Speaker 1: My Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part two of our series about the
Speaker 1: legendary Irish hero Finn McCool. If you haven't heard part one,
Speaker 1: you should go back and listen to that one first.
Speaker 1: This one will make a lot more sense if you do.
Speaker 1: But at the end of the last episode, we promised
Speaker 1: you that this episode would be the one that's all thumb, because,
Speaker 1: of course, one of the great legends about Finn McCool
Speaker 1: is the so called thumb of knowledge. We teased it
Speaker 1: a few times in the previous episode. But but now
Speaker 1: we're finally here. We're finally to the thumb factory. That's
Speaker 1: all right. Finn is not merely a warrior and a
Speaker 1: hunter and in a in a defender of his people.
Speaker 1: He also has the gift of divination. His prescience puts
Speaker 1: him in keeping with the likes of Paula Trades, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't take spice or enter a Prana Bindu trance
Speaker 1: in order to see the future, or is it sometimes
Speaker 1: described to gain wisdom. Instead, he puts his thumb in
Speaker 1: his mouth is the most heroic thing I can picture.
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine the movie poster. It's like your your
Speaker 1: action movie hero. They've got the sword, their hair is
Speaker 1: blowing in the wind, maybe their armor is splattered with
Speaker 1: blood and mud. And also he's just got his thumb
Speaker 1: in his mouth. Now. In the last part of the series,
Speaker 1: we referenced a few works by a scholar named James McKillop,
Speaker 1: who has written extensively on Finn McCool and on Irish
Speaker 1: smith and legend. For example, I cited him when I
Speaker 1: was talking about the version of the Giants Causeways story
Speaker 1: that involves uh, that involves the the Ben and Donner Giant,
Speaker 1: the rival Giant being replaced with one named Kukullen, which
Speaker 1: is totally confusing because that's the name of a different
Speaker 1: Irish folk hero. But this was also the version of
Speaker 1: the story where Finn McCool bites off the rival giant's
Speaker 1: finger when the giant is tricked into putting the finger
Speaker 1: into his mouth. But I think you were also reading
Speaker 1: something by James McKillop on the on the origins of
Speaker 1: this thumb story, right, yeah, yeah. According to McKillop. The
Speaker 1: The details on how the thumb is utilized very according
Speaker 1: to the you know, the different tellings. Sometimes it's described
Speaker 1: as a sucking of the thumb, much like an infant
Speaker 1: would would suck on a thumber fingers. Other Times it's
Speaker 1: described as a chewing of the thumb, and sometimes it's
Speaker 1: specifically said that the thumb is placed behind the upper teeth,
Speaker 1: which I guess is something that is is more or
Speaker 1: less happening with any kind of infantile sucking of the
Speaker 1: thumb anyway, but that they seem to make us sometimes
Speaker 1: the point is made that is like the thumb is
Speaker 1: coming into contact with the palette and pressing. All right.
Speaker 1: So as amusing as the image of an action hero
Speaker 1: sucking his thumb might be, uh, the idea of an
Speaker 1: action hero biting his thumb, that's pretty close, but that
Speaker 1: seems a little more maybe on the money, especially when
Speaker 1: you take into account some historical considerations, because the idea
Speaker 1: of biting his thumb immediately made me think of the
Speaker 1: classically confusing scene from Shakespeare the Infamous do you bite
Speaker 1: your thumbatus serve the scene from Romeo and Juliet rob
Speaker 1: do you remember coming across this in in school and
Speaker 1: having no idea what to make of it. Yes, I
Speaker 1: distinctly remember this, probably when we were watching at an
Speaker 1: adaptation of it um and uh, yeah, there's the whole
Speaker 1: scene with I by my thumb at you, and I
Speaker 1: remember everyone getting a real kick out of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's one of those where you know what
Speaker 1: it means, but you don't know what it means, Like
Speaker 1: you get the gist, but you don't understand what they're
Speaker 1: talking about. Because so the scene, for anybody who hasn't
Speaker 1: read it, it's in Romeo and Juliet, Act one, Scene one.
Speaker 1: We get servants of the two rival houses, the Montague
Speaker 1: in the Capulets. They run into each other in the
Speaker 1: street and they're they're trying to stir things up there.
Speaker 1: They're trying to to provoke a fight because they hate
Speaker 1: each other. And so a character from one house says,
Speaker 1: do you bite your thumbat us, sir? And the guy
Speaker 1: from the other house says, I do bite my thumb, sir.
Speaker 1: Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? And then
Speaker 1: he uh. The guy who's biting his thumb lead leans
Speaker 1: aside to his friend and he says is the law
Speaker 1: on our side. If I say I and his friend
Speaker 1: says no, it is not. So he says, no, sir,
Speaker 1: I do not bite my thumb at you, sir. But
Speaker 1: I bite my thumb sir. So it's it's sort of like,
Speaker 1: I'm just punching the air. And if you happen to
Speaker 1: walk into the air that I'm punching, you know, so
Speaker 1: be it. I think the implication is that if he
Speaker 1: says outright that he is biting his thumb at the
Speaker 1: other guy, then if a fight breaks out, it will
Speaker 1: be considered his fault because he provoked it. So he's
Speaker 1: just saying no, I'm just biting my thumb in general,
Speaker 1: all right, makes sense, makes sense. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: if here is, if there's a difference between flashing the
Speaker 1: middle thing or and making a middle finger and scratching
Speaker 1: your face, you have plausible deniability and saying I know
Speaker 1: I wasn't flipping you off. I was. I just on
Speaker 1: the side of my face itches and I needed to
Speaker 1: relieve it. And my see, my middle finger is my
Speaker 1: longest finger, and therefore it is the ideal finger to
Speaker 1: use for scratching. Said notes right, Oh, oh, it's itching again. Oh,
Speaker 1: here I go again. Oh now both sides are itching. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh so yeah, that that is clearly what's going on
Speaker 1: in the scene. But it is interesting to ponder, like,
Speaker 1: what is what is the origin of this thumb biting thing,
Speaker 1: because of course this was localized to specific cultures, but
Speaker 1: it's clear what it means in context. It seems to
Speaker 1: bite one's thumb at someone was a gesture of disrespect
Speaker 1: or contempt. It was kind of like giving the finger.
