Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday. We have a
Speaker 1: vault episode for you. This is going to be The
Speaker 1: Hogs of Hell Part one. It originally aired ten twenty four,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. Let's jump right in. I remember, indeed
Speaker 1: that in later years the Lord of my country, knowing
Speaker 1: I was acquainted with Italy, asked me why, as he
Speaker 1: had seen down there some lords went out to pasture
Speaker 1: their pigs. And I laughed, realizing that on the contrary,
Speaker 1: they were going in search of truffles. But when I
Speaker 1: told him that these lords hoped to find the truffle
Speaker 1: underground to eat it, he thought I said they were
Speaker 1: seeking der Typhon, the devil, and he blessed himself devoutly,
Speaker 1: looking at me in amazement. Then the misunderstanding was cleared up,
Speaker 1: and we both laughed at it. Such is the magic
Speaker 1: of human languages, that, by human accord, often the same
Speaker 1: sounds mean different things. Had so of milk umberto echoes
Speaker 1: the name of the Rose.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: All right. In today's episode, as the title indicates, and
Speaker 1: as the quote suggest, we're turning our attention once more
Speaker 1: to beings and monsters that may verge on the demonic,
Speaker 1: and this time it is, of course, hogs of hell,
Speaker 1: pigs of hell, uh bores of the underworld, and so forth.
Speaker 1: We've of course discussed the Garrisne demoniac on the show
Speaker 1: before this, being Christ's exorcism of the demonic legion into
Speaker 1: a herd of swine, out of a man and into swine.
Speaker 1: We did a whole episode about that in the past.
Speaker 1: This time, though, it's more about hell pigs of one
Speaker 1: sort or another. We're gonna we're gonna explore some different
Speaker 1: territory and different interpretations.
Speaker 3: That's right, monster pigs, bl z of bores, and pigs
Speaker 3: of a more heavenly sword as well. But we start
Speaker 3: a lot of these October episodes with examples from horror
Speaker 3: movies of the types of creatures we're talking about, and
Speaker 3: so I figured we should do the same today. I
Speaker 3: know this has come up on the show several times.
Speaker 3: I'm not quite sure why we keep pinging back on
Speaker 3: this movie so often, but when it comes to horror
Speaker 3: movies with monster pigs. I have to mention the nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty four Russell Mulcaheek killer pig movie from before the
Speaker 3: same director made Highlander in nineteen eighty six. This was
Speaker 3: eighty four and the movie is called Razorback Now. I've
Speaker 3: described the plot in the past as something like a
Speaker 3: combination of Australian Texas Chainsaw massacre and Jaws, but with
Speaker 3: a pig instead of a shark. I stand by that.
Speaker 3: I think that is a pretty that gives you a
Speaker 3: pretty good idea of what you're dealing with. It's been
Speaker 3: a while since I've seen it. I don't super highly
Speaker 3: recommend it. Like my memory is that is extremely gooey
Speaker 3: and gross like at one of the major settings of
Speaker 3: the movie is a gray market dog food factory in
Speaker 3: the Australian outback, so you can imagine the kind of
Speaker 3: chainsaw massacre connotations you'd get there. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: body slop. But it is worth mentioning as a movie
Speaker 3: because it's one of the relatively few horror films I
Speaker 3: can think of where the monster is a pig. I
Speaker 3: was looking it up and it seems there have been
Speaker 3: several more movies on this theme in recent decades, but
Speaker 3: I haven't seen any of those, so this is the
Speaker 3: one I'm aware of. And I recall that the movie
Speaker 3: does actually do a pretty commendable job of making the
Speaker 3: bores mouth a mind rending terror. It's just this hot,
Speaker 3: steaming maze of teeth and tusks, and for most of
Speaker 3: the movie, in fact, almost never really you really don't
Speaker 3: see the creature's whole bit. You just see its mouth almost,
Speaker 3: like all there is is a mouth, which I think
Speaker 3: is a strong choice. You get a similar kind of
Speaker 3: thing in some shark movies, basically all you see or
Speaker 3: the gaping Jaws.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not what I've seen, but I know
Speaker 1: you admire it, or in my aspects of it. And
Speaker 1: I'm looking at some stills here right now, and yeah,
Speaker 1: this monster pick looks amazing, Like this is this is
Speaker 1: the thoroughly deserving of the title Jaws, but with a pig.
Speaker 3: I mean, it does take serious boldness to approach that
Speaker 3: as a concept, because do you can keep the You
Speaker 3: can keep the monster hidden much more easily in Jaws
Speaker 3: because it's underwater, right, but a boor is just running around,
Speaker 3: So yeah, it takes some clever photography to make the
Speaker 3: scene convincing and heighten the tension without ever showing us
Speaker 3: too much of the bore until the very end.
Speaker 1: I guess the thing about a bore is you can
Speaker 1: have the boar moving through like the tall grass or
Speaker 1: the undergrowth to some extent, it's sort of like it's underwater.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, you can have that. Uh
Speaker 3: though this boar I from what IVER call it's taller
Speaker 3: than any grass in the setting. It's like a fan
Speaker 3: sized bore. Okay, Now, as I said, I haven't really
Speaker 3: seen any of these other recent pig monster movies. Maybe
Speaker 3: there's some really good ones. I don't know, I can't say.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: But of course, beyond the realm of horror movies, there
Speaker 3: are a lot of fascinating pig beings in mythology, religion,
Speaker 3: and ancient literature, including good pigs, bad pigs, and everything
Speaker 3: in between.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I have to admit I never really
Speaker 1: looked into them all that much before, and I think
Speaker 1: I probably kind of glossed over mentions of bores and
Speaker 1: pigs in mythology in the past, just because I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm I didn't have really strong opinions about wild boars.
