Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Cool People who did cool stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Margaret Killjoy, and this week is Spooky Week.
Speaker 1: Actually last week was Spooky Week, but I kind of
Speaker 1: sucked up the timing about three part episodes. So this
Speaker 1: week is Spooky Week. And instead of what I usually do,
Speaker 1: tell you about some cool actual person from history, this
Speaker 1: week I'm telling you about a cool person from folklore.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Jamie Loftus, who herself is a
Speaker 1: creature out of folklore? What are you the personification of
Speaker 1: a gun? I can't remember, Jamie? Oh what was I? I? Actually,
Speaker 1: it's been heavily, it's been hotly debated over over time. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't. I let people interpret it for themselves.
Speaker 1: It's not for me to say as as as someone
Speaker 1: who's not a real person, more of an idea than
Speaker 1: a person, It's not for me to say, Okay, that's fair.
Speaker 1: It's up for the listener to decide. What have you've
Speaker 1: been the what have you've been popularly interpreted to be
Speaker 1: the personification of Margaret? Oh lord? Um? Well, what's fun
Speaker 1: about that is I think people actually do do that
Speaker 1: to me. But then they, like, you know, they pick
Speaker 1: like one aspect of your personality and run with it.
Speaker 1: And it used to be the like the like vagabond figure, right,
Speaker 1: like it's the like perpetual traveler. And then it was
Speaker 1: like the girl who lives in a black house that
Speaker 1: she built in the forest, and like, both of those
Speaker 1: are like true things about me. But yeah, I see
Speaker 1: where they're coming from. To be fair, you did write
Speaker 1: a chapter in your latest book about a girl turned
Speaker 1: which that lives in a house in the forest. That's true.
Speaker 1: That's true. So you did kind of write your own folklore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems like something I would do. Fair enough, they
Speaker 1: have cultivated people often think that I am extremely chaotic
Speaker 1: and don't have any semblance of control over my life.
Speaker 1: But that's not true. That is completely that is factually inaccurate.
Speaker 1: You're far too productive for that to be true. I
Speaker 1: have my ship together just enough, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: But here we are. Here we are too, or three
Speaker 1: three women who represent ideas and are projected upon constantly. Sophie,
Speaker 1: what's your professionally? Even my folklore? I think I think
Speaker 1: you wrote my folklore if you told me I was
Speaker 1: the pope of podcasting. So it's probably just like the
Speaker 1: weird para social folklore that that all I do is
Speaker 1: say no, which is not true the personification of sometimes
Speaker 1: I say absolutely not. Yeah, so the queen of yeah yeah, Well, Jamie,
Speaker 1: when you pointed out that, like, also professionally, we are
Speaker 1: like that is the odd thing about doing this kind
Speaker 1: of work is that you're like, oh, yeah, romanticize my life.
Speaker 1: You'll buy my books. Right, You're like, it's not it's
Speaker 1: not that negative, and it doesn't always even bother me.
Speaker 1: But sometimes you're just like, well, I know what I'm like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and for me, nobody even knows what my
Speaker 1: job is and that's fun and I'm not telling any
Speaker 1: of you. Yeah. Well, one person whose job we do know. Uh.
Speaker 1: The audio engineering is done by ian and the theme
Speaker 1: music was written by a woman. Yeah. And where we
Speaker 1: last left off, we talked about who Bobby Aga was,
Speaker 1: about her chicken hut and her bony legs, and how
Speaker 1: she ate children who misbehaved. Today we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about what she means and where she comes from. But
Speaker 1: first another story. I'm excited. I literally I have my
Speaker 1: blanket here too, and I'm saying, okay, this story is
Speaker 1: called by command of Prince Daniel. That's a great name
Speaker 1: for a story. Okay, okay, as translated yeah by Leonard
Speaker 1: Arthur Magnus, also about a hundred years ago. I didn't
Speaker 1: forgot to write down the date I picked the public
Speaker 1: domain translations. Is what happened. I'm inherently mistrustful of someone
Speaker 1: who actively goes by three names, so this will be interesting,
Speaker 1: that's fair. Yeah, I'm trying to come up with the
Speaker 1: counter example, but I don't have one off the top
Speaker 1: of my head. Three namers generally fall into the buckets
Speaker 1: of serial killers or child stars, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: and and so you're just like, this is going to
Speaker 1: be a mixed bag. We'll see YEA. Once upon a
Speaker 1: time there was an aged queen who had a son
Speaker 1: and a daughter who were fine sturred each children, but
Speaker 1: there was also an yeah coming in hard. But there
Speaker 1: was also an evil witch who could not bear them,
Speaker 1: and she began to lay plots how she might contrive
Speaker 1: their overthrow. I think this is not even whatever I
Speaker 1: must pulling anything. So she to the old queen and said,
Speaker 1: dear gossip, that must be the queen's name. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I am giving you a ring. Put it on your
Speaker 1: son's hand, and then he will be rich and generous.
Speaker 1: Only he must marry the maiden whom this ring fits.
Speaker 1: The mother believed her and was extremely glad, and at
Speaker 1: her death bade her son marry only the woman whom
Speaker 1: the ring fitted. Time went by, and the boy grew up.
Speaker 1: He became a man, and he looked at all the maidens.
Speaker 1: Very many of them he liked, only as soon as
Speaker 1: he put the ring on their finger. It was either
Speaker 1: too broad or too narrow. So he traveled from village
Speaker 1: to village, from town to town, and searched out all
Speaker 1: the fair damsels. But he could not find his chosen one,
Speaker 1: and he returned home in a reflective mood. What is
Speaker 1: the mother? What is the matter? Brother? His sister asked him.
Speaker 1: So he told her of his trouble, explained his sorrow.
Speaker 1: What a wonderful ring you have, said the sister, Let
Speaker 1: me try it on. No, hey, bro um, that wedding ring.
Speaker 1: Why don't she slap it on this finger? No problems here? Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the water system is poisoned. There's all these policy issues.
Speaker 1: While this guy has been fucking off putting rings on
Speaker 1: the random people. People are dying. Meanwhile, we have some
Speaker 1: incest in progress. This is disgusting. Yeah, this is clearly
Speaker 1: an HBO show. Yeah. She tried it on her finger,
Speaker 1: and the ring was firm as firmly fixed as if
Speaker 1: it had been soldered on, as though it had been
Speaker 1: made for her. Oh, sister, you are my chosen bride
Speaker 1: and you must be my wife. What a horrible idea brother,
Speaker 1: That would be a sin. But the brother would not
Speaker 1: listen to a word she said. He danced for joy
Speaker 1: and told her to make ready for the wedding. She
Speaker 1: wept bitter tears, went in front of the house and
Speaker 1: sat on the threshold and let her tears flow. Two
Speaker 1: old beggars came up, and she gave them to eat
Speaker 1: and drink. They asked what her trouble was us, and
Speaker 1: she needs must tell the two. Now weep no more,
Speaker 1: but do what we say. Make up four dolls and
Speaker 1: put them in four corners of your room. After your
Speaker 1: brother calls you in for the betrothal, go and if
Speaker 1: he calls you into the bridal chamber, ask for time,
Speaker 1: trust in God, and follow our advice. And the beggars departed.
Speaker 1: We need less doll based solutions in this world. I
Speaker 1: don't know doll into girl to I mean, look, as
Speaker 1: the owner of many dolls, they have not solved a
Speaker 1: damn problem. And in fact, they've been an active deterrent. Uh,
Speaker 1: they've maybe cause more problems then they've solved for me,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. You mean because when people come
Speaker 1: into your house, it's just dolls staring at you from
Speaker 1: the wall. Yeah, people don't like that, it turns out, Margaret.
Speaker 1: But people come into your house, they seed nine thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and they're like, um, interesting, I just got so
Speaker 1: busy and sick. Okay, So what we should try is
Speaker 1: we should trade and you can become a sword girl
Speaker 1: for a while and I'll become a doll girl for
Speaker 1: a while, and we'll just, yeah, like walking a mile
Speaker 1: in each other's shoes. Um, it would be useful because
Speaker 1: the pigs and valleys of being a doll girl are
Speaker 1: I feel like I've really lived and I want to
Speaker 1: know what it feels like to be a sword girl.