Speaker 1: It was. It was a way of saying you stink.
Speaker 1: And in trying to find something about the origins of
Speaker 1: this gesture, I found an exerpt from a book called
Speaker 1: How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan, England by a British
Speaker 1: story named Ruth Goodman. And uh she writes as follows quote.
Speaker 1: In modern sicily, you can still see a form of
Speaker 1: this gesture and use an upright thumb held so that
Speaker 1: the pad points outwards, is tucked behind the top front teeth,
Speaker 1: and then flicked forwards out of the mouth towards the
Speaker 1: intended insulte. Okay, so are you picturing that It's not
Speaker 1: the thumb going straight into the mouth as you might
Speaker 1: think with like when a child is sucking their thumb instead.
Speaker 1: It's like the thumb kind of goes upward into the
Speaker 1: mouth behind the top teeth, and then you kind of
Speaker 1: flick the thumb out pad out. But then Goodman also writes,
Speaker 1: I've also seen a version in action on the outskirts
Speaker 1: of Venice, although I don't know if it was a
Speaker 1: native Venetian performing it, where the pad of the thumb
Speaker 1: was placed horizontally between the top and bottom teeth in
Speaker 1: a bite, and then flicked out, rotating as it went
Speaker 1: so that the bitten pad was thrust forwards. And so
Speaker 1: because of the the the Finn McCool biting the thumb thing,
Speaker 1: I started to wonder if there were any in tristing
Speaker 1: connections between this gesture we see in Shakespeare that appears
Speaker 1: to have mostly gone out of style today, though maybe
Speaker 1: you might still see it in isolated cases here or there,
Speaker 1: such as in Sicily or somewhere in Italy. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to say that for me, this investigation was
Speaker 1: a failure. I couldn't find any evidence of a connection
Speaker 1: between these two story elements, though it did raise interesting
Speaker 1: questions on its own, like where would this type of
Speaker 1: thumb biting gesture come from and uh from what I
Speaker 1: turned up. Like many obscene gestures, its origins are unknown,
Speaker 1: but I did find a book that had some interesting
Speaker 1: informed guesses, and this was in an academic book called
Speaker 1: Historical Social Psychology by Kenneth Gurgin and Mary Gurgan published
Speaker 1: by Taylor and Francis. And so, first of all, they
Speaker 1: dispense with a few alternatives. They say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the thumb biting uh insult gesture has something to
Speaker 1: do with thumb sucking, but that doesn't really fit what's
Speaker 1: described in the Shakespearean usage. And they say the same
Speaker 1: goes for the act of biting the knuckle of your thumb,
Speaker 1: which is a gesture that sometimes people still used today,
Speaker 1: but it seems to to mean something different. Biting the
Speaker 1: knuckle of your thumb seems to denote someone desperately trying
Speaker 1: to contain rage, and that also it also just doesn't
Speaker 1: fit what's described in these sources. So instead they argued
Speaker 1: that the thumb biting described by Shakespeare is something that
Speaker 1: has generally fallen out of fashion today, it's mostly not
Speaker 1: used anymore, and that in order to understand it we
Speaker 1: would need to look to the historical context. So what's
Speaker 1: the context. Well, I thought their answer was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: They write quote. The clue, it seems, is to be
Speaker 1: found in the fact that during the latter half of
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, men were in the habit of wearing gloves,
Speaker 1: and these were usually removed prior to any confrontation, not
Speaker 1: unlike the present day Irish habit of taking off one's
Speaker 1: jacket to show that one means business. In fact, the
Speaker 1: practice of removing and throwing down glove had become ritualized
Speaker 1: as a challenge long before Shakespeare's time, and it is
Speaker 1: common knowledge that medieval knights use this device to invite
Speaker 1: each other into the lists. It seems likely that the
Speaker 1: medieval convention, or some version of it, was still around
Speaker 1: in a stylized form during Shakespeare's time, but it had
Speaker 1: become abbreviated to the point where an intention movement of
Speaker 1: removing one's gloves would suffice. So how does an early
Speaker 1: modern hater remove a glove? Well, one way would be
Speaker 1: to remove it with the opposite hand, but another way
Speaker 1: would be to bite at one of the fingers of
Speaker 1: the glove with your teeth and then pull the hand
Speaker 1: away from inside. You've probably seen people take gloves off
Speaker 1: this way. The latter method, they claim, is well attested,
Speaker 1: and it was not unusual to remove a glove this
Speaker 1: way by by biting the thumb and pulling the hand out.
Speaker 1: Though when I was trying to imagine doing this myself,
Speaker 1: to just sort of give it a quick thought experiment check,
Speaker 1: I think you probably can do it. Though it seems
Speaker 1: to me be easier to get get your hand out
Speaker 1: of the glove by biting one of the long fingers
Speaker 1: than by biting the thumb. But I'm no no glove expert.
