WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Siren 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:08.360 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:08.400 --> 0:00:11.000 is Robert Lamb. Today is Saturday, so we have another 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:14.680 episode from the vault for you here. This originally published 0:00:14.680 --> 0:00:19.079 eleven seven, twenty twenty four. It is our episode on 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:24.080 the Siren from Mythology. So let's dive right in. 0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:31.400 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:40.080 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:40.720 is Robert. 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:44.240 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And once again October 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:46.560 content has spilled over the edge of the month. 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:50.480 That's right. In today's episode, we're continuing our Halloween twenty 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:54.000 twenty four express with an episode that was originally scheduled 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:57.960 for late October, but our episode on the Hogs of 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:00.840 Hell went a little long, ended up going into two episodes, 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:03.480 so we bumped this one back a bit. It's a 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:07.119 topic we've touched on briefly before, but it's a great one, 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:09.680 taking us back to the world of oceanic monsters of 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:13.280 myth and legend. We're going to be talking about the Siren. 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:17.560 The Siren, So I realized Rob, correct me if I'm wrong, 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:21.320 but I realized I think we both had we had 0:01:21.480 --> 0:01:26.960 different theeomorphic hybrids in mind when we were separately thinking 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:29.800 about the siren, Because when I thought of the siren, 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:33.480 I first thought of sort of half woman, half bird 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:36.399 creatures that sing to the sailors. But I get the 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:41.920 impression that your mind first went to half human, half fish. 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:44.440 So I guess those are both within the siren tradition, 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:45.000 aren't they? 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:48.640 They are. This is one of the things about the siren, 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:51.400 as we'll discuss, is that there are takes on them 0:01:51.480 --> 0:01:56.240 in which they are essentially mermaids. It's essentially some version 0:01:56.360 --> 0:02:01.360 of the European North European mermaid tradition. There are versions 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:04.480 of it in which they are just sort of beautiful 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:08.840 ladies who sing sailors to their death, that sort of thing. 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:11.040 And then other times they are essentially what we might 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:14.280 think of as a harpie, you know. They are a 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:18.800 winged creature, perhaps like an all out vulture type being, 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:21.560 with even just the head of a maiden or the 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:22.480 face of a maiden. 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:25.640 But in either case, I think we're to assume that 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:29.240 their voices may be lovely, but they sing sailors to 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:29.760 their doom. 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:32.440 Yes, And that's one thing we can be sure on 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:36.280 when we look to really the most famous literary account 0:02:36.480 --> 0:02:40.480 of the sirens, but also the one that continues to 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:44.440 raise a lot of questions because it does skim over 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:47.519 some of the details, as we'll discuss. We are, of 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:50.519 course talking about Homer's the Odyssey. I'm just going to 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:53.920 read a quote here. This is from the Samuel Butler translation. 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:59.639 I believe this is Circe warning Odysseus and his men 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:04.400 about the challenges ahead. First, you will come to the sirens, 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:08.239 who enchant all who come near them. If anyone unwarily 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:11.799 draws in too close and hears the singing of the sirens, 0:03:12.200 --> 0:03:15.400 his wife and children will never welcome him home again, 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:19.399 For they sit in a green field and warble him 0:03:19.480 --> 0:03:23.000 to death with the sweetness of their song. There is 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:26.200 a great heap of dead men's bones lying all around, 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:29.200 and the flesh still rotting off them. 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:34.320 Number one, that's intense. Number two does not describe them physically. 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:36.840 And number three warbled to death. 