Speaker 1: Also a horse girl. Yeah, I do want to be
Speaker 1: a horse girl, but horses don't respect my authority and
Speaker 1: go where they want. And it's hard. I've been saying
Speaker 1: that for years. Horses are so fucking disrespectful. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The brother and the sister were betrothed, and he went
Speaker 1: into the room and cried out, sister mine, come in.
Speaker 1: I will come in a moment. Brother, I'm only taking
Speaker 1: off my earrings. And the dolls in the four corners
Speaker 1: began to sing, cuckoo, Prince Danilo, cuckoo, dio ver leo
Speaker 1: ku Ku. It's as a brother Kukou weds his sister Kukou.
Speaker 1: Earth must be split asunder Kukou and the sister lie
Speaker 1: hid under. Then the earth rose up and slowly started
Speaker 1: to swallow the sister, and the brother cried out again,
Speaker 1: did she do? Oh wait, you're here? Okay, sorry, I'm no,
Speaker 1: no no, And the brother cried out again, sister mine,
Speaker 1: come into the feather bed in in a minute, Brother,
Speaker 1: I am undoing my girdle. And the dolls began to saying, Cuckoo,
Speaker 1: Prince de nilo, cukoo, giver you hukou. It is a
Speaker 1: brother Kuku weds his sister Huku. Earth must be split
Speaker 1: asunder cuckoo, and the sister lie hid under. Only she
Speaker 1: had vanished now all but her head, and the brother
Speaker 1: cried out again, come into the feather bed in, a minute, brother,
Speaker 1: I am taking off my shoes, and the dolls went
Speaker 1: on cooing, and she vanished under the earth, and the
Speaker 1: brother kept crying and crying and crying, and when she
Speaker 1: never returned, he became angry and ran out to fetch her.
Speaker 1: He could see nothing but the dolls, which kept singing,
Speaker 1: so we knocked off their heads and threw them into
Speaker 1: the stove. Okay, I actually think I've maybe done this.
Speaker 1: Had four dolls in the corner while man slowly gets
Speaker 1: more and more furious and then just sucking bolt. It's like,
Speaker 1: where are you nothing? Yeah? Yeah. The sister went farther
Speaker 1: under the earth and she saw a little hut, standing
Speaker 1: on cox feet and turning round. Hout, she cried out,
Speaker 1: stand as you should with your back to the wood.
Speaker 1: Exactly how there's a forest under the earth is not explained,
Speaker 1: Just to be clear. I like the idea, I know, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very gobliny, and I'm approve of all thanks goblining,
Speaker 1: especially my dog who was a goblin. So the hut
Speaker 1: stopped and the doors opened, and a fair maiden looked out.
Speaker 1: She was knitting a cloth with gold and silver thread.
Speaker 1: She greeted the guest friendly, and kindly but sighed and said, oh,
Speaker 1: my darling and my sister, I am so glad to
Speaker 1: see you. I shall be glad to look after you
Speaker 1: and care for you as long as my mother is
Speaker 1: not here, But as soon as she flies in, woe
Speaker 1: to you and me, for she is a witch. When
Speaker 1: she heard this, the maiden was frightened, but could not
Speaker 1: fly anywhere. I think means like runaway. Okay. I was like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's a person, yeah, exactly like I can't fly anywhere either.
Speaker 1: So she's not drink covid anyway, Okay. So she sat
Speaker 1: down and began helping the other maiden at her work.
Speaker 1: So they chattered along, and soon at the right time
Speaker 1: before the mother came, the fair Maiden turned her guests
Speaker 1: into a needle because she's totally not a witch herself,
Speaker 1: turned her guest into a needle, stuck her into the
Speaker 1: bassom and put it on one side. But scarcely had
Speaker 1: this been done when Bobby Yaga came in. Now and
Speaker 1: then everyone's cheering. Everyone at midnight screening's like, yes, there
Speaker 1: she is, This is why we come here. Oh exactly,
Speaker 1: what a rush she's back. Yeah, now, my fair daughter,
Speaker 1: my little child, tell me at once, why does the
Speaker 1: room smell so of Russian bones? Classic baba, you know,
Speaker 1: sniff in that blood. Mother, there have been strange men
Speaker 1: journey in past who wanted a drink of water? Why
Speaker 1: did you not keep them? They were too old, mother,
Speaker 1: much too tough a snack for your teeth. Henceforth, entice
Speaker 1: them all into the house, and never let them go.
Speaker 1: I must now go get about again and look out
Speaker 1: for other booty. As soon as ever she had gone,
Speaker 1: the maiden set to work again, knitting, talking and laughing.
Speaker 1: Then the witch came into the room once more. She
Speaker 1: sniffed about the house and said, daughter, my sweet daughter,
Speaker 1: my darling, tell me at once, why does it smells
Speaker 1: so of Russian bones? Old men who were just passing by,
Speaker 1: who wanted to warm their hands. I did my best
Speaker 1: to keep them, but they would not stay. So the
Speaker 1: witch was angry, scolded her daughter, and flew away. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, her unknown guest was sitting in the bassoon.
Speaker 1: Someone is listening, but I keep thinking bassoon and yeah
Speaker 1: it makes me laugh. And someone who's listening knows this word,
Speaker 1: and it's like, what the fund is wrong with you?
Speaker 1: You had two days to learn how to pronounce it.
Speaker 1: The maidens once more set to work. Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: like the bassoon. Okay. Anyway, the maidens once more set
Speaker 1: to work. So it laughed and thought how they might
Speaker 1: escape the evil witch. This time they forgot how. The
Speaker 1: hours were flying by, and suddenly the witch stood in
Speaker 1: front of them, darling, tell me where have the Russian
Speaker 1: bones crept away? Here? My mother, a fair maiden is
Speaker 1: waiting for you. Daughter, mind darling, heat the oven quickly,
Speaker 1: make it very hot. If this were like a realistic story,
Speaker 1: Bobby AGA's daughter would be like, Mom, stop talking about
Speaker 1: Russian bones. Yeah, it's kind of weird, so embarrassing. I
Speaker 1: have a friend over a. Yeah. So the maiden looked
Speaker 1: up and was frightened to death, for Bobby Aga, with
Speaker 1: the wooden legs, stood in front of her, and to
Speaker 1: the ceiling rose her nose. So the mother and daughter
Speaker 1: carried firewood in logs of oak and maple, made the
Speaker 1: oven ready till the flames shot up merrily. Then the
Speaker 1: witch took her broad shovel and said, in a friendly voice,
Speaker 1: go and sit on my shovel, fair child. So the
Speaker 1: maiden obeyed, and the Bobby a god was going to
Speaker 1: shove her into the oven, but the girl stuck her
Speaker 1: feet against the wall of the hearth. Will you sit still, girl?
Speaker 1: But it was not any good. Bobby Aga could not
Speaker 1: put the maiden into the oven, so she became angry,
Speaker 1: thrust her back and said, you are simply wasting time.
Speaker 1: Just look at me and see how it is done.
Speaker 1: Down she sat on the shovel with her legs nicely
Speaker 1: trusted together. So the maidens instantly put her into the oven,
Speaker 1: shut the oven door and slammed her in, took their
Speaker 1: knitting with them and their comb in their brush ran away. God,
Speaker 1: I do love the confidence that it takes to be like, um,
Speaker 1: this is how you sit on a shovel. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get put in? Yeah yeah, loving it? Yeah? They
Speaker 1: ran hard away, but when they turned round there was
Speaker 1: bobby Aga running after them. She had set herself free,
Speaker 1: some real ex mocking a ship in this Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: who hoo hoo. They're run the two. So the maidens,
Speaker 1: in their need, threw the brush away and a thick,
Speaker 1: dense coppice, which is like a bunch of trees a rose,
Speaker 1: which she could not break through, so she stretched out
Speaker 1: her claws scratched herself away through and again ran after them.
Speaker 1: Whither should the two girls flee? They flung their comb
Speaker 1: behind them, and a dark, murky oak forest grew up
Speaker 1: so thick no fly could have ever flown its way through.
Speaker 1: Then the witch wetted her teeth and set to work.
Speaker 1: She went on, tearing up one tree after the other
Speaker 1: by the roots, and she made herself away and again
Speaker 1: set out after them, and almost caught up with them.
