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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it

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Speaker 2: is Cat Week here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 2: So chosen because August eighth is apparently International Cat Day,

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Speaker 2: or has been since around two thousand and two, thanks

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Speaker 2: to the International Fund for Animal Welfare that's IFAW dot org.

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Speaker 2: They're involved in a vast array of animal welfare and

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Speaker 2: conservation products around the world, and that includes.

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Speaker 3: Cats and telling you when it's a cat related holiday.

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Speaker 2: That's right, right. I believe International Dog Day is actually

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Speaker 2: later in the month. So if some of you out

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Speaker 2: there are like, well, we need equal time for dogs,

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Speaker 2: write in and demand it and we can do the

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Speaker 2: same treatment for dogs. We have tons of dog related

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Speaker 2: topic ideas that we haven't gotten to yet.

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Speaker 3: Now wait, somehow we decided we're doing a whole week

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Speaker 3: of cat themed stuff. What's going on? Where'd that come from?

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Speaker 2: Rob? Well, just I like the idea of doing theme weeks.

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Speaker 2: So we actually got a couple other theme weeks related

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Speaker 2: to other things that are not pets. So I don't know,

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Speaker 2: I like a good theme keeps us disciplined. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: So you know, if listeners out there have any ideas

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Speaker 2: for other theme weeks that you would like write in

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Speaker 2: and let us know. But today is going to be

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Speaker 2: about cats. All the episodes this week are about cats,

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Speaker 2: one way or another, and in today's episode, we're going

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Speaker 2: to return to a topic that we previously discussed with

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Speaker 2: a focus on Japanese traditions supernatural cats, only this time

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Speaker 2: we're going to draw from the rich folk traditions of

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Speaker 2: the British Isles. They have quite a few to select from.

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Speaker 2: We're not going to be able to get to them all,

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Speaker 2: of course, but we've picked out a few of them here.

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Speaker 2: And we should note that, of course, as far as

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Speaker 2: the house cat goes in Britain, these seem to date

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Speaker 2: back at least to the Roman occupation. And then of

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Speaker 2: course then we also have wildcats in the British Isles

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Speaker 2: as well, and those of course predate the Romans, and

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Speaker 2: so a lot of the stories we're going to be

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Speaker 2: talking about here today, you can kind of, like I guess,

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Speaker 2: you can sort of pick and choose, like how much

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Speaker 2: of this is inspired by traditions involving the domesticated cat.

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Speaker 2: How much of this is involving traditions about wildcats, and

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Speaker 2: then you know the melding of the two.

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Speaker 3: That gets especially funny when some of these monster cat

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Speaker 3: stories do not specify the size.

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Speaker 2: Of the cat.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, So throughout research for this episode, you know, in

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Speaker 3: learning about cats that killed one hundred and eighty men

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Speaker 3: or killed famous folk heroes, I certainly was in a

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Speaker 3: mindset of like the Beast of Cayirbannag from Monty Python

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Speaker 3: in The Holy Grail, where it's a regular size bunny

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Speaker 3: that attacks and kills. I was thinking about a regular

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Speaker 3: sized cat.

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Speaker 2: The sources don't say that. Yeah, I think with a

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Speaker 2: lot of these stories, you have to sort of think

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Speaker 2: about these varying inspirations. Like you can definitely think of

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Speaker 2: about various actual wildcats. You can then think about sort

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Speaker 2: of cryptids and wildcats that were supposed to exist or

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Speaker 2: thought to exist by some, and then of course just

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Speaker 2: purely mythological imaginings as well. But even if you're just

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Speaker 2: limiting things to the domestic cat, being around a domestic

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Speaker 2: cat is in and of itself kind of a contemplation

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Speaker 2: of these different dimensions, because a domestic cat that never

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Speaker 2: leaves your home. At times acts like this comforting little

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Speaker 2: snuggle buddy, other times like a vicious hunter, other times

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Speaker 2: like some sort of strange specter of the night, eyes

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Speaker 2: twinkling in the dark. So you know that experience alone

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Speaker 2: lends itself to a lot of these ideas.

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Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't tell you this yet, but just yesterday

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Speaker 3: last evening, my daughter for the first time got too

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Speaker 3: full on like hold a kitty cat.

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Speaker 2: Oh.

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Speaker 3: She's been very cat brained for some time now, at

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Speaker 3: least the past six months to a year or sometime,

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Speaker 3: and that she thinks about cats a lot, talks about

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Speaker 3: them a lot, and of course sees them sometimes when

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Speaker 3: we visit friends who have cats. But last night we

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Speaker 3: were walking. We were out on a walk in her

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Speaker 3: neighborhood and a neighbor who we know has a cat

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Speaker 3: because she walks around the neighborhood with the cat in

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Speaker 3: a mesh backpack kind of carrying it. If you've seen

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Speaker 3: one of these, yeah, it's like a little sort of

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Speaker 3: playpen with mesh, So she's seen the cat before that way.

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Speaker 3: But our neighbor brought the cat out for her to hold,

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Speaker 3: and she just sat there beaming like her eyes literally

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Speaker 3: were emitting light. It was a very special time, but

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Speaker 3: I was but I was thinking about monster cats while

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Speaker 3: while that was going on, and just turning my mind over.

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Speaker 3: You know what savagery lay in the intentions of this beautiful,

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Speaker 3: pitiful little creature in my you know two year old

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Speaker 3: daughter's arms.

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Speaker 2: Well that they scratched, so there is always the threat

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Speaker 2: of the scratch. This one was being gentle. All right. Well,

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Speaker 2: I want to start by talking about a particular cat

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Speaker 2: that I actually don't have a lot on this one,

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Speaker 2: but it's going to lead into some more lengthy discussions.

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Speaker 2: But there's one that comes to us from Celtic traditions

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Speaker 2: that is known as the cat she. It looks like

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Speaker 2: catsith as it's often spelled, but I'm to understand this

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Speaker 2: is pronounced cat she or something close to that that

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Speaker 2: I'm unable to actually capture. So this is sometimes described

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Speaker 2: as a black cat that is about the size of

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Speaker 2: a large dog, and it's said to have a white

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Speaker 2: mark on its front, and visual depictions of this it's

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Speaker 2: often it's often a white mark on the cat's chest.

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Speaker 2: According to Carol Rose and her Monster Encyclopedia books, it's

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Speaker 2: a rough, bristly creature and it's often seen arching its back,

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Speaker 2: so you know, classic Halloween cat scenario here, and she

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Speaker 2: points out that in scottis Highland traditions this is sometimes

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Speaker 2: thought to be the animal for of a witch. And

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Speaker 2: on that note, I do want to drive home that

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Speaker 2: a lot of the cat traditions in the British Isles,

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Speaker 2: and this implies elsewhere in the world too. Eventually a

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Speaker 2: lot of these pre existing pre Christian traditions eventually get

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Speaker 2: wound up in witchcraft lore that comes about much later.

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Speaker 2: So you know, these ideas of which is familiar as

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Speaker 2: being cats and so forth.

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Speaker 3: The grimalkin and stuff like that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And at times it can be difficult to

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Speaker 2: sort of remove all of that and trying to get

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Speaker 2: at the the the much older ideas of various supernatural

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Speaker 2: cat like beings. Now, as far as the cat she

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Speaker 2: itself goes, I've been having a hard time finding solid

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Speaker 2: sources for these traditions, and this can this is often

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Speaker 2: the case with you know, folk traditions. What are folk traditions?

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Speaker 2: They are often alive and carried on the tongue and

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Speaker 2: not always courted or recorded all that well in the

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Speaker 2: written form. But the cat she is sometimes associated with

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Speaker 2: the theft of the soul from the newly dead. Sometimes

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Speaker 2: the lore of nine Lives is mentioned when talking about

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Speaker 2: the cat she and again, like everything supernatural involving cats,

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Speaker 2: in these parts, it ends up factoring in details of witches,

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Speaker 2: and they're familiar as much later now. A related creature

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Speaker 2: that Rose brings up, though, is one that she refers

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Speaker 2: to as big Ears, a demonic cat with glowing yellow

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Speaker 2: eyes that in Highland traditions she says was summoned via

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Speaker 2: Satanic seventeenth century cat sacrifices known as the tam. Now

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Speaker 2: she uses the word Satanic here, and I have no

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Speaker 2: doubt that this is how some sources end up describing it,

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Speaker 2: because again you get into the Christian tradition and the

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Speaker 2: witchcraft persecution era, and it all gets retold and reframed.

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Speaker 2: But apparently the Taguram might be more properly thought of

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Speaker 2: as an older Gaelic divination ceremony that when you dig

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Speaker 2: into it it often involves a hide and a river

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Speaker 2: bank or a waterfall, these implements used in order to

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Speaker 2: seek the guidance of an oracle, and then other times

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Speaker 2: it does involve the summoning of a supernatural cat. One

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Speaker 2: of the sources I was looking at here for this

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Speaker 2: is a paper from twenty ten by Andrew E. M.

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Speaker 2: Wiseman titled Catterwauling and demon Raising the Ancient Right of

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Speaker 2: the Tegurum. This was published in Scottish Studies thirty five

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Speaker 2: and it gets into a great deal of detail here.

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Speaker 2: If anyone out there wants to do a much deeper

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Speaker 2: dive into this topic, I recommend this paper.

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Speaker 1: So.

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Speaker 2: Wiseman discusses that historically authors tended to associate this particular

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Speaker 2: ride with the Isle of Sky, and at least one

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Speaker 2: historic author described it as a practice of an extinguished

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Speaker 2: race of wicked people. To summarize, so, it seems that

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Speaker 2: the hide ritual was all about seeking divination via a

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Speaker 2: person that has been forced into an altered state of

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Speaker 2: consciousness through some possible mix of sensory deprivation and agitation.

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Speaker 2: So the individual would be covered with a hide sometimes

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Speaker 2: described as a fresh hide, so like freshly cut from

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Speaker 2: a cow or something. And then by putting this hide

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Speaker 2: on your body, you're somehow suspended between life and death. Goody.

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Speaker 2: And then you would be placed in a remote spot,

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Speaker 2: perhaps on a riverbank or near a roaring waterfall, and

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Speaker 2: then perhaps poked or beaten with sticks of a particular

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Speaker 2: sort of wood, essentially terrorized until the question may be

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Speaker 2: put to you because you have now reached the oracular state.

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Speaker 2: So you're in this altered, agitated state, and they're like, okay,

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Speaker 2: he's ready, now ask him what we need to know

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Speaker 2: about the future.

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Speaker 3: Interesting to imagine the practical pressure to and fabulate on

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Speaker 3: a person in that situation.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, In some ways, it's very different from our

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Speaker 2: modern ideas about altered states of consciousness, and even some

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Speaker 2: of the ancient ideas we may turn to involving oracles

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Speaker 2: and divination. You tend to think of an individual who's

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Speaker 2: in a very serene, calm environment. You don't think of

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Speaker 2: somebody wrapped in a hide and then beaten with sticks

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Speaker 2: on a river bank. But then again, there are countless

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Speaker 2: examples of altered states of consciousness that are achieved through

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Speaker 2: ritualistic means, both ancient and modern primitive that entail pain

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Speaker 2: or discomfort, So you know, there are other examples of this.

