Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it
Speaker 2: is Cat Week here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 2: So chosen because August eighth is apparently International Cat Day,
Speaker 2: or has been since around two thousand and two, thanks
Speaker 2: to the International Fund for Animal Welfare that's IFAW dot org.
Speaker 2: They're involved in a vast array of animal welfare and
Speaker 2: conservation products around the world, and that includes.
Speaker 3: Cats and telling you when it's a cat related holiday.
Speaker 2: That's right, right. I believe International Dog Day is actually
Speaker 2: later in the month. So if some of you out
Speaker 2: there are like, well, we need equal time for dogs,
Speaker 2: write in and demand it and we can do the
Speaker 2: same treatment for dogs. We have tons of dog related
Speaker 2: topic ideas that we haven't gotten to yet.
Speaker 3: Now wait, somehow we decided we're doing a whole week
Speaker 3: of cat themed stuff. What's going on? Where'd that come from?
Speaker 2: Rob? Well, just I like the idea of doing theme weeks.
Speaker 2: So we actually got a couple other theme weeks related
Speaker 2: to other things that are not pets. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: I like a good theme keeps us disciplined. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: So you know, if listeners out there have any ideas
Speaker 2: for other theme weeks that you would like write in
Speaker 2: and let us know. But today is going to be
Speaker 2: about cats. All the episodes this week are about cats,
Speaker 2: one way or another, and in today's episode, we're going
Speaker 2: to return to a topic that we previously discussed with
Speaker 2: a focus on Japanese traditions supernatural cats, only this time
Speaker 2: we're going to draw from the rich folk traditions of
Speaker 2: the British Isles. They have quite a few to select from.
Speaker 2: We're not going to be able to get to them all,
Speaker 2: of course, but we've picked out a few of them here.
Speaker 2: And we should note that, of course, as far as
Speaker 2: the house cat goes in Britain, these seem to date
Speaker 2: back at least to the Roman occupation. And then of
Speaker 2: course then we also have wildcats in the British Isles
Speaker 2: as well, and those of course predate the Romans, and
Speaker 2: so a lot of the stories we're going to be
Speaker 2: talking about here today, you can kind of, like I guess,
Speaker 2: you can sort of pick and choose, like how much
Speaker 2: of this is inspired by traditions involving the domesticated cat.
Speaker 2: How much of this is involving traditions about wildcats, and
Speaker 2: then you know the melding of the two.
Speaker 3: That gets especially funny when some of these monster cat
Speaker 3: stories do not specify the size.
Speaker 2: Of the cat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So throughout research for this episode, you know, in
Speaker 3: learning about cats that killed one hundred and eighty men
Speaker 3: or killed famous folk heroes, I certainly was in a
Speaker 3: mindset of like the Beast of Cayirbannag from Monty Python
Speaker 3: in The Holy Grail, where it's a regular size bunny
Speaker 3: that attacks and kills. I was thinking about a regular
Speaker 3: sized cat.
Speaker 2: The sources don't say that. Yeah, I think with a
Speaker 2: lot of these stories, you have to sort of think
Speaker 2: about these varying inspirations. Like you can definitely think of
Speaker 2: about various actual wildcats. You can then think about sort
Speaker 2: of cryptids and wildcats that were supposed to exist or
Speaker 2: thought to exist by some, and then of course just
Speaker 2: purely mythological imaginings as well. But even if you're just
Speaker 2: limiting things to the domestic cat, being around a domestic
Speaker 2: cat is in and of itself kind of a contemplation
Speaker 2: of these different dimensions, because a domestic cat that never
Speaker 2: leaves your home. At times acts like this comforting little
Speaker 2: snuggle buddy, other times like a vicious hunter, other times
Speaker 2: like some sort of strange specter of the night, eyes
Speaker 2: twinkling in the dark. So you know that experience alone
Speaker 2: lends itself to a lot of these ideas.
Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't tell you this yet, but just yesterday
Speaker 3: last evening, my daughter for the first time got too
Speaker 3: full on like hold a kitty cat.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: She's been very cat brained for some time now, at
Speaker 3: least the past six months to a year or sometime,
Speaker 3: and that she thinks about cats a lot, talks about
Speaker 3: them a lot, and of course sees them sometimes when
Speaker 3: we visit friends who have cats. But last night we
Speaker 3: were walking. We were out on a walk in her
Speaker 3: neighborhood and a neighbor who we know has a cat
Speaker 3: because she walks around the neighborhood with the cat in
Speaker 3: a mesh backpack kind of carrying it. If you've seen
Speaker 3: one of these, yeah, it's like a little sort of
Speaker 3: playpen with mesh, So she's seen the cat before that way.
Speaker 3: But our neighbor brought the cat out for her to hold,
Speaker 3: and she just sat there beaming like her eyes literally
Speaker 3: were emitting light. It was a very special time, but
Speaker 3: I was but I was thinking about monster cats while
Speaker 3: while that was going on, and just turning my mind over.
Speaker 3: You know what savagery lay in the intentions of this beautiful,
Speaker 3: pitiful little creature in my you know two year old
Speaker 3: daughter's arms.
Speaker 2: Well that they scratched, so there is always the threat
Speaker 2: of the scratch. This one was being gentle. All right. Well,
Speaker 2: I want to start by talking about a particular cat
Speaker 2: that I actually don't have a lot on this one,
Speaker 2: but it's going to lead into some more lengthy discussions.
Speaker 2: But there's one that comes to us from Celtic traditions
Speaker 2: that is known as the cat she. It looks like
Speaker 2: catsith as it's often spelled, but I'm to understand this
Speaker 2: is pronounced cat she or something close to that that
Speaker 2: I'm unable to actually capture. So this is sometimes described
Speaker 2: as a black cat that is about the size of
Speaker 2: a large dog, and it's said to have a white
Speaker 2: mark on its front, and visual depictions of this it's
Speaker 2: often it's often a white mark on the cat's chest.
Speaker 2: According to Carol Rose and her Monster Encyclopedia books, it's
Speaker 2: a rough, bristly creature and it's often seen arching its back,
Speaker 2: so you know, classic Halloween cat scenario here, and she
Speaker 2: points out that in scottis Highland traditions this is sometimes
Speaker 2: thought to be the animal for of a witch. And
Speaker 2: on that note, I do want to drive home that
Speaker 2: a lot of the cat traditions in the British Isles,
Speaker 2: and this implies elsewhere in the world too. Eventually a
Speaker 2: lot of these pre existing pre Christian traditions eventually get
Speaker 2: wound up in witchcraft lore that comes about much later.
Speaker 2: So you know, these ideas of which is familiar as
Speaker 2: being cats and so forth.
Speaker 3: The grimalkin and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And at times it can be difficult to
Speaker 2: sort of remove all of that and trying to get
Speaker 2: at the the the much older ideas of various supernatural
Speaker 2: cat like beings. Now, as far as the cat she
Speaker 2: itself goes, I've been having a hard time finding solid
Speaker 2: sources for these traditions, and this can this is often
Speaker 2: the case with you know, folk traditions. What are folk traditions?
Speaker 2: They are often alive and carried on the tongue and
Speaker 2: not always courted or recorded all that well in the
Speaker 2: written form. But the cat she is sometimes associated with
Speaker 2: the theft of the soul from the newly dead. Sometimes
Speaker 2: the lore of nine Lives is mentioned when talking about
Speaker 2: the cat she and again, like everything supernatural involving cats,
Speaker 2: in these parts, it ends up factoring in details of witches,
Speaker 2: and they're familiar as much later now. A related creature
Speaker 2: that Rose brings up, though, is one that she refers
Speaker 2: to as big Ears, a demonic cat with glowing yellow
Speaker 2: eyes that in Highland traditions she says was summoned via
Speaker 2: Satanic seventeenth century cat sacrifices known as the tam. Now
Speaker 2: she uses the word Satanic here, and I have no
Speaker 2: doubt that this is how some sources end up describing it,
Speaker 2: because again you get into the Christian tradition and the
Speaker 2: witchcraft persecution era, and it all gets retold and reframed.