Speaker 1: I like this one, Vasiline or whatever her name is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: totally Vasiline the sexy. What was that? Was that? Vasilisa
Speaker 1: the beautiful? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Vassiline sexy? Yeah, basically. Now,
Speaker 1: the two girls had no strength left to run, so
Speaker 1: through the cloth behind them, and a broad sea stretched out, deep,
Speaker 1: wide and fiery. The old woman rose up, wanted to
Speaker 1: fly over it, but fell into the fire and was
Speaker 1: burned to death. Again with the burning, I know, the
Speaker 1: poor aiden's, poor homeless dubs did not know whither to go.
Speaker 1: They sat down in order to rest, and a man
Speaker 1: came and asked them who they were. He told his
Speaker 1: master that the two little birds had fluttered onto his estate.
Speaker 1: The two fairest damsels similar in form and shape, eye
Speaker 1: for eye and line for line. One was his sister,
Speaker 1: but which was it? What is this? Oh? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: the master is the prince. Okay. One was a sister,
Speaker 1: but which was it? He could not guess. So the
Speaker 1: Master went to both of them. One was a sister,
Speaker 1: which the servant had not lied. He did not know them,
Speaker 1: and she was angry with him and did not say.
Speaker 1: What shall I do? Asked the master. Master. I will
Speaker 1: pour blood into an eu skin, put that under my armpit,
Speaker 1: and talked to the maiden. In the meantime, I will
Speaker 1: go and I will stab you in the side with
Speaker 1: my knife, and then blood will flow, and your sister
Speaker 1: will betray herself as to who she is the Nothing
Speaker 1: could go wrong with this plan. This plan is air tight,
Speaker 1: no notes, what could very well? Yeah, as soon as
Speaker 1: it was said, it was done. The servants stabbed his
Speaker 1: master in the side, and the blood poured forth, and
Speaker 1: he fell down. And Margaret isn't the one who wrote
Speaker 1: this story. So then his sister flung herself over him
Speaker 1: and cried out, oh, my brother, my darling. Then her
Speaker 1: brother jumped up again, healthy and well. Margaret, if the
Speaker 1: moral of this story is she should have fucked her brother.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna break my iPad. Okay, he embraced
Speaker 1: his sister, gave her a proper husband, and he married
Speaker 1: her friend. It's not Game of thron, it's got it
Speaker 1: got for the ring fitted her just as well, and
Speaker 1: they all lived splendidly and happily. Okay, they did not
Speaker 1: stick the landing on that one. I'll be perfectly honest
Speaker 1: that that that one was going great and then it
Speaker 1: really turned to dogshit at the end. But like, oh,
Speaker 1: actually this ring also fits my friend, so you can
Speaker 1: have sex with her. And yeah, it's brother was so
Speaker 1: come to the feather bed my ass. That's wow, what
Speaker 1: a what it can And and also Bobby Yaga gone
Speaker 1: without Bobby Bobby Yaga. I'm hitting this, everyone says Bobby
Speaker 1: Bobby Yaga. And then I just like watched a Russian
Speaker 1: cartoon where she's like, I'm Bobby Aga and I'm like, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm gonna try. And second, like, let's go
Speaker 1: with that one. But she once again, uh disappeared in
Speaker 1: the middle of the story. Yeah, because she's no one asks, um,
Speaker 1: how there's a joke here. I don't know. How to
Speaker 1: do it? Um okay. I wanted to read this one
Speaker 1: because sometimes Bobbyaga is what's called in folklore stories a donor,
Speaker 1: like someone who will give you the stuff you need, right,
Speaker 1: like the skull with the fire to burn your slightly
Speaker 1: wicked steps a stepmother, right. And sometimes she's just a
Speaker 1: cannibal on a chicken hut. And I wanted to give
Speaker 1: you a taste. Yeah, exactly, um, give you a taste
Speaker 1: of the cannibal version. So who the fuck is she?
Speaker 1: Where did she come from? We'll talk about her name
Speaker 1: we mentioned a little bit about it last time, and
Speaker 1: take a little bit more into it. The simplest but
Speaker 1: sort of an accurate translation is grandmother witch baba meaning
Speaker 1: grandmother short for babushka um. No, one's really presented a
Speaker 1: compelling case about the etymology of of yoga, but people
Speaker 1: have done it, and baba icily means grandmother in tons
Speaker 1: of Slavic languages. My own Irish grandmother went by baba,
Speaker 1: which is not Irish at all. It might actually just
Speaker 1: be my family being weird, but maybe it's spread elsewhere.
Speaker 1: I I don't really know. It trips off that I
Speaker 1: was as you were saying that I realized that I've
Speaker 1: written on a show where there's the main grandmother characters
Speaker 1: called Baba, and I was like, wow, my memory is
Speaker 1: um bad. One of the things I found really interesting
Speaker 1: I found at least one reference to that um baba
Speaker 1: as a meaning grandmother is probably derived from the Old
Speaker 1: Russian baba meaning midwife, sorceress, or fortune teller. So it's
Speaker 1: actually like grandma means which not the other way around
Speaker 1: or whatever. Okay, And I don't I don't hate that.
Speaker 1: I don't hate that. So basically her names means Granny
Speaker 1: Yuga the witch as far as I can tell. As
Speaker 1: a as a folkloric figure, there's actually no known origin.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of guesses, and I have some guesses
Speaker 1: as well that well they're not my own guess is
Speaker 1: they're the guesses that I prefer esthetically and or I mean,
Speaker 1: it seemed more convincing out of the stuff what I've
Speaker 1: read about it. My question is like, in the chronology
Speaker 1: of witches, do you know, like where where does she come?
Speaker 1: Is she like an early folkloric which character or somewhere
Speaker 1: in the middle, or I guess I I there's just
Speaker 1: been so many witch figures throughout history. I don't really
Speaker 1: know where she falls. I haven't done I actually at
Speaker 1: some point want to do um more of a deep
Speaker 1: dive into the history of witches. And I have like
Speaker 1: the stuff that I've read about it and stuff, but
Speaker 1: that's constantly changing as people present different ideas. So I
Speaker 1: the answers I don't know. UM I can say that
Speaker 1: I can because people don't know when she comes from.
Speaker 1: It seems like she actually is a very similar actual
Speaker 1: origin as witches, but as sort of a a mythic
Speaker 1: figure rather than like, oh, that lady over there will
Speaker 1: like read the entrails of a chicken, so we should
Speaker 1: kill her, you know. I like, I mean, I like,
Speaker 1: I like the variations on like I don't know. I
Speaker 1: like the flavor of which that she is where it's
Speaker 1: like she's very powerful. It doesn't seem like the story
Speaker 1: has a vested interest in doing away with her or
Speaker 1: like making a strong I don't know. I I don't
Speaker 1: think I've encountered this flavor of which before excited well,
Speaker 1: speaking of flavors of witches, uh, which flavored potato chips
Speaker 1: that you could buy called witch chips? Our sponsors today's
Speaker 1: here are some ads and we are back. I'm hoping
Speaker 1: that which is would be into dill pickle chips, only
Speaker 1: because I hope that I'm a witch and dill pickle
Speaker 1: chips are delicious. Have you have either of you ever
Speaker 1: tried them. I've had dill pickles and I've had chips.
Speaker 1: I've had dill pickle chips. They're great. They have no
Speaker 1: no right to be as good as they are. It's
Speaker 1: just it's mostly just really loud salt. That's how I
Speaker 1: would describe the chips sort of. But like, but but
Speaker 1: what if what if vinegar minded her business and it
Speaker 1: was just salt screaming at the top of its lungs.
Speaker 1: It's all capital letters. Salt is what the pickle chip
Speaker 1: tastes like. And that is like as a sodium head.
Speaker 1: All right, I love it. I love it. Big sodium guy, um,
Speaker 1: huge sodium guy. Yeah. Okay, So Bobby I got started
Speaker 1: showing up in written sources in the eighteenth century and
Speaker 1: things that we're talking about. How she's been around for
Speaker 1: a very long time, like collections of Russian folklore as
Speaker 1: well as eighteenth century Russian political cartoons. Okay, there are
Speaker 1: these single panel woodblock prints called love Key that were
Speaker 1: in the style of the time, and she was a
Speaker 1: common figure in these woodblock prints as sort of an archetype.
