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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. It is Saturday, so we have a

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Speaker 1: vault episode for you. This is going to be one

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Speaker 1: that originally published eight twelve, twenty twenty five. It is

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Speaker 1: Saint Swithin's Revenge. This one gets into folklore, it gets

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Speaker 1: into weather in meteorology, it's it's a pretty fun one,

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Speaker 1: so we hope you enjoy.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on the show,

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Speaker 3: we are going to be doing a holiday episode, but

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Speaker 3: not on the holiday itself. Today we are talking about

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Speaker 3: Saint Swithin's Day and its namesake, Saint Swithin.

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Speaker 1: That's right. We were originally going to put this episode

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Speaker 1: out on July fifteenth to correspond with Saint Swithin's Day,

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Speaker 1: but some stuff came up. I had to take a

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Speaker 1: week off, so we were we had We realized, well,

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Speaker 1: we could sit on this episode and just finish it

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Speaker 1: and record it later on the next time Saint Swiftin'sday

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Speaker 1: happens to fall on the Tuesday or Thursday, or we

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Speaker 1: could just simply push on and do it, assuming that

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Speaker 1: most of you are going to forgive us for being

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Speaker 1: several weeks late to the punch on this I perhaps

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Speaker 1: obscure Saints Day.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a holiday. I would bet most of

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Speaker 3: our American and international listeners will not be familiar with

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Speaker 3: UK listeners. I'm maybe more likely. I'm not exactly sure

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Speaker 3: how what consciousness of Saint Swithin is like today, but

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Speaker 3: I guess if anybody out there is going to be

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Speaker 3: wired in on Swithin it is it's probably like Catholics

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Speaker 3: in England. But I don't know. So why are we

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Speaker 3: talking about this? Why is this somewhat obscure medieval saint

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Speaker 3: and his holiday even on our radar? The main reason,

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Speaker 3: perhaps the only reason that I personally had any previous

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Speaker 3: consciousness of Saint Swithin and his feast day was from

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Speaker 3: a quite unlikely source, and that is the lyrics of

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Speaker 3: a song by the late great psychedelic rock pioneer Rocky Ericsson,

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Speaker 3: one of my personal favorite musical artists of all time.

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Speaker 3: The song in which this lyric appears is called The

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Speaker 3: Night of the Vampire, and it actually appears on multiple albums,

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Speaker 3: including The Evil One from nineteen eighty that's one of

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Speaker 3: my favorite Rocky albums. Actually just got that on vinyl,

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Speaker 3: and my daughter has become obsessed with it, like, she

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Speaker 3: asks for it by name one here, two Headed Dog.

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Speaker 3: She begs us to put it on.

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Speaker 1: Oh Man, wonderful. I would play that in the car sometimes,

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Speaker 1: and my kiddo would sometimes ask me to skip Bloody Hammer.

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Speaker 1: They're like, I don't know about this song.

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Speaker 3: Well, it might be different once she recognizes what all

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Speaker 3: the lyrics are. I don't know, but right now she

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Speaker 3: just thinks he's a funny Halloween guy. He just a

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Speaker 3: Halloween guy.

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Speaker 1: That is also true.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, but so she asks for Rocky but anyway, so

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Speaker 3: it's on The Evil One.

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Speaker 1: Though.

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Speaker 3: My favorite version of this song is actually the first

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Speaker 3: track on Rocky's nineteen eighty six compilation album Grimlins Have Pictures.

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Speaker 3: The title of that album, by the way, is taken

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Speaker 3: from the lyrics of his song Anthem, and the full

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Speaker 3: line there is Grimlins Have Pictures of the Anniversary of Christ.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that one's a real head scratcher. There are a

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Speaker 1: lot of there's a lot of the lyrics to Rocky

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Speaker 1: Erickson songs will drift into head, scratch your territory.

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Speaker 3: But they're wonderful. I mean, they will make you scratch

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Speaker 3: your head, but they'll also stay in your head, or

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Speaker 3: at least in my head. I you know, after I

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Speaker 3: listen to Rocky, even if I'm sort of in a

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Speaker 3: rocky way, and I guess you know, there are periods

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Speaker 3: where I'm listening to him constantly and somewhere I listen less.

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Speaker 3: But and the ones when I listen less, sometimes something

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Speaker 3: just comes, like a bolt of lightning out of nowhere,

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Speaker 3: and my brain is thinking, you know, if it's raining

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Speaker 3: and you're running, don't slip in mud, because if you do,

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Speaker 3: you'll slip in blood. That is also from Night of

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Speaker 3: the Vampire.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, his lyrics have a real stream of consciousness vibe

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Speaker 1: to them, and amid the horror movie references, he'll also

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Speaker 1: invoke words, ideas and connections that were you know, unique

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Speaker 1: to his own mind and worldview. Might be difficult for

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Speaker 1: the rest of us to understand. But that's the tantalizing

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Speaker 1: part of that. It's like a puzzle and you're trying

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Speaker 1: to interpret it the interpreter. Where is he now?

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Speaker 3: Oh? Another one? Another good one? But anyway, So in

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Speaker 3: the middle of the song Night of the Vampire, which is,

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Speaker 3: as my kid would say, a Halloween guy song. It's

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Speaker 3: a song about vampires. It's a song about raining and running,

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Speaker 3: slipping in mud, slipping in blood. There is a bridge

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Speaker 3: to the song where Rocky sings me Castle Brand Transylvania

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Speaker 3: on Saint Swithin's Day he was born, eyes stare through

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Speaker 3: the darkness with no form maidens his bite harms. That's

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Speaker 3: a good slant rhyme, by the way, with you know

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Speaker 3: born form harm, but on Saint Swithin's Day he was born.

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Speaker 3: That's a strange connection to make. I want to come

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Speaker 3: back in a minute to figure out what's going on

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Speaker 3: with that now, if you're wondering, was it normal for

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Speaker 3: this guy to sing rock songs about vampires. Yes, as

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Speaker 3: we've established, he's a Halloween guy. Rocky's career had two

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Speaker 3: main stages. In the nineteen sixties, he sang and performed

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Speaker 3: with a Texas based garage psych band called the Thirteenth

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Speaker 3: Floor Elevators, I think one of the best psychedelic rock

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Speaker 3: bands of the sixties, really awesome. So he had a

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Speaker 3: period with them where they released a couple of great albums.

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Speaker 3: So one is the Psychedelic Sounds of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators.

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Speaker 3: Their second album is my favorite. It's called Easter Everywhere.

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Speaker 3: After that, he had a more difficult period where he

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Speaker 3: had some legal issues and where he was he had

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Speaker 3: a period of involuntary commitment at some statemental hospitals in Texas.

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Speaker 3: After his eventual release, instead of going back to psychedelic

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Speaker 3: sounds like he did with the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, he

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Speaker 3: instead focused on others genres. He did folk, blues, and

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Speaker 3: particularly a kind of hard rock idea that he called

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Speaker 3: horror rock, which was fueled by his longtime obsession with

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Speaker 3: monster movies, especially old monster movies, like many of the

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Speaker 3: things we cover on Weird House Cinema. In fact, we've

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Speaker 3: done some very rocky centric movies on Weird House, like

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Speaker 3: Creature with the Adam Brain has its own rocky ericson song,

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Speaker 3: which is fabulous.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. He wasn't necessarily picking really well known films

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Speaker 1: or the films that connected with him.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So it's one of the charms because sometimes you might

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Speaker 1: not even realize he's referring to a movie until you

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Speaker 1: dig a little deeper.

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Speaker 3: Yeah. Rocky described this genre at one point by saying

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Speaker 3: I'm trying to horrify them, demonize them, and possessionize them,

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Speaker 3: and he's doing it. So Night of the Vampire is

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Speaker 3: a core horror rock song. So I've been listening to

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Speaker 3: this song for years. I first got into this, I

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Speaker 3: think one summer when I was in college, So Saint

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Speaker 3: Swithin's has been also banging around in my head as

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Speaker 3: a phrase for that long, but I had never much

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Speaker 3: looked into it until Rob this summer. You flagged it

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Speaker 3: on our show calendar saying, Hey, Saint Swithin's Day is

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Speaker 3: a real day. Let's figure out what's going on here,

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Speaker 3: And oh boy, that was really music to my ears.

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Speaker 3: So we very much got into the spirit of Saint Swithin,

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Speaker 3: and especially the question what does Saint Swithin have to

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Speaker 3: do with vampires? Well, I did some fairly extensive digging

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Speaker 3: on this question, and I've come to the conclusion that

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Speaker 3: there is no connection at all outside this song. I

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Speaker 3: can't find any records of a famous vampire from movies

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Speaker 3: or literature who was born on Saint Swithin's Day, nor

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Speaker 3: any pre existing connection between the historical character of Saint

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Speaker 3: Swithin and any vampire lore, though maybe we can get

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Speaker 3: halfway there by connecting Saint Swithin to some ambiguous witches

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Speaker 3: or hags or valkyries some other kind of scary female creature.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: However, the one real connection I could find is that

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Speaker 3: one person who was born on Saint Swithin's day was

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Speaker 3: Rocky Erickson himself born July fifteenth, nineteen forty seven. Rocky's

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Speaker 3: lyrics about movie monsters sometimes do shift back and forth

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Speaker 3: between third person and first person. I think there is

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Speaker 3: a good degree of when I'm talking about the monster,

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Speaker 3: I am talking about myself. You know, I'm a demon

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Speaker 3: and I love rock and roll. That's another one of

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Speaker 3: his songs. So I think that probably is the main connection.

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Speaker 3: That Saint Swithin's Day is Rocky's birthday, and so the

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Speaker 3: night of the Vampire is his night. It's you know,

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Speaker 3: the vampire is me to paraphrase Flaubert. However, to bring

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Speaker 3: things back to Saint Swithin. While again I can't find

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Speaker 3: any evidence of a vampire character born on Saint Swithin's

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Speaker 3: celebration day, I do think there's an interesting connection in

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Speaker 3: the lyrics of the song, and I already quoted this part.

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Speaker 3: In the first verse of Night of the Vampire, Rocky

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Speaker 3: offers the advice, if it's raining and you're running, don't

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Speaker 3: slip in mud, because if you do, you'll slip in blood.

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Speaker 3: Tonight is the Night of the Vampire, So Rocky's head

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Speaker 3: was stuck on the idea of trying to escape a

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Speaker 3: vampire in a heavy rainstorm. And it turns out. One

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Speaker 3: of the most famous things about Swithen is that his day,

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Speaker 3: July fifteenth, is associated with a seasonal proverb for predicting

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Speaker 3: the weather, specifically for predicting rain patterns in Great Britain.

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Speaker 3: There are many versions of this saying, but here's one

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Speaker 3: I came across. Goes like this, Saint Swithin's day, If

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Speaker 3: thou dost rain for forty days, it will remain Saint

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Speaker 3: Swithin's day. If thou be fair for forty days, twill

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Speaker 3: rain ney mare. So that's sinking in you. Basically, whatever

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Speaker 3: you get on Saint Swithin's day, you're going to get

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Speaker 3: that again for forty days.

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Speaker 1: I've been reading this over in the notes, though I've

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Speaker 1: gone ahead and read this in my head in Rocky

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Speaker 1: Erickson's voice as well.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, twell rain naymare, Yeah, I can hear it. He

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Speaker 3: had a wonderful like a Texan accent to yowl.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: But again, according to this proverb, if it rains on

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Speaker 3: July fifteenth, it's going to keep raining for the next

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Speaker 3: forty days. If it's dry, it will be dry the

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Speaker 3: next forty days. So if that proverb actually holds true,

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Speaker 3: Saint Swithin's day is a good tool for planning your

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Speaker 3: upcoming vampire survival strategies. If it's raining on the fifteenth,

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Speaker 3: you should invest in some boots with grippy souls to

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Speaker 3: avoid slipping in mud and therefore slipping in blood. But

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Speaker 3: is there anything to this kind of weather predicting doggerel

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Speaker 3: other than superstition and the fact that it rhymes. It

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Speaker 3: does rhyme. You gotta admit that rope. Yeah, And what

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Speaker 3: was the deal with this Saint Swithin guy? What does

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Speaker 3: he have to do with whether whether it rains or not?

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Speaker 3: These questions are what we'll be exploring for the rest

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Speaker 3: of today's episode.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, We'll leave it to you to ultimately decide how

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Speaker 1: closely aligned the lyrics of Rocky ericson are with this

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Speaker 1: historic individual and legendary English saint.