Speaker 1: I don't have any experiences with them. You know, I've
Speaker 1: seen various you know, pig and pig kin animals that
Speaker 1: the zoos, and they're interesting, but you know, I just
Speaker 1: wasn't inspired. So I of course, when we were going
Speaker 1: to do this episode, I said, sure, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Let's dive in, and I turned to one of my
Speaker 1: favorite sources, initial sources for this sort of thing. I
Speaker 1: looked to one of folklore's Carol Rose's books, in this case, Giants,
Speaker 1: Monsters and Dragons and Encyclopedia Folklore, Legend and Myth great volume,
Speaker 1: easily one of my most loved and falling apart books.
Speaker 1: But when I started looking around for bores and pig
Speaker 1: like creatures, I was surprised at how many there were.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of them. Dozens of creatures are
Speaker 1: referenced in this book. And I should stress that while
Speaker 1: she's pretty exhaustive in these volumes, she is by no
Speaker 1: means complete in her chronicling of global traditions. So if
Speaker 1: she has dozens, there are more out there as well.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of monstrous, hellish and even
Speaker 1: divine pig bore and bore like beings in global traditions.
Speaker 3: This just popped into my head. So it's not a
Speaker 3: fully formed thought. Maybe is this not worthy yet, but
Speaker 3: it just struck me that you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: these animals that we see having a major role in
Speaker 3: religion in mythology are animals that exist in both a
Speaker 3: wild and domesticated form around the culture. So like you see,
Speaker 3: you know, very common to have cattle related, cattle related imagery.
Speaker 3: We were just talking about cattle related beings in ancient
Speaker 3: Mesopotamian religion, and of course they would have had both
Speaker 3: domesticated cattle and the wild orx around them. And we've
Speaker 3: seen similar things with goats. You could have domestic goats
Speaker 3: and wild goats around you. Maybe something about that kind
Speaker 3: of dichotomy where you're seeing like the same animal body
Speaker 3: both you know, roaming and running around and doing its
Speaker 3: own thing in the wild, but also in a only
Speaker 3: slightly altered form as an animal that you keep on
Speaker 3: your farms, and that that seems to hit something in
Speaker 3: the brain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and definitely seems to influence the way we use
Speaker 1: those animals in our language and our symbols and in
Speaker 1: our mythology. You know, coming back to for instance, you
Speaker 1: know donkeys and asses. We talked about this in the
Speaker 1: Mesopotamian Demon episode, the idea of of a ferocious she
Speaker 1: demon being associated with a donkey, and how it seems
Speaker 1: perhaps laughable if you're thinking from a modern standpoint about
Speaker 1: a domestic donkey, but we're talking here about a wild creature.
Speaker 1: It was swift, and therefore it's a fitting steed for
Speaker 1: a demon.
Speaker 3: S Oh, yeah, that's right. So what was it? The
Speaker 3: demonus lamashe Tu is said to ride on a wild donkey,
Speaker 3: but also occasionally was depicted maybe with donkey ears.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And to your point, we also see this
Speaker 1: with cattle versus you know, wilder forms of that creature.
Speaker 1: And we'll see that again time and time again. When
Speaker 1: it comes to pigs, bores, and pick like creatures. The
Speaker 1: various species compose the suborder of Suena known as the
Speaker 1: Sua forms. These can be found around the world, from
Speaker 1: wild and ferocious bores to pig like cavalinas, and of
Speaker 1: course the wild and domestic pigs of the genus sus.
Speaker 1: I had when I told my son about this, he
Speaker 1: thought this was rich. I was like, you're never gonna
Speaker 1: forget the genus of wild and domestic pigs because they're sas.
Speaker 3: Is it not sus? I would have said Sue's, but oh,
Speaker 3: it's got to be saus.
Speaker 1: It's well sus maybe, but when I read it, I'm like, sus.
Speaker 1: Their genus is sus perfect us.
Speaker 3: Okay, suck.