Speaker 1: And she was used in a couple of different ways,
Speaker 1: and people like to argue about People feel very certain
Speaker 1: about what the interpretation of her and these are, but
Speaker 1: they disagree with each other, and I have no fucking
Speaker 1: way of knowing. Some ways she was used to represent
Speaker 1: like the old ways and the old beliefs, but an
Speaker 1: other times she was probably used as like this, like
Speaker 1: finished lady married the tsar at some point, and it
Speaker 1: was like, here's this fucking evil which she's going to
Speaker 1: come funk up our good Christian czar by being finished
Speaker 1: and therefore like you know, a barbarian or whatever. Okay.
Speaker 1: In seventeen fifty five she appeared in writing for maybe
Speaker 1: the first time, and it was a list of Slavic
Speaker 1: gods and their Greek counterparts, and so she was listed
Speaker 1: as a god and in it she was the only
Speaker 1: god or one of the only gods in that list
Speaker 1: with no counterpart. There was no counterpart to a Greek god. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's cool. I know, there's like later p who kind
Speaker 1: of comparative her sphone, but it wasn't. I think being
Speaker 1: done at the time. I mean, I I like that
Speaker 1: as sort of being canonical to who she is of
Speaker 1: like she doesn't she has so much like power and
Speaker 1: intent that she doesn't need a sidekicker counterpart. Like that's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it it makes her basically like unique and like
Speaker 1: indigenous to that area, and that is going to tie
Speaker 1: into some of the kind of ship that I find
Speaker 1: really interesting about it. Um. Okay, But there's one other
Speaker 1: at a station attestation people talking about her from back
Speaker 1: in the day that's super interesting to me. There was
Speaker 1: this guy, his name was a Chokov MacHale, and he
Speaker 1: wrote a book in sev two called Dictionary of Russian Superstitions,
Speaker 1: and I cannot find an English translation of it. I'm
Speaker 1: very sad, and I almost bought a Russian copy of
Speaker 1: it because it's that rock and it's all about all
Speaker 1: the weird pagany ship that people were doing. Um, unlike
Speaker 1: the weird good normal stuff like being part of a
Speaker 1: blood drinking called like Christianity. Um, it's all about the
Speaker 1: like superstitions. Blood. Yeah. I actually don't remember whether Orthodox.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether Orthodox believes it literally turns into
Speaker 1: blood in your body. The way that Catholics did. But um,
Speaker 1: I know that there was Catholics there too anyway, So
Speaker 1: it's all about like, well, yeah, Catholics famously chill. It's
Speaker 1: about blood, blood sacrifices and shamanic marriages and all this
Speaker 1: like stuff. And he doesn't like superstitions, and as far
Speaker 1: as anyone can tell, as as far as historians can tell,
Speaker 1: he didn't make up anything in the book. But he
Speaker 1: also wasn't very great about vetting his sources, so he
Speaker 1: didn't like be like, oh, you know, would be funny
Speaker 1: as I like if we did this, um, But instead
Speaker 1: he's just like, oh, I met a guy in the
Speaker 1: road who told me this, and that's totally what people do,
Speaker 1: you know. So he's not the strongest source in the world,
Speaker 1: and this is the one of the main sources we
Speaker 1: have about well. He he wrote down a lot of
Speaker 1: folk tales and folk songs, and he systematized Russian legislation,
Speaker 1: not in this book, in a different book. He's just like,
Speaker 1: I feel being like a guy who knows how to
Speaker 1: write books was like kind of just like a job
Speaker 1: at the time. I feel like that's what podcasting is
Speaker 1: right now, where you're like if you know how to
Speaker 1: do this, you can kind of talk about fucking whatever
Speaker 1: or that's I'm banking on that. And in this guy's corner,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, yeah, you can just totally switch areas
Speaker 1: of expertise because you knew how to write something down.
Speaker 1: I mean that that is my job, yes, like tychically
Speaker 1: what we're both doing. He also wrote a book speaking
Speaker 1: of calendars that the devil could make in such or
Speaker 1: different sapphic things. He wrote a book called Comely Cook,
Speaker 1: or Adventures of Lewd Woman. I love him. I'm like yeah.
Speaker 1: In his seventy two Superstitions book, he talks about an
Speaker 1: Eastern Slavic goddess named Yagi Baba. And so this is
Speaker 1: a pre Baba Yaga character who sits in an iron
Speaker 1: mortar with an iron pestle in her hand and is
Speaker 1: a death god. And I think the mortar and pestle
Speaker 1: for like grinding up the dead right, like like being
Speaker 1: returned to the earth kind of stuff. And there's very
Speaker 1: little information about a Yagia Babba and in English, um,
Speaker 1: basically just like the sentence or two from this guy's book.
Speaker 1: But people made blood sacrifices to her, which she used
Speaker 1: to feed her two granddaughters. And in some Bobby stories
Speaker 1: she has two granddaughters, and sometimes she has two sisters.
Speaker 1: So and then the story you just told me she
Speaker 1: had a daughter, is that correct? Do we know who? Like,
Speaker 1: how does Bobbo go? Who bon reproduced? Yeah? Who? She? Who? She?
Speaker 1: Fucking we will we will get okay good, because it
Speaker 1: seems like, I mean, at least in the story you
Speaker 1: just told, it seemed like the daughter was very maybe
Speaker 1: the I can't imagine Bobby got Jean are recessive, but
Speaker 1: like she seemed like she didn't have the Babby you
Speaker 1: got intensity about her. Yeah, yeah, but she was magic
Speaker 1: and like turned her and turned her friend into a
Speaker 1: needle and also looked exactly like the friend. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is some like doppel banger ship, right, Like that
Speaker 1: is like oh, cute girls coming to the window. Let
Speaker 1: me just like, oh I am I am you No,
Speaker 1: I'm a cute girl. So yeah, that story was wild.
Speaker 1: I I got, I got, I got sidetracked by the
Speaker 1: the incest fake out. But there's a lot going on
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's it's weird. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So from as far as I can tell, this seems
Speaker 1: like this is the main argument that Babbia is based
Speaker 1: on the Agia Babba is based on an Eastern Slavic goddess,
Speaker 1: that there's not that much information about the people perform
Speaker 1: blood sacrifices. To Vladimir prop Right in the nineties talk
Speaker 1: about ho Bobby represents the guardian between the land of
Speaker 1: the living and the forest of the dead, and so
Speaker 1: this is where she starts getting compared to Persephone in
Speaker 1: Greek mythology though, the goddess of the harvest who ruled
Speaker 1: the underworld. M h. And there's actually some stuff about
Speaker 1: her being like an agricultural god to not Persephone, but
Speaker 1: um Bobbia god being like kind of an agricultural god.
Speaker 1: And there's like some stuff about I actually literally don't
Speaker 1: remember if I put this in the script later and not,
Speaker 1: so maybe I'll end up repeating this or skimming past it.
Speaker 1: But like plowing the earth with her teeth um, and
Speaker 1: that's like why she has like the wild fucked up teeth, okay,
Speaker 1: which is fucking cool. Her hut, her hut faces the forest,
Speaker 1: which is the land of the dead, and the people
Speaker 1: have to turn the hot around because they can't walk
Speaker 1: to the other side because that's the land of the
Speaker 1: dead in this reading of like the forest representing the
Speaker 1: land of the dead and death. So they have to
Speaker 1: turn her house around. Yeah, because okay, when you show
Speaker 1: up Bobby August houses facing the wrong way and you
Speaker 1: have to say like hut hut, turn around and face me. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: And because you're kind of like, well, why don't you
Speaker 1: just walk around the house? Like when I think to myself,
Speaker 1: I would like to be um by the back door
Speaker 1: of a house, I don't think to myself, how can
Speaker 1: I entice the house to turn around? I tend to
Speaker 1: think to myself, I will walk around that. Margaret, you're
Speaker 1: being too accommodating. You need to ask for what you
Speaker 1: need if you need the house to turn to you.