0:03:36.880 --> 0:03:40.480 Warbled to death. You know which, if you got to go, 0:03:41.440 --> 0:03:45.760 why not choose warbling? Why not? So this is you know, considered. 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:49.680 You know, this is probably the most famous literary description 0:03:49.880 --> 0:03:53.600 and non description of the sirens. But we have a 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:58.640 lot of other materials that have depicted the sirens, describe them, 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:02.320 or depicted them visually that also sort of compete with 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:05.840 our imaginations here and end up and this is often 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:09.720 the case with these things, ends up coloring our absorption 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:14.080 of Homer's original writings. We've had some great cinematic sirens 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:17.480 over time. We have, for example, to get into the 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:21.320 adaptations of the Odyssey itself, there, of course the Three 0:04:21.400 --> 0:04:26.520 Sirens and No Brother, Where art thou? The three strange 0:04:26.560 --> 0:04:30.000 women that appear as beautiful washer women singing go to sleep, 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:32.800 little Baby. They of course lure end del Mar and 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:35.000 turn him into a horny toad sort of. 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:37.599 Wait does he get turned back? I haven't seen this 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:38.359 movie in a while. 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:43.080 Well, he doesn't. Actually, we end up finding out later 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:45.080 that he was never turned into a horny toad. He 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.760 was captured by authorities because he was wanted. 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:51.640 Oh yeah, they find him again in the movie Theater 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:53.040 Do Not Seek the Treasure. 0:04:53.400 --> 0:04:56.320 Yeah, but you know, it's a great sequence in the film, 0:04:56.400 --> 0:04:59.120 a lot of laughs, and it works nicely in comparison 0:04:59.160 --> 0:05:01.839 to the theme of bat that's also employed in the work. 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:06.560 Elsewhere in cinema, we tend to see the idea of 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:10.200 sirens employed more in terms of the evil mermaid. You 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:11.799 want to have a mermaid, but you want an evil 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:14.520 one where you lean into this idea of the siren. 0:05:15.240 --> 0:05:18.280 Just a few quick mentions, and I'm missing a lot 0:05:18.320 --> 0:05:20.480 of them. I'm sure there's two thousand and one's Dagon. 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:23.520 This is the Stuart Gordon film you have neat Split 0:05:23.640 --> 0:05:26.560 Tale at Kidneess style Mermaids in that. There's a two 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:29.839 and another two thousand and one film titled She Creature 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:32.280 that I have not seen since two thousand and one, 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:34.400 but I remember having a nice little cast to it, 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:40.120 and also having a monstrous mermaid more recently. I don't 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:41.719 know much about the plot details here, so I don't 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:45.560 know where this falls in terms of sirens. But there's 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:49.400 a Polish musical horror film titled The Lure that seems 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:51.360 to have resonated with a number of viewers. I've seen 0:05:51.440 --> 0:05:53.880 some nice reviews of that. And then I think we've 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:56.720 had at least a couple of different Mermaid slash Siren 0:05:56.800 --> 0:06:00.640 TV shows in recent decades, but I have not seen them. 0:06:00.680 --> 0:06:02.839 So we'll have to lean on our listeners to write 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:06.080 in and tell us what those are like now. Again 0:06:06.279 --> 0:06:08.320 to get back to what we were just talking about earlier. 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:16.520 Though sirens are not definitively sea creatures or definitively mermaids. However, 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:23.520 it's impossible to separate the two completely, so you know, 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:27.919 we do have to acknowledge that to whatever extent sirens 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:32.520 are based in this idea of undersea creatures, well, you know, 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:35.640 the idea of people and creatures from beneath the waves. Naturally, 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:38.560 it goes back very long ways. As long as humans 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:40.920 have gazed out across the waves or peered down through 0:06:40.960 --> 0:06:44.040 clear waters from the side of their boats, they've dreamed 0:06:44.279 --> 0:06:46.520 of a mirror world to our own, a place where 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:50.400 every animal has its watery reflection, where intelligent human like 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:55.000 beings no doubt dwell as well, along with various monsters 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:58.920 and gods and so forth. There is a paper by 0:06:59.040 --> 0:07:02.039 Nancy Easter. This is a two thousand and one paper 