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Speaker 3: I guess we got to say this near the top

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Speaker 3: because we keep calling him Saint Swiin. Uh, Rob, did

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Speaker 3: you come across the fact that even though he is

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Speaker 3: widely known as Saint Swithin, he was never officially canonized

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Speaker 3: by the Catholic Church. So he's not actually a saint

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Speaker 3: on paper, only a street saint, a saint by reputation.

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Speaker 1: That's right, He's uh, he was never canonized as a

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Speaker 1: saint by the Catholic Church. So yeah, he's a He's

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Speaker 1: not a saint saint, just a street saint.

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Speaker 3: As you say, now, I think what we could start

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Speaker 3: off by doing is dividing the historical Saint Swithin from

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Speaker 3: the legendary Saint Swin. And I think that will be

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Speaker 3: a reasonably easy, uh division to make because from what

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Speaker 3: I can tell, Rob, I think you did more of

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Speaker 3: the historical research. But is it correct that very little

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Speaker 3: is known about the real historical Saint Swien and that

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Speaker 3: much of his biography, maybe almost all of his biography

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Speaker 3: is understood by historians to be legend probably fabricated long

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Speaker 3: after his death.

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Speaker 1: Correct, Yeah, most of we know very little about the

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Speaker 1: historic individual. That then ends up being built out into

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Speaker 1: this saint of legend. Now historians do agree that there

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Speaker 1: was definitely unhistoric Swiven. You know, sometimes you peel away

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Speaker 1: the layers of legend and you discover there's perhaps nobody

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Speaker 1: at the bottom, or there's just sort of a hypothetical

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Speaker 1: real person at the bottom of things. But there was

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Speaker 1: an individual by the name of Swiven. He would have

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Speaker 1: been born around eight hundred CE. He was consecrated by Selnoth,

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Speaker 1: Archbishop of Canterbury, on October thirtieth, eight fifty two, and

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Speaker 1: he died on July Tewod eight sixty two. He served

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Speaker 1: as the Bishop of Winchester, England, and also served as

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Speaker 1: counselor to Kings Egbert and Athel Wolf of Wessex. This

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Speaker 1: is the Kingdom of the West Saxons in the south

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Speaker 1: of Great Britain. All that definitely true, No layers of legend.

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Speaker 1: You know, these are just some of the basics. This

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Speaker 1: is some of the basic information that we have about him.

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Speaker 1: And when it comes down to it, it's like just

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Speaker 1: the basics that we really have. After his death, or

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Speaker 1: perhaps more accurately, after the popularity of an account following

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Speaker 1: his death, he was popularly venerated as a saint, but

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Speaker 1: again was never officially canonized as a saint by the

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Speaker 1: Catholic Church. And this will make you know, and it

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Speaker 1: all makes sense as we get into how he becomes

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Speaker 1: a saint and so forth. But as far as other

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Speaker 1: details about the real life of the historic Swien, yeah,

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Speaker 1: we actually have very little to go on. There are

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Speaker 1: a few mentions of him from contemporary sources, and the

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Speaker 1: problem with saints in general is that their lives are

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Speaker 1: often constructed long after their deaths by much later writers.

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Speaker 1: So I was turned to a couple of mains horses here.

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Speaker 1: There's a two thousand and three book, The Cult of

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Speaker 1: Saint Swithin by Michael Lappage, and that's certainly a great

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Speaker 1: book to look to if you want to deeper dive

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Speaker 1: into the questions and mysteries and legends surrounding this individual.

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Speaker 1: I also referred to Winchester Cathedral historian Tom Watson's shorter

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Speaker 1: work an article by the same name, The Cult of

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Speaker 1: Saint Swiftin from two thousand and eight, and that one

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Speaker 1: also cites Lappage's work, singling it out as a major

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Speaker 1: work of modern scholarship about Swiven.

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Speaker 3: All right, So, we know that the real Swithen died

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Speaker 3: around the middle of the ninth century. You said the

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Speaker 3: year eight sixty two CE, So when do the writings

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Speaker 3: about him first start to appear? When does his reputation

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Speaker 3: begin to boom?

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Speaker 1: The cult of Swiften doesn't really begin in earnest until

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Speaker 1: around nine thirty seven, So yeah, many decades after his death.

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Speaker 1: The first known writings of his miracles came out three

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Speaker 1: years after that. Another history emerges twenty years after that

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Speaker 1: with new tributed miracles, and another comes out two hundred

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Speaker 1: and thirty years after his death.

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Speaker 3: So one of these cases where more detail is added

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Speaker 3: the longer time goes on, that's always the suspicious pattern.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but of course it makes sense when again

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Speaker 1: we're talking about legends and stories. We're not talking about

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Speaker 1: things that objectively actually happened. We're talking about myth making.

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Speaker 1: And I mean that's part of of what's that's the

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Speaker 1: huge part of what's going on here. And as Watson explains,

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Speaker 1: and in this he was citing the work of Susan

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Speaker 1: Richard English Saint Colts, they didn't simply develop, they were developed.

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Speaker 1: It was a matter of branding, and then eventually rebranding

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Speaker 1: and of advertising. Quote, the most successful, that is, most

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Speaker 1: popular cults had shrines visited by many pilgrims. The popularity

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Speaker 1: of shrines also rose and fell. They were actively promoted

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Speaker 1: and across the entire medieval period, relaunched in response to competition.

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Speaker 3: Oh okay, So the accretion of stories around popular saint

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Speaker 3: wouldn't necessarily be driven just by organic folklore and word

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Speaker 3: of mouth and people adding on, you know, things happening

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Speaker 3: out amongst the people. That there could be a kind

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Speaker 3: of top down effort by people whose livelihoods or whose

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Speaker 3: missions were associated with this saint to beef up what

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Speaker 3: was known about them and to make them appear and

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Speaker 3: come off a certain way.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. I like this comparison to any kind of like

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Speaker 1: branding and rebranding effort you have today. You think of

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Speaker 1: like any long lasting fast food chain. A lot of

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Speaker 1: things are going to be the same, maybe like the

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Speaker 1: central mascot and the logo, but things may shift, and

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Speaker 1: they're gonna shift in response to what the public wants

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Speaker 1: or things they want, or in response to what more

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Speaker 1: powerful entities decide that the people should want and so forth.

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Speaker 3: Man, you ever get nostalgic for the architecture of taco

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Speaker 3: bells and pizza huts from the nineties. Now they just

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Speaker 3: all look like banks.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the little things like that are ancient McDonald's

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Speaker 1: playgrounds times when they had the full pantheon before it

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Speaker 1: went monotheistic. Seeah, I think there are a lot of

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Speaker 1: comparisons to be made here between these cults and enterprises

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Speaker 1: like that. So, as these various authors point out, the

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Speaker 1: formation of the Cult of Saint Switten itself came about

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Speaker 1: in nine thirty seven, evidently due to the pressure of

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Speaker 1: reform movements active in the church at the time, and

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Speaker 1: perhaps even more to the point, due to the efforts

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Speaker 1: of a youthful new king, King Edgar, who is attempting

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Speaker 1: to assert his power over the nation and making use

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Speaker 1: of the church as part of his strategy. So the

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Speaker 1: reform movement here was aimed at making English churches more

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Speaker 1: religiously rigorous and also more monastic, and entailed on Edgar's part,

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Speaker 1: the forced removal of secular clerics. Secular clerics would be

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Speaker 1: clerics that they were not monks, they could even marry,

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Speaker 1: and so he's having them forcibly removed and replacing them

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Speaker 1: with monks and Swiften just happened to be the right

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Speaker 1: local name to take up in this campaign for power,

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Speaker 1: even though it's ironic that the actual Swiften was a

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Speaker 1: secular cleric and was not a monk.

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Speaker 3: Wait does that mean Swithin was married or do we

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Speaker 3: not know?

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Speaker 1: I don't As far as I could tell, he wasn't married,

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Speaker 1: or if he was married, we don't know anything of it.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, he was not himself a monk, and you know,

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Speaker 1: there were these stories that said he was. You know,

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Speaker 1: there's just because we have all these legends, it's very

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Speaker 1: possible that he was a very pious and humble man.

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Speaker 1: We just don't know. We just have all these layers

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Speaker 1: of legends built upon it, and very little is known

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Speaker 1: about the historic Swiften, But we can put together that

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Speaker 1: he was close to the ruling Anglo Saxon royal family.

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Speaker 1: He tutored the future King ethel Wolf, and this very

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Speaker 1: king promoted him to the Bishop of Winchester in eight

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Speaker 1: fifty two. We also know from you know, scant mentions,

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Speaker 1: that he seemed to have been involved in the repair

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Speaker 1: of several churches, and if we were to believe a

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Speaker 1: tenth century poem, he also had a bridge built. These

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Speaker 1: are pretty far from miracles, but these are the actual

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Speaker 1: things that he probably had a hand in.

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Speaker 3: You know, a lot of medieval sources we've been looking

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Speaker 3: at recently really emphasized the church building or church repair

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Speaker 3: career of people. What this just came up in our

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Speaker 3: Cats episode. Yeah, we were talking about the mystical Cats

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Speaker 3: of Great Britain, where what like the guy who's doing

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Speaker 3: unspeakable cat crimes in order to get a message from

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Speaker 3: the other world about you know what, what have I

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Speaker 3: got to do to make things right? And the King

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Speaker 3: of Cats comes and tells him you got to build

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Speaker 3: seven churches?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, what a kind of public works are you

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Speaker 1: going to build? I mean, basically, comes, you're gonna build

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Speaker 1: a church? Are you're gonna build a bridge? What else?

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Speaker 1: You're not going to build a water treatment plan? So

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Speaker 1: might as well build that church, Okay, but so known

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Speaker 1: as a supporter of church and possibly also some secular infrastructure. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but basically, you know, he this is a man who

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Speaker 1: had a career and we only know just a few

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Speaker 1: bullet points about his career, and as far as we

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Speaker 1: can tell, he was he was not considered saintly during

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Speaker 1: his own lifespan. You know, people I guess liked him,

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Speaker 1: and you know, being reasonable, there are probably some people

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Speaker 1: who didn't like him because he was a human being

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Speaker 1: in a position of some power. But and he also

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Speaker 1: wasn't considered saintly in the hundred years that fought or

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Speaker 1: so were roughly one hundred years that followed his his

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Speaker 1: his death. All of it was built up on after

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Speaker 1: that point.

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Speaker 3: Okay, so where's the first jumping off point. When do

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Speaker 3: we start getting stories?

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Speaker 1: Well, you know, they basically with the creation of the cult,

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Speaker 1: but certainly by the time we see the tenth century

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Speaker 1: work life of Saint Swiftin according to Lappage, this is

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Speaker 1: just like pure fiction, just he says, the creation of

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Speaker 1: a scholar who had few historical resources at his disposal.

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Speaker 1: He stresses that there's there's a lot of conjecture. There's

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Speaker 1: you know, there are things you can point to in

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Speaker 1: these legends and say, well, okay, something in that could

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Speaker 1: have been true maybe. But one of the things that

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Speaker 1: factors into like a key story that we're going to

390
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Speaker 1: be talking about concerning Swiften concerns his humble burial requests,

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Speaker 1: And according according to Lapage, like this is just complete

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Speaker 1: legend making here. So basically the idea and we'll tell

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Speaker 1: the story a little more detail here shortly, But the

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Speaker 1: idea is that when he died, he's like, don't bury

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Speaker 1: me in a fancy tomb, bury me like out here

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Speaker 1: in the dirt, out in front of the church. I

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Speaker 1: want to be where people can walk over my grave.

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Speaker 3: It's some of them phrase it in a more aggressive way,

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Speaker 3: and he's like, bury me in a nasty place, bury

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Speaker 3: me in a violent, gross, gross place.

401
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Speaker 1: Yeah, But the lappage says that now he would have

402
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Speaker 1: been buried in a sarcophagus within a prominent tomb outside

403
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Speaker 1: of the old Minster Church, and then later he's moved

404
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Speaker 1: inside the church. And this has everything to do with

405
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Speaker 1: the creation of the of the Saint, the cult of

406
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Speaker 1: the Saint around him, and then the church was eventually

407
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Speaker 1: expanded to encompass the grounds he was originally buried on.

408
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Speaker 1: And I think there's something kind of poetic to that.

