Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part two of our series on elf Shot. Now,
Speaker 1: this is an idea we introduced in part one. If
Speaker 1: you haven't listened to that yet, you should go back
Speaker 1: check that one out first. But basically elf shot is
Speaker 1: a what would you say, rob like, it's a complex
Speaker 1: of interlocking folk beliefs, not a single belief, but it's
Speaker 1: found especially in the British Isles and essentially centering on
Speaker 1: the idea of fairies or elves attacking mortal humans and
Speaker 1: especially their live stock with supernatural weapons. Would you say
Speaker 1: that's fair? Yeah? Yeah. There there's a lot going on
Speaker 1: in it, as we discussed in the first episode. I mean,
Speaker 1: on one hand, there there's the interpretation of artifacts, artifacts
Speaker 1: that from various time periods, both ancient and relatively recent. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's also the attempt to understand mysterious ailments, mostly in
Speaker 1: in livestock, but sometimes in human beings as well, and
Speaker 1: then various folk traditions getting wrapped up into these scripts.
Speaker 1: And it's also it seems to be highly regional too.
Speaker 1: Uh so it's uh, it's not. There's not just one
Speaker 1: elf aero script. We have multiple scripts. It ends up
Speaker 1: tying into folk medicine and so forth as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that folk medicine aspect is is very interesting. I
Speaker 1: want to come back to that in just a minute.
Speaker 1: So in the last episode we we did talk about
Speaker 1: some direct accounts of folk beliefs about elf shot, especially
Speaker 1: in Scotland, I think is where a lot of these
Speaker 1: accounts came from, and they included things like, okay, you
Speaker 1: have a story where a calf suddenly falls ill and
Speaker 1: dies with no apparent explanation, and then the farmer confirms
Speaker 1: that elf shot was the cause because he and his
Speaker 1: neighbor open up the cow's body and they find a
Speaker 1: hole in its heart, even though there was no hole
Speaker 1: in the hide. So it must have been some kind
Speaker 1: of supernatural fairy weapon that can pierce through the hide
Speaker 1: without actually breaking it and strike only the internal organs.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, when it was believed that there
Speaker 1: was an injury of this kind caused by an elf
Speaker 1: for a fairy weapon, uh, there were plenty of magical
Speaker 1: remedies and rob can you characterize what some of the
Speaker 1: main themes in these remedies were. Yeah, some of the
Speaker 1: main themes included, of course, being able to fetch either
Speaker 1: the elf arrow or or have an elf arrow that
Speaker 1: you found, or elf arrows that were in the possession
Speaker 1: of the town or local community, and using those in
Speaker 1: the treatment. Oftentimes this would take the form of of
Speaker 1: immersing them in water and then using that that water
Speaker 1: either as a drink for the afflicted or as something
Speaker 1: that is rubbed on the liquid, flickted or poured on
Speaker 1: the site of the wounding, that sort of thing. But again,
Speaker 1: there are a number of different versions of this, and
Speaker 1: the various wrinkles get added depending on which tradition you're
Speaker 1: looking at which account. Yeah, other things were just like, hey,
Speaker 1: mix up some gunpowder with some eggs and stuff like
Speaker 1: that and then feed that to the cow. Right delicious.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I wanted to address a question that came
Speaker 1: up while we were talking uh talking last time. I
Speaker 1: didn't have the answer to it at the time, so
Speaker 1: I decided to look it up before we recorded this episode.
Speaker 1: And the question is is there such a thing as
Speaker 1: the placebo effect for non human animals? Of course, the
Speaker 1: placebo effect in humans is something that often comes up
Speaker 1: when we're talking about, well, you're talking about medicine in
Speaker 1: any context, but it's especially important when you're talking about
Speaker 1: like the history of pre scientific medicine, Like why did
Speaker 1: people think that soaking a stone arrowhead and water and
Speaker 1: then pressing it to their skin had actually healed them
Speaker 1: of a disease? Like if you have a you know,
Speaker 1: any a tumor or a bacterial infection or something, we
Speaker 1: can be relatively confident that this intervention does not actually
Speaker 1: shrink the tumor or kill the bacteria. And yet people
Speaker 1: often thought interventions like this had healed them. So what
Speaker 1: made them think that? I think some of that can
Speaker 1: be chalked up to a concept that we did an
Speaker 1: episode about, I think last year. It was a statistical
Speaker 1: phenomenon called regression towards the mean or regression to the mean.
Speaker 1: But you can also think of this concept as returning
Speaker 1: to the baseline. So UH as a quick explainer for that,
Speaker 1: imagine you suddenly get a pain in your foot and
Speaker 1: you've never had that pain before, and you're like, ah,
Speaker 1: it really hurts. I don't know what to do, but
Speaker 1: your friend says, well, I know what to do. You
Speaker 1: have to sing a Gregorian chant and then you have
Speaker 1: to lick the morning do from a spider's web. So
Speaker 1: you try that out. You want your foot to stop hurting,
Speaker 1: and then what do you know, sometime after that, your
Speaker 1: foot does stop hurting. Now, in a situation like this,
Speaker 1: we we really all have a tendency to think something
Speaker 1: has been proved here, like, ah, the spider do did work,
Speaker 1: But actually, how do you know that your foot wouldn't
Speaker 1: have stopped hurting on its own, just as soon if
Speaker 1: you didn't do any of that stuff. In fact, the
Speaker 1: whole point is that your foot doesn't usually hurt. The
Speaker 1: state of pain is an outlier, that's an anomalous condition,
Speaker 1: So things going back to normal on a certain time
Speaker 1: scale is a totally expected outcome, all things being equal,
Speaker 1: and regression to the mean is especially important in medicine
Speaker 1: because it tends to be specifically when we're in an
Speaker 1: anomalous condition, a condition that is not normal for us,
Speaker 1: that we seek medical interventions. So if you want to
Speaker 1: know if a medical intervention actually works or not, you
Speaker 1: have to compare its efficacy against a say, placebo control group.
Speaker 1: Instead of just giving somebody a treatment and saying did
Speaker 1: you get better? If you do that, you don't know
Speaker 1: if they would have gotten better anyway. Having the comparison
Speaker 1: between the two groups gives you confidence in the efficacy.
Speaker 1: But on top of just the regression to the mean
Speaker 1: as a as a baseline effect, you've also got psychological
Speaker 1: effects where if you actually compare people who receive an
Speaker 1: intervention like a medicine or a ritual or a doctor's
Speaker 1: visit versus people who don't receive any intervention, sometimes people
Speaker 1: who receive an intervention have better outcomes on average, even
Speaker 1: if there's no way that intervention is actually doing anything.
