Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: But it's a Saturday in October. So not only are
Speaker 1: we going into the dark of the Vault today, it
Speaker 1: seems that we're going to be waiting into a pool
Speaker 1: full of green scum. This is gonna be our episode
Speaker 1: about Jenny Green Teeth. This was one of my favorites, Robert, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one is a lot of fun, Old Jenny Green Teeth,
Speaker 1: Old Nelly long Arms, Peg Powler the grind below all
Speaker 1: that this originally published on October two. We got a
Speaker 1: lot of good listener mail about this one. So if
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this Vault episode and you want to hear
Speaker 1: more here people doing doing feedback about Jenny green Teeth,
Speaker 1: go check out whatever was our listener mail episode following
Speaker 1: this when this episode originally aired. With respect to Jenny
Speaker 1: Green Teeth, well, do I remember in childhood stays and
Speaker 1: isolated Gordon Farmstead with a yeoman's house dating back to
Speaker 1: the early part of the seventeenth century, almost overshading. It
Speaker 1: was a somber old yew tree, doubtless coeval, but then
Speaker 1: beginning to decay. The end was being hastened by the
Speaker 1: annual Yule tide custom of lopping off the branches in
Speaker 1: order to decorate the tiny leaden casemented windows than existing
Speaker 1: in the house, and also in a chapel hard by
Speaker 1: the green of a neighboring village. Lying at some depth
Speaker 1: beneath the grassy hillock on which the fine old tree
Speaker 1: had so long stood sentinel was a deep dismal pool
Speaker 1: which had sometimes been excavated as a marl pit. Of course,
Speaker 1: little lads and lasses, with no other playmates than themselves,
Speaker 1: would now and then, when other pastimes had been run through,
Speaker 1: amused themselves by sailing mimic flats and boats in order
Speaker 1: to deter them from approaching so dangerous a spot. When
Speaker 1: caught upon the steps leading down to the lading hole,
Speaker 1: an anxious mother would affirm solemnly, as we then thought
Speaker 1: that jinny green teeth was artfully lurking in the waters below.
Speaker 1: Proof of the story was afforded to our unsophisticated minds
Speaker 1: by the exhibition of a set of human teeth enameled
Speaker 1: with green tartar. These were said to bear only a
Speaker 1: faint resemblance to those of the demonus below, who, with
Speaker 1: her long, sinewy arms, first drew children in and then
Speaker 1: devoured them. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from
Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe
Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert. I'm so excited. It's October. Yes, we
Speaker 1: are into our our October offerings. Here a full month
Speaker 1: of of Halloween flavored content, monster science, a whole month.
Speaker 1: It's it's the most wonderful time of the year. And
Speaker 1: I think I say that every year it is. Now. Granted,
Speaker 1: we do let a few other monsters, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: leak out and crawl out during the rest of the year,
Speaker 1: but but we do set aside a number of different
Speaker 1: topics just for this month's celebration. So that passage that
Speaker 1: I read at the beginning of the episode was from
Speaker 1: a letter by a folklorist named John Higson, English folklorist
Speaker 1: from Lee's who chronicles stories of fairies and Boggart's uh.
Speaker 1: And it was published in Notes and Queries, a medium
Speaker 1: of intercommunication for literary men, general readers, et cetera, from
Speaker 1: Oxford University Press in eighteen seventy, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: be quoting a little bit more from Higson's work, but
Speaker 1: as you may have detected from that passage, today we're
Speaker 1: going to be focusing on a particular malicious water spirit,
Speaker 1: a sodden hag, a faery of the depths named Jenny
Speaker 1: green Teeth, who will pull you in. Yes, to invoke
Speaker 1: one of my favorite ClickHole videos. If you don't follow
Speaker 1: the rules, Jenny Green Teeth will kill you with their
Speaker 1: sharp things. And I love knowing that. Now there are
Speaker 1: a couple of ways that you could classify Jinny Green Teeth,
Speaker 1: like what categories she goes in. I guess one would
Speaker 1: be to say that she's part of this this class
Speaker 1: of bogies, and Boggert's and Higgson's term fair and frightful things,
Speaker 1: the sort of English or or UK tradition of frightful spirits, Yes,
Speaker 1: and nursery bogies. Uh, that's certainly the term that folkloris
Speaker 1: Carol Rose uses in her her encyclopedias of various magical creatures,
Speaker 1: including giants, monsters, and dragons. I think the nursery bogie
Speaker 1: categorization was applied by the folkloris Catherine Briggs, who does
Speaker 1: a lot on English fairies and the nursery bogie. Bogie
Speaker 1: specifically were bogies that were invoked to frighten children, often
Speaker 1: with an instructive angle, and it seems like they wouldn't
Speaker 1: usually have much in the way of real mythic roots
Speaker 1: beyond their role, as you know, an educational and instructional entity.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand that they very much could
Speaker 1: have roots, they could have inspirations because uh, water hags
Speaker 1: like Jenny green Teeth, they're not unique to the British isles.
Speaker 1: They're not unique to Jenny green Teeth especially, we will
Speaker 1: discuss seems to be situated in like northern England, especially
Speaker 1: Northwest England around Liverpool in Lancashire. Yeah, and we'll will
Speaker 1: reference a few of her ken that live in the area,
Speaker 1: as well as some of her more distant relatives that
Speaker 1: live elsewhere. But it does make I kept wondering as
Speaker 1: I was looking at these different examples, some of which
Speaker 1: that were very much just a folklore nursery bogie and
Speaker 1: others that had more of a mythic air about them.
Speaker 1: You wonder, like, to what extent is a particular nursery
Speaker 1: bogie a stripped down version of some older, deeper mythological creature.
Speaker 1: Or is it something entirely new or mostly new? I
Speaker 1: feel like it's probably a a little bit of both.
Speaker 1: There's probably an ebb and flow uh that can be
Speaker 1: found there. If the nursery bogie is a horrific schoolhouse
Speaker 1: rock video, is it inspired by something horrific from the past,
Speaker 1: that is having that is being somewhat tamed or bent
Speaker 1: to the will of the warning instructive parent. Indeed, indeed,
Speaker 1: so let's let's go back to Carol Rose. What what
Speaker 1: does Rose have to say about old Jenny? Alright? So
Speaker 1: Rose wrote that Jenny grin teeth is an evil quote
Speaker 1: predator of humans and in particular awaits the unwary child
Speaker 1: who may go too close to the water. So you
Speaker 1: get too close and she'll come at you with her
Speaker 1: long green things. Then she'll pull you into the depths,
Speaker 1: and she can haunt virtually any pond that's covered in
Speaker 1: green slime. And again, she's, of course a nursery bogi um,
Speaker 1: a monster used to instruct children and enforce a wide
Speaker 1: variety of rules. For example, another bogey that that exists
Speaker 1: out there is the red legged scissor man. Uh. And
Speaker 1: there's a delightful grotesque rhyme about the red legged says man.
Speaker 1: And essentially, if you suck your thumb um, the red
Speaker 1: legged scissor man will come and cut off your thumbs,
Speaker 1: which is terrifying. But you see, it's very much just
Speaker 1: a monster that's made up to scare children out of
Speaker 1: doing something they're not supposed to do. But then with
Speaker 1: Jenny Green teeth, the steaks are much higher. This isn't
Speaker 1: about prevention preventing uh, you know, thumb sucking. This is
Speaker 1: about preventing a child from wandering too close to the water,
Speaker 1: falling in and drowning. Now, as we go through the episode,
Speaker 1: I think we will steadily learn more and more about
Speaker 1: exactly what that water threat is. Or sometimes Jenny is
Speaker 1: deployed in ways that have nothing to do with water,
Speaker 1: though clearly her home is in the water. She she
Speaker 1: is a water faery, a water hag. Yeah. I can't
Speaker 1: help but think of what is it Meg muckle Bones
Speaker 1: from the Riddley Scott a filmed legend Exactly. I think
Speaker 1: Meg muchacle Bones is directly inspired by Jenny. She she's
Speaker 1: got to be Yeah, just the grotesque hag like monstrosity,
Speaker 1: this troll like creature of this loathsome entity that rises
Speaker 1: up out of the swampy muck. Now I want to
Speaker 1: continue with what Higson wrote which was published in in
Speaker 1: that Notes and Queries in eighteen seventy, where he's talking
Speaker 1: about the role of Jenny Green Teeth in in English folklore.
Speaker 1: Picking up where my first quote left off, he says
Speaker 1: that some of the pits in the locality, and this
Speaker 1: is generally gonna be talking about Northwest England, in the
Speaker 1: locality were likely patronized by a Jenny Green Teeth. And
Speaker 1: in my Gorton Historical Recorder, published in eighteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: there are briefly noticed a dozen places in the township
Speaker 1: once supposed to be haunted with Boggarts and fair and
Speaker 1: in addition there were nut NaN's clap cans, Wills with
Speaker 1: the whisp, oh yeah and Will of the whisps, Buddy
Speaker 1: Jack with the lantern lantern or Lanthorne it seems to
Speaker 1: be spelled and peg with the iron teeth. And lastly,
Speaker 1: which is more to the point, he says quote, to
Speaker 1: restrain their children from venturing too near the numerous pits
Speaker 1: and pools which were to be found in every fold
Speaker 1: and field. A demonus or guardian was stated to crouch
Speaker 1: at the bottom. She was known as Jenny Green Teeth,
Speaker 1: and was reported to prey upon children who ventured too
Speaker 1: near her domain. Sometimes the water demonus was termed grind Low.
Speaker 1: This incarnation, of course, might be more familiar to fans
Speaker 1: of Harry Potter. Oh do they invoke Grendil or the
Speaker 1: grindy Low as I've seen it written? Yeah, Rowling mentions
Speaker 1: grindy Lows. I don't really remember exactly how I think
Speaker 1: they are water dwelling monsters, but that's all I recall.