Speaker 2: But apparently the Taguram might be more properly thought of
Speaker 2: as an older Gaelic divination ceremony that when you dig
Speaker 2: into it it often involves a hide and a river
Speaker 2: bank or a waterfall, these implements used in order to
Speaker 2: seek the guidance of an oracle, and then other times
Speaker 2: it does involve the summoning of a supernatural cat. One
Speaker 2: of the sources I was looking at here for this
Speaker 2: is a paper from twenty ten by Andrew E. M.
Speaker 2: Wiseman titled Catterwauling and demon Raising the Ancient Right of
Speaker 2: the Tegurum. This was published in Scottish Studies thirty five
Speaker 2: and it gets into a great deal of detail here.
Speaker 2: If anyone out there wants to do a much deeper
Speaker 2: dive into this topic, I recommend this paper.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Wiseman discusses that historically authors tended to associate this particular
Speaker 2: ride with the Isle of Sky, and at least one
Speaker 2: historic author described it as a practice of an extinguished
Speaker 2: race of wicked people. To summarize, so, it seems that
Speaker 2: the hide ritual was all about seeking divination via a
Speaker 2: person that has been forced into an altered state of
Speaker 2: consciousness through some possible mix of sensory deprivation and agitation.
Speaker 2: So the individual would be covered with a hide sometimes
Speaker 2: described as a fresh hide, so like freshly cut from
Speaker 2: a cow or something. And then by putting this hide
Speaker 2: on your body, you're somehow suspended between life and death. Goody.
Speaker 2: And then you would be placed in a remote spot,
Speaker 2: perhaps on a riverbank or near a roaring waterfall, and
Speaker 2: then perhaps poked or beaten with sticks of a particular
Speaker 2: sort of wood, essentially terrorized until the question may be
Speaker 2: put to you because you have now reached the oracular state.
Speaker 2: So you're in this altered, agitated state, and they're like, okay,
Speaker 2: he's ready, now ask him what we need to know
Speaker 2: about the future.
Speaker 3: Interesting to imagine the practical pressure to and fabulate on
Speaker 3: a person in that situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, In some ways, it's very different from our
Speaker 2: modern ideas about altered states of consciousness, and even some
Speaker 2: of the ancient ideas we may turn to involving oracles
Speaker 2: and divination. You tend to think of an individual who's
Speaker 2: in a very serene, calm environment. You don't think of
Speaker 2: somebody wrapped in a hide and then beaten with sticks
Speaker 2: on a river bank. But then again, there are countless
Speaker 2: examples of altered states of consciousness that are achieved through
Speaker 2: ritualistic means, both ancient and modern primitive that entail pain
Speaker 2: or discomfort, So you know, there are other examples of this.
Speaker 2: This is not something that stands entirely on its own here.
Speaker 3: I guess the difference from the stories of that sort
Speaker 3: that I'm familiar with is that would often be a
Speaker 3: self imposed kind of denial of comfort or of pleasures.
Speaker 3: You know, I think of hermits or people living in
Speaker 3: a lifestyle who, yeah, they might get into another state
Speaker 3: by fasting or by doing something of their own will,
Speaker 3: But here it's being imposed externally. They put a hide
Speaker 3: on you and people beat you a poke with sticks
Speaker 3: and take you out to the lonely place. That just
Speaker 3: feels like a totally different dynamic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this may just be my reading of it,
Speaker 2: but I'm not entirely certain what degree of agency the
Speaker 2: would be oracle here had, Like I don't know if
Speaker 2: you were and maybe this is just completely unknown if
Speaker 2: you were selected for it or you were asked to
Speaker 2: do it, or just what was the selection process like
Speaker 2: for this, right?
Speaker 3: Is it like, you know, it's not going to be fun,
Speaker 3: but it's what I have to do to generate the
Speaker 3: knowledge of the future or the information from the gods.
Speaker 3: Or is it like this is what we do to
Speaker 3: a prisoner to get knowledge of the future from them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so you can you can imagine it breaking
Speaker 2: down in either direction. But some historians also associate this
Speaker 2: or a similar practice with the Welsh, and it looks like.
Speaker 2: However you slice it, it certainly does seem to be
Speaker 2: a pre Christian, perhaps Druidic practice. So I want to
Speaker 2: read a quote here from Wisman where he sort of
Speaker 2: summarizes some of these ideas about the tagaram. He says,
Speaker 2: quote one can theorize that the methods employed in performing
Speaker 2: the tagaram cause sensory deprivation or attenuation, and that this
Speaker 2: in turn caused heightened mental awareness or consciousness, thus inducing
Speaker 2: a trance like meditation receptive to higher or preternatural intelligences.
Speaker 2: This type of method is common enough in shamanistic operations,
Speaker 2: where there is need to heighten concentration to dull normal
Speaker 2: sensory input control, breathing, and so forth, in order for
Speaker 2: the desired effect to occur an alternate, usually higher state
Speaker 2: of consciousness. Such a type of process may have in
Speaker 2: fact brought the practitioner into contact with the workings of
Speaker 2: the subconsciousness or higher self rather than incorporeal element.
Speaker 3: Right, and this will be a familiar theme to longtime
Speaker 3: listeners of this show. You know, there are plenty of
Speaker 3: studies of different ways that people can achieve altered states
Speaker 3: of consciousness, even basically psychedelic experiences without the use of drugs.
Speaker 3: You know, you don't necessarily have to take acid or
Speaker 3: mushrooms to induce hallucinations, and an otherwise mentally typical person
Speaker 3: you can do it. It can happen with certain kinds of
Speaker 3: sensory deprivation or certain kinds of sensory stimulation. We've talked
Speaker 3: about how common it is for people to have hallucinations
Speaker 3: if they simply look in a mirror in a dark
Speaker 3: room for long enough or Yeah, sensory deprivation going into
Speaker 3: total darkness will tend to cause hallucinations over time. Now,
Speaker 3: of course, this is not necessarily talking about hallucinations. This
Speaker 3: is just talking about various sorts of mental phenomena. Thinking
Speaker 3: you're receiving messages or something. But that seems like you
Speaker 3: could work by a similar mechanism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I can also imagine this. This is taking
Speaker 2: off as a new trend in Silicon Valley with vous
Speaker 2: highly placed individuals. Instead of microdos thing psilocymin they just
Speaker 2: they wrap themselves up very loosely in a hide every
Speaker 2: morning and are at least lightly tapped.
Speaker 3: With a stick, have their inns poked them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, so that's the hide side of the
Speaker 4: ritual of the of the takaram.
Speaker 2: But what about the cats? Yes, there is also the
Speaker 2: summoning of cats, and Wiseman acknowledges that this practice is
Speaker 2: not easily set alongside the hide rights without a fair
Speaker 2: amount of work. So it does seem rather it's rather different.
Speaker 2: And one way that he describes it is kind of
Speaker 2: it's another rite that you could do sometimes to check
Speaker 2: the work of the hide ritual. So like, we put
Speaker 2: this individual through all this and we got them to
Speaker 2: the oracular state, we ask them this question about the
Speaker 2: future or about the you know, the will of the
Speaker 2: gods or god, what have you. They gave us an answer,
Speaker 2: But how do we know that is correct? Is there
Speaker 2: perhaps another inhuman method that we could turn to in
Speaker 2: order to also ask the question, and then we can
Speaker 2: compare the answers. Okay, trust, but verify? Yes. Now, I
Speaker 2: want to issue content warning here though I'm going to
Speaker 2: be discussing historic animal cruelty and sacrifice in this section.
