Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamman. This is the Monster Fact,
Speaker 2: a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 2: focusing on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time. Yesterday
Speaker 2: was Saint Patrick's Day, so I figured it would be
Speaker 2: appropriate and not too late to feature another monster of
Speaker 2: Irish origin on the show. So I'd like to discuss
Speaker 2: not a leprechaun or a banshee, but rather the out
Speaker 2: Blue Ucra, an invisible creature that crawls down your throat
Speaker 2: while you're asleep and then proceeds to eat the contents
Speaker 2: of your belley. Now. I initially read about this creature
Speaker 2: in the pages of Carol Rose's Spirits Fairies, Leprechauns and
Speaker 2: Goblins and Encyclopedia, and then looked up one of her
Speaker 2: primary sources on the subject, Irish author Douglas Hydes. Beside
Speaker 2: the Fire from A ninety The entity is also discussed
Speaker 2: in James mccullop's Dictionary of Celtic Mythology nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: But here's the basics. One allegedly can inquire the out
Speaker 2: Blueucra by sleeping near a stream. The invisible creature, sometimes
Speaker 2: described as being a kind of fairy, other times a
Speaker 2: sort of invisible newt, will crawl down the sleeper's throat
Speaker 2: and eat the food in his stomach. Once it has
Speaker 2: set up shop down there, the creature will just continue
Speaker 2: to eat any food or most of the food that
Speaker 2: the human swallows. As a result, the poor victim of
Speaker 2: the alp lucra grows weaker and frailer despite always eating,
Speaker 2: because an evil spirit in his belly is actually eating
Speaker 2: all of the food. The solution, as described by Hyde,
Speaker 2: is to just eat a whole lot of salt beef
Speaker 2: and then lie with your mouth open over a stream.
Speaker 2: The thirsty out leucra will then eject itself desperately in
Speaker 2: need of a refreshing drink. Kellop also adds that in
Speaker 2: some stories, the invisible creature, also known as the joint eater,
Speaker 2: will sit beside the victim. There also seems to be
Speaker 2: related tails out there, one in which serpent eggs in
Speaker 2: the water of running Brook that eve ingested will cause
Speaker 2: snakes to hatch in your stomach, and these apparently can
Speaker 2: only be removed by fasting and then positioning oneself mouth
Speaker 2: open in front of a bowl of milk. This according
Speaker 2: to one wwn in an eighteen ninety one review of
Speaker 2: Hyde's book in the Journal of American Folklore. So there's
Speaker 2: a twist of magic and folklore humor to these tales, obviously,
Speaker 2: the eating of the salt beef and so forth. But
Speaker 2: at heart we can't help but be reminded of real
Speaker 2: world intestinal parasites such as tapeworms here, with McKellop also
Speaker 2: mentioning this in his analysis, humans have known about tapeworms
Speaker 2: for a very long time, the descriptions of them sprinkling
Speaker 2: and popping not throughout the writings of the ancient world.
Speaker 2: And so in the story of the alp Lucra we
Speaker 2: seem to combine this knowledge with the universal concept of
Speaker 2: a spiritual or invisible force that brings illness while also
Speaker 2: warning us about the more subtle dangers associated with bodies
Speaker 2: of water. And obviously we have any number of folklooric
Speaker 2: creature that is warning us about the more overt perils
Speaker 2: of the water, creatures that will drag you down into
Speaker 2: the waters and drown you, and so forth. But here
Speaker 2: you know, various internal parasites do occur in water, and
Speaker 2: a tale like this could be warning us about those
Speaker 2: sorts of dangers as well. But hey, hopefully, today, the
Speaker 2: day after Saint Patrick's Day, you did not wake up
Speaker 2: next to a running stream and there is not a
Speaker 2: demon inside your belly eager to consume all or most
Speaker 2: of your next meal. Tune in for additional episodes of
Speaker 2: The Monster, the Artifact or Animalia Stupendium each week, and
Speaker 2: you can find episodes of all of these in audio
Speaker 2: form in our audio archive. Wherever it is you get
Speaker 2: your audio podcasts. As always, you can email us at
Speaker 2: contact at Stuffdblow your Mind dot com.
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