Speaker 1: I like to maybe think that the grind Low is
Speaker 1: the species and Jenny as the individual. Oh I like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jenny is one particular grindy Low. Though, as many authors
Speaker 1: point out, if there's just one Jenny, she really gets around, right,
Speaker 1: because she's in every stagnant pool and marl pit filled
Speaker 1: in with water, and every dangerous pit of any kind
Speaker 1: in Northwest England. Well, I mean, on one hand, it
Speaker 1: makes sense that if you've just about any loathsome pool
Speaker 1: in in England, if you've go back far enough in time,
Speaker 1: you'll probably encounter some sort of horrific tragedy. One thing
Speaker 1: I like about Jenny green Teeth is that, for some
Speaker 1: reason her name actually sounds scary to me, whereas many
Speaker 1: of these Boggers and fair End and stuff, they their
Speaker 1: names are funny. Unfortunately something has been lost over time. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so you get like Boum Rapid and the Grizzlehurst
Speaker 1: Boggert and cleg Hoboggert and stuff. Well, it's it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: You have to wonder were they given fun names intentionally
Speaker 1: or was the or was the the fun name terrifying
Speaker 1: within contexts? For instance, take Pennywise the clown. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty sinister sounding name if you have decades of familiarity
Speaker 1: with Stephen King's it. But was the name initially sinister
Speaker 1: or was it initially just a ridiculous sounding clown name.
Speaker 1: That's a very good point. You know. This will actually
Speaker 1: go with something that we're going to talk about in
Speaker 1: a minute. There's a paper I read by a folklorist
Speaker 1: and sort of like folk song researcher named Annie Gilchrist.
Speaker 1: Two chronicles these horrific children's songs of like early twentieth
Speaker 1: century England, and they're all about like murder and cannibalism
Speaker 1: and infanticide and family members eating each other and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. But they're set to these like happy little
Speaker 1: nursery rhyme tunes. I guess that makes them more creepy,
Speaker 1: more creepy, but also more memorable. I guess maybe it
Speaker 1: helps in in relaying the content to young minds. To
Speaker 1: explore Jenny a little bit more. Through Higson's letter, I
Speaker 1: want to read another passage he writes quote. A clerical
Speaker 1: friend whose juvenile years were spent in the vicinity of Stockport, Cheshire,
Speaker 1: states that he remembers being threatened more than once with
Speaker 1: Jenny Green Teeth, but in that case, probably as there
Speaker 1: was no pond near the house, she was said to
Speaker 1: perch in the tops of the trees at least after nightfall,
Speaker 1: his young imagination having been wrought up to the proper pitch,
Speaker 1: he was led into the garden and bade to listen
Speaker 1: to the site of the night wind through the branches,
Speaker 1: and then told it was the moaning of Jenny Green Teeth.
Speaker 1: It may be just then disturbed with the nightmare. Another
Speaker 1: clergyman born in Walton Ladale informs me that he remembers
Speaker 1: an old pit, since filled up but then existing in
Speaker 1: his native village and in which it was affirmed, lived
Speaker 1: Jenny green Teeth, ever on the watch, and therefore woe
Speaker 1: betided the urchin who ventured too near her domain. Jenny
Speaker 1: was also known in Manchester. Some fifty years ago, says
Speaker 1: an antiquarian friend, shooters Brook passes in a culvert under
Speaker 1: the aqueduct which carries the Manchester and Ashton under Lynn
Speaker 1: Canal over Shore Street near the London road Station. At
Speaker 1: that period, there existed an opening or break left in
Speaker 1: the culvert, forming a dangerous spot for children to play beside,
Speaker 1: and yet they often selected it. Their mothers tried to
Speaker 1: destroy the fascination by stating that Jenny Green Teeth laid
Speaker 1: in wait at the bottom in order to nab children
Speaker 1: playing there, and highlights something that I think will come
Speaker 1: back to throughout the episode, which is that it's interesting
Speaker 1: that children are drawn specifically, it is said, to these
Speaker 1: dangerous locations, the break in the culvert, the dangerous pond
Speaker 1: or pit. It's like the children specifically want to go
Speaker 1: right to where the danger to their lives is the highest,
Speaker 1: and they have to be warned with another kind of
Speaker 1: danger to keep them away. Oh yeah, I I. I
Speaker 1: see this this all the time with with my son
Speaker 1: and his various friends, when we take them out for
Speaker 1: walks and in the nature trails and whatnot. If there's
Speaker 1: some sort of dangerous little area where it's like a
Speaker 1: sheer drop off or something like, that's what they're drawn to,
Speaker 1: and then you have to you have to urge them
Speaker 1: away and say, like, look, there's a zero entry like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, creek area up ahead, Let's go playing that,
Speaker 1: not this, uh, this scary little bog that you've picked
Speaker 1: out here for yourself. Uh. And indeed, some of the
Speaker 1: places that that I've seen them drawn to just in
Speaker 1: the past few weeks are are very very much to
Speaker 1: the sort of place that a Jenny Green Teeth might
Speaker 1: be said to reside in. So, Robert, I have a question.
Speaker 1: Have you ever invoked a fictional monster or supernatural threat
Speaker 1: in order to scare your child away from a real threat? No?
Speaker 1: I haven't um that. That being said, you know some
Speaker 1: people are against utilizing, say Santa Claus of the Tooth Fairy.
Speaker 1: We have Santa Claus, we have the Tooth Fairy, we
Speaker 1: have the Switch which for Halloween. But beyond these beneficial entities,
Speaker 1: we have not invoked any other supernatural entities, uh in
Speaker 1: our daily practice. I guess we just try and be
Speaker 1: honest about what dangers are. But you know, I can
Speaker 1: understand the temptation here because with Jenny Green teeth, you
Speaker 1: that the parent is invoking or creating an imagine a monster,
Speaker 1: a fantastic lethal monster, instead of having like a frank
Speaker 1: discussion about the more mundane but equally like traumatic dangers
Speaker 1: that are involved. And sometimes you want to protect them
Speaker 1: from the truth of of real danger, like setting down
Speaker 1: and explaining the dangers of drowning to a child like
Speaker 1: that can be intimidating. You want to shield them from drowning,
Speaker 1: but you there's also this instinct to shield them from
Speaker 1: knowledge of that world. And so I can understand the
Speaker 1: temptation to utilize the fantastic to create something horrific but
Speaker 1: fictional as a like almost a gentler way of teaching
Speaker 1: them the same lesson, uh, which is weird because that
Speaker 1: can be they can I guess be even more harmful
Speaker 1: in some respects uh, because you're creating this nightmare creature
Speaker 1: to live in their heads. But I can see where
Speaker 1: you could reach that point, um with only the best intentions.
Speaker 1: That's a really interesting point, and we will talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about the real dangers of water and
Speaker 1: drowning later in the psychology of of how this works out.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, is it possible that the monster is
Speaker 1: actually a defanged version of the threat in a way,
Speaker 1: not a more threatening version of the threat, but putting
Speaker 1: the threat into a form that feels more comfortable and
Speaker 1: less depressing. Yes, I think so. I think there's a
Speaker 1: strong case to be made for that. Now, Robert, if
Speaker 1: you are right with it, I'd like to look at
Speaker 1: a couple of older a couple more older books and
Speaker 1: papers that mentioned Jenny Green Teeth. One is a book
Speaker 1: by Percy B. Green called A History of Nursey Rhymes.
Speaker 1: Oh really, Percy B. Green? Okay, Yeah, that guy didn't
Speaker 1: need a pseudonym, or maybe that is the pseudonym anyway,
Speaker 1: So I want to quote him later, also because he
Speaker 1: mentions another fascinating story about a water monster. But Green
Speaker 1: writes in a middle in the middle of a section
Speaker 1: about water spirits, he writes, in England, to the North Country,
Speaker 1: people speak of a river sprite as Jenny Green Teeth,
Speaker 1: and the children dread to the Green slimy covered rocks
Speaker 1: on the streams bank or on the brink of a
Speaker 1: black pool. Wait, I should I want to throw in
Speaker 1: this is key too, right, because we're talking about the
Speaker 1: slime covered rocks themselves, like that's a key danger that
Speaker 1: kid's gonna slip and fall. Um. Yeah, sorry, I had
Speaker 1: I had to jump in on that. No, that's a
Speaker 1: very good point. I mean, there's actually specific information about
Speaker 1: real dangers being conveyed in the superstition though. So it's
Speaker 1: like you see the green covered rocks, that that might
Speaker 1: be a sign that the rock is going to be
Speaker 1: something you could slip off of, and the child might
Speaker 1: not know that naturally, but the child sees it and says, oh,
Speaker 1: there's green on the rocks Jenny green Teeth is about huh. So,
Speaker 1: you know that's that feels a lot more calibrated, where
Speaker 1: the example we heard earlier about Jenny Green Teeth living
Speaker 1: in the trees that felt like the tail had become unhinged,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, Well, that's part of the problem with
Speaker 1: creating superstitions and myths about monsters like this is that
Speaker 1: if you're trying to do it for a specific purpose,
Speaker 1: like to warn children, myths go wild, and it's always
Speaker 1: become untamed. They roam loose, and they become their own thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, as does a logical fear itself. I mean,
Speaker 1: even as adults, we can probably think of things in
Speaker 1: our lives where they're not really you know, they're not monsters,
Speaker 1: but they're at least a little illogical. And if you
Speaker 1: don't watch them, if you don't curb them, then yeah,
Speaker 1: they can start living in the trees. They go ferrell.