Speaker 2: I absolutely understand if you want to skip ahead maybe
Speaker 2: five minutes or so here, though I will keep descriptions
Speaker 2: as PG as possible. Animal cruelty is indefensible, especially in
Speaker 2: its most overt forms, but in cases such as this,
Speaker 2: in which historical peoples seem to have engaged in it
Speaker 2: for religio magical purposes, I imagine we should at least
Speaker 2: try to place it within the context of the times
Speaker 2: and try to imagine the perceived stakes involved. Again, none
Speaker 2: of that makes it any easier to swallow, though. All right,
Speaker 2: so you've been warned, I'm going to proceed here. So
Speaker 2: what we're talking about here is go ahead and pull
Speaker 2: off the band aid, roasting a live cat over a
Speaker 2: fire after it has been like pierced, skewered through in
Speaker 2: a way so as to not hit any vital organs, supposedly,
Speaker 2: and you can also see why this practice was easily
Speaker 2: interpreted within the context of witchcraft and devil worship as well,
Speaker 2: like the sacrifice of an animal, the use of fire,
Speaker 2: and so forth. But the idea here boiling it down.
Speaker 2: And there are many different versions of this and many
Speaker 2: different stories that involve it, but the basic idea seems
Speaker 2: to be that by torturing like a small normal cat,
Speaker 2: this might be like a wild cat that you've that
Speaker 2: you've you've caught. By tormenting it, you would summon a
Speaker 2: much larger, supernatural cat out of the darkness along with
Speaker 2: its smaller kin, and then the question might be put
Speaker 2: to this great cat or this king of cats in
Speaker 2: exchange for the alleviation of the sacrificial cats suffering.
Speaker 3: WHOA That is grim logic but interesting. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 3: you would think it worked that way, that the small
Speaker 3: and pitiful beasts have large and magical patrons or cousins,
Speaker 3: and that you can you can summon them to sort
Speaker 3: of investigate the suffering of their kin.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, one thing, the one thing that I don't
Speaker 2: have an answer to though, is, Okay, we've in talking
Speaker 2: about the right involving the hide, carrying that out, You're
Speaker 2: probably you're you're dealing with a human being, So you're
Speaker 2: going to reach a point where that human being tells
Speaker 2: you something. They are going to answer your question, either
Speaker 2: because they've reached some state of altered consciousness or because
Speaker 2: they simply want you to stop perhaps hitting them with
Speaker 2: a stick, or they don't want to wear the hide anymore.
Speaker 2: With this, I mean, you're not going to actually summon
Speaker 2: a great supernatural cat. You cannot summon that which does
Speaker 2: not exist. I mean, I guess there are various ways
Speaker 2: you could slice this. Maybe again, you're it's involving the
Speaker 2: human imagination, Maybe that it involves just speaking to the
Speaker 2: night and imagine the answer. Maybe it is a situation
Speaker 2: where the calls of a cat that is being tormented
Speaker 2: does call to other cats in the vicinity, and you
Speaker 2: might see them or hear them and then somehow interpret
Speaker 2: that for your oracle. I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't have any special insight about this, but
Speaker 3: my but my opriori guess would be that it would
Speaker 3: it would yet again involve like somebody would be translating
Speaker 3: from this being. You know, you might have a priest
Speaker 3: or shaman of some type of figure who's saying like, ah, yeah,
Speaker 3: here the here is the cat, and it's speaking to me,
Speaker 3: and this is what it's saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So uh, I'm gonna have less to say about
Speaker 2: the actual cat torment moving forward, because I think we've
Speaker 2: discussed that enough. But the stories about it, some of
Speaker 2: these are rather interesting, and again there are many different accounts,
Speaker 2: many different stories. The one that Wiseman shares tells the
Speaker 2: story of a man named Ewan who undergoes the ritual
Speaker 2: of the cat in order to find out this and
Speaker 2: this seems great ironic what amends he needs to do
Speaker 2: in order to write his past misdeeds. It's like, I
Speaker 2: feel like I've done some terrible things in the past.
Speaker 2: What can I do to make those better? I'm going
Speaker 2: to torture this cat so that I can find out.
Speaker 3: It's like if going to confession and a Catholic church involved,
Speaker 3: you know, like bashing the priest with a glass bottle.
Speaker 3: It's like, Father, I have committed some kind of sin.
Speaker 3: Sure what it is? Help me figure it out?
Speaker 2: All right? So, in the context of the story here, yeah,
Speaker 2: he turns to this this, this known right so that
Speaker 2: he can find out what he needs to do. And
Speaker 2: so he goes through the through all the steps, skewers
Speaker 2: a cat, puts it over a fire, begins to slowly
Speaker 2: roast this cat, which you know might be a Scottish
Speaker 2: or European wildcat, but you know, I guess it doesn't
Speaker 2: particularly matter. But he's he's torturing this cat, roasting it,
Speaker 2: roasting it over the fire. It's turning over the fire
Speaker 2: on a spit. And this does, in fact act draw
Speaker 2: the attention of the Great King of the Cats and
Speaker 2: his many feline attendants, and they kind of like swell
Speaker 2: in number in the darkness outside of the hut where
Speaker 2: he is carrying on with the spit and the tortured cat.
Speaker 2: And interesting here it's described as a very tense ceremony.
Speaker 2: So these cats have come with the intent to not
Speaker 2: only free their fellow feline from torment, but to also
Speaker 2: rip the human torture to bloody shreds.
Speaker 3: Oh cat revenge.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's described here that Ewan is terrified as
Speaker 2: he's doing this, like these death is awaiting him outside.
Speaker 2: But he knows that he absolutely has to quote keep
Speaker 2: turning the spit or he's doomed, Like if he stops
Speaker 2: turning the spit, then the cats will just descend on him.
Speaker 2: And so, and this reminds us of various you know,
Speaker 2: supernatural accounts where there's some sort of ritual involved, like
Speaker 2: not breaking the magic circle or else the creatures that
Speaker 2: you have summoned will destroy you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't open your eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he keeps turning it, and then he treats
Speaker 2: with the King of the cats and he asks the cat, hey,
Speaker 2: what amends can I make for my wrongs in the
Speaker 2: past and maybe a rather recent past, And he's told
Speaker 2: to build seven churches, and so he releases the tormented cat,
Speaker 2: and then the cat horde depart with the tormented cat.
Speaker 2: They jump into the river, and they.
Speaker 3: All swim away into the river. Huh, we'll get back
Speaker 3: to this, right, This will become a theme. Yeah, but
Speaker 3: a cat owner is out there. If you had a
Speaker 3: cat in distress, do you think the first place it
Speaker 3: would likely jump to would be into the water?
Speaker 2: Probably not so. Wiseman discusses that these rights may relate
Speaker 2: to ancient worship of cat based deities among the pre
Speaker 2: Christian Celts. He also writes that while the origins of
Speaker 2: this ritual are obscure, there doesn't seem to be a
Speaker 2: direct ancient source of the practice quote, there are too
Speaker 2: many liminal elements within the tradition to dismiss it as
Speaker 2: something which could be described as relatively new. It has
Speaker 2: been argued that cats were venerated during pagan times, and
Speaker 2: then during medieval times cats came to be associated with witchcraft.
Speaker 2: He also notes that these practices and Christian era witchcraft
Speaker 2: hysteria apparently resulted in large scale cat sacrifices that may
Speaker 2: have actually increased the severity of the Black plague. For
Speaker 2: when the cats have all been sacrificed. Who is going
Speaker 2: to kill the rat that carries the flea? Ooh wow,
Speaker 2: so interesting food for thought there. Now there's no mention
Speaker 2: in Wise Men of Big Ears. I'm not entirely sure
Speaker 2: where big Ears comes from, but I want to come
Speaker 2: back to this idea of the king of the cats
Speaker 2: sometimes given a name, particularly the name of Erosan son
Speaker 2: of Arosan in Irish traditions, and in fact, William Butler
Speaker 2: Yeates included minh of of Irasan in Irish fairy and
Speaker 2: folk tales recounting the tale of Shan Shan, the Bard
Speaker 2: and the King of the Cats.