Speaker 1: So human relationships with these animals, of course, has entailed
Speaker 1: many different things. Hunting, consumption, sort of just acknowledgment of
Speaker 1: their wild status, observation of their behavior in the wild,
Speaker 1: and then poresine imagery and associations. These are going to
Speaker 1: vary somewhat from culture to culture and from time to time,
Speaker 1: and at times too and kind of counterintuitive ways that
Speaker 1: I think sometimes breaks down to, you know, the the
Speaker 1: idea of looking to the wild seuiforms as well as
Speaker 1: to the domestic suiform and then also having you know,
Speaker 1: different cultural influences enter into an area.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Thinking about the cultural associations we have with pigs
Speaker 3: got me thinking on several different frequencies. I was like,
Speaker 3: for one thing, in our culture, isn't it funny how
Speaker 3: we we really associate pigs with eating when eating is
Speaker 3: something all animals do. Yeah, Like, why is that? And
Speaker 3: my best guess is maybe it has something just to
Speaker 3: do with the relatively omnivorous appetites of a pig that
Speaker 3: you know they famously will kind of they're kind of
Speaker 3: not picky about what kinds of things they eat. But
Speaker 3: that's also true of many other animals that you think
Speaker 3: of us that way.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, we end up comparing ourselves more to
Speaker 1: the pig. And they're probably a number of ways to
Speaker 1: sort of slice that up, right. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: focus on the intelligence of the pig, and the domestic
Speaker 1: pig is a pretty bright creature. You could maybe focus
Speaker 1: on it's relative hairless. I mean, I say the pigs
Speaker 1: are hairless. They do have hair, but a lot of
Speaker 1: times they are you're seen or certainly depict it as
Speaker 1: being kind of hairless, especially when you're dealing with like
Speaker 1: cartoon pigs. Yeah, and we're very we're very strange in
Speaker 1: the way that we are, especially with like roadside barbecue
Speaker 1: restaurants are very quick to personify the pig and invot
Speaker 1: cartoon pigs. Eat at a place where the flesh of
Speaker 1: pigs is served under the name of pork.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Pulled Pork restaurant where it shows a pig
Speaker 3: in a chef's hat, wearing just a shirt with like
Speaker 3: a knife and a fork.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna often be horrific. So yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: to unpack and like American associations of the pig, but
Speaker 1: if you go, you know, across the board and throughout time,
Speaker 1: you'll find a lot more to look at. For instance,
Speaker 1: the wild boar is a powerful image in medieval heraldry.
Speaker 1: It's also pretty powerful and Hindu iconography, where it's at
Speaker 1: times linked to the divine, as we'll explore. In the
Speaker 1: Chinese zodiac the pig is associated with wealth and good fortune.
Speaker 1: And I've heard other you know, sort of takes on,
Speaker 1: like how the pig is considered in say Thai culture,
Speaker 1: where I'm to understand that the term for pig, which
Speaker 1: I believe is MoU, is a common nickname of endearment.
Speaker 1: So something you might call a child with some endearment,
Speaker 1: you know, some some kid that you love, or your
Speaker 1: baby brother, and it wouldn't be a put down, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be an insult, that sort of thing. But meanwhile,
Speaker 1: elsewhere in time and space, here on Earth, poresine imagery
Speaker 1: of course has all these negative connotations tied to as
Speaker 1: you said, gluttony or sloth, or even to the unclean
Speaker 1: and the demonic.
Speaker 3: That's right. And as we often bring up in these
Speaker 3: episodes about monster traditions, looking at beliefs about monsters, especially
Speaker 3: monsters based on an animal, I think usually tells us
Speaker 3: more about us and our relationship to that animal than
Speaker 3: it does about the animal itself. That's right.
Speaker 1: So you know, we're going to dive into some examples
Speaker 1: from global traditions here, but I will say that as
Speaker 1: I was going through them and reading about them, and
Speaker 1: some of which they couldn't find enough to really mention here,
Speaker 1: but overall I found that you could basically divide them
Speaker 1: into sort of three categories with a certain amount of overlap.
Speaker 1: So there are primordial bores, often with a real emphasis
Speaker 1: on a connection to the earth. You know, they run
Speaker 1: around in the earth, they dig in the earth, kind
Speaker 1: of as referenced in our cold open here. You know,
Speaker 1: they are concerned with things under the soil, and they
Speaker 1: go under the soil to get them. So they have
Speaker 1: this connection.
Speaker 3: But by primordial, are you saying that they have something
Speaker 3: to do with like an initial state of the universe
Speaker 3: or with the creation of the world.
Speaker 1: Yes, like something about like the state of at least
Speaker 1: the surface world, and we'll get into some examples of this.
Speaker 1: Then there are also divine bores. Often these are ethereocephalic,
Speaker 1: so you know it's the head of a bore on
Speaker 1: a humanoid body, but not always. There are also divine
Speaker 1: bares that are just straight up like a mighty boar
Speaker 1: that is also a god. And then another huge area,
Speaker 1: and this is one that I think ties directly into
Speaker 1: the horror movie example that we kicked off the episode with,
Speaker 1: and that is the bore that hunts humans, which is
Speaker 1: basically not a huge twist because I mean history and
Speaker 1: just basic understanding of wild boars will tell you that
Speaker 1: they are they can be dangerous prey, and we can
Speaker 1: point to examples throughout history of even famous people, members
Speaker 1: of nobility dying in the conquest of a prize bore,
Speaker 1: say a bore that they have injured in an attempt
Speaker 1: to kill, and then they themselves die of injuries sustained
Speaker 1: from the boar.
Speaker 3: So the famous and within context somewhat ignoble death of
Speaker 3: Robert Barathian in fiction is based somewhat on real incidents.
Speaker 3: It's not implausible in royal.
Speaker 1: History, no, not at all. Yeah, I mean, and to
Speaker 1: be clear, like wild boars can be dangerous today, and
Speaker 1: there are fatal incidents that occur. They can be very
Speaker 1: defensive and even aggressive if the circumstances are right. But
Speaker 1: these mythic treatments often take it one step beyond. It's
Speaker 1: not just that this is a dangerous game to hunt,
Speaker 1: but this game actively not only hunts you back, but
Speaker 1: might hunt you of its own accord. Like you're not
Speaker 1: even trying to hunt the monster boar. It just goes
Speaker 1: out and hunts people at night. That sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Okay, So to recaps, you've got boors from the creation,
Speaker 3: or bores from the beginning. You've got divine bores or
Speaker 3: heavenly bores, and then you've got the board that eats people.