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Speaker 2: This is not something that stands entirely on its own here.

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Speaker 3: I guess the difference from the stories of that sort

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Speaker 3: that I'm familiar with is that would often be a

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Speaker 3: self imposed kind of denial of comfort or of pleasures.

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Speaker 3: You know, I think of hermits or people living in

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Speaker 3: a lifestyle who, yeah, they might get into another state

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Speaker 3: by fasting or by doing something of their own will,

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Speaker 3: But here it's being imposed externally. They put a hide

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Speaker 3: on you and people beat you a poke with sticks

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Speaker 3: and take you out to the lonely place. That just

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Speaker 3: feels like a totally different dynamic.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and this may just be my reading of it,

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Speaker 2: but I'm not entirely certain what degree of agency the

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Speaker 2: would be oracle here had, Like I don't know if

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Speaker 2: you were and maybe this is just completely unknown if

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Speaker 2: you were selected for it or you were asked to

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Speaker 2: do it, or just what was the selection process like

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Speaker 2: for this, right?

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Speaker 3: Is it like, you know, it's not going to be fun,

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Speaker 3: but it's what I have to do to generate the

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Speaker 3: knowledge of the future or the information from the gods.

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Speaker 3: Or is it like this is what we do to

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Speaker 3: a prisoner to get knowledge of the future from them.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so you can you can imagine it breaking

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Speaker 2: down in either direction. But some historians also associate this

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Speaker 2: or a similar practice with the Welsh, and it looks like.

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Speaker 2: However you slice it, it certainly does seem to be

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Speaker 2: a pre Christian, perhaps Druidic practice. So I want to

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Speaker 2: read a quote here from Wisman where he sort of

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Speaker 2: summarizes some of these ideas about the tagaram. He says,

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Speaker 2: quote one can theorize that the methods employed in performing

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Speaker 2: the tagaram cause sensory deprivation or attenuation, and that this

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Speaker 2: in turn caused heightened mental awareness or consciousness, thus inducing

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Speaker 2: a trance like meditation receptive to higher or preternatural intelligences.

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Speaker 2: This type of method is common enough in shamanistic operations,

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Speaker 2: where there is need to heighten concentration to dull normal

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Speaker 2: sensory input control, breathing, and so forth, in order for

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Speaker 2: the desired effect to occur an alternate, usually higher state

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Speaker 2: of consciousness. Such a type of process may have in

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Speaker 2: fact brought the practitioner into contact with the workings of

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Speaker 2: the subconsciousness or higher self rather than incorporeal element.

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Speaker 3: Right, and this will be a familiar theme to longtime

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Speaker 3: listeners of this show. You know, there are plenty of

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Speaker 3: studies of different ways that people can achieve altered states

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Speaker 3: of consciousness, even basically psychedelic experiences without the use of drugs.

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Speaker 3: You know, you don't necessarily have to take acid or

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Speaker 3: mushrooms to induce hallucinations, and an otherwise mentally typical person

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Speaker 3: you can do it. It can happen with certain kinds of

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Speaker 3: sensory deprivation or certain kinds of sensory stimulation. We've talked

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Speaker 3: about how common it is for people to have hallucinations

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Speaker 3: if they simply look in a mirror in a dark

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Speaker 3: room for long enough or Yeah, sensory deprivation going into

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Speaker 3: total darkness will tend to cause hallucinations over time. Now,

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Speaker 3: of course, this is not necessarily talking about hallucinations. This

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Speaker 3: is just talking about various sorts of mental phenomena. Thinking

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Speaker 3: you're receiving messages or something. But that seems like you

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Speaker 3: could work by a similar mechanism.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I can also imagine this. This is taking

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Speaker 2: off as a new trend in Silicon Valley with vous

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Speaker 2: highly placed individuals. Instead of microdos thing psilocymin they just

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Speaker 2: they wrap themselves up very loosely in a hide every

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Speaker 2: morning and are at least lightly tapped.

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Speaker 3: With a stick, have their inns poked them.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, so that's the hide side of the

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Speaker 4: ritual of the of the takaram.

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Speaker 2: But what about the cats? Yes, there is also the

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Speaker 2: summoning of cats, and Wiseman acknowledges that this practice is

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Speaker 2: not easily set alongside the hide rights without a fair

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Speaker 2: amount of work. So it does seem rather it's rather different.

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Speaker 2: And one way that he describes it is kind of

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Speaker 2: it's another rite that you could do sometimes to check

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Speaker 2: the work of the hide ritual. So like, we put

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Speaker 2: this individual through all this and we got them to

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Speaker 2: the oracular state, we ask them this question about the

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Speaker 2: future or about the you know, the will of the

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Speaker 2: gods or god, what have you. They gave us an answer,

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Speaker 2: But how do we know that is correct? Is there

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Speaker 2: perhaps another inhuman method that we could turn to in

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Speaker 2: order to also ask the question, and then we can

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Speaker 2: compare the answers. Okay, trust, but verify? Yes. Now, I

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Speaker 2: want to issue content warning here though I'm going to

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Speaker 2: be discussing historic animal cruelty and sacrifice in this section.

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Speaker 2: I absolutely understand if you want to skip ahead maybe

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Speaker 2: five minutes or so here, though I will keep descriptions

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Speaker 2: as PG as possible. Animal cruelty is indefensible, especially in

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Speaker 2: its most overt forms, but in cases such as this,

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Speaker 2: in which historical peoples seem to have engaged in it

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Speaker 2: for religio magical purposes, I imagine we should at least

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Speaker 2: try to place it within the context of the times

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Speaker 2: and try to imagine the perceived stakes involved. Again, none

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Speaker 2: of that makes it any easier to swallow, though. All right,

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Speaker 2: so you've been warned, I'm going to proceed here. So

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Speaker 2: what we're talking about here is go ahead and pull

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Speaker 2: off the band aid, roasting a live cat over a

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Speaker 2: fire after it has been like pierced, skewered through in

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Speaker 2: a way so as to not hit any vital organs, supposedly,

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Speaker 2: and you can also see why this practice was easily

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Speaker 2: interpreted within the context of witchcraft and devil worship as well,

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Speaker 2: like the sacrifice of an animal, the use of fire,

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Speaker 2: and so forth. But the idea here boiling it down.

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Speaker 2: And there are many different versions of this and many

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Speaker 2: different stories that involve it, but the basic idea seems

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Speaker 2: to be that by torturing like a small normal cat,

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Speaker 2: this might be like a wild cat that you've that

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Speaker 2: you've you've caught. By tormenting it, you would summon a

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Speaker 2: much larger, supernatural cat out of the darkness along with

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Speaker 2: its smaller kin, and then the question might be put

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Speaker 2: to this great cat or this king of cats in

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Speaker 2: exchange for the alleviation of the sacrificial cats suffering.

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Speaker 3: WHOA That is grim logic but interesting. Yeah, yeah, that

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Speaker 3: you would think it worked that way, that the small

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Speaker 3: and pitiful beasts have large and magical patrons or cousins,

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Speaker 3: and that you can you can summon them to sort

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Speaker 3: of investigate the suffering of their kin.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, one thing, the one thing that I don't

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Speaker 2: have an answer to though, is, Okay, we've in talking

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Speaker 2: about the right involving the hide, carrying that out, You're

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Speaker 2: probably you're you're dealing with a human being, So you're

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Speaker 2: going to reach a point where that human being tells

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Speaker 2: you something. They are going to answer your question, either

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Speaker 2: because they've reached some state of altered consciousness or because

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Speaker 2: they simply want you to stop perhaps hitting them with

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Speaker 2: a stick, or they don't want to wear the hide anymore.

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Speaker 2: With this, I mean, you're not going to actually summon

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Speaker 2: a great supernatural cat. You cannot summon that which does

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Speaker 2: not exist. I mean, I guess there are various ways

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Speaker 2: you could slice this. Maybe again, you're it's involving the

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Speaker 2: human imagination, Maybe that it involves just speaking to the

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Speaker 2: night and imagine the answer. Maybe it is a situation

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Speaker 2: where the calls of a cat that is being tormented

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Speaker 2: does call to other cats in the vicinity, and you

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Speaker 2: might see them or hear them and then somehow interpret

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Speaker 2: that for your oracle. I'm not sure.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't have any special insight about this, but

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Speaker 3: my but my opriori guess would be that it would

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Speaker 3: it would yet again involve like somebody would be translating

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Speaker 3: from this being. You know, you might have a priest

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Speaker 3: or shaman of some type of figure who's saying like, ah, yeah,

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Speaker 3: here the here is the cat, and it's speaking to me,

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Speaker 3: and this is what it's saying.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So uh, I'm gonna have less to say about

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Speaker 2: the actual cat torment moving forward, because I think we've

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Speaker 2: discussed that enough. But the stories about it, some of

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Speaker 2: these are rather interesting, and again there are many different accounts,

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Speaker 2: many different stories. The one that Wiseman shares tells the

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Speaker 2: story of a man named Ewan who undergoes the ritual

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Speaker 2: of the cat in order to find out this and

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Speaker 2: this seems great ironic what amends he needs to do

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Speaker 2: in order to write his past misdeeds. It's like, I

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Speaker 2: feel like I've done some terrible things in the past.

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Speaker 2: What can I do to make those better? I'm going

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Speaker 2: to torture this cat so that I can find out.

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Speaker 3: It's like if going to confession and a Catholic church involved,

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Speaker 3: you know, like bashing the priest with a glass bottle.

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Speaker 3: It's like, Father, I have committed some kind of sin.

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Speaker 3: Sure what it is? Help me figure it out?

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Speaker 2: All right? So, in the context of the story here, yeah,

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Speaker 2: he turns to this this, this known right so that

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Speaker 2: he can find out what he needs to do. And

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Speaker 2: so he goes through the through all the steps, skewers

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Speaker 2: a cat, puts it over a fire, begins to slowly

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Speaker 2: roast this cat, which you know might be a Scottish

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Speaker 2: or European wildcat, but you know, I guess it doesn't

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Speaker 2: particularly matter. But he's he's torturing this cat, roasting it,

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Speaker 2: roasting it over the fire. It's turning over the fire

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Speaker 2: on a spit. And this does, in fact act draw

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Speaker 2: the attention of the Great King of the Cats and

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Speaker 2: his many feline attendants, and they kind of like swell

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Speaker 2: in number in the darkness outside of the hut where

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Speaker 2: he is carrying on with the spit and the tortured cat.

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Speaker 2: And interesting here it's described as a very tense ceremony.

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Speaker 2: So these cats have come with the intent to not

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Speaker 2: only free their fellow feline from torment, but to also

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Speaker 2: rip the human torture to bloody shreds.

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Speaker 3: Oh cat revenge.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's described here that Ewan is terrified as

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Speaker 2: he's doing this, like these death is awaiting him outside.

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Speaker 2: But he knows that he absolutely has to quote keep

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Speaker 2: turning the spit or he's doomed, Like if he stops

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Speaker 2: turning the spit, then the cats will just descend on him.