Speaker 1: And that's self care, and that's practice, and that's pottery
Speaker 1: class all in one turned to me. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: this makes the stories tie into the hero's journey if
Speaker 1: it's about like the land of the dead and ship right. Um,
Speaker 1: And I kind of like low ki hate the hero's
Speaker 1: journey as like a plot structure that is like used
Speaker 1: for everything. But this concept throughout folklore, especially Western folklore,
Speaker 1: where you're like going into the land of the dead
Speaker 1: to return to the land of the living um and
Speaker 1: sometimes it's like a death and rebirth. Sometimes that means
Speaker 1: sometimes I was symbolized by being swallowed by an animal,
Speaker 1: and so the chicken legs as part of the hut
Speaker 1: like could be like the house is the animal that
Speaker 1: you're getting swallowed by when you're being reborn. And so
Speaker 1: there's this this theory. And I also think that that
Speaker 1: sometimes the walls are made of bone, right, and certainly
Speaker 1: the gate walls are made of bone. I feel like
Speaker 1: that ties into that too. There's this theory that Bobbia
Speaker 1: gott and the journey to her it was like this
Speaker 1: coming of age ritual in the pre Christianized version of
Speaker 1: all this, and so going on this hero's journey is
Speaker 1: how these characters become adults. And there's no actual like
Speaker 1: the people who have done a lot of research about
Speaker 1: Bobbia go like theorize this, but it's like mostly based
Speaker 1: on like, well pretty much every other culture we've looked
Speaker 1: at has this, so they probably did too, we don't know.
Speaker 1: And so it's like, yeah, okay. To quote Andreas Johns,
Speaker 1: who wrote kind of the main English language academic study
Speaker 1: of Bobbiica, uh, and he's discussing a different author, Vladimir
Speaker 1: props Ideas quote as the initiation will died out only
Speaker 1: Bobby AGA's association with death was remembered. With the appearance
Speaker 1: of agriculture, a new religion replaced older hunting beliefs, and
Speaker 1: the old divinities were reinterpreted as evil spirits. Your god,
Speaker 1: the mother and mistress of the beasts, became a witch.
Speaker 1: And I actually a little bit there's a lot of
Speaker 1: like modern anthropological stuff about how like this idea that
Speaker 1: like everyone was hunters and then suddenly was like, what
Speaker 1: if we throw the seeds in the ground. Now everyone's agriculture,
Speaker 1: And like there's been a lot of like anthropological ship
Speaker 1: about how like ship was like way blurrier than that,
Speaker 1: And so I'm like less excited. I'm less quick to
Speaker 1: believe that has to do with like the coming of
Speaker 1: agriculture disrupting that traditional form, and probably more of the
Speaker 1: coming of Christianity that made her a demon, and like
Speaker 1: all the old gods become like myths or demons instead
Speaker 1: of God's you know that scans more for me as well. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And and so she becomes a boogeyman with coming to Christianity,
Speaker 1: and if you're obedient and listen to your mother, you
Speaker 1: survive your encounter with her. She's the bad mother to
Speaker 1: be contrasted with the good mother, like we were talking about.
Speaker 1: And then one of the reasons I find that really
Speaker 1: interesting is that as I was doing all this reading
Speaker 1: about rural Slavic and rural Russian kind of like medieval
Speaker 1: early medieval and stuff families, not everyone lived in a
Speaker 1: nuclear family. A lot of rural people lived in extended
Speaker 1: family units under in one household, under one patriarch. And
Speaker 1: then even that under one patriarch might be an assumption
Speaker 1: from patriarchal anthropologist, but I don't know. So a kid
Speaker 1: grows up with a bunch of mothers because you grow
Speaker 1: up with like a bunch of family units that are
Speaker 1: one family unit, because you live rurally and it takes
Speaker 1: a village to raise a child, right, all right? And
Speaker 1: the wackiest thing that people like to talk about Bobby
Speaker 1: at God that I have a unique interest in. She's
Speaker 1: also perceived as a a phallic mother to some folklore scholars. Okay,
Speaker 1: she's unpacked that. Yeah, so she's presented as wielding a
Speaker 1: pestle and a broom. She has a bony leg and
Speaker 1: a large nose and making air quotes here, and sometimes
Speaker 1: she has a giant iron tooth or an iron hook,
Speaker 1: and she attacks with snakes sometimes and sometimes she has
Speaker 1: an entire army. These are all like masculine traits, and
Speaker 1: some of them are like penis traits, according to people
Speaker 1: who are under the like psycho sexual ship that I
Speaker 1: don't really believe in personally. Yeah, so to quote Andreas
Speaker 1: John's about this again. Some psychologists have interpreted fantasies about
Speaker 1: phallic women as an expression of male castration anxiety. As
Speaker 1: frightening as the fantasies of phallic women may be themselves,
Speaker 1: they serve to deny women's genital difference and the more
Speaker 1: frightening possibility that a man might lose his penis. Freud
Speaker 1: states that the snakes which form Medusa's hair are quote
Speaker 1: derived are are derived from the castration complex. It is
Speaker 1: a remarkable fact that, however frightening they may be in themselves,
Speaker 1: they never less sort of actually as a mitigation of
Speaker 1: the horror of Medusa, because they replaced the penis, the
Speaker 1: absence of which causes the horror. Huh. I think this
Speaker 1: is a bullshit. But I hear Freddian theory and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, sounds like it might have been more of
Speaker 1: a him thing, and uh, this is not our this
Speaker 1: is maybe not the collective issue that we're making it
Speaker 1: out to be. Yeah, the whole like well you would
Speaker 1: say that is having penis of it, never the penis
Speaker 1: envy ship, the phallic woman thing. It's like and like, okay,
Speaker 1: so there's this a concept of like the phallic woman,
Speaker 1: and which is writing. Broomsticks is another example of this.
Speaker 1: And there's like people who have written all the ship
Speaker 1: about Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a phallic woman because
Speaker 1: like she runs around staking people, right, and I'm just
Speaker 1: like weapons are pointing and sharp, like I know, I
Speaker 1: know he's like I didn't like the tree isaginal weapon
Speaker 1: like a net? I guess um yeah, no, no, it's
Speaker 1: it's um. I mean it's interesting to me because I'm
Speaker 1: interested in trying to explore like the concepts of transness
Speaker 1: throughout history and ship and so less is the like
Speaker 1: phallack mother. But there's like this like it's this like male,
Speaker 1: I don't put this Okay, So it's like Shroedinger's genitals
Speaker 1: in the unobserved state a man or a woman could
Speaker 1: have any set of genitals, and so witches and Bobby
Speaker 1: Got could have anything. And it's like presented as like,
Speaker 1: that's part of the fear of witches and these like
Speaker 1: masculinized women is that they like could have dicks, and
Speaker 1: I think it's I think it's horseship. But the part
Speaker 1: of it I like is like, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I I know some women with dicks. And
Speaker 1: just the phrase Shrodinger's genitals stop being my tracks and
Speaker 1: I'll never move again. It's so good. That was an
Speaker 1: unbelievable turn of phrase. Thank you for that. Yeah, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks uh and so okay, so this makes her like
Speaker 1: a potentially transfigure um and and in the ways in
Speaker 1: which she was a fertility goddess actually tie into that
Speaker 1: in that like, um like because she's she's the one
Speaker 1: plowing the fields. There's like fertility shit about the like
Speaker 1: masculine act rather than the receptive whatever fucking nonsense that
Speaker 1: people are into that ship. Yeah, and she also seems
Speaker 1: similar to stop talking about drunk for a moment. She
Speaker 1: seems similar to me, to another another goddess, another Slavic
Speaker 1: goddess named Mokosh is a deaf god and a mother
Speaker 1: goddess and Mokosh is the ruler of death and fertility,
Speaker 1: life and rebirth. And she's like more famous because she
Speaker 1: was one of the gods who was sort of like
Speaker 1: h canonized essentially, like not by the Christians, but by
Speaker 1: like a a formal codification of some of the pagan
Speaker 1: ship that was happening. She was the only girl that
Speaker 1: got just like the weird guy's book, Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: This is like there's like more like statues and shipped
Speaker 1: to Mokosh around and like and like, um, I wish
Speaker 1: i'd remember wrote down more exactly, but like a guy
Speaker 1: who like formalized a lot of the pagan ship only
Speaker 1: picked one girl and picked Mokosh. And she's the ruler
Speaker 1: of death and fertility, life and rebirth. Her name probably
Speaker 1: means moisture, which rules. And she's related to another Slavic goddess.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, not sorry, just folklore. Sometimes you're like I guess,
Speaker 1: so yeah, sure, great, Yeah. She's related to another slav
Speaker 1: At goddess, matt Zemla, who is called the moist Mother Earth.