Speaker 3: Oh, okay, I've read a good bit of Yates over
Speaker 3: the years, but I don't I don't know this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a This is a story that he
Speaker 2: account that he collected from from other sources and includes
Speaker 2: here in the book. And uh uh. He includes a
Speaker 2: couple of cat stories. The other cat story has a
Speaker 2: lot of humans blinding each other with with hot pokers,
Speaker 2: and so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna get into
Speaker 2: that one. But this one about Shan Shan is really good.
Speaker 2: It's it's ritually amusing, pretty funny. Uh So I'm gonna
Speaker 2: sort of summarize some elements of it here and also
Speaker 2: read some quotes from Yates as well. Okay, so we
Speaker 2: have shan Shan here. He's a moody and righteous poet
Speaker 2: who has been invited to King Guari's banquet where all
Speaker 2: the other poets of Ireland have gathered, and there's gonna
Speaker 2: be a lot of feasting, you know, a lot of
Speaker 2: one assumes a lot of song and poetry. But shan
Speaker 2: Chan takes offense at how well the nobles are eating,
Speaker 2: and you know, how nice everything is, and he ends
Speaker 2: up refusing all food and drink and spends the time
Speaker 2: sulking instead. The king learns about this, and he's like,
Speaker 2: why is shan Chan over there sulking? And he's a
Speaker 2: great poet. This is all about celebrating poetry. So he
Speaker 2: calls for his own favorite server, the King's favorite server,
Speaker 2: and says, bring this food to shan Chen, and he does,
Speaker 2: and Shanhen rejects the food and insults the server. So
Speaker 2: the king says, okay, I'll send my own foster daughter
Speaker 2: over to him with a fine salmon dish, and the
Speaker 2: poet also insults her and refuses the food, and so
Speaker 2: This finally pisses the king off, and he wishes, quote,
Speaker 2: may the kiss of a leper be on shan Chan's
Speaker 2: lips before he dies. So he's had enough. I guess
Speaker 2: that was a real back then. Now. While this is
Speaker 2: going on, though, finally a young servant girl comes up
Speaker 2: to shan Chan and says, hey, I've got a hen's
Speaker 2: egg I can bring you if that's that's enough. I
Speaker 2: mean it's not much, but it's what I got and
Speaker 2: he's like, okay, that will suffice. She goes to fetch it,
Speaker 2: and then she comes back and says, actually, sorry, the
Speaker 2: egg's gone. I can't offer that to you, and this
Speaker 2: sets sean Chan off. He immediately accuses the girl of
Speaker 2: eating the eggs. He's like, oh, you couldn't bring it
Speaker 2: because you ate it nice and she said, no, no,
Speaker 2: it wasn't me. It was probably the mice. They're mice
Speaker 2: all over this place. They probably ate the egg. That's
Speaker 2: probably what happened.
Speaker 3: Lot of twist and turns in the story.
Speaker 2: But the poet here, yeah, he's in a mood at
Speaker 2: this point and he says, then I will satirize them
Speaker 2: in a poem, said Sean Chan, and forthwith he chanted
Speaker 2: so bitter a satire against them that ten mice fell
Speaker 2: dead at once in his presence. WHOA, Yeah, I mean again,
Speaker 2: this guy is a great poet.
Speaker 3: That's also a lot of mice to have just been
Speaker 3: present anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it did. I mean, that makes sense. That's
Speaker 2: probably what happened to the egg.
Speaker 3: Yeah, affair is a veritable schmorgasbord.
Speaker 2: Now one assumes that Shanchen pauses, catches his breath a
Speaker 2: little bit, but he's still in a foul mood over
Speaker 2: all of this, and he continues, this is this is
Speaker 2: from Yates tis well, said Shanzhen. But the cat is
Speaker 2: the one most to blame, for it was her duty
Speaker 2: to suppress the mice. Therefore, I shall satirize the tribe
Speaker 2: of the cats and their chief lord, Urusan, son of Arousan,
Speaker 2: for I know where he lives, with his wife's Spitfire,
Speaker 2: and his daughter Sharptooth, with her brothers, the Purr and
Speaker 2: the Growler. But I shall begin with Urusan himself, for
Speaker 2: he is a king and answerable for all the cats.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure my child made up these cat names.
Speaker 2: It does sound a little bit like Cat's the musical, right,
Speaker 2: he's the purr and the growler. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 2: already seeming like a bad decision, but he's again, he's
Speaker 2: in a mood. He's gonna keep going. Quote and he said,
Speaker 2: Erosan monster of claws, who strikes at the mouse, but
Speaker 2: lets it go weakest of cats, the otter did well,
Speaker 2: who bit off the tips of thy progenitor's ears, so
Speaker 2: that every cat sense is jagged eared. Let thy tail
Speaker 2: hang down. It is right for the mouse jeers at thee.
Speaker 2: Now Erosan heard these words in his cave, and he
Speaker 2: said to his daughter, sharp tooth, Shanhan has satirized me,
Speaker 2: but I will be avenged. Nay, father, she said, bring
Speaker 2: him here alive, that we may all take our revenge.
Speaker 2: I shall go then and bring him, said Erosan, So
Speaker 2: send thy brothers after me. So obviously things are about
Speaker 2: to really get out of hand. Shan Chhan gets the
Speaker 2: sense that this is about to happen, so he asked
Speaker 2: the king and all the people he's been insulting to
Speaker 2: protect him. But none of them can protect him from
Speaker 2: the coming of the King of the cats. And there's
Speaker 2: this great description here where this is originally all I
Speaker 2: was going to include, but then the story was too good.
Speaker 2: But here's the description. And when the cat appeared, he
Speaker 2: seemed to them the size of a bullock, so a steer.
Speaker 2: And this was his appearance, rapacious, panting, jagged eared, snub nosed,
Speaker 2: sharp toothed, nimble, angry, vindictive, glare eyed, terrible, sharp plod
Speaker 2: Such was his similitude. But he passed on amongst them,
Speaker 2: not minding till he came to Shan Shan and him
Speaker 2: he seized by the arm and jerked him up on
Speaker 2: his back and made off the way he came before
Speaker 2: anyone could anyone could touch him, for he had no
Speaker 2: other object in view but to get hold of the poet.
Speaker 2: So he swept him up. He's taken him away. Okay,
Speaker 2: So at this point the king of the cats rides
Speaker 2: off into the night with the terrified poet on his back.
Speaker 2: Shan Shan, clearly in a tight spot, tries flattery. He
Speaker 2: starts on telling Irosan Love what a marvelous beast he is,
Speaker 2: and this is not working, so he invokes the saints,
Speaker 2: but Irasan is having none of it, and he brings
Speaker 2: the bard straight to a forge at a monastery, apparently
Speaker 2: so he can roast the poet within it, and maybe
Speaker 2: there's some sort of maybe maybe there's some sort of
Speaker 2: intended twist here. Right, the cat is not being roasted here,
Speaker 2: the human is going to be roasted.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But at this point, who's hanging out here by the
Speaker 2: forge but Saint Kiran, one of the twelve Apostles of Ireland,
Speaker 2: and he refuses to see such a fine poet incinerated,
Speaker 2: so he hits the King of the Cats with a
Speaker 2: bar of red hot iron, killing him, and then Sean
Speaker 2: Chan tells off the saint. He says, quote, I would
Speaker 2: rather Irosan had killed me and eaten me every bit,
Speaker 2: so that I might bring disgrace on Guori the King
Speaker 2: for the bad food he gave me, for it was
Speaker 2: all owing to his wretched dinners that I got into
Speaker 2: this plight. I love that he's such a such a
Speaker 2: grumpus and just so committed to this grudge that he's like,
Speaker 2: I wish you hadn't saved me because I because I'm
Speaker 2: just so mad at the king. Amazing all time grouch.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, But anyway, the story ends up with the
Speaker 2: King and the bar and eventually make up, and shan
Speaker 2: Chen gets on it gets an honored seat at all
Speaker 2: the feasts moving forward. So in a way, I feel
Speaker 2: like the King of the Cats really catches astray in
Speaker 2: this in the story, if you ask me, Like, he
Speaker 2: was just kind of mining his own business until he
Speaker 2: was just wretchedly insulted by this poet. And you know,
Speaker 2: he couldn't. He's the king. He can't just stand there
Speaker 2: and let this pass. He has to go off and
Speaker 2: kill this poet, and he gets just drawn into all
Speaker 2: of this drama.