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Speaker 2: And so, and this reminds us of various you know,

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Speaker 2: supernatural accounts where there's some sort of ritual involved, like

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Speaker 2: not breaking the magic circle or else the creatures that

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Speaker 2: you have summoned will destroy you.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, don't open your eyes.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So he keeps turning it, and then he treats

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Speaker 2: with the King of the cats and he asks the cat, hey,

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Speaker 2: what amends can I make for my wrongs in the

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Speaker 2: past and maybe a rather recent past, And he's told

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Speaker 2: to build seven churches, and so he releases the tormented cat,

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Speaker 2: and then the cat horde depart with the tormented cat.

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Speaker 2: They jump into the river, and they.

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Speaker 3: All swim away into the river. Huh, we'll get back

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Speaker 3: to this, right, This will become a theme. Yeah, but

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Speaker 3: a cat owner is out there. If you had a

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Speaker 3: cat in distress, do you think the first place it

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Speaker 3: would likely jump to would be into the water?

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Speaker 2: Probably not so. Wiseman discusses that these rights may relate

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Speaker 2: to ancient worship of cat based deities among the pre

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Speaker 2: Christian Celts. He also writes that while the origins of

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Speaker 2: this ritual are obscure, there doesn't seem to be a

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Speaker 2: direct ancient source of the practice quote, there are too

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Speaker 2: many liminal elements within the tradition to dismiss it as

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Speaker 2: something which could be described as relatively new. It has

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Speaker 2: been argued that cats were venerated during pagan times, and

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Speaker 2: then during medieval times cats came to be associated with witchcraft.

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Speaker 2: He also notes that these practices and Christian era witchcraft

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Speaker 2: hysteria apparently resulted in large scale cat sacrifices that may

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Speaker 2: have actually increased the severity of the Black plague. For

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Speaker 2: when the cats have all been sacrificed. Who is going

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Speaker 2: to kill the rat that carries the flea? Ooh wow,

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Speaker 2: so interesting food for thought there. Now there's no mention

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Speaker 2: in Wise Men of Big Ears. I'm not entirely sure

401
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Speaker 2: where big Ears comes from, but I want to come

402
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Speaker 2: back to this idea of the king of the cats

403
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Speaker 2: sometimes given a name, particularly the name of Erosan son

404
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Speaker 2: of Arosan in Irish traditions, and in fact, William Butler

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Speaker 2: Yeates included minh of of Irasan in Irish fairy and

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Speaker 2: folk tales recounting the tale of Shan Shan, the Bard

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Speaker 2: and the King of the Cats.

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Speaker 3: Oh, okay, I've read a good bit of Yates over

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Speaker 3: the years, but I don't I don't know this one.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a This is a story that he

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Speaker 2: account that he collected from from other sources and includes

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Speaker 2: here in the book. And uh uh. He includes a

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Speaker 2: couple of cat stories. The other cat story has a

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Speaker 2: lot of humans blinding each other with with hot pokers,

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Speaker 2: and so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna get into

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Speaker 2: that one. But this one about Shan Shan is really good.

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Speaker 2: It's it's ritually amusing, pretty funny. Uh So I'm gonna

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Speaker 2: sort of summarize some elements of it here and also

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Speaker 2: read some quotes from Yates as well. Okay, so we

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Speaker 2: have shan Shan here. He's a moody and righteous poet

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Speaker 2: who has been invited to King Guari's banquet where all

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Speaker 2: the other poets of Ireland have gathered, and there's gonna

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Speaker 2: be a lot of feasting, you know, a lot of

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Speaker 2: one assumes a lot of song and poetry. But shan

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Speaker 2: Chan takes offense at how well the nobles are eating,

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Speaker 2: and you know, how nice everything is, and he ends

427
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Speaker 2: up refusing all food and drink and spends the time

428
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Speaker 2: sulking instead. The king learns about this, and he's like,

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Speaker 2: why is shan Chan over there sulking? And he's a

430
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Speaker 2: great poet. This is all about celebrating poetry. So he

431
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Speaker 2: calls for his own favorite server, the King's favorite server,

432
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Speaker 2: and says, bring this food to shan Chen, and he does,

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Speaker 2: and Shanhen rejects the food and insults the server. So

434
00:24:39,080 --> 00:24:42,160
Speaker 2: the king says, okay, I'll send my own foster daughter

435
00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:45,439
Speaker 2: over to him with a fine salmon dish, and the

436
00:24:45,480 --> 00:24:49,720
Speaker 2: poet also insults her and refuses the food, and so

437
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:53,200
Speaker 2: This finally pisses the king off, and he wishes, quote,

438
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:55,879
Speaker 2: may the kiss of a leper be on shan Chan's

439
00:24:55,920 --> 00:24:59,240
Speaker 2: lips before he dies. So he's had enough. I guess

440
00:24:59,480 --> 00:25:04,159
Speaker 2: that was a real back then. Now. While this is

441
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:06,679
Speaker 2: going on, though, finally a young servant girl comes up

442
00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:08,639
Speaker 2: to shan Chan and says, hey, I've got a hen's

443
00:25:08,680 --> 00:25:11,560
Speaker 2: egg I can bring you if that's that's enough. I

444
00:25:11,560 --> 00:25:13,159
Speaker 2: mean it's not much, but it's what I got and

445
00:25:13,200 --> 00:25:17,040
Speaker 2: he's like, okay, that will suffice. She goes to fetch it,

446
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:19,439
Speaker 2: and then she comes back and says, actually, sorry, the

447
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:21,920
Speaker 2: egg's gone. I can't offer that to you, and this

448
00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:25,879
Speaker 2: sets sean Chan off. He immediately accuses the girl of

449
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:27,760
Speaker 2: eating the eggs. He's like, oh, you couldn't bring it

450
00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:30,720
Speaker 2: because you ate it nice and she said, no, no,

451
00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:33,720
Speaker 2: it wasn't me. It was probably the mice. They're mice

452
00:25:33,760 --> 00:25:36,000
Speaker 2: all over this place. They probably ate the egg. That's

453
00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:36,919
Speaker 2: probably what happened.

454
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:39,639
Speaker 3: Lot of twist and turns in the story.

455
00:25:40,400 --> 00:25:43,479
Speaker 2: But the poet here, yeah, he's in a mood at

456
00:25:43,520 --> 00:25:46,640
Speaker 2: this point and he says, then I will satirize them

457
00:25:46,960 --> 00:25:51,040
Speaker 2: in a poem, said Sean Chan, and forthwith he chanted

458
00:25:51,200 --> 00:25:54,920
Speaker 2: so bitter a satire against them that ten mice fell

459
00:25:55,040 --> 00:25:59,160
Speaker 2: dead at once in his presence. WHOA, Yeah, I mean again,

460
00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:00,800
Speaker 2: this guy is a great poet.

461
00:26:01,280 --> 00:26:03,320
Speaker 3: That's also a lot of mice to have just been

462
00:26:03,400 --> 00:26:04,520
Speaker 3: present anyway.

463
00:26:05,840 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it did. I mean, that makes sense. That's

464
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:08,920
Speaker 2: probably what happened to the egg.

465
00:26:09,320 --> 00:26:11,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, affair is a veritable schmorgasbord.

466
00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:16,399
Speaker 2: Now one assumes that Shanchen pauses, catches his breath a

467
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:18,760
Speaker 2: little bit, but he's still in a foul mood over

468
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:21,159
Speaker 2: all of this, and he continues, this is this is

469
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:25,280
Speaker 2: from Yates tis well, said Shanzhen. But the cat is

470
00:26:25,320 --> 00:26:27,879
Speaker 2: the one most to blame, for it was her duty

471
00:26:28,000 --> 00:26:32,920
Speaker 2: to suppress the mice. Therefore, I shall satirize the tribe

472
00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:37,440
Speaker 2: of the cats and their chief lord, Urusan, son of Arousan,

473
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:40,600
Speaker 2: for I know where he lives, with his wife's Spitfire,

474
00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:44,679
Speaker 2: and his daughter Sharptooth, with her brothers, the Purr and

475
00:26:44,760 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 2: the Growler. But I shall begin with Urusan himself, for

476
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:51,359
Speaker 2: he is a king and answerable for all the cats.

477
00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:55,640
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure my child made up these cat names.

478
00:26:55,400 --> 00:26:58,040
Speaker 2: It does sound a little bit like Cat's the musical, right,

479
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:01,359
Speaker 2: he's the purr and the growler. Yeah, so this is

480
00:27:01,400 --> 00:27:04,720
Speaker 2: already seeming like a bad decision, but he's again, he's

481
00:27:04,720 --> 00:27:08,159
Speaker 2: in a mood. He's gonna keep going. Quote and he said,

482
00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:11,800
Speaker 2: Erosan monster of claws, who strikes at the mouse, but

483
00:27:11,960 --> 00:27:15,680
Speaker 2: lets it go weakest of cats, the otter did well,

484
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:19,080
Speaker 2: who bit off the tips of thy progenitor's ears, so

485
00:27:19,160 --> 00:27:22,560
Speaker 2: that every cat sense is jagged eared. Let thy tail

486
00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:26,399
Speaker 2: hang down. It is right for the mouse jeers at thee.

487
00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:29,720
Speaker 2: Now Erosan heard these words in his cave, and he

488
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:33,760
Speaker 2: said to his daughter, sharp tooth, Shanhan has satirized me,

489
00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:38,879
Speaker 2: but I will be avenged. Nay, father, she said, bring

490
00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:41,480
Speaker 2: him here alive, that we may all take our revenge.

491
00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:45,280
Speaker 2: I shall go then and bring him, said Erosan, So

492
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:49,840
Speaker 2: send thy brothers after me. So obviously things are about

493
00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:53,439
Speaker 2: to really get out of hand. Shan Chhan gets the

494
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:55,680
Speaker 2: sense that this is about to happen, so he asked

495
00:27:55,720 --> 00:27:57,639
Speaker 2: the king and all the people he's been insulting to

496
00:27:57,680 --> 00:28:01,280
Speaker 2: protect him. But none of them can protect him from

497
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:04,400
Speaker 2: the coming of the King of the cats. And there's

498
00:28:04,400 --> 00:28:08,600
Speaker 2: this great description here where this is originally all I

499
00:28:08,680 --> 00:28:11,400
Speaker 2: was going to include, but then the story was too good.

500
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:15,119
Speaker 2: But here's the description. And when the cat appeared, he

501
00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:18,359
Speaker 2: seemed to them the size of a bullock, so a steer.

502
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:24,760
Speaker 2: And this was his appearance, rapacious, panting, jagged eared, snub nosed,

503
00:28:25,040 --> 00:28:32,000
Speaker 2: sharp toothed, nimble, angry, vindictive, glare eyed, terrible, sharp plod

504
00:28:32,600 --> 00:28:36,280
Speaker 2: Such was his similitude. But he passed on amongst them,

505
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:39,200
Speaker 2: not minding till he came to Shan Shan and him

506
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:41,400
Speaker 2: he seized by the arm and jerked him up on

507
00:28:41,480 --> 00:28:44,520
Speaker 2: his back and made off the way he came before

508
00:28:44,560 --> 00:28:47,240
Speaker 2: anyone could anyone could touch him, for he had no

509
00:28:47,320 --> 00:28:50,160
Speaker 2: other object in view but to get hold of the poet.