Speaker 1: And in the nineteenth century, the two goddesses Mocash and
Speaker 1: Matt Zamiela sort of became one in a lot of
Speaker 1: like people's minds and stuff. Um, and the relationship is
Speaker 1: like super fuzzy, like sometimes they're related and sometimes they're not.
Speaker 1: Like and Mokosh, there are claims that she has been
Speaker 1: portrayed with male genitals throughout time, and so you know,
Speaker 1: transgoddess is for the wind from from my book, um,
Speaker 1: and Mokosh probably came from the fins like Bobby Agamida,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to in a bit or I guess
Speaker 1: we get to it now. Okay, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about chicken. Yeah, yeah, yes, okay, this is the part
Speaker 1: that I feel most confident about. I know where the
Speaker 1: chicken legged hut comes from. I can't believe you've We've
Speaker 1: been here, We've been here for two hours. Tell me,
Speaker 1: all right, does the chicken well, it probably comes from
Speaker 1: the vendors of No. I'm going to give you the
Speaker 1: actual answer, but first we have to do an ad pivot.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, advertisers support the economy that we all
Speaker 1: participated in gladly. We're all so excited about the way
Speaker 1: the economy works. Sophie's shaking her head and disbelieve it.
Speaker 1: How well I'm doing my job. Listen to the ads
Speaker 1: so I can hear where this damn chicken leg hunt
Speaker 1: comes from. Already, all right, ads, ads over, Okay, I
Speaker 1: want you to google what you you're actually at an
Speaker 1: I pad, you might not be able to do this.
Speaker 1: I gotta, I gotta phone, I gotta telephone. What's up? Okay?
Speaker 1: I want you to google, Um, Sammy s a m
Speaker 1: I storehouse and an image searches say, Sammy storehouse. Oh god,
Speaker 1: my tabs are so embarrassing. I just had I just
Speaker 1: had to open the Minion's menu at eyehop so I
Speaker 1: can type this in Sammy storehouse. Okay, And we're hitting images. Oh,
Speaker 1: this building has gams. Yeah, that is a chicken leg
Speaker 1: at hut Okay, okay, so that so it's I'm looking
Speaker 1: at um. The first result is kind of a log cabin,
Speaker 1: but it's got it's got sexy little legs. It's got
Speaker 1: four four sexy legs, which is chickens don't well. But
Speaker 1: her hot sometimes has four legs, sometimes as two and
Speaker 1: sometimes as four. This I can I'll tell you about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: are these still? Are these still feasible? Can we still
Speaker 1: do this, So I don't know. I mean, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can certainly build that, and and the some Sami folks
Speaker 1: still do. So this comes this chicken legged hut. As
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, and as far as a
Speaker 1: lot of other people can tell, I didn't come up
Speaker 1: with this idea. Um. It comes from the Sami people,
Speaker 1: who are indigenous to what is usually has historically been
Speaker 1: called Lapland, but is better known as a Sami Um,
Speaker 1: which is northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and like the northwestern
Speaker 1: bits of Russia. And for centuries, the Sami actually had
Speaker 1: little contact with the Germanic Scandinavians who lived in southern
Speaker 1: Scandinavia UM, which is like the Vikings and the Norse
Speaker 1: and Germanic gods and all that ship. The Sami had
Speaker 1: their own fucking thing going on and still do. They
Speaker 1: lived in places that were too barren to cultivate, so
Speaker 1: they were left alone for a long time. UM. Coastal
Speaker 1: Sami traditionally sustained themselves as fishers, while those in the
Speaker 1: interior traditionally heard reindeer. The nineteenth century caused force assimilation
Speaker 1: project of quote civilizing them as part sad and true,
Speaker 1: banning their languages, giving incentives to settlers to move into
Speaker 1: their territory. Their children were taken to residential schools to
Speaker 1: have their culture destroyed. All the usual colonizers ship. These days,
Speaker 1: Sami lands are being exploited for mineral and oil and
Speaker 1: gas resources, disturbing the reindeer um and I don't know, um,
Speaker 1: just destroying an entire indigenous Yeah, because I think that's
Speaker 1: something that people don't recognize enough, is that colonization happens
Speaker 1: everywhere in the world. Um. And you know, indigenous people
Speaker 1: getting shoved into states and then oppressed happens sucking everywhere. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: this is a theme that is explored in the movie
Speaker 1: Frozen two. That's cool. Yeah, that's just a fact. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I have not heard about the um about
Speaker 1: Sami culture before. This is all new to me, okay,
Speaker 1: And so many of them, the Sammi were traditionally migratory,
Speaker 1: the folks who would follow the reindeer and heard reindeer,
Speaker 1: and so they built storehouses on stilts for all the
Speaker 1: stuff that they weren't taking with them on migration. And
Speaker 1: I've read this both as storehouses of dried food, like
Speaker 1: you know, all the stuff that they prepare and they're like,
Speaker 1: why can't we can't take all this with us. I've
Speaker 1: also read it as storehouses of just like stuff, like
Speaker 1: all the stuff that when we come back here we're
Speaker 1: gonna want. And so wild animals can't get in because
Speaker 1: the stilts and sometimes they didn't have windows, and the
Speaker 1: stilts were sometimes for tree trunks with their roots looking
Speaker 1: like chicken feet. And yeah, I I cannot imagine after
Speaker 1: seeing this sort of image, I cannot imagine another origin
Speaker 1: of this, because, um, the you know, the Slavs were,
Speaker 1: if at their like wildest, venturing into the far birch forests,
Speaker 1: you know, um, and traditionally Bobby Aga lives in birch forest.
Speaker 1: That's when you would be encountering something like this. I
Speaker 1: mean visually it is so fucking cool looking, Like I
Speaker 1: get why the image stuck because it it looks amazing. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And so the Sami aren't fins, right, There's a lot
Speaker 1: of different groups of people that share that little sort
Speaker 1: of vague. Um, it's not part of the Scandinavian Peninsula,
Speaker 1: the Finland part. But there are several Finnish ogresses, one
Speaker 1: of him is good and one of whom is bad.
Speaker 1: Who are seen as potential origins of Bobby a gaswell,
Speaker 1: or like influences on it that like Bobby Gas like
Speaker 1: both of those ogresses at once, and one more weird
Speaker 1: thing that ties into the Bobby a myth. Now she's
Speaker 1: like shoving, um, shoving our protagonist into the oven on
Speaker 1: the like shovel or whatever into the huge oven. Boy
Speaker 1: do I okay? Well? Um? There was this Eastern Slavic
Speaker 1: traditional healing method called baking children where if the kid
Speaker 1: is sick, especially like a child who's born too early
Speaker 1: or like some other issues, you put them in the
Speaker 1: oven for a while, um not too hot obviously, instead
Speaker 1: of timer because it's easy to get distracted, you know,
Speaker 1: like I get yeah, yeah, we've all been there. So
Speaker 1: that was a thing that people did, and it's like
Speaker 1: almost certainly the origin of the the The person who
Speaker 1: knows the traditional methods is like the evil witch who
Speaker 1: bakes children. Right, I feel, Okay, this did it work?
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to that. I think there
Speaker 1: are probab probably some things that would have helped with
Speaker 1: but I do not know. And I think that they
Speaker 1: did it in a way to your kid, Yeah, just
Speaker 1: made made it afraid of enclosed spaces for the rest
Speaker 1: of her life. What Yeah, wow, Freud would have had
Speaker 1: a fucking field day with us back into the womb
Speaker 1: ship too. It was a fucking weirdo. I just like,
Speaker 1: you know, uh that is um okay, so so bad
Speaker 1: witches put like baked children? Yeah yeah, question mark okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so that ogresses in this case. Yeah, well yes, sometimes
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes she's an over us. And so, as
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, basically, Bobby Aga in post
Speaker 1: Christian folklore represents the fear of the pagan other, especially
Speaker 1: the sort of like indigenous pagan other, the knowledgeable, strange
Speaker 1: people in the woods in Siberia, it seems like Bobby
Speaker 1: Aga represents the fear of the indigenous people out there.
