Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to stuff to blow your mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time
Speaker 1: to go into the vault for a classic episode of
Speaker 1: the show. This one originally aired on October twenty two,
Speaker 1: and it's our episode on the leshy, The Old Man
Speaker 1: of the Forest. Yeah, this is a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: a lot of discussion of Russian folk tales and becoming
Speaker 1: lost in the woods. It's uh, it's a great episode
Speaker 1: to listen to. Here at the end of October, it
Speaker 1: was near sunset when the old man looked up from
Speaker 1: his labors and saw the stranger approaching from the west,
Speaker 1: And though his eyes were weaker than they once were,
Speaker 1: he soon saw that the stranger carried himself like a soldier,
Speaker 1: that he bore no weapon that could be seen, and
Speaker 1: so the old man continued scraping his hides till the
Speaker 1: stranger approached close enough to greet him. Hello, grandfather, Oh,
Speaker 1: please don't let me disturb your labor. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to ask, is this the way to the Greenwood Path? Hey?
Speaker 1: It is, but what business have you in the woods?
Speaker 1: Not the woods, Grandfather, the lands on the other side,
Speaker 1: you see I'm returned from the war and I seek
Speaker 1: my family's farm. It's been five long years, and I'm
Speaker 1: eager to aid them with the harvest. There's no path
Speaker 1: through the green forest, at least none blazed by the
Speaker 1: likes of you and me game trails. Then, well, so happens.
Speaker 1: I'm a gifted tracker and can make my own way,
Speaker 1: your own way. Uh, if there are any landmarks, you
Speaker 1: might a lurt me to, well, I'd be most gracious.
Speaker 1: But the old man didn't answer right away. He looked
Speaker 1: out to the woods and instead motioned back towards his hut,
Speaker 1: where the old woman would have supper ready soon enough.
Speaker 1: Tell you what stay with us tonight, and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you of the forest. What the young soldier lacked in caution,
Speaker 1: he made up for in politeness. When he had finished
Speaker 1: his bowl of rabbit stew, he thanked the old man
Speaker 1: and in woman a half dozen times. He cleaned the
Speaker 1: bowls and scrubbed the pot. He split more wood for
Speaker 1: the fire, and even produced a bottle of spirits, which
Speaker 1: he shared with the old man. So tell me of
Speaker 1: the forest, grandfather, You'll not find your own way through
Speaker 1: the green forest, not by moonlight and not by day.
Speaker 1: What little of either filters down through the tree tops.
Speaker 1: The animal paths won't help you either. That only winds
Speaker 1: you down into greater depths. There is neither your way
Speaker 1: nor my way in the green forest. There is only
Speaker 1: the law of the woods. And there is a leshy.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'll be troubled by some forest dwarf
Speaker 1: tis no dwarf. The less she has always been in
Speaker 1: the old forest. He was there before human tribes roamed in.
Speaker 1: He was there when strange animals still range these parts.
Speaker 1: And he is no man nor dwarf, but a shaggy
Speaker 1: figure that casts no shadow, that stares straight through the
Speaker 1: forest depths with eyes that burn like green fire. He
Speaker 1: passes gigantic behind the great trees and sneaks meekly behind
Speaker 1: the nearest blade of grass. Like that, he is on you.
Speaker 1: And he who breaks the forest law is broken. Well,
Speaker 1: then tell me the forest law so that I might
Speaker 1: avoid him. The forest law is not like man's lot,
Speaker 1: can't be told or written down. A very nature breaks
Speaker 1: it as much as our acts. But you're a trapper,
Speaker 1: how do you avoid the less She's wrath? I do
Speaker 1: not trap in the woods, but at its border, and
Speaker 1: for that the less she spares me, and asked, but
Speaker 1: one more thing that I worn wanderers such as yourself.
Speaker 1: The young soldier nodded and smiled, but the old man
Speaker 1: could tell he was only being mannerly. He did not
Speaker 1: believe his tale of the leshy, and would not be
Speaker 1: swayed from his short cut through the woods. And so
Speaker 1: the next morning he thanked the old man and woman
Speaker 1: yet again and departed into the green forest, no doubt,
Speaker 1: thinking he'd found the makings of a path, or discovered
Speaker 1: some logic, and the dead leaves beneath his feet, the
Speaker 1: old man went back to his traps and snares near
Speaker 1: the forest edge. He flinched when he heard the first
Speaker 1: startled scream from the forest depths, then the howl of
Speaker 1: the leshy as it bore the young soldier limb from limb.
Speaker 1: As he walked back home, his spirits sapped by the sounds,
Speaker 1: he caught once more the sense of something vast and shaggy,
Speaker 1: walking just behind the great tree trunks, yet tiptoeing impossibly
Speaker 1: behind the smallest shrub or mushroom, not like a thing
Speaker 1: that moved through the woods, but like something reflected in
Speaker 1: its substance. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And hey it's still October. We are still going strong
Speaker 1: with the monster stuff. And boy, I'm I'm excited about
Speaker 1: today's episode. So, Rob, if it's okay with you, I
Speaker 1: want to begin by reading reading a quote. You you
Speaker 1: cool starting this way, Yes, let's do it, okay. So
Speaker 1: this quote is recorded in a nineteen nine book called
Speaker 1: Russian Folk Belief by a Penn State professor of Russian
Speaker 1: and comparative literature named Linda j Ivantas. And this quote
Speaker 1: is attributed to an old woman from the Kaluga Province
Speaker 1: of Russia describing what she believed to have witnessed during
Speaker 1: the height of a forest fire. So she says, I
Speaker 1: looked and bears and with them wolves, foxes, hairs, squirrels, elk, goats,
Speaker 1: in a word, every sort of forest life, and each
Speaker 1: in his own group, not mixing with the others. Thronged
Speaker 1: out of the forest and passed me and the horses,
Speaker 1: not even looking at us, And behind the beasts with
Speaker 1: his knout over his shoulder and horn and hands was
Speaker 1: he himself, and he was the size of a bell tower.
Speaker 1: He himself tall as a bell tower, dragging the horn
Speaker 1: and the nowt and a now it means a whip
Speaker 1: or a scourge. Who is he? Who she talking about?
Speaker 1: She's talking about the Leshy, an awesome monster of Slavic mythology,
Speaker 1: the demon of the woods, sort of a malevolent trickster. NT. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was, I was reading about the Leshy. I was
Speaker 1: not not really familiar with it prior to our research here.
Speaker 1: But according to Carol Rose in her excellent Spirits, Fairies,
Speaker 1: lepre cons and goblins and Encyclopedia, uh, they're they're numerous
Speaker 1: different versions of the spelling and and or pronunciation of
Speaker 1: the name. You see it kind of like leshy, but
Speaker 1: also lessovic or less shak or less nor. Uh So
Speaker 1: there are several different variations on it. But just as
Speaker 1: just as the name is kind of a morphous uh,
Speaker 1: the you know, the actual substance of the creature is
Speaker 1: also a fair bit of morphous, to which one might
Speaker 1: expect with folklore traditions and any kind of entity that
Speaker 1: it arises out of, out of out of old beliefs
Speaker 1: and old legends, old mythologies, right, Yeah, so the Lusty
Speaker 1: is not something that comes originally from one canonical source.
Speaker 1: It it is a folk belief and thus you're going
Speaker 1: to get lots of different versions of it, and I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna be really fun to explore where a
Speaker 1: lot of these different stories overlap and then what the
Speaker 1: differences are. Yeah. So Rose points out that the Leshy
Speaker 1: is essentially a Russian nature spirit and forrest guardian. He's
Speaker 1: often described as a pale humanoid figure with green eyes,
Speaker 1: green beard, and long, straggly hair. He wears a pair
Speaker 1: of of of boots, often made from bark, which any
Speaker 1: wears them on the wrong feet. It's often said that
Speaker 1: he cast no shadow, and he's also a shape shifter.
Speaker 1: And as we tried to reflect in our opening, a
Speaker 1: bit of narration, a little or dramatic opening, uh, it
Speaker 1: said that he can be as tall as a great
Speaker 1: tree or as small as a blade of grass. Likewise,
Speaker 1: he can mimic any sound in the forest, which is
Speaker 1: a tool he might use to lead humans astray sometimes. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this is one of the main threats that the
Speaker 1: less he represents. That there again, a number of stories,
Speaker 1: But the most common ways that he represents a threat
Speaker 1: to human existence are in making sounds or in laying
Speaker 1: sort of traps and tricks that lead travelers off the
Speaker 1: path and get them lost in the woods to wander
Speaker 1: hopelessly until they die in the woods or die in
Speaker 1: a swamp. Or The other thing is that he's often
Speaker 1: said to kidnap babies at the edge of the forest,
Speaker 1: or to kidnap children, especially unbaptized babies and children. Uh
Speaker 1: And a lot of sources mentioned this, this idea of
Speaker 1: him luring wanderers off the forest path by making noises.
Speaker 1: One of the sources I was reading for this episode
Speaker 1: is a book by Elizabeth Warner called Russian Myths from
Speaker 1: the University of Texas Press in two thousand two, and
Speaker 1: Warner says, the less she would quote hoot, roar, and howl,
Speaker 1: and the voices of birds and beasts, emit wild bursts
Speaker 1: of laughter, blood curdling shrieks, and clap his hands loudly.
Speaker 1: Uh So, so, it seems like there are a couple
Speaker 1: of different ways that you might catch the less she
Speaker 1: making sounds in the forest, sometimes maybe mimicking the voice
Speaker 1: of an animal or human in order to lure somebody
Speaker 1: off the path, or sometimes just making a lot of noise,
Speaker 1: maybe to mess with your head, kind of scare you
Speaker 1: or make you laugh. Now picking up in the lessies appearance,
Speaker 1: there are several sources that summarize the folklore. Again this
Speaker 1: is from Warner and Russian myths. Uh. The less She
Speaker 1: may and often does look and dress like an ordinary
Speaker 1: human being. Like there are some stories where the less
Speaker 1: She leaves the forest and interacts with humans as if he,
Speaker 1: you know, looked like any other human. But in fact, again,
Speaker 1: he is a shape shifter, so he can mimic the
Speaker 1: appearance of not just all the animals of the forest.