Speaker 1: If it's like you know, pressing the arrowhead deer skin. Uh.
Speaker 1: This might be considered the pure placebo effect, improved outcomes
Speaker 1: associated with an intervention even though it's not doing anything
Speaker 1: mechanistically or chemically to solve the problem. And though the
Speaker 1: placebo effect shows up for a range of conditions and treatments,
Speaker 1: it seems to be especially powerful for conditions that are
Speaker 1: modulated by the brain, such as the perception of pain
Speaker 1: and other types of discomfort. So, to bring it back
Speaker 1: to the question of of elf shot cattle, could it
Speaker 1: be possible that a non human animal benefits from the
Speaker 1: placebo effect of a magical cure in some way, even
Speaker 1: though they can't understand the concept of medicine or develop
Speaker 1: expectations that the magical cure would heal them. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the you know the thing I was wondering about what
Speaker 1: this is. There's evidence that some placebo effects and humans
Speaker 1: are created not so much by the expectation that the
Speaker 1: treatment is efficacious, but by the reassurance felt in the
Speaker 1: presence of a doctor or nurse who has a good
Speaker 1: bedside manner. And I thought, well, maybe it's possible that
Speaker 1: animals could be calmed or soothed by certain kinds of
Speaker 1: human attention, even if they're not able to understand that
Speaker 1: it is for the intended purpose of healing. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I went looking this up and I found an interesting
Speaker 1: article by Emily Antis, who is also the author of
Speaker 1: a book we've talked about on the show before called
Speaker 1: The Great Indoors that's all about the effects of living
Speaker 1: and spending time indoors. But this was an article published
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic in twenty nineteen called a Crucial blind
Speaker 1: Spot in Veterinary Medicine. So the top line answer here
Speaker 1: is a clear yes. There is such a thing as
Speaker 1: the placebo effect in non human animals in veterinary medicine,
Speaker 1: but it probably works by different means than the human
Speaker 1: version of the placebo effect. So here's an example, and
Speaker 1: this begins by talking about a particular study of treatments
Speaker 1: for canine epilepsy epilepsy and dogs. This research was being
Speaker 1: carried out in the early two thousands. I think this
Speaker 1: was in the year two thousand three, and the citation
Speaker 1: here is the Journal of Veterinary Medicine. The article was
Speaker 1: called Placebo Effect in Canine Epilepsy Trials and the authors
Speaker 1: were Munyana, Jong and Patterson, eventually published in two thousand ten.
Speaker 1: And the story is that the researchers were testing an
Speaker 1: ant convulsant drug called uh leave tarrassetam, and it was
Speaker 1: intended to curtail epileptic seizures in dogs. So in the
Speaker 1: test group, the group that was actually getting the drug,
Speaker 1: eight six percent of dogs of their owners reported a
Speaker 1: reduction in seizure frequency, which bodes very well for the drug.
Speaker 1: But then the study also happened to have a placebo
Speaker 1: control group, which we're receiving a dummy treatment that was
Speaker 1: supposed to do nothing, and in that group, seventy nine
Speaker 1: percent also saw a reduction in reported seizures seventy nine
Speaker 1: compared to eighty six. That's that's impressive, right, Well, it
Speaker 1: would tend to make you doubt that that the test group,
Speaker 1: that that it's actually the drug that is making the difference.
Speaker 1: So at the time of this study, Anthes notes that
Speaker 1: the double blind placebo controlled trials were not all that
Speaker 1: common in veterinary medicine, which makes sense on one hand
Speaker 1: because again, like non human, animals are not thought to
Speaker 1: be able to develop expectations about a about a drug
Speaker 1: treatment or the efficacy of medicine, So how could you
Speaker 1: expect a placebo effect to exist in dogs? But it's
Speaker 1: a good thing to study did use such a controlled design,
Speaker 1: because otherwise the medicine would have looked really good until
Speaker 1: you realize that fake medicine leads to results that look
Speaker 1: about the same or almost as good. I guess it's
Speaker 1: just the healing power of pill pockets, right, my god,
Speaker 1: you can never doubt the hand that those things stink
Speaker 1: so much and dogs love them. What do they put
Speaker 1: in those things? Do do you work in a pill
Speaker 1: pocket factory? Tell? Maybe we don't want to know what
Speaker 1: goes into pill pocket. That would be that's Halloween content.
Speaker 1: I have not had a good run with with feline
Speaker 1: pill pockets. Um oh, I'm sorry, and I'm not to
Speaker 1: say they don't. You know, they work in some some cats,
Speaker 1: and some cats are not crazy about them. My cat
Speaker 1: will spit it out and then like dissected. And in
Speaker 1: some brands of pill pockets you just didn't want to
Speaker 1: want a piece off anyway, She's like, no, not eating that.
Speaker 1: So do you ever use the trick this? This works
Speaker 1: for us in the past where if if the animal
Speaker 1: is skeptical of the pill pocket with the pill in it,
Speaker 1: you first have to give them an empty pill pocket
Speaker 1: that has no pill in it, so they get used
Speaker 1: to like, oh yeah, I can just eat this straight up.
Speaker 1: And then the second one or the third one you
Speaker 1: give them. I mean, that's a lot of pill pockets
Speaker 1: if you're stacking it up. But if you're desperate, you
Speaker 1: can try the empty pill pocket first to lower their defenses. Well,
Speaker 1: you'd think that would work, but we ended up using
Speaker 1: the water syringe to just blast it into the back
Speaker 1: of her throat and that seems to work well again
Speaker 1: and that's a method that's not going to work for
Speaker 1: every cat either, So it's uh, it's tough getting the
Speaker 1: meds in these animals sometimes. Oh and I should also
Speaker 1: know that. So the main study uh Anthes is talking
Speaker 1: about here in this article is in dogs, but she
Speaker 1: also cites studies that have reported placebo effects in cats
Speaker 1: and in horse is. Uh So, anyway, how on earth
Speaker 1: could this be? Like again, we're assuming that dogs themselves
Speaker 1: are not developing expectations that a drug will be effective.