Speaker 1: Well this makes sense. Yeah, the gloves are off. This
Speaker 1: is the classic challenge, and I had to We had
Speaker 1: to check this with seth Um, whose Simpsons knowledge knows
Speaker 1: no bounds. But on on the Simpsons we had the
Speaker 1: episode where we had the glove slap where Homer is
Speaker 1: challenging everyone to a duel in town by slapping them
Speaker 1: with his glove, which he has removed. Right, So in
Speaker 1: this case, the authors suggest their hypothesis is that over time,
Speaker 1: this familiar, highly salient activity of taking off a glove
Speaker 1: to demand a duel could be abbreviated to a simple
Speaker 1: gesture of just biting your thumb to show scorn or
Speaker 1: disrespect whether or not you're actually wearing a glove. They
Speaker 1: do say they could find no direct evidence supporting this hypothesis,
Speaker 1: though it does fit well with the observation that the
Speaker 1: gesture mostly fell into disuse when dueling disappeared as a
Speaker 1: legitimate way settling beef. So anyway, I think interesting question
Speaker 1: on its own, but I couldn't really find that this
Speaker 1: much informs Finn McCool right right. I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that makes the Thumb of Knowledge here
Speaker 1: so fascinating is that it does, to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: feel like kind of an island in mythology, Like it's
Speaker 1: something that it's not like there's something universal about heroes
Speaker 1: um biting or sucking their thumb or placing their thumb
Speaker 1: in their mouth. But but we'll get into some of
Speaker 1: the connections that that are in place in a bit here.
Speaker 1: The next question is, of course, well, why, what's the story.
Speaker 1: There's gotta be a story. There's always a story behind
Speaker 1: why something is the way it is in mythology, and
Speaker 1: the main origin story for the miraculous thumb of Finn
Speaker 1: McCool is the salmon of knowledge. Salmon is in the
Speaker 1: the fish, the delicious fish where we're familiar with and uh.
Speaker 1: McKillop points out that, okay um. In addition to this,
Speaker 1: the salmon has plenty of mystical connotations, uh, in part
Speaker 1: due to uh it's observed leaping out of the water.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't a stretch to think there might be
Speaker 1: something magical about a salmon. Uh. It's not like an
Speaker 1: inherently secular animal or mundane animal. It is one that
Speaker 1: that that already has all these various mystical connotations and uh,
Speaker 1: and so it makes sense that it might play into
Speaker 1: such a story. Rob can I reveal though, when I
Speaker 1: was trying to say, okay, are there are other magical
Speaker 1: salmon out there? So I google the phrase magical salmon
Speaker 1: and the first result is, of course, Chef Paul Prudom's
Speaker 1: salmon Magic Seasoning Blend. There you go. I'm sure it
Speaker 1: was a magical um recipe that that he he earned
Speaker 1: by catching a magical fish. Um. Because that's that's that's
Speaker 1: basically what we have going on here. So the stories goes,
Speaker 1: do you have a druid by the name of Finnegus
Speaker 1: who lives on the banks of a river and he
Speaker 1: has long waited for and and and intends to catch
Speaker 1: the salmon of knowledge. There are other versions of the
Speaker 1: story that say that he's he's camping out at a waterfall,
Speaker 1: or that there's some sort of a you know, some
Speaker 1: sort of an underground UH reservoir sort of situation going on.
Speaker 1: But the idea is that at some point this uh,
Speaker 1: this marvelous salmon is going to present itself and if
Speaker 1: the druid can catch it, he can eat it and
Speaker 1: he can gain all of that wonderful wisdom for himself.
Speaker 1: Now is it ever explained how he knows that the salmon,
Speaker 1: the salmon of knowledge, will give him all this wisdom?
Speaker 1: Or is that just he is just something he knows? Well,
Speaker 1: there are a few different um there's at least one
Speaker 1: really good UH story beyond behind this, and this is account.
Speaker 1: This is an account mentioned by Patricia Monaghan in uh
Speaker 1: Celtic Mythology and Folklore. According to this author, the fish
Speaker 1: is sometimes identified is Fenton, a bard who lived many
Speaker 1: lifetimes and many incarnations. Us he has all of this
Speaker 1: accumulated knowledge and in this incarnation he just happens to
Speaker 1: be a salmon. And so I guess you know, through
Speaker 1: the druid I arts. This particular druid knows hey, I
Speaker 1: can catch him this time, and if I eat him,
Speaker 1: and I'll gain all of that knowledge. So it's it's
Speaker 1: literally that I'm gonna eat your brains and gain your knowledge,
Speaker 1: right well, you know, but not maybe not the brains,
Speaker 1: maybe just all that delicious. Uh maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't I'm not sure if you have to eat
Speaker 1: like absolutely all of the fish, or you have to
Speaker 1: eat the brain, but you're already cooking a salmon, so
Speaker 1: you might as well make a meal out of it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, I actually I guess as as
Speaker 1: well as we're about to learn it's not just the brains,
Speaker 1: and in fact that it may be a little more
Speaker 1: subtle than that, because what what apparently happens is, uh
Speaker 1: the druid finally succeeded in catching it after waiting for
Speaker 1: it for seven years, which incidentally, it's been seven years
Speaker 1: since Finn McCool was born. And seven year old Finn
Speaker 1: McCool is hanging out there at the druid camp with him,
Speaker 1: and you know he's shadowing him, uh you know, as
Speaker 1: you do. And so Finnegus he's caught the salmon. He's overjoyed,
Speaker 1: so he starts cooking the salm, puts it on a spit.