510
00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:53,200
Speaker 2: So he swept him up. He's taken him away. Okay,

511
00:28:53,840 --> 00:28:55,800
Speaker 2: So at this point the king of the cats rides

512
00:28:55,800 --> 00:28:58,240
Speaker 2: off into the night with the terrified poet on his back.

513
00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:02,880
Speaker 2: Shan Shan, clearly in a tight spot, tries flattery. He

514
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 2: starts on telling Irosan Love what a marvelous beast he is,

515
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:11,400
Speaker 2: and this is not working, so he invokes the saints,

516
00:29:11,800 --> 00:29:14,040
Speaker 2: but Irasan is having none of it, and he brings

517
00:29:14,080 --> 00:29:17,680
Speaker 2: the bard straight to a forge at a monastery, apparently

518
00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:20,800
Speaker 2: so he can roast the poet within it, and maybe

519
00:29:20,800 --> 00:29:23,360
Speaker 2: there's some sort of maybe maybe there's some sort of

520
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 2: intended twist here. Right, the cat is not being roasted here,

521
00:29:27,560 --> 00:29:29,080
Speaker 2: the human is going to be roasted.

522
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 3: Yeah.

523
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:32,760
Speaker 2: But at this point, who's hanging out here by the

524
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:36,480
Speaker 2: forge but Saint Kiran, one of the twelve Apostles of Ireland,

525
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:39,880
Speaker 2: and he refuses to see such a fine poet incinerated,

526
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:41,720
Speaker 2: so he hits the King of the Cats with a

527
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:46,000
Speaker 2: bar of red hot iron, killing him, and then Sean

528
00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:50,600
Speaker 2: Chan tells off the saint. He says, quote, I would

529
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:53,880
Speaker 2: rather Irosan had killed me and eaten me every bit,

530
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:57,800
Speaker 2: so that I might bring disgrace on Guori the King

531
00:29:58,200 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 2: for the bad food he gave me, for it was

532
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:03,120
Speaker 2: all owing to his wretched dinners that I got into

533
00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 2: this plight. I love that he's such a such a

534
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:12,760
Speaker 2: grumpus and just so committed to this grudge that he's like,

535
00:30:12,760 --> 00:30:15,120
Speaker 2: I wish you hadn't saved me because I because I'm

536
00:30:15,160 --> 00:30:18,160
Speaker 2: just so mad at the king. Amazing all time grouch.

537
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:21,600
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, But anyway, the story ends up with the

538
00:30:21,680 --> 00:30:23,880
Speaker 2: King and the bar and eventually make up, and shan

539
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:25,800
Speaker 2: Chen gets on it gets an honored seat at all

540
00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:29,360
Speaker 2: the feasts moving forward. So in a way, I feel

541
00:30:29,360 --> 00:30:31,280
Speaker 2: like the King of the Cats really catches astray in

542
00:30:31,320 --> 00:30:33,680
Speaker 2: this in the story, if you ask me, Like, he

543
00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:36,120
Speaker 2: was just kind of mining his own business until he

544
00:30:36,280 --> 00:30:39,440
Speaker 2: was just wretchedly insulted by this poet. And you know,

545
00:30:39,480 --> 00:30:41,320
Speaker 2: he couldn't. He's the king. He can't just stand there

546
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:43,440
Speaker 2: and let this pass. He has to go off and

547
00:30:43,760 --> 00:30:46,360
Speaker 2: kill this poet, and he gets just drawn into all

548
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:47,240
Speaker 2: of this drama.

549
00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:49,960
Speaker 3: But so do you think this captures the spirit of

550
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:52,840
Speaker 3: the King of Cats that is summoned by that the

551
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:56,080
Speaker 3: horrible ritual, Like it's the same sort of being as

552
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:56,880
Speaker 3: being imagined.

553
00:30:57,160 --> 00:31:00,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, here given you know, given treatment within an using

554
00:31:00,440 --> 00:31:05,200
Speaker 2: story that is clearly playing for laughs and places. But yeah,

555
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:07,640
Speaker 2: they both seem to get at this idea of some

556
00:31:07,720 --> 00:31:10,920
Speaker 2: sort of a great cat, some sort of a supernatural

557
00:31:11,080 --> 00:31:16,720
Speaker 2: cat being that has knowledge, uh, you know, beyond that

558
00:31:17,040 --> 00:31:20,120
Speaker 2: of of a of a mortal So something like a

559
00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:23,560
Speaker 2: god perhaps, like Wiseman points out, connected to some sort

560
00:31:23,560 --> 00:31:28,080
Speaker 2: of a feline deity of of you know, of Pagan,

561
00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:32,560
Speaker 2: Driddic pre Christian origin. So it's yeah, it's interesting to

562
00:31:32,560 --> 00:31:34,440
Speaker 2: see that you kind of see it like peeking out

563
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:36,920
Speaker 2: of the Odadus, you know, almost like a cat in

564
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:39,160
Speaker 2: the night, but it's peaking out of Adadus from these

565
00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 2: various folk tales and traditions.

566
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, that takes a fence and comes to the aid

567
00:31:44,520 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 3: of its smaller, more mundane brethren. And that we can,

568
00:31:48,120 --> 00:31:52,080
Speaker 3: at our peril, get its attention by irritating or harming

569
00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:53,080
Speaker 3: those little brethren.

570
00:31:53,760 --> 00:31:56,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that in its you know that that feels

571
00:31:56,640 --> 00:31:58,880
Speaker 2: very twisted in so many ways, right, because on one hand,

572
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:00,720
Speaker 2: it seems like it should be a cot genary tale,

573
00:32:00,720 --> 00:32:02,920
Speaker 2: don't mistreat a cat because the King of the cats

574
00:32:02,920 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 2: could come for you, But then it gets turned into

575
00:32:04,840 --> 00:32:06,960
Speaker 2: a whole ritual. It's like, well, we're counting on that

576
00:32:07,040 --> 00:32:10,240
Speaker 2: because we actually need some sage advice from the King

577
00:32:10,280 --> 00:32:12,240
Speaker 2: of the cats. But we've got to play it just

578
00:32:12,320 --> 00:32:13,920
Speaker 2: right otherwise he'll destroy us.

579
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 3: But the advice is always just going to be build

580
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:19,280
Speaker 3: seven churches. It's going to tell you that every time.

581
00:32:19,440 --> 00:32:20,000
Speaker 3: You already know.

582
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:22,800
Speaker 2: That's why there's just so many churches over there.

583
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:22,960
Speaker 4: Now.

584
00:32:22,960 --> 00:32:35,520
Speaker 3: I guess, okay, are you ready to shift to a

585
00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:36,800
Speaker 3: new supernatural cat?

586
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:38,680
Speaker 2: Let us summon it out of the dark.

587
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:41,160
Speaker 3: I would like to take a look at a monster

588
00:32:41,280 --> 00:32:46,440
Speaker 3: cat that appears in Welsh folklore and Arthurian literature, known

589
00:32:46,560 --> 00:32:50,720
Speaker 3: as Cath Polyg if you're trying to look it up. Unfortunately,

590
00:32:50,760 --> 00:32:53,920
Speaker 3: there are a bunch of different spelling and pronunciation variants

591
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:56,960
Speaker 3: for the name of this creature. Usually the cat part

592
00:32:57,000 --> 00:32:59,040
Speaker 3: of the name is spelled with the thch at the end,

593
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:02,440
Speaker 3: like Kathy with the y so cat or cat, and

594
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:04,880
Speaker 3: then the second word in the name could be pa

595
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:07,920
Speaker 3: l u c b A l u g b a

596
00:33:08,120 --> 00:33:10,120
Speaker 3: l u s something like that, but I think it's

597
00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:15,160
Speaker 3: pronounced Kath Pollog. The name comes from Welsh and it

598
00:33:15,240 --> 00:33:19,520
Speaker 3: is usually, at least in the mainline tradition, taken to

599
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:22,680
Speaker 3: mean Pollug's cat, as in a cat belonging to a

600
00:33:22,760 --> 00:33:27,600
Speaker 3: proper noun polag. There is also a French literary variation

601
00:33:27,840 --> 00:33:32,400
Speaker 3: known as Capalou or Chappalou, which by a false etymology,

602
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:35,320
Speaker 3: seems to have evolved to mean a bog cat. Will

603
00:33:35,320 --> 00:33:36,840
Speaker 3: come back to that in a bit, because I think

604
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:42,240
Speaker 3: that's interesting. In some stories, kath Pollog is a monster

605
00:33:42,400 --> 00:33:46,560
Speaker 3: cat that does battle with a hero from Arthurian legend

606
00:33:46,920 --> 00:33:51,920
Speaker 3: named k sometimes spelled c Ai or Cei or kay.

607
00:33:52,640 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 2: Yeah. Fans of the nineteen sixty three Disney film The

608
00:33:55,480 --> 00:33:58,400
Speaker 2: Sword in the Stone will remember this character. This is

609
00:33:58,480 --> 00:34:01,160
Speaker 2: based on the nineteen thirty eight None novel by T. H. White,

610
00:34:01,240 --> 00:34:03,719
Speaker 2: but it plays a prominent role in that picture.

611
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:06,400
Speaker 3: The version of the Sword in the Stone is very

612
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:10,200
Speaker 3: much the k you get in later Arthurian literature, where

613
00:34:10,200 --> 00:34:15,520
Speaker 3: he is an obnoxious, loud mouth bully Arthur's older foster brother,

614
00:34:15,600 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 3: but he's also he's a buffoon. In these earlier Arthur stories,

615
00:34:19,560 --> 00:34:24,480
Speaker 3: k is a much more honorable and uncomplicatedly heroic character.

616
00:34:25,400 --> 00:34:29,040
Speaker 3: But Kath Palack's enemy is not always k In some

617
00:34:29,200 --> 00:34:33,680
Speaker 3: later yarns, the creature is fought by King Arthur himself,

618
00:34:33,800 --> 00:34:38,040
Speaker 3: and especially in some French tellings, the cat actually wins

619
00:34:38,080 --> 00:34:39,960
Speaker 3: this fight. What kills Arthur.

620
00:34:40,160 --> 00:34:42,360
Speaker 2: We're gonna have to come back to that. This is crazy?

621
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:46,560
Speaker 2: Is that is not any version of the Arthurine legend

622
00:34:46,600 --> 00:34:49,040
Speaker 2: that I've ever read or seemed committed to film.