Speaker 1: Those are common forms he takes, especially the form of
Speaker 1: a wolf or a bear, but he can also mimic
Speaker 1: the appearance of any particular person. So a child might
Speaker 1: be lured into the forest by a vision of their
Speaker 1: own grandfather offering them fruits and sweets, or a person
Speaker 1: might be you know, antagonized or lured off the path
Speaker 1: in the woods by the shape of their own father
Speaker 1: or mother or husband or wife, or even their child.
Speaker 1: But much like the succubus who appears as a seductive,
Speaker 1: beautiful woman, but with say a duck's foot. The leshy
Speaker 1: in disguise will usually have a detail out of place,
Speaker 1: and that detail will be noticeable to the observant hero.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the idea that the less she might cast
Speaker 1: no shadow, or have their shoes on the wrong feet
Speaker 1: or backwards. Warner gives the examples that the less she
Speaker 1: might be wearing a calf tan like a like a
Speaker 1: Russian traveler might wear, but the calf tan would be
Speaker 1: buttoned back words, or his eyes might be extremely pale,
Speaker 1: or he might have no eyebrows. I like that one.
Speaker 1: Or again, he might cast no shadow. And and then finally,
Speaker 1: this one seems particularly relevant in his role in confusing
Speaker 1: travelers in a forest. He might leave no footprints. I
Speaker 1: love how common this detail is across so much different folklore,
Speaker 1: that the monster or the trickster demon will have some
Speaker 1: kind of detail wrong that allows you to spot it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's the kind of myth, that kind of legend
Speaker 1: that that appeals well to our our our nature, you know,
Speaker 1: because when when we're just encountering people for the first time,
Speaker 1: situations for the first time, the suspicious mind is always
Speaker 1: looking for for some sort of a tell, right, like
Speaker 1: what's weird about this person, what's weird about this place? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And and it also it makes the myth more fair,
Speaker 1: I mean, unlike just the less She being a a
Speaker 1: power that cannot possibly be overcome, and it just takes
Speaker 1: whoever it wants and does whatever it wants. The fact
Speaker 1: that there's some detail often wrong with it allows the
Speaker 1: observant hero, the virtuous protagonist of the story to to
Speaker 1: catch them, to be like, hey, wait a minute, there's
Speaker 1: something wrong with you. It makes you It makes you
Speaker 1: think that maybe if you are clever enough, if you're
Speaker 1: observant enough, then you could best the leshy. Now, Warner
Speaker 1: agrees with what we already talked about about the less
Speaker 1: She being able to dramatically change size, and it's often
Speaker 1: reported in these stories that he can become taller than
Speaker 1: the tallest tree tops. Remember the story at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the woman who says the less She was like
Speaker 1: a bell tower. Or he can be small, small enough
Speaker 1: to hide behind grass or behind a mushroom. Now, in
Speaker 1: his true form, Warner says that the lessies appearance betrays
Speaker 1: his affinity for the vegetation of the forest, so his
Speaker 1: skin might very much resemble the bark of a tree.
Speaker 1: It will be rough and gnarly, and sometimes he's said
Speaker 1: to be completely covered in hair, but sometimes he's just
Speaker 1: got hair on his head and a beard, and in
Speaker 1: those cases his hair and beard might be as green
Speaker 1: as the vines and the grass. But some imagery of
Speaker 1: the leshy is more classically devilish in the Christian sense,
Speaker 1: or at least in the syncratistic Christian sense that that
Speaker 1: combines sort of Satan with the god pan Uh. Warner
Speaker 1: says that many descriptions include shaggy hair almost like moss,
Speaker 1: but also cloven hoofs and horns on his head and
Speaker 1: a tail like the devil's tail. And then finally she
Speaker 1: mentions that the horns are golden in the case of
Speaker 1: one particular leshie known as the leshy Czar. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I think this devilish appearances is interesting because it uh
Speaker 1: it makes sense based on something that Warner talks about
Speaker 1: in her book, which is called the Dual Faith, that
Speaker 1: this idea that after Christianity took over the Kievan Ruth
Speaker 1: stayed in the tenth century, Christianity and old pagan practices
Speaker 1: kind of mesh together. They coexisted for hundreds of years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and We've discussed examples of this before with other other
Speaker 1: legends and folklore and and even mythologies. Um where yeah,
Speaker 1: the new, a new faith comes along and it doesn't
Speaker 1: just wipe out the old. It adds new wrinkles to
Speaker 1: the old or and or exist alongside the old, uh
Speaker 1: in ways that that may might not make sense if
Speaker 1: you were to say, write them out or discuss them.
Speaker 1: You know. It's it's always fascinating how even as modern humans,
Speaker 1: the various conflicting world views and ideas of the natural
Speaker 1: and the supernatural that can simultaneously exist in our minds,
Speaker 1: it can be hard to enforce the borders of one
Speaker 1: supernatural picture of the world. Like it can be hard
Speaker 1: to sort of like beat into people like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: like this part these supernatural beliefs are acceptable. But these
Speaker 1: other ones that your grandparents believed and their grandparents before them,
Speaker 1: you can't believe those anymore. Yeah, Like, I remember, when
Speaker 1: I was younger, there was a time when I was
Speaker 1: at least a bit afraid of the prospect of both
Speaker 1: aliens and ghosts, which rationally, it seems like you know
Speaker 1: now I'm looking back and like, well, surely I should
Speaker 1: have just picked one or the other, like one would
Speaker 1: seem more likely than the other, and that should be
Speaker 1: the one to be afraid of. I can't be, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't just be afraid of everything that's on Unsolved Mysteries.
Speaker 1: I have to pick, you know, like obviously be afraid
Speaker 1: of your criminals, but then choose aliens or ghosts like
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have to, I shouldn't take both on. But no.
Speaker 1: Unsolved Mysteries presents a perfect synchrotistic view of the world
Speaker 1: where all paranormal phenomena exists simultaneously. Now Additionally, as Rose
Speaker 1: points out, each forest is said to have its own leshy,
Speaker 1: unless it's a very large forest, and then then you
Speaker 1: can have more than one lessy. I guess it just
Speaker 1: comes down to It's kind of like having park rangers, right,
Speaker 1: depends just how big the park is, right. They gotta
Speaker 1: like a range of territory. Right. Furthermore, the less she
Speaker 1: may have a wife in some traditions, which is a lessovica,
Speaker 1: and then there are sometimes lessy children or less shunky,
Speaker 1: and there's all to a variety of leshy sometimes described
Speaker 1: as a as a zoi abot schnick that takes on
Speaker 1: the guys and sound of a baby gurgling in the treetops.
Speaker 1: So in that in that case, a quality that is
Speaker 1: sometimes ascribed to the leshy in general is sometimes pulled
Speaker 1: out and made its own particular thing. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting the idea of giving a leshi a
Speaker 1: family allows you to to sort of add in more
Speaker 1: dynamics that would explain natural phenomenon potentially, Like, for example,
Speaker 1: one of our sources was saying that if you saw
Speaker 1: a whirlwind, I think mean, you know, a whirlwind or
Speaker 1: even a tornado, that was the leshy dancing with his wife.
Speaker 1: So adding the wife in, you know, they're twirling through
Speaker 1: the forest. But this dovetails with another interesting belief, which
Speaker 1: is that sometimes fallen trees found in the forest were
Speaker 1: said to have been knocked over by fights between leshies.
Speaker 1: But you know, you put those two things together kind
Speaker 1: of dovetails into the center sting idea that I wonder
Speaker 1: if people at some point maybe came across the path
Speaker 1: that a tornado or whirlwind had cut through a forest,
Speaker 1: and you know, it looks like something is just like
Speaker 1: come through and mode this this shaved line out through
Speaker 1: the middle of the woods. And what happened here? What
Speaker 1: was less she's fighting or it was less she's dancing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there are no tracks there, you know, there's no
Speaker 1: there's no sign that animals did this, and yet something
Speaker 1: large has has trampled the woods now like the forest itself,
Speaker 1: you know, at least from a folkloric standpoint, the less
Speaker 1: she is said to die with the advent of winter
Speaker 1: and then emerge from his winter death in the spring.
Speaker 1: And it's during this time and once the Lessies have
Speaker 1: come back that has said that the that the leshies
Speaker 1: of the forest rage over the their autumn deaths. They
Speaker 1: realized that they had died previously. Now they're mad about it,
Speaker 1: and this raging produces storms and floods in the process.
Speaker 1: But then all that settles down again. So here we
Speaker 1: see an idea of the leshy is a way to
Speaker 1: explain not only specific storm damage, but also just the
Speaker 1: general pattern of like spring storms. On top of that,
Speaker 1: the the leshy is a bit of a bit of
Speaker 1: a trickster again, sometimes calling out to human travelers with
Speaker 1: the sounds of the forest to lead them astray, even
Speaker 1: taking the form of a fellow traveler to give them
Speaker 1: bad advice or guidance, disappearing and laughing once they managed
Speaker 1: to get them lost in a bog or worse. Um
Speaker 1: and uh, you'll have other individuals though that are wise
Speaker 1: to the ways of the leshy, that they'll know how
Speaker 1: to outsmart them or and we'll get into an example
Speaker 1: of how I'll smart them in a bit, but also
Speaker 1: making offerings to them such as salt and bread. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Warner points out how there was some kind of division.
Speaker 1: Like she starts by saying that, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: for many Russian people living at the edge of the forest,
Speaker 1: the forest was itself an image of of great bounty
Speaker 1: but also great chaos and great danger. And that is
Speaker 1: of course, like you know, becoming lost in the forest,
Speaker 1: you can quite easily die. This is something I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't really remember these days. Maybe
Speaker 1: they go out and experience the forest in say nature
Speaker 1: trails that have forged paths that you can follow, but like,
Speaker 1: it's really easy to get lost and die in the woods.