Speaker 1: It's roasting there, and Finns trying to help out, and
Speaker 1: he accidentally burns his thumb on the cooking fish. And
Speaker 1: what does he do? What do you do in your
Speaker 1: your thumb is is burnt while you immediately seek to
Speaker 1: soothe that pain by thrusting your thumb into your mouth.
Speaker 1: And Finn does just this, and when he does, he
Speaker 1: inherits the power of the salmon before the old druid
Speaker 1: even gets a shot at it. So it's the oil
Speaker 1: from the salmon that contains the knowledge you. It's not
Speaker 1: eat your brains and gain your knowledge. It's eat your
Speaker 1: omega threes and gain your knowledge right right now. In
Speaker 1: some variations, however, he gains he said to gain the
Speaker 1: power of divination by eating magical hazel nuts, or he
Speaker 1: gains it from the salmon because the salmon ate magical
Speaker 1: hazel nuts. Uh. There's also one version in which he
Speaker 1: enters a fairy mound. Uh. Fairy mounds are these sircular
Speaker 1: ancient dwellings uh you know from from from ancient Ireland
Speaker 1: that were later associated with supernatural tales and you know,
Speaker 1: stuff like the to authora done and uh So. Anyway,
Speaker 1: he enters a fairy ground, he gains the magical ability
Speaker 1: from three fairy women he encounters there, but then as
Speaker 1: he's leaving, he accidentally smashes his thumb in the door
Speaker 1: of the fairy mound. But it seems like the fish
Speaker 1: version of the story, the Salmon of Knowledge is the
Speaker 1: primary tale. It's the most popular now. It's It's often
Speaker 1: stated that it's not just putting the thumb in his
Speaker 1: mouth that sets off the divination trance, but that Finn
Speaker 1: also has to recite a kind of poetic chanting incantation
Speaker 1: um called the I think probably pronouncing this wrong, but
Speaker 1: the teenem latia laeda uh and uh. This also may
Speaker 1: have some connection to hazel nuts, according to McKellop in
Speaker 1: the Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. McKellop adds that the thumb
Speaker 1: allowed him to enter quote and I love this an
Speaker 1: altered visionary state in which he could see past, present,
Speaker 1: and future, in which he could see present. Wow, I
Speaker 1: mean that that is a real Well maybe maybe it
Speaker 1: means he could see all of the present, like things
Speaker 1: that are not present with him at the present or
Speaker 1: to see the present clearly. I don't know. There's another
Speaker 1: interesting wrinkle here. Uh. The Celtic Languages and Literature professor
Speaker 1: Patrick k Ford suggests that one connection here may be
Speaker 1: that the old Irish word for thumb was order, which
Speaker 1: may also signify a morsel, particularly a morsel of meat
Speaker 1: that you would you know, consume, And McKillop points out
Speaker 1: that that the consumption of a morsel of magical flesh
Speaker 1: is a common folkloric more motif. So if I'm to
Speaker 1: understand this correctly, uh, the interpretation would mean that fins
Speaker 1: morsel slash thumb becomes the sacred flesh by coming into
Speaker 1: burning contact with the cooking sacred fish of the salmon
Speaker 1: of wisdom. But is it also suggesting that there may
Speaker 1: possibly have been the kind of semantic contagion in the
Speaker 1: evolution of this story where originally the story was about
Speaker 1: eating a magical morsel of meat, but because you can
Speaker 1: use the same word for morsel of meat and thumb,
Speaker 1: that it came to represent a thumb in later tellings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely the sense I'm getting from this. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we have, you know, sanantics and linguistic shift going on
Speaker 1: here in addition to just you know, a cool story
Speaker 1: of of magic fish consumption. Oh, this is great because
Speaker 1: I'm imagining other variations of of that kind of evolution
Speaker 1: of a story like the the the thumb slash morsel
Speaker 1: makes sense because like a little morsel of meat that
Speaker 1: might be about the size of your thumb. But there
Speaker 1: are other ways that we use body parts to measure
Speaker 1: quantities in reality. Like I'm thinking of people who would say, hey,
Speaker 1: I want two fingers of whiskey in the glass. So
Speaker 1: you could have a story about somebody who drinks a
Speaker 1: magical draft of something. They get two fingers of it,
Speaker 1: but then in later tellings it gets confused and it's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they drank their own fingers and then they gained this power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could have like a sort of a Popeye esque
Speaker 1: character if he has if he's six two fingers in
Speaker 1: his in his mouth, then he gets all riled up
Speaker 1: and is ready to fight, puts him into a drunken
Speaker 1: brawling spade. So as we'll discuss, the thumb pops up
Speaker 1: in a few other places. Um, but it's largely thought
Speaker 1: to be quite emblematic of Finn McCool. His only real
Speaker 1: defining feature in iconography. I think sometimes there are hounds
Speaker 1: or dogs that are associated with Finn McCool. Uh. But
Speaker 1: but the thumb especially is something where you know, historians
Speaker 1: and art historians are looking at at various images. If
Speaker 1: they see the thumb being, you know, poked towards the mouth,
Speaker 1: they can they can generally say, with some certain data,
Speaker 1: this must be Finn McCool. And I haven't found an
Speaker 1: example of this online or in the books I was
Speaker 1: looking at, But apparently many Celtic crosses have various figures
Speaker 1: in the design and sometimes you'll see uh this, uh,
Speaker 1: this thumb brandishing Finn McCool. Characters pop up, or it's
Speaker 1: assumed that it's Finn mcool because who else would it be. Um. So,
Speaker 1: if if you, if you've never if you can't imagine
Speaker 1: what a Celtic cross tends will look like. They tend
Speaker 1: to be to be a cruciform shape. But then with
Speaker 1: all these kind of compartments for further illustrations and symbols, Now,
Speaker 1: how is it the thumb is usually emphasized in the psychography.