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.280 again back to two thousand and one that we've we 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:08.840 cited in a much older episode of the podcast titled 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:12.400 Hans Christian Andersen's Fish out of Water, and she points 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:15.760 out that the Babylonians recognize gods with fish features or 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:21.320 hybridity you have, like what Adappa fish the fishermen of Onias, 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:25.840 the teacher of wisdom. Even mighty Inky, the ancient Sumerian 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:28.200 water god, is sometimes depicted as having a cloak of 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:32.720 fish or scaled skin, and the chief place of worship 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:36.480 was a ziggurat known as the House of the Subterranean Waters. 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:41.480 And additionally fishtailed gods, water dragons and so forth found 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:44.800 throughout the cultures of India, China and Japan and so forth. 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:51.920 There's a quote from that Easter paper. She writes some 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:55.360 other mythological sea beings and deities, such as Poseidon and 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:59.960 the Sirens were not originally associated with water and pissine anatom. 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:03.000 The sirens were originally birds. We'll get back to that 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:06.440 in a minute, indicating that divine power and woman leolure 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:09.360 became combined with the power and promise of the sea 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:13.880 when ancient cultures overtook maritime war and trade. So in 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:17.400 that paper gets into a familiar theme on this show 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:20.480 when we're talking about deities and supernatural beings, is that 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:23.240 of course they are passed down and they do not 0:08:23.440 --> 0:08:27.960 stay in one form or another. They are reused, recreated, 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:33.840 you know, different, different, various relaunches and reboots of the 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:35.079 brand over time. 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:39.559 And in past episodes we've even talked about reasons for 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:43.440 questioning the very idea of such a thing as a 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:47.160 canonical form of a deity or a monster or something that. 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:49.920 You know, that makes sense when you have something like 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:52.920 intellectual property, like if a monster is the creation of 0:08:52.960 --> 0:08:55.680 a specific author and they describe it a certain way, 0:08:55.760 --> 0:08:58.040 and then other people could take the idea and vary it, 0:08:58.120 --> 0:08:59.560 but you would want to refer back to what is 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:02.439 the original one, you know, with like gods and monsters 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:04.880 and things that come out of folklore. You know, maybe 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:08.040 sometimes it makes sense to say there's basically an authoritative 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:10.520 version of a story, but most of the time there's not. 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:14.760 Sometimes the characteristics aren't even given in the earliest works 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:17.960 that are still extant today. So like searching after the 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:22.079 canonical form of the monster or deity or whatever is fruitless. 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:25.199 There just is no original that we can access. 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:27.720 Yeah, I think we've talked about this before. You get 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:29.600 kind of close to this idea when you look at 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:32.840 a multi author of franchise like say Marvel Comics, where 0:09:32.880 --> 0:09:34.440 you can say, you know, you try to explain like, well, 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:37.599 who's Venom, Oh, he's a villain of Spider man. Oh well, no, 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:39.520 he's also kind of a hero. He's kind of an 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:42.920 anti hero. Oh yeah. And sometimes he's just straight up 0:09:43.640 --> 0:09:45.680 what we would think I was the protagonist of a story, 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:48.000 So it just it changes. And there are probably better 0:09:48.080 --> 0:09:49.320 examples than Venom to turn to. 