Speaker 1: And then in western Russia it was like the indigenous
Speaker 1: people who lived there are like the the people who
Speaker 1: are being mothered by this. And I think that this
Speaker 1: ties into how she can always smell the Russian blood
Speaker 1: because she's not Russian. She's a foreigner. She's not from
Speaker 1: a different place, but she's from a foreign culture because Russia, clearly,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a very large place. And so it's
Speaker 1: that colonial storytelling tradition of um, implying that all of
Speaker 1: the evil comes from the indigenous character. That's being Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's my organized And then it might be more
Speaker 1: of like just purely about paganism. Um, it might be
Speaker 1: more a bunch of other stuff, but that that is
Speaker 1: my read of it, Okay. But she's also got the
Speaker 1: like entrancing power of the other two, right, because she's
Speaker 1: not just a villain. She's the villain in about two
Speaker 1: thirds of the stories she's in, and she's almost unique
Speaker 1: and folk and folklore because overall she's like this bad
Speaker 1: bit who eats kids. But she's the representation of the
Speaker 1: catalyst of change that's necessary in any person's life. People
Speaker 1: have described as like the god of tough love. That's
Speaker 1: a cool that's a cool tital I could use that.
Speaker 1: And I like how a lot of the kind of
Speaker 1: pre Christian beliefs or morals like survive in monsters. I
Speaker 1: really have this whole thing where I really like monsters.
Speaker 1: And to quote Madame Pemita writing for Bust, if we
Speaker 1: look back even further, we see her in her truer
Speaker 1: guys as the forest Mother, the guardian of the woods.
Speaker 1: This is where her dicey nature comes in for our ancestors.
Speaker 1: The wild was truly ambiguous. Nature provided food, materials, and beauty,
Speaker 1: but it could also be devil you, devour you, and
Speaker 1: destroy you. Babba Yaga is just like that, cruel one
Speaker 1: moment and achingly sweet and generous the next. An ancient
Speaker 1: Slavic paganism of three planes of existence. There's the middle
Speaker 1: world where we all live. We've the upper world where
Speaker 1: the gods hang out, and then you have the lower world,
Speaker 1: which isn't hell. It's like where the plant spirits and
Speaker 1: the animals and like the mythical things hang out. And
Speaker 1: Bobby as like lower world all the way. Okay, I
Speaker 1: I like that, uh that kind of not I I
Speaker 1: don't even know if that's a hierarchy, but I like
Speaker 1: I like that concept of the lower world. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: me too. I want to learn more about a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff, like because a lot of this is
Speaker 1: like mentioned in Passing and stuff about Bobby at God.
Speaker 1: And then I like start digging into it because I
Speaker 1: get excited, and then I remember that I um have
Speaker 1: to eventually finished projects. But even like the concept of
Speaker 1: the forest beneath the ground and like stuff like that,
Speaker 1: it just I don't know all of that imagery is
Speaker 1: so cool. Yeah, totally, um, and so so Christian Russians
Speaker 1: don't actually have to go very far to find a
Speaker 1: pagan other. There's been an unbroken tradition of paganism right
Speaker 1: to the present day within Russia. Um, about five miles
Speaker 1: east of Moscow, there the Mari people who are ethnically
Speaker 1: finn U grick I believe, and they claim that their
Speaker 1: religion is about seven thousand, five and thirty years old.
Speaker 1: And when I say about, I mean they claim that
Speaker 1: their religion is seven thousand, five and thirty years old.
Speaker 1: I was like, that's a very precise about um, which
Speaker 1: which implies that they have a specific start date. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in so many ways they're just like the archetypical
Speaker 1: pagans that people when they think about European paganism, Um,
Speaker 1: they're polytheists. They meet in sacred groves instead of churches,
Speaker 1: and and they've run across some problems over the years.
Speaker 1: You'd think that, Um, the history of history is the
Speaker 1: history of people accepting religious differences. That's I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the way I've understood it, and I've only read books
Speaker 1: from the winners, So I think that that's probably chill. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, we totally accepted them. And then they
Speaker 1: just stopped believing what they believed peacefully. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: holiday about that coming up. Garbage. Sorry, continue. So the
Speaker 1: problems that they've run into first, they ran into the
Speaker 1: problems of Christians. Russia started christianizing more intensely around the
Speaker 1: yearth a thousand, and a lot of Pagans had to
Speaker 1: resettle or do what Christianized people have done all over
Speaker 1: the world, especially Catholics, they syncretize. Um, there's this like
Speaker 1: dual faith thing that people have going on where people
Speaker 1: managed successfully for hundreds of years, if not thousands of years,
Speaker 1: where they're like, oh, yeah, I'm like Catholic or Orthodox
Speaker 1: or whatever, and then they go out to the glade
Speaker 1: and keep up their actual religion. And so a lot
Speaker 1: of the Mari religious believers were practicing that, and then
Speaker 1: they had a bigger problem the Bolsheviks. When the Bolsheviks
Speaker 1: took over Russia created the USSR. They didn't like religion,
Speaker 1: sort of a classic thing. Mosques and churches were raised
Speaker 1: all over, and so were the sacred growths. They would
Speaker 1: run through and be like, that's also a thing you're
Speaker 1: not allowed to do. One Mari practitioner describes life under
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union about how they creep into the forest
Speaker 1: to practice. Quote the police, fervent atheists, communists would come.
Speaker 1: They kicked over our cauldrons and chased us away. And
Speaker 1: that was mostly the seventies and eighties. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of the more intense anti religious stuff that was happening.
Speaker 1: But again, this is like a thing I like to
Speaker 1: have touched on peripherally but not dive deep into. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm interested. I mean every uh, every sort of like
Speaker 1: alley this story leads down. Is that's wild. After the
Speaker 1: fall of the uss are the practice started back up again,
Speaker 1: more more openly, until the other classic monster on the
Speaker 1: world stage Putin. Yeah oh Putin Uh is not a
Speaker 1: huge supporter of religious freedom. Yeah, no, weirdly um persecution
Speaker 1: And the article I'm reading is about who that's talking about.
Speaker 1: This is from about when it was like starting to
Speaker 1: kick back in. I have not been able to find
Speaker 1: the follow up about Putin changing his mind and suddenly
Speaker 1: being very tolerant. And he actually specifically used an anti
Speaker 1: extremist law that persecutes a ton of religions UM like
Speaker 1: Muslims and Jehovah's Witnesses and the Marii Pagans, where it's
Speaker 1: like if you're book is like, hey, our practices are cool.
Speaker 1: We don't like churches. They're like, that's extremism because you
Speaker 1: said this other thing. Okay, And so I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think putin bait and swing. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't know a ton about them. But they're
Speaker 1: still around, They're still doing their thing. They consciously stand
Speaker 1: in solidarity with indigenous and pagan religions the world round,
Speaker 1: especially as relates to climate change. One practitioner said, they say,
Speaker 1: we need to increase consumption to get out of the
Speaker 1: economic crisis, but if we all start to consume on
Speaker 1: the level of England or America will destroy the earth
Speaker 1: within a decade. So at least on this level, I
Speaker 1: like them, you know. I was like, yeah that, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm on board with that. Yeah, I'm so, I'm I
Speaker 1: wanna learn more about this. Yeah. So back to bubbya Got.
Speaker 1: The thing is, she's never centered in the story. She's
Speaker 1: never the protagonist. She's a force of nature that people
Speaker 1: contend with. No One ever asks how is Bobby Aga?
Speaker 1: They only ask um, you know about about the arch Crone,
Speaker 1: the bone Mother. These are other names I found for Um.