409
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Speaker 1: You know, here's an historic individual sort of consumed by

410
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Speaker 1: the church or the workings of the church, in the

411
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Speaker 1: hands of kingly authority, and the original historic individual becomes

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Speaker 1: kind of redundant via the waves of all of this

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Speaker 1: legend making.

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Speaker 3: Interesting, all right, So that is what we know about Swithin,

415
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Speaker 3: the historic ninth century cleric of the Catholic Church. But

416
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Speaker 3: what do we know about the the character, the character

417
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Speaker 3: that blooms from the grave of this figure.

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Speaker 1: Well, a lot of it, I think is summed up

419
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Speaker 1: in that in this legend, this story that he says,

420
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Speaker 1: you know, bury me, bury me in the dirt, don't

421
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Speaker 1: bury me in the tomb. Give me a common nasty grave,

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Speaker 1: if you will, so that the rain's going to fall

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Speaker 1: in my grave. Common people can visit my grave, walk

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Speaker 1: over it, and so forth. And the idea that the

425
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Speaker 1: idea here is that they initially honor it, but then

426
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Speaker 1: they reverse the decision a century later and his remains

427
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Speaker 1: are moved into the new church building, and then forty

428
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Speaker 1: days of rain follow Ah.

429
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Speaker 3: Okay, so here's where we start getting the tie into

430
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Speaker 3: the rain. Now. I was trying to find more information

431
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Speaker 3: about the legends of Saint Swithin's life and his connection

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Speaker 3: to the weather proverb that I mentioned earlier, and I

433
00:23:50,080 --> 00:23:53,399
Speaker 3: came across an article from the journal Weather from the

434
00:23:53,480 --> 00:23:57,840
Speaker 3: year nineteen forty seven by an author Anthony Klein. It's

435
00:23:57,840 --> 00:24:01,960
Speaker 3: called Saint Swithin's forty days. Again, that's in the journal Weather.

436
00:24:03,119 --> 00:24:07,000
Speaker 3: So Klein, the author here talks about how weather lower

437
00:24:07,119 --> 00:24:10,800
Speaker 3: tends to come and go over time, but he says

438
00:24:10,880 --> 00:24:15,480
Speaker 3: that the predictive proverb associated with Swithin's day has really

439
00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:18,959
Speaker 3: stuck around. It has a tenacity, and he said, at

440
00:24:19,040 --> 00:24:21,399
Speaker 3: the time of his writing many still believe it. This

441
00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:24,920
Speaker 3: would have been in the nineteen forties. He says, of course,

442
00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:28,440
Speaker 3: meteorologists have superior tools to work with now in predicting

443
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:32,160
Speaker 3: the weather, and yet quote still many harbor some minute

444
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:37,680
Speaker 3: and shadowy faith. However, despite the popularity and tenacity of

445
00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:40,840
Speaker 3: the proverb, one thing that seems quite clear is that,

446
00:24:41,600 --> 00:24:43,280
Speaker 3: or at least this is one of these things like

447
00:24:43,359 --> 00:24:47,000
Speaker 3: you can't rule out conclusively. But it really does not

448
00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:51,720
Speaker 3: seem to go back to Saint Swidin himself. In fact,

449
00:24:51,800 --> 00:24:55,679
Speaker 3: at the time of Klein's writing, the earliest evidence he

450
00:24:55,800 --> 00:25:00,360
Speaker 3: knew of knew of for the prediction that forty days

451
00:25:00,359 --> 00:25:02,880
Speaker 3: of rain would follow if it rained on Saint Swithin's

452
00:25:02,960 --> 00:25:06,960
Speaker 3: day was dated to Ben Johnson around the year sixteen hundred,

453
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:12,080
Speaker 3: more than seven hundred years after Saint Swithin's death. He

454
00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:15,280
Speaker 3: quotes a version. So I'll read from Klin here quote

455
00:25:15,280 --> 00:25:18,760
Speaker 3: at the end of the century, Poor Robin's Almanac included

456
00:25:18,840 --> 00:25:22,000
Speaker 3: in its dog roll for July these lines in this

457
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:26,080
Speaker 3: month is Saint Swithin's day, on which if that it rained,

458
00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:29,880
Speaker 3: they say full forty days after it will or more

459
00:25:30,040 --> 00:25:34,000
Speaker 3: or less some rain distill. Which is interesting because that's

460
00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:38,000
Speaker 3: it's a similar rhyme pattern, and it's like four lines,

461
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:40,080
Speaker 3: and it has the same meaning as the rhyme I

462
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:41,960
Speaker 3: read earlier, but is totally different words.

463
00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:46,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a little more awkward. Yeah, it's construction at

464
00:25:46,240 --> 00:25:47,200
Speaker 1: least by our standards.

465
00:25:47,440 --> 00:25:51,280
Speaker 3: I agree. The earlier one scanned a little better. After this,

466
00:25:51,880 --> 00:25:54,480
Speaker 3: Klein talks about some other legends of Saint Swithin', So

467
00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:56,679
Speaker 3: I did want to go go abroad a little bit

468
00:25:56,760 --> 00:25:58,680
Speaker 3: and look at a few other legends about his life.

469
00:25:58,920 --> 00:26:01,840
Speaker 3: There's one good one where there's an old lady carrying

470
00:26:01,840 --> 00:26:05,600
Speaker 3: a basket of eggs and then a klutzy guy passes

471
00:26:05,640 --> 00:26:07,399
Speaker 3: by her. I think maybe this is happening on a

472
00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:10,240
Speaker 3: bridge or something, But a klutzy guy walks by the

473
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:12,400
Speaker 3: lady with her eggs, and he breaks all the eggs,

474
00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:15,520
Speaker 3: and the old lady is distraught. She cries out for

475
00:26:15,560 --> 00:26:18,679
Speaker 3: her eggs, and then Saint Swithin comes along. He sees

476
00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:22,040
Speaker 3: the situation, he gives a quick blessing and her eggs

477
00:26:22,200 --> 00:26:26,200
Speaker 3: are repaired. Wow. Okay, so that's a miracle. But then

478
00:26:26,240 --> 00:26:29,320
Speaker 3: I was thinking, how are you actually supposed to picture that?

479
00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:32,560
Speaker 3: You picture it happening the eggs break and the goop

480
00:26:32,640 --> 00:26:35,800
Speaker 3: comes out? Does the group go back inside the eggs?

481
00:26:35,840 --> 00:26:38,719
Speaker 3: Are you supposed to picture the goop slithering inside like

482
00:26:38,800 --> 00:26:41,040
Speaker 3: one half of the shell and then the eggs like

483
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:42,280
Speaker 3: close back over it?

484
00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:45,080
Speaker 1: Hmmm? Oh yea, yeah, you're I think you're picturing it

485
00:26:45,200 --> 00:26:48,960
Speaker 1: like he's reversing the footage. Yeah, And I guess I'm

486
00:26:48,960 --> 00:26:52,359
Speaker 1: trying to imagine it more like a sleight of hand trick,

487
00:26:52,480 --> 00:26:56,159
Speaker 1: like he passes his palm over the cracked eggs, and

488
00:26:56,200 --> 00:27:00,280
Speaker 1: then in his palm's wake he leaves behind uncracked.

489
00:26:59,880 --> 00:27:04,080
Speaker 3: Eg missing footage. Yeah, okay, reversing the footage versus just

490
00:27:04,119 --> 00:27:05,000
Speaker 3: a hard cut.

491
00:27:05,400 --> 00:27:11,119
Speaker 1: Yeah. By the way, according to Lappage, this one story, apparently,

492
00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:15,959
Speaker 1: this one swift and miracle may have been reported off

493
00:27:16,040 --> 00:27:18,920
Speaker 1: him during his lifetime, but it still wasn't written down

494
00:27:18,960 --> 00:27:20,879
Speaker 1: until one hundred and twenty years after his death. So

495
00:27:21,359 --> 00:27:24,639
Speaker 1: he contends that it's it's very dubious, but he at

496
00:27:24,680 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 1: least that he does acknowledge that it's possible this story

497
00:27:28,560 --> 00:27:30,080
Speaker 1: was told about him during his lifetime.

498
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:33,480
Speaker 3: It's one of the stories I see mentioned in multiple

499
00:27:33,520 --> 00:27:35,520
Speaker 3: sources about Swift, and so it seems to be a

500
00:27:35,560 --> 00:27:37,840
Speaker 3: popular one that he repaired broken eggs.

501
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:41,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it also seems humble enough, you know,

502
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:45,080
Speaker 1: for an individual who wasn't necessarily on the track for

503
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:49,600
Speaker 1: local sainthood, just because he may have helped an old

504
00:27:49,680 --> 00:27:51,919
Speaker 1: lady with some broken eggs, you know, and we can

505
00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:55,119
Speaker 1: easily imagine what the like real world version of that

506
00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:56,800
Speaker 1: could have been, like maybe he saw somebody with a

507
00:27:56,800 --> 00:27:58,959
Speaker 1: broken egg and he's like, hey, I've got some extra eggs,

508
00:27:59,080 --> 00:28:01,560
Speaker 1: have some, you know, and act kindness gets, you know,

509
00:28:01,840 --> 00:28:03,560
Speaker 1: magically translated into miracle.

510
00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 3: I was wondering if it could have anything to do

511
00:28:05,560 --> 00:28:09,720
Speaker 3: with him as the repairer of broken churches, because he,

512
00:28:09,920 --> 00:28:13,760
Speaker 3: you know, did the restorations and repairs there anyway. So

513
00:28:14,760 --> 00:28:18,399
Speaker 3: a one source that a lot of writers on this

514
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:21,720
Speaker 3: topic end up going back to is a nineteenth century

515
00:28:21,840 --> 00:28:26,240
Speaker 3: Oxford professor of Anglo Saxon named John Earl, who wrote

516
00:28:26,280 --> 00:28:29,679
Speaker 3: an essay in the eighteen sixties called on the Life

517
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:33,040
Speaker 3: and Times of Swithin, which you can find collected in

518
00:28:33,080 --> 00:28:37,400
Speaker 3: a book called Gloucester Fragments. That's where I was reading it.

519
00:28:38,520 --> 00:28:42,440
Speaker 3: So Earle talks about how in the tenth and eleventh

520
00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:47,520
Speaker 3: century biographies of Swithin quote, the historical part was very,

521
00:28:47,720 --> 00:28:50,880
Speaker 3: very meager, being little more than a frame to support

522
00:28:51,000 --> 00:28:55,680
Speaker 3: the medallions of popular tradition. And Earle claims that during

523
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:58,240
Speaker 3: this period of history, a lot of the stories that

524
00:28:58,240 --> 00:29:03,120
Speaker 3: were told about Christian sayints, actually have analogues in stories

525
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:07,959
Speaker 3: about pre Christian gods and heroes. So he argues that

526
00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:12,120
Speaker 3: it's possible in some cases the deeds attributed to saints

527
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:16,440
Speaker 3: and Christian figures like Swithin are actually pieces of older

528
00:29:16,560 --> 00:29:22,720
Speaker 3: pagan folklore being transferred onto an acceptable Catholic host.

529
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:27,800
Speaker 1: Hmmmm, that's interesting. You know, this reminds me. It's it's

530
00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:30,960
Speaker 1: kind of like the the darker version of perhaps the

531
00:29:31,000 --> 00:29:36,520
Speaker 1: same thing, but with urban legends. Sometimes you encounter this

532
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:40,360
Speaker 1: where you'll have like urban legends, like generally scandalous things

533
00:29:40,400 --> 00:29:43,720
Speaker 1: that are said about celebrities of old, and then they'll

534
00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:46,440
Speaker 1: eventually get passed on to new celebrities, often with the

535
00:29:46,480 --> 00:29:51,240
Speaker 1: new tale tellers maybe not even being not even realizing

536
00:29:51,280 --> 00:29:54,120
Speaker 1: that these same stories were told about previous rock stars

537
00:29:54,160 --> 00:29:56,160
Speaker 1: or actors or what have you. But you need a

538
00:29:56,200 --> 00:29:58,680
Speaker 1: place to hang them, thank you, to use this analogy

539
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:00,520
Speaker 1: of the medallions hanging on the framework.

540
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:02,920
Speaker 3: Have we been hearing about how Bruno Mars bit the

541
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:03,760
Speaker 3: head off a bat?

542
00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:06,680
Speaker 1: Not yet, but that's exactly the sort of thing you

543
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:08,320
Speaker 1: can you can imagine.

544
00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:10,040
Speaker 3: I guess, but that one really happened, though.