Speaker 1: But Green writes that a warning of a Lancashire mother
Speaker 1: to her child is quote Jenny Green, teeth will have
Speaker 1: the goist onto river banks. Now, I think I already
Speaker 1: mentioned the the author An E. G. Gilchrist, who has
Speaker 1: done some work chronicling folk songs discovered in the wild,
Speaker 1: and she wrote a paper for the Journal of the
Speaker 1: Folk Song Society in nineteen nineteen that is called Note
Speaker 1: on the Lady Dressed in Green and Other Fragments of
Speaker 1: tragic ballads and folk Tales Preserved among Children. So this
Speaker 1: is about folk songs sung by children in early twentie
Speaker 1: cent England. And these songs are just messed up. They
Speaker 1: are I think I mentioned earlier. They're they're all about murder, cannibalism,
Speaker 1: hiding dead bodies in your house. It is fascinating that
Speaker 1: we often think that children need to be protected from horror,
Speaker 1: Like I can understand that impulse, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: This just seems to me like an indication that children
Speaker 1: naturally gravitate to themes of murder and death and gore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they can be rather severe in their invocation of
Speaker 1: these ideas. Now, the main song talks about in this
Speaker 1: paper is uh is one called the Lady Dressed in Green,
Speaker 1: which gil Christ heard sung by a girl named Margaret
Speaker 1: in a Southport orphanage, and Margaret apparently brought it from
Speaker 1: a Lancashire workhouse. And gil Chris goes on to discuss
Speaker 1: how versus of the in verses of this song, the
Speaker 1: Lady Dressed in Green is holding a baby and then
Speaker 1: she murders her baby with a pen knife, and then
Speaker 1: three bobbies come and haul her off to prison. And
Speaker 1: so gil Christ is talking about the significance of the
Speaker 1: song and it's parallel us to other similar children's rhymes, songs,
Speaker 1: murder ballads and so forth. And one of the interesting
Speaker 1: things is the significance of the color green, and this
Speaker 1: leads her to talk about the color green in its
Speaker 1: relation to curses and bogies and evil fairies and spirits.
Speaker 1: We will talk more about the significance of the color
Speaker 1: green later, but as for Jenny Green Teeth, Gilchrist writes
Speaker 1: quote of still more sinister import is the color In
Speaker 1: the case of Jenny Green Teeth, the evil water spirit
Speaker 1: appearing is the green scum on stagnant water what claws
Speaker 1: you in, as country children say, if you go too
Speaker 1: near or in the obscure and horrible English folk tale
Speaker 1: of the green Lady, who appears to be a sort
Speaker 1: of lamia or vampire, living on or delighting in blood,
Speaker 1: and perhaps deriving her name and Hugh from a classic
Speaker 1: serpent ancestry. But Jenny Green Teeth and perhaps green Lady
Speaker 1: also is allied with the German water nicks and green hats,
Speaker 1: the hat appearing to be a tuft of beautiful vegetation
Speaker 1: growing in the water, who dragged down the unwary to
Speaker 1: the depths. They're horrible fate being visible in a fountain
Speaker 1: of blood which spouts up through the surface of the water.
Speaker 1: This is interesting the the the mention of of serpents,
Speaker 1: because as I was looking through Carol Rose and looking
Speaker 1: at various uh aquatic uh you know, fresh water, especially monsters.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of serpents in various beliefs, weird
Speaker 1: serpents in uh Native American beliefs as well. And this
Speaker 1: makes a certain amount of sense, right, because you will
Speaker 1: encounter snakes around the water sometimes. Yeah, and this would
Speaker 1: be a very old fear and human culture, but also
Speaker 1: even predating some of that, you know, just sort of
Speaker 1: an ingrained thing to be afraid of. Yeah, we're all
Speaker 1: the cat with the cucumber behind us. Yes, Now, I
Speaker 1: can't move on without mentioning what Gilchrist writes about this
Speaker 1: other story, the green Lady story, that may have its
Speaker 1: origins in some kind of serpent ancestry. She writes that
Speaker 1: she's never found a version of the green Lady folktale
Speaker 1: in print, but there's there's a version she heard from
Speaker 1: a person named Ethel Kidson, and this is how it goes.
Speaker 1: A little girl took service with the Green Lady. The
Speaker 1: next morning, after preparing breakfast for her, she called up
Speaker 1: the stair, green Lady, Green Lady, come down to your breakfast.
Speaker 1: But the Green Lady did not come down. The formula
Speaker 1: was repeated for dinner and supper, but still she did
Speaker 1: not appear. At last, the little girl went upstairs to
Speaker 1: the chamber door, and, urged by curiosity, looked through the
Speaker 1: keyhole and saw the green lady dancing in a basin
Speaker 1: of blood. Now, this paper is actually worth a look
Speaker 1: if you want to just go look it up to
Speaker 1: see the absolutely depraved folk songs that children sing. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: one of these that you highlighted here, My mama did
Speaker 1: kill me? Uh, And it has the sheet music with it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna attempt to sing just a little of it,
Speaker 1: with fair warning I'm not very good at reading sheet music.
Speaker 1: But it goes something like this, my mama did kill
Speaker 1: me and put me in a pie. My dad da
Speaker 1: did eat me and say it was I. And then
Speaker 1: it goes on my brother and sister did pick my
Speaker 1: bones and bury them under cold marble stones, and bury
Speaker 1: them under cold marble stones. We we were emailing with
Speaker 1: our producer Alex about this, and Alex was trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of the line my Dada did eat me
Speaker 1: and say it was I. Now, one way of reading
Speaker 1: that could be like, I don't know the dada knows
Speaker 1: what the child's flesh tastes like like, oh, that's that's him,
Speaker 1: that's the one I'm eating, or maybe the dad da
Speaker 1: is saying, no, you're eating yourself. It's you that's doing
Speaker 1: the eating of you. I tend to favor the earlier interpretation,
Speaker 1: but either way you slice it, it's pretty unsettling. One
Speaker 1: more paper I came across that mentioned Jenny green Teeth
Speaker 1: I thought had a really kind of sad but fascinating
Speaker 1: story about something that happened in the sixteen century. So
Speaker 1: this is a paper by Terence R. Murphy called Woeful
Speaker 1: Child of Parents, Rage, Suicide of Children and Adolescence in
Speaker 1: Early Modern England fifteen o seven to seventeen ten in
Speaker 1: the sixteenth Century Journal. And so the author writes that
Speaker 1: there was a case of an adolescent suicide in Cambridgeshire
Speaker 1: in fifteen sixty five, where a quote twelve year old
Speaker 1: Agnes Adam went horseback riding with her girlfriend and accidentally
Speaker 1: got her clothes dirty. She came toward home, but fearing
Speaker 1: that her father would punish her, she rushed to a
Speaker 1: pond in her father's clothes and drowned herself. And then
Speaker 1: there's a footnote saying, quote the coroner's jury swore that
Speaker 1: Agnes adams motives were timur parentium correct shetionis and met
Speaker 1: us castigatitionis. The jury could or would not recognize her
Speaker 1: hostility toward her parents. How when and where she killed
Speaker 1: herself suggested that she intended to become in death a
Speaker 1: life demanding water spirit. The motive was childish and silly.
Speaker 1: This spirit was a nursery bogey, which adults customarily and
Speaker 1: cynically used to intimidate children into behaving themselves properly. Little
Speaker 1: children like Agnes believed in nursery bogies, but wiser adults
Speaker 1: did not. This is one instance where adult duplicity and
Speaker 1: terrorization of children backfired when a child believed her elders
Speaker 1: lies enough to act on them in order to get revenge. Well,
Speaker 1: there we go. We've reached a like pique bleakness for
Speaker 1: this episode. That's a sad story, but it does illustrate
Speaker 1: something interesting about how, you know, we've been talking about
Speaker 1: using the idea of a specter or a water hag
Speaker 1: or a monster to warn children away from real danger.
Speaker 1: But this tends to show that, if, if this is
Speaker 1: really what happened in this case, a child's belief in
Speaker 1: the existence of this kind of creature could actually cause
Speaker 1: her to call it to kill herself, to cause harm
Speaker 1: to herself. Yeah, it's it's it's powerful magic to start
Speaker 1: messing with the magic of belief. All right, I think
Speaker 1: we should a quick break and when we come back
Speaker 1: we will talk about other specters of the water than
Speaker 1: all right, we're back, Robert, tell me about Nelly Long Arms.
Speaker 1: All right, Yeah, so these are We're gonna run through
Speaker 1: a few different versions of of old Jenny Green Teeth
Speaker 1: here and these are all from again, that that excellent
Speaker 1: book by Carol Rose. Uh. If you look up Carol
Speaker 1: Rose and Monsters or Fairies, you'll find her Encyclopedia's um
Speaker 1: they're all still in print and I always highly recommend them.
Speaker 1: Lots of wonderful illustrations. But yeah, we have Nelly Long Arms,
Speaker 1: and she's essentially just Jenny Green Teeth with the fangs
Speaker 1: and the green skin, but with added elongated arms and
Speaker 1: spidery fingers. And you'll find her in the folklore of Derbyshire, Cheshire, Lancashire,
Speaker 1: Shropshire and Yorkshire. And there's also a nearly identical long
Speaker 1: armed monster named We've discussed this in already the Grindy
Speaker 1: Low and it's tied more spec typically New Yorkshire. And
Speaker 1: then there's peg Powler. This is another creature of the
Speaker 1: same sword. And this one is just straight up identical
Speaker 1: to Jenny green Teeth. But she said to live specifically
Speaker 1: in the River Tys and belongs to the folklore of
Speaker 1: the border region between Yorkshire and Durham. Now. Carol Rose
Speaker 1: also mentions a male incarnation of the same entity named
Speaker 1: Cutty Dyer. This is from the folklore of Ashburton in Somerset, England,
Speaker 1: and he said to haunt the bridge over the river. Yo,
Speaker 1: I believe it is hy Yo, yeah, I guess i'll
Speaker 1: e o. And he was in a normal he described
Speaker 1: as an enormous man with eyes like saucers, and he'd
Speaker 1: emerge behind you and either pull you into the river
Speaker 1: or slit your throat and drink your blood. And she
Speaker 1: she shares the following little ditty that's attributed to an
Speaker 1: old I believe blind Ashburton resident in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: remembering this is you know, from from his childhood. It goes,
Speaker 1: don't he go down the river's eye? Cut he die?
Speaker 1: Or do a bide, cut you die, or ain't no
Speaker 1: good cuttie die, or drink your blood. This one didn't
Speaker 1: come with sheet music, so I don't know if if
Speaker 1: it had a tune to it, or is just like
Speaker 1: something you might chant. I kind of like the idea
Speaker 1: of it just being a dirge. Now. Water monsters have
Speaker 1: just got to be one of the best kind of monsters, right,
Speaker 1: because they can play on several different fears at once. Right,
Speaker 1: they can be near you without you knowing it because
Speaker 1: they're underneath the surface and maybe the water is dark
Speaker 1: or murky and you can't see down there. But they
Speaker 1: also play on fears of drowning. Once they get you
Speaker 1: down into their world, they've got all the power. You're
Speaker 1: not going to be able to defend yourself much underwater.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of great water monsters around the world,
Speaker 1: far too many for us to talk about today. Right.