Speaker 1: Right, One more quick fictional example before we dive into
Speaker 1: these examples from global traditions, I should note that in
Speaker 1: Dante's Inferno, there are twelve named demons that compose the
Speaker 1: Malagrancia in the eighth circle of Hell, and one of
Speaker 1: them is clearly named with hogs in mind. This is Curiato,
Speaker 1: whose name means swine or a little pig, and we
Speaker 1: meet him in Canto twenty one verse one twenty two.
Speaker 1: So that's just a quick example of a literary pig
Speaker 1: in hell.
Speaker 3: I don't remember what the context was, but we've talked
Speaker 3: about the Mala bronca before. There were the I think
Speaker 3: that name translates to evil claws. And this is the
Speaker 3: circle of demons who are shown like surrounding a boiling
Speaker 3: lake of pitch, and there are the like I don't know,
Speaker 3: like corrupt people and grafters or something that they keep
Speaker 3: having to force back down under the pitch. Pretty pretty
Speaker 3: nasty job.
Speaker 1: They're demons with jobs, though they have a rope. All right,
Speaker 1: enough of the like straight up demonic here, Let's get
Speaker 1: into some other examples. So I'd like to start in
Speaker 1: Hindu traditions, since these traditions feature some of the most
Speaker 1: divine and I think powerful invocations of por sign imagery.
Speaker 1: So I turned once more to Nanditha Krishna's excellent book
Speaker 1: Sacred Animals of India, in which the author chronicles a
Speaker 1: number of different animals and talks about like their you know,
Speaker 1: their their role in the natural world in India, conservation status,
Speaker 1: and then also the different ways that they're invoked. And
Speaker 1: so the author here describes a course, the scie and
Speaker 1: power of wild boars creatures that are that are of
Speaker 1: course closely tied to the earth. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: they dig for roots in the soil, and in doing
Speaker 1: so they turn over the soil, perhaps as the author
Speaker 1: suggests informing humans about the value of tilled soil.
Speaker 3: Oh, so they could be one of the sort of
Speaker 3: like agricultural knowledge givers in a way.
Speaker 1: Exactly at the same time, they're also like this natural
Speaker 1: force that you know might be beneficial but might also
Speaker 1: be destructive. They can they can certainly hurt and kill humans,
Speaker 1: but they can also be destructive to human agricultural pursuits
Speaker 1: because they may raid crops, they may dig around in
Speaker 1: your gardens and so forth. So in essence, we have
Speaker 1: a fierce, wild, but not universally hostile creature that is
Speaker 1: closely tied to the earth. The bore both tills and
Speaker 1: fertilizes the soil, and tradition holds that they're also tied
Speaker 1: to rain and monsoon seasons as well, digging right before
Speaker 1: the beginning of the monsoon. So one of the major
Speaker 1: uses of bor iconography and Hindu traditions is the tenth
Speaker 1: incarnation of the god Vishnu and that is of Vadaha.
Speaker 1: And there are different stories, of course concerning this incarnation,
Speaker 1: as you'll find with just about any particular detail and
Speaker 1: the Hindu traditions. But one of the big tales does
Speaker 1: involve a demon of sorts. Now more precisely, it involves
Speaker 1: an osserra. This is the kind of power seeking demi
Speaker 1: god that is often in conflict with the benevolent devas.
Speaker 1: So one of these is one of these cases where
Speaker 1: the word demon in English seems a precise enough descriptor,
Speaker 1: but with certain caveats, you know, like it's the system
Speaker 1: of supernatural beings can be compared to that that you
Speaker 1: find in Christian mythology. But there's still a lot of
Speaker 1: important differences, right.
Speaker 3: We just recently talked about this in our series on
Speaker 3: the so called demons of age in Mesopotamia. To what
Speaker 3: extent that term does sort of apply and in other
Speaker 3: ways doesn't.
Speaker 1: In this case, we have a demon or by the
Speaker 1: name of Hironyaksha that steals the earth itself, so rolls
Speaker 1: up the earth like a mat, we are told, and
Speaker 1: then takes it into the ocean depths. Wow, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and so Vishnu is not crazy about this. So Vishnu
Speaker 1: takes the form of a great bore, this is Vardaja,
Speaker 1: and dives into the ocean to retrieve it, slaying here
Speaker 1: in Yaksha. In the fierce battle that ensues. Then Vardaja
Speaker 1: restores the earth, and while he is at it, teaches
Speaker 1: humans agriculture, because again this is connection between bores and
Speaker 1: tilling of the earth, fertilizing the soil. Uh And I
Speaker 1: want to note that while many illustrations and depictions of
Speaker 1: this battle show Vardaja as a bore and here in
Speaker 1: Yaksha as a human or a humanoid demon, there's at
Speaker 1: least one illustration that depicts them both as human boar hybrids.
Speaker 1: I included this one here for you, Joe. This is
Speaker 1: a seventeen forty illustration by Indian painter Manaku of guler Oh.
Speaker 3: I like this painting though, so they're shown in conflict here.
Speaker 3: Do you know which of the two beings in the
Speaker 3: painting is supposed to be the incarnation of Vishnu? Is
Speaker 3: it the one with the grayer skin or the green skin?