545
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:13,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, or some version of it, right, yeah.

546
00:30:13,960 --> 00:30:17,160
Speaker 3: Yeah, not about Bruno Mars, I mean I actually did.

547
00:30:17,240 --> 00:30:21,640
Speaker 3: Sorry anyway. But from here, Earl goes on to tell

548
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:25,720
Speaker 3: a pretty weird story from one of these Swithin legends

549
00:30:25,720 --> 00:30:29,320
Speaker 3: that I just wanted to recount here, so he says,

550
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:33,120
Speaker 3: quote among the stories narrated of Swithin is the following.

551
00:30:34,040 --> 00:30:36,760
Speaker 3: A certain nobleman was walking by the side of a

552
00:30:36,840 --> 00:30:40,360
Speaker 3: river at noontide, and he became suddenly aware of three

553
00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:44,800
Speaker 3: female figures of more than human stature, which rapidly and

554
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 3: furiously bore down upon him. He could not escape. They

555
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:51,960
Speaker 3: seized him and maltreated him and left him as dead.

556
00:30:52,480 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 3: He was brought to Swithen and presently restored. In this

557
00:30:56,280 --> 00:31:01,480
Speaker 3: narrative we may confidently recognize the three fates of Scandinavian mythology,

558
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:04,440
Speaker 3: the past, the present and the future. They make their

559
00:31:04,480 --> 00:31:07,320
Speaker 3: appearance again in the form of the three witches who

560
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:11,520
Speaker 3: meet Macbeth and Banquo on the heath the weird sisters

561
00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:15,960
Speaker 3: hand in hand posters of the sea and land. And

562
00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:18,240
Speaker 3: then he also goes on to say a well known

563
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:22,840
Speaker 3: chromlck on the verge of Dartmoor near Drewstenton, has three

564
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:25,880
Speaker 3: tall uprights. The name of the Kromlic among the people

565
00:31:25,880 --> 00:31:29,680
Speaker 3: of the country is the Spinster's Rock. Still the same

566
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 3: three weird or fatal sisters. And here I looked up

567
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:38,040
Speaker 3: this monument by the way, Spinster's Rock near Dartmoor, which

568
00:31:38,080 --> 00:31:42,600
Speaker 3: is in southwest England. It's a neolithic chambered tomb or

569
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:46,480
Speaker 3: the modern remains of which what's left of it are

570
00:31:46,800 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 3: actually a reconstruction now of three upright stones balancing a

571
00:31:50,760 --> 00:31:53,920
Speaker 3: large capstone between them. What we're looking at in this

572
00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:57,120
Speaker 3: picture of is a modern reconstruction after this thing collapsed,

573
00:31:57,160 --> 00:31:59,520
Speaker 3: I believe during a storm in the eighteen sixties.

574
00:31:59,720 --> 00:32:00,760
Speaker 1: A storm.

575
00:32:00,920 --> 00:32:04,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I've got an illustration of the original monument

576
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:06,440
Speaker 3: from eighteen forty eight for you to look at here,

577
00:32:06,920 --> 00:32:08,880
Speaker 3: and it does look a little bit haunting. So yeah,

578
00:32:08,880 --> 00:32:12,880
Speaker 3: three upright stones and a big multi ton capstone balance

579
00:32:12,960 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 3: between them obviously has some wonderful associations with this kind

580
00:32:16,320 --> 00:32:20,080
Speaker 3: of legend of like three you know, three dangerous witches

581
00:32:20,240 --> 00:32:24,000
Speaker 3: or weird sisters, or figures of you know, female monstrous

582
00:32:24,040 --> 00:32:27,560
Speaker 3: figures of some kind. I'm not sure what modern folklore

583
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:30,680
Speaker 3: scholars would make of these connections that Earle is drawing.

584
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:34,320
Speaker 3: I think now there is a tendency to look back

585
00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:36,560
Speaker 3: on some of the folklore scholarship of the nineteenth and

586
00:32:36,600 --> 00:32:39,880
Speaker 3: early twentieth century with a little more critical of a lens.

587
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:43,280
Speaker 3: Like a lot of the Soldier scholarship was probably a

588
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:47,640
Speaker 3: little too enthusiastic in finding parallels between different stories and

589
00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:51,320
Speaker 3: practices and then asserting with too little evidence that it

590
00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 3: was actually that, actually one of these is the direct

591
00:32:54,120 --> 00:32:56,080
Speaker 3: ancestor of the other. I mean, in some cases, of

592
00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:59,360
Speaker 3: course it is, but in other cases we don't know.

593
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:02,720
Speaker 3: Though in this case it seems interesting and Rob, I

594
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:05,040
Speaker 3: think you even did you come across another version of

595
00:33:05,080 --> 00:33:08,040
Speaker 3: a story like this about swiften or the same story.

596
00:33:08,120 --> 00:33:10,520
Speaker 1: I think it is the same story. So a Lappage

597
00:33:10,600 --> 00:33:14,040
Speaker 1: includes a section here where I think he's including the

598
00:33:14,080 --> 00:33:16,000
Speaker 1: actual text from it. So this would have been from

599
00:33:16,600 --> 00:33:20,480
Speaker 1: Lanford of Fleury, who wrote a tenth or eleventh century work,

600
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:23,719
Speaker 1: The Life of Saint Swiften, which again is this is

601
00:33:23,840 --> 00:33:26,560
Speaker 1: very much in the tradition of legendary Saint Swifton. This

602
00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:30,720
Speaker 1: is not historic at all. But yeah, this bit where

603
00:33:31,040 --> 00:33:33,480
Speaker 1: he tells the tale of a local man of Winchester

604
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:36,800
Speaker 1: who happens to be traveling along, takes a nap, and

605
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:40,200
Speaker 1: when he wakes up he sees two grotesque female creatures.

606
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:43,080
Speaker 1: These are two of the witches, two of the weird sisters.

607
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 1: Quote not decked out in any finery, nor covered up

608
00:33:47,440 --> 00:33:50,200
Speaker 1: with any clothing, but rather naked to their foul skin

609
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:54,120
Speaker 1: and terrifying with their swarthy hair, blackened with faces like

610
00:33:54,320 --> 00:33:58,880
Speaker 1: to Sephanie, and armed with hellish wickedness and poison. And

611
00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:01,240
Speaker 1: here in name referring to one of the names of

612
00:34:01,280 --> 00:34:04,640
Speaker 1: the furies, and this is referred to once more in

613
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:06,480
Speaker 1: the text as well, saying like these are like two

614
00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:10,440
Speaker 1: of the three Furies. But Lappage notes that when we

615
00:34:10,440 --> 00:34:13,719
Speaker 1: get into some of the terms used. Yeah, these may

616
00:34:13,760 --> 00:34:19,080
Speaker 1: be hags or witches. There's this word hag, hag sessen

617
00:34:19,719 --> 00:34:24,919
Speaker 1: and this is sometimes Lappage notes associated with the word valkyrie.

618
00:34:25,360 --> 00:34:27,600
Speaker 1: So in a way you could think of these certainly

619
00:34:27,640 --> 00:34:31,200
Speaker 1: as hags or witches, but also you could probably think

620
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:33,640
Speaker 1: of them as valkyries to a certain extent, or at

621
00:34:33,719 --> 00:34:37,200
Speaker 1: least the stories that these are based on, like the

622
00:34:37,239 --> 00:34:40,880
Speaker 1: original spirit of this medallion that's now hung on the

623
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:43,319
Speaker 1: frame of Saint Swithin, you know, may go back to

624
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:47,560
Speaker 1: stories of the valkyries and in Scandinavian traditions.

625
00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:50,400
Speaker 3: Okay, So in this case, the kind of connection that

626
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:54,880
Speaker 3: Earl is making to earlier pre Christian stories uh Lappage

627
00:34:54,880 --> 00:34:57,640
Speaker 3: seems to be at least partially endorsing. More modern scholar

628
00:34:57,760 --> 00:34:59,600
Speaker 3: is also saying that there seems to be some real

629
00:34:59,600 --> 00:35:00,760
Speaker 3: connective tissue here.

630
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And the full story boy goes on along ways.

631
00:35:05,120 --> 00:35:08,000
Speaker 1: But basically, these two witches try to speak to this

632
00:35:08,080 --> 00:35:11,759
Speaker 1: man of Winchester, and he is frightened and he runs

633
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:13,600
Speaker 1: away from them, and they chase after him, and they

634
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:15,840
Speaker 1: taunt him about how he's doomed and he's gonna die

635
00:35:16,239 --> 00:35:17,919
Speaker 1: when they catch him, and so he prays to God

636
00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:21,719
Speaker 1: for protection. Meanwhile, the third sister, who is dressed all

637
00:35:21,719 --> 00:35:23,480
Speaker 1: in white, she calls out to the other two and

638
00:35:23,520 --> 00:35:26,319
Speaker 1: she's like, stop chasing him, loop around over here with me.

639
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:28,640
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ambush him. I'm going to get him real good.

640
00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:32,719
Speaker 1: And then thanks to God's interference, her attack is like

641
00:35:32,840 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 1: partially blocked and it only wounds like the man on

642
00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:38,719
Speaker 1: one side of his body. But he's pretty wounded, so

643
00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:40,680
Speaker 1: he has to be taken to the nearest church where

644
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:43,680
Speaker 1: he is healed by none other than Bishop swython.

645
00:35:43,600 --> 00:35:45,640
Speaker 3: Sw with unto the rescue, he just treats him like

646
00:35:45,680 --> 00:35:47,640
Speaker 3: a big egg. Yeah.

647
00:35:48,280 --> 00:35:51,080
Speaker 1: By the way, on the subject of hags and witches

648
00:35:51,120 --> 00:35:55,080
Speaker 1: in Saint Swithin, Sir Walter Scott in his eighteen fourteen

649
00:35:55,560 --> 00:35:59,440
Speaker 1: novel Waverley, has this fragment of a ballad that is

650
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:03,640
Speaker 1: included that Scott can put together for the for use

651
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:07,920
Speaker 1: in the fiction here called Saint Swithin's Chair, and you

652
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:10,120
Speaker 1: can you can look this up. It's it's on your

653
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:12,880
Speaker 1: main poetry websites. But I just want to read just

654
00:36:12,920 --> 00:36:15,200
Speaker 1: a bit from it where he's he's taking this connection

655
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:18,239
Speaker 1: between Swithen and hags and like taking it in a

656
00:36:18,320 --> 00:36:21,319
Speaker 1: darker direction. And he says he that dar sit on

657
00:36:21,440 --> 00:36:25,280
Speaker 1: Saint Swithm's chair when the night hag wings the troubled

658
00:36:25,320 --> 00:36:29,640
Speaker 1: air questions three. When he speaks the spell, he may

659
00:36:29,800 --> 00:36:33,560
Speaker 1: ask and she must tell. So in this, you know,

660
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:37,520
Speaker 1: Scott would seem to be like taking these ideas about

661
00:36:37,760 --> 00:36:40,760
Speaker 1: about Swithen and like taking them to the next darker step.

662
00:36:40,880 --> 00:36:43,440
Speaker 1: Not just one that not one that controls or has

663
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:46,640
Speaker 1: influence over the weather, or even one that can can

664
00:36:47,120 --> 00:36:50,879
Speaker 1: can heal the damage rot by hags, but perhaps one

665
00:36:50,880 --> 00:36:53,640
Speaker 1: that can control the creatures of the night as well.

666
00:36:54,360 --> 00:36:54,640
Speaker 3: Wow.

667
00:37:04,880 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 1: You know.

668
00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:09,440
Speaker 3: To continue with Earl's theme of decorating the lives of

669
00:37:09,520 --> 00:37:13,000
Speaker 3: Christian saints with material from other sources, hanging the medallions

670
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:16,720
Speaker 3: on the frame, so to speak, he mentions stories based

671
00:37:16,760 --> 00:37:19,040
Speaker 3: on wonders of nature. And I just wanted to throw

672
00:37:19,080 --> 00:37:21,680
Speaker 3: this out there quick, because this relates to something we

673
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:26,960
Speaker 3: just discussed in our Cats of Cyprus episode. So he says,

674
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:32,080
Speaker 3: quote any phenomenon, whether constant or casual, that had arrested

675
00:37:32,120 --> 00:37:36,480
Speaker 3: popular attention was fit matter for these amusing and edifying narratives.