Speaker 1: Is it like glowing or something? Or is he sucking it?
Speaker 1: Is it in his mouth? Um? Like I said, I
Speaker 1: couldn't find a direct example of this that stood out
Speaker 1: to me, But I I just they're they're they're gonna
Speaker 1: be smaller figures and they're I don't think they're gonna
Speaker 1: it's gonna be necessarily obvious that like the thumb is
Speaker 1: glowing or anything. But just by by virtue of having
Speaker 1: some sort of emphasis on the thumb and a visible
Speaker 1: thumb or even a thumb in the mouth, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be pretty obvious that it's Finn McCool. Now this is
Speaker 1: not related to the thumb, but just as a quick
Speaker 1: side note on you mentioned that some stories of Finn
Speaker 1: McCool emphasizes dogs. I was reading a few of those.
Speaker 1: They are actually some really great dog buddy uh legends
Speaker 1: of Finn, And one of them is about how he
Speaker 1: how he gains a wife who is a person who
Speaker 1: or I think she's like a fairy, but in any case,
Speaker 1: she's transformed into a fawn by an evil wizard and uh,
Speaker 1: and he finds her by by virtue of the fact
Speaker 1: that he's out with his hunting dogs and when he
Speaker 1: comes across this fawn, his dogs don't go after the
Speaker 1: fond and like attack it, but instead settle down and
Speaker 1: cuddle with it. And so then he brings the fawn
Speaker 1: back with him to his to his castle. And once
Speaker 1: they arrived there, the fawn turns into this woman who
Speaker 1: becomes his wife. But then unfortunately she is she is
Speaker 1: tricked and stolen away by the evil wizard. Again interesting interesting. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: in terms of other accounts of thumbs in uh in
Speaker 1: in in Celtic mythology, I did run across another interesting example,
Speaker 1: and this was this is from the or ninety three
Speaker 1: Nordic Celtic Legends Symposium, an article by Rhea knock Ogan
Speaker 1: titled Music Learned from the Fairies, and according to the
Speaker 1: author here that there are many tales of mortals learning
Speaker 1: the music of fairy folk music from beyond our world,
Speaker 1: and usually they learn it by hearing it in just
Speaker 1: the right place at just the right time, uh you know,
Speaker 1: something like ancient ruin strange rocks in the woods, you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of place that fairies might appear or hang out. Um.
Speaker 1: And such was also around the time of Solon, like
Speaker 1: this is the time of the year when the veil
Speaker 1: is thin between our world and the next. And there's
Speaker 1: at least one account uh in in Celtic tradition of
Speaker 1: a man hearing fairy music. He's, uh, you know, he
Speaker 1: hears it in the woods or wherever, and does he
Speaker 1: do He sticks his thumb in his mouth whilst hearing
Speaker 1: the music, and as a result he remembered the music.
Speaker 1: And of course this this calls to mind Finn McCool interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, what does that suggest about our intuitions about
Speaker 1: the power of sucking a thumb that it like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what that means, that that it it has
Speaker 1: some kind of uh grounding power that it can cause
Speaker 1: you to, uh to sort of like hold fast against
Speaker 1: uh maybe currents of magic or forgetfulness that would otherwise
Speaker 1: wash away the memory. Well, yeah, this is a great
Speaker 1: question because I guess, on one hand, let's let's start
Speaker 1: by let's go ahead and assume that that sticking your
Speaker 1: thumb in your mouth actually doesn't have any effect on uh,
Speaker 1: you know, your your your memory or your your your
Speaker 1: your stress level or anything like that. Um, it does
Speaker 1: make you wonder if there is if there's something culturally
Speaker 1: in place where, uh where just the idea of sticking
Speaker 1: your thumb in your mouth is like a novel thing
Speaker 1: that is done that that is associated with insight. Um.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it is the kind of thing where
Speaker 1: you could stick your thumb in your mouth thinking about
Speaker 1: this tradition and it would actually help you remember something better,
Speaker 1: because it's also like that thing I heard while I
Speaker 1: was sticking my thumb in my mouth. Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: In fact, that even connects to a mnemonic device I've
Speaker 1: I've heard of before, which is uh, basically like if
Speaker 1: if suddenly something happens and you want to remember it
Speaker 1: very well, you should do something really weird immediately so
Speaker 1: that you like form a link in your mind between
Speaker 1: that weird memorable thing you did and uh, and and
Speaker 1: whatever thing it is you're trying to remember. Interesting now,
Speaker 1: of course that the thing is with when it comes
Speaker 1: with thumb sucking, Uh, it doesn't seem to be just
Speaker 1: a a completely neutral um just here if you will. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we actually have quite a lot of research out
Speaker 1: there on thumb sucking, particularly as it relates to children. Right.
Speaker 1: So I was actually reading a brief article in a
Speaker 1: pediatric medicine journal reviewing the existing literature on thumbs sucking
Speaker 1: as of two thousand eight. So this article was called
Speaker 1: Thumb and Finger Sucking by Lynn Davidson in the Journal
Speaker 1: Pediatrics in Review. Again, this was the year two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: and a few major takeaways from this brief right up.