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:51.920 There. Yeah, well, I think that's a good one. Except 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:55.560 it's like that. But imagine if most Marvel comics were 0:09:55.600 --> 0:09:57.600 lost and we don't know what they said or what 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:00.680 was in them, and we don't know where the first 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:01.920 appearance of Venom was. 0:10:02.360 --> 0:10:06.040 Yeah, all right, But coming back to the Siren and 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:11.640 getting into the Greek traditions, here, we as the quote 0:10:11.679 --> 0:10:15.000 you read earlier attests to, we certainly experience the sirens 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:18.360 and Homer's eighth century BCEE work The Odyssey, and they 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:23.640 are described as malicious doomy women when we put in 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:28.440 asterisk by that woman description, malicious doomy entities anyway, who 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:31.720 hang out on rocks and sing to passing sailors. But 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:37.080 Homer neglects to physically describe them at all. So again, 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:40.920 even by just briefly mentioning them as women, I'm airing 0:10:41.040 --> 0:10:44.640 because he does not ascribe gender to these creatures. But 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:47.199 the thing is it's really hard not to be infected 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:50.800 by the various visual treatments of this encounter of these 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:54.400 creatures from throughout Western art, you know, which has often 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:57.240 served as a great opportunity to create dramatic and evocative 0:10:57.280 --> 0:11:00.760 scenes that make use of, you know, the the unclothed 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:05.440 are partially unclothed male and female bodies. I was talking 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:09.400 about this with my son yesterday when I was researching this, 0:11:09.440 --> 0:11:11.599 and I mentioned to him, and he already knows his 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:13.559 way around myths and monsters pretty well, I mentioned, you 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:17.760 know that Homer never actually describes them. So they could 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:19.640 look like a woman, they could look like a fish monster, 0:11:19.679 --> 0:11:21.720 they could look like a bird person, we don't know. 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:23.200 And he asked, well, could they just be like a 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:26.000 banana peel? And I dare say they could. And he 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:28.480 does not say that they do not look like banana peels, 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:32.920 and provides no other physical description at all. 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:35.120 They could literally be Ronald McDonald. 0:11:35.679 --> 0:11:38.520 They could be. There's nothing in the Odyssey that says 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:41.320 they're not. So I was reading a bit more about 0:11:41.360 --> 0:11:45.200 this in this is an older book. This is an 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:48.920 older publication. This is from nineteen seventy. The Homeric Sirens 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:52.800 by Gerald K. Gressith. This was publishing the Transactions and 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:59.760 Proceedings of the American Philological Association, and in it the 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:02.760 but there spends a lot of time talking about what 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:06.760 at the time were like two dueling interpretations of the 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:10.120 sirens in Homer's the Odyssey, and I think that it's 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:12.880 interesting to look at them here. So the first one 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:16.560 that he references is the idea that the sirens are 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:20.840 soul birds, again playing on the idea that in other 0:12:20.960 --> 0:12:25.240 texts we have the sirens described in Avian terms. And 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:28.080 the connection here is that they would be representations of 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:31.360 the souls of the dead in bird form, an idea 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:34.800 that extends back through ancient Egyptian religion. This was an 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:40.120 idea champion by the German classical archaeologist Georg Viker. In short, 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:43.240 this view sees the sirens as things that emerge from 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:47.400 hades and or the grave, and as grethis explains, Homer 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.120 likely wouldn't have thought that the soul became a bird 0:12:51.200 --> 0:12:54.160 upon death in this scenario, but he might have been 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:57.480 influenced by older ideas still present in art and culture 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:01.960 of his time. Okay, then there's this other idea, and 0:13:01.960 --> 0:13:05.920 that is that the sirens are other world enchantresses, so 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:09.000 an idea in this case champion by German archaeologist and 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:13.960 translator Ernst Bouscher in response to Vicker arguing that Homer 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:18.240 sirens are anthropomorphic. This view sees the sirens not as 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:22.280 creatures of the afterlife, but as something else that doesn't 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:27.040 reside in Hades, though perhaps does reside in a different 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:31.480 other world and might not even be directly malicious. That's 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:34.400 the interesting thing about this kind of view. They might 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:38.199 be more in line with muses offering song and information 