Speaker 1: I think that's a very fair assumption. They don't understand
Speaker 1: what's going on. How on earth could such a strong
Speaker 1: placebo effect manifest? And a number of ideas are discussed
Speaker 1: in this article. One is, when we already talked about
Speaker 1: regression to the mean, right, people are more likely to
Speaker 1: enroll in a clinical trial for their dogs epilepsy if
Speaker 1: seizures have been especially bad lately, And conditions like epilepsy
Speaker 1: tend to sort of wax and wane on their own anyway,
Speaker 1: So you know, you could enroll the dog at a
Speaker 1: time when their seizures are bad, and then that would
Speaker 1: just tend to, by the law of averages, give way
Speaker 1: to a period where they return to the baseline and
Speaker 1: have fewer seizures, So again, a good reason to have
Speaker 1: a placebo control group to compare your test group to. UH.
Speaker 1: Second thing that I thought was interesting, Anthes sites something
Speaker 1: called the hawthorne An effect, which is the idea that
Speaker 1: people often behave differently when they know they're being studied
Speaker 1: or observed. I think the name of this effect comes
Speaker 1: from UH some anecdote about industrial productivity research which found
Speaker 1: all kinds of spurious effects for things like, oh, what
Speaker 1: would happen if we change the lighting in this room?
Speaker 1: Are workers more productive? Oh? It turns out they are.
Speaker 1: But then one ex post facto explanation for all these
Speaker 1: spurious results is just that when employees know that they're
Speaker 1: part of an experiment, they are more productive because they
Speaker 1: know they're being closely scrutinized. Now, this would not apply
Speaker 1: so much to the dogs themselves, but probably to the owners.
Speaker 1: So in the case of the epilepsy studying dogs, Antis
Speaker 1: writes that UH that all of the dogs in the
Speaker 1: study were already on at least one other anti seizure medication,
Speaker 1: and the leaveder acetam was being studied as a supplemental drug.
Speaker 1: So one possibility is that once enrolled in a study,
Speaker 1: pet owners may have been more consistent about making sure
Speaker 1: their dogs got all doses of their pre existing pretested
Speaker 1: epilepsy medication on time. Other possible explanations what about more
Speaker 1: attentive veterinary care. It's possible that while enrolled in the study,
Speaker 1: the animals were we're getting special attention from from vets,
Speaker 1: and this would be partially in line with the explanation
Speaker 1: I was guessing about beforehand, something roughly parallel to the
Speaker 1: effect of a reassuring doctor or nurse. Uh. And I
Speaker 1: think it is a pre existing finding that sometimes gentle
Speaker 1: affectionate attention from humans can help animals like dogs and
Speaker 1: horses show fewer symptoms of discomfort or anxiety and things
Speaker 1: like that. In some cases, you could actually have classical conditioning. Uh. Probably,
Speaker 1: it's hard to see how it would apply to this case,
Speaker 1: but Anti writes quote for example, rats that have regularly
Speaker 1: been getting insulin injections will still experience blood sugar changes
Speaker 1: if they suddenly start receiving saline injections instead. Again, I
Speaker 1: don't think this would apply directly to the epilepsy study,
Speaker 1: but you can imagine it applying to other studies. But
Speaker 1: then the primary explanation favored by anthis in this article
Speaker 1: is something called the caregiver placebo effect or the placebo
Speaker 1: effect by proxy. And this one's pretty straightforward when you
Speaker 1: think about it. Animals can't report or explain their own symptoms.
Speaker 1: Understanding the symptoms experienced by an animal, whether that's something
Speaker 1: like a seizure or whether it's something even more elusive
Speaker 1: like discomfort or pain, that requires human observation of some kind,
Speaker 1: usually reports by the pet owners, and the pet owner
Speaker 1: absolutely can form expectations about improvement based on believing that
Speaker 1: their pet is getting a treatment of some kind, even
Speaker 1: though their their pet might actually be in the placebo
Speaker 1: arm of the study. They don't know that. If it's
Speaker 1: a good if it's a well designed study, uh so
Speaker 1: they think their pet might be receiving the actual drug.
Speaker 1: They form expectations that the pet will be getting better,
Speaker 1: and thus they they interpret everything they see in light
Speaker 1: of those expectations. Because again, seizure frequency in the study
Speaker 1: in question was measured by owner reports, and you might imagine, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's pretty clear whether a dog is
Speaker 1: having a seizure or not. Well, you might assume that,
Speaker 1: but in fact, pet owners are not always there to
Speaker 1: see a seizure take place. Sometimes you have to interpret
Speaker 1: ambiguous evidence. So the example given in the article is,
Speaker 1: if there's a spot of saliva on the floor, is
Speaker 1: that a sign that the dog had a seizure unobserved
Speaker 1: and drooled on the floor or is that just nothing?
Speaker 1: Did the dog just dripped? Rule? Because they just dripped? Rule. Uh.
Speaker 1: If if the owners believe their dogs are receiving a
Speaker 1: drug that will help reduce the seizures, does that actually
Speaker 1: make the owner less likely to interpret that evidence as
Speaker 1: evidence of a seizure. Yeah, Okay, I see what. I
Speaker 1: see what you're talking about here. Okay, Like I well,
Speaker 1: he's on the medicine, So I guess that's that's not
Speaker 1: a seizure drule, that's just druel. Yeah. The article also
Speaker 1: cites a veterinary surgeon at the University of Minnesota named
Speaker 1: Michael Consimius who gives a really interesting example from a
Speaker 1: different study. This was a study on anti inflammatory treatments
Speaker 1: for arthritis in dogs, and they did a trial that
Speaker 1: involved both subjective and objective measurements of how well this
Speaker 1: anti inflammatory was doing to reduce reduce arthritic pain in
Speaker 1: the limbs, and so the subjective measure was you would
Speaker 1: ask both pet owners and veterinarians to observe the dog
Speaker 1: and rate how much pain they seem to be in.
Speaker 1: And then there were also objective measures, and this would
Speaker 1: be having the dog walk on a on a complicated
Speaker 1: setup of digital scales to determine how much weight the
Speaker 1: dogs were putting on each limb while walking, because if
Speaker 1: the dog, if one of the dog's limbs is in pain,
Speaker 1: they will tend to put less weight on that limb.
Speaker 1: And this study found conflicts between the subjective measures and
Speaker 1: the objective measures. So in the placebo group, owners and
Speaker 1: vets who thought the dog might be receiving the drug
Speaker 1: but actually they were just getting a placebo, reported improvements,
Speaker 1: but the objective measure, the scales did not show improvements.
Speaker 1: So the in the placebo group they're getting a fake treatment.
Speaker 1: The owners and the veterinarians are like, yeah, we think
Speaker 1: the dog is doing better, but when you put them
Speaker 1: on the scales, they're still not putting weight on that limb.