Speaker 1: It would be the gray skin, I believe, because here
Speaker 1: you see a regal, multi armed, noble looking poor sign
Speaker 1: individual por sign being and then on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you see this wild green monster that is also poor
Speaker 1: sign that also has the features of a bore. And
Speaker 1: I love this imagery because you get in one image
Speaker 1: these two drastically different ways of invoking the imagery of
Speaker 1: the boar, the noble and the savage, the good and
Speaker 1: the evil, and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So the vicious demonic boar here is
Speaker 3: mouth open, its jaws kind of like the to compare
Speaker 3: it to the the movie Razorback, it's just all mouthed
Speaker 3: a reaching out with its arms to attack, whereas the
Speaker 3: Vishnu version of the boar, Yeah, it's standing with its
Speaker 3: chin up, you know, raised in kind of lofty defiance.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And you'll find other depictions of Vardaja in
Speaker 1: which pretty much looks like this with gray skin, the
Speaker 1: head of a boar, multiple arms. But then you'll also
Speaker 1: find depictions where he is just a great bore. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I included an image of some sculpture art that
Speaker 1: depicts this. Now Naraka, the lord of the underworld Krishna
Speaker 1: rights is also held to be the offspring of Vadaha
Speaker 1: and the Earth via his spouse Boudevi, which I believe
Speaker 1: the sculpture I included here. If you look at it,
Speaker 1: there is a female figure on there, kind of like
Speaker 1: hanging from one of his tusks. I believe that is
Speaker 1: bou Devi.
Speaker 3: Whoa oh okay, so I initially interpreted this humanoid figure
Speaker 3: to be climbing the boar, as if to climb up
Speaker 3: its side and ride it. Be though she's hanging from
Speaker 3: its tusk. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Krishna also points to a couple of other Hindu entities
Speaker 1: that feature bor iconography. There's the goddess of Vadahai, an
Speaker 1: aspect of the goddess Durga. The author also mentions that
Speaker 1: the boar is also invoked in Jainism and in Buddhism,
Speaker 1: where the goddess ma Richi or Marisi drives a chariot
Speaker 1: drawn by seven bores. I believe this figure also factors
Speaker 1: into Hinduism and has sometimes depicted as writing a single boar,
Speaker 1: though not always all right, let's let's turn to the
Speaker 1: world of monstrous boars, because one really important example in
Speaker 1: Greco Roman traditions is, of course the Caledonian boar or
Speaker 1: the Itolian boar. This is a monstrous boar sent by
Speaker 1: the goddess Artemis to punish the King of Kaledon for
Speaker 1: lack of proper sacrifices. You didn't throw up the right sacrifices.
Speaker 1: You ticked off a god. Have to deal with a
Speaker 1: monster pig. It brings great. Oh, it just destroys everything.
Speaker 1: It destroys people, It destroys the town, it destroys the
Speaker 1: land itself. And then you end up having to have
Speaker 1: the heroes Meleager and Atalanta hunt it with their friends,
Speaker 1: their allies, slay it, and then get into a big
Speaker 1: fight with their allies over who gets what part of
Speaker 1: the spoils from the monster pig. Because we see this
Speaker 1: time and time again. You'll have some sort of supernatural pig.
Speaker 1: But then once you have killed that pig, its parts
Speaker 1: are used. You know, it is it is, it is food,
Speaker 1: it is you know it's hide has value and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the drama is not done when the monster boor
Speaker 3: is slain. In fact, that factors into the next one
Speaker 3: you're gonna mention.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, the Aramanthean boar. This is another monster bore
Speaker 1: of Greek myth. This is the one that ravaged Arcadia,
Speaker 1: and it ends up being one of the twelve labors
Speaker 1: of Hercules having to dispose of this monster boar king.
Speaker 1: Eurystheus tells her, you can't slay it, You've got to
Speaker 1: bring it back alive. And in most of these tellings
Speaker 1: you have this wonderful scene where of course Hercules pulls
Speaker 1: this off, brings back this ferocious boar alive, and just
Speaker 1: the sight of Hercules carrying this thing is so terrifying
Speaker 1: that the tyrant king jumps inside of a jar and hides.
Speaker 3: So I thought this was interesting because of the way
Speaker 3: the story ties into a weird art meme from the
Speaker 3: ancient world that I've noticed. I'll get to that in
Speaker 3: a second. But first of all, I was wondering if
Speaker 3: there was any like really good ancient texts that describes
Speaker 3: this hunt in detail. Maybe there is, but if so,
Speaker 3: I couldn't. I couldn't find it. I didn't really come
Speaker 3: across anything all that great. It's pretty sparse, you know,
Speaker 3: It's just like, oh, and he hunted the boar down.
Speaker 3: The best example I came across was from the text
Speaker 3: of Pseudo Apollodorus the Library. This is the Phraser translation,
Speaker 3: which says, well, first of all, there's a bunch of
Speaker 3: drama with Hercules going out to hunt the boar and
Speaker 3: then gets into a bunch of stuff with some cinaurs
Speaker 3: and his companion gets killed. But then when Hercules, it
Speaker 3: says quote, when Hercules had chased the boar with shouts
Speaker 3: from a certain thicket, he drove the exhausted animal into
Speaker 3: deep snow, trapped it, and brought it to myceny. Now
Speaker 3: here's the funny art note. If you look up ancient
Speaker 3: Greek pottery depicting this scene where Heracles in the Greek
Speaker 3: returns with the boar, multiple pieces I found have the
Speaker 3: same style of depicting the scene, so little things about
Speaker 3: it are different. It's not like a tracing, you know.