623
00:34:49,160 --> 00:34:52,359
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't remember that from Sword in the Stone. But

624
00:34:52,840 --> 00:34:56,360
Speaker 3: so for more information on Kath pallag I was trying

625
00:34:56,360 --> 00:34:58,319
Speaker 3: to find a solid source and I eventually settled on

626
00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:01,839
Speaker 3: a good one. So it's a twenty Foureen edition of

627
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:05,440
Speaker 3: the Triads of the Island of Britain, edited by a

628
00:35:05,480 --> 00:35:09,320
Speaker 3: scholar named Rachel Bromwich from the University of Wales Press,

629
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:13,279
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen. So this book is a translation of the

630
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:18,760
Speaker 3: Welsh Triads. Very interesting literary form that I really didn't

631
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:21,800
Speaker 3: know anything about before this. So it's a literary form

632
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:26,560
Speaker 3: preserved in Middle Welsh manuscripts from the medieval period where

633
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:30,840
Speaker 3: you would essentially have three names of people or things

634
00:35:31,360 --> 00:35:36,520
Speaker 3: listed together under a common conceptual grouping. So examples would

635
00:35:36,520 --> 00:35:40,120
Speaker 3: be three generous men of the Island of Britain, and

636
00:35:40,160 --> 00:35:42,120
Speaker 3: then it would give you a list of three names,

637
00:35:42,160 --> 00:35:45,960
Speaker 3: all with an epithet the generous, you know, Mordaff the generous.

638
00:35:47,239 --> 00:35:50,480
Speaker 3: A lot of these are lists of famous people, lists

639
00:35:50,480 --> 00:35:53,200
Speaker 3: of chieftains or rich people who add a lot of

640
00:35:53,239 --> 00:35:57,239
Speaker 3: sheep or something, or warriors and heroes from history and

641
00:35:57,280 --> 00:36:02,360
Speaker 3: from legend. Some of them are interesting, They've got interesting names,

642
00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:04,279
Speaker 3: and they're kind of confusing. One I remember I came

643
00:36:04,320 --> 00:36:07,600
Speaker 3: across in this book is three slaughter Blocks of the

644
00:36:07,600 --> 00:36:10,399
Speaker 3: Island of Britain. But I think it's not actually talking

645
00:36:10,400 --> 00:36:13,280
Speaker 3: about literal blocks. From the notes, it seems this means

646
00:36:13,280 --> 00:36:16,280
Speaker 3: like a leader who stands his ground firmly in battle.

647
00:36:17,200 --> 00:36:20,480
Speaker 3: Another one that was funny was three Frivolous Bards of

648
00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:24,399
Speaker 3: the Island of Britain. And some of these contain not

649
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:29,719
Speaker 3: only three names with epithets, some actually have whole narratives attached.

650
00:36:30,520 --> 00:36:33,440
Speaker 3: So where does kath Pallag come in? The kath Pallag

651
00:36:33,600 --> 00:36:38,359
Speaker 3: creature is referenced in a narrative attached to one of

652
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:42,480
Speaker 3: these Middle Welsh triads, specifically number twenty six in this edition,

653
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:47,920
Speaker 3: called three Powerful Swine Herds of the Island of Britain.

654
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:51,480
Speaker 3: This triad, this is one of the ones that has

655
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:54,239
Speaker 3: some story attached to it, and it's talking about these

656
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:59,640
Speaker 3: awesome dudes who commanded awesome legions of swine. And it

657
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:05,400
Speaker 3: leads into a story about Henwin Hnwn Henwin, a mythical

658
00:37:05,600 --> 00:37:10,120
Speaker 3: magical monster pig whose name means old White. I think

659
00:37:10,160 --> 00:37:13,359
Speaker 3: we might have referenced Old White or Henwen in our

660
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:15,919
Speaker 3: series on the Hogs of Hell last year.

661
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:19,760
Speaker 2: I think so. Yeah, I remember at least reading about

662
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:23,320
Speaker 2: King Arthur chasing pigs all over the British Isles.

663
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 3: Right, So here, I'm going to read from Bromwich's translation

664
00:37:26,760 --> 00:37:29,400
Speaker 3: of the triad narrative, and please forgive my attempts to

665
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:33,839
Speaker 3: pronounce these Middle Welsh names here, I'm doing my best.

666
00:37:34,120 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 3: So it's listing the three great swineherds, and it gets

667
00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:38,880
Speaker 3: to the third one, and then it says, and the

668
00:37:38,920 --> 00:37:42,799
Speaker 3: third call son of koul Ruey, with the swine of

669
00:37:42,920 --> 00:37:47,319
Speaker 3: Dalwear Dalbin in Glenn dahlwere in Cornwall, and one of

670
00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 3: the swine was pregnant. Henwin was her name, and it

671
00:37:51,239 --> 00:37:53,799
Speaker 3: was prophesied that the island of Britain would be the

672
00:37:53,880 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 3: worse for the womb burden. Then Arthur assembled the army

673
00:37:57,960 --> 00:38:00,560
Speaker 3: of the Island of Britain and set out to seek

674
00:38:00,600 --> 00:38:05,080
Speaker 3: to destroy her. So, now being hunted, Henwin goes on

675
00:38:05,200 --> 00:38:07,839
Speaker 3: to give birth to a pharaoh. It says, in order

676
00:38:07,880 --> 00:38:10,279
Speaker 3: to give birth, she goes into the sea. But then

677
00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:13,319
Speaker 3: later it's describing where these creatures are born, and it

678
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:15,759
Speaker 3: sounds like it's different locations on land, so it's kind

679
00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:18,759
Speaker 3: of confusing. Maybe she gets to these locations by sea

680
00:38:18,800 --> 00:38:23,080
Speaker 3: travel between giving birth to them, but yeah, it comes

681
00:38:23,120 --> 00:38:26,400
Speaker 3: back on land to have each batch or something. But anyway,

682
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:28,880
Speaker 3: it says she ends up giving birth to a grain

683
00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:32,080
Speaker 3: of wheat and a bee, and it explains that's why

684
00:38:32,160 --> 00:38:36,280
Speaker 3: one location has good wheat crops. And then at another

685
00:38:36,320 --> 00:38:39,040
Speaker 3: place she gives birth to a grain of barley and

686
00:38:39,080 --> 00:38:42,880
Speaker 3: a grain of wheat, and that's again some crop related

687
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:47,000
Speaker 3: futures there. But then things start getting bad. She gives

688
00:38:47,040 --> 00:38:50,200
Speaker 3: birth to a wolf cub and a young eagle, and

689
00:38:50,239 --> 00:38:52,520
Speaker 3: it says these monsters are sent to different parts of

690
00:38:52,560 --> 00:38:55,560
Speaker 3: the British Isles, and you know, cause much trouble there.

691
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:59,600
Speaker 3: And then from here we learn quote and at landfair

692
00:38:59,719 --> 00:39:03,120
Speaker 3: in are fun. Under the black Rock she brought forth

693
00:39:03,160 --> 00:39:06,560
Speaker 3: a kitten, and the powerful swineherd threw it from the

694
00:39:06,640 --> 00:39:10,080
Speaker 3: rock into the sea, and the sons of Pollag fostered

695
00:39:10,120 --> 00:39:13,360
Speaker 3: it in Man to their own harm. And that was

696
00:39:13,440 --> 00:39:16,400
Speaker 3: Polyg's cat, and it was one of the three great

697
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:20,279
Speaker 3: oppressions of Man nurtured therein. So it brings it all

698
00:39:20,320 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 3: back to another triad, three great oppressions of man. So yes,

699
00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:27,000
Speaker 3: this monster cat, first of all, born not to a

700
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:30,720
Speaker 3: previous generation of monster cats, but to one very special swine,

701
00:39:30,840 --> 00:39:36,800
Speaker 3: some pig Man seems to be a reference to a place,

702
00:39:37,320 --> 00:39:40,480
Speaker 3: this surreal place now called Anglesey, which is a large

703
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:44,560
Speaker 3: island just off the northwest coast of Wales. So if

704
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:46,960
Speaker 3: you're trying to picture it on a map, yeah, the

705
00:39:47,480 --> 00:39:50,279
Speaker 3: cat Polag's hunting grounds. It was up on Anglesey and

706
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:55,680
Speaker 3: especially I think around the sort of mainland facing coast

707
00:39:55,719 --> 00:39:57,920
Speaker 3: of that island. It was said that it could swim

708
00:39:57,960 --> 00:39:58,560
Speaker 3: the straits.

709
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:01,560
Speaker 2: However, despite the fact that.

710
00:40:01,560 --> 00:40:05,400
Speaker 3: In the core text here Pallag is treated as a

711
00:40:05,400 --> 00:40:09,120
Speaker 3: proper name, it is a person to which the cat belongs,

712
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 3: Pallag's cat, there also seems to be a more descriptive

713
00:40:13,560 --> 00:40:18,799
Speaker 3: etymology that some scholars have proposed. Bromwich points out that

714
00:40:18,960 --> 00:40:24,000
Speaker 3: the Middle Welsh word pallock or ballock comes from a

715
00:40:24,120 --> 00:40:29,640
Speaker 3: root word which means to dig, pierce, wound, hit, scratch,

716
00:40:29,920 --> 00:40:33,080
Speaker 3: or claw, so it's kind of an all purpose striking

717
00:40:33,160 --> 00:40:37,920
Speaker 3: and gouging verb. And Bromwich cites another scholar named Lloyd Jones,

718
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:42,680
Speaker 3: who argues that pollock was originally an adjectival descriptor of

719
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:46,719
Speaker 3: the cat, as in scratching cat. So cat Pallag, not

720
00:40:47,040 --> 00:40:49,719
Speaker 3: the cat that belongs to Pallack, but the scratching cat.

721
00:40:50,239 --> 00:40:52,240
Speaker 3: The aren't most cat scratching cats?

722
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:55,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, if you if you look at them the

723
00:40:55,200 --> 00:40:56,920
Speaker 2: wrong way, Yeah.

724
00:40:56,600 --> 00:40:59,359
Speaker 3: I think it's supposed to make this monster cat sound

725
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:02,680
Speaker 3: dangerous and deadly, So maybe scratching isn't the best English

726
00:41:02,680 --> 00:41:05,360
Speaker 3: translation in terms of connotations. Maybe it should be like

727
00:41:05,560 --> 00:41:07,720
Speaker 3: striking or gouging cat guys.

728
00:41:07,760 --> 00:41:10,719
Speaker 2: Like, perhaps a more severe version of scratching, because you

729
00:41:10,719 --> 00:41:13,480
Speaker 2: can get a pretty friendly scratch from even a very

730
00:41:13,600 --> 00:41:16,200
Speaker 2: nice cat, but a gouging is different.