Speaker 1: So the dog itself is not affected by receiving the placebo,
Speaker 1: but the human observers are interestingly even the veterinarians. This
Speaker 1: is interesting because when we first raised the question about
Speaker 1: BOTHO effected animals and then when you brought up dogs here,
Speaker 1: my first thought was, well, dogs are are highly social animals,
Speaker 1: so perhaps there is some sort of social by namic
Speaker 1: between the way that they're human is treating them, like
Speaker 1: maybe it has to do lee, and maybe it has
Speaker 1: to do with with pill pockets, like oh, I'm getting
Speaker 1: more snacks or I'm getting more attention or something like that.
Speaker 1: And then that of course would be something that would
Speaker 1: not seem to readily translate into the livestock world. But
Speaker 1: what we're looking at here these are examples that, if
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, would translate rather readily into the world
Speaker 1: of caring for livestock. Yeah, because it's about the human observers,
Speaker 1: like the cow whatever is making it into these reports
Speaker 1: that are in like anthropological texts or you know, folklore
Speaker 1: journals or whatever. The cow doesn't actually get to write
Speaker 1: that report that's made by humans, and it's usually going
Speaker 1: to be like the farmers saying, yeah, my cow got
Speaker 1: better or something like that. And they could well be
Speaker 1: affected by caregiver placebo effect. They form expectations of efficacy,
Speaker 1: and they interpret what they see through that lens. Another
Speaker 1: thing is that this article reports how sometimes animal pain
Speaker 1: is observable to one human onlooker but not to another. Again,
Speaker 1: just based on expectations, like our emotional biases are very
Speaker 1: strong in this area. And and one example given would
Speaker 1: be a you know, a pet owner brings an animal
Speaker 1: into the vet and it was in pain before, and
Speaker 1: the vet observes that the animal does still appear to
Speaker 1: be in pain, but the owner says, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: he's not he's in he's much better now. I've been
Speaker 1: giving him these homeopathic treatments I found. And you know,
Speaker 1: that's a mix of things. Like the pet owner, they
Speaker 1: love their pet, so they desire to believe that the
Speaker 1: beloved animal is doing better. And then on top of that,
Speaker 1: you could have like a choice supportive bias bias too,
Speaker 1: you know, where you interpret reality in a way that
Speaker 1: that supports the idea that what you have decided to
Speaker 1: do was the right decision. So the choice supportive bias
Speaker 1: says your selected intervention is working. And that may be
Speaker 1: a magical treatment or a or a non science based
Speaker 1: intervention like homeopathy or something, and that can blind you too.
Speaker 1: Signs of distress that other unbiased onlookers could see. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because because at least you feel like you're doing something
Speaker 1: in those cases, and or you're consultant. You may be
Speaker 1: consulting experts in the local community that are also assuring
Speaker 1: you like, yeah, this is the way to go, this
Speaker 1: is what will will get results. Yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: the important thing to stress here is that this occurs.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be like an uncaring you know,
Speaker 1: companion to to your non human animal of whatever type.
Speaker 1: It is like you can care very much about their
Speaker 1: well being and have this kind of bias. It's not
Speaker 1: like a result of being cold and unfeeling and cruel.
Speaker 1: So just a couple of final notes on this article.
Speaker 1: One is just a big takeaway is you should be
Speaker 1: careful when observing the symptoms of of a non human animal,
Speaker 1: of a pet or whatever, uh, not to let these
Speaker 1: kinds of biases prevent you from finding the most effective
Speaker 1: treatment or solution. You know, whenever possible, try to look
Speaker 1: for objective pieces of behavioral evidence that remove your subjective
Speaker 1: evaluation from things. And then the other thing is about
Speaker 1: the standards of evidence within veterinary medicine. Unfortunately, the history
Speaker 1: of veterinary studies has included fewer double blind, placebo controlled
Speaker 1: trials than human medicine. Because again, for a long time,
Speaker 1: nobody really thought placebo effect would come into play in
Speaker 1: a major way in veterinary medicine. But it looks like,
Speaker 1: at least in some cases, it really does, especially when
Speaker 1: that reported outcomes are based on owner's perceptions. And so
Speaker 1: this is changing and more more evidentiary standards like this
Speaker 1: are being introduced into veterinary medicine. But it may mean
Speaker 1: that the evaluation of the true efficacy of veterinary medicine
Speaker 1: has in some cases, especially when the basis is older,
Speaker 1: maybe on a lower standard of evidence than in human
Speaker 1: drug trials. But fortunately that that is changing. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so I'm bringing all this back to thoughts about how
Speaker 1: this could relate to like a Scottish farmer in the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century who believes that his his cow is sick
Speaker 1: or his horse is sick because it has been elf shot,
Speaker 1: it has been you know, hit by a ferry arrow
Speaker 1: and summon someone to provide a magical cure that maybe
Speaker 1: involves neolithic flints or egg mixed with gunpowder and healing
Speaker 1: their cow I I wonder how it relates to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would guess that the specifically that last
Speaker 1: when the caregiver placebo effect would would be a major
Speaker 1: factor here. Yeah, yeah, I think so that seems to
Speaker 1: be the That would seem to be the key. Though.
Speaker 1: It also makes me wonder about the idea of a
Speaker 1: of an inverse thing. This is not addressed in the
Speaker 1: article at all, but a a caregiver no sebo effect.
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes me wonder how you could have
Speaker 1: anxieties or beliefs about danger, other kinds of things taking
Speaker 1: place purely within the mind of the animal caregiver that
Speaker 1: give rise to spurious diagnoses of of illness or symptoms
Speaker 1: in the animal. Like what if actually the cow was fine.