Speaker 1: Number one is that different studies across time have found
Speaker 1: some some different rates of the prevalence of thumb sucking
Speaker 1: or finger sucking. A lot of times these studies just
Speaker 1: lump thumb and finger sucking in together, so you're not
Speaker 1: necessarily getting a breakdown by which finger it is. But
Speaker 1: I think it is clear that thumbs are the most
Speaker 1: most common finger for infants to suck. But older studies
Speaker 1: found rates in the range of seventy to nine percent
Speaker 1: of children showing a thumb or finger sucking behaviors, and
Speaker 1: more recent studies have found rates more like thirty percent
Speaker 1: by the end of the first year after birth. Along
Speaker 1: with using a pacifier. That with that thirty four percent.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's an either or situation or
Speaker 1: an and situation to some children suck thumb and to pacifier,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I don't I don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of direct experience with that, but I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: in some cases you're gonna have a situation where the
Speaker 1: child is gravitating towards sucking on on digits and you
Speaker 1: want to get a pacifier in there instead, and you're like, here, here,
Speaker 1: use this instead. Anyway. There's some variations on these rates,
Speaker 1: uh with the within the first few years of life,
Speaker 1: but Davidson writes that by the time most children reached
Speaker 1: the age of four, these rates have gone way down.
Speaker 1: On average, only twelve percent of children in one study
Speaker 1: sucked a finger, including a thumb, by the age of four,
Speaker 1: and pacifier use had gone down to four percent by
Speaker 1: that time. Now here's something I thought was interesting. Apparently,
Speaker 1: during the first few months of life, infants are most
Speaker 1: likely to suck their thumbs during sleep, but by the
Speaker 1: end of the first year more infants do it while awake.
Speaker 1: There were no differ princes in rates of thumb sucking
Speaker 1: prevalence by sex. And oh and I thought this was interesting.
Speaker 1: Up to fifty percent of children who suck their thumbs
Speaker 1: or fingers also tend to hold a special object while
Speaker 1: doing so. M hmm. This is yeah, sort of the
Speaker 1: classic I I have sudden my my my thumb or
Speaker 1: my fingers, and I have to hold onto a special
Speaker 1: blanket or a special stuff. He that sort of thing. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: there have been a number of historical explanations for thumb
Speaker 1: sucking UH. One that must be cited, unfortunately, as Freud
Speaker 1: Freud being Freud believed it to be an expression of
Speaker 1: what he called quote infantile sexuality, and that when it
Speaker 1: persisted beyond infancy, it was a symptom of emotional disturbance. UH. Obviously,
Speaker 1: Freudian is um held a lot of sway for a while,
Speaker 1: despite it being profoundly weird and not actually being subject
Speaker 1: to empirical testing. But there are some more recent theories
Speaker 1: that seem better grounded and experimental research, and they generally
Speaker 1: suggest that UM thumb sucking grows out of instinctual behaviors
Speaker 1: in infants, that sucking behaviors are a universal instinctual behavior
Speaker 1: in newborns that they use for breastfeeding or bottle feeding,
Speaker 1: and that after that, for some reason, in some children,
Speaker 1: this instinctual behavior continues beyond the point of nutritional relevance,
Speaker 1: and the instinctual behavior might be reinforced through conditioning, and
Speaker 1: in some cases it just continues with a substitute such
Speaker 1: as a thumb or a finger. I don't know if
Speaker 1: there is a good agreed upon answer as to why
Speaker 1: this reinforced behavior would be continued in some children but
Speaker 1: not others, Like what makes the difference? I'm not sure. However,
Speaker 1: it might be informative to note that some studies have
Speaker 1: found that thumb sucking appears to be especially common when
Speaker 1: children are board tired or anxious, and this suggests that
Speaker 1: it plays some kind of self soothing role. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I was finding some some evidence to back this up
Speaker 1: as well. There's a two thousand fifteen article published in
Speaker 1: Minerva PEDIATRICAU that concluded that quote, a thumbsucking subject puts
Speaker 1: the thumb in the mouth to stimulate the nasal palatal
Speaker 1: receptors of trigeminists and obtain muscular balance and a release
Speaker 1: of physical and psychological tension. Now that's also interesting when
Speaker 1: you when you think about the Okay, we have Finn
Speaker 1: McCool doing this as an adult. You can certainly find
Speaker 1: adult thumbsuckers who speak to the calming effects of the practice.
Speaker 1: Um So, I wonder if it is too much of
Speaker 1: a stretch to imagine an Irish warrior of old who
Speaker 1: you know, just you know, he's this wonderful hunter and
Speaker 1: warrior and all this, but he needs to calm down
Speaker 1: every now and then, and this stressful role in society,
Speaker 1: and if you're going to ponder an important decision, you
Speaker 1: need to reach a place of relative peace. And perhaps
Speaker 1: placing his thumb inside of his mouth allows him to
Speaker 1: do so, and and and maybe you end up seeing
Speaker 1: the creation of magical explanations for what's going on here,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just saying, well, he never quite stopped
Speaker 1: sucking his thumb when he's nervous or stressed. Oh man,
Speaker 1: that would be an amazing origin story. Yes, so it
Speaker 1: begins with this beast of a warrior, great hunter, you know,
Speaker 1: blow the hunting horn. I will defend the shores of Ireland.