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.640 that we're just not equipped to resist. We just can't 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:45.640 handle a song this beautiful and or information this tantalizing, 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:49.760 and therefore we are just drawn into it. And this 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:52.160 actually gets into the vagueness of how they actually bring 0:13:52.160 --> 0:13:56.800 about these men's dooms, because, as Aggressive points out, we 0:13:56.840 --> 0:13:59.280 don't have an answer for this in Homer either and 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:03.200 elsewhere interpretations range from an overt and then the sirens 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:06.800 ate him sort of situation to this idea that enraptured 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:10.920 individuals just slowly die of exposure on the shores of 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:13.080 the sirens, like they're drawn by the song, and then 0:14:13.120 --> 0:14:16.200 they just you know, forget to eat, forget to stay 0:14:16.240 --> 0:14:17.920 out of the sun and just waste away. 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:19.400 And so in that. 0:14:19.320 --> 0:14:21.920 Scenario, it's like, well, the muses, like they may not 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:25.000 even be entities that are aware of what they are doing. 0:14:25.080 --> 0:14:28.360 They're just sharing song and information, but we just can't 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:29.440 handle it as mortals. 0:14:30.000 --> 0:14:33.360 That's fascinating, And it's funny because the interpretation I always 0:14:33.400 --> 0:14:35.200 just had in the back of my mind isn't even 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:38.280 listed there, which is the idea that they sit on 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.040 the rocks and they sing to the sailors and they 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:43.920 draw the sailors in close, and the ships wreck on 0:14:43.960 --> 0:14:46.400 the rocks and the sailors drone that I don't know 0:14:46.440 --> 0:14:48.400 where that idea came from, but that is what I 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:50.880 thought was being described in the Odyssey. 0:14:51.480 --> 0:14:53.040 You know, Like I said, there are a lot of 0:14:53.120 --> 0:14:59.240 paintings of the Sirens and or Odysseus, and I think 0:14:59.320 --> 0:15:05.520 they also so almost at times subliminally charge one's understanding 0:15:05.520 --> 0:15:07.880 of this scenario. And there are several of these that 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:10.360 I think I've just seen most of my life. There 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:12.200 are a couple in particular that pop up in the 0:15:12.200 --> 0:15:14.920 time Life Enchanted World book series that of course makes 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:17.560 use of a lot of excellent original art, but also 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.800 a lot of classic art as well too, In particular 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:24.080 John william Waterhouse is the Siren from nineteen hundred. This 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:27.240 is a like a vertical piece in which there is 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:31.800 a nude woman with a harp of some kind of 0:15:31.880 --> 0:15:32.680 or is this a lute? 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:36.760 I believe it's a liar. Yeah, there you go, U 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:38.120 shaped stringed instrument. 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:40.600 Yeah. So she's playing it on the rocks, and there 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:44.760 down in the water below her is an enraptured male, 0:15:45.200 --> 0:15:48.120 like a youthful male, who looks like he is probably 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:50.920 going to drown. And so like, I think this really 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:53.120 matches up with your read on it, and you know, 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:55.800 I often I think thought about it in similar terms 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:58.640 looking at these images, like the sirens just draw you 0:15:58.720 --> 0:16:01.680 in and then you know, stuff happens. But it's not 0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:03.400 like they're biting into you or anything. 0:16:03.760 --> 0:16:08.960 That's right. But in the Waterhouse painting, the siren does 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:12.200 not look malicious. She does not look like she's even 0:16:12.360 --> 0:16:16.600 really attempting to lure him. She's just kind of there existing, 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:19.960 and he is up to his neck in the water, 0:16:20.120 --> 0:16:23.080 clearly about to die, looking like he has this combination 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:24.960 of just joy and terror. 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:28.960 Yeah. And then the other piece that was definitely in 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:32.200 the Enchanted World series is Herbert James Draper's nineteen oh 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:35.000 nine painting Ulysses and the Sirens. This is a very 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:38.960 captivating piece in which you see the familiar scenario that 0:16:39.040 --> 0:16:41.440 I may again describe her in a second, where, of course, 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:45.800 how does Odysseus how does he get past the sirens? Well, 0:16:45.840 --> 0:16:49.280 of course he clogs the earholes of all of his 0:16:49.360 --> 0:16:53.840 men with wax, and then he himself is strapped to 0:16:54.080 --> 0:16:56.800 the mast of the ship, and then they just keep 0:16:57.120 --> 0:17:01.280 moving that way. The siren song doesn't infect the oarsman. 