Speaker 1: The farmer just gets freaked out about the idea that, oh, no,
Speaker 1: something bad is happening to my cow for some reason,
Speaker 1: and and that brings on the illusion of distress, which
Speaker 1: could then be treated by some kind of magical intervention,
Speaker 1: and then what do you know of the cow's fine afterwards? Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is especially possible given some of the the linked
Speaker 1: or perceived to be linked activities to elf shot, the
Speaker 1: cases where humans did something they shouldn't have to attract
Speaker 1: the attention of the elves, be it, you know, trumping
Speaker 1: on sacred ground, cutting down of a sacred tree, um
Speaker 1: or or or so something of this nature, um or
Speaker 1: even just the finding of the elf ere like this
Speaker 1: was curious. I was out with my cattle and I
Speaker 1: found this artifact on the ground. It's clearly an artifact
Speaker 1: of the elves. I better check on my cattle and
Speaker 1: see how they're doing. Oh, this one's not doing too well.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I didn't make that connection with the picking
Speaker 1: up of the flint, but yeah, that makes sense. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you. Now, there was a paper we talked about
Speaker 1: a little bit in the previous episode that I wanted
Speaker 1: to come back to and just mention a couple of
Speaker 1: more interesting little stories from uh. It was that paper
Speaker 1: called elf Shot Cattle by Thomas Davidson that was published
Speaker 1: in the journal Antiquity in nineteen fifty six. Remember, this
Speaker 1: is the one that was collecting a lot of those
Speaker 1: reports about elf shot. One of the things that caught
Speaker 1: my attention was the claim that a lot of times
Speaker 1: these injuries from elf shot are not inflicted directly by
Speaker 1: fairies or elves themselves. Davidson cites an author named Luid
Speaker 1: writing that there's a belief among some that fairies have
Speaker 1: to use humans as intermediaries in order to inflict these injuries,
Speaker 1: since the fairies have little power to cause direct physical
Speaker 1: injury to animal bodies them selves. So sometimes these stories
Speaker 1: say humans are like sucked up into the air by
Speaker 1: fairies and then given fairy weapons and then forced to
Speaker 1: shoot at men or cattle. M So okay, so sort
Speaker 1: of possession going on here. Yeah. One example of this
Speaker 1: is a story called the Tale of Black Donald of
Speaker 1: the Fairy Throng Uh. And this is a story where
Speaker 1: there's this guy named Donald and he's out plowing. He's
Speaker 1: plowing the land, he's working in the furrows, and this
Speaker 1: is on the Aisle of Tyree, which is off the
Speaker 1: coast of Scotland. And Donald's he's plowing and he gets
Speaker 1: uh sucked up by a fairy convoy and uh, and
Speaker 1: then they force him to drop an arrow from the
Speaker 1: sky that kills a speckled cow. And this actually connects
Speaker 1: with some of the critical stuff I was reading about
Speaker 1: the elf shot tradition, which says that actually in a
Speaker 1: lot of these stories, it is being alleger that it's
Speaker 1: he whoman's who are doing the inflicting, like witches or
Speaker 1: something who are inflicting damage with these weapons rather than
Speaker 1: elves directly. Interesting and in the end this it gets
Speaker 1: into a common trope in many cultures of the of
Speaker 1: sort of like the outsider within somebody within the community,
Speaker 1: either somebody from outside the community or somebody within the
Speaker 1: community that has been corrupted somehow. Yeah. Yeah, one thing
Speaker 1: I had to mention just because it was funny. There
Speaker 1: there's a long section of this paper that talks about
Speaker 1: alleged cures for elf shot, and one is a recorded
Speaker 1: anecdote of a wise woman curing a cow in the
Speaker 1: Shetlands by asking the crofter, the farmer, to bring her
Speaker 1: a Bible, and he brings the Bible, and she rips
Speaker 1: pages out of the Bible and balls them up into
Speaker 1: a pellet and then crams the Bible page pellet into
Speaker 1: a dimple in the cow's skin. Then there's another one
Speaker 1: I have to share because it involves crabs and and
Speaker 1: raises a mr for me that I cannot solve. So
Speaker 1: maybe the listeners have some input on this. So this
Speaker 1: is from a source Davidson sites called Shetland folklore. This
Speaker 1: is a book by Spence, and I'm going to read
Speaker 1: directly from Davidson summary here. Oh, I'm sorry, this is
Speaker 1: still about traditions in the Shetlands. Quote. A variant prescription
Speaker 1: from the same area directs the wise woman to take tar,
Speaker 1: a needle, a bible, a fire brand, and some fairy crabs.
Speaker 1: Waving the burning brand, she walked three times witter shans
Speaker 1: round the cow. That means counterclockwise three times witter shans
Speaker 1: round the cow, jabbing the animal with the needle, waving
Speaker 1: a leaf of the Bible over its back, and muttering
Speaker 1: an incantation. The firebrand was placed in a pot of
Speaker 1: tar and set at the cow's head so the fumes
Speaker 1: would make her cough. She was then given the fairy
Speaker 1: crabs to eat alive. The ashes of the fire brand
Speaker 1: were later mixed with the tar into three pills, which
Speaker 1: were administered to the animal on three successive mornings. What
Speaker 1: so involves eating the fairy crabs alive, it says she,
Speaker 1: And I'm sorry, I'm not sure if that means the
Speaker 1: cow or the wise woman. I think that means the cow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember reading this in the source during the initial
Speaker 1: research phase. And I could not figure out what fairy
Speaker 1: crabs where. I was like, yeah, it was I was trying,
Speaker 1: my mind was struggling to form. I was just imagining
Speaker 1: like a glowing blue crab. I was confused too, and
Speaker 1: I tried to look this up. There is an animal
Speaker 1: called a fairy crab, you can see it if you
Speaker 1: google that phrase. But it's clearly not what this is
Speaker 1: referring to, because it's a species of squat lobster called
Speaker 1: the scientific name is Laurea gianni and it's native to
Speaker 1: the Pacific. It's found like off the coast of Australia
Speaker 1: and UH and Indonesia. I think, so this is clearly
Speaker 1: not what they're talking about in the Shetlands. And I
Speaker 1: was trying to find more information and I just could not.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if this refers to I don't know,
Speaker 1: if this is a local Shetland name for a certain
Speaker 1: type of animal, like an actual crab or some type
Speaker 1: of insect or something. I really have no idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can imagine it going in different directions, some sort
Speaker 1: of novel crab that's found on the shore or or
Speaker 1: turned up in nets, or or indeed something that is
Speaker 1: found uh. You know, in in streams, or is not
Speaker 1: a crab at all, but some sort of an insect
Speaker 1: with some sort of folk medicine properties to it. Or
Speaker 1: I mean certainly we have examples in in plenty of
Speaker 1: cultures where something is named after an animal, but it's
Speaker 1: not itself an animal. It could be you know, you
Speaker 1: can imagine a situation where the fairy crab is actually
Speaker 1: some sort of a root, uh something into that effect.
Speaker 1: So there's so many different directions that could go in
Speaker 1: not not knowing exactly what this is referring to. Well,
Speaker 1: hey listeners, if you've got inside on this, you know
Speaker 1: what the fairy crabs are, right in. One last subject
Speaker 1: that Davidson brings up with respect to elf shot is
Speaker 1: the idea of of curved plow furrows and ridges in
Speaker 1: order to quote Wander the fairy, which I found so interesting.