Speaker 1: For example, we've talked about the Japanese monster, the Kappa before.
Speaker 1: That's right, the Japanese spirit. It kind of looks like
Speaker 1: a ninja turtle, but with a little pool of water
Speaker 1: and its skull, and if you get it to bow
Speaker 1: to you and the water or spills out and it
Speaker 1: loses its vital essence. Yeah. So so they're all over
Speaker 1: the world. But since we're talking about Jenny Green Teeth today,
Speaker 1: I think we can specifically focus on like water monsters
Speaker 1: of the British Isles. Right, So, another one I know
Speaker 1: about that Katherine Briggs wrote about is the idea of
Speaker 1: the kelpie. Katherine Briggs wrote that Scotland has a kelpie
Speaker 1: in every lonely lock. Yeah, the kelpy is very interesting.
Speaker 1: This is this is one um. I don't know if
Speaker 1: I read about it before Dungeons and Dragons or if
Speaker 1: I was initially introduced to it in Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: but it's I think long been um, an inmate of
Speaker 1: the monster manual. But it's a traditional Scottish monster said
Speaker 1: to haunt the shores of locks forwards and fairy points.
Speaker 1: And it seems to be more robust than a mirror
Speaker 1: nursery bogeye, or or at least it evolved beyond that point.
Speaker 1: Maybe it ended up influencing some of these other entities
Speaker 1: we've been discussing, but it does have a far more
Speaker 1: robust air of legend about it. It can appear as
Speaker 1: a shaggy old man, a handsome young man, or, most famously,
Speaker 1: a beautiful black or gray horse. WHOA, that's a departure. Yeah. Never,
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful woman though, which it seems unnecessary for
Speaker 1: to take that form, because the horse form was sufficient
Speaker 1: to attract women, young men, and children alike. Everybody loves
Speaker 1: a gorgeous horse. Do they do you when you just
Speaker 1: see a horse? Do you walk up to it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, especially back in the day, like a horse
Speaker 1: like this, it was value. I love. Also the mythic
Speaker 1: dimension of it. You know, there's this kind of idea
Speaker 1: that maybe more tender individuals they want to go and
Speaker 1: meet the animal, and maybe harsher individuals they just see
Speaker 1: maybe the monetary value or the raw power of the thing,
Speaker 1: I guess. So, oh yeah, the monetary value is I
Speaker 1: guess like seeing a horse without an owner or a
Speaker 1: parent would be what kind of seeing like a free
Speaker 1: car somewhere? Yeah? Yeah, I mean horse thieves were everywhere, right,
Speaker 1: So there's kind of this idea that an unattended horse
Speaker 1: is also you know, it's something that maybe it belongs
Speaker 1: to somebody and maybe you're just gonna try and steal it.
Speaker 1: But the idea here is that the creature, the kelpie
Speaker 1: was it was a portent of drowning, an aquatic doom.
Speaker 1: But if you could force a bridle over it, you
Speaker 1: could harness the power of the kelpie and ride it.
Speaker 1: And there are various tales of like individuals who successfully
Speaker 1: rode the kelpie and and what one might do with
Speaker 1: the harness power of the kelpie that sort of thing, Well,
Speaker 1: what would you do? Um, you would basically just just
Speaker 1: run them up for a little bit. There are also
Speaker 1: some tales of like the kelpie powering water wheels at mills.
Speaker 1: So there's this interesting idea of like the kelpie being this, uh,
Speaker 1: the embodiment of just the raw power and danger of water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. It's kind of like a horse, you know,
Speaker 1: something that may be tamed and used if done so respectfully,
Speaker 1: but that if if if you step out of line
Speaker 1: or you don't know what you're doing, you can easily
Speaker 1: be killed by it. Yeah. And of course a brook
Speaker 1: can gallop the same way a horse can. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we see some more dualities like that in other
Speaker 1: water creatures. Like one that comes to mind I think
Speaker 1: is is it would it be the marrow or the
Speaker 1: mirrow marrow of Ireland yes, there there's some versions of
Speaker 1: this that are more purely monstrous, and other versions that
Speaker 1: appear to be less less dangerous, less monstrous. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: is described by Carol Rose. He gives a pretty friendly
Speaker 1: account of them, that they're peaceful and they generally get
Speaker 1: along with humans. They have a little red cap that
Speaker 1: allows them to shape shift and walk on land and uh,
Speaker 1: and they sometimes breed with humans as well. But from
Speaker 1: that Percy B. Green book I mentioned earlier. Now, who
Speaker 1: knows this is from the eighteen hundred, so maybe Green's
Speaker 1: folklore work is is not super rigorous. But Green has
Speaker 1: a much darker vision of the mirrow. He writes, quote
Speaker 1: the Irish fisherman's belief in the soul's cages and the
Speaker 1: mirror or man of the sea was once held in
Speaker 1: general esteem by the men who earned a livelihood on
Speaker 1: the shores of the Atlantic. This mirrow or spirit of
Speaker 1: the utters, sometimes took upon himself a half human form,
Speaker 1: and many a sailor on the rocky coast of Western
Speaker 1: Ireland has told the tale of how he saw the
Speaker 1: mirrow basking in the sun watching a storm driven ship.
Speaker 1: His form is described as that of a half man,
Speaker 1: half fish, a thing with green hair, long green teeth,
Speaker 1: legs with scales on them, short arms like fins of
Speaker 1: fish's tail, and a huge red nose. He wore no
Speaker 1: clothes and had a cocked hat like a sugar loaf,
Speaker 1: which was carried under the arm. Never did be put
Speaker 1: on the head unless for the purpose of diving into
Speaker 1: the sea. At such times, he caught all the souls
Speaker 1: of those drowned at sea and put them in cages
Speaker 1: made like lobster pots. Oh wow, I love how that
Speaker 1: this invokes plenty of you know, much older ideas of
Speaker 1: aquatic human ollids, and even like they an old man
Speaker 1: of the sea, uh, you know, much like like Proteus himself,
Speaker 1: but depresent is this weird twist of him essentially taking
Speaker 1: a lobster pots to catch souls. Well, it strikes me
Speaker 1: as a perhaps intentionally ironic or blasphemous in version of
Speaker 1: the Christian idea of ben fisher of men the marrow
Speaker 1: as a fisher of men. Interesting. Now, I also have
Speaker 1: to mention one of one of my favorite depictions of
Speaker 1: of of a fresh water monster, and that's the illustration
Speaker 1: What Came of Picking Jessamine by Henry justice Ford, an
Speaker 1: illustration in Andrew Lang's The Gray Fairy book. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is a great illustration, right and I'm going to make
Speaker 1: sure to include this on the landing page for this episode.
Speaker 1: It's stuff to Goo your Mind dot com so everybody
Speaker 1: can check it out. But it's but the book itself,
Speaker 1: The Gray Fairy. This is available as well on the web.
Speaker 1: I think Project Gutenberg has it and you can you
Speaker 1: can get the PDF and scroll through it and read
Speaker 1: these various uh fairy tales from throughout Europe and uh
Speaker 1: and and even beyond I believe, but they all have
Speaker 1: these wonderful illustrations as well. But um, I'm gonna kind
Speaker 1: of just roll through the story really quickly. It's an
Speaker 1: illustration though from the Portuguese fairytale what came of picking flowers?
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna try and roll through it real quick
Speaker 1: for everybody. Basically, a woman three daughters are lost in
Speaker 1: the process of picking three different plants, a pink carnation
Speaker 1: arose and then some Jessamine or Jasmine. Their brother, the
Speaker 1: only survivor in the family, grows up, acquires some magical
Speaker 1: items and decides to get his lost sisters back. But
Speaker 1: as it turns out, the first sister was not dead,
Speaker 1: but locked away in the magic castle, trapped in I
Speaker 1: guess you can just say a magical marriage arrangement with
Speaker 1: the King of the Birds. So he fixes that, and
Speaker 1: then he becomes a friend of the King of the Birds. Wait,
Speaker 1: so removes the King of the Bird's wife who is
Speaker 1: his sister, but also becomes friends with the King of
Speaker 1: the Birds. Well, I'm just gonna just just to simplify things,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say he fixes their magical scenario because
Speaker 1: the first two sisters here are are less important for
Speaker 1: our purposes here. But then he goes off and heaches
Speaker 1: searches for the second sister. He finds that she too
Speaker 1: is trapped in a magical marriage to the King of
Speaker 1: the Fish. And here it sounds like there's more of
Speaker 1: a Lady Hawk scenario where husband's a fish half the time,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a kind of annoying. So he manages
Speaker 1: to fix this scenario as well and becomes a friend
Speaker 1: of the King of the Fish. Is the brother Rutger
Speaker 1: howerd I And when I was reading, I certainly pictured
Speaker 1: him like that, like Rudgar Howard, but with more of
Speaker 1: a fishy look to him. And then Finally, he sets
Speaker 1: out for the third a sister, and find finds that
Speaker 1: she was in fact captured by a monster. This monster
Speaker 1: that we see in this illustration what came of picking Jessamine.
Speaker 1: This troll like entity that grabbed her, came up out
Speaker 1: of the water and pulled her in. But this monster
Speaker 1: has been keeping her prisoner in his castle because she
Speaker 1: refuses to marry him. So the brother sneaks in and
Speaker 1: he talks to her about this, and he says, look,
Speaker 1: here's what you need to do. Promise to marry the monster,
Speaker 1: but only if he tells you how he can die.
Speaker 1: Tell make sure that he tells you the secret of
Speaker 1: his death, because like a lot of magical creatures, you know,
Speaker 1: there's only one way, one specific way you can kill it.