Speaker 1: And I want to talk more about the science of
Speaker 1: that later on. But but then there are these professions
Speaker 1: where people would have to go into the woods in
Speaker 1: order to make a living, for example, and there would
Speaker 1: be herdsman and hunters like you mentioned, and herdsman very
Speaker 1: often in medieval Russia would not graze their cattle in
Speaker 1: open pastures, but would graze them through the woods. They
Speaker 1: would have to find, you know, like little patches and
Speaker 1: openings throughout the trees, and so it would require them
Speaker 1: to go into the domain of the leshy and and
Speaker 1: risk risk all these dangers, and so Warner writes, quote,
Speaker 1: protective measures could be taken against the leshy, making the
Speaker 1: sign of the cross, uttering a prayer or spell, and
Speaker 1: more interestingly, reversing one's clothing or retracing one steps backwards
Speaker 1: out of the forest, reversal of the normal back to frontness,
Speaker 1: upside downness left as opposed to right. We're all signs
Speaker 1: of the supernatural and Russian tradition. Yes, I I absolutely
Speaker 1: love this. Uh this example, the idea of wearing your
Speaker 1: clothes backwards or walking backwards as a way to to
Speaker 1: outsmart the leshy. Um and we see we see versions
Speaker 1: of this pop up in other traditions as well. For instance, uh,
Speaker 1: I read that you see this in Irish folklore, sometimes
Speaker 1: concerning encounters or potential encounters with dangerous varieties of fairy
Speaker 1: um uh. And the idea here, it seems and this
Speaker 1: is going to vary. There's not like, you know, anybody
Speaker 1: wrote wrote this down and came up with necessarily a
Speaker 1: straightforward reason that this works. But one one interpretation is
Speaker 1: that it's just about confusing the spirit, like the spirits like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna get this woodsman now, and then
Speaker 1: he realizes, oh that what's going on here? His clothes
Speaker 1: are on backwards. I don't know what to do. I
Speaker 1: guess I'll just watch him for a bit. Or it
Speaker 1: tricks the spirit or fairy or leshy in this case
Speaker 1: into thinking you're leaving rather than arriving. And I love
Speaker 1: the twisted logic of this, where it's like the the
Speaker 1: lest she shows up, it's like, all right, it's time
Speaker 1: to time to to to unleash some havoc. We'll look
Speaker 1: at this guy coming into my far Wait. Oh the
Speaker 1: way their clothes are or or or basic cane, it
Speaker 1: looks like he's walking away. All right, He's good, he's leaving.
Speaker 1: Carry on. You know, it's just fabulous. This is really
Speaker 1: funny because it kind of connects to the idea of
Speaker 1: wearing eye spots on your back. To deter predators in
Speaker 1: the forest. Yeah, yeah, which is which is something that
Speaker 1: has been been done. We've discussed this in the show
Speaker 1: before too, with varying degrees of success with both humans
Speaker 1: and also putting eye spots on the back of cattle
Speaker 1: to deter lion attacks and uh in parts of Africa. Now,
Speaker 1: as Rose points out that the less, she can be
Speaker 1: very generally classified as a guardian spirit, which we see
Speaker 1: in various and far flung cultures. Many versions of this
Speaker 1: revolve around the project of individuals, UH, and the should
Speaker 1: be pretty familiar with a lot to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: You have like the guardian angels of Latin, Greek and Russian,
Speaker 1: Orthodox and Anglican churches. These are assigned from the hour
Speaker 1: of an individual's birth. Uh. Interestingly, one that Rose describes
Speaker 1: in her book is the grind, a gin of in
Speaker 1: the folklore of Morocco. That's described as kind of inhabiting
Speaker 1: a parallel world. So it's not that they're assigned to
Speaker 1: an individual, but they're they're born at the same moment
Speaker 1: in this other world, and so there's this bond between
Speaker 1: the two. Likewise, you also have just Damon's and lend Lars,
Speaker 1: you know, getting into ancient Greek and Roman tradition, and
Speaker 1: one also sees this concept in the traditions of say
Speaker 1: Uh in Native American tribes, native Australian cultures as well.
Speaker 1: There there are a lot of these to list, and
Speaker 1: she has a lot a lot of them in the book,
Speaker 1: ranging from the ab Gal to the Zoa. But then
Speaker 1: as an extension of this, there's the idea of a
Speaker 1: protector spirit that looks after particular sular places such as
Speaker 1: standing stones or mounds, or certain natural places and or animals.
Speaker 1: And so clearly this is going to be the kind
Speaker 1: of guardian or protector that the lestia is not of
Speaker 1: a person, but of a place, which is the woods, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the protector of the forest, very very much in keeping
Speaker 1: with such woodland or vegetation spirits as the Gandharva's of India,
Speaker 1: which are described as being like shaggy half animal beings,
Speaker 1: and some tellings, or the green Man of ancient European traditions,
Speaker 1: a quote pagan image of a grotesque severed head with
Speaker 1: emergent foliage from the mouth, beard, and hairline. We find
Speaker 1: him in Christian churches from the sixth century onward. He's
Speaker 1: a He's a wild man of the woods, a guardian
Speaker 1: spirit of the forest, and like the Leshy, is prone
Speaker 1: uh you know, to two tricks and meanness in the
Speaker 1: woods and you know, leading people astray, etcetera. He is
Speaker 1: also the genesis of both the Green Night of Authoritian
Speaker 1: and of Robin Hood. Yeah. I think one traditional interpretation
Speaker 1: of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Speaker 1: is of a conflict between the Christian chival ric virtues
Speaker 1: represented by the Arthurian Chord and by Sir Gawain, and
Speaker 1: then on the other hand the sort of pagan embodiment
Speaker 1: of nature and the wilderness that is the Green Knight
Speaker 1: a k a. The Green Man. Now, of course, we
Speaker 1: have various modern versions of this tale as well, the
Speaker 1: most the most obvious, at least to me, being the
Speaker 1: character swamp Thing Uh, which is very much a guardian
Speaker 1: spirit in the tradition of the Green Man and the Leshy,
Speaker 1: though more of a noble twist as a pure protector
Speaker 1: as opposed to a trickster. And this is especially the
Speaker 1: case in the Alan Moore run of the character Uh
Speaker 1: in the comic books, but you also see it in
Speaker 1: most cinematic and TV incarnations like that. I kept thinking
Speaker 1: back this time and time again reading about the leshy. Uh.
Speaker 1: The ninety nineties TV show version of Swamp Thing had this, uh,
Speaker 1: this ket phrase that that the swamp Thing would always
Speaker 1: say at the end of the intro to the TV episode,
Speaker 1: and it was do not bring your evil here. What
Speaker 1: was the evil? It was like a like a polluting
Speaker 1: factory or something. Oh yeah, polluting factory. Just general mad
Speaker 1: science from Dr Anton Arcane, you know that sort of thing. Um.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, the swamp Thing is very much in
Speaker 1: line with this tradition. I think one of the interesting
Speaker 1: things if you start thinking about modern standards versus um
Speaker 1: versus these more archaic versions of the myth. And this
Speaker 1: is something I tried to just sort of get at
Speaker 1: in that dramatic opening, the idea of to what extent
Speaker 1: humans can understand the law of the forest. And I
Speaker 1: think these these more recent versions, like Swamp Thing, they
Speaker 1: tend to imply they kind of take on I think
Speaker 1: this environmental message of like, yes, we can understand the
Speaker 1: law of the forest at least to some extent, and
Speaker 1: we can do good for the forest. And I and
Speaker 1: I and I believe I agree with that I think
Speaker 1: that is part of our responsibility to the forest as
Speaker 1: as protectors. We are kind of we have to take
Speaker 1: on the mantle of the swamp thing and the leshy
Speaker 1: and the green man. But the r I think the
Speaker 1: more archaic version of this is again, like you said,
Speaker 1: the forest is a place of chaos. If it has
Speaker 1: a law, it is a law that we cannot really understand,
Speaker 1: and it's a law that is not written and maybe
Speaker 1: you know, it can't even be comprehended by us, and
Speaker 1: therefore there's even more danger in running a foul off
Speaker 1: it because you you can't really comprehend all the details
Speaker 1: of that law. Yeah. I think it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the law of the hidden folk. It's the law of
Speaker 1: the other world. And these uh, these laws I think
Speaker 1: sometimes in a lot of folk traditions can be understood
Speaker 1: by but only by certain special kinds of people, people
Speaker 1: who have a often people who are in some way
Speaker 1: considered otherwise not normal. Yeah. Like another modern take that
Speaker 1: gets into this is um Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro, which
Speaker 1: of course is inspired by Japanese and Shinto traditions. But
Speaker 1: the totoro that we encounter, they're very much forest guardian spirits,
Speaker 1: and in Miyazaki's version of this, the only ones who
Speaker 1: can really who can certainly see them and to a
Speaker 1: certain extent understand them, are children. Like children have that
Speaker 1: privileged insight into the rules and laws and existence of
Speaker 1: this other world. It's almost like we're born with an
Speaker 1: understanding of the law of the forest, but the process
Speaker 1: of socialization and maturing beats it out of us. Yes,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, So this is one of the reasons at
Speaker 1: the beginning I said that the less she is kind
Speaker 1: of like a malevolent trickster int It's like if the
Speaker 1: nt were a demon, because it makes me think of
Speaker 1: the scenes in Lord of the Rings where the Orcs
Speaker 1: are punished for hacking down the trees of Fangorn Forest.
Speaker 1: You know, the the trees get revenge and and the
Speaker 1: nts get very angry to see their forests destroyed. This
Speaker 1: is something that that does come through in some of
Speaker 1: the folk tales. For example, warn Or talks about how
Speaker 1: there were certain things you could do in the forest
Speaker 1: or near the forest to really especially bring on the
Speaker 1: leshies wrath, and these things might involve whistling, swearing, making
Speaker 1: a noise, willful damage of flowers or trees or hunting
Speaker 1: on certain church festivals, which that last one seems kind
Speaker 1: of incongruous with the other, isn't. Maybe it's tacked on
Speaker 1: a bit by the by the by the priests. I
Speaker 1: agree with all of those go ahead and going on
Speaker 1: a lot of nature hike hikes these days. I feel like, uh,
Speaker 1: I feel like we need a leshy enforcing all of
Speaker 1: those rules plus social distancing norms. Yeah, but that's just me.