0:17:02.440 --> 0:17:04.440 It infects him, but he can't do anything about it 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:05.680 because he's strapped to the mast. 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:09.760 And this is usually presented as a result of curiosity, 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:13.000 like Odysseus wants to hear what the siren song is like, 0:17:13.080 --> 0:17:16.720 but doesn't want to allow himself under its spell to 0:17:16.840 --> 0:17:19.520 command his men to do otherwise, so he has himself 0:17:19.560 --> 0:17:20.560 tied up on purpose. 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:24.600 Yeah, and so in this particular piece by Draper, which 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:26.840 you know is widely available you can find it on 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:29.560 wiki commons, and so forth, we see, you know, this 0:17:29.640 --> 0:17:33.479 crazed look on Odysseus's eye. He's completely enraptured, straining against 0:17:33.520 --> 0:17:37.159 the ropes that bind him. Meanwhile, the naked sirens in 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:40.960 this case seemingly seeming to transform out of mermaid form 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:45.120 into humanoid form, just like the movie Splash as they 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:48.560 crawl on the ship. And of course this is this 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:52.400 image of course, like a lot of the like later 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:55.960 treatments of sirens, is of course very there's a certain 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:58.399 sexual politics to all this and gender politics to it, 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:02.359 because it's clearly showed like the feminine form is the 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:07.639 aggressively alluring temptation that is coming at the men on 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:08.159 the ship. 0:18:08.480 --> 0:18:11.440 Yeah, and it looked there are very different implied situations 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:14.440 in these two paintings, Like in the Waterhouse painting. I 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:16.520 don't know, you could interpret it multiple ways, but it 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:18.760 doesn't look obvious to me. Like I said that the 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:21.480 siren is even trying to attract the man. She's just 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:23.920 sitting there. She might just be minding her own business. Yeah, 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:27.159 and he's enraptured. In the second painting, the Draper painting 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:31.760 from nine, these are beings that are obviously trying to 0:18:31.800 --> 0:18:36.640 seduce the men, and they are posed with seductive ill intent. 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:40.480 Yes, so these are the two that I was most 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:42.280 familiar with, But there's a third I want to mention, 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:45.680 and this is the Sirens Annulylysses from eighteen thirty seven 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:49.600 by William Edie or Eddie I'm not sure which, but 0:18:49.680 --> 0:18:52.119 this one is also tremendous. I was not familiar with this, 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:55.160 but in this one, we see the sirens on their 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:59.439 rocky island in the foreground, and in the background we 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:02.399 see Ulysses send a ship and there's a lot of 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:06.200 struggling going on there. But in the foreground the sirens 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:10.560 are just kind of like, hey, Sirens, party, come on over, guys. 0:19:10.600 --> 0:19:14.240 And then next to them we see rotting bodies and bones. 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:16.800 It's quite quite a quite a scene. 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:20.320 It is wonderful. But to your point, yeah, I interpret 0:19:20.400 --> 0:19:22.719 this one more along the lines of the waterhouse painting. 0:19:22.720 --> 0:19:26.879 There's no indication that their attention even has anything to 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:28.040 do with the men on the ship. 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:42.120 Yeah, all right, So I already rolled through the basic 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:45.920 scenario with Odysseus and the Odyssey and how they get 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:51.840 past the sirens. But we have another encounter, and this 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:55.639 one is detailed in the Argonautica from the third century BCE, 0:19:56.440 --> 0:19:59.280 and this one involves Jason and the Argonauts. How did 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:04.000 they defeat the sirens? Well, they brought Orpheus along with them, 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:08.679 the most famous bard of Greek mythology, at least as 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:12.400 far as mortals go. And his song is even sweeter 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:15.480 than the sirens, so you know, they explode or something. 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:17.080 It's the Devil went down to Georgia. 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:22.520 Yeah, actually, as Apollodorus described it, I believe the sweet 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:25.240 song of Orpheus causes them to throw themselves into the 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:28.439 sea and become