Speaker 1: That is a smart pre nup. Yeah, so I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're a horrible monster. But anyway, this uh, the
Speaker 1: monster here he just kind of laughs and says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you because this information will be completely useless,
Speaker 1: especially to you. And he tells her that there's an
Speaker 1: iron casket at the bottom of the sea and it
Speaker 1: contains a magical dove, and that dove's egg if dashed
Speaker 1: against the monster's forehead will kill it. Okay, so um,
Speaker 1: you know, he laugh has a good laugh at that.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile the brother uh sneaks away and he goes
Speaker 1: to the King of the fish and convinces the King
Speaker 1: of the fish, who you know owes in one to
Speaker 1: fetch the casket, which he does. Uh. They bring the
Speaker 1: casket up, and then the bird flies out of the casket.
Speaker 1: So he asked the King of the birds to grab
Speaker 1: the dove and bring it back. So the King of
Speaker 1: the Birds goes off, gets the dove, brings it back.
Speaker 1: He ends up with that egg, and he rushes back
Speaker 1: to where the monster is waiting impatiently for the go
Speaker 1: ahead to marry the sister. And he's becoming, you know, impatient.
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna read the last little bit from
Speaker 1: Andrew Lang's version of the story quote. At a sign
Speaker 1: from her brother, she sat down and invited the old
Speaker 1: monster to lay its head on her lap. He did
Speaker 1: so with delight, and her brother, standing behind her back,
Speaker 1: passed her the egg unseen. She took it and dashed
Speaker 1: it straight at the horrible head, and the monster started
Speaker 1: and with a groan that people took for the rumblings
Speaker 1: of an earthquake, he turned over and died. That's a
Speaker 1: boss fight for the ages. Yeah, I love it. It's
Speaker 1: it's one of those fairy tales. It's maybe a little
Speaker 1: shaky in the early goings, but it totally delivers the end.
Speaker 1: I like how the the alliance with the King of
Speaker 1: the Birds and the King of the Fish comes through. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is one I would have loved to have seen
Speaker 1: Jim Hinson's storyteller bring the life because it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a little bit perfect, because it's a little bit weird,
Speaker 1: and it has a really hideous monster in it and
Speaker 1: a kind of whimsical way of defeating it. That is
Speaker 1: a great story. But I want to go back to
Speaker 1: Jenny Green Teeth and discuss a little bit more about
Speaker 1: what the Jinny Green Teeth lore means, like what it
Speaker 1: tells us about culture, about our values, our psychology, and
Speaker 1: so one of the things that's explored is the the
Speaker 1: importance of the color green in the Jenny Green Teeth lore.
Speaker 1: Anny Gilchrist, in her paper on The Lady Dressed in Green,
Speaker 1: talks about this a good bit. She says that in
Speaker 1: in England at the time, the color green is widely
Speaker 1: believed to be a quote ill omened hue for a
Speaker 1: garment because it symbolizes the loss of maidenhood or the
Speaker 1: loss of a lover. U. And there's this saying apparently
Speaker 1: that green is forsaken and yellows forsworn or green can
Speaker 1: also symbolize being passed over for a younger bride quote,
Speaker 1: as in the case of the green stockings or garters,
Speaker 1: in which the elder unmarried sisters had to dance at
Speaker 1: a younger sister's wedding. But she also writes that quote
Speaker 1: the unluckiness of green clothing must be a very old
Speaker 1: belief and perhaps had reference originally to a fear of
Speaker 1: incurring the hostility of the spirits of the woods by
Speaker 1: borrowing their livery. So the idea there is that the fairies,
Speaker 1: the fairies are not nice. I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: sort of modern thing that we think fairies are. Oh,
Speaker 1: fairies are sweet, they're fun. Traditionally, I think fairies are
Speaker 1: much more nasty creatures. Oh yeah, the fairy folk are
Speaker 1: are generally best thought of as uh, poorly understood magical
Speaker 1: alien folk that kind of lived and live in the
Speaker 1: folds of realities. Yeah, and and so if the fairies
Speaker 1: dress in green, they can easily be made jealous to
Speaker 1: see humans dressing in green. Apparently, uh, and so gil
Speaker 1: Christ talks about how there's a book called Folklore of
Speaker 1: the Northern Countries by a writer named Henderson, and Henderson writes,
Speaker 1: quote green, ever an ominous color in the Lowlands of Scotland,
Speaker 1: must on no account be worn there at a wedding.
Speaker 1: The fairies whose chosen color it is is would resent
Speaker 1: the insult and destroy the wearer. Henderson also claims that
Speaker 1: mothers in the south of England sometimes forbid their daughters
Speaker 1: from wearing green, and avoid even having green furniture in
Speaker 1: their houses. And also there's a general belief in the
Speaker 1: folk rhymes of the time that the color green is
Speaker 1: a sign of hatred when given as a token from someone,
Speaker 1: so like you would give someone a blue ribbon as
Speaker 1: a sign of true love, but you'd give someone a
Speaker 1: green ribbon as a sign of hatred. Gil Christ also
Speaker 1: says that a tailor once told her that his workers
Speaker 1: hated to see a green garment come into their come
Speaker 1: into their shop for mending, since they believe that there's
Speaker 1: this rotten curse of the color and it could fall
Speaker 1: on them as well, for for for working on it.
Speaker 1: And then she also says, of course that the color
Speaker 1: green is associated with poison. So I think this is
Speaker 1: interesting because I think of green as a very nice, RESTful,
Speaker 1: pleasant color. In fact, I think green is my favorite color. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of of modern uh individual is
Speaker 1: associated with green. Like, what's the greenest superhero? I guess
Speaker 1: like green lantern, writer's green. There's another green Well, there's
Speaker 1: green Goblin, but he's he's bad. What's the green hornet?
Speaker 1: Green hornet? I don't know much about green hornet, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure you where's all that much green? Confession, I
Speaker 1: don't know that much about superheroes. There's Peter Pan, kind
Speaker 1: of a superhero. Well he you know, Pan embodies sort
Speaker 1: of the spirits of wildness in the forest. He's sort
Speaker 1: of wearing green because he is a fairy in a way.
Speaker 1: Peter Pan is like Pan. You know Robin Hood as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these green garments, I think are associated with the fact
Speaker 1: that a person is sort of is of nature, is
Speaker 1: of the fairy world, is untamed and uncivilized and not
Speaker 1: not necessarily subject to say the Christian authorities. You know,
Speaker 1: this would I think this would be a topic for
Speaker 1: another day. But then you could you could also explore
Speaker 1: the whole realm of the green man the green night
Speaker 1: from our Thoritian legend. Well, yeah, I think that that
Speaker 1: would be a great thing to explore. Whatever is going
Speaker 1: on with the color green in Gilchrist time is is definitely,
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, not reflected in the
Speaker 1: color psychology of late twentie and nearly twenty first century
Speaker 1: scientific journals, and as far as I can tell, most
Speaker 1: of this research appears to be on Americans, And I
Speaker 1: can see how color psychology could be hugely influenced by culture,
Speaker 1: of course, like it would really depend on like the
Speaker 1: culture of the people you're testing. Yeah, I mean one
Speaker 1: modern example of this, if I'm remembering the antidote, the
Speaker 1: anecdotea correctly. Um. We've touched on before the importance of
Speaker 1: red uh in Chinese culture uh, and I believe it
Speaker 1: has to do with phone uh smartphone design uh. The
Speaker 1: idea of something going from red to green being a
Speaker 1: positive movement and say checking off a tab or something.
Speaker 1: But I've my understanding is correct. For Chinese markets, you'll
Speaker 1: often see an inversion of that, like to go to
Speaker 1: the positive movement, cannot be away from red. It must
Speaker 1: be towards red, because red is the most auspicious color. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting, and so I think it's pretty clear that
Speaker 1: color psychology is going to be heavily influenced by culture.
Speaker 1: I doubt that there is just like a you know,
Speaker 1: a universal color association thing across human beings that's part
Speaker 1: of our biological brains or something. Oh yeah, Like I've
Speaker 1: read before about interpretations of the color pink and about
Speaker 1: how we we fell into this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: grotesque cohole of just assuming that like pink is a
Speaker 1: feminine color, whereas you see older traditions where pink was
Speaker 1: very much a masculine color, and ultimately like what is
Speaker 1: what is the color of fresh wounds on the battlefield?
Speaker 1: You know? But pink and red, you know, I think
Speaker 1: of the I believe pink is the color and Game
Speaker 1: of Thrones attributed to the Bolton's. It's like red and
Speaker 1: pink or their colors because they don't like playing human flesh.
Speaker 1: Those creeps. Yeah they're no good. Well anyway, just whatever
Speaker 1: all the caveats are and how this is influenced by
Speaker 1: culture and everything. I was poking around in a few
Speaker 1: studies about color psychology, and generally what it seemed to be.
Speaker 1: What seemed to be the case to me is that
Speaker 1: green is not usually viewed by the subjects of these
Speaker 1: studies as something that's cursed or scary or or an
Speaker 1: ill omen Blue and green are generally seen as more
Speaker 1: psychologically relaxing, whereas red and yellow or more arousing and
Speaker 1: more associated with anxiety. States Um and the authors of
Speaker 1: one study described how green was described. The word green
Speaker 1: was associated with the quality of being good, whereas like
Speaker 1: the word yellow was associated with the quality of being bad,
Speaker 1: and that blue and blue, green and green were colors
Speaker 1: that cause subjects to feel more pleasure than colors like
Speaker 1: yellow and yellow. Green. Here's another significant thing in the
Speaker 1: Jinny green teeth folklore, and it is the significance of
Speaker 1: a particular green plant. So I want to talk about
Speaker 1: a paper called Lemna Minor and Jinny Green Teeth by
Speaker 1: a botanist in English, hotanist named Roy Vickery, who has
Speaker 1: apparently written a good deal about the folklore of plants.
Speaker 1: And this was published in the journal Folklore in nine three.
Speaker 1: And this was a great paper about Jenny Green Teeth
Speaker 1: because he's picking up on the work of people like
Speaker 1: Catherine Briggs and Vickery wants to give a fuller account
Speaker 1: of Jenny Green Teeth and explore the relationship between Jenny
Speaker 1: and this water plant known as lesser duck weed or
Speaker 1: Lemna minor. Now LiMnO minor you've probably seen before. I
Speaker 1: added a picture to our our outline here, Robert, so
Speaker 1: you can take a look at it. But Lemno minor.
