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

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Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamman. This is the Monster Fact,

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Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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Speaker 2: focusing on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time. Yesterday

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Speaker 2: was Saint Patrick's Day, so I figured it would be

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Speaker 2: appropriate and not too late to feature another monster of

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Speaker 2: Irish origin on the show. So I'd like to discuss

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Speaker 2: not a leprechaun or a banshee, but rather the out

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Speaker 2: Blue Ucra, an invisible creature that crawls down your throat

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Speaker 2: while you're asleep and then proceeds to eat the contents

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Speaker 2: of your belley. Now. I initially read about this creature

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Speaker 2: in the pages of Carol Rose's Spirits Fairies, Leprechauns and

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Speaker 2: Goblins and Encyclopedia, and then looked up one of her

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Speaker 2: primary sources on the subject, Irish author Douglas Hydes. Beside

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Speaker 2: the Fire from A ninety The entity is also discussed

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Speaker 2: in James mccullop's Dictionary of Celtic Mythology nineteen ninety eight.

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Speaker 2: But here's the basics. One allegedly can inquire the out

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Speaker 2: Blueucra by sleeping near a stream. The invisible creature, sometimes

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Speaker 2: described as being a kind of fairy, other times a

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Speaker 2: sort of invisible newt, will crawl down the sleeper's throat

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Speaker 2: and eat the food in his stomach. Once it has

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Speaker 2: set up shop down there, the creature will just continue

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Speaker 2: to eat any food or most of the food that

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Speaker 2: the human swallows. As a result, the poor victim of

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Speaker 2: the alp lucra grows weaker and frailer despite always eating,

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Speaker 2: because an evil spirit in his belly is actually eating

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Speaker 2: all of the food. The solution, as described by Hyde,

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Speaker 2: is to just eat a whole lot of salt beef

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Speaker 2: and then lie with your mouth open over a stream.

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Speaker 2: The thirsty out leucra will then eject itself desperately in

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Speaker 2: need of a refreshing drink. Kellop also adds that in

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Speaker 2: some stories, the invisible creature, also known as the joint eater,

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Speaker 2: will sit beside the victim. There also seems to be

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Speaker 2: related tails out there, one in which serpent eggs in

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Speaker 2: the water of running Brook that eve ingested will cause

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Speaker 2: snakes to hatch in your stomach, and these apparently can

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Speaker 2: only be removed by fasting and then positioning oneself mouth

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Speaker 2: open in front of a bowl of milk. This according

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Speaker 2: to one wwn in an eighteen ninety one review of

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Speaker 2: Hyde's book in the Journal of American Folklore. So there's

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Speaker 2: a twist of magic and folklore humor to these tales, obviously,

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Speaker 2: the eating of the salt beef and so forth. But

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Speaker 2: at heart we can't help but be reminded of real

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Speaker 2: world intestinal parasites such as tapeworms here, with McKellop also

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Speaker 2: mentioning this in his analysis, humans have known about tapeworms

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Speaker 2: for a very long time, the descriptions of them sprinkling

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Speaker 2: and popping not throughout the writings of the ancient world.

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Speaker 2: And so in the story of the alp Lucra we

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Speaker 2: seem to combine this knowledge with the universal concept of

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Speaker 2: a spiritual or invisible force that brings illness while also

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Speaker 2: warning us about the more subtle dangers associated with bodies

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Speaker 2: of water. And obviously we have any number of folklooric

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Speaker 2: creature that is warning us about the more overt perils

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Speaker 2: of the water, creatures that will drag you down into

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Speaker 2: the waters and drown you, and so forth. But here

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Speaker 2: you know, various internal parasites do occur in water, and

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Speaker 2: a tale like this could be warning us about those

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Speaker 2: sorts of dangers as well. But hey, hopefully, today, the

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Speaker 2: day after Saint Patrick's Day, you did not wake up

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Speaker 2: next to a running stream and there is not a

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Speaker 2: demon inside your belly eager to consume all or most

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Speaker 2: of your next meal. Tune in for additional episodes of

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Speaker 2: The Monster, the Artifact or Animalia Stupendium each week, and

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Speaker 2: you can find episodes of all of these in audio

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Speaker 2: form in our audio archive. Wherever it is you get

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Speaker 2: your audio podcasts. As always, you can email us at

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Speaker 2: contact at Stuffdblow your Mind dot com.

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

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