Speaker 3: But so do you think this captures the spirit of
Speaker 3: the King of Cats that is summoned by that the
Speaker 3: horrible ritual, Like it's the same sort of being as
Speaker 3: being imagined.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here given you know, given treatment within an using
Speaker 2: story that is clearly playing for laughs and places. But yeah,
Speaker 2: they both seem to get at this idea of some
Speaker 2: sort of a great cat, some sort of a supernatural
Speaker 2: cat being that has knowledge, uh, you know, beyond that
Speaker 2: of of a of a mortal So something like a
Speaker 2: god perhaps, like Wiseman points out, connected to some sort
Speaker 2: of a feline deity of of you know, of Pagan,
Speaker 2: Driddic pre Christian origin. So it's yeah, it's interesting to
Speaker 2: see that you kind of see it like peeking out
Speaker 2: of the Odadus, you know, almost like a cat in
Speaker 2: the night, but it's peaking out of Adadus from these
Speaker 2: various folk tales and traditions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that takes a fence and comes to the aid
Speaker 3: of its smaller, more mundane brethren. And that we can,
Speaker 3: at our peril, get its attention by irritating or harming
Speaker 3: those little brethren.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that in its you know that that feels
Speaker 2: very twisted in so many ways, right, because on one hand,
Speaker 2: it seems like it should be a cot genary tale,
Speaker 2: don't mistreat a cat because the King of the cats
Speaker 2: could come for you, But then it gets turned into
Speaker 2: a whole ritual. It's like, well, we're counting on that
Speaker 2: because we actually need some sage advice from the King
Speaker 2: of the cats. But we've got to play it just
Speaker 2: right otherwise he'll destroy us.
Speaker 3: But the advice is always just going to be build
Speaker 3: seven churches. It's going to tell you that every time.
Speaker 3: You already know.
Speaker 2: That's why there's just so many churches over there.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: I guess, okay, are you ready to shift to a
Speaker 3: new supernatural cat?
Speaker 2: Let us summon it out of the dark.
Speaker 3: I would like to take a look at a monster
Speaker 3: cat that appears in Welsh folklore and Arthurian literature, known
Speaker 3: as Cath Polyg if you're trying to look it up. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: there are a bunch of different spelling and pronunciation variants
Speaker 3: for the name of this creature. Usually the cat part
Speaker 3: of the name is spelled with the thch at the end,
Speaker 3: like Kathy with the y so cat or cat, and
Speaker 3: then the second word in the name could be pa
Speaker 3: l u c b A l u g b a
Speaker 3: l u s something like that, but I think it's
Speaker 3: pronounced Kath Pollog. The name comes from Welsh and it
Speaker 3: is usually, at least in the mainline tradition, taken to
Speaker 3: mean Pollug's cat, as in a cat belonging to a
Speaker 3: proper noun polag. There is also a French literary variation
Speaker 3: known as Capalou or Chappalou, which by a false etymology,
Speaker 3: seems to have evolved to mean a bog cat. Will
Speaker 3: come back to that in a bit, because I think
Speaker 3: that's interesting. In some stories, kath Pollog is a monster
Speaker 3: cat that does battle with a hero from Arthurian legend
Speaker 3: named k sometimes spelled c Ai or Cei or kay.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Fans of the nineteen sixty three Disney film The
Speaker 2: Sword in the Stone will remember this character. This is
Speaker 2: based on the nineteen thirty eight None novel by T. H. White,
Speaker 2: but it plays a prominent role in that picture.
Speaker 3: The version of the Sword in the Stone is very
Speaker 3: much the k you get in later Arthurian literature, where
Speaker 3: he is an obnoxious, loud mouth bully Arthur's older foster brother,
Speaker 3: but he's also he's a buffoon. In these earlier Arthur stories,
Speaker 3: k is a much more honorable and uncomplicatedly heroic character.
Speaker 3: But Kath Palack's enemy is not always k In some
Speaker 3: later yarns, the creature is fought by King Arthur himself,
Speaker 3: and especially in some French tellings, the cat actually wins
Speaker 3: this fight. What kills Arthur.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have to come back to that. This is crazy?
Speaker 2: Is that is not any version of the Arthurine legend
Speaker 2: that I've ever read or seemed committed to film.
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't remember that from Sword in the Stone. But
Speaker 3: so for more information on Kath pallag I was trying
Speaker 3: to find a solid source and I eventually settled on
Speaker 3: a good one. So it's a twenty Foureen edition of
Speaker 3: the Triads of the Island of Britain, edited by a
Speaker 3: scholar named Rachel Bromwich from the University of Wales Press,
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen. So this book is a translation of the
Speaker 3: Welsh Triads. Very interesting literary form that I really didn't
Speaker 3: know anything about before this. So it's a literary form
Speaker 3: preserved in Middle Welsh manuscripts from the medieval period where
Speaker 3: you would essentially have three names of people or things
Speaker 3: listed together under a common conceptual grouping. So examples would
Speaker 3: be three generous men of the Island of Britain, and
Speaker 3: then it would give you a list of three names,
Speaker 3: all with an epithet the generous, you know, Mordaff the generous.
Speaker 3: A lot of these are lists of famous people, lists
Speaker 3: of chieftains or rich people who add a lot of
Speaker 3: sheep or something, or warriors and heroes from history and
Speaker 3: from legend. Some of them are interesting, They've got interesting names,
Speaker 3: and they're kind of confusing. One I remember I came
Speaker 3: across in this book is three slaughter Blocks of the
Speaker 3: Island of Britain. But I think it's not actually talking
Speaker 3: about literal blocks. From the notes, it seems this means
Speaker 3: like a leader who stands his ground firmly in battle.
Speaker 3: Another one that was funny was three Frivolous Bards of
Speaker 3: the Island of Britain. And some of these contain not
Speaker 3: only three names with epithets, some actually have whole narratives attached.
Speaker 3: So where does kath Pallag come in? The kath Pallag
Speaker 3: creature is referenced in a narrative attached to one of
Speaker 3: these Middle Welsh triads, specifically number twenty six in this edition,
Speaker 3: called three Powerful Swine Herds of the Island of Britain.
Speaker 3: This triad, this is one of the ones that has
Speaker 3: some story attached to it, and it's talking about these
Speaker 3: awesome dudes who commanded awesome legions of swine. And it
Speaker 3: leads into a story about Henwin Hnwn Henwin, a mythical
Speaker 3: magical monster pig whose name means old White. I think
Speaker 3: we might have referenced Old White or Henwen in our
Speaker 3: series on the Hogs of Hell last year.
Speaker 2: I think so. Yeah, I remember at least reading about
Speaker 2: King Arthur chasing pigs all over the British Isles.