Speaker 1: It's the idea that if you you go throughout Scotland
Speaker 1: and you look at some old cultivated fields, you'll find,
Speaker 1: you know, these places that are uh, they're they're dug
Speaker 1: with a what's known as like a ridge and furrow system,
Speaker 1: So you'll see a series of basically you know, lines
Speaker 1: where like you'd have a plowed area and then like
Speaker 1: a sort of ridge of of moved earth piled up
Speaker 1: in between them. And an interesting thing about a lot
Speaker 1: of these is they are created with with so that
Speaker 1: the ridges and the furrows are not straight lines, but
Speaker 1: are curved or crooked or s shaped even. And it
Speaker 1: is believed by some that the purpose of this is
Speaker 1: to confuse or quote wander the ferry to uh, to
Speaker 1: maybe lead the ferry off course or lead the elf
Speaker 1: off course. This is not the only system, by the way,
Speaker 1: that would use this, Like Davidson notes that a lot
Speaker 1: of amulets that are designed for protection against fairies have
Speaker 1: a rays of kind of spiral patterns or can you know,
Speaker 1: complex whirls within them, or labyrinths or something, and that
Speaker 1: this is designed to confuse the evil spirits, to kind
Speaker 1: of send them on a on a maze like journey
Speaker 1: that will lead them astray and keep them from harming you.
Speaker 1: These If if you haven't seen these ridgin furrow features,
Speaker 1: definitely look them up to do an image search, because
Speaker 1: you can see lots of wonderful aerial photographs of this
Speaker 1: sort of thing. And yeah, you can sort of imagine
Speaker 1: the trail of the of the elf going astray here. Oh,
Speaker 1: some of the ones you're looking at are the curved ones,
Speaker 1: because some are just straight, but others some are just straight.
Speaker 1: But I was looking at one in particular here where
Speaker 1: you do see you kind of see a mix in
Speaker 1: this particular one. You see the different areas of land
Speaker 1: and definite curves in some areas where and one kind
Speaker 1: of has like almost like a fern look because you
Speaker 1: have the line going down the middle and you have
Speaker 1: some like like different wavings on each side. So the
Speaker 1: magical understanding here again is that this, well, it could
Speaker 1: throw fairies off just generally because you know, you you
Speaker 1: make twisting paths in order to confuse evil spirits. But
Speaker 1: the other thing would be it doesn't allow them to
Speaker 1: get a clear straight line shot at the cattle, like
Speaker 1: at the oxen that you're using to plow the field. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is strange, Like this idea of the elf is
Speaker 1: kind of like this. Uh, you know, I guess you
Speaker 1: look at different folklore systems, it's like you want to
Speaker 1: avoid doing things that draw attention to yourself. You know,
Speaker 1: we definitely see that with the elf and fairy folk traditions,
Speaker 1: and in this part of the world with the wearing
Speaker 1: of green, which we've discussed before. Don't wear the green
Speaker 1: that's the color of the elves or the fairies. They'll
Speaker 1: come at you. You also see that with editions of
Speaker 1: the Evil Eye in the Middle East, where there are
Speaker 1: various things like you should not do because this invisible
Speaker 1: nefarious forces out there in the world, and you do
Speaker 1: not want it aware of your presence or your fortune.
Speaker 1: So you don't. Don't, don't get on its radar, don't
Speaker 1: have direct lines leading to you, be that line something
Speaker 1: like you know, you're shouting about how beautiful your child is.
Speaker 1: Um you know, in the case of some of the
Speaker 1: Evil Eye traditions in particularly in Judaism, I remember hearing
Speaker 1: about reading about um or or in this case, like
Speaker 1: a physical line through the altered landscape. I think this
Speaker 1: type of belief is still present even in like modern
Speaker 1: day and Christianity. Like I remember when I was a
Speaker 1: kid hearing about the dangers of playing with a weigia board,
Speaker 1: and the idea was it attracts demonic attention. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's literally like the it's it's like when you play
Speaker 1: with a wegia board. It's not so much something about
Speaker 1: the board as evil, but it. It's sort of like
Speaker 1: puts up a beacon to demons that says, hey, I'm available. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, pay attention to me, and they will hone
Speaker 1: in on you because you have done that. Yeah. Oh.
Speaker 1: In quick note, I mentioned Judaism and the evil eye
Speaker 1: and so forth. The evil eyes not necessarily like a
Speaker 1: part of Judaism. I don't want to imply that, but
Speaker 1: it is something that is sort of in the folklore
Speaker 1: traditions of various people in the Middle East, including you'll
Speaker 1: see that in Judaic culture. Yeah. And certainly we see
Speaker 1: similar site case with with this here because we have
Speaker 1: people who are discussing that have taken you know, that
Speaker 1: have converted to Christianity, and that they're still they're still
Speaker 1: practicing beliefs, they're still engaging in belief of the elves,
Speaker 1: but they're also incorporating in some of these Christian traditions
Speaker 1: like well, maybe maybe you know, wat up a Bible
Speaker 1: page and stick it into that furrow in the cow
Speaker 1: and that will help to this is this next thing
Speaker 1: is not really addressed in Davidson, but I was wondering
Speaker 1: about this, uh, because I was reading about the ridge
Speaker 1: and furrow system elsewhere after after reading this passage from Davidson,
Speaker 1: and it seems to me that sometime the strips that
Speaker 1: are plowed in this system are curved for totally mundane
Speaker 1: reasons that have nothing to do with magical beliefs. I
Speaker 1: think that they're they're often curved just because of Uh.
Speaker 1: It was a sort of necessary consequence of the types
Speaker 1: of plow rigging and and oxen pulling teams that they
Speaker 1: used at the time. They would lead to a farrow
Speaker 1: or ridge being kind of like curved off at each
Speaker 1: end every time the team turned around to make a
Speaker 1: new line. Uh. And that makes me wonder if something
Speaker 1: like twisting twisting in these rows could have originally been
Speaker 1: a totally mundane thing that somebody saw and then in
Speaker 1: trying to explain why it was like that without understanding it,
Speaker 1: they came up with this explanation about confusing the ferries
Speaker 1: and then afterwards did did it like that on purpose?
Speaker 1: It's like like somebody like that. The landowner whoever comes
Speaker 1: out to check on the work is like, Dale, what's
Speaker 1: going on with these ridges and furrows? Look and look
Speaker 1: at it. It's just like I can tell it's crooked.