Speaker 1: The duckweed is a is a green plant that floats
Speaker 1: on the top of stagnant water and ponds and pools,
Speaker 1: and it has very small leaves and can end up
Speaker 1: looking like a flat matte of green on top of
Speaker 1: the water. If it collects enough, it can make a
Speaker 1: watery surface look just sort of like a flat pudding
Speaker 1: green or something. It's like the hard phone cap a
Speaker 1: top and old school cappuccino, except green. It totally is
Speaker 1: so uh so. Vickory writes the stories of Jinny Green
Speaker 1: Teeth are still told around the Liverpool area, and Liverpool
Speaker 1: is of course in northwest England, near Lancashire, and he
Speaker 1: writes quote usually she's considered to be a bogey who
Speaker 1: inhabits quiet pools and drags venturesome children down into the depths.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she's considered to be the harmless water plant lesser duckweed,
Speaker 1: and occasionally she can be found far away from any pool.
Speaker 1: And in his eighteen thirty nine book of book The
Speaker 1: Flora of Liverpool, author TV Hall notes that quote marl
Speaker 1: pits abound on both sides of the Mercy, which is
Speaker 1: a river going through that area, and are caused in
Speaker 1: most instances by excavating clay for the purpose of making bricks.
Speaker 1: Before these pits are a year old, they're filled with
Speaker 1: aquatic plants, and specifically, of course, that plant is generally
Speaker 1: lesser duckweed. This small green plant that floats on the
Speaker 1: top of the water has these little root ten drils
Speaker 1: that extend down into the water. It can look like
Speaker 1: this matt from above, and Vickery writes quote. In summer,
Speaker 1: such pools are frequently covered with a dense mat composed
Speaker 1: of thousands of floating duckweed plants, so that their surfaces
Speaker 1: appear solid. Lesser duckweed is one of the world's smallest
Speaker 1: flowering plants, each plant measuring one point five to four
Speaker 1: millimeters in diameter, with tiny and significant flowers and a
Speaker 1: thread like root which may reach several centimeters in length. Obviously,
Speaker 1: any child who attempted to walk across a pond covered
Speaker 1: with duckweed would soon find himself in serious difficulty, and so,
Speaker 1: of course this creates an interesting association that for some children. Apparently,
Speaker 1: Jenny green Teeth was not a name for a magical monster,
Speaker 1: but was literally the name for the duckweed itself, and
Speaker 1: Vickery quotes the experience of a woman who recounted her
Speaker 1: childhood memories about Jenny green Teeth to him in the
Speaker 1: December of nineteen eighty. She starts by talking about the
Speaker 1: area where she was brought up, and then she says, quote,
Speaker 1: it was and still is largely a farming area, and
Speaker 1: many of the fields contained pits, never ponds, which I
Speaker 1: believe our old marl pits. Some of them have quite
Speaker 1: steep sides. Jenny was well known to me and my contemporaries,
Speaker 1: and was simply the green weed duck weed which covered
Speaker 1: the surface of stagnant water. Children who strayed too close
Speaker 1: to the edge of these pits would be warned to
Speaker 1: watch out for Ginny green teeth. But it was the
Speaker 1: weed itself which was believed to hold children under the water.
Speaker 1: There was never any suggestion that there was a witch
Speaker 1: of any kind there. And then another firstthand account of
Speaker 1: the Vicary quotes quote, as a child in the countryside
Speaker 1: of Cheshire, I heard the name Jinny green Teeth given
Speaker 1: to the bright green water plant that lies on the
Speaker 1: surface of stagnant ponds. The minute leaves are rather like
Speaker 1: tiny teeth, and imagine that if one fell into the pond,
Speaker 1: the green scum like plant would close over one's head.
Speaker 1: Thus Jinny green Teeth had got you. Now that's an
Speaker 1: interesting development there. There's still this predatory aspect being imputed
Speaker 1: to Jenny Green Teeth. But she's not a hag, she's
Speaker 1: not a witch. It's the plant that kills you. It
Speaker 1: lures you into the water by making it look like
Speaker 1: a solid surface, and then when you fall in, the
Speaker 1: children imagined this plant would close over top of you
Speaker 1: like a like a membrane, ceiling you under the water. Interesting,
Speaker 1: so we kind of have a their meeting is halfway
Speaker 1: between like actual realistic fear and an outlandish monstrous invention, right,
Speaker 1: because there's no indication that duck weed will actually close
Speaker 1: over you and prevent you from getting out of the water,
Speaker 1: but it can be dangerous because it can make a
Speaker 1: deep pit of water look like a solid surface that
Speaker 1: you could just run straight into. So one question is
Speaker 1: did this association between the Jenny green Teeth monster and
Speaker 1: duck weed begin earlier late like, was Jenny a pre
Speaker 1: existing bogey figure who later came to be identified with
Speaker 1: duck weed or was she always a creature of the weed?
Speaker 1: And I think the answer is not quite clear. Vicary
Speaker 1: cites one scholar who wrote that the association had to
Speaker 1: be recent, since he believed Jenny quote had descended from
Speaker 1: the water spirits of Gothic mythology, whose great seductive beauty
Speaker 1: was somewhat marred by their green teeth. And of course
Speaker 1: this makes me think about a principle we've talked about
Speaker 1: several times. From that book The Demon Lovers by Walter Stevens,
Speaker 1: Yeah and Demon Lovers, Witchcraft, Sex, and Crisis of Belief,
Speaker 1: he examines a number of different texts associated with which
Speaker 1: with witchcraft, persecution, witchcraft, theory of the day, and one
Speaker 1: of the texts that he looks at is The witch
Speaker 1: or on the Illusions of Demons by Jeanne Francesco Pica
Speaker 1: del Mirandola, who died in fifteen thirty three. Now Pico
Speaker 1: was the nephew of the influential philosopher Giovanni Pico, and
Speaker 1: Pico the younger here was wasn't was an influential thinker
Speaker 1: of the day as well. He was an intellectual who
Speaker 1: championed quote, the truths of Christianity against the crescendo of
Speaker 1: skepticism that he felt era Statlian science fostered by encouraging
Speaker 1: an empirical attitude towards the world. So Stevens wrote that
Speaker 1: he quote brilliantly understood the way to fight skepticism was
Speaker 1: with skepticism itself. So in other words, Pico was an
Speaker 1: enemy of reason who used his intellectual gifts to champion
Speaker 1: religious worldview over skepticism. His works enforced quite literally the
Speaker 1: idea of a demon haunted world. But Pico in his work,
Speaker 1: he describes a conversation between four individuals, including the inquisitor
Speaker 1: Dicasti so which means judge who quote healthfully explains that
Speaker 1: all the trial records of the inquisition revealed that the
Speaker 1: devil can create a nearly perfect facsimile of the human body,
Speaker 1: but never can get the feet to come out right.
Speaker 1: Never the feet. God makes the feet come out in
Speaker 1: verse those at preposteros, so that people will know that
Speaker 1: they are in the presence of a devil and not
Speaker 1: be fool into thinking that he is human. Thus they
Speaker 1: have no excuse for sinning. The corollary, which Decosts does
Speaker 1: not state, is equally important. Imperfect feet are an infallible
Speaker 1: way of recognizing demons, So we should not fear that
Speaker 1: which is mistake ordinary humans for demons. So perhaps you
Speaker 1: know Jenny works along some more lines or or plays
Speaker 1: upon these trends and storytelling, right, well, I think the
Speaker 1: idea here would not necessarily be Jenny herself, but would
Speaker 1: be the creatures that this scholar is saying that Jenny
Speaker 1: descends from. The idea of the green teeth comes to
Speaker 1: us from the fact that there would be the seductive
Speaker 1: water spirits who might they might be beautiful to lure
Speaker 1: men into the water and drown them. But like like
Speaker 1: the witches that Dicostys is talking about, here, would have
Speaker 1: one feature that would be a tell that would let
Speaker 1: you know that God has not allowed this demon to
Speaker 1: be a perfect mimicking of human beauty, and that tell
Speaker 1: is that she's got disgusting green teeth well, and from
Speaker 1: storytelling standpoint, it's always great to have that that little uh,
Speaker 1: that that little detail at the last minute that clears
Speaker 1: everyone in, Oh, it's not a woman, it's a demon, etcetera. Uh. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: this also reminded me of a line from C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where
Speaker 1: it's written, quote, when you meet anything that is going
Speaker 1: to be human and isn't yet or it used to
Speaker 1: be human once and isn't now or ought to be human,
Speaker 1: and isn't you keep your eyes on it and feel
Speaker 1: for your hatchet. Sound advice, sound violent advice, sound advice. Alright,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're gonna take one more break and
Speaker 1: we'll come back. We're gonna discuss duckweed a little bit more.
Speaker 1: We're gonna discuss Jenny Green Teeth a little bit more,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to close out. Alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So Vickery also in his paper sites other first hand
Speaker 1: accounts that the association with duckweed also also goes the
Speaker 1: other way. It's not just that Jinny green Teeth is
Speaker 1: a nickname for the lesser duckweed. It's that lesser duckweed
Speaker 1: could be a sign that Jinny green Teeth is lurking
Speaker 1: underneath uh. In an interview with a thirty four year
Speaker 1: old woman in nineteen eighty UH, the interview goes quote,
Speaker 1: I remember, as a very small child being told by
Speaker 1: my mother to stay away from ponds, as Jenny green
Speaker 1: Teeth lived in them. However, I only recall Jenny living
Speaker 1: in ponds which were covered in green weed, of a
Speaker 1: type which has tiny leaves and covers the entire surface
Speaker 1: of the pond. The theory was that Jinny enticed little
Speaker 1: children into the ponds by making them look like grass
Speaker 1: and safe to walk on. As soon as the child
Speaker 1: stepped onto the green it of course parted, and the
Speaker 1: child fell through into Jenny's clutches and was drowned. The
Speaker 1: green weed then closed over, hiding all traces of the
Speaker 1: child ever being there. This last point was the one
Speaker 1: which really terrified me and kept me well away from
Speaker 1: the ponds, and indeed my own children have also been
Speaker 1: told about Jenny, although ponds aren't as numerous these days.