676
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 3: The ammonites of Whitby became coiled serpents that Saint Hilda

677
00:37:41,560 --> 00:37:46,880
Speaker 3: had charmed. Another geological curiosity became the beads of Saint Cuthbert,

678
00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:50,720
Speaker 3: and to Saint Patrick was attributed the absence of venomous

679
00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:54,960
Speaker 3: serpents in Ireland. But yeah, that first example, we were

680
00:37:55,000 --> 00:37:58,239
Speaker 3: just talking about the ammonites, the shells of these now

681
00:37:58,360 --> 00:38:02,440
Speaker 3: extinct cephalopods, these creatures that died out in the KPg extinction.

682
00:38:03,480 --> 00:38:06,920
Speaker 3: You know, we find these fossils everywhere, certainly in England.

683
00:38:07,680 --> 00:38:10,759
Speaker 3: But yeah, these are actually now the coiled serpents of

684
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 3: Saint Hilda. I think we were talking about them as

685
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:14,600
Speaker 3: coiled serpents of something else.

686
00:38:14,840 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 1: No, no, no, it was Hilda.

687
00:38:16,200 --> 00:38:18,760
Speaker 3: Oh it was Hild out Okay, okay, but you people

688
00:38:18,800 --> 00:38:21,400
Speaker 3: were like trying to help out the connection by carving

689
00:38:21,440 --> 00:38:22,560
Speaker 3: snake faces into them.

690
00:38:22,640 --> 00:38:24,920
Speaker 1: Yeah they're a little too cute. Yeah you can look

691
00:38:24,960 --> 00:38:26,680
Speaker 1: up images of these. Yeah.

692
00:38:27,040 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 3: Anyway, but coming back to Klein's discussion of the weather

693
00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:33,440
Speaker 3: related stories, so those are some other stories. You know,

694
00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:37,120
Speaker 3: he fixes broken eggs, he heals people who have been

695
00:38:37,120 --> 00:38:40,480
Speaker 3: attacked by witches or weird sisters or valkyries or whatever.

696
00:38:40,920 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 3: But another story from the legend of Saint swithin which

697
00:38:44,120 --> 00:38:48,359
Speaker 3: actually connects thematically to the weather. So this is what

698
00:38:48,440 --> 00:38:51,279
Speaker 3: you were alluding to earlier. Rob story goes that Saint

699
00:38:51,280 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 3: Swiin was so humble and so pious that he asked

700
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:57,640
Speaker 3: that at the time of his death his body be

701
00:38:57,719 --> 00:39:01,920
Speaker 3: buried outside the church. And I assume this is referring

702
00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:04,960
Speaker 3: to Winchester Cathedral, or at least the version of that

703
00:39:05,000 --> 00:39:08,440
Speaker 3: cathedral that existed at the time. The Winchester Cathedral that

704
00:39:08,480 --> 00:39:12,360
Speaker 3: exists today was built centuries after Swin's death, but so

705
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:15,040
Speaker 3: it was the earlier version of that church. He wanted

706
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:17,279
Speaker 3: to be outside so that, as we were talking about,

707
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:19,880
Speaker 3: rain would fall upon his grave, and so that the

708
00:39:19,880 --> 00:39:22,520
Speaker 3: feet of people passing by the church would trample on

709
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:26,920
Speaker 3: top of it. And the clergy initially honored his wishes.

710
00:39:27,000 --> 00:39:29,000
Speaker 3: They put him where he asked. But about one hundred

711
00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:32,920
Speaker 3: years after his death, some churchmen got squeamish and they

712
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:36,960
Speaker 3: were like, Saint Swiin was really holy, isn't it wrong

713
00:39:37,120 --> 00:39:39,800
Speaker 3: that people should be walking around on top of his grave?

714
00:39:40,600 --> 00:39:44,279
Speaker 3: So they made preparations to dig up his remains and

715
00:39:44,440 --> 00:39:48,759
Speaker 3: move them on the date of July fifteenth. But when

716
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:52,279
Speaker 3: the day came, a mighty storm broke out, forcing the

717
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:56,160
Speaker 3: church to delay their plans. Only the storm did not stop.

718
00:39:56,239 --> 00:39:59,240
Speaker 3: It kept raining for forty days and forty nights straight,

719
00:39:59,680 --> 00:40:03,720
Speaker 3: and this was interpreted as Saint Swidin's revenge from beyond

720
00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:06,400
Speaker 3: the grave, or at least him issuing a stern warning

721
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:11,120
Speaker 3: to them do not disobey his wishes. So instead they

722
00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:14,640
Speaker 3: just built a chapel over his existing grave, and many

723
00:40:14,680 --> 00:40:17,880
Speaker 3: miracles were performed there. It seems like still a violation

724
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:22,359
Speaker 3: of what he was asking for. Yeah, I don't know,

725
00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:27,279
Speaker 3: but client says this story is not the origin of

726
00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:30,920
Speaker 3: the weather prophecy, and this version of the story does

727
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:34,640
Speaker 3: not show up until the eighteenth century, and it contradicts

728
00:40:34,719 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 3: the claims of his earlier biographies, which are again are

729
00:40:37,640 --> 00:40:43,600
Speaker 3: probably also legendary, but were at least earlier. These earlier biographies,

730
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:45,640
Speaker 3: you know, they they're the ones that talk about the

731
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:47,480
Speaker 3: things I was bringing up earlier, about him being a

732
00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:51,000
Speaker 3: real work beast when it came to infrastructure projects, restoring

733
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:55,400
Speaker 3: old churches, building new ones. Apparently he, you know, he

734
00:40:55,760 --> 00:40:59,160
Speaker 3: really impressed the King ethel Wolf by doing all this

735
00:40:59,239 --> 00:41:02,719
Speaker 3: work and eventually granted the church ten percent of its

736
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:06,480
Speaker 3: royal lands as a gift. According to these stories, and

737
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:09,200
Speaker 3: also at Winchester's it is said that he had a

738
00:41:09,239 --> 00:41:12,600
Speaker 3: stone bridge built over the river Itchin, and he was

739
00:41:12,680 --> 00:41:15,600
Speaker 3: known for being deeply humble and even ascetic, Like he

740
00:41:15,840 --> 00:41:19,640
Speaker 3: traveled through his diocese on foot, and he threw banquets

741
00:41:19,719 --> 00:41:22,440
Speaker 3: where only the poor and the outcast were invited, the

742
00:41:22,560 --> 00:41:23,600
Speaker 3: rich were not allowed in.

743
00:41:24,200 --> 00:41:26,000
Speaker 1: And like that's one of the details where I think

744
00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:28,080
Speaker 1: you can make the argument, and that could be true,

745
00:41:28,200 --> 00:41:30,600
Speaker 1: absolutely could be true. It doesn't break anything else that

746
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:32,720
Speaker 1: we understand about the man or the time.

747
00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:36,319
Speaker 3: According to these earlier stories, when he died, he left

748
00:41:36,360 --> 00:41:39,720
Speaker 3: instructions that he was to be buried outside the church

749
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:41,800
Speaker 3: in Oh, here's the source of what I was saying earlier,

750
00:41:42,080 --> 00:41:46,120
Speaker 3: buried outside the church in quote a vile and unworthy place.

751
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:49,440
Speaker 3: And then this earlier biography also tells that in the

752
00:41:49,520 --> 00:41:52,120
Speaker 3: year nine to seventy one, more than one hundred years

753
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:55,719
Speaker 3: after his death on July fifteenth, in fact, his remains

754
00:41:56,280 --> 00:42:00,719
Speaker 3: were actually successfully moved from their original rest place, from

755
00:42:00,719 --> 00:42:04,240
Speaker 3: the vile and unworthy place and taken to a new church.

756
00:42:04,640 --> 00:42:07,480
Speaker 3: And so this contradicts the forty days of rain revenge

757
00:42:07,520 --> 00:42:11,600
Speaker 3: story and really has nothing to do with weather. Now here.

758
00:42:11,719 --> 00:42:14,480
Speaker 3: Client actually brings it back to the figure of John Earle,

759
00:42:14,640 --> 00:42:18,399
Speaker 3: the Anglo Saxon professor I was talking about earlier, who,

760
00:42:18,440 --> 00:42:21,680
Speaker 3: he says quote in the middle of last century discovered

761
00:42:21,719 --> 00:42:27,600
Speaker 3: and translated a fragmentary chronicle concerning the transference. According to this,

762
00:42:27,800 --> 00:42:31,360
Speaker 3: Bishop Swen appeared in a dream to an aged smith

763
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:35,160
Speaker 3: at Winchester, bidding him communicate to the monks the saints

764
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:38,240
Speaker 3: wish that his bones should be brought within the church.

765
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:41,319
Speaker 3: Asking for a sign to convince the monks of the

766
00:42:41,360 --> 00:42:44,239
Speaker 3: authenticity of the message, he was told to pull an

767
00:42:44,320 --> 00:42:48,160
Speaker 3: iron ring embedded in Swithin's stone coffin and it would

768
00:42:48,200 --> 00:42:52,040
Speaker 3: come away. So it did, but the smith still hesitated

769
00:42:52,120 --> 00:42:56,400
Speaker 3: until Swyin had appeared to him three times. Then he obeyed.

770
00:42:57,239 --> 00:43:00,160
Speaker 1: It's interesting that part of the confirmation here is you

771
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:03,960
Speaker 1: dig up my grave and then pull on parts of

772
00:43:04,000 --> 00:43:06,360
Speaker 1: my coffin. So at that point you've aready done, like

773
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:09,240
Speaker 1: what a third of the work anyway, maybe half the work.

774
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:13,240
Speaker 3: But he had to appear three times like this smith

775
00:43:13,280 --> 00:43:17,360
Speaker 3: took some convincing. But it's also the exact opposite of

776
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:20,720
Speaker 3: the earlier story. So in this version of the story,

777
00:43:20,760 --> 00:43:23,760
Speaker 3: the transfer of the remains was not contrary to Swidin's wishes,

778
00:43:23,840 --> 00:43:27,719
Speaker 3: It was his direct request. And then you've got additional

779
00:43:27,800 --> 00:43:32,680
Speaker 3: legendary explanations for the transfer. Let's see, there were stories

780
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:36,920
Speaker 3: of like I think one of them goes basically like

781
00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:40,000
Speaker 3: there were stories that went far and wide of miracles

782
00:43:40,040 --> 00:43:43,400
Speaker 3: worked at the grave of Swien. The blind came to

783
00:43:43,440 --> 00:43:45,600
Speaker 3: it and recovered their sight. There's the story of a

784
00:43:45,680 --> 00:43:49,320
Speaker 3: humped man losing his hump. So the king at the time,

785
00:43:49,480 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 3: King Edgar, heard of these wonder works, and he thus

786
00:43:52,600 --> 00:43:55,799
Speaker 3: ordered that Swiin's remains be moved from his grave into

787
00:43:55,880 --> 00:43:59,480
Speaker 3: a gold shrine covered in jewels. Seems to befitting of

788
00:43:59,520 --> 00:44:03,320
Speaker 3: such a hump man as Swyen. And there was a

789
00:44:03,320 --> 00:44:06,080
Speaker 3: great ceremony in the feast. And in this version of

790
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:10,319
Speaker 3: the story, there's like nothing at all about weather. So

791
00:44:10,440 --> 00:44:13,239
Speaker 3: what's the origin of the connection to whether As of

792
00:44:13,320 --> 00:44:16,720
Speaker 3: Klein's article, he says the answer is not really known,

793
00:44:17,719 --> 00:44:21,799
Speaker 3: But of course Earl speculates that it may have to

794
00:44:21,840 --> 00:44:26,160
Speaker 3: do with a pre existing tradition, possibly going back to

795
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:32,480
Speaker 3: pre Christian times, throughout many different local European pagan mythologies

796
00:44:33,200 --> 00:44:37,600
Speaker 3: of weather predicting proverbs that were rooted in some kind

797
00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:42,240
Speaker 3: of local god or hero. There are other local saints

798
00:44:42,400 --> 00:44:46,719
Speaker 3: around the world associated with weather prediction heuristics. For example,

799
00:44:47,200 --> 00:44:51,640
Speaker 3: the legend of Saint Medard's Day June eighth, known in France.