731
00:41:16,600 --> 00:41:18,799
Speaker 3: As I said earlier, this version of the story does

732
00:41:18,840 --> 00:41:21,320
Speaker 3: not say how big the cat is, though, so maybe

733
00:41:21,360 --> 00:41:23,640
Speaker 3: it is scratching. Maybe we should understand it that way,

734
00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:27,680
Speaker 3: but anyway, the name of the cath polaic here may

735
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:31,920
Speaker 3: also have survived in the common name for an herb

736
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:38,160
Speaker 3: called palag'spaw, known in English as silverweed. So apart from

737
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:42,840
Speaker 3: this triad about very powerful swineherds, the only other early

738
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:47,440
Speaker 3: reference to catho polog in written sources is a tenth

739
00:41:47,560 --> 00:41:52,160
Speaker 3: or eleventh century Old Welsh poem called pah Gurr, which

740
00:41:52,320 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 3: only exists in a fragmentary state now. And this poem

741
00:41:56,960 --> 00:42:00,520
Speaker 3: is in one passage it's talking about the adventure of

742
00:42:00,640 --> 00:42:03,319
Speaker 3: k Again, we're back to Kay, who later would become

743
00:42:03,760 --> 00:42:07,880
Speaker 3: Arthur's buffoonish older foster brother. In this earlier story about K,

744
00:42:08,239 --> 00:42:13,160
Speaker 3: it says quote fair k went to Man to destroy monsters,

745
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:17,320
Speaker 3: and the word here that it uses is luon, which

746
00:42:18,320 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 3: the authors have suggested might possibly be in some way

747
00:42:22,080 --> 00:42:24,680
Speaker 3: related to the word lions, though it seems to refer

748
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 3: to monsters here. But it goes on to say his

749
00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:33,280
Speaker 3: shield was a fragment against caath Pallag. When people ask

750
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:37,759
Speaker 3: who killed kath Pallag, nine score fierce men fell for

751
00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:43,120
Speaker 3: its food. Nine score warriors. All right, so this cat

752
00:42:43,360 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 3: killed one hundred and eighty warriors, and then the night

753
00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:50,279
Speaker 3: k probably killed it, at least that's what's implied. The

754
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:52,560
Speaker 3: version of the poem we have here cuts off in

755
00:42:52,600 --> 00:42:54,680
Speaker 3: the middle of the tale, so we don't actually get

756
00:42:54,680 --> 00:42:57,120
Speaker 3: the part where he kills it if he does, but

757
00:42:57,560 --> 00:43:01,000
Speaker 3: that seems to be implied because kay like survives the encounter.

758
00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:04,719
Speaker 2: And that's usually where these stories go, with some not

759
00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 2: always but often.

760
00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:09,719
Speaker 3: In another later Welsh source, there's a reference to a

761
00:43:09,760 --> 00:43:13,120
Speaker 3: monster cat in Anglesey, which may be the same creature.

762
00:43:14,000 --> 00:43:17,120
Speaker 3: It's not called cath Pallag, but it says may the

763
00:43:17,200 --> 00:43:21,480
Speaker 3: speckled cat and her strangers make an uproar. Seems to

764
00:43:21,520 --> 00:43:22,840
Speaker 3: be phrased as a kind of curse.

765
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 2: That and that, of course that makes me think about

766
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:28,520
Speaker 2: these ideas of like a king of cats and its

767
00:43:28,560 --> 00:43:32,040
Speaker 2: attendants in the night, which I want to mention I

768
00:43:32,120 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 2: think it was. Wiseman pointed out that there are also

769
00:43:34,280 --> 00:43:38,959
Speaker 2: some tellings in which that particular cat is described as

770
00:43:39,239 --> 00:43:42,440
Speaker 2: not being attended by other cats, but even but perhaps

771
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:46,160
Speaker 2: even by like humans holding their own heads. So you

772
00:43:46,200 --> 00:43:49,960
Speaker 2: maybe get some mixed ideas of like are these demons?

773
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:54,360
Speaker 2: Are these specters of the grave? And so forth? And

774
00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:57,160
Speaker 2: certainly the speckled cat and her strangers makes me think

775
00:43:57,200 --> 00:43:59,440
Speaker 2: of that, like who are these strangers? Are the other cats?

776
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:01,920
Speaker 2: Are they? You know? Phantoms from beyond?

777
00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:04,239
Speaker 3: That's all that's a ten out of ten band name

778
00:44:04,280 --> 00:44:10,279
Speaker 3: as well. Yes, it's just like the marquee at the Masquerade.

779
00:44:10,400 --> 00:44:13,719
Speaker 3: But so Bromwich says that the cat Pollag legend is

780
00:44:14,080 --> 00:44:18,840
Speaker 3: probably related to another cat monster, a horrible sea cat

781
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:23,439
Speaker 3: from Irish folklore called the Merchada, and this beast gets

782
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 3: a description in the Lives of the Saints from the

783
00:44:25,920 --> 00:44:28,520
Speaker 3: Book of Lismore, in a subsection on the life of

784
00:44:28,560 --> 00:44:32,000
Speaker 3: Saint Brendan that Bromwich includes in her EndNote. So I'm

785
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:33,840
Speaker 3: going to read from that here to give an idea

786
00:44:35,120 --> 00:44:39,360
Speaker 3: talking about Saint Brendan. It says, there is a great

787
00:44:39,480 --> 00:44:42,400
Speaker 3: sea cat here, like a young ox or like a

788
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:46,080
Speaker 3: three year old horse, overgrown by feeding on the fish

789
00:44:46,160 --> 00:44:49,319
Speaker 3: of this sea and this island. And then there's a

790
00:44:49,320 --> 00:44:51,360
Speaker 3: part where the monster is said to be chasing the

791
00:44:51,400 --> 00:44:53,840
Speaker 3: saint's boat. I think Saint Brendan was like a sailor

792
00:44:53,880 --> 00:44:57,280
Speaker 3: and a navigator. And it says bigger than a brazen

793
00:44:57,400 --> 00:45:00,920
Speaker 3: cauldron was each of his eyes A boy rrs tusks

794
00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:04,719
Speaker 3: had he furzy hair upon him. And when I saw

795
00:45:04,760 --> 00:45:06,759
Speaker 3: a furzy, I was like, is that a TYPEO? No,

796
00:45:06,880 --> 00:45:08,839
Speaker 3: that is not a type furze.

797
00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:09,319
Speaker 2: F you are.

798
00:45:09,480 --> 00:45:13,839
Speaker 3: Ze means the thorny foliage on an evergreen shrub. So

799
00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:17,319
Speaker 3: think of a cat, a monstrous sea cat, with like

800
00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 3: evergreen kind of pine needle hair or brambly hair. And

801
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:24,359
Speaker 3: then and then it goes on to say he had

802
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:26,799
Speaker 3: the maw of a leopard, with the strength of a

803
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:31,279
Speaker 3: lion and the veracity of a hound, which the comparisons

804
00:45:31,320 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 3: kind of lose steam for me there at the end,

805
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:36,719
Speaker 3: because it's saying this monstrous cat had a mouth like

806
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:39,480
Speaker 3: a big cat. You know, I had a mouth like

807
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 3: a lion. So it was like a lion, like the

808
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:45,759
Speaker 3: real animal like he is a cat, but.

809
00:45:45,800 --> 00:45:47,840
Speaker 2: It is to be clear some sort of sea creature

810
00:45:48,760 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 2: in this.

811
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:51,560
Speaker 3: That's what they're saying here. Yeah, so this monster cat

812
00:45:51,640 --> 00:45:55,080
Speaker 3: is said to live in the sea. Cat Pallock also

813
00:45:55,160 --> 00:45:59,560
Speaker 3: apparently has sea related powers, since it is said to

814
00:45:59,640 --> 00:46:02,839
Speaker 3: swim the Mini Straits, the waterway that separates the Isle

815
00:46:02,880 --> 00:46:07,040
Speaker 3: of Anglesey from the mainland of Whales. We don't know

816
00:46:07,280 --> 00:46:10,880
Speaker 3: exactly how much of the story of Kath Pallack is

817
00:46:11,480 --> 00:46:15,359
Speaker 3: influenced by these Irish cat beast tales, but they seem

818
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:19,919
Speaker 3: probably related. There are more sources on these Irish monster cats,

819
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:23,000
Speaker 3: and Bromwich says that they were sometimes sort of a

820
00:46:23,040 --> 00:46:26,040
Speaker 3: ware cat, a human being who has been bewitched, or

821
00:46:26,360 --> 00:46:30,360
Speaker 3: one who can magically transform themselves with a cat skin disguise.

822
00:46:31,719 --> 00:46:34,680
Speaker 3: They sometimes guard hidden treasure troves, so that's kind of cool. Again,

823
00:46:34,719 --> 00:46:37,759
Speaker 3: this is not necessarily Cath Pallick, but the Irish ones.

824
00:46:37,800 --> 00:46:42,320
Speaker 3: They guard treasure troves, and they are sometimes witnessed coming

825
00:46:42,440 --> 00:46:46,360
Speaker 3: out of she mounds. These would be hills where fairies

826
00:46:46,480 --> 00:46:49,400
Speaker 3: or elves dwell underneath the earth. They thought of his

827
00:46:49,480 --> 00:47:03,319
Speaker 3: portals to the hidden world. Now I mentioned earlier. The

828
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:08,400
Speaker 3: French variation on cat pallag the Capellou or the Chappealou.

829
00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:12,759
Speaker 3: Whereas in Welsh texts the slayer of the cat is

830
00:47:12,920 --> 00:47:17,920
Speaker 3: k in some medieval French Arthurian romances it is actually

831
00:47:18,239 --> 00:47:22,839
Speaker 3: Arthur himself, King Arthur, who fights the creature and sometimes

832
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:27,080
Speaker 3: loses the fight disastrously. So I'm going to start with

833
00:47:27,160 --> 00:47:31,399
Speaker 3: that version. So from a late twelfth century text known

834
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:35,920
Speaker 3: as Romance de Francais, describing a poem in which this

835
00:47:36,000 --> 00:47:39,360
Speaker 3: story is told, the author says, quote, the French have

836
00:47:39,480 --> 00:47:42,560
Speaker 3: made a poem about him, that King Arthur was pushed

837
00:47:42,600 --> 00:47:46,000
Speaker 3: by Capellou into the bog and the cat killed him

838
00:47:46,000 --> 00:47:49,279
Speaker 3: in war, then passed over to England and was not

839
00:47:49,440 --> 00:47:52,120
Speaker 3: slow to conquer it, then wore the crown in the

840
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:55,239
Speaker 3: land and was the lord of the country. Where did

841
00:47:55,239 --> 00:47:57,960
Speaker 3: they get such a tale? It is a proven lie.

842
00:47:58,200 --> 00:47:59,239
Speaker 3: God knows.

843
00:48:02,920 --> 00:48:04,640
Speaker 2: I love that. That's amazing.

844
00:48:05,360 --> 00:48:06,280
Speaker 3: Is not true?

845
00:48:07,239 --> 00:48:11,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very much imagining the French people from Monty

846
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:15,240
Speaker 2: Python in the Holy Grail here creating a scandalous story

847
00:48:15,239 --> 00:48:18,040
Speaker 2: about a cat killing King Arthur and becoming the King

848
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:18,719
Speaker 2: of the Britons.

849
00:48:18,960 --> 00:48:20,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to come back to that the question

850
00:48:20,680 --> 00:48:24,239
Speaker 3: of how to take this story. But another interesting thing

851
00:48:24,560 --> 00:48:27,600
Speaker 3: in the secondhand description of the story here the fight

852
00:48:27,719 --> 00:48:30,560
Speaker 3: takes place in a bog or in a swamp, which

853
00:48:30,600 --> 00:48:33,080
Speaker 3: in the French language would have been in la palou,

854
00:48:33,400 --> 00:48:38,239
Speaker 3: meaning in the bog. Bromwich writes that this is evidence that,

855
00:48:38,600 --> 00:48:44,799
Speaker 3: by way of a false etymology, the French misunderstood kathpollog

856
00:48:44,960 --> 00:48:49,560
Speaker 3: to mean bog cat, and note that this allows the

857
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:53,359
Speaker 3: capelu or the chappalou to retain the characteristics of a

858
00:48:53,560 --> 00:48:58,400
Speaker 3: water monster like the Irish sea cats. These false folk

859
00:48:58,480 --> 00:49:01,680
Speaker 3: etymologies are always really interesting to me. We've talked about

860
00:49:01,719 --> 00:49:02,919
Speaker 3: a number of them on the show before.