Speaker 1: The way you're describing this, it cracks me up. It
Speaker 1: just like sounds like you're like teeing up to pitch
Speaker 1: a really shitty Disney Plus series about like people always
Speaker 1: ask like no one ever asked how is Bobby and
Speaker 1: in this reboot starring insert a woman here, This is
Speaker 1: a this is a terrible Catherine Han mini series rating
Speaker 1: to happen. I think we can do it well, I've
Speaker 1: been This has all been my long pitch to to
Speaker 1: get you as co writer. I'm in. I'm in, baby,
Speaker 1: all right. She's almost never married in any of the stories,
Speaker 1: which good for her, right, sometimes she has children or grandchildren.
Speaker 1: She's clearly doing what she wants even when she has
Speaker 1: children and is unmarried. So fuck yeah. Um. There's one
Speaker 1: guy she sometimes represented as hooking up with another pagan
Speaker 1: fear of the other guy. And his name is Coche
Speaker 1: the Deathless, and he's kind of cool because his name
Speaker 1: is I mean, it's a cool name. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm i I'm I'm into the name. What
Speaker 1: does deal? Well, Jamie, I'm glad you asked. He's a
Speaker 1: weird and more immortal wizard warrior guy who can't die
Speaker 1: because he hides his soul and objects like in a
Speaker 1: needle and an egg and a duck and a hair
Speaker 1: and a chest buried on a far island. All right, well,
Speaker 1: none of this is disqualifying to me, so continue. He's
Speaker 1: got a ton of magical items, and he has a
Speaker 1: super fast magical horse. In one story, he gets this
Speaker 1: horse from Bobby at Goa. And sometimes the horse is
Speaker 1: three legs, sometimes a seven legs, sometimes has the normal
Speaker 1: boring amount of legs. And this guy is probably or
Speaker 1: at least has been conjectured in a way that I
Speaker 1: find convincing enough to make this in action, because it's entertaining.
Speaker 1: He might have been an actual guy. Uh. There was
Speaker 1: a twelfth century pagan Cohn of the of the Kuman
Speaker 1: people named Khan con Check, who maybe let us he
Speaker 1: had the hardest time finding this part out. I'm like,
Speaker 1: maybe he led a slave uprising. I'm not sure. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't feel confident about that. But he also is
Speaker 1: conjectured to have like lived over a hundred years old,
Speaker 1: unless maybe his kid was using his name too. But
Speaker 1: basically he was the immortal because Um, he lived over
Speaker 1: he like saw six generations of people, and so everyone's
Speaker 1: like that guy is never gonna fucking die. He keeps
Speaker 1: sucking conquering everything because everyone lived six years back. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And he wore an ombulet of protection that was an
Speaker 1: arrow head inside of an egg shape, and so that's
Speaker 1: probably where you get the like needle in the egg
Speaker 1: and the dock and the goose and the hole in
Speaker 1: the bottom of the sea. There's a hole. There's a hole.
Speaker 1: There's a hole in the bottom of the sea. I
Speaker 1: was like, keep going, keep And since he was a
Speaker 1: successful battle guy, he was a pagan, he became a batty, right.
Speaker 1: I mean most battle guys are batties to be to
Speaker 1: be real that what they do is run around hit
Speaker 1: people with swords, which is like not usually a polite
Speaker 1: thing to do. It's not usually smiled upon in polite society. Um.
Speaker 1: But because him and Bobby and God were both baddies,
Speaker 1: people like to ship them together and sometimes they got
Speaker 1: together in stories and that's so God. I love when
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, folk like folk tales and fan fiction,
Speaker 1: are they live in the same neighborhood. And it was
Speaker 1: we're just like, uh, they're both pretty bad. What if
Speaker 1: they fucked totally? Totally? People have been horny for so long.
Speaker 1: And you know that's my controversial statement. Since he hid
Speaker 1: his soul and other objects, we could call this book
Speaker 1: which for lich swish. Yeah, thanks, um And and that's
Speaker 1: what I've got about Bobby A gum cool. I love
Speaker 1: Bob the as I was, Um I was. I googled,
Speaker 1: I hit Google images bravely to see, like what different
Speaker 1: interpretations of her look like, and it is like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we talked about this in the
Speaker 1: last episode, but all of the kind of cartoon like
Speaker 1: anti an't I any woman who isn't like aggressively Western
Speaker 1: beauty standards. You've got the cartoon anti semitism, and you
Speaker 1: also have Bobby Agawa was an antagonist in a Miyazaki
Speaker 1: movie which I didn't realize. I haven't seen it. Have
Speaker 1: you seen it? Which movie is it in? Um? It's
Speaker 1: when I haven't seen. Sorry, it's um the main antagonist
Speaker 1: and Mr Dough and the Egg Princess. She brings the
Speaker 1: Egg Princess to life. Her home is the Castle of
Speaker 1: the Dark Forest. Seems like a loose interpretation, but I
Speaker 1: think this is a short film, but I wanna I
Speaker 1: want to go back and watch it now to see
Speaker 1: how Miyazaki interpreted. But she was still a cannibal okay okay.
Speaker 1: And and also, um, if you're familiar with the Miyazaki
Speaker 1: character you Baba from Spirit in a way which I
Speaker 1: have seen, I guess that Bobby Yaga has you Baba
Speaker 1: energy as well. I was like, oh, I want to
Speaker 1: see more Bobby Yaga. Seems like there should be more
Speaker 1: modern interpretations of She's cool. I know there's a um.
Speaker 1: I watched a Lost Girl episode, um, Bobby Aga in
Speaker 1: preparation for this. I've never actually seen Lost Girl, and
Speaker 1: my friend was like, what the fun and then it
Speaker 1: was and then described it as in the genre of
Speaker 1: entertainment that is people who fight demons and quip. Oh see,
Speaker 1: that's what I like. That that can be you You
Speaker 1: got to be in the right mood, but that can
Speaker 1: be a good genre. I have written to novellas that
Speaker 1: are people who fight demons and quips, So I like,
Speaker 1: I'm into it. Yeah, you're damn good at it, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. M Yeah. No. And there is the Japanese analogue.
Speaker 1: I didn't get into it more. There's like um, comparisons
Speaker 1: that made and to two cultures especially nearby like Japan
Speaker 1: and Siberia, and I want to know more about how
Speaker 1: all of that traces around. Um. But that is also
Speaker 1: the stuff that people get doctorates in. I'm a lowly
Speaker 1: the equivalent of the the guy who writes the like
Speaker 1: I'll write down your legal structure and write erotic fan
Speaker 1: fick about a maid. Um. Yeah, I think that that
Speaker 1: is a beautiful place to be. That is a culturally
Speaker 1: significant and impactful place to be. Thanks, well, this has
Speaker 1: been so fascinating. Yeah. Uh, if people want to hear
Speaker 1: you occupy that cultural space, how can they do so? Yes, Uh,
Speaker 1: you can do all sorts of stuff. I was because
Speaker 1: we're talking about Baba, I would recommend watching a show
Speaker 1: called Teenage Euthanasia, in which there is a character named
Speaker 1: Baba written on the show for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: It's streaming on HBO Max. It's a really fun show, um,
Speaker 1: and Baba is also kind of a mystical, mysterious figure. Um.
Speaker 1: You can also preorder my book Raw Dog, which is
Speaker 1: about hot dogs, which Baba you got famously loves, and
Speaker 1: you can listen to any of my podcasts about extremely
Speaker 1: specific topic on cool Zone Media, I ever heard of it, Sophie.
Speaker 1: Anything you want to plug, just follow up closon media
Speaker 1: on Instagram and Twitter for all the all the things,
Speaker 1: um and then and then and then Margaret, Robert Evans
Speaker 1: and myself will be doing a special live stream I
Speaker 1: believe on December eighth. More details to come, um, but
Speaker 1: it's going to be a good time. And if you
Speaker 1: want to read my Fight Demons and Quip book, uh,
Speaker 1: the first one is called The Lamb Will Slaughter the
Speaker 1: Lion and the second one is called the Barrel Will
Speaker 1: Send what it May. And yes, I realized I named
Speaker 1: my books things that no one remembers. But the Lamb
Speaker 1: will Slaughter the Lion or just like Margaret Killjoy books
Speaker 1: will probably do that for you as a blue cover,
Speaker 1: the cool cover. And you can hear us next week
Speaker 1: when we talk about more things. Hi, Hi, Hi, cool people.
Speaker 1: Who did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: But more podcasts and cool Zone Media. Visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com or check us out on
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Zo