Speaker 3: Right, So here, I'm going to read from Bromwich's translation
Speaker 3: of the triad narrative, and please forgive my attempts to
Speaker 3: pronounce these Middle Welsh names here, I'm doing my best.
Speaker 3: So it's listing the three great swineherds, and it gets
Speaker 3: to the third one, and then it says, and the
Speaker 3: third call son of koul Ruey, with the swine of
Speaker 3: Dalwear Dalbin in Glenn dahlwere in Cornwall, and one of
Speaker 3: the swine was pregnant. Henwin was her name, and it
Speaker 3: was prophesied that the island of Britain would be the
Speaker 3: worse for the womb burden. Then Arthur assembled the army
Speaker 3: of the Island of Britain and set out to seek
Speaker 3: to destroy her. So, now being hunted, Henwin goes on
Speaker 3: to give birth to a pharaoh. It says, in order
Speaker 3: to give birth, she goes into the sea. But then
Speaker 3: later it's describing where these creatures are born, and it
Speaker 3: sounds like it's different locations on land, so it's kind
Speaker 3: of confusing. Maybe she gets to these locations by sea
Speaker 3: travel between giving birth to them, but yeah, it comes
Speaker 3: back on land to have each batch or something. But anyway,
Speaker 3: it says she ends up giving birth to a grain
Speaker 3: of wheat and a bee, and it explains that's why
Speaker 3: one location has good wheat crops. And then at another
Speaker 3: place she gives birth to a grain of barley and
Speaker 3: a grain of wheat, and that's again some crop related
Speaker 3: futures there. But then things start getting bad. She gives
Speaker 3: birth to a wolf cub and a young eagle, and
Speaker 3: it says these monsters are sent to different parts of
Speaker 3: the British Isles, and you know, cause much trouble there.
Speaker 3: And then from here we learn quote and at landfair
Speaker 3: in are fun. Under the black Rock she brought forth
Speaker 3: a kitten, and the powerful swineherd threw it from the
Speaker 3: rock into the sea, and the sons of Pollag fostered
Speaker 3: it in Man to their own harm. And that was
Speaker 3: Polyg's cat, and it was one of the three great
Speaker 3: oppressions of Man nurtured therein. So it brings it all
Speaker 3: back to another triad, three great oppressions of man. So yes,
Speaker 3: this monster cat, first of all, born not to a
Speaker 3: previous generation of monster cats, but to one very special swine,
Speaker 3: some pig Man seems to be a reference to a place,
Speaker 3: this surreal place now called Anglesey, which is a large
Speaker 3: island just off the northwest coast of Wales. So if
Speaker 3: you're trying to picture it on a map, yeah, the
Speaker 3: cat Polag's hunting grounds. It was up on Anglesey and
Speaker 3: especially I think around the sort of mainland facing coast
Speaker 3: of that island. It was said that it could swim
Speaker 3: the straits.
Speaker 2: However, despite the fact that.
Speaker 3: In the core text here Pallag is treated as a
Speaker 3: proper name, it is a person to which the cat belongs,
Speaker 3: Pallag's cat, there also seems to be a more descriptive
Speaker 3: etymology that some scholars have proposed. Bromwich points out that
Speaker 3: the Middle Welsh word pallock or ballock comes from a
Speaker 3: root word which means to dig, pierce, wound, hit, scratch,
Speaker 3: or claw, so it's kind of an all purpose striking
Speaker 3: and gouging verb. And Bromwich cites another scholar named Lloyd Jones,
Speaker 3: who argues that pollock was originally an adjectival descriptor of
Speaker 3: the cat, as in scratching cat. So cat Pallag, not
Speaker 3: the cat that belongs to Pallack, but the scratching cat.
Speaker 3: The aren't most cat scratching cats?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, if you if you look at them the
Speaker 2: wrong way, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it's supposed to make this monster cat sound
Speaker 3: dangerous and deadly, So maybe scratching isn't the best English
Speaker 3: translation in terms of connotations. Maybe it should be like
Speaker 3: striking or gouging cat guys.
Speaker 2: Like, perhaps a more severe version of scratching, because you
Speaker 2: can get a pretty friendly scratch from even a very
Speaker 2: nice cat, but a gouging is different.
Speaker 3: As I said earlier, this version of the story does
Speaker 3: not say how big the cat is, though, so maybe
Speaker 3: it is scratching. Maybe we should understand it that way,
Speaker 3: but anyway, the name of the cath polaic here may
Speaker 3: also have survived in the common name for an herb
Speaker 3: called palag'spaw, known in English as silverweed. So apart from
Speaker 3: this triad about very powerful swineherds, the only other early
Speaker 3: reference to catho polog in written sources is a tenth
Speaker 3: or eleventh century Old Welsh poem called pah Gurr, which
Speaker 3: only exists in a fragmentary state now. And this poem
Speaker 3: is in one passage it's talking about the adventure of
Speaker 3: k Again, we're back to Kay, who later would become
Speaker 3: Arthur's buffoonish older foster brother. In this earlier story about K,
Speaker 3: it says quote fair k went to Man to destroy monsters,
Speaker 3: and the word here that it uses is luon, which
Speaker 3: the authors have suggested might possibly be in some way
Speaker 3: related to the word lions, though it seems to refer
Speaker 3: to monsters here. But it goes on to say his
Speaker 3: shield was a fragment against caath Pallag. When people ask
Speaker 3: who killed kath Pallag, nine score fierce men fell for
Speaker 3: its food. Nine score warriors. All right, so this cat
Speaker 3: killed one hundred and eighty warriors, and then the night
Speaker 3: k probably killed it, at least that's what's implied. The
Speaker 3: version of the poem we have here cuts off in
Speaker 3: the middle of the tale, so we don't actually get
Speaker 3: the part where he kills it if he does, but
Speaker 3: that seems to be implied because kay like survives the encounter.
Speaker 2: And that's usually where these stories go, with some not
Speaker 2: always but often.
Speaker 3: In another later Welsh source, there's a reference to a
Speaker 3: monster cat in Anglesey, which may be the same creature.
Speaker 3: It's not called cath Pallag, but it says may the
Speaker 3: speckled cat and her strangers make an uproar. Seems to
Speaker 3: be phrased as a kind of curse.
Speaker 2: That and that, of course that makes me think about
Speaker 2: these ideas of like a king of cats and its
Speaker 2: attendants in the night, which I want to mention I
Speaker 2: think it was. Wiseman pointed out that there are also
Speaker 2: some tellings in which that particular cat is described as
Speaker 2: not being attended by other cats, but even but perhaps
Speaker 2: even by like humans holding their own heads. So you
Speaker 2: maybe get some mixed ideas of like are these demons?
Speaker 2: Are these specters of the grave? And so forth? And
Speaker 2: certainly the speckled cat and her strangers makes me think
Speaker 2: of that, like who are these strangers? Are the other cats?
Speaker 2: Are they? You know? Phantoms from beyond?
Speaker 3: That's all that's a ten out of ten band name
Speaker 3: as well. Yes, it's just like the marquee at the Masquerade.
Speaker 3: But so Bromwich says that the cat Pollag legend is
Speaker 3: probably related to another cat monster, a horrible sea cat
Speaker 3: from Irish folklore called the Merchada, and this beast gets
Speaker 3: a description in the Lives of the Saints from the
Speaker 3: Book of Lismore, in a subsection on the life of
Speaker 3: Saint Brendan that Bromwich includes in her EndNote. So I'm
Speaker 3: going to read from that here to give an idea
Speaker 3: talking about Saint Brendan. It says, there is a great
Speaker 3: sea cat here, like a young ox or like a
Speaker 3: three year old horse, overgrown by feeding on the fish
Speaker 3: of this sea and this island. And then there's a
Speaker 3: part where the monster is said to be chasing the
Speaker 3: saint's boat. I think Saint Brendan was like a sailor
Speaker 3: and a navigator. And it says bigger than a brazen
Speaker 3: cauldron was each of his eyes A boy rrs tusks
Speaker 3: had he furzy hair upon him. And when I saw
Speaker 3: a furzy, I was like, is that a TYPEO? No,
Speaker 3: that is not a type furze.