861
00:49:02,960 --> 00:49:03,200
Speaker 4: I know.

862
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:07,400
Speaker 3: One that's come up is the English. This is certainly

863
00:49:07,400 --> 00:49:10,120
Speaker 3: the case for English speakers. Is the word muskrat.

864
00:49:10,719 --> 00:49:12,560
Speaker 2: People assume that.

865
00:49:12,680 --> 00:49:15,520
Speaker 3: Because of the way the name sounds, it must be

866
00:49:15,600 --> 00:49:18,960
Speaker 3: a rat that produces a musk meaning a smelly rat,

867
00:49:19,320 --> 00:49:24,160
Speaker 3: But actually muskrat is an English transliteration of an Algonquin word,

868
00:49:24,840 --> 00:49:26,719
Speaker 3: and so it seems like that may have been going

869
00:49:26,719 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 3: on with the French understanding of capellou here, that it's

870
00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:33,720
Speaker 3: like sounds like the French for cat from a bog

871
00:49:34,000 --> 00:49:36,200
Speaker 3: bog cat so that's what they thought it meant. So

872
00:49:36,239 --> 00:49:38,800
Speaker 3: the stories are set in a bog or a swamp.

873
00:49:38,840 --> 00:49:41,520
Speaker 2: Wow, and that ends up coloring the shape of the

874
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:42,439
Speaker 2: folk tale.

875
00:49:43,520 --> 00:49:47,239
Speaker 3: The French bog cat was like some of these Irish monsters,

876
00:49:47,400 --> 00:49:49,959
Speaker 3: said to be a man who morphed into a cat

877
00:49:50,040 --> 00:49:54,040
Speaker 3: body form by the power of magic. There's another version

878
00:49:54,080 --> 00:49:57,800
Speaker 3: of the story where this time Arthur actually manages to

879
00:49:57,880 --> 00:50:01,160
Speaker 3: kill the cat. This is from a text called Estoir

880
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:04,080
Speaker 3: de Merlin I think the history of Merlin or the

881
00:50:04,120 --> 00:50:08,760
Speaker 3: Story of Merlin, which takes place in a real location

882
00:50:09,160 --> 00:50:12,840
Speaker 3: around the Lake of Le Bourgeais, which Bromwich says was

883
00:50:12,920 --> 00:50:16,799
Speaker 3: known from the fourteenth century as Mont duchat ar two.

884
00:50:17,120 --> 00:50:20,960
Speaker 3: I think that means Mount Arthur's cat, something like that.

885
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:26,520
Speaker 3: And another version with the French Capelou says that this

886
00:50:26,719 --> 00:50:32,680
Speaker 3: bog cat captures Arthur, kidnaps him, takes him away to Avalon,

887
00:50:32,920 --> 00:50:35,480
Speaker 3: which is where Arthur comes to rest at the end

888
00:50:35,480 --> 00:50:38,000
Speaker 3: of the more well known stories, you know the Lancelot

889
00:50:38,080 --> 00:50:40,400
Speaker 3: Guenevere romances, where they have a big battle and then

890
00:50:40,520 --> 00:50:45,879
Speaker 3: Arthur's laid to rest in Avalon. Bromwich speculates that this

891
00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:49,440
Speaker 3: weird story where the cat takes the cat takes him

892
00:50:49,440 --> 00:50:52,640
Speaker 3: there may have arisen in an attempt to like blend

893
00:50:52,680 --> 00:50:58,239
Speaker 3: together popular Arthur versus Bogcat battle stories with the more

894
00:50:58,320 --> 00:51:02,120
Speaker 3: well known or canon detail of Arthur's biography in these

895
00:51:02,160 --> 00:51:05,800
Speaker 3: big stories. So I was trying to think of an analogy,

896
00:51:05,840 --> 00:51:08,640
Speaker 3: and it's kind of like if there were a popular

897
00:51:08,760 --> 00:51:13,000
Speaker 3: stream of Star Wars fan fiction where Obi Wan Kenobi

898
00:51:13,160 --> 00:51:15,640
Speaker 3: fights the Fluke Man from the X Files, you know,

899
00:51:15,719 --> 00:51:19,000
Speaker 3: the toilet Monster, and so in one of these stories

900
00:51:19,120 --> 00:51:22,680
Speaker 3: has the Toilet Monster abducting obi Wan Kenobi and taking

901
00:51:22,760 --> 00:51:24,759
Speaker 3: him to the Death Star so he can meet his

902
00:51:24,800 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 3: canonical ending.

903
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:29,680
Speaker 2: Right right, Because it's like, well, we're talking about Obi Wan,

904
00:51:30,120 --> 00:51:31,600
Speaker 2: so of course we have to have the Fluke Band,

905
00:51:31,600 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 2: but we need to actually come back to the major

906
00:51:35,200 --> 00:51:38,040
Speaker 2: the major beats in the overarching story, and we've got

907
00:51:38,040 --> 00:51:40,239
Speaker 2: to have Fluke Band there for that as well. Right,

908
00:51:41,239 --> 00:51:42,239
Speaker 2: So yeah, I like that.

909
00:51:42,320 --> 00:51:45,160
Speaker 3: But also I wanted to come back to the question

910
00:51:45,280 --> 00:51:48,279
Speaker 3: you raised about the version where Arthur is killed in

911
00:51:48,360 --> 00:51:52,279
Speaker 3: the bog or killed by the Bogcat, because Arthur he

912
00:51:52,400 --> 00:51:55,759
Speaker 3: just gets crumpled and the cat becomes king. Is it

913
00:51:55,880 --> 00:51:58,640
Speaker 3: possible this was meant as a as a spoof or

914
00:51:58,680 --> 00:52:01,880
Speaker 3: a kind of cross channel national ridicule by the French.

915
00:52:02,800 --> 00:52:04,919
Speaker 3: I don't know of a strong reason for thinking that's

916
00:52:04,920 --> 00:52:08,000
Speaker 3: the case, though I'm very tempted to wonder along those lines.

917
00:52:08,040 --> 00:52:11,000
Speaker 3: Though I'm by no means an expert on Arthurian literature,

918
00:52:11,040 --> 00:52:15,160
Speaker 3: so you know, maybe there are nuances there that I'm missing.

919
00:52:15,640 --> 00:52:19,400
Speaker 3: On the other hand, Bromwich says that the version of

920
00:52:19,560 --> 00:52:24,680
Speaker 3: the story where Arthur dies is actually the oldest known

921
00:52:24,840 --> 00:52:29,200
Speaker 3: variant of the Arthur versus the Bogcat story, and thus

922
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:33,799
Speaker 3: she argues it's possible that this reflects a quote genuine

923
00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:38,640
Speaker 3: variant tradition of Arthur's end, which existed in antecedent Welsh

924
00:52:38,680 --> 00:52:41,600
Speaker 3: and or Breton tradition, but which by the time of

925
00:52:41,640 --> 00:52:45,400
Speaker 3: the extant records has given place to other alternative traditions.

926
00:52:45,880 --> 00:52:49,680
Speaker 3: Arthur's death at Camlin became conflated with a story of

927
00:52:49,719 --> 00:52:52,799
Speaker 3: his removal to Avalon, so that the story of his

928
00:52:52,960 --> 00:52:56,040
Speaker 3: terminal fight with the cat monster is yet another variant

929
00:52:56,280 --> 00:53:01,000
Speaker 3: which survives only in certain tantalizing illusions. So does that

930
00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:03,680
Speaker 3: make sense that this is obviously here limited to the

931
00:53:03,680 --> 00:53:06,200
Speaker 3: realm of speculation. We don't know about what the earliest

932
00:53:06,280 --> 00:53:09,880
Speaker 3: versions of the story were, But in Bromwich's opinion, it

933
00:53:09,960 --> 00:53:13,880
Speaker 3: could be that this bizarre version of the story of

934
00:53:14,000 --> 00:53:17,200
Speaker 3: King Arthur, where King Arthur is killed by a wicked

935
00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:21,880
Speaker 3: swamp cat, may actually reflect a genuine early variant of

936
00:53:21,920 --> 00:53:25,560
Speaker 3: the King Arthur story, which has since disappeared in Welsh

937
00:53:25,600 --> 00:53:29,640
Speaker 3: and Breton sources, but survives in this altered derivative form

938
00:53:30,360 --> 00:53:33,799
Speaker 3: in these references from French texts like what if What

939
00:53:33,880 --> 00:53:36,880
Speaker 3: if it were that the actual og King Arthur was

940
00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:39,120
Speaker 3: pushed into a bog by a kitty cat?

941
00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:42,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing to think about. Yeah, the idea that

942
00:53:42,560 --> 00:53:44,840
Speaker 2: this is not just some sort of one off, not

943
00:53:45,440 --> 00:53:48,640
Speaker 2: the results of some you know, just from some translation

944
00:53:48,880 --> 00:53:52,040
Speaker 2: accidents and so forth. It kind of gives us this

945
00:53:52,440 --> 00:53:55,000
Speaker 2: curio of a tale, but it may represent like a

946
00:53:55,080 --> 00:54:00,759
Speaker 2: significant strain of fiction or Arthurian tradition going back quite

947
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:03,560
Speaker 2: a ways. That's that's fascinating to think about it. And

948
00:54:03,600 --> 00:54:06,800
Speaker 2: it makes sense too if you again think about this,

949
00:54:06,800 --> 00:54:09,960
Speaker 2: this idea that Wiseman brings up about some of these

950
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:14,840
Speaker 2: cat stories being connected to much older traditions of even

951
00:54:14,960 --> 00:54:18,719
Speaker 2: feline deities in the British Isles, you know, those are

952
00:54:18,760 --> 00:54:22,960
Speaker 2: exactly the sort of entities that a hero might die fighting.

953
00:54:23,360 --> 00:54:25,400
Speaker 3: I mean, if you come up on the more familiar

954
00:54:25,560 --> 00:54:28,319
Speaker 3: Arthur stories, it sounds comical that he's killed in a

955
00:54:28,360 --> 00:54:32,560
Speaker 3: bog by a cat. But but like you know, Beowulf

956
00:54:32,680 --> 00:54:35,400
Speaker 3: is killed while fighting a dragon. You know this, Yeah,

957
00:54:35,480 --> 00:54:38,640
Speaker 3: and you would have plenty of these medieval stories that

958
00:54:38,680 --> 00:54:41,760
Speaker 3: are about a great heroic warrior and is in fact

959
00:54:41,800 --> 00:54:44,120
Speaker 3: at some point killed in the story by a monster

960
00:54:44,320 --> 00:54:46,279
Speaker 3: in the way that make in a way that makes

961
00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:49,120
Speaker 3: sense of the narrative. Like it, it's not an accident

962
00:54:49,160 --> 00:54:51,520
Speaker 3: that Beowulf gets killed by a dragon. That's like part

963
00:54:51,600 --> 00:54:53,239
Speaker 3: of the arc of the story. And then you know,

964
00:54:53,280 --> 00:54:54,359
Speaker 3: wiggleff steps up.