800
00:44:52,480 --> 00:44:56,760
Speaker 3: So Madard or medardas was a Christian bishop who lived

801
00:44:56,840 --> 00:45:00,520
Speaker 3: in the fifth through the sixth century in modern day France,

802
00:45:01,160 --> 00:45:03,600
Speaker 3: and the legend about him goes that one day, when

803
00:45:03,680 --> 00:45:06,759
Speaker 3: Madarda's child, he was out walking in the country with

804
00:45:06,800 --> 00:45:09,360
Speaker 3: a bunch of other people. They were out and it

805
00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:12,239
Speaker 3: was nice weather, but then a terrible thunderstorm broke out,

806
00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:15,080
Speaker 3: and the people all around him were soaked in the rain.

807
00:45:15,239 --> 00:45:20,080
Speaker 3: But Madard himself was bone dry because he was sheltered

808
00:45:20,120 --> 00:45:24,000
Speaker 3: from above by a giant eagle that hovered over his

809
00:45:24,120 --> 00:45:27,720
Speaker 3: head with wings unfolded for the entirety of his journey home.

810
00:45:27,840 --> 00:45:29,759
Speaker 3: So an eagle umbrella.

811
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:32,920
Speaker 1: All right, all right, one that hovers, yes.

812
00:45:33,520 --> 00:45:36,600
Speaker 3: And so in France there was a weather prediction proverb

813
00:45:36,719 --> 00:45:40,400
Speaker 3: or weather prophecy about Saint Medard's day that is almost

814
00:45:40,440 --> 00:45:44,800
Speaker 3: identical to the Swien proverb. It's basically, if it rains

815
00:45:44,800 --> 00:45:47,080
Speaker 3: on Saint Medard's day, there will be forty more days

816
00:45:47,120 --> 00:45:49,640
Speaker 3: of rain. If it's dry, the next forty days will

817
00:45:49,680 --> 00:45:52,560
Speaker 3: be dry. And then Earl has a footnote where he

818
00:45:52,600 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 3: also mentions a couple of other figures like this, Apparently

819
00:45:55,120 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 3: there's a weather predicting proverb for a saint protee in France,

820
00:45:59,600 --> 00:46:05,360
Speaker 3: pierro Ais. And then he also says, quote, the reigning

821
00:46:05,440 --> 00:46:10,040
Speaker 3: saint in Flanders is a saint a Godoliev and in

822
00:46:10,120 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 3: Germany there are three reigning saints or saints days. One

823
00:46:14,000 --> 00:46:17,920
Speaker 3: of the days is that of the Seven Sleepers. I

824
00:46:17,920 --> 00:46:19,799
Speaker 3: think we've talked about the Seven Sleepers on the show,

825
00:46:19,800 --> 00:46:20,239
Speaker 3: haven't we.

826
00:46:20,560 --> 00:46:22,799
Speaker 1: I believe so. I'm a little foggy off the top

827
00:46:22,840 --> 00:46:25,080
Speaker 1: of my head who they were while they were sleeping,

828
00:46:25,160 --> 00:46:27,879
Speaker 1: but I do believe we've talked about them.

829
00:46:27,920 --> 00:46:31,040
Speaker 3: I think the story is they were early Christian saints

830
00:46:31,040 --> 00:46:33,319
Speaker 3: in the Roman Empire who went into a cave to

831
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:36,520
Speaker 3: escape persecution by the Romans, and then they fell asleep,

832
00:46:36,719 --> 00:46:39,279
Speaker 3: and then they woke up. I don't know. It's a

833
00:46:39,360 --> 00:46:41,359
Speaker 3: kind of a rip van Winkle thing. They woke up

834
00:46:41,480 --> 00:46:42,520
Speaker 3: many many years later.

835
00:46:42,719 --> 00:46:45,400
Speaker 1: We talked about them in our episode on time travel

836
00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:49,760
Speaker 1: fiction and what are some of the arguments for early

837
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:56,120
Speaker 1: precursors to science fiction time travel stories. It's, in my opinion,

838
00:46:56,280 --> 00:46:58,640
Speaker 1: a pretty cool episode. So I would recommend folks go

839
00:46:58,640 --> 00:47:00,800
Speaker 1: back and listen to it. Yeah, because it's like the

840
00:47:01,160 --> 00:47:03,719
Speaker 1: idea of time travel, like where not only where does

841
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:06,240
Speaker 1: it come from, but how far back were we thinking

842
00:47:06,280 --> 00:47:09,160
Speaker 1: about things like it? How far back did we think

843
00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:13,759
Speaker 1: about time in the same way. Because nowadays, with via

844
00:47:13,840 --> 00:47:17,200
Speaker 1: time travel fiction, we think about this sort of thing

845
00:47:17,239 --> 00:47:19,400
Speaker 1: all the time. If I could go back and change this,

846
00:47:19,760 --> 00:47:21,480
Speaker 1: if I could go into the future and see what

847
00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:22,239
Speaker 1: this will look like.

848
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:25,800
Speaker 3: I have fun memories of that episode.

849
00:47:26,040 --> 00:47:28,919
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now you can actually go back in time

850
00:47:28,960 --> 00:47:31,280
Speaker 1: and listen to it. That's the crazy thing about podcasts.

851
00:47:41,480 --> 00:47:45,840
Speaker 3: So there's another quick literary connection I wanted to discuss

852
00:47:45,880 --> 00:47:48,600
Speaker 3: that I thought was interesting. This one I came across

853
00:47:48,760 --> 00:47:55,040
Speaker 3: in a post by the Royal Meteorological Society of Great Britain.

854
00:47:55,520 --> 00:47:58,719
Speaker 3: The post is called behind the Folklore Saint Swithin's Day?

855
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:02,040
Speaker 3: Does reign today really mean a ruined summer? This is

856
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:06,280
Speaker 3: from July fifteenth, twenty nineteen. This post includes a quote

857
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:11,840
Speaker 3: from a poem called Trivia or the Art of Walking

858
00:48:11,880 --> 00:48:14,919
Speaker 3: the Streets of London by the British writer John Gay,

859
00:48:15,080 --> 00:48:19,680
Speaker 3: published in seventeen sixteen. I knew nothing of this work beforehand,

860
00:48:19,719 --> 00:48:21,920
Speaker 3: but I looked it up and it had some very

861
00:48:21,920 --> 00:48:26,200
Speaker 3: funny parts. It's a satirical poem giving advice about how

862
00:48:26,239 --> 00:48:29,480
Speaker 3: to go for walks around the city, including everything from

863
00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:33,440
Speaker 3: what to where, to strategies for avoiding common dangers and

864
00:48:33,520 --> 00:48:36,040
Speaker 3: obstacles in the streets. You know, how not to get

865
00:48:36,080 --> 00:48:39,120
Speaker 3: a chamber pot port on your head or whatever. And

866
00:48:39,520 --> 00:48:43,719
Speaker 3: here's one couplet from it. When suffocating mists obscure the

867
00:48:43,800 --> 00:48:48,520
Speaker 3: morn let thy worst wig long used to storms be worn. Ah,

868
00:48:48,600 --> 00:48:52,720
Speaker 3: and it rhymes too, Yeah, no rhymes, that's just good advice.

869
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:53,760
Speaker 1: Yeah.

870
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:56,800
Speaker 3: But there is a passage that directly addresses the weather

871
00:48:56,920 --> 00:49:01,200
Speaker 3: predicting proverb of Saint Swithin, and also one that is

872
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:04,440
Speaker 3: about the Festival of Saint Paul as well, So there

873
00:49:04,440 --> 00:49:09,040
Speaker 3: are multiple weather predicting proverbs. So John Gay's poem goes

874
00:49:09,160 --> 00:49:14,000
Speaker 3: like this, all superstition from thy breast repel let, credulous

875
00:49:14,040 --> 00:49:17,719
Speaker 3: boys and prattling nurses tell how if the Festival of

876
00:49:17,760 --> 00:49:22,080
Speaker 3: Paul be clear, plenty from liberal horns shall strow the

877
00:49:22,160 --> 00:49:25,640
Speaker 3: ear when the dark skies dissolve in snow or rain,

878
00:49:25,840 --> 00:49:29,279
Speaker 3: the laboring hind shall yoke the steer in vain. But

879
00:49:29,719 --> 00:49:33,440
Speaker 3: if the threatening winds in tempest roar, then war shall

880
00:49:33,480 --> 00:49:37,880
Speaker 3: bathe her wasteful sword and gore. And then here's the

881
00:49:37,920 --> 00:49:40,279
Speaker 3: relevant part with Swien. This is the other half here.

882
00:49:40,760 --> 00:49:45,239
Speaker 3: How if on Swithin's feast the welkin lowers, I was like, what,

883
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:47,200
Speaker 3: I had to look that up, so that meaning dark

884
00:49:47,239 --> 00:49:51,399
Speaker 3: clouds gather. Basically, welkin is the sky lowers, I think

885
00:49:51,480 --> 00:49:54,160
Speaker 3: means like lowers, like it grows dark. If the sky

886
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:58,880
Speaker 3: grows dark, If on Swithin's feast the welkin lowers and

887
00:49:58,920 --> 00:50:04,000
Speaker 3: every penthouse with hasty showers twice twenty days, shall clouds

888
00:50:04,040 --> 00:50:08,120
Speaker 3: their fleeces drain and wash the pavements with incessant rain.

889
00:50:08,680 --> 00:50:12,680
Speaker 3: Let not such vulgar tales debase thy mind, nor Paul

890
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:17,360
Speaker 3: nor Swithen rules the clouds and wind? Oh sad to

891
00:50:17,480 --> 00:50:19,399
Speaker 3: end on that that kind of rhyme. That doesn't really

892
00:50:19,400 --> 00:50:22,480
Speaker 3: work anymore. It mind and paper, it kind of works

893
00:50:22,480 --> 00:50:25,840
Speaker 3: mind and wind. I wonder, did did mind sound like

894
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:28,560
Speaker 3: wind then? Or did wind sound like mind?

895
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:32,160
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's always the question, right, are you

896
00:50:32,160 --> 00:50:34,360
Speaker 1: gonna are you gonna actually try and make something like

897
00:50:34,400 --> 00:50:37,720
Speaker 1: this rhyme when you pronounce it and potentially sound foolish.

898
00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:41,320
Speaker 3: But so even in seventeen sixteen, this guy's well aware

899
00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:44,319
Speaker 3: of this. This proverb as like a common saying, but

900
00:50:44,400 --> 00:50:47,680
Speaker 3: he's saying, pay no attention, it's hogwash. In fact, I

901
00:50:47,719 --> 00:50:50,759
Speaker 3: couldn't find any older sources where people are saying this

902
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:53,880
Speaker 3: is a good. Yeah, this is good, it really works.

903
00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:56,360
Speaker 3: Every source I was finding on it was just people

904
00:50:56,440 --> 00:50:58,800
Speaker 3: hundreds of years ago saying this is stupid. It doesn't

905
00:50:58,840 --> 00:50:59,520
Speaker 3: make any sense.

906
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:02,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, because all you have to do is observe and

907
00:51:02,280 --> 00:51:03,839
Speaker 1: you don't need It's not one of these things where

908
00:51:03,840 --> 00:51:05,800
Speaker 1: you can just say, well, if you have the benefit

909
00:51:05,840 --> 00:51:08,759
Speaker 1: of long term record keeping, like no, it's like if

910
00:51:08,760 --> 00:51:12,200
Speaker 1: you've just tried it out more than once or even once,

911
00:51:12,239 --> 00:51:14,480
Speaker 1: you'd realize, you know, that didn't work, that actually wasn't

912
00:51:14,480 --> 00:51:15,240
Speaker 1: helpful advice.

913
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:17,480
Speaker 3: That's right. So here we come to the question does

914
00:51:17,520 --> 00:51:20,279
Speaker 3: it actually predict the weather? The short answer is no.

915
00:51:20,600 --> 00:51:23,200
Speaker 3: It is not a reliable guide, and you can easily

916
00:51:23,200 --> 00:51:25,279
Speaker 3: find lots of cases where it's wrong. In fact, if

917
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:29,600
Speaker 3: you're strict about it, it is always wrong. The Royal

918
00:51:29,640 --> 00:51:34,000
Speaker 3: Meteorological Society post points out quote since records began, not

919
00:51:34,160 --> 00:51:37,799
Speaker 3: a single forty day drought has occurred anywhere in the

920
00:51:37,920 --> 00:51:40,719
Speaker 3: UK during the summer months, and there has not been

921
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:44,800
Speaker 3: one instance at any time of the year of forty

922
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:48,520
Speaker 3: consecutive days of rainfall sunshine on Saint Swithin's day. In

923
00:51:48,640 --> 00:51:52,080
Speaker 3: Miami may well auger forty days of unbroken sunshine, but

924
00:51:52,160 --> 00:51:56,160
Speaker 3: in Blackpool it most assuredly does not. So the if

925
00:51:56,160 --> 00:51:59,800
Speaker 3: you're very strict about interpreting it, this never ever has happened,

926
00:52:00,160 --> 00:52:03,040
Speaker 3: never will happen. I mean maybe in a million years,

927
00:52:03,080 --> 00:52:04,320
Speaker 3: but never happens.