Speaker 3: You might have different characters on the sides of the scene,
Speaker 3: or different sort of posture or ways of rendering the
Speaker 3: Hercules's face and body, but the thing being shown is
Speaker 3: the same in every case. So you will have down
Speaker 3: below there's an opening of a large jar. I guess
Speaker 3: this is the type of Greek jar known as a pithos,
Speaker 3: with the king hiding down in the jar, and you
Speaker 3: can see like his head and hands popping up out
Speaker 3: of it like oh, And then up above you will
Speaker 3: have Hercules standing above the opening of the jar, holding
Speaker 3: the boar up as if to dump it on top
Speaker 3: of the king, or like to plug the king in
Speaker 3: the jar with the boar as a cork. And I've
Speaker 3: got at least four different m foi from ancient Greece
Speaker 3: that depict the scene almost exactly like this Robi. You
Speaker 3: can take a look and see what you noticed about
Speaker 3: all of these. The first one I've got in the
Speaker 3: outline here is from the British Museum. It's a Greek
Speaker 3: amphora from the sixth century BCE, and M four a
Speaker 3: is also a type of jar that was a smaller
Speaker 3: jar jar that would usually be used to store wine
Speaker 3: or perfume or oil or something like that. So this
Speaker 3: a for a. Hercules is wearing some kind of armor,
Speaker 3: but also his thighs and butt cheeks are showing a
Speaker 3: little bit, and he's.
Speaker 1: He's remarkably clo though. I have to say yes for Heracles.
Speaker 3: Yes, so Heracles. He's got the boar up on his shoulder,
Speaker 3: and the king is down in the jar like no,
Speaker 3: don't dump the boar on me, and the boar is
Speaker 3: just going straight down on top of him. It looks
Speaker 3: like he's gonna to plug him up in there. And
Speaker 3: in most versions of this scene he's dropping the boar
Speaker 3: head first on the king, but in one I found
Speaker 3: it's the last one I've got for you to look
Speaker 3: at here, Rob, in this case, he's dropping the boar
Speaker 3: tail first onto the king. So I don't know what
Speaker 3: the difference is there. I am in no way an
Speaker 3: expert on ancient Greek art. I couldn't find anything that's
Speaker 3: saying why this scene appears so often and looks so similar.
Speaker 3: And I could be totally wrong about this, but I
Speaker 3: wonder if this scene is popular to depict on MPI
Speaker 3: on jars because the king is hiding in a jar
Speaker 3: in the scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Heracles or Hercules, hero of the people
Speaker 1: we discussed in the pad. I can't remember we're talking
Speaker 1: about it this on a Core episode or a Weird
Speaker 1: House cinem episode. I think it was weird House because
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Mario Bava Hercules in the Underworld film.
Speaker 1: But Hercules stands up to power like this, but he
Speaker 1: does not proclaim himself a king, so he's kind of
Speaker 1: and he's kind of a workingman's.
Speaker 3: Hero in that regard.
Speaker 1: I guess, you know, take this job and shove it.
Speaker 1: Take this pig and shove it, right.
Speaker 3: That is exactly the vibe of these scenes here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: take this pig and shove it.
Speaker 1: I like how the fourth image that you shared Hercules
Speaker 1: is the most naked here, varying levels of nudity for
Speaker 1: Hercules in each of them. But then the second one
Speaker 1: you shared, Hercules is making this wild Gargonian face that
Speaker 1: is really great, almost as if he is saying, wahs up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's asko. Yeah, any experts on ancient Greco Roman
Speaker 3: art out there you want to fill us in on
Speaker 3: why this scene appears so often and looks so similar? Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: in contact that stuff to blow your mind dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, let's see which what other monster picks should
Speaker 1: I mention here? There's some that I couldn't find a
Speaker 1: lot on. Like, for instance, there's one in Icelandic tradition
Speaker 1: that is called by God, not like by God it's
Speaker 1: a pick, but like b E I G A D.
Speaker 1: And this apparently roughly translates to bringer of fear, which
Speaker 1: I like. But then there's one from Irish legend that's
Speaker 1: really interesting. This one is the bore of being Goldbain,
Speaker 1: and in this there's a whole story for this one.
Speaker 1: So this is a monster that was once the mortal
Speaker 1: human son of Angus, but upon his son's death in
Speaker 1: a quarrel, the father you know, refused to accept this
Speaker 1: and refused to accept the custom of death gold from
Speaker 1: his killer in to sort of settle the dispute. Instead,
Speaker 1: he raises his son from the dead with dark magic
Speaker 1: into the form of a great bore that Carol Rose
Speaker 1: says has neither tail nor ears. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: the significance of that detail is, but if nothing else,
Speaker 1: it tends to show you that this is an unnatural boar.
Speaker 1: It is somehow not quite bore and certainly not man. Now.