Speaker 1: As far as I know, Jenny had no known form
Speaker 1: due to the fact that she never appeared above the
Speaker 1: surface of the pond. So here the mat on the
Speaker 1: surface of the pond is it's like a trick that
Speaker 1: Jenny green Teeth uses. She is a hag, she is
Speaker 1: a witch, but she uses the duck weed to lure
Speaker 1: people to her. But then, also interestingly, Vickery mentions that
Speaker 1: Jenny would sometimes get dislocated from her home turf like
Speaker 1: children who grew up in Liverpool recount how they believe
Speaker 1: Jenny Green Teeth didn't live in ponds or pools, but
Speaker 1: in churchyard cemeteries, and that she would reach out and
Speaker 1: drag children into the graveyard and then into burial vaults.
Speaker 1: And then here's a really interesting one. In the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: parents in South Cheshire told children that Jenny would get
Speaker 1: them if they ventured too close to the railroad tracks.
Speaker 1: So Jenny, Jenny green Teeth of the the industrial world.
Speaker 1: Now that is interesting because it seems like the idea
Speaker 1: that the train could run you over that seems far
Speaker 1: more overt, Like do you really need to invoke mythology,
Speaker 1: uh to make that that that threat reel. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good question. I think we we can come back
Speaker 1: to that at the very end. But you know, one
Speaker 1: of the things that we haven't really talked about yet,
Speaker 1: is the idea that, uh, that water's edge attack strategies
Speaker 1: are actually a pretty common ambush tactic of some predators. Right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well, let's let's discuss a few of them here,
Speaker 1: because some of them are are really impressive. I think
Speaker 1: the most obvious one and maybe it's just most obvious
Speaker 1: to us because who watch enough nature documentaries uh and
Speaker 1: or terrible movies, but croco crocodilian species their attack strategies.
Speaker 1: So crocodilians, you know, everything from alligators and crocodiles to
Speaker 1: more you know, to lesser known creatures such as the cayman. Uh.
Speaker 1: Crocodilians are specialized in hunting both in the water and
Speaker 1: at the water's edge, so they're they're ambush predators. They
Speaker 1: wait for prey to come close, such as near the
Speaker 1: water to drink, and then they lash out with amazing speed. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's a some fabulous nature documentary documentary footage out
Speaker 1: there of, for instance, nile crocodiles attacking wild the beast
Speaker 1: that are either drinking or preparing to cross bodies of
Speaker 1: water during migration. And much like the stories of Jenny
Speaker 1: Green Teeth, one of the things about a lot of
Speaker 1: crocodilian attack strategies is that they get you into their world,
Speaker 1: into the water world that they control. So like, if
Speaker 1: you're just out on land, you might easily be able
Speaker 1: to get away from a crocodile, But if the crocodile
Speaker 1: can get up close to you and can snatch you
Speaker 1: and get you into the water and do this thing
Speaker 1: that's often referred to as the death roll, this twisting
Speaker 1: ocean in the water that breaks your bones, that disorients you,
Speaker 1: and then you can allow it to drown you in
Speaker 1: the water before it feasts on you. Um. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a way that it gets you into its domain.
Speaker 1: It's like Jenny Green teeth pulling you down underneath the
Speaker 1: mat of the duck weed. I have to admit I
Speaker 1: was nearly pulled in and overtaken by just research related
Speaker 1: to crocodilians because I ran across um a paper titled
Speaker 1: on terrestrial Hunting by Crocodilians by Vladimir Dennets uh and
Speaker 1: and he points, uh, you know, out that purely terrestrial
Speaker 1: attacks even on humans are documented. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: attacks that take place not in the water, not at
Speaker 1: the water's edge, but outside of the water. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't mean like you know, you know, downtown New York
Speaker 1: City or anything. I'm talking about area near the water.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't rule anything out. But but but but they do occur. Uh.
Speaker 1: For and this is a particularly interesting You have the
Speaker 1: Cuban crocodile, which apparently is is the most terrestrial of
Speaker 1: of today's crocodilian species, in that it is more adapt
Speaker 1: at at moving about and uh and even hunting out
Speaker 1: of the water. And uh it's thought that the Cuban
Speaker 1: crocodiles ancestors may have used pack hunting behavior to take
Speaker 1: down giant ground sloths in a past giant ground sloths. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's just again just a tantalizing tidbit that maybe
Speaker 1: we can come back to in a later episode, the
Speaker 1: idea of pack hunting Cuban crocodile ancestors. So that would
Speaker 1: be the what the megatherium? Yeah, those things look like
Speaker 1: I wouldn't imagine anything would mess with them. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: if you have enough enough land crocs then who knows. Now.
Speaker 1: Another really impressive organism to talk about here is the
Speaker 1: archer fish. And this one also is kind of superstar
Speaker 1: of certain nature documentaries. So it's a family of fish
Speaker 1: that's evolved an amazing means of hunting prey. Uh. They
Speaker 1: shoot a highly specialized stream of water at insects on
Speaker 1: branches that are overhanging the water, and they spit this
Speaker 1: stream in such a way that high the higher velocity
Speaker 1: rear portion of the stream catches up to the lower
Speaker 1: velocity front portion of the stream right before it hits
Speaker 1: the target, jamming everything into a glob, just one solid
Speaker 1: glob of so it just really pops. It's like a
Speaker 1: it's a water bomb. Yeah, it's just a water bomb
Speaker 1: that hits them and then knocks the insect off into
Speaker 1: the water where it can get them. It uses exceptional
Speaker 1: eyesight to aim, as well as an ability to compensate
Speaker 1: for the refraction of light as it passes through the
Speaker 1: air water interface, which is impressive in and of itself right.
Speaker 1: And then it's also interesting to know that they're they're
Speaker 1: not born dead eyes. They actually have to practice and
Speaker 1: learn by observing other fish in their school. Interesting, so
Speaker 1: usually think of fish is learning very much. I know
Speaker 1: that these are from several different angles. These are fascinating creatures.
Speaker 1: They also use their water jet attack underwater and they've
Speaker 1: been observed jumping out of the water to catch prey
Speaker 1: as well. Now their their jet of water. It has
Speaker 1: a functional range of something like one to two meters
Speaker 1: or three ft three inches to six ft seven inches,
Speaker 1: but they can shoot it further than that, but it
Speaker 1: just doesn't have particularly good aim beyond that point. You know.
Speaker 1: Another example I would like to mention is the fact
Speaker 1: that we all know seals and sea lions can be
Speaker 1: fearsome predators themselves, right, but sometimes, of course they have
Speaker 1: to flee a more powerful flesh gobbler, which is the orca,
Speaker 1: the killer whale. Goodness, and this is another superstar of
Speaker 1: nature documaries. Yes, Now, normally, if you're a seal sea lion,
Speaker 1: the best way to escape a killer whale is going
Speaker 1: to be what swim full speed for sure, get onto
Speaker 1: the beach or the rocks of the orca can't reach you.
Speaker 1: Right then you can just lay around all day and
Speaker 1: for the most part, nothing's gonna miss with you. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of the you know, the swim Charlie swim
Speaker 1: scene in Jaws. Right, the shark won't follow you onto
Speaker 1: the beach. There are no land sharks, but one of
Speaker 1: the strangest attack strategies I've ever seen in nature is
Speaker 1: the way that the orca has learned to defy this logic.
Speaker 1: Sometimes orcas will deliberately beach themselves to catch prey that
Speaker 1: has escaped onto land. For example, the orcas of the
Speaker 1: Valdes Peninsula on the Atlantic coast of Argentina are known
Speaker 1: for doing this. They will chase a seal or sea
Speaker 1: lion that's on the ground or in the in the
Speaker 1: shallow water like the surf or just up on the rocks,
Speaker 1: and the orca will rock it towards the water line,
Speaker 1: crash over it onto land at snag a seal, and
Speaker 1: then flop around and slide back into the water, dragging
Speaker 1: the seal with them. It's an impressive and just awesome
Speaker 1: sight and and it's like the ultimate nightmare. Right. There
Speaker 1: are so many just unbelievably powerful predators in the water
Speaker 1: that you always think like, well, at least I'm safe
Speaker 1: on land, and to be clear of the target here
Speaker 1: is the seal. So yes, humans are safe from beach
Speaker 1: based oorca attacks, right at least generally, I wouldn't rule
Speaker 1: out that it could never happen. Well, but I would
Speaker 1: not lose any sleepover, right not Yeah, nothing to go
Speaker 1: about your life worthy and about. But hey, let's go
Speaker 1: to another similar example, Robert, I want you to put
Speaker 1: yourself in a in a city in France. Imagine yourself
Speaker 1: wandering along the river Tarn in southern France, in the
Speaker 1: commune of Albi. Like a lot of urban areas, Albi
Speaker 1: has its resident population of pigeons. We all know about
Speaker 1: city pigeons, and they're probably out there getting fat off
Speaker 1: the bread that falls off the edges of cafe tables
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. The winged rats of civilization. Now
Speaker 1: in the river dwells a mighty leviathan, the European catfish.
Speaker 1: The European catfish Silarus glanis is not not native to
Speaker 1: this river, but it is this invasive species that has
Speaker 1: taken over rivers in in all throughout Europe, and it
Speaker 1: is Europe's largest freshwater fish. I believe it's the third
Speaker 1: largest freshwater fish in the world. And these things get big.
Speaker 1: I've read like a meter to even a meter and
Speaker 1: a half long, and they are thick. Now, I want
Speaker 1: to remind everybody that the catfish is generally regarded as
Speaker 1: a bottom feeder. Um I imagine you you haven't grown
Speaker 1: up in Tennessee like I like I have. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of stories of the catfish that grow gigantic
Speaker 1: the like the depths near dams, for instance. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And there weren't a lot of stories about them being
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess they were occasionally stories about them,
Speaker 1: you know, biting or whatnot. But for the most part, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're down there in the deep. They're not really concerned
Speaker 1: with the surface until you catch one on your reel
Speaker 1: and you bring it up. Right. So you're in Albe,
Speaker 1: You're going along the river and the river tarn, and
Speaker 1: you notice the pigeons are hanging out on a little
Speaker 1: gravel island to clean themselves by the water, and you,
Speaker 1: of course also see these invasive catfish, the monstrous catfish,
Speaker 1: floating around at the water's edge. And then suddenly what
Speaker 1: you see is that one of these leviathans lashes out
Speaker 1: of the shallows, partially beaches itself, clamps its jaws down
Speaker 1: on a pigeon's head or leg or wing, and then
Speaker 1: drags the bird down into the deeper part of the
Speaker 1: water to feast. There was a study in two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve and pl os one that that characterized this behavior
Speaker 1: by Julian coukro Set, Stephanie Bullatrouw, fred drick as, Amar,
Speaker 1: Arthur Compeen, Matthew Guillaume, and Frederick Santool, and the authors
Speaker 1: characterized the catfish in this case as freshwater killer whales.