Speaker 1: I wonder if I ever needed to get another job,
Speaker 1: could I get a job as a kind of leshy,
Speaker 1: like in a state park or something. I just wander
Speaker 1: around the forest. If I find somebody carving their name
Speaker 1: into a tree or some you know, littering or whatever,
Speaker 1: I make them wander off the path into a bog,
Speaker 1: you know. I had My family actually had a very
Speaker 1: recent experience on a high which kind of felt akin
Speaker 1: to running a foul of the forest. We never got
Speaker 1: off of a paved path because it had just been
Speaker 1: a very rainy weekend and uh, and so we knew that,
Speaker 1: you know, we needed to get like a paved path
Speaker 1: to walk on. But we still on this one particular
Speaker 1: road we encountered first a stretch of the road where
Speaker 1: mud had washed over everything, so suddenly we were tramping
Speaker 1: through mud. And then immediately we were set up on
Speaker 1: by by by a whole cloud of mosquitoes, despite being
Speaker 1: kind of late in the year, And I kid you not,
Speaker 1: at the very same moment, two deer showed up and
Speaker 1: a snake crossed the road in front of us, like
Speaker 1: very close to us. So like suddenly it just felt
Speaker 1: like like the woods were opening up and speaking to
Speaker 1: us and saying that we should not proceed any further.
Speaker 1: And in fact we turned back that he's about to
Speaker 1: come out in bell tower form with the now it
Speaker 1: over his shoulder. Yeah, leave this place, Do not bring
Speaker 1: your evil here. All right, Well, I think we need
Speaker 1: to take a break, but when we come back, let's
Speaker 1: talk about Grandfather Mushroom. Alright, we're back. So we know
Speaker 1: as usual that the listeners to our episodes, you know,
Speaker 1: are far flung, and some of you are going to
Speaker 1: have a great deal of familiarity with these various uh
Speaker 1: Russian folk tales that were discussing here. For for others
Speaker 1: of you, though, you might only be familiar with them
Speaker 1: through some of the more popular, you know, mainstream Western treatments. Like.
Speaker 1: One thing that comes to mind is once again Jim
Speaker 1: Hinson's Storyteller series. The first season of that relied heavily
Speaker 1: on Russian folk tales. I actually haven't seen that first season.
Speaker 1: I've only watched some of the Greek episodes, so maybe
Speaker 1: I should go back check that out. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like Slavic folklore. Yeah, yeah, there, um, you know, the
Speaker 1: czar shows up in one of them. So there's several
Speaker 1: really good, good tales in there like that. That whole
Speaker 1: season is worth watching. But there are some really good ones,
Speaker 1: like the Soldier and Death is a great one. That
Speaker 1: that one in particular is wonderful. But another place that
Speaker 1: a lot of you might be familiar with Russian folklore
Speaker 1: is from a particular nineteen sixty five film titled Moral's
Speaker 1: Goal or Jack Frost. And there's a very good chance
Speaker 1: you're familiar with this film because Mystery Science Theater three
Speaker 1: thousand famously featured it in one of their episodes. So
Speaker 1: this is how It's certainly how I discovered it. But
Speaker 1: I've I've had conversations with people like I was. This
Speaker 1: was years and years ago. I was talking to someone
Speaker 1: from the Czech Republic, and they pointed out, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they would show that every year for Christmas. That was
Speaker 1: our Christmas film, Like that is that is a part
Speaker 1: of our holiday culture, and uh and and and and
Speaker 1: at this point I would say Jack Frost is also
Speaker 1: part of my holiday culture. I rewatch it every year.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's it's it's a little bit different
Speaker 1: coming at it from this lampooning direction, but it is
Speaker 1: a very beautiful film. And if you've only seen, like,
Speaker 1: you know this, this really degraded quality version of it,
Speaker 1: um as far as the video quality goes on Mr
Speaker 1: Science three Mystery Science Theater three thousand, I I challenge
Speaker 1: everyone out there to check out a pristine cut of this.
Speaker 1: Either I think there's a version as of this recording
Speaker 1: available on Amazon Prime, or you can also sometimes find uh,
Speaker 1: you know, versions of it on YouTube that have just
Speaker 1: the full glorious quality of the film. It is a
Speaker 1: beautiful movie and even without the riffing, extremely watchable and
Speaker 1: extremely enjoyable. This is why I've never thought about the
Speaker 1: idea that this was a commonly viewed Christmas film for
Speaker 1: lots of people. So like here in America, we've got bumbles,
Speaker 1: balance and then maybe throughout Eastern Europe they've got we
Speaker 1: will rob them. We won't rob them, we will beat them.
Speaker 1: We will be beaten. Yes, yeah, I mean really, it's
Speaker 1: it's not fair because we have like Charlie Brown Christmas,
Speaker 1: which is awful, but but they have Jack Frost, which,
Speaker 1: oh man, we're we're going to get hate mail. Now.
Speaker 1: It's it's fine, I risk it's it's it's it's perfectly okay.
Speaker 1: It's just not my thing. I mean, no, this is
Speaker 1: a wonderful movie. It's got it's it's so imaginative. I
Speaker 1: love when Ivan gets the bear head. I love Grandfather Mushroom,
Speaker 1: I love the bandits, I love the the creepy girl.
Speaker 1: It's it's fantastic. Yeah, it's it has so many It
Speaker 1: actually has so many wonderful elements of Russian folk tales.
Speaker 1: They're just straight out of Russian folk tales that really
Speaker 1: you could you could watch that film and you already
Speaker 1: are in a great place to begin reading more Russian
Speaker 1: tales and exploring them from yourself, because it has you know,
Speaker 1: you have the the you have. Ivan Tsarovich is the
Speaker 1: you know, the blonde guy who gets his head turned
Speaker 1: into a bear in the film. He is a staple
Speaker 1: of Russian folk tales. You have Boba Yaga, the the
Speaker 1: evil woodland witch. Again, just a staple that you see
Speaker 1: time and time again. Now you might be wondering, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: where's where's the leshi in Jack Frost and I don't.
Speaker 1: We don't have a direct Leshie and we'll get into
Speaker 1: some of the reasons for this, but we do have
Speaker 1: an interesting character that pops up that I instantly thought
Speaker 1: about in reading all of that's this and that is
Speaker 1: uh the little grandfather Mushroom father mushroom character, the little
Speaker 1: diminutive old man with a mushroom cap that shows up
Speaker 1: and uh has a little bit of mischief in him
Speaker 1: and teaches Ivan a lesson. Yeah, he is portrayed as
Speaker 1: sort of a wise figure, a figure of the force,
Speaker 1: but also like the less she a trickster. You know,
Speaker 1: he's playing, he's like doing, he's disappearing, playing hide and seek,
Speaker 1: sort of taunting Ivan. Um. I don't know if we
Speaker 1: said his his Russian name. I guess In Russian he's
Speaker 1: known as Starry Chalk Borova Chalk. Yes, that's what I've
Speaker 1: read as well. You know, father grandfather Mushroom. Uh, and
Speaker 1: and again. He has a very memorable um appearance in
Speaker 1: that film. Now, one of the lingering questions that I'll
Speaker 1: get back to again is I was never able to
Speaker 1: determine if he has an existence outside of this film,
Speaker 1: like if he if he pre existed as part of
Speaker 1: Russian folklore. I did not run across in any of
Speaker 1: the stories I read, though I did not read all
Speaker 1: written accounts of Russian folklore, and I didn't find him
Speaker 1: mentioned in any of the academic papers we're looking at.
Speaker 1: But that that doesn't mean anything either. Uh. And certainly
Speaker 1: that film was such a big part of of several cultures.
Speaker 1: In sixty five of hints that you look and you
Speaker 1: find like countless Christmas ornaments of him, So like now,
Speaker 1: he is definitely a part of of our understanding of
Speaker 1: Russian folklore to a certain extent. But I wasn't. I
Speaker 1: was never sure he was authentically something that existed before
Speaker 1: that film. You know, there are some interesting connections I
Speaker 1: was thinking about between this this mushroomy character and the
Speaker 1: less she beyond just the fact that he is sort
Speaker 1: of a trickster guardian of the forest in a way, Uh,
Speaker 1: there are some other things like, for example, I was
Speaker 1: reading in one of our sources that the wrinkles on
Speaker 1: a mushroom are often said to be the marks of
Speaker 1: the less She's whip. Remember the less she carries the
Speaker 1: now or the whip at to show his dominion and
Speaker 1: over the forest. You know, it's like that, I'm the
Speaker 1: boss stick. But apparently the all the little ribs and
Speaker 1: wrinkles on the mushrooms are from him flicking the lash. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I ran across that as well. Um, that that's that's
Speaker 1: interesting that that seems to be the That was the only, like,
Speaker 1: I think, one of the only true leshy mushroom connections
Speaker 1: I came across. But I was reading Funguy folk Ways
Speaker 1: and Fairy Tales, Mushrooms and Mildews and Stories, Remedies and
Speaker 1: Rituals from Oberon to the Internet by Frank M. Duggan,
Speaker 1: which was published in North American fung Guy in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight, and Duggan writes that Eastern Europe and Russia
Speaker 1: are generally mico Phillick in nature. Again going back to
Speaker 1: we discussed this in a previous episode. How broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: some cultures are mico philic and some are microphobic, and
Speaker 1: this is often based just in how they describe and
Speaker 1: broadly view mushrooms um uh and uh, and certainly listen
Speaker 1: to our mushroom foraging episode for more insight on that.
Speaker 1: But yes, uh, Slavic culture is Eastern Europe from you know,
Speaker 1: Poland through Russia and Finland. I think it's widely viewed
Speaker 1: as uh as a totally common and desirable thing to
Speaker 1: go out in the forest looking for mushrooms. And yet
Speaker 1: at the same time, Dugan points out that there were
Speaker 1: there was still often a taboo against speaking about certain
Speaker 1: kinds of mushrooms due to sexual connotations associated with them. Huh. Likewise,
Speaker 1: some sorts of mushrooms were also heavily associated with Baba Yaga.