Speaker 1: In doing this and raising up his son like this,
Speaker 1: he's also cursing his son's killer, Dimid and for telling
Speaker 1: that the two of them, the reincarnated son here and
Speaker 1: his killer Domed, are going to be the death of
Speaker 1: each other. That he will live as long as this
Speaker 1: this unnatural boar that he's raised up, and indeed that's
Speaker 1: exactly how it goes down. They fight, they gore and
Speaker 1: stab each other. And I think we may have touched
Speaker 1: on this story before in our episode about Finn McCool,
Speaker 1: because this is where Finn McCool jumps in and tries
Speaker 1: to bring healing waters to the dying warrior, and he
Speaker 1: tries three times, but it slips through his fingers the
Speaker 1: first two times, and by the third time the hero
Speaker 1: has already died. All right, This next one comes from
Speaker 1: Welsh traditions, and I'm going to butcher this. I know,
Speaker 1: my apologies, but it is something like hults do gut
Speaker 1: and it is it is the bobtailed black soal. It
Speaker 1: is definitely in the category of the boar that hunts.
Speaker 1: It was said to be active. I've seen it. I
Speaker 1: believe Carol Rose discusses it as being connected with Salin
Speaker 1: and then with the introduction of Christianity war that, of
Speaker 1: course that has warped more in the direction of Halloween,
Speaker 1: and then this creature becomes associated with the devil. But
Speaker 1: in essence we're dealing with a with just another boar
Speaker 1: who hunts that is monstrous and terrible, certainly kind of
Speaker 1: like an evil monster. You're right again, I think the
Speaker 1: name here is Hawk du Gita or something to that effect. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm not really good with the Welsh tongue here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know how to pronounce it hats off
Speaker 3: to you, Rob, But I was looking at the entry
Speaker 3: on this one in the Oxford Dictionary of Celtic Mythology,
Speaker 3: and it says that this is the spectral pig, later
Speaker 3: often associated with the devil in Christianity. But the idea
Speaker 3: is that it's a spectral pig that would rise up
Speaker 3: out of the embers of a dying bonfire on the
Speaker 3: night of this like sort of autumn festival night, and
Speaker 3: it would rise up out of the embers of the
Speaker 3: dying bonfire, and it would catch the last person, I guess,
Speaker 3: to the last person in some case to like leave
Speaker 3: the festivities or to arrive.
Speaker 1: Oh fascinating. Well, let's see we have some other ones here.
Speaker 1: There's a Comapoa. This is a Hawaiian primordial monster bore
Speaker 1: from Hawaiian mythology, the pig child who raised up the
Speaker 1: ocean mud with his snout to form the islands and
Speaker 1: some tellings. So again another primordial vision of the bore.
Speaker 3: And I like the resonance is there with the Hindu
Speaker 3: idea of the incarnation of Vishnu that like has to
Speaker 3: swim down into the ocean to retrieve the mat of
Speaker 3: the earth and bring it back in this case, raising
Speaker 3: up the ocean mud from beneath.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, is there an actual connection there, a reverberation
Speaker 1: of belief or is it just come from familiarity with
Speaker 1: the animal? You know, and these these sort of metaphors
Speaker 1: and ideas emerging from human observation of these animals that
Speaker 1: they live in close contact with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to be clear, I was not suggesting a causal connection. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: those two myths.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but if if there, if there isn't a
Speaker 1: causal connection, it's it's clearly like observing the animal, and
Speaker 1: you know the ideas that emerge when we see the
Speaker 1: animal and it's on its natural turf. Let's see. Oh,
Speaker 1: the legends tell of a monstrous family of bors, like
Speaker 1: you could probably call these ogre boors. I think that
Speaker 1: fought King Arthur and his knights. May come back to
Speaker 1: some of this, but the tellings have a lot of gorings,
Speaker 1: Like it's just a whole series of gorings. They're chasing
Speaker 1: these boors around, killing off certain boars. Yeah, we'll come
Speaker 1: back to these, because there are a few like examples
Speaker 1: of the King of Boars.
Speaker 3: Did your source of say, which of King Arthur's knights
Speaker 3: got got gord because I was just thinking because it's funny.
Speaker 3: I know, one of the knights in Arthurian legend is
Speaker 3: Sir Bars, and it would be somewhat hilarious if Sir
Speaker 3: Bors got gored by a boar.
Speaker 1: I do I don't know. I don't know if any
Speaker 1: like name knights were gored, but it's possible. Like some
Speaker 1: of the particular ones I'm scanning down, I do have
Speaker 1: notes on this. Let's say twitrich Tritch. This is a
Speaker 1: This is one of the wicked kings who was transformed
Speaker 1: into a monstrous boar. So, uh, this is one of
Speaker 1: the ones that they do battle with. Then, yeah, there
Speaker 1: are various other ones that have names and factor into
Speaker 1: this whole series of battles between humans and bores. Oh
Speaker 1: now here's another one that Carol ro shares that is
Speaker 1: really interesting and has a very cool story to it.
Speaker 1: And this is concerning a particular monster pick by the
Speaker 1: name of Totoima or I've seen it also spelled dodo Ema.
Speaker 1: It's a monster pig of the Oro Kaiva people of
Speaker 1: Papua New Guinea. So essentially, this monster pig is a
Speaker 1: father of mortal humans who hunts them from their birth
Speaker 1: and devours them if he finds them. So the basic
Speaker 1: story concerning this monster pig is that I guess at
Speaker 1: night it takes the form of the monster pig, but
Speaker 1: during the day it takes the form or can take
Speaker 1: the form of a mortal man. And in this form,
Speaker 1: toto Ema couples with human women, producing human offspring, which
Speaker 1: then at night, in the form of the beast, he
Speaker 1: seeks out and he consumes if he finds them.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: But then one woman ends up birthing twins, and of
Speaker 1: course he does what he always does in bore form.