928
00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:07,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, once they build the dome or something.

929
00:52:07,160 --> 00:52:10,719
Speaker 3: You know. Now, if you're not as strict in interpreting it,

930
00:52:10,800 --> 00:52:14,080
Speaker 3: if you take it more as an indicator of general trends,

931
00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:17,160
Speaker 3: it often does hold true, though you can still find

932
00:52:17,239 --> 00:52:18,880
Speaker 3: lots of years where it does not.

933
00:52:19,400 --> 00:52:19,480
Speaker 2: So.

934
00:52:19,600 --> 00:52:22,360
Speaker 3: John Earl investigated this in the eighteen hundreds. In his

935
00:52:22,440 --> 00:52:25,720
Speaker 3: piece on it, he's like looking at almanacs, and he says,

936
00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:30,680
Speaker 3: quote in Hone's Everyday Book for July fifteenth, some observations

937
00:52:30,719 --> 00:52:33,680
Speaker 3: are quoted, tending to prove that though it will not

938
00:52:33,800 --> 00:52:37,880
Speaker 3: bear rigid examination, yet it is not totally unfounded. Among

939
00:52:37,960 --> 00:52:42,000
Speaker 3: other instances, these occur. In eighteen oh seven it proved wrong.

940
00:52:42,120 --> 00:52:44,840
Speaker 3: A rainy July fifteenth was followed by a dry time.

941
00:52:45,160 --> 00:52:47,520
Speaker 3: In eighteen oh eight it was wet, and the rule

942
00:52:47,560 --> 00:52:51,359
Speaker 3: came partially true. In eighteen eighteen and eighteen nineteen, July

943
00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:54,640
Speaker 3: fifteenth was dry and followed by dry weather. Of the

944
00:52:54,680 --> 00:52:57,880
Speaker 3: series eighteen oh seven to eighteen nineteen, it was generally

945
00:52:57,960 --> 00:53:01,360
Speaker 3: true enough, but in the wet summer of eighteen sixteen,

946
00:53:01,520 --> 00:53:05,160
Speaker 3: though the adage was literally verified. Yet the heaviest wet

947
00:53:05,239 --> 00:53:08,440
Speaker 3: fell before the fifteenth And Earl has a friend who

948
00:53:08,520 --> 00:53:12,080
Speaker 3: studies meteorology who tells him that, you know, really, the

949
00:53:12,080 --> 00:53:16,640
Speaker 3: only way people can believe this prognostication has predictive value

950
00:53:16,920 --> 00:53:21,160
Speaker 3: is by quote attention being given to the instances wherein

951
00:53:21,280 --> 00:53:24,319
Speaker 3: it fell true and neglect of the cases in which

952
00:53:24,360 --> 00:53:25,360
Speaker 3: the reverse occurred.

953
00:53:25,680 --> 00:53:27,840
Speaker 1: Ah, so sint that always the case?

954
00:53:28,000 --> 00:53:31,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, this would be once again our old friend confirmation bias,

955
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:34,840
Speaker 3: where you count the hits and you ignore the misses.

956
00:53:35,560 --> 00:53:38,160
Speaker 3: And you know, I think a lot of even outside

957
00:53:38,200 --> 00:53:42,520
Speaker 3: of weather prediction, just a lot of common sayings and

958
00:53:42,680 --> 00:53:47,280
Speaker 3: proverbs are regarded as wisdom in part on the basis

959
00:53:47,320 --> 00:53:51,960
Speaker 3: of confirmation bias. They're not actually true in all cases,

960
00:53:52,120 --> 00:53:56,200
Speaker 3: or sometimes even in most cases, but because we're already

961
00:53:56,239 --> 00:53:59,840
Speaker 3: familiar with a proverb propounding a rule or a pattern,

962
00:54:00,520 --> 00:54:04,560
Speaker 3: we notice events that conform to the rule and associate

963
00:54:04,640 --> 00:54:08,080
Speaker 3: them with the rule, and we tend to ignore events

964
00:54:08,120 --> 00:54:10,600
Speaker 3: that contradict the rule, or at least we don't mentally

965
00:54:10,640 --> 00:54:13,600
Speaker 3: associate them with the saying. So I was just thinking

966
00:54:13,640 --> 00:54:15,920
Speaker 3: of common sayings. One that came to mind for me

967
00:54:16,040 --> 00:54:20,080
Speaker 3: is absence makes the heart grow fonder. Seems very true, right,

968
00:54:20,520 --> 00:54:21,319
Speaker 3: seems very true?

969
00:54:21,480 --> 00:54:22,440
Speaker 1: Why people keep saying it?

970
00:54:22,560 --> 00:54:25,680
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah, being away from something or someone makes you

971
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:28,680
Speaker 3: yearn for that thing or that person. But there's also

972
00:54:28,719 --> 00:54:32,680
Speaker 3: a counter saying, out of sight out of mind. This

973
00:54:32,800 --> 00:54:36,360
Speaker 3: also seems true, even though it basically means exactly the opposite.

974
00:54:36,920 --> 00:54:40,080
Speaker 3: And I think the reality is that sometimes absence makes

975
00:54:40,080 --> 00:54:42,680
Speaker 3: the heart grow fonder, and sometimes it doesn't. And in

976
00:54:42,719 --> 00:54:45,560
Speaker 3: the cases where it does, it seems like it proves

977
00:54:45,640 --> 00:54:48,520
Speaker 3: the saying true, and in cases where it doesn't, it

978
00:54:48,600 --> 00:54:51,280
Speaker 3: just doesn't occur to us to count it against the proverb.

979
00:54:52,160 --> 00:54:55,160
Speaker 3: So maybe instead it just counts as confirmation of an

980
00:54:55,160 --> 00:54:58,160
Speaker 3: opposing proverb. Oh, out of sight, out of mind confirmed.

981
00:54:58,280 --> 00:55:00,719
Speaker 3: So like both are true even though they contradict.

982
00:55:01,120 --> 00:55:04,759
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, it's you're you're summoning a saying to make

983
00:55:04,880 --> 00:55:06,880
Speaker 1: sense of things that are happening in your life, or

984
00:55:06,920 --> 00:55:09,239
Speaker 1: maybe even serve as kind of a predictive model of

985
00:55:09,280 --> 00:55:14,120
Speaker 1: what might happen, you know, feeding the the the the

986
00:55:14,160 --> 00:55:17,759
Speaker 1: ever turning gears of the mind with these things. So yeah,

987
00:55:18,560 --> 00:55:21,000
Speaker 1: it's only important to you to whatever extent it backs

988
00:55:21,120 --> 00:55:24,280
Speaker 1: up your existing machinations. Yeah.

989
00:55:24,360 --> 00:55:27,080
Speaker 3: So, I think sayings like this are often they're not

990
00:55:27,480 --> 00:55:33,080
Speaker 3: really useful for predictive power. What they're actually used for

991
00:55:33,280 --> 00:55:38,680
Speaker 3: is a mental classification system for events in our lives.

992
00:55:39,239 --> 00:55:41,920
Speaker 3: They're more kind of like a filing system for our

993
00:55:41,960 --> 00:55:46,040
Speaker 3: own mental biography. You know, I can remember this event

994
00:55:46,120 --> 00:55:49,719
Speaker 3: that happened here under the kind of salience tag of

995
00:55:49,800 --> 00:55:52,960
Speaker 3: absence makes the heart grow fonder, and this other event

996
00:55:53,080 --> 00:55:56,000
Speaker 3: I can remember under the salience tag of out of sight,

997
00:55:56,080 --> 00:56:00,120
Speaker 3: out of mind. Yeah. But anyway, back to the weather. So,

998
00:56:00,120 --> 00:56:03,080
Speaker 3: while it's certainly not true all of the time, maybe

999
00:56:03,120 --> 00:56:06,879
Speaker 3: not even most of the time, when taken as a

1000
00:56:06,920 --> 00:56:10,200
Speaker 3: predictor of trends on average, I think you could argue

1001
00:56:10,200 --> 00:56:12,720
Speaker 3: the sw within proverb has a little bit of truth

1002
00:56:12,800 --> 00:56:16,680
Speaker 3: to it, and there is interestingly actually a mechanism, a

1003
00:56:16,719 --> 00:56:20,720
Speaker 3: scientific mechanism we can point to that would explain why

1004
00:56:20,840 --> 00:56:23,560
Speaker 3: it sometimes has a little truth to it, and that

1005
00:56:23,719 --> 00:56:27,560
Speaker 3: is the jet stream. This is a point made by

1006
00:56:27,600 --> 00:56:32,480
Speaker 3: that post by the Royal Meteorological Society. So the post

1007
00:56:32,560 --> 00:56:35,640
Speaker 3: concludes quote the middle of July tends to be around

1008
00:56:35,640 --> 00:56:38,640
Speaker 3: the time that the jet stream settles into a relatively

1009
00:56:38,680 --> 00:56:42,080
Speaker 3: consistent pattern. If the jet stream lies north of the

1010
00:56:42,160 --> 00:56:45,600
Speaker 3: UK throughout the summer, continental high pressure is able to

1011
00:56:45,640 --> 00:56:49,800
Speaker 3: move in, bringing warmth and sunshine. If it sticks further south,

1012
00:56:50,080 --> 00:56:53,640
Speaker 3: Arctic air and Atlantic weather systems are likely to predominate,

1013
00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:59,360
Speaker 3: bringing colder, wetter weather. So to explain that a little

1014
00:56:59,360 --> 00:57:02,600
Speaker 3: bit more so, the jet stream is this fast moving

1015
00:57:02,760 --> 00:57:05,799
Speaker 3: current of air in the upper atmosphere above like nine

1016
00:57:05,800 --> 00:57:10,480
Speaker 3: thousand meters that typically flows from west to east. There

1017
00:57:10,480 --> 00:57:12,959
Speaker 3: are four main jet streams on Earth. You've got two

1018
00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:16,360
Speaker 3: at the boundary of each polar region, in the North

1019
00:57:16,360 --> 00:57:18,600
Speaker 3: Pole and the South Pole, and then you've got two

1020
00:57:18,640 --> 00:57:22,800
Speaker 3: subtropical jet streams. The specific current that has the most

1021
00:57:22,840 --> 00:57:27,120
Speaker 3: influence on European weather is the northern polar jet stream.

1022
00:57:27,680 --> 00:57:32,560
Speaker 3: Jet streams are formed because of the temperature difference between

1023
00:57:32,640 --> 00:57:36,040
Speaker 3: two big masses of air, in this case, the cold

1024
00:57:36,200 --> 00:57:40,120
Speaker 3: polar air and the warmer air of the northern mid latitudes.

1025
00:57:40,120 --> 00:57:43,720
Speaker 3: So you've got warmer air at lower latitudes colder air

1026
00:57:43,720 --> 00:57:46,920
Speaker 3: at higher latitudes, and there's a boundary point where they meet,

1027
00:57:47,200 --> 00:57:52,680
Speaker 3: and this boundary point creates strong horizontal pressure gradients in

1028
00:57:52,720 --> 00:57:56,720
Speaker 3: the upper atmosphere, in short, big differences in pressure between

1029
00:57:56,760 --> 00:57:59,840
Speaker 3: over here and over there. And these big differences in

1030
00:57:59,840 --> 00:58:03,480
Speaker 3: pressure mean there's a lot of moving air in the

1031
00:58:03,520 --> 00:58:07,560
Speaker 3: upper atmosphere. The moving air at this boundary gets deflected

1032
00:58:07,640 --> 00:58:10,160
Speaker 3: to the right in the northern hemisphere because of our

1033
00:58:10,200 --> 00:58:13,200
Speaker 3: old friend, the Coriolis effect. Because the Earth is spinning

1034
00:58:13,800 --> 00:58:18,160
Speaker 3: west to east, it deflects these movements to the right,

1035
00:58:18,520 --> 00:58:23,160
Speaker 3: which creates this powerful, fast moving river of air flowing

1036
00:58:23,360 --> 00:58:26,520
Speaker 3: west to east in the upper atmosphere and is going

1037
00:58:26,600 --> 00:58:30,720
Speaker 3: fast at speeds of several hundred miles per hour, and

1038
00:58:30,800 --> 00:58:34,080
Speaker 3: this is the northern polar jet stream. It often tends

1039
00:58:34,080 --> 00:58:37,040
Speaker 3: to flow right over or right around the British Isles.