Speaker 1: That uh that that evil m haggish um which that
Speaker 1: lives in the wood uh In in that that fabulous
Speaker 1: hut with the chicken leg, there's a story about her
Speaker 1: hunting for mushrooms and running into a hedgehog that was
Speaker 1: doing the same thing. So the Bobba Yaga and the
Speaker 1: hedgehog they reach an understanding and she later turns him
Speaker 1: into a boy hero. And then there's also this really
Speaker 1: interesting bit in light of my Cilia quote, Baba Yaga
Speaker 1: is also an associate of magic and benevolent spirit. It's
Speaker 1: who dwell under mushrooms, under mushrooms. Well, so you mentioned
Speaker 1: the massilia. Yeah, the fibers that stretch out underneath the soil,
Speaker 1: that are in many ways the actual body of the
Speaker 1: the fungus, whereas the mushroom part is just the fruiting
Speaker 1: body is the reproductive part. Yeah. So I can't help
Speaker 1: but wonder if that little nugget of folkloric wisdom is
Speaker 1: is touching on this understanding that there's a you know,
Speaker 1: this is vast network beneath the visible mushroom. I don't
Speaker 1: know now, speaking of of Baba Yaga. According to Andreas
Speaker 1: John's in Baba Yaga The Ambiguous Mother and Which of
Speaker 1: the Russian folk tale in various Slavic languages and dialects,
Speaker 1: Baba derived words serve as names for the butterfly, cake,
Speaker 1: types of cake, pears, and certain kinds of mushrooms, as
Speaker 1: well as the pelican, and she is sometimes associated with
Speaker 1: the leshi. The author points out that in the Mezen region,
Speaker 1: the leshies life is often said to be the yaga Baba,
Speaker 1: Wait did you mean to say? Or well, it was
Speaker 1: written as Jaga Baba. So I'm not entirely sure if
Speaker 1: we were. I mean, it's it seems very close. We
Speaker 1: either they're dealing directly with Bobba Yaga or some regional
Speaker 1: twist on it. I'm imagining the inverted Baba Yaga. Yeah,
Speaker 1: John's rights. Uh. Melantinski referring to an author and his
Speaker 1: colleagues feel that Bobba Yaga became associated with a forest
Speaker 1: hut later than figures such as the forest spirit or
Speaker 1: the bear. Presumably Baba Yaga is a later kind of
Speaker 1: forest demon because of her anthropomorphic and therefore less archaic form.
Speaker 1: Whether or not she is the original owner, Babba Yaga
Speaker 1: is probably the most frequent and popular inhabitant of the
Speaker 1: forest hut in Eastern Slavic fairy tales. So in that
Speaker 1: you know, the author is talking about like forest huts
Speaker 1: and how they factor into these various folk tales. But
Speaker 1: it also points to this idea that that that you
Speaker 1: have Bobby Yaga coming along after pre existing ideas of
Speaker 1: forest spirits, because she's very much a forest spirit. She's
Speaker 1: very much an encounter you have when you go into
Speaker 1: the magical Russian forest. But there seems to be this
Speaker 1: idea that the leshy is in essence something more archaic,
Speaker 1: and perhaps I see this reflecting in other sources, perhaps
Speaker 1: less story shape less, less fitting for a proper narrative,
Speaker 1: and therefore you actually see less leshy than you might
Speaker 1: think in in at least known and recorded Russian tales.
Speaker 1: Maybe the less she is more often a figure than
Speaker 1: a character. Yeah, yeah, you do see see him pop up,
Speaker 1: but less as like a key antagonist. But we will
Speaker 1: touch on some examples here in a debt. Now. I
Speaker 1: also looked around for tales concerning Ivan Tsarevich, the hero
Speaker 1: in Jack Frost and a traditional Russian character, and I
Speaker 1: did find a tale concerning concerning Ivan and the leshy.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and this is collected in a fabulous collect
Speaker 1: entitled and Anthology of Russian Folk Tales by Jack V. Hainey. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's hear it all right, So the story mainly concerns
Speaker 1: Ivan and the immortal antagonist uh cosh Jay the deathless
Speaker 1: who's this this like evils are like being that is
Speaker 1: encountered in a lot of these tales, like he's he's
Speaker 1: kind of the big bad. For instance, Boba Yaga is
Speaker 1: sometimes sometimes like you know, more of the primary villain,
Speaker 1: but she's often just this weird character you encounter on
Speaker 1: the way. But but the Deathless is just all evil
Speaker 1: and and and terror and uh and and it's just
Speaker 1: you know, the ultimate bad is he's sort of sort
Speaker 1: of a low pan sort of yeah, just you know,
Speaker 1: he can't die. But there's some sort of secret to
Speaker 1: his immortality that the hero has to figure out, and
Speaker 1: in this case, that's what Ivan is doing, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how he can deal with this deathless enemy.
Speaker 1: But in one part of the story, Ivan and basically
Speaker 1: Ivan goes into the forest and his typical in Russian
Speaker 1: tales hasn't counters in the forest that help and hinder it.
Speaker 1: So in the forest, Ivan encounters three leshy in the
Speaker 1: woods who are searching for their grandfather's buried treasure. And
Speaker 1: these three treasures are an animate fighting club. So it's
Speaker 1: like a club and you say, hey, go hit that
Speaker 1: guy over the head, and the club goes and does it.
Speaker 1: Um there's a hat of invisibility, which I don't have
Speaker 1: to describe because we have versions of this in every
Speaker 1: folk laura tradition I believe. And then you have the
Speaker 1: fabulous self laying table cloth that seems not as good
Speaker 1: as the other two, and yet it's it's amazing, especially
Speaker 1: I guess if your dungeon master is very particular about
Speaker 1: making sure you're you're you're eating properly, because the self
Speaker 1: laying table cloth is a table cloth that you whip
Speaker 1: out and spread on the ground and it is instantly
Speaker 1: set with food and beverage. Oh so it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a Loaves and Fishes multiplayer. Absolutely. So the
Speaker 1: leshy are fighting over the rights to these treasures, which
Speaker 1: Ivan has already found, by the way, and and Ivan
Speaker 1: tricks them into running a foot race instead of fighting.
Speaker 1: He says, hey, don't fight each other over this. Why
Speaker 1: don't you run from here to that? See that far
Speaker 1: tree that you can barely see over there mid the horizon,
Speaker 1: go run at that. Whoever gets to that first wins
Speaker 1: and the less you're like, that's great, let's do it.
Speaker 1: And they go off to run the race, and so
Speaker 1: Ivan slips away while they're far away from him. From there,
Speaker 1: he encounters the Baba Yaga at her hut, who he
Speaker 1: who's seeking for answers on how to achieve cash the deathless,
Speaker 1: how to achieve his death, and of course the the
Speaker 1: answer ends up that there's an egg in a box
Speaker 1: hidden under a mountain that he has to gain access too.
Speaker 1: So anyway, this is a fun encounter in and of itself,
Speaker 1: but it also makes me think back to the Jack
Speaker 1: Frost film and remember the sort of dwarf like bandits
Speaker 1: that the Ivan encounters and I can't help but wonder
Speaker 1: if they are sort of serving as a version of
Speaker 1: Leshi in that regard. Yeah, like a danger risk, chaotic
Speaker 1: force in the forest that that Ivan has to interact with.
Speaker 1: And Trick I can't remember in the movie, doesn't he
Speaker 1: aren't their clubs in their scenes as well, like they
Speaker 1: have to. They end up throwing clubs up in the
Speaker 1: air and then later the clubs come back down and
Speaker 1: hit them. Yes, they do. That seems to connect to
Speaker 1: like the automatic fighting club that the unless she was
Speaker 1: arguing over. Yeah, I was, I was wondering the same thing.
Speaker 1: Um now now again this this. I read this in
Speaker 1: the Anthology of Russian Folk Tales by Jack V. Haney,
Speaker 1: who I believe that this particular volume has ninety nine
Speaker 1: different folk tales, some very small, someome a little bit longer,
Speaker 1: and also commentary on them. And it's it's a wonderful
Speaker 1: read I recommend it. But he also had like several
Speaker 1: volumes on top of this that he had compiled, and
Speaker 1: these were just like the best or most you know,
Speaker 1: helpful to share with readers. But he he adds later
Speaker 1: in in this particular volumes, his stories featuring the FOURT
Speaker 1: speech spirit the leshy are uncommon, and perhaps this again
Speaker 1: speaks to the more archaic take on this being a
Speaker 1: more archaic take on spirits of the forest, which are
Speaker 1: less narrative compared to other embodiments of the forest and wildness,
Speaker 1: such as Baba Yaga or even you know Father Frost
Speaker 1: Morosco himself, you know, who's very much an embodiment of
Speaker 1: of the winds of winter. So it seems that maybe
Speaker 1: the less she and these stories are less going to
Speaker 1: be like the main villain of the story and more
Speaker 1: kind of an environmental threat. I mean, the less She
Speaker 1: might be something kind of like a like a particular
Speaker 1: monster encountered along the way, or almost like a like
Speaker 1: a pit of quicksand like just something that you've got
Speaker 1: to worry about in the in the wild environment. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. Now I want to share some other
Speaker 1: points that that Haney makes about Russian folk tales in general,
Speaker 1: because I think these can help us understand Russian folklore
Speaker 1: a bit more and also understand the less She's place
Speaker 1: in these tales. So Haney contends that there are there
Speaker 1: are more folk tales that may have emerged out of
Speaker 1: the Russian people than any other. He says due in
Speaker 1: part to the fact that well into the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: Russia quote remained in illiterate and basically peasant country where
Speaker 1: folk traditions were strong and carefully maintained. Okay, so it's
Speaker 1: the idea that if the culture was more literate, the
Speaker 1: folk tales would have been less less retold. Um. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess the idea is like, once you start writing
Speaker 1: them down, right, then you have like a totally a
Speaker 1: different energy takeover regarding the folk tales, and then you
Speaker 1: also have different influences on the shape of those tales.
Speaker 1: But in Russia, he's arguing that they remained, um like
Speaker 1: the property of of the common Russian people, and they
Speaker 1: were speaking of this sort of Russian existence that had
Speaker 1: not changed a whole lot, you know, throughout their history.