Speaker 1: He chases after them to consume them. But when he
Speaker 1: finds them, he's only able to consume the boy twin
Speaker 1: and the female escapes. Well, the twins mother she's not
Speaker 1: gonna take this, she stands up to it. So she
Speaker 1: goes to a shaman, and the shaman casts a spell
Speaker 1: that causes the boy to grow rapidly into adulthood inside
Speaker 1: of Totoima's stomach and then bursting out of him, killing
Speaker 1: the monster pig in the process, and then the shaman
Speaker 1: marries the daughter. The people feast on the body of Totolima,
Speaker 1: and in doing so they consume his power. His supernatural
Speaker 1: power the absorb it, and then this story is echoed
Speaker 1: in all of the boar feasts to follow in this culture.
Speaker 3: Oh. Interesting, So the boy explodes out of the belly
Speaker 3: of the boar by growing rapidly. But does that mean
Speaker 3: the boy survives?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess he either. I'm not sure of the
Speaker 1: details of the spell. Maybe he reforms and then grows,
Speaker 1: or maybe the monster consumed him whole, as we see,
Speaker 1: of course, in a lot of stories of monsters consuming people,
Speaker 1: they are swallowed whole, and then there's this chance for
Speaker 1: them to escape somehow, you know, clearly a popular idea,
Speaker 1: even in modern fiction and science fiction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess I'm more familiar with stories along these lines,
Speaker 3: where like, oh, you know the Little Red Riding Hood,
Speaker 3: the hunter comes along and cuts open the wolf's stomach
Speaker 3: and everybody, and everybody gets out. But I love this
Speaker 3: version with the magic spell that causes the yeah, the
Speaker 3: the eating child to grow and explode from the inside, and.
Speaker 1: Then they eat the monster. Again. We see allusion to
Speaker 1: this in the Greek traditions as well. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: every monster boar ends up being consumed, but it does
Speaker 1: seem to be kind of a frequent idea, like it
Speaker 1: is a rare kind of this rare case where the
Speaker 1: monster is both for and also on the menu for
Speaker 1: human beings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I guess that's interesting. Where you know that
Speaker 3: the pig occupies this middle space between somewhere between just
Speaker 3: herbivorous prey animal and carnivore, which is, you know, carnivore
Speaker 3: is not usually thought of as great eating. Not to
Speaker 3: say people wouldn't eat, you know, eat a wolf or whatever,
Speaker 3: but but yeah, exactly, but that like the pig is
Speaker 3: sort of it's in both camps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, two more, just real quick ones here, speaking
Speaker 1: of pigs that are eaten there, there is also the
Speaker 1: eternally regenerating roasting pig of Valhalla. This is sasrm there
Speaker 1: or so soccrom there, whose name just means blackened.
Speaker 3: I believe.
Speaker 1: I think we've touched on him before, but that's his
Speaker 1: entire role. I don't think he has much of a backstory.
Speaker 1: He's just a never ending feast pig that reunites.
Speaker 3: So this is not so much pig as pig, but
Speaker 3: divine pig as pork.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, yeah, And then there is at least one
Speaker 1: supernatural pig or boar worth talking about here from Chinese traditions,
Speaker 1: and that is ping fing or bingfing. This is a
Speaker 1: black boar with either I think some tellings the head
Speaker 1: of a human, but I think most of the sellings
Speaker 1: that I was reading about it's a boar head at
Speaker 1: either end. So kind of like the what the push
Speaker 1: me pull me from Doctor Doolittle, Doctor Doolittle, of course, yes,
Speaker 1: there's like a creature like this to push me, pull
Speaker 1: me in that where it has a head on either side.
Speaker 1: It's this is the push me pull me of bores
Speaker 1: and Chinese mythology.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: This is the variation that appears in the classic text
Speaker 1: of the Shanghai Jing, the classic of mountains and seas
Speaker 1: that we've touched on the show before, and as with
Speaker 1: other two headed creatures, said to be quite obstinate, according
Speaker 1: to Richard Strasburg in the book A Chinese bestI Area.
Speaker 1: So I guess in this, you know, it's like you
Speaker 1: have a two headed animal. Which one's in charge, which
Speaker 1: one's the boss. Well, they're both the boss. You have
Speaker 1: to talk to both ends.
Speaker 3: Of the pain, especially stubborn. Yeah. Stubbornness comes from the head.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again this is just a brief overview of
Speaker 1: some of the varieties and some of the basic tropes
Speaker 1: you seem to encounter with mythic pigs, mythic bores, and
Speaker 1: so forth. I'm sure there are some other interesting ones
Speaker 1: that I didn't run across enough details regarding, so if
Speaker 1: you have a favorite, write in share them. We would
Speaker 1: love to hear about your hell pig.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, it looks like we're out of time
Speaker 3: for today, but we are not done with the topic
Speaker 3: of monster pigs. So if you can't get enough you
Speaker 3: want to learn about more monster pigs, and in fact
Speaker 3: monster pigs not only in myth and legend, but in reality,
Speaker 3: come back and join us on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: All right. Just a reminder to everyone out there that
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
Speaker 1: culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays episodes
Speaker 1: that are more likely to be monstrous and horror themed
Speaker 1: during the month of October, and then we do a
Speaker 1: short form episode on Wednesday, and then on Fridays we
Speaker 1: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
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