Speaker 1: And Dale was like, well, do you want the fairies
Speaker 1: coming straight at you. I didn't think, so You're welcome.
Speaker 1: This of course also reminds me of on one hand
Speaker 1: this and this may have well be connected, uh, the
Speaker 1: the idea that vampires might be deterred by hanging some
Speaker 1: sort of a nodded item or or carefully woven item
Speaker 1: out for them, like a complex pattern that will draw
Speaker 1: their attention and they have to deal with and maybe
Speaker 1: get they'll either spend all their time doing that and
Speaker 1: leave you alone, or perhaps even get caught in the
Speaker 1: sunlight the loose track of time. And then of course
Speaker 1: I can't help but think of crop circles as well,
Speaker 1: which again, as we've discussed I think we've discussed this
Speaker 1: in the show before. I mean crop crop circles are
Speaker 1: pretty much put to bed as a you know, is
Speaker 1: the work of human actors. But thinking about like sort
Speaker 1: of the draw to do this to a field, like
Speaker 1: the human um intention to do this, and there's there
Speaker 1: are several factors that can play into that someone which
Speaker 1: may actually they come up in our next episode of
Speaker 1: such to blow your mind. But um, but the the
Speaker 1: idea of like just seeing that field, like I wonder
Speaker 1: if there's some sort of draw that like, no, the
Speaker 1: lines are too too perfect. Everything is just too pristine,
Speaker 1: like this this this, this land has been too finely transformed.
Speaker 1: We gotta get some swirls in there. We gotta get
Speaker 1: some circles, you know. Yeah, that is a good comparison.
Speaker 1: I didn't think you were going to crop circles though.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to mention the jung she
Speaker 1: being uh being warded off by spilling glutinous rice on
Speaker 1: the floor because they'll I think they'll be counting the grains, right. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that also, that's a good point as well. I've
Speaker 1: forgot about that one, something about yeah, the the inhuman
Speaker 1: analytical mind of the of of non human beings and folklore,
Speaker 1: and that there they can be led astray by and
Speaker 1: by either random randomized patterns or things of of human
Speaker 1: creation that have some sort of eloquence to them, which
Speaker 1: is kind of ironic given that we're talking about situations
Speaker 1: where human beings may in some cases of just like
Speaker 1: completely flipped their wig over finding an old flint arrow
Speaker 1: in the dirt. So I I guess it cuts both winds. Now,
Speaker 1: there's one more paper. I wanted to briefly mention that
Speaker 1: gets way more into the weeds about a particular text
Speaker 1: that is believed or has been believed to reference elf shot.
Speaker 1: But I thought this was interesting too. So this was
Speaker 1: a paper by a professor of English at the University
Speaker 1: of Leeds named Alaric Hall called Calling the Shots the
Speaker 1: Old English Remedy Gift Horse of Scotland CE and Anglo
Speaker 1: Saxon elf Shot, published in two thousand five. So this
Speaker 1: paper is mainly an attempt to critically re examine an
Speaker 1: Anglo Saxon text called Gift Horse of Scotland c. Which
Speaker 1: is a passage from a medieval Anglo Saxon medical text
Speaker 1: that has been widely interpreted as being about elf shot.
Speaker 1: The title gift Horse of Scott and c. Translates to
Speaker 1: if a horse be and then the word is off scotten,
Speaker 1: And the question is what does of Scott mean? It's
Speaker 1: been traditionally translated as elf shot if a horse be
Speaker 1: elf shot. Hall argues that it should not be understood
Speaker 1: that way, and yet there are still references to elf
Speaker 1: attacks within the passage. So this is Hall's translation of
Speaker 1: this text, which is interesting in itself. If a horse
Speaker 1: be off Scott take, then a dagger who's halft is
Speaker 1: of fallow Ox's horn, and in which there are three
Speaker 1: brass nails. And then there's a term that every time
Speaker 1: is rendered as right slash. Inscribe, I'm just gonna say, inscribe.
Speaker 1: Inscribe on the horse on the forehead, Christ's mark, so
Speaker 1: it bleeds. Inscribe then Christ's mark on the spine, and
Speaker 1: on each of the limbs which you can grasp. This,
Speaker 1: shall you do take a staff strike on the act,
Speaker 1: then the horse will be well. And inscribe on the
Speaker 1: daggers handle. These words been a de cite omnia opera
Speaker 1: domini dominum, which means bless all the works of the
Speaker 1: Lord of lords. Should it be Alf's which is on it,
Speaker 1: this will do as a remedy for it. And so
Speaker 1: Hall makes the argument in this paper that the primary
Speaker 1: condition being described in this text under the word off
Speaker 1: scotten should not be translated as elf shot, as it
Speaker 1: traditionally has been. But it's something like badly pained. It's
Speaker 1: more more mundane condition that is prompting this entire remedy. However,
Speaker 1: even if that's correct, the last line of the remedy
Speaker 1: does mention the idea of this word alf the a
Speaker 1: E combined vowel and then l f e uh. Though
Speaker 1: this sentence is also kind of difficult to translate, the
Speaker 1: one that's got the alfh in it. I think that
Speaker 1: the understanding that makes the most senses, this whole remedy
Speaker 1: is for regular bad pain and horses, and then there's
Speaker 1: an additional remedy, the one that's riding on the daggers
Speaker 1: handle the words bless all the works of the Lord
Speaker 1: of lords. Uh. That additional remedy is like a special
Speaker 1: extra dose of holiness that should be applied if the
Speaker 1: cause of the horses pain is injury by an elf.
Speaker 1: Though it doesn't explain how you tell the difference between
Speaker 1: normal bad pain and bad pain caused by an elf.
Speaker 1: You know, of course, the the elf injury being even
Speaker 1: more unholy and requiring more holiness or more piety in
Speaker 1: order to undo either way you shake it. From a
Speaker 1: modern perspective, it's a lot of uh cutting and striking
Speaker 1: of a pain horse. Yeah, jeez, you feel bad for
Speaker 1: the horse now, as we uh, As we go to
Speaker 1: close out this look at elf shot, I did want
Speaker 1: to come back to some basic questions, some of which
Speaker 1: we've already got into, concerning the art theology of elf shot,
Speaker 1: who were the people who made these artifacts and how
Speaker 1: did they get to the regions where the artifacts were found?