Speaker 1: But then he points out that the twentieth century comes along,
Speaker 1: and this is an exceedingly hard time on the Russian
Speaker 1: people and it ends up disrupting their storytelling traditions. He
Speaker 1: also points out that Russia has the second largest number
Speaker 1: of tale types according to the International Classification System for
Speaker 1: Folk tales. Uh, and this gets you know, when you
Speaker 1: get into the the scholarly study of folk tales, you
Speaker 1: find it. Yeah, there are all these different classifications for
Speaker 1: the different types of tales you encounter in cultures around
Speaker 1: the world. He points out that there are a lot
Speaker 1: of animal tales. Uh. The frequent villains you encounter are,
Speaker 1: of course the Bobby Yaga, which is nasty dwarves shape
Speaker 1: shifting magicians. However, Bobby Yaga is also sometimes a donor
Speaker 1: or helper. Frequent characters in general, you have Bobby Yaga
Speaker 1: and her hut. You have the firebird co j, the
Speaker 1: Deathless Prince Ivan's are of Itch, who already mentioned Princess Elena,
Speaker 1: and of course generic Czar is often involved as well. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the king that is. And I believe that
Speaker 1: the exact nature of the king depends, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes a little more on the cruel side, sometimes a
Speaker 1: little more the deevolent side, kind of like just sort
Speaker 1: of the generic keen you encounter in other folkloric traditions. Now,
Speaker 1: it does seem that a huge number of these tales
Speaker 1: do involve having to travel through the forest, right, Absolutely,
Speaker 1: that the hero frequently wanders through the woods and at
Speaker 1: some point receives help in his quest from an animal
Speaker 1: or some other sort of supernatural aid. And uh, and
Speaker 1: sometimes the charactery encounters is a devil or the devil
Speaker 1: or the devil's offspring. Uh. This this was interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: this is a whole category of tail Ivan the fool
Speaker 1: versus the devil or the devil's offspring. And it's not
Speaker 1: really Ivan as a fool, but Ivan, I think it's more,
Speaker 1: you know, he's clever, but in kind of a a
Speaker 1: roguish way. And in these tales, Haney writes, it's important
Speaker 1: to recognize first the satire, but then also that the
Speaker 1: devil is not really a Christian devil, but quote rather
Speaker 1: a figure derived from the various malevolent spirits that inhabited
Speaker 1: the Russian peasants universe, the forest spirit or leshy, the
Speaker 1: water spirit or Vodiana, and others too numerous to mention.
Speaker 1: So again the idea of the devil comes along, and
Speaker 1: it ends up kind of absorbing these other ideas of
Speaker 1: evil things in the wild wood. This is just another
Speaker 1: one of the many interesting ways that the concept of
Speaker 1: Satan or the devil has evolved over the centuries. I mean,
Speaker 1: like if you go back to the earliest versions of Satan,
Speaker 1: even like in the in the Jewish tradition, Satan then
Speaker 1: is not even presented as as monstrous or evil, like
Speaker 1: in the Book of job As seems to be one
Speaker 1: of the earliest references to Satan. Satan is like one
Speaker 1: of God's angels. You know, he kind of works for him.
Speaker 1: He he's sort of like a prosecutor or a like
Speaker 1: a detective doing you know, trying to sniff out disloyalty.
Speaker 1: But later on you you incorporate more and more into
Speaker 1: this adversary figure of the monstrous of evil, of the
Speaker 1: all that's wrong with the world. And I think this
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons that the devil figure accumulates
Speaker 1: the monstrosity of every particular location and every culture that
Speaker 1: absorbs him. Now, Hany does have some some of the
Speaker 1: stories with Leshie of popping up. One of them that
Speaker 1: that was really good is a story called a Prince
Speaker 1: and his Uncle, which features an old trapper in the
Speaker 1: woods who serves the farest spirit or leshy. When a
Speaker 1: greedy king shows up looking to squeeze more money out
Speaker 1: of the commoners, he asked the old man how he
Speaker 1: catches his beasts, and the old man says, well, the
Speaker 1: farest spirit sets out snares and the beast is stupid
Speaker 1: and gets caught. So the king hears this and he
Speaker 1: gets an idea. He bribes the old man with wine
Speaker 1: and money for the location of these snares that again
Speaker 1: were set by the leshy, and then the king orders
Speaker 1: the leshy caught and fettered to an iron post. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the prince is a decent lad and listens to the
Speaker 1: leshis please for release. He instructs the prince in how
Speaker 1: to tame the key to his irons and distracts the
Speaker 1: others uh while he's being released. Afterwards, the king is
Speaker 1: enraged and sends the prince out on an excursion into
Speaker 1: the far corners of the world his punishment, and he
Speaker 1: sends his old uncle with him to guide him. This
Speaker 1: uncle figure it's always in quotations, so it's like not
Speaker 1: really his uncle um, But then again, it's not super
Speaker 1: important to the story. Seemingly eventually, the prince and the
Speaker 1: uncle switched places, and at one point the less She
Speaker 1: meets the prince again and gives him some magical items,
Speaker 1: which include once more the self setting table cloth, but
Speaker 1: also a magic mirror that shows you whatever you want
Speaker 1: to see and a magical musical instrument that kind of
Speaker 1: plays on demand. And then he later provides him with
Speaker 1: a horse and magical vodka to give him strength against
Speaker 1: a terrible monster. Now, sadly the story doesn't really involve
Speaker 1: unless she beyond this point, but we see the less
Speaker 1: She kind of serving this role uh in the later
Speaker 1: portions of the story as this magical forest creature that
Speaker 1: shows up and provide its assistance to the hero. But
Speaker 1: then he goes on to share what I think is
Speaker 1: my favorite leshy story that I read um Hain. He
Speaker 1: shares this story titled the Forest Spirit, which hinges on
Speaker 1: this notion that you have a leshy or some or
Speaker 1: various other creatures like a like a coldn which is
Speaker 1: a type of male sorcerer if you if they are
Speaker 1: not invited to your wedding, they may show up anyway
Speaker 1: and find some way to spoil it. Wait, so you
Speaker 1: are supposed to invite them. Apparently, that's that's one tradition,
Speaker 1: is go ahead and invite the leshy. It's it would
Speaker 1: be rude not to because if you don't invite the leshy,
Speaker 1: he will show up and he might cause chaos. But
Speaker 1: I guess if you do invite him, he won't show
Speaker 1: up there. You know, they're fickle, chaotic creatures. It's reverse psychology.
Speaker 1: So this, this the forest spirit, is a fun little tail.
Speaker 1: There's not much to it, but this is how it
Speaker 1: goes down. Basically, So there's an old peasant who grows
Speaker 1: and threshes grain, but then he suddenly keeps coming into
Speaker 1: the drawing shed to find that the grain he is
Speaker 1: harvested is already threshed. Now, basically this means somebody is
Speaker 1: doing half his work for him for free. But you
Speaker 1: know he's he's he's an old cadger, you know, probably
Speaker 1: a bit grumpy about things. He wants to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of this. He doesn't want unexplained threshing going
Speaker 1: on and his his his drying shed. So he asked
Speaker 1: an old woman for help, and she says, well, I'm
Speaker 1: just an old woman. I can't help you. You're gonna
Speaker 1: have to go ask the local witch. So he goes
Speaker 1: to the local witch and she says, well, look it's
Speaker 1: a lessie that's doing this. Uh, but if you want
Speaker 1: to stop him, you want to catch the leshie, this
Speaker 1: is what you do. Stake out your shed and you
Speaker 1: sneak up on him and you loop a necklace with
Speaker 1: a cross around on it around his neck and that'll
Speaker 1: capture him, making him your servant. And so the old
Speaker 1: man does just that. Uh. The lessie of course immediately
Speaker 1: asked for release and offers to help the old man
Speaker 1: build a new slip to haul grain on in exchange
Speaker 1: for his freedom. The old man agrees, but then keeps
Speaker 1: asking for more work in exchange for the less She's released.
Speaker 1: So he's like, well, I need some firewood. Maybe after
Speaker 1: you give me some firewood. And he's like, well, you
Speaker 1: know I need the firewood chopped up as well. I
Speaker 1: am altering the deal. Pray I alter it no further, right,
Speaker 1: But then finally he says, you know, Lee, She says,
Speaker 1: all right, how about now can I go free? I've
Speaker 1: chopped your wood, I made you this slip. You know,
Speaker 1: what what else do you want? He's like, no, my
Speaker 1: niece is getting married. Next week and you're coming to
Speaker 1: the wedding with me. So the old man is just
Speaker 1: straight up taking the less she to a family wedding
Speaker 1: as his plus one. Does it explain why he wants
Speaker 1: the lessie to go to the wedding. Is he just
Speaker 1: trying to like pad out the attendance. I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like he doesn't expressly say in this book, or doesn't
Speaker 1: you know, interpret it expressly in this book. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's a sense where like I'm supposed
Speaker 1: you're supposed to invite nless you to the wedding, so
Speaker 1: I will. I'll just straight up bring him. Like maybe
Speaker 1: he is misinterpreting the tradition being an old man who
Speaker 1: lives in the woods or um, or maybe maybe he's lonely.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I kind of like the idea that
Speaker 1: he's lonely, and it's just like he's spending so much
Speaker 1: time with the less She's like, now I'm come to
Speaker 1: this wedding with me. Come hang out. I may need
Speaker 1: you to chop some wood during the ceremony. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: anyway they attend, the less she seems at first to
Speaker 1: be standing back and minding his own business in the
Speaker 1: corner of the room, standing by the doors, out of sight,
Speaker 1: not even partaking of the food in the drink. But
Speaker 1: then the less She sees a pretty maid bringing out
Speaker 1: the soured milk in a cup, which, by the context
Speaker 1: of the story seems to be just part of the ceremony.
Speaker 1: So the less She immediately takes her, spins her around,
Speaker 1: and then she falls down, spilling the milk all over
Speaker 1: the place, And the less She begins to clap and
Speaker 1: laugh at this loudly so everybody hears it. The guests
Speaker 1: do not find this amusing at all, and they chastise
Speaker 1: the old man for bringing such a guest with him
Speaker 1: to the event. Oh so this is the first time
Speaker 1: they've noticed there's a Lessi here at the wedding. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's standing over there by the door. Nobody noticed until
Speaker 1: he started, you know, making a spectacle and spoiling the wedding.
Speaker 1: So everyone is displeased, and they they curse him in
Speaker 1: all and can cuss at him. Uh, the old man,
Speaker 1: And unless she go home, the less She asked once
Speaker 1: more for his release, and the old man grants it
Speaker 1: to him. And I love the way that Haney winds
Speaker 1: this up. Uh. He attributes this tale the telling him
Speaker 1: this tale to a sixty two year old peasant who
Speaker 1: related it in nine and the final quote at the
Speaker 1: end of the tale is, in olden times, they believe this,
Speaker 1: but now they don't believe anything. Those darn kids no
Speaker 1: longer believe in the leshy. Yeah, I just yeah, I
Speaker 1: love the the grumpiness of the tale, like the tale
Speaker 1: that like, I'm going to tell you this story. Kids
Speaker 1: don't believe it anymore, but it happened. This is actually
Speaker 1: similar to another tale that I was reading, at least
Speaker 1: summarized in in one of those sources as we were
Speaker 1: looking at for this episode, which is the Encyclopedia of
Speaker 1: Russian and Slavic Myth and Legend by Mike Dixon Kennedy.