Speaker 2: F you are.
Speaker 3: Ze means the thorny foliage on an evergreen shrub. So
Speaker 3: think of a cat, a monstrous sea cat, with like
Speaker 3: evergreen kind of pine needle hair or brambly hair. And
Speaker 3: then and then it goes on to say he had
Speaker 3: the maw of a leopard, with the strength of a
Speaker 3: lion and the veracity of a hound, which the comparisons
Speaker 3: kind of lose steam for me there at the end,
Speaker 3: because it's saying this monstrous cat had a mouth like
Speaker 3: a big cat. You know, I had a mouth like
Speaker 3: a lion. So it was like a lion, like the
Speaker 3: real animal like he is a cat, but.
Speaker 2: It is to be clear some sort of sea creature
Speaker 2: in this.
Speaker 3: That's what they're saying here. Yeah, so this monster cat
Speaker 3: is said to live in the sea. Cat Pallock also
Speaker 3: apparently has sea related powers, since it is said to
Speaker 3: swim the Mini Straits, the waterway that separates the Isle
Speaker 3: of Anglesey from the mainland of Whales. We don't know
Speaker 3: exactly how much of the story of Kath Pallack is
Speaker 3: influenced by these Irish cat beast tales, but they seem
Speaker 3: probably related. There are more sources on these Irish monster cats,
Speaker 3: and Bromwich says that they were sometimes sort of a
Speaker 3: ware cat, a human being who has been bewitched, or
Speaker 3: one who can magically transform themselves with a cat skin disguise.
Speaker 3: They sometimes guard hidden treasure troves, so that's kind of cool. Again,
Speaker 3: this is not necessarily Cath Pallick, but the Irish ones.
Speaker 3: They guard treasure troves, and they are sometimes witnessed coming
Speaker 3: out of she mounds. These would be hills where fairies
Speaker 3: or elves dwell underneath the earth. They thought of his
Speaker 3: portals to the hidden world. Now I mentioned earlier. The
Speaker 3: French variation on cat pallag the Capellou or the Chappealou.
Speaker 3: Whereas in Welsh texts the slayer of the cat is
Speaker 3: k in some medieval French Arthurian romances it is actually
Speaker 3: Arthur himself, King Arthur, who fights the creature and sometimes
Speaker 3: loses the fight disastrously. So I'm going to start with
Speaker 3: that version. So from a late twelfth century text known
Speaker 3: as Romance de Francais, describing a poem in which this
Speaker 3: story is told, the author says, quote, the French have
Speaker 3: made a poem about him, that King Arthur was pushed
Speaker 3: by Capellou into the bog and the cat killed him
Speaker 3: in war, then passed over to England and was not
Speaker 3: slow to conquer it, then wore the crown in the
Speaker 3: land and was the lord of the country. Where did
Speaker 3: they get such a tale? It is a proven lie.
Speaker 3: God knows.
Speaker 2: I love that. That's amazing.
Speaker 3: Is not true?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm very much imagining the French people from Monty
Speaker 2: Python in the Holy Grail here creating a scandalous story
Speaker 2: about a cat killing King Arthur and becoming the King
Speaker 2: of the Britons.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to come back to that the question
Speaker 3: of how to take this story. But another interesting thing
Speaker 3: in the secondhand description of the story here the fight
Speaker 3: takes place in a bog or in a swamp, which
Speaker 3: in the French language would have been in la palou,
Speaker 3: meaning in the bog. Bromwich writes that this is evidence that,
Speaker 3: by way of a false etymology, the French misunderstood kathpollog
Speaker 3: to mean bog cat, and note that this allows the
Speaker 3: capelu or the chappalou to retain the characteristics of a
Speaker 3: water monster like the Irish sea cats. These false folk
Speaker 3: etymologies are always really interesting to me. We've talked about
Speaker 3: a number of them on the show before.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: One that's come up is the English. This is certainly
Speaker 3: the case for English speakers. Is the word muskrat.
Speaker 2: People assume that.
Speaker 3: Because of the way the name sounds, it must be
Speaker 3: a rat that produces a musk meaning a smelly rat,
Speaker 3: But actually muskrat is an English transliteration of an Algonquin word,
Speaker 3: and so it seems like that may have been going
Speaker 3: on with the French understanding of capellou here, that it's
Speaker 3: like sounds like the French for cat from a bog
Speaker 3: bog cat so that's what they thought it meant. So
Speaker 3: the stories are set in a bog or a swamp.
Speaker 2: Wow, and that ends up coloring the shape of the
Speaker 2: folk tale.
Speaker 3: The French bog cat was like some of these Irish monsters,
Speaker 3: said to be a man who morphed into a cat
Speaker 3: body form by the power of magic. There's another version
Speaker 3: of the story where this time Arthur actually manages to
Speaker 3: kill the cat. This is from a text called Estoir
Speaker 3: de Merlin I think the history of Merlin or the
Speaker 3: Story of Merlin, which takes place in a real location
Speaker 3: around the Lake of Le Bourgeais, which Bromwich says was
Speaker 3: known from the fourteenth century as Mont duchat ar two.
Speaker 3: I think that means Mount Arthur's cat, something like that.
Speaker 3: And another version with the French Capelou says that this
Speaker 3: bog cat captures Arthur, kidnaps him, takes him away to Avalon,
Speaker 3: which is where Arthur comes to rest at the end
Speaker 3: of the more well known stories, you know the Lancelot
Speaker 3: Guenevere romances, where they have a big battle and then
Speaker 3: Arthur's laid to rest in Avalon. Bromwich speculates that this
Speaker 3: weird story where the cat takes the cat takes him
Speaker 3: there may have arisen in an attempt to like blend
Speaker 3: together popular Arthur versus Bogcat battle stories with the more
Speaker 3: well known or canon detail of Arthur's biography in these
Speaker 3: big stories. So I was trying to think of an analogy,
Speaker 3: and it's kind of like if there were a popular
Speaker 3: stream of Star Wars fan fiction where Obi Wan Kenobi
Speaker 3: fights the Fluke Man from the X Files, you know,
Speaker 3: the toilet Monster, and so in one of these stories
Speaker 3: has the Toilet Monster abducting obi Wan Kenobi and taking
Speaker 3: him to the Death Star so he can meet his
Speaker 3: canonical ending.
Speaker 2: Right right, Because it's like, well, we're talking about Obi Wan,
Speaker 2: so of course we have to have the Fluke Band,
Speaker 2: but we need to actually come back to the major
Speaker 2: the major beats in the overarching story, and we've got
Speaker 2: to have Fluke Band there for that as well. Right,
Speaker 2: So yeah, I like that.
Speaker 3: But also I wanted to come back to the question
Speaker 3: you raised about the version where Arthur is killed in
Speaker 3: the bog or killed by the Bogcat, because Arthur he
Speaker 3: just gets crumpled and the cat becomes king. Is it
Speaker 3: possible this was meant as a as a spoof or
Speaker 3: a kind of cross channel national ridicule by the French.
Speaker 3: I don't know of a strong reason for thinking that's
Speaker 3: the case, though I'm very tempted to wonder along those lines.
Speaker 3: Though I'm by no means an expert on Arthurian literature,
Speaker 3: so you know, maybe there are nuances there that I'm missing.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, Bromwich says that the version of
Speaker 3: the story where Arthur dies is actually the oldest known
Speaker 3: variant of the Arthur versus the Bogcat story, and thus
Speaker 3: she argues it's possible that this reflects a quote genuine
Speaker 3: variant tradition of Arthur's end, which existed in antecedent Welsh
Speaker 3: and or Breton tradition, but which by the time of
Speaker 3: the extant records has given place to other alternative traditions.