Speaker 1: Now they noticed something interesting. Only moving pigeons were attacked,
Speaker 1: and the catfish that hunted pigeons would tend to hold
Speaker 1: their you know those whiskers catfish have on their faces,
Speaker 1: the barbels, they would tend to hold those erect while
Speaker 1: they were hunting. And this led the authors to conclude
Speaker 1: that the catfish were probably hunting by sensing vibrations in
Speaker 1: the water. But fascinating question, how did this hunting strategy
Speaker 1: come about? How did the how did the catfish start
Speaker 1: going from just you know, normal aquatic feeding behaviors to saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll jump out of the water into the air onto
Speaker 1: the land that would probably kill me, grab a pigeon
Speaker 1: and drag it in. How did it decide to become
Speaker 1: Jenny Green teeth. I'm guessing it probably started off as
Speaker 1: a like a crime of opportunity, right, yeah, But it's
Speaker 1: always I mean, it's just hard to imagine, Like how
Speaker 1: all behaviors like that originate? What how did it start happening? Well,
Speaker 1: it makes me think of our old friends, the squirrels,
Speaker 1: the scugs, and uh, their their their predatory side. And
Speaker 1: what point does a creature that is not that is
Speaker 1: clearly not evolved for such behavior begin, you know, dipping
Speaker 1: its little toes into that, right. Yeah, but then again
Speaker 1: when you think about it, I mean, it is a
Speaker 1: great opportunity, right because the water's edge is sort of
Speaker 1: a perfect ambush. Point is the crocodilians have caught onto
Speaker 1: the attacker can get so close to the prey while
Speaker 1: remaining hidden, just like Jenny lurking under the duck weed.
Speaker 1: And and this emphasizes that there are actually multiple reasons
Speaker 1: that water's edge fears are not just you know, psychologically salient,
Speaker 1: but they're entirely justified in many ways, especially when you're
Speaker 1: talking about children. Yeah, this this really brings us back
Speaker 1: to what we talked about at the very beginning, the
Speaker 1: the idea that there is this, this real and perhaps
Speaker 1: you know, very honest reason for for crafting these men
Speaker 1: so or at least embracing these these folkloric beliefs and
Speaker 1: then passing them onto children. Uh, you know, and I
Speaker 1: definitely want to be sensitive about this because accidental drowning
Speaker 1: deaths are are a very serious matter and a traumatic matter,
Speaker 1: especially when it concerns children. I've known people personally affected
Speaker 1: by tragedies like this, and and it is it's difficult
Speaker 1: to find words to even even talk about them. You know,
Speaker 1: there's just such a such a you know, a bleak
Speaker 1: traumatic experience to even contemplate. Uh. And I know that
Speaker 1: some of you out there listening to this episode you
Speaker 1: may have lost people in this matter. And I do
Speaker 1: want to drive home that you do have our our
Speaker 1: sympathies even as we discuss the you know, the human
Speaker 1: myth making that builds up around the truth. But but
Speaker 1: let's let's stop just to consider some of the modern
Speaker 1: stats about accidental drowning. According to the CDC, from two
Speaker 1: thousand five to two thousand and fourteen, there were an
Speaker 1: average of three thousand, five hundred and thirty six fatal
Speaker 1: unintentional drownings non voting related annually in the United States,
Speaker 1: about ten deaths per day. An additional three d and
Speaker 1: thirty two people died each year from drowning in boat
Speaker 1: related incidents. About one in five people who die from
Speaker 1: drowning our children fourteen and younger, and for every child
Speaker 1: who dies from drowning, another five receive emergency department care
Speaker 1: for non fatal submersion injuries. This is worth noting here
Speaker 1: as well, because if you haven't if you don't have
Speaker 1: any firsthand account with drowning, or you're not trained as
Speaker 1: a lifeguard, you might not realize that it's it's not
Speaker 1: just this definite line between drowning and almost drowning, between
Speaker 1: you know, dying in the water and surviving. Um. The
Speaker 1: CDC page points out that uh more than fifty percent
Speaker 1: of drowning victims treated in emergency departments require hospital treatment,
Speaker 1: and non fatal drowning injuries can still cause severe brain damage,
Speaker 1: the result in long term disabilities. Yeah. I mean, this
Speaker 1: kind of thing emphasizes and we should be clear that
Speaker 1: these are modern statistics. These are based on a time
Speaker 1: where I think it is more common for people to
Speaker 1: know how to swim, like to have been taught how
Speaker 1: to swim. Um that this is probably not referring as
Speaker 1: often to people living in places where it's common for
Speaker 1: there to be stagnant pools that are covered in a
Speaker 1: map that make them look like grass. Um. I mean, so,
Speaker 1: so yeah, this is different circumstances even but it highlights
Speaker 1: how dangerous water can be. If you're an adult who
Speaker 1: knows how to swim and you don't think about dangers
Speaker 1: to children, you just really might not realize how real
Speaker 1: of a threat a standing body of water is. So
Speaker 1: the myth making of Jenny Green Teeth as a as
Speaker 1: a warning to keep children away from the duckweed ponds
Speaker 1: and the moral pits filled in it seems like a
Speaker 1: very very reasonable thing to do in a way. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily advocating making up fictional monsters to scare children,
Speaker 1: but you can see why people did it, And so
Speaker 1: Jenny is often used educationally as a safety warning. The
Speaker 1: monster is invoked to keep children from playing near dangerous
Speaker 1: bodies of water or in other contexts that are dangerous,
Speaker 1: like around railroad tracks, like Vickery talked about. But here's
Speaker 1: this interesting part we were talking about earlier that I
Speaker 1: feel like we still haven't necessarily solved. The thing you're
Speaker 1: warning children to stay away from is real, life threatening danger,
Speaker 1: and in order to get the message across, you have
Speaker 1: to create a fictional supernatural life threatening danger. Children are
Speaker 1: obviously motivated by self preservation or the fictional supernatural life
Speaker 1: threatening danger wouldn't work. But for some reason, some risks
Speaker 1: to their body safety and their survival don't seem to
Speaker 1: be as salient or as as effective as others. And
Speaker 1: apparently mothers and fathers are wagering that children are just
Speaker 1: not likely to obey warnings about the risks of deep
Speaker 1: water that says you could fall in and drown. They
Speaker 1: think children are more likely to obey a warning that
Speaker 1: says the green Lady will get you. So why is
Speaker 1: the fictional threat more compelling and more useful than the
Speaker 1: actual threat? Now I come back again to what I
Speaker 1: said earlier about how I feel like the monster is
Speaker 1: actually still a sanitized version of the threat um And
Speaker 1: and isn't it interesting too that we see these examples
Speaker 1: where you're personifying the threat, you're turning the threat into
Speaker 1: the human identity. But then you're making it an old woman,
Speaker 1: which also feels like a sanity, like you're sanitizing it
Speaker 1: because you're not making it into a man, which if
Speaker 1: you look at the if you look at the chances
Speaker 1: of a of an individual posing a significant bodily and
Speaker 1: certainly a lethal threat to a child. That individual is
Speaker 1: far more likely to be male. Um, you know, without
Speaker 1: certainly getting into into stranger danger and the more, you know,
Speaker 1: inflated aspects of this sphere. But but you've you've, You've chosen.
Speaker 1: There seems to be there's an active choice here in
Speaker 1: making Jenny been teeth, making it an older female entity
Speaker 1: instead of a male entity, which would, again, I think,
Speaker 1: bring it too close to horrific real life situations that
Speaker 1: you're trying to avoid and crafting the myth. I think
Speaker 1: I agree with that, though, then again, I wonder if
Speaker 1: this is this is a sort of modern American cultural
Speaker 1: bias on our part that makes us feel this way.
Speaker 1: I mean, we might not feel like old women are
Speaker 1: necessarily less dangerous. If we say we're in a context
Speaker 1: in which we believed witchcraft was real, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 1: If we have we're taking this and we're we're steeping
Speaker 1: it in, uh, the age of witchcraft persecution and then
Speaker 1: the an age in which which tales of hags and
Speaker 1: witches are are are found everywhere. Then again a lot
Speaker 1: of this is taking place, and say the early twentieth
Speaker 1: century in which case, I don't know how many people
Speaker 1: in north Northwest England in the early twentieth century thought
Speaker 1: witchcraft was real. But then again, it wasn't that far
Speaker 1: removed from from witchcraft persecution. Again, we have to remember
Speaker 1: that witchcraft persecution was was what was not a medieval
Speaker 1: um uh practice, it was post medieval so early modern. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Before we we closed out here, I do want to
Speaker 1: quickly reference another green in today that I forgot to
Speaker 1: mention that I should have mentioned, that I can only
Speaker 1: imagine is based in part on some of these ideas,
Speaker 1: and that is the Hitcher from the Mighty Bush, the
Speaker 1: green skinned hag like male Cockney character. I'm not familiar.
Speaker 1: Oh you haven't he sings the song about eels. No,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, those of you out there who
Speaker 1: have watched The Mighty Bush you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: If not, um, do a do a search for for
Speaker 1: Bush and Hitcher, and I think you'll be delighted with
Speaker 1: what you find. I thought you were going to say,
Speaker 1: Cheddar Goblin, ch cheddar Goblin. It is a more recent phenomenon,
Speaker 1: but but I think probably unrelated to this particular fairy tale. Well, Robert,
Speaker 1: I have had massive fun with this epic exploration of
Speaker 1: water hags Jenny Green teeth. Yeah, this has been a
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