Speaker 1: And in this entry, there was a story where there's
Speaker 1: a there's an old man who lives by the forest
Speaker 1: and one day a traveler appears and asks if he
Speaker 1: can rest in his hut, and the old man says, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: you can rest in my hut. Now. The old man
Speaker 1: is a is a cattle herdsman who has to, you know,
Speaker 1: take his herd of cattle through the forest to graze.
Speaker 1: And after giving the traveler a good night's rest in
Speaker 1: his home. He is told it's like revealed that the
Speaker 1: traveler was a leshy, and was like, you know what,
Speaker 1: You're not gonna have to worry about your cattle anymore.
Speaker 1: You don't have to follow them around. You just let
Speaker 1: him go out in rome in the morning, and then
Speaker 1: they'll come back full of and and give plenty of
Speaker 1: milk at the end of the day. And this happens
Speaker 1: for a while until the traveler gets curious about what's
Speaker 1: happening during the day, so he follows his cattle out
Speaker 1: and then finds that they are being shepherded in in
Speaker 1: or I guess, not shepherded. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: term for a person who herds cattle would be a
Speaker 1: cat cattle herded by some old crone, I guess the
Speaker 1: the ideas that she's a witch or a helper of
Speaker 1: some kind of the leshy. And when he finds her
Speaker 1: and tries to speak to her in the forest, she vanishes,
Speaker 1: and then the basically the blessing is lifted and he
Speaker 1: has to keep toiling with his cattle again after that,
Speaker 1: like they're no longer self servicing cattle. Uh, And so
Speaker 1: his curiosity breaks the Leshi's goodwill. Yeah, yeah, that does
Speaker 1: seem a very similar story. The idea that lest she
Speaker 1: might just spontaneously start helping you you out, but if
Speaker 1: you get too greedy about it, uh, then it's going
Speaker 1: to backfire on you too greedy or too curious. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, I guess one way you could take
Speaker 1: the moral of that story is just like, don't go
Speaker 1: in there, don't look too close at what's happening in
Speaker 1: the woods, don't inquire about the law of the woods.
Speaker 1: Just let the woods do its thing. Yeah, alright, on
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to take another break, but we'll
Speaker 1: be right back. All right, we're back. So clearly, a
Speaker 1: lot of the folk tales about the less She come
Speaker 1: from anxieties people have about the idea of getting lost
Speaker 1: in the woods. Again, remember one of the main threats
Speaker 1: that the the Leshy and his demon or monster form
Speaker 1: uh you know, represents threats in a couple of different ways.
Speaker 1: One by like kidnapping children or unbaptized babies at the
Speaker 1: forest's edge, but also by causing people to become lost
Speaker 1: in the woods. You're traveling through the woods, maybe you're
Speaker 1: trying to stick to the path, But then you're lured
Speaker 1: off the path by the call of the leshy or
Speaker 1: by the less she pretending to be somebody you know,
Speaker 1: or you know, or or mimicking the sound of a
Speaker 1: distressed child. And then you get lost in the woods.
Speaker 1: You you can't find your way home, and you perish
Speaker 1: out among the trees. I wanted to talk about an
Speaker 1: article that I was reading about the real life sort
Speaker 1: of like science and history of people getting lost in
Speaker 1: the woods. Uh. This is an exert adapted from a
Speaker 1: book called From Here to There, The Art and Science
Speaker 1: of Finding and Losing Our Way by Michael Bond, published
Speaker 1: by Harvard University Press. This excerpt was published and Wired
Speaker 1: and I thought this was really interesting. So a lot
Speaker 1: of the article focuses on the story of Geraldine Larkay,
Speaker 1: who was a sixty six year old retired nurse from
Speaker 1: Tennessee who died in the forest after becoming lost just
Speaker 1: off of the Appalachian Trail, and once her body was discovered,
Speaker 1: details from her diary and her phone clarified what happened.
Speaker 1: She had been hiking the Appalachian Trail and she moved
Speaker 1: just slightly off the path in order to go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom. It was that she wrote that she went
Speaker 1: no more than eighty paces off the path, but then
Speaker 1: afterwards was nevertheless unable to find the trail again. She
Speaker 1: survived for nineteen days before dying of the effects of
Speaker 1: exposure and starvation, and when her campsite was discovered, it
Speaker 1: became clear that she was actually less than half a
Speaker 1: mile from the trail as the crow flies, and that
Speaker 1: search and rescue teams with dogs had passed within a
Speaker 1: hundred yards of her campsite while she was still alive.
Speaker 1: She was also really close to some railroad tracks that
Speaker 1: could have led her out of the forest if she'd
Speaker 1: known about them. And in this case and others like it,
Speaker 1: there are there's some really kind of like cruel and
Speaker 1: unsympathetic and and and dumb ways that people react to
Speaker 1: this by saying like, oh, how could you know? How dumb?
Speaker 1: How you know she could have survived? How could you
Speaker 1: get lost when you're that close to the trail. But
Speaker 1: Bond points out that experienced hikers don't talk like this
Speaker 1: because most of them know actually how easy it is
Speaker 1: to become hopelessly lost in a forest, and how powerful
Speaker 1: is the urge to do all of the just exactly
Speaker 1: the wrong things in that scenario. For example, one common
Speaker 1: piece of advice is if you're lost in the woods,
Speaker 1: you should immediately stop moving, Like as soon as you
Speaker 1: realize that you don't know where you are and you
Speaker 1: don't know how to get back where you came from,
Speaker 1: immediately stop moving, stay in place, and you're more likely
Speaker 1: to survive. While you're in place, you can come up
Speaker 1: with a plan if you need to, and not exhaust
Speaker 1: yourself moving around or getting more lost in the process.
Speaker 1: You can wait for rescue without worth, without wandering further
Speaker 1: and further away from where you were. However, the stop
Speaker 1: and wait plan, while actually very good advice, is extremely
Speaker 1: difficult to actually follow. What people with experience report is
Speaker 1: that the moment you realize you're lost in the woods,
Speaker 1: you are overcome with a powerful sense of panic that
Speaker 1: compels you to keep moving, in fact, to start running
Speaker 1: all over the place. Bond quotes a British psychologist named
Speaker 1: Hugo Spears for from another work about his experience of
Speaker 1: becoming temporarily lost in the rainforest in Peru. So Spears writes, quote,
Speaker 1: so I didn't go far, but it's the jungle, and
Speaker 1: ten ms into the jungle is enough to be completely disoriented.
Speaker 1: I was lost in this jungle for two hours. They
Speaker 1: sent a dog out to find me. I wasn't the
Speaker 1: first person to have a dog sent out. It was terrifying.
Speaker 1: My brain just wanted me to run, just run, just
Speaker 1: keep moving. I was very aware that that was not
Speaker 1: the right strategy. Keeping moving in the jungle is not
Speaker 1: going to save your life. So I tried to calm
Speaker 1: down and think carefully and not react at high speed
Speaker 1: and look at my environment. And I realized I was
Speaker 1: going in circles, exactly like in the movies. I was
Speaker 1: using a machete to mark big trees, laying down a
Speaker 1: thread to know if I'd come that way. Before that
Speaker 1: was starting to work, I'd mark a tree with three slashes,
Speaker 1: and if I ended up back at that tree, I
Speaker 1: knew I'd gone in a circle. I was nearly back
Speaker 1: at the camp when they sent the dog out, but
Speaker 1: it was a huge relief. It just made me very
Speaker 1: aware that being really, really lost is quite terrifying. It
Speaker 1: is not a normal thing. I think being lost in
Speaker 1: the woods is one of those types of scenarios where
Speaker 1: your imagination of it really does not capture what the
Speaker 1: experience would be like people imagine, they're like, Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: I've I've I've gotten turned around disoriented before, maybe you know,
Speaker 1: in a in a in a city, or in a
Speaker 1: neighborhood or something. You don't know exactly where you're going,
Speaker 1: but it's pretty easy to find your way back when
Speaker 1: there are roads and sidewalks and landmarks. Oh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: that house. Being lost in the woods is not like that.
Speaker 1: Being lost in the woods, I think could it could
Speaker 1: be argued that it is a form of an altered
Speaker 1: state of consciousness that is terrifying and completely short circuits
Speaker 1: your better judgment in multiple ways. Oh absolutely. And you know,
Speaker 1: I I have my friends who have been lost in
Speaker 1: the forest before, and they were not like as lost
Speaker 1: as like one can truly become lost in the forest,
Speaker 1: or certainly as lost as one could in the times
Speaker 1: of these folk tales, because they at least had not
Speaker 1: lost cell coverage for their phone and we're able to
Speaker 1: to use that. You know, they were still tethered to
Speaker 1: the into the civilized world via their their device, and
Speaker 1: it was still a terrifying experience. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean,
Speaker 1: try to imagine it without those devices, without even a compass. Again,
Speaker 1: this is there's so many ways that imagining what it
Speaker 1: would be like to be lost in the forest does
Speaker 1: not really cut it. Like, you're not likely to predict
Speaker 1: a lot of the ways that your normal powers of
Speaker 1: navigation fail. For example, of course, now, uh, if you
Speaker 1: are lost in the woods, it is generally advised that
Speaker 1: you should just stop and wait for rescue. But if
Speaker 1: you are going to walk, you need to have a
Speaker 1: good idea where you're going and try to travel in
Speaker 1: a straight line. You might think that going straight is easy, right,
Speaker 1: I can walk a straight line. We all you know,
Speaker 1: we walk straight lines all day. But actually it is
Speaker 1: not easy without landmarks, without trails or a compass. Lost
Speaker 1: people really do, and this is proven by research. They
Speaker 1: just walk in circles. There was research in two thousand
Speaker 1: nine by by Jan Suman who used GPS monitors to
Speaker 1: track volunteers while they tried to navigate in a straight
Speaker 1: line through a couple of natural environments without the aid
Speaker 1: of external landmarks or signs. This was the Sahara Desert
Speaker 1: and Germany's buy and Waled Forest, and it did not
Speaker 1: go well. When they couldn't see the sun, people could
Speaker 1: not travel in a straight line at all. Small initial
Speaker 1: errors in orientation would just quickly grow wider as they
Speaker 1: piled upon themselves. And people actually truly did just walk
Speaker 1: in circles. I know, it sounds like that wouldn't happen.