965
00:54:55,080 --> 00:54:58,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And now I am going to refuse

966
00:54:58,719 --> 00:55:00,840
Speaker 2: to imagine this as any thing less than like a

967
00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:06,080
Speaker 2: tiger sized cat. Though I can't imagine King Arthur falling

968
00:55:06,160 --> 00:55:07,560
Speaker 2: to something that's housecats sized.

969
00:55:07,680 --> 00:55:09,799
Speaker 3: Well, I can imagine it. Maybe I've got a better

970
00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:12,839
Speaker 3: imagination than you. No, I'm thinking, I'm full on thinking

971
00:55:12,880 --> 00:55:15,000
Speaker 3: it's like the rabbit in Monty Python. This is a

972
00:55:15,160 --> 00:55:18,359
Speaker 3: regular sized house cat that is killing King Arthur. It's

973
00:55:18,440 --> 00:55:22,359
Speaker 3: killing one hundred and eighty fine warriors, it's getting them all.

974
00:55:22,960 --> 00:55:26,799
Speaker 2: Well, This does bring us to an interesting notion here,

975
00:55:27,239 --> 00:55:30,800
Speaker 2: thinking about again about the size of a killer cat.

976
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:35,080
Speaker 2: On one hand, like a big cat is a killer cat.

977
00:55:35,120 --> 00:55:37,200
Speaker 2: That makes sense. We see a big cat at a

978
00:55:37,280 --> 00:55:39,400
Speaker 2: zoo and we feel it in our bones. We know

979
00:55:39,520 --> 00:55:42,080
Speaker 2: that that is something that is a threat to us.

980
00:55:42,600 --> 00:55:45,080
Speaker 2: And if you're dealing with a giant sized cat, I

981
00:55:45,120 --> 00:55:48,640
Speaker 2: mean that's that's of course, been a very popular area

982
00:55:48,640 --> 00:55:52,160
Speaker 2: of focus in fiction. In fact, the Weird House Cinema

983
00:55:52,160 --> 00:55:55,440
Speaker 2: episode that we just re ran, which of course is

984
00:55:56,160 --> 00:55:59,160
Speaker 2: the Incredible Shrinking Man from nineteen fifty seven, has a

985
00:55:59,160 --> 00:56:03,200
Speaker 2: great sequence which our incredible Shrinking Man has to flee

986
00:56:03,280 --> 00:56:06,480
Speaker 2: for his life from a normal sized house cat that

987
00:56:06,560 --> 00:56:10,319
Speaker 2: to him is an enormous monster like a kaiju that

988
00:56:10,440 --> 00:56:12,479
Speaker 2: is trying to get at him in a doll's house.

989
00:56:12,680 --> 00:56:15,799
Speaker 3: There's no kaiju as cruel as a cat, though.

990
00:56:15,719 --> 00:56:18,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it goes back to that

991
00:56:18,320 --> 00:56:22,360
Speaker 2: old bit of folk wisdom that if you were reduced

992
00:56:22,480 --> 00:56:24,600
Speaker 2: to the size of a mouse, your cat would eat you.

993
00:56:25,120 --> 00:56:28,600
Speaker 2: It would not be your friend, which you know, I

994
00:56:28,640 --> 00:56:31,839
Speaker 2: love cats, but I think that's totally true. But then

995
00:56:31,920 --> 00:56:34,160
Speaker 2: on the other end, we have plenty of examples of

996
00:56:34,760 --> 00:56:38,840
Speaker 2: house cat sized cats that are depicted as vicious monsters

997
00:56:39,320 --> 00:56:41,919
Speaker 2: sometimes played for laugh certainly, but although other times there's

998
00:56:41,920 --> 00:56:44,400
Speaker 2: at least an attempt to play it seriously. The movie

999
00:56:44,440 --> 00:56:47,680
Speaker 2: We'll be watching this Friday for Weirdhouse Cinema has such

1000
00:56:47,719 --> 00:56:51,640
Speaker 2: a creature. Another film that comes to mind is Tales

1001
00:56:51,680 --> 00:56:54,040
Speaker 2: from the Dark Side, the movie which has in it.

1002
00:56:54,120 --> 00:56:57,080
Speaker 2: One of the segments is an adaptation of Stephen King's

1003
00:56:57,080 --> 00:56:59,359
Speaker 2: The Cat from Hell, and we get to see that

1004
00:56:59,400 --> 00:57:02,680
Speaker 2: cat running around and killing people, even though it's not

1005
00:57:02,760 --> 00:57:05,880
Speaker 2: shooting lightning out of its eyes. It's not the size

1006
00:57:05,880 --> 00:57:07,919
Speaker 2: of a tiger. It's just the size of a house cat.

1007
00:57:07,920 --> 00:57:10,000
Speaker 2: But it's really fast and really vicious.

1008
00:57:10,560 --> 00:57:13,040
Speaker 3: We shall not underestimate them. I don't think you and

1009
00:57:13,080 --> 00:57:15,840
Speaker 3: I would have anyway, but especially not after today.

1010
00:57:16,400 --> 00:57:19,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, even with a house cat, you know,

1011
00:57:19,400 --> 00:57:21,880
Speaker 2: there'll be times when they will go into hunter mode

1012
00:57:22,320 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 2: and they may attack your feet or you know, run

1013
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:26,320
Speaker 2: through the house, and in those moments you get a

1014
00:57:26,360 --> 00:57:29,040
Speaker 2: sense of it and you're like, what if this creature

1015
00:57:29,120 --> 00:57:32,560
Speaker 2: was suddenly not my friend or not my partner, not

1016
00:57:32,640 --> 00:57:36,800
Speaker 2: my roommate, and what if it saw me as something else?

1017
00:57:37,040 --> 00:57:38,160
Speaker 2: Maybe I would be in trouble.

1018
00:57:38,720 --> 00:57:40,760
Speaker 3: But you gotta be nice to it anyway. I mean,

1019
00:57:40,920 --> 00:57:42,720
Speaker 3: not only because it's the right thing to do. If

1020
00:57:42,720 --> 00:57:45,640
Speaker 3: you don't, you might summon the King of cats exactly.

1021
00:57:45,760 --> 00:57:49,400
Speaker 2: And yeah, and the king will not take kindly to you.

1022
00:57:49,880 --> 00:57:55,120
Speaker 2: And that includes just slight slight errors on your part,

1023
00:57:55,240 --> 00:57:58,680
Speaker 2: like not giving them the wet food and so forth,

1024
00:58:00,120 --> 00:58:03,520
Speaker 2: laying feeding by even fifteen minutes. So just be very

1025
00:58:03,560 --> 00:58:04,720
Speaker 2: careful out there everyone.

1026
00:58:05,560 --> 00:58:07,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, a little late for dinner time. There's

1027
00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:09,840
Speaker 3: a knock on the door. It's a soft knock, a

1028
00:58:09,920 --> 00:58:11,080
Speaker 3: kind of furry knock.

1029
00:58:13,000 --> 00:58:15,560
Speaker 2: All right. So that is our look at folkloric cats

1030
00:58:15,560 --> 00:58:18,360
Speaker 2: of the British Isles. Again, we couldn't cover everything here,

1031
00:58:18,440 --> 00:58:20,360
Speaker 2: and when you start following some of the threads you

1032
00:58:20,400 --> 00:58:22,960
Speaker 2: also get into cryptids. Certainly there are a lot of

1033
00:58:22,960 --> 00:58:28,080
Speaker 2: like modern cat cryptids and supposed sightings of big cats.

1034
00:58:28,080 --> 00:58:29,720
Speaker 2: And then of course again you have the reality of

1035
00:58:29,760 --> 00:58:33,360
Speaker 2: wildcats and feral cats and so forth. So there's a lot.

1036
00:58:33,800 --> 00:58:36,760
Speaker 2: There's a lot else out there. But hopefully you found

1037
00:58:36,760 --> 00:58:40,680
Speaker 2: this enjoyable, and perhaps those of you listening have some

1038
00:58:40,720 --> 00:58:42,640
Speaker 2: additional stories you want to bring to mind. Maybe it's

1039
00:58:42,640 --> 00:58:45,440
Speaker 2: a different twist on some of the stories we shared

1040
00:58:45,480 --> 00:58:47,840
Speaker 2: here today, some of the traditions we shared here today,

1041
00:58:48,240 --> 00:58:52,040
Speaker 2: or a treatment of these traditions in fiction one way

1042
00:58:52,160 --> 00:58:54,440
Speaker 2: or another right in with those, We would love to

1043
00:58:55,000 --> 00:58:57,360
Speaker 2: read those, perhaps on a future episode of Stuff to

1044
00:58:57,360 --> 00:58:59,960
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind. Listener mail. Just a reminder to everyone

1045
00:59:00,040 --> 00:59:01,920
Speaker 2: out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily

1046
00:59:01,960 --> 00:59:04,280
Speaker 2: a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays

1047
00:59:04,320 --> 00:59:07,280
Speaker 2: and Thursday, short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays,

1048
00:59:07,320 --> 00:59:10,640
Speaker 2: we set aside most serious concerns to watch talk about

1049
00:59:10,640 --> 00:59:13,240
Speaker 2: a weird movie on Weird House Cinema. And again this

1050
00:59:13,320 --> 00:59:17,160
Speaker 2: is Catwek. Cat episodes will continue all week and Dog people,

1051
00:59:17,240 --> 00:59:19,080
Speaker 2: if you want a Dog Week, write in and let

1052
00:59:19,160 --> 00:59:21,560
Speaker 2: us know that we should do talk week and we'll

1053
00:59:21,560 --> 00:59:22,440
Speaker 2: try and make it happen.

1054
00:59:22,920 --> 00:59:25,479
Speaker 3: Also, we had ideas for cat content that we don't

1055
00:59:25,480 --> 00:59:27,440
Speaker 3: have time for this week, so we may have to

1056
00:59:28,000 --> 00:59:29,880
Speaker 3: we can come back and do Cat Week part.

1057
00:59:29,720 --> 00:59:31,920
Speaker 2: Due yeah next year for CATWEK.

1058
00:59:33,040 --> 00:59:36,960
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1059
00:59:37,160 --> 00:59:38,640
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1060
00:59:38,640 --> 00:59:41,400
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1061
00:59:41,400 --> 00:59:43,439
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1062
00:59:43,560 --> 00:59:46,520
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact stuff to Blow Your

1063
00:59:46,520 --> 00:59:55,120
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

1064
00:59:55,240 --> 00:59:58,200
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

1065
00:59:58,280 --> 01:00:02,120
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1066
01:00:02,200 --> 01:00:22,320
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