Speaker 3: Arthur's death at Camlin became conflated with a story of
Speaker 3: his removal to Avalon, so that the story of his
Speaker 3: terminal fight with the cat monster is yet another variant
Speaker 3: which survives only in certain tantalizing illusions. So does that
Speaker 3: make sense that this is obviously here limited to the
Speaker 3: realm of speculation. We don't know about what the earliest
Speaker 3: versions of the story were, But in Bromwich's opinion, it
Speaker 3: could be that this bizarre version of the story of
Speaker 3: King Arthur, where King Arthur is killed by a wicked
Speaker 3: swamp cat, may actually reflect a genuine early variant of
Speaker 3: the King Arthur story, which has since disappeared in Welsh
Speaker 3: and Breton sources, but survives in this altered derivative form
Speaker 3: in these references from French texts like what if What
Speaker 3: if it were that the actual og King Arthur was
Speaker 3: pushed into a bog by a kitty cat?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing to think about. Yeah, the idea that
Speaker 2: this is not just some sort of one off, not
Speaker 2: the results of some you know, just from some translation
Speaker 2: accidents and so forth. It kind of gives us this
Speaker 2: curio of a tale, but it may represent like a
Speaker 2: significant strain of fiction or Arthurian tradition going back quite
Speaker 2: a ways. That's that's fascinating to think about it. And
Speaker 2: it makes sense too if you again think about this,
Speaker 2: this idea that Wiseman brings up about some of these
Speaker 2: cat stories being connected to much older traditions of even
Speaker 2: feline deities in the British Isles, you know, those are
Speaker 2: exactly the sort of entities that a hero might die fighting.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you come up on the more familiar
Speaker 3: Arthur stories, it sounds comical that he's killed in a
Speaker 3: bog by a cat. But but like you know, Beowulf
Speaker 3: is killed while fighting a dragon. You know this, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you would have plenty of these medieval stories that
Speaker 3: are about a great heroic warrior and is in fact
Speaker 3: at some point killed in the story by a monster
Speaker 3: in the way that make in a way that makes
Speaker 3: sense of the narrative. Like it, it's not an accident
Speaker 3: that Beowulf gets killed by a dragon. That's like part
Speaker 3: of the arc of the story. And then you know,
Speaker 3: wiggleff steps up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And now I am going to refuse
Speaker 2: to imagine this as any thing less than like a
Speaker 2: tiger sized cat. Though I can't imagine King Arthur falling
Speaker 2: to something that's housecats sized.
Speaker 3: Well, I can imagine it. Maybe I've got a better
Speaker 3: imagination than you. No, I'm thinking, I'm full on thinking
Speaker 3: it's like the rabbit in Monty Python. This is a
Speaker 3: regular sized house cat that is killing King Arthur. It's
Speaker 3: killing one hundred and eighty fine warriors, it's getting them all.
Speaker 2: Well, This does bring us to an interesting notion here,
Speaker 2: thinking about again about the size of a killer cat.
Speaker 2: On one hand, like a big cat is a killer cat.
Speaker 2: That makes sense. We see a big cat at a
Speaker 2: zoo and we feel it in our bones. We know
Speaker 2: that that is something that is a threat to us.
Speaker 2: And if you're dealing with a giant sized cat, I
Speaker 2: mean that's that's of course, been a very popular area
Speaker 2: of focus in fiction. In fact, the Weird House Cinema
Speaker 2: episode that we just re ran, which of course is
Speaker 2: the Incredible Shrinking Man from nineteen fifty seven, has a
Speaker 2: great sequence which our incredible Shrinking Man has to flee
Speaker 2: for his life from a normal sized house cat that
Speaker 2: to him is an enormous monster like a kaiju that
Speaker 2: is trying to get at him in a doll's house.
Speaker 3: There's no kaiju as cruel as a cat, though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it goes back to that
Speaker 2: old bit of folk wisdom that if you were reduced
Speaker 2: to the size of a mouse, your cat would eat you.
Speaker 2: It would not be your friend, which you know, I
Speaker 2: love cats, but I think that's totally true. But then
Speaker 2: on the other end, we have plenty of examples of
Speaker 2: house cat sized cats that are depicted as vicious monsters
Speaker 2: sometimes played for laugh certainly, but although other times there's
Speaker 2: at least an attempt to play it seriously. The movie
Speaker 2: We'll be watching this Friday for Weirdhouse Cinema has such
Speaker 2: a creature. Another film that comes to mind is Tales
Speaker 2: from the Dark Side, the movie which has in it.
Speaker 2: One of the segments is an adaptation of Stephen King's
Speaker 2: The Cat from Hell, and we get to see that
Speaker 2: cat running around and killing people, even though it's not
Speaker 2: shooting lightning out of its eyes. It's not the size
Speaker 2: of a tiger. It's just the size of a house cat.
Speaker 2: But it's really fast and really vicious.
Speaker 3: We shall not underestimate them. I don't think you and
Speaker 3: I would have anyway, but especially not after today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, even with a house cat, you know,
Speaker 2: there'll be times when they will go into hunter mode
Speaker 2: and they may attack your feet or you know, run
Speaker 2: through the house, and in those moments you get a
Speaker 2: sense of it and you're like, what if this creature
Speaker 2: was suddenly not my friend or not my partner, not
Speaker 2: my roommate, and what if it saw me as something else?
Speaker 2: Maybe I would be in trouble.
Speaker 3: But you gotta be nice to it anyway. I mean,
Speaker 3: not only because it's the right thing to do. If
Speaker 3: you don't, you might summon the King of cats exactly.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and the king will not take kindly to you.
Speaker 2: And that includes just slight slight errors on your part,
Speaker 2: like not giving them the wet food and so forth,
Speaker 2: laying feeding by even fifteen minutes. So just be very
Speaker 2: careful out there everyone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, a little late for dinner time. There's
Speaker 3: a knock on the door. It's a soft knock, a
Speaker 3: kind of furry knock.
Speaker 2: All right. So that is our look at folkloric cats
Speaker 2: of the British Isles. Again, we couldn't cover everything here,
Speaker 2: and when you start following some of the threads you
Speaker 2: also get into cryptids. Certainly there are a lot of
Speaker 2: like modern cat cryptids and supposed sightings of big cats.
Speaker 2: And then of course again you have the reality of
Speaker 2: wildcats and feral cats and so forth. So there's a lot.
Speaker 2: There's a lot else out there. But hopefully you found
Speaker 2: this enjoyable, and perhaps those of you listening have some
Speaker 2: additional stories you want to bring to mind. Maybe it's
Speaker 2: a different twist on some of the stories we shared
Speaker 2: here today, some of the traditions we shared here today,
Speaker 2: or a treatment of these traditions in fiction one way
Speaker 2: or another right in with those, We would love to
Speaker 2: read those, perhaps on a future episode of Stuff to
Speaker 2: Blow Your Mind. Listener mail. Just a reminder to everyone
Speaker 2: out there that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
Speaker 2: a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays
Speaker 2: and Thursday, short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays,
Speaker 2: we set aside most serious concerns to watch talk about
Speaker 2: a weird movie on Weird House Cinema. And again this
Speaker 2: is Catwek. Cat episodes will continue all week and Dog people,
Speaker 2: if you want a Dog Week, write in and let
Speaker 2: us know that we should do talk week and we'll
Speaker 2: try and make it happen.
Speaker 3: Also, we had ideas for cat content that we don't
Speaker 3: have time for this week, so we may have to
Speaker 3: we can come back and do Cat Week part.
Speaker 2: Due yeah next year for CATWEK.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: You can email us at contact stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. M