Speaker 1: You're like, no, no, no, I could, I could go
Speaker 1: into straight line, but you probably couldn't you just go
Speaker 1: in circles? Uh? And to read from the article quote,
Speaker 1: Suman concluded that with no external cues to help them,
Speaker 1: people will not travel more than around a hundred meters
Speaker 1: from their starting position, regardless of how long they walk for.
Speaker 1: That's so hard to believe, but apparently it's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that the path in the forest is not just a suggestion,
Speaker 1: you know it is. It is a lifeline. But another
Speaker 1: big part of this article, Bond talks about how being
Speaker 1: lost in the forest it doesn't just make it hard
Speaker 1: to navigate. It does that, but it also affects the
Speaker 1: way we reason. He says being lost as a cognitive state,
Speaker 1: in that the woods make it extremely difficult, sometimes basically impossible,
Speaker 1: to form a mental map of your surroundings because woods
Speaker 1: just kind of look like woods if you're if you're
Speaker 1: not used to being in them. Uh. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: nothing in your spatial memory matches what you see. Your
Speaker 1: normal mental equipment for navigation becomes close to useless. But
Speaker 1: even more so, Bond argues that being lost is an
Speaker 1: emotional state quote. It delivers a psychic double whammy. Not
Speaker 1: only are you stricken with fear, you also lose your
Speaker 1: ability to reason. You suffer what neuroscientists Joseph Lead calls
Speaker 1: a hostile takeover of consciousness by a motion of people
Speaker 1: make things a lot worse for themselves when they realize
Speaker 1: they are lost by running, for instance, because they're afraid,
Speaker 1: they can't solve problems or figure out what to do.
Speaker 1: They fail to notice landmarks or fail to remember them.
Speaker 1: They lose track of how far they've traveled. They feel claustrophobic,
Speaker 1: as if their surroundings are closing in on them. Uh
Speaker 1: And Bond also says that there are chemical signatures of
Speaker 1: this lost in the woods panic. He quotes a search
Speaker 1: and rescue specialist named Robert Kester who argues that being
Speaker 1: lost is, in terms of neurobiology, similar to a panic attack.
Speaker 1: The body floods with catechola means, and the standard fight
Speaker 1: or flight behavior patterns get triggered. So in a subjective sense,
Speaker 1: it often feels kind of like a break with reality.
Speaker 1: You know, you you're just kind of you feel like
Speaker 1: you're losing your mind. And this can even last after
Speaker 1: a person gets out of the state. He also quotes
Speaker 1: Ed Cornell, who's a psychologist who studies the behavior of
Speaker 1: people who get lost, and and Cornell says that it
Speaker 1: can be really difficult to get information out of a
Speaker 1: person who's been lost. They often have trouble communicating their
Speaker 1: experience and can't remember quite what happened to them, and
Speaker 1: uh and and the type of disorientation and panic and
Speaker 1: stress that's brought on by being lost in the woods
Speaker 1: causes people sometimes to experience delusions and hallucinations. Even in
Speaker 1: otherwise healthy people or seemingly otherwise healthy people, they will
Speaker 1: sometimes report hallucinating interactions with people in the forest. And
Speaker 1: given all this, it's not hard at all to see
Speaker 1: where stories and an otherworldly demon who lives in the
Speaker 1: forest and lures people into becoming lost where they would
Speaker 1: come from. You know, you can easily imagine somebody becoming
Speaker 1: lost in the forest in medieval Russia and then by
Speaker 1: chance they managed to find their way back or get
Speaker 1: rescued somehow, and what is their experience might be kind
Speaker 1: of hard for them to remember what happened, that's strange.
Speaker 1: And they may be experienced like stress based hallucinations while
Speaker 1: they were out there, hearing voices or hearing sounds, maybe
Speaker 1: even seeing people who were taunting them or luring them
Speaker 1: this way and that, Uh, it becomes quite clear how
Speaker 1: stories like this could come out of real experiences. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and I think it's also interesting how you know,
Speaker 1: we can compare this to the leshy and the idea
Speaker 1: of the leshy being both gigantic and small, hiding behind
Speaker 1: blades of glad grass, and also being the another size
Speaker 1: of a bell tower. There's this kind of this idea
Speaker 1: of the nature of the leshy warps physical space in
Speaker 1: a way that seems to line up well with this
Speaker 1: um that the experiences we're describing here. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean,
Speaker 1: I gotta say researching this episode has has made me
Speaker 1: think kind of differently. I Mean, I'm somebody who I
Speaker 1: love to go hiking in the woods on a on
Speaker 1: a path of course, and in the past I think
Speaker 1: I might have been i don't know, more likely to
Speaker 1: to say like, oh, there's something that looks cool over there.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll go off the path. I think that's some
Speaker 1: think people should genuinely be cautious about, Like it is
Speaker 1: much easier to lose the path and lose your way
Speaker 1: in the woods than you might think. Yeah, certainly to
Speaker 1: keep in mind for anybody who listened to our episode
Speaker 1: on mushroom foraging and decides to get into it, because
Speaker 1: you know, often is the case that you you spot
Speaker 1: the you know, the the tempting Chanterrell's just a little
Speaker 1: off the path, and you may go out to them
Speaker 1: and you and may that may work out just fine, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, for you, but it also might not, especially
Speaker 1: if you then see the next patch of Chanterrelle's or
Speaker 1: what might be Chanterrelle's, but also might be just some
Speaker 1: some you know, orange ish colored leaves on the ground,
Speaker 1: and then before you know it, uh, the lesh she
Speaker 1: has led you astray. We will eat them. We won't
Speaker 1: eat them, We will saute them in butter. We will
Speaker 1: be saute in butter. I I do you know again,
Speaker 1: I have to to really recommend that that Haney book
Speaker 1: for anyone who wants to read Russian folk tales. But
Speaker 1: I have to drive home again just how good that
Speaker 1: sixty Jack Frost film is not only terms of just
Speaker 1: what a beautiful production it is, but it seems to
Speaker 1: really capture the nature of those Russian folk tales because
Speaker 1: there's this like whimsy and danger and magic, uh that
Speaker 1: is inherent in a lot of these beings. Like, for instance,
Speaker 1: the Babba Yaga herself is in the tales often described,
Speaker 1: you know, is being you know, having these qualities of
Speaker 1: of a woodland monster spirit, but also of just like
Speaker 1: a ridiculous, farting old woman, you know, And and all
Speaker 1: of that I think is reflected very well. And that
Speaker 1: whimsical performance in the film. Yes, Tom Petty Riff Society,
Speaker 1: it is haunted by peasant genius, it really is, you know.
Speaker 1: Another interesting point than Haney made in his overview of
Speaker 1: Russian folk tales is that, aside from the fact that
Speaker 1: the hero very frequently goes into the forest and has
Speaker 1: an encounter, also the hero always prevails, uh. Like, Haney
Speaker 1: really underlined that, like the the hero is going to
Speaker 1: win in these stories. So again we can think back
Speaker 1: to so many of these tales dealing with like the
Speaker 1: the chaotic nature of the woods and it being they
Speaker 1: being stories about how humans can and do overcome the
Speaker 1: chaos of the wilds. Though it's funny because the story
Speaker 1: is also uh, they don't encourage what in the modern
Speaker 1: day at least is generally the best behavior if you
Speaker 1: become lost in the woods, like the you know, Ivan
Speaker 1: Sarvag does not sit down and wait for rescue. He
Speaker 1: does not hug a tree, which is actually the smartest
Speaker 1: thing to do if you get lost. He's like, no,
Speaker 1: forge ahead. Yeah, it always works out for him eventually.
Speaker 1: If you get lost, don't be like Ivan. I guess
Speaker 1: unless you've got a self setting table cloth, then you
Speaker 1: might be okay. Oh yeah. I mean if you've got
Speaker 1: a self setting table cloth, that's really gonna help you
Speaker 1: out in the long run. I mean that that means
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about food and water. Do
Speaker 1: you think the food from the self setting table cloth
Speaker 1: was good or was it just like you know, kind
Speaker 1: of you know, it's bread or whatever. Is it like
Speaker 1: really nice were ma stuff? Um? I mean I'm assuming
Speaker 1: it was probably like basic like everyday food. Uh. I
Speaker 1: guess it was pretty good. I mean there's a section
Speaker 1: where where Ivan's dining from it. Um, And I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's just not. I don't think it was mentioned in
Speaker 1: that particular retelling of the tale, but I imagine it
Speaker 1: as being like typical like typical Russian people's food, borsht
Speaker 1: and morals. Yeah, I guess so. You know, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and close this out here. Obviously
Speaker 1: there there's there's so many other things we could talk
Speaker 1: about with Russian folklore, a tremendous amount of material out there.
Speaker 1: You know, who knows if if you all enjoyed listening
Speaker 1: to this episode, perhaps we could return in the future,
Speaker 1: but we would love to hear from you in the meantime.
Speaker 1: Some of the key questions UM would regard, of course,
Speaker 1: did you grow up watching Jack Frost? If so, tell
Speaker 1: us about that and it's impact on your you know,
Speaker 1: your your your holidays or your just a sort of
Speaker 1: appreciation of cinema in general. I understand it was quite
Speaker 1: influential on some filmmakers. By the way, I also am
Speaker 1: interested if anybody has any definite answers regarding father or
Speaker 1: grandfather Mushroom, does he have an existence in Russian Russian
Speaker 1: folklore prior to that nineteen film. I would I would
Speaker 1: love to to have some clarity on that question, and
Speaker 1: of course if you have been lost in the woods,
Speaker 1: either just a little bit lost or like majorly lost
Speaker 1: in the woods, if you would like to share your
Speaker 1: your experience with us and tell us how it relates
Speaker 1: to both the you know, the studies that Joe mentioned
Speaker 1: and also the folklore we've discussed here, we would love
Speaker 1: to hear from you totally. In the meantime, if you
Speaker 1: would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, you can find us wherever you get
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