1040
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:42,680
Speaker 3: So the position of this jet stream is largely determinative

1041
00:58:42,960 --> 00:58:46,640
Speaker 3: of Europe's weather If the jet stream is flowing in

1042
00:58:46,680 --> 00:58:51,440
Speaker 3: a relatively straight line across roughly the same latitude, it

1043
00:58:51,480 --> 00:58:55,040
Speaker 3: can mean somewhat erratic weather actually, because what that means

1044
00:58:55,120 --> 00:58:58,360
Speaker 3: is it will be pulling regular storms in from the

1045
00:58:58,400 --> 00:59:02,000
Speaker 3: Atlantic on a repeating basis, and then they'll be punctuated

1046
00:59:02,040 --> 00:59:06,040
Speaker 3: by periods of calm in between. However, if it's a

1047
00:59:06,080 --> 00:59:09,200
Speaker 3: more squiggly line, think of like a meandering river, kind

1048
00:59:09,200 --> 00:59:11,560
Speaker 3: of looping up and down. If it's shaped more like that,

1049
00:59:11,680 --> 00:59:15,760
Speaker 3: which it sometimes is, Britain's weather will depend more on

1050
00:59:16,080 --> 00:59:20,400
Speaker 3: which side of the squiggly line it ends up lassoed into.

1051
00:59:21,160 --> 00:59:23,880
Speaker 3: So if it is trapped in part of a bend

1052
00:59:23,960 --> 00:59:28,000
Speaker 3: reaching up from the south, this will tend to mean warm,

1053
00:59:28,240 --> 00:59:31,720
Speaker 3: dry weather, kind of a more Mediterranean weather system, and

1054
00:59:31,880 --> 00:59:34,800
Speaker 3: if it is part of a bend curling down from

1055
00:59:34,840 --> 00:59:38,520
Speaker 3: the north, this will usually mean Britain gets cool, rainy

1056
00:59:38,560 --> 00:59:41,720
Speaker 3: weather driven by the polar air mass coming in from

1057
00:59:41,800 --> 00:59:46,600
Speaker 3: the sea. And these wavy patterns can sometimes park over

1058
00:59:46,720 --> 00:59:50,240
Speaker 3: an area like Britain for several weeks at a time,

1059
00:59:50,720 --> 00:59:55,560
Speaker 3: leading to somewhat stable patterns which, while not exactly conforming

1060
00:59:55,640 --> 00:59:59,680
Speaker 3: to Swien's forty days prediction, they can approximate it. So

1061
00:59:59,760 --> 01:00:01,760
Speaker 3: there it is a little bit of something going on

1062
01:00:01,840 --> 01:00:03,680
Speaker 3: here based in real weather patterns.

1063
01:00:04,240 --> 01:00:06,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you can imagine somebody setting out in

1064
01:00:06,760 --> 01:00:10,120
Speaker 1: the weeks following July fifteenth, it's raining, they're wearing their

1065
01:00:10,160 --> 01:00:14,880
Speaker 1: old wig, and yeah, it's conforming to the legend enough

1066
01:00:14,960 --> 01:00:17,000
Speaker 1: that they might summon the legend in their mind as

1067
01:00:17,040 --> 01:00:18,360
Speaker 1: they look up at the rainy.

1068
01:00:18,160 --> 01:00:20,920
Speaker 3: Sky, right, And that could well be because at that

1069
01:00:21,080 --> 01:00:24,680
Speaker 3: time Britain is trapped in one of these polar troughs

1070
01:00:24,720 --> 01:00:27,080
Speaker 3: where the jet stream loops down under it, so they're

1071
01:00:27,080 --> 01:00:29,640
Speaker 3: getting a lot of northern air coming in, bringing in

1072
01:00:29,880 --> 01:00:33,400
Speaker 3: the you know, cool wet stuff off the sea.

1073
01:00:33,440 --> 01:00:35,280
Speaker 1: And you know, it's one of those things where I

1074
01:00:35,320 --> 01:00:37,520
Speaker 1: mean not to analyze it too deeply because I think

1075
01:00:38,400 --> 01:00:41,160
Speaker 1: in many cases we're probably dealing with a very casual

1076
01:00:41,200 --> 01:00:45,400
Speaker 1: association with the legend like that. But still little things

1077
01:00:45,480 --> 01:00:49,840
Speaker 1: like that can make it seem like there's something or

1078
01:00:49,880 --> 01:00:53,160
Speaker 1: somebody in control, like there is some level of control

1079
01:00:53,440 --> 01:00:57,040
Speaker 1: in a life and in a world that seems chaotic

1080
01:00:57,080 --> 01:00:59,960
Speaker 1: at times and can be quite scary, and it's unpartict

1081
01:01:00,080 --> 01:01:03,000
Speaker 1: to build nature, but you can sort of even just

1082
01:01:03,080 --> 01:01:06,200
Speaker 1: casually think, oh, it's just like that legend. Then it

1083
01:01:06,200 --> 01:01:10,280
Speaker 1: feels like there's some month there's some bumpers on the lane,

1084
01:01:10,320 --> 01:01:10,600
Speaker 1: you know.

1085
01:01:10,840 --> 01:01:15,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, totally. So this RMS post they end with

1086
01:01:15,120 --> 01:01:18,400
Speaker 3: a revised version of the Swithin poem that's even clunkier.

1087
01:01:18,560 --> 01:01:21,680
Speaker 3: Not even trying really to scan at this point, but

1088
01:01:21,840 --> 01:01:24,400
Speaker 3: this is what they come up with. They say, Saint

1089
01:01:24,480 --> 01:01:28,920
Speaker 3: Swithin's Day, if thou dost rain for forty days relatively unsettled,

1090
01:01:29,040 --> 01:01:32,080
Speaker 3: there's a fair chance it will remain. That sounds almost

1091
01:01:32,120 --> 01:01:35,640
Speaker 3: kind of Yoda issue. And then Saint Swithin's Day, if

1092
01:01:35,640 --> 01:01:38,920
Speaker 3: that'll be fair for forty days a northerly jet stream

1093
01:01:39,040 --> 01:01:42,720
Speaker 3: might result in some fairly decent spells, but then again

1094
01:01:43,120 --> 01:01:43,640
Speaker 3: it might not.

1095
01:01:44,280 --> 01:01:46,920
Speaker 1: You know who could have made this work Rocky ericson

1096
01:01:47,120 --> 01:01:47,840
Speaker 1: Oh my god.

1097
01:01:47,960 --> 01:01:51,920
Speaker 3: Yes, he could cram so many words into a line

1098
01:01:52,040 --> 01:01:53,320
Speaker 3: like yeah.

1099
01:01:53,120 --> 01:01:55,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, you think of the lyrics to if you have

1100
01:01:55,120 --> 01:01:59,240
Speaker 1: ghosts that. Yeah, this could totally work within the context of.

1101
01:01:59,200 --> 01:02:01,680
Speaker 3: That objects move without wind blowing from the newspaper to

1102
01:02:01,720 --> 01:02:02,040
Speaker 3: the door.

1103
01:02:02,360 --> 01:02:03,640
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1104
01:02:03,680 --> 01:02:06,240
Speaker 3: Okay, well that's all I've got on Swithin, Saint Swithin's

1105
01:02:06,320 --> 01:02:07,120
Speaker 3: Day and the weather.

1106
01:02:07,760 --> 01:02:09,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, to bring it back to Rocky Erickson.

1107
01:02:09,920 --> 01:02:14,680
Speaker 1: I definitely check out his music if you were at

1108
01:02:14,720 --> 01:02:16,960
Speaker 1: all interested in anything we've said about him. The thing

1109
01:02:17,000 --> 01:02:19,000
Speaker 1: is you've probably heard his music before and you just

1110
01:02:19,040 --> 01:02:23,880
Speaker 1: hadn't realized it. I was watching The Wednesday Show about

1111
01:02:23,880 --> 01:02:26,880
Speaker 1: Wednsday Adams on Netflix with the Family recently, and in

1112
01:02:26,920 --> 01:02:30,440
Speaker 1: season two there's an episode where they drop Rocky Ericson's

1113
01:02:30,480 --> 01:02:34,000
Speaker 1: I Walked with the Zombie's. It's a pretty well known

1114
01:02:34,080 --> 01:02:36,360
Speaker 1: track of his, even if you're not aware of Rocky

1115
01:02:36,480 --> 01:02:39,520
Speaker 1: Ericson like that one's been used in a number of things,

1116
01:02:39,560 --> 01:02:41,400
Speaker 1: and like a number of his songs, he's kind of

1117
01:02:41,440 --> 01:02:43,600
Speaker 1: a I think he's one of those artists that is

1118
01:02:43,600 --> 01:02:46,480
Speaker 1: often kind of a musician's musician, you know. So his

1119
01:02:46,480 --> 01:02:48,840
Speaker 1: his songs have been covered a lot by folks that

1120
01:02:48,920 --> 01:02:51,200
Speaker 1: were inspired by his music.

1121
01:02:51,480 --> 01:02:54,720
Speaker 3: I'd say his best to known song is probably the

1122
01:02:54,760 --> 01:02:57,320
Speaker 3: one he did with the thirteenth thirteenth Floor Elevators, is

1123
01:02:57,480 --> 01:02:59,680
Speaker 3: the first track off their first album called You're Gonna

1124
01:02:59,680 --> 01:03:01,560
Speaker 3: Miss Me. A lot of people have heard that one.

1125
01:03:01,680 --> 01:03:05,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good one, and I think it

1126
01:03:05,720 --> 01:03:07,560
Speaker 1: was that the tie also the title of the documentary

1127
01:03:07,600 --> 01:03:10,880
Speaker 1: about him. Yes, yes, it was Yeah, solid track, but

1128
01:03:11,400 --> 01:03:13,640
Speaker 1: not as I mean, not as rocking and not and

1129
01:03:13,720 --> 01:03:16,520
Speaker 1: certainly not horror tame like the later Many.

1130
01:03:16,320 --> 01:03:19,520
Speaker 3: Of the later songs were I'm tempted to talk about

1131
01:03:19,560 --> 01:03:21,920
Speaker 3: May ninth, nineteen seventy six, when I looked up and

1132
01:03:22,000 --> 01:03:23,720
Speaker 3: nothing significant happened that day.

1133
01:03:26,080 --> 01:03:27,480
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're going to go and close it

1134
01:03:27,520 --> 01:03:29,400
Speaker 1: out here, but we just like to remind everyone that

1135
01:03:29,440 --> 01:03:31,440
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily the Science and

1136
01:03:31,480 --> 01:03:34,880
Speaker 1: Culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On

1137
01:03:34,920 --> 01:03:37,280
Speaker 1: Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on Fridays

1138
01:03:37,280 --> 01:03:39,280
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about

1139
01:03:39,320 --> 01:03:42,880
Speaker 1: a weird film on Weird House Cinema wherever you get

1140
01:03:42,920 --> 01:03:46,680
Speaker 1: the podcast, where we just asked that you subscribe, rate,

1141
01:03:46,760 --> 01:03:50,240
Speaker 1: and review. We don't always really hammer this home, but

1142
01:03:50,600 --> 01:03:52,400
Speaker 1: these are things that really help us out. Make sure

1143
01:03:52,440 --> 01:03:55,760
Speaker 1: you've subscribed, rate and review the show. It helps ensure

1144
01:03:55,800 --> 01:03:58,240
Speaker 1: that we continue to put these episodes out for your

1145
01:03:58,240 --> 01:03:58,960
Speaker 1: listening pleasure.

1146
01:03:59,360 --> 01:04:03,280
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1147
01:04:03,600 --> 01:04:05,120
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1148
01:04:05,120 --> 01:04:07,720
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest

1149
01:04:07,760 --> 01:04:09,800
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello.

1150
01:04:10,280 --> 01:04:12,880
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

1151
01:04:12,920 --> 01:04:21,919
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

1152
01:04:22,040 --> 01:04:24,960
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1153
01:04:25,040 --> 01:04:27,840
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1154
01:04:28,000 --> 01:04:44,760
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.