Speaker 1: And then of course you know, interpreted and reinterpreted within
Speaker 1: these folkloric traditions. Uh. This of course is a broad
Speaker 1: question because as we've we've mentioned already, we're talking about
Speaker 1: multiple areas. We're talking about locations throughout the British Isles
Speaker 1: and even outside of the British Isles. But just limiting
Speaker 1: the question to the British Isles, were still looking at
Speaker 1: close to a million years of occupation by various human species,
Speaker 1: including Neanderthals. And as for the how they got there,
Speaker 1: the predominant theories involved land bridges between Europe and Britain
Speaker 1: that were president at the time. And regarding Ireland, I've
Speaker 1: seen hypotheses that involve boats, land bridges and also ice bridges.
Speaker 1: But just to give a few examples that really sort
Speaker 1: of drive home at the time we're talking about here, Uh,
Speaker 1: there are stone tool and footprints in Norfolk. The date
Speaker 1: back and estibated nine hundred thousand years uh, and these
Speaker 1: would be the work and the and or the footprints
Speaker 1: of Homo antecessor. Notable here are the Happisburg footprints in Norfolk,
Speaker 1: and also a black flint hand axe was also found
Speaker 1: in this area. So Homo antecessor they were makers of
Speaker 1: simple stone tools, and it looks like many experts think
Speaker 1: that they might not have had mastery of fire. By
Speaker 1: four thousand BC, e Neolithic culture was firmly established on
Speaker 1: the British Isles and lasted till roughly Uh, it's just
Speaker 1: you know, the rough time period of our histories, uh,
Speaker 1: two thousand, five hundred BC. And of course between three
Speaker 1: thousand BC and two thousand BC we see the construction
Speaker 1: of Stonehenge, one, of course the most famous, if not
Speaker 1: the most famous testament to prehistoric Britain. And of course
Speaker 1: even Stonehenge gets wrapped up into various folklore, traditions and
Speaker 1: folkloric interpretations and reinterpretations that involved at times the wizard Merlin,
Speaker 1: but also the Christian devil, and even during the Roman period,
Speaker 1: which would have been a roughly forty three CE two
Speaker 1: four tense, the Roman sky god Kalis. More realistically or
Speaker 1: more on this sort of you know, realistic interpretation and
Speaker 1: reinterpretation standpoint, it was at one point thought to be
Speaker 1: credited to the work of Druidic culture. But this culture
Speaker 1: didn't exist till three d b C, which would have
Speaker 1: been too late, so the stones were already ancient history
Speaker 1: to the Druids. Now, another example that I found really
Speaker 1: interesting of talking about found arrowheads uh in the British Isles.
Speaker 1: In archaeologists from the University of Reading discovered a four thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred year old flint arrowhead a few miles from Stonehenge,
Speaker 1: and according to David Dawson, director of the Wiltshire Museum,
Speaker 1: this particular arrowhead is not only finally preserved, but incredibly fragile,
Speaker 1: suggesting that it was never actually intended for use in
Speaker 1: war or hunting, but was rather ceremonial or decorative and
Speaker 1: or decorative um this was. You can look up images
Speaker 1: of this. There was some news articles at the time.
Speaker 1: The arrowhead was unearthed in two parts, two different digs,
Speaker 1: five years apart, and it is quite elegent looking. It
Speaker 1: has like one it has barbs, but one really long
Speaker 1: barb and elongated barb on one side. So I don't
Speaker 1: know about you, but I find that really interesting because
Speaker 1: I think it's easy to think of folkloric interpretation of
Speaker 1: found objects to be a luxury of later civilizations on
Speaker 1: the British hiles to think supernaturally about about these about
Speaker 1: these items. But certainly, and certainly there's a lot we
Speaker 1: don't know about concerning pre Roman and prehistoric Britain. But
Speaker 1: even of forty years ago, uh, this find would suggest
Speaker 1: that people here were already capable of sublime interpretations and
Speaker 1: uh and perhaps mystical meanings for their own created artifacts.
Speaker 1: That you could have this this sacred arrow, uh that
Speaker 1: wasn't found, that was made, but some of the same
Speaker 1: energy that goes into the the the interpretation of these artifacts,
Speaker 1: you know, thousands of years later, was already present in
Speaker 1: the cultures that made their home here, right. And so
Speaker 1: we don't know what it would have been used for,
Speaker 1: but it's clear that it would not have been useful
Speaker 1: for actual shooting of an arrow. So you know, it
Speaker 1: could be decorative, it could be medicinal, some kind of amulet.
Speaker 1: It could be magical or ceremonial. We don't know, but
Speaker 1: in any case, it would be a symbolic arrowhead rather
Speaker 1: than one used for the literal, direct mundane purpose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so you can imagine at some point in in
Speaker 1: history after this point, uh, if someone were to find
Speaker 1: an arrow had like this especially, I mean any arrow
Speaker 1: had obviously any kind of novel lump of stone um
Speaker 1: could find itself interpreted as an elf arrow and and
Speaker 1: and incorporated into elf shot folklore. But imagine if you
Speaker 1: found this, you know, clearly and an arrow that that
Speaker 1: looks too fine to be shot. You know, that's almost
Speaker 1: ephemeral in its construction, Like who would make this? Why
Speaker 1: would they make this? Clearly this is the work of
Speaker 1: the elves. But also I think it's just yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just worth remembering the the deep history of of of
Speaker 1: people on the British Isles. You know, it might not
Speaker 1: be as deep as uh as some other areas. I like,
Speaker 1: you know, you're looking at what on France, I think
Speaker 1: it's what one point fifty seven million years ago we
Speaker 1: have some of the earliest known evidence of human beings.
Speaker 1: But still you have human species on the British Isles. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know that as early as almost a million years ago,
Speaker 1: different species, different cultures, different waves of technology and arrivals
Speaker 1: in the subsequent centuries and millennium millennia, and of course
Speaker 1: different waves of interpretation and reinterpretation of what came before.
Speaker 1: All Right, we're gonna go and close it out there,
Speaker 1: but obviously we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Speaker 1: We'd especially love to hear from folks listening to the
Speaker 1: show oh on the British Aisles, or folks who have
Speaker 1: spent time on the British Isles. Perhaps you have some
Speaker 1: tidbits some local lore to share with us. If so,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. Reminder that Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is a primarily a science podcast that
Speaker 1: publishes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind podcast feed but on Monday's we do a
Speaker 1: listener mail episode where we read various missives from our listeners.
Speaker 1: On Wednesday's we do a short form artifact or monster fact.
Speaker 1: On Friday's we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time
Speaker 1: to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird film. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. It's production I Heart Radio. For
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