Speaker 1: But I also suck my thumb and uh. And people
Speaker 1: are like, why is he sucking his thumb? And somebody
Speaker 1: else is like, well, it's what he does when he
Speaker 1: needs to, you know, see into the future. Yeah. Thank now,
Speaker 1: another possible connection. I was thinking about a related connection anyway.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's more stress placed on the idea that Finn
Speaker 1: is placing his thumb behind his upper teeth, and of
Speaker 1: course thumb sucking itself impacts the palette. I was reminded
Speaker 1: of traditions in meditation that you encounter in which one
Speaker 1: is asked to hold the tip of one's tongue to
Speaker 1: the roof of the mouth. Sometimes this is described in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, of course, bodily energy flow. Other
Speaker 1: times it's just being a way of of altering the
Speaker 1: flow of saliva in the mouth. Though it is sometimes
Speaker 1: described as a way of eliminating negative thoughts or even
Speaker 1: a way of sort of weeding out speech based thoughts. Well,
Speaker 1: and I'd wonder if you know, any kind of meditative
Speaker 1: practice that involves unusual activities with the body is essentially
Speaker 1: just trying to trying to direct your concentration away from
Speaker 1: the sort of default mode flow of of thoughts that
Speaker 1: are that arise. Uh. Normally, if if you're thinking about
Speaker 1: doing a sort of strange repetitive action with your body,
Speaker 1: you're probably less inclined to start thinking about, oh man,
Speaker 1: next Thursday. I really yeah, yeah exactly. Um So I
Speaker 1: feel like that is I couldn't find any like real
Speaker 1: research on this, and perhaps I'm missing something, but um,
Speaker 1: this seems plausible to me, like if there was some
Speaker 1: sort of like ritual uh we see in meditation, this
Speaker 1: is a ritual touching of something to the roof of
Speaker 1: your mouth. That is then associated with um with some
Speaker 1: degree of anxiety relief and some degree of relaxation. Uh.
Speaker 1: We we see some evidence to support the idea that
Speaker 1: that thumb sucking itself can reduce anxiety. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: we have this idea too that just sort of novel
Speaker 1: behaviors and rituals of relaxation, rituals of grounding can can
Speaker 1: very much be be helpful. I'm not advising anybody to
Speaker 1: take up sucking of the thumb as a as a
Speaker 1: as a way to try and uh, you know, find
Speaker 1: balance or to see into the future, but I feel
Speaker 1: like there's some there's some interesting leads here to potentially
Speaker 1: pull on to sort of try and make sense of
Speaker 1: of where this may come from. And uh and and
Speaker 1: how such a either at the very least such a
Speaker 1: myth comes together, but but also the possibility that this
Speaker 1: is something that could have been practiced to some limited
Speaker 1: degree uh uh you know, in in Ireland of old. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also another note, Yes, so we were not encouraging thumb
Speaker 1: sucking for adults, especially because that can cause dental problems
Speaker 1: if if you're doing chronic thumb sucking after the baby
Speaker 1: teeth have been replaced. Yeah, that's the that's of course,
Speaker 1: the the prime reason that the adults discourage the act
Speaker 1: and want to to wean kids away from the sucking
Speaker 1: of fingers and thumbs, because yeah, once the baby teeth
Speaker 1: are going, you've got the adult teeth going in. You
Speaker 1: can you can jack up those adult teeth by continually
Speaker 1: pre pressing the thumb up there into the palette. It
Speaker 1: seems like the methods used to discourage thumb sucking and
Speaker 1: and train children not to do it have become more
Speaker 1: humane over time, because I was reading about some of
Speaker 1: the older methods people used to try to, you know,
Speaker 1: get their kid to get the thumb out of the mouth,
Speaker 1: and it was brutal, like one was about these ideas
Speaker 1: of having the sharp implements put on the backs of
Speaker 1: the teeth that would like cause pain in the thumb.
Speaker 1: Have you read about this, Yeah, yeah, I think I've
Speaker 1: heard about that before. Um, yeah, obviously that does not
Speaker 1: sound good, or of course putting putting noxious chemicals or
Speaker 1: something on the thumb. Yeah, I think I think people
Speaker 1: have better methods now. Yeah, Now, one of the interesting
Speaker 1: that we talked about, this idea of the thumb sucking
Speaker 1: being you know, the thumb in the mouth being kind
Speaker 1: of an island for this mythology of Finn McCool, and
Speaker 1: certainly again it is a defining one of the defining
Speaker 1: factors of this this particular hero. But you do see
Speaker 1: thumbs sucking, thumb in the mouth motifs popping up with
Speaker 1: some other heroes, particularly A few examples that have come
Speaker 1: to mind include um Ciggurd, the hero there. Actually I
Speaker 1: saw an image of him that it's like a carving,
Speaker 1: and you see him with thumb in the mouth, So
Speaker 1: that seems to be very much related to what we're
Speaker 1: looking at here. Another hero that we see lined up
Speaker 1: with the thumb is tal Yesen, So there seems to
Speaker 1: be some connection Betwe Queen, Finn McCool and these heroes
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah. McKillop notes in his book that there
Speaker 1: was a controversial suggestion by Robert Graves that that Heracles
Speaker 1: or Hercules, the Greek hero, was associated with the thumb
Speaker 1: in the same way that Achilles is associated with the heel,
Speaker 1: kind of these body parts that are emblematic of the person.
Speaker 1: But McKillip brings that association up specifically in the context
Speaker 1: of it of it being kind of kind of doubtful. Now,
Speaker 1: outside of these these three heroes, I wasn't really really
Speaker 1: finding much that that that even resembled Finn McCool. But
Speaker 1: there is an interesting thumbsucking bit of myth making that
Speaker 1: pop pops up in Hindu traditions. In the Hindu epic
Speaker 1: the Mahabarata, there's the story of King van Ashva, who
Speaker 1: apparently has trouble conceiving a child with any of his concubines,
Speaker 1: and so he winds up drinking a magic potion that
Speaker 1: makes him pregnant. So when this occurs, his you know,
Speaker 1: he realizes, well, there's some some additional problems now that
Speaker 1: I have to deal with. So he turns to the
Speaker 1: divine physicians and they cut open his thigh so that
Speaker 1: he can actually give birth to the baby. But then
Speaker 1: how is he to nourish the child? Well, then we
Speaker 1: have Indra, the King of Davis, to cut open his
Speaker 1: thumb and this allows milk to leak forth from the
Speaker 1: thumb so that he can nurse his infant son in
Speaker 1: this manner, And this is why the story goes, did
Speaker 1: babies sometimes suck their thumbs? Wow? Interesting? Yeah, no direct
Speaker 1: connection between this and Finn McCool, but just another kind
Speaker 1: of cool thumbsucking mythology to to reference here. The more
Speaker 1: I think about the idea of a of a thumbsucking
Speaker 1: warrior action hero, the more I love it, Like I
Speaker 1: want to see a movie like this, or it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be thumbsucking. It could also be, Um, you
Speaker 1: know you're you're great warrior, great swinger of the sword,
Speaker 1: like has a blankie. Yeah, yeah, I mean we had,
Speaker 1: uh see who's the telling of all his character that
Speaker 1: does a kolchak uh ko jack that that had the
Speaker 1: the sucker like that was his whole thing, right, lollipops
Speaker 1: the lollipop. Yeah, uh, that's not too far removed from it.
Speaker 1: I cannot do detective until I get my lolly. Yes, well, Rob,
Speaker 1: I have greatly enjoyed this journey into Finn McCool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one has been a lot of fun. Like I say,
Speaker 1: I wasn't super familiar with Finn McCool prior to this,
Speaker 1: and I certainly had had somehow skipped over or forgotten
Speaker 1: anything about the thumb of knowledge. So this was this
Speaker 1: was a fun journey into Irish mythology. Always fun to
Speaker 1: do that around this time of year, you know, um
Speaker 1: previous episodes of the show, we have talked about our
Speaker 1: love for the Time Life Enchanted World books that were
Speaker 1: fabulously advertised on TV commercials with Vincent Price where you
Speaker 1: know he's I love to carrl up with a good book.
Speaker 1: Did his eyes glow green in those commercials? I think so? Um,
Speaker 1: they may have. Well, a couple of the volumes of
Speaker 1: the Time Life Enchanted World have stories of Finn McCool
Speaker 1: and there you know what I gotta say, By and large,
Speaker 1: those books are really good. They're good syntheses of their
Speaker 1: sources and uh and pretty well written, much better than
Speaker 1: you would expect for something that was advertised on TV
Speaker 1: that way. Oh absolutely, yeah. I'm I'm actually reading through
Speaker 1: the Dragon volume from that collection right now with my son,
Speaker 1: and uh, there's some sections of it that I feel
Speaker 1: like we're a little a little wordier than they need
Speaker 1: to be, but we're having a lot of fun with it.
Speaker 1: You have the longer sections, the shorter sections. You have
Speaker 1: this wonderful mix of original artwork as well as traditional
Speaker 1: artwork to uh, to illustrate these tales. Uh. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're there are a lot of fun. Do you do
Speaker 1: you have them? Al Ja? It was a wonderful gift
Speaker 1: from my wife Rachel got me the complete Time Life
Speaker 1: Enchanted World collection. Oh nice. It's something like twenty something volumes,
Speaker 1: all told. Right. Uh, that might about right. I haven't
Speaker 1: read them all yet. So the stories about Finn McCool
Speaker 1: are in the ones called Acts of Valor or maybe
Speaker 1: Tales of Valor. That's the one with Valor and the title,
Speaker 1: and then the one called Fabled Lands. Yeah, okay, I
Speaker 1: have one of those, but not the other. I uh.
Speaker 1: For the longest I just I kind of assumed that
Speaker 1: I had the full collection that had been gifted to
Speaker 1: me from an aunt when I was a child. But
Speaker 1: I've come to realize, oh, I don't have them all,
Speaker 1: so um. Like, just the other day, as we were
Speaker 1: recording this, I was looking at oh which I was
Speaker 1: looking at, like, Okay, which ones do I not have
Speaker 1: that I really should have? And I noticed that I
Speaker 1: had two of the Black Books, but not the third.
Speaker 1: So I immediately had to order that one up. One
Speaker 1: of the great things about these books is that I
Speaker 1: guess they were just so mass produced. You can pick
Speaker 1: these volumes up for you know, for reasonable sums. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you'll find one's even like dirt cheap. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there there are plenty. There's plenty of Enchanted World
Speaker 1: to go around, if anyone's interested. I'm incredibly proud of
Speaker 1: my Enchanted World collection. It's a it's a treasure m
Speaker 1: all right. Where we're gonna go ahead and close it
Speaker 1: out here. And and I guess I wish everybody the St.
Speaker 1: Patrick's Day while we're at it. But we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from everyone out there. We'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: uh Irish folk and non Irish folk alike. Um regarding
Speaker 1: these uh these myths, these these tales, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: thumbs in the mouth, thumbsucking in general, or even just
Speaker 1: an Enchanted World book chat, what's your favorite volume? Did
Speaker 1: you have these growing up or did you just want them?
Speaker 1: Have you have you rectified this in your adult life, etcetera? Uh,
Speaker 1: just let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, you can find core episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. On Monday's, we
Speaker 1: do listener mail. On Wednesday's, we do an artifact or
Speaker 1: a monster fact. The one we did this week is
Speaker 1: is also Irish themed. And then on Friday's we set
Speaker 1: most serious matters aside and we just talked about a
Speaker 1: strange film, Huge things. As always to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producer set Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 1: any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just
Speaker 1: to say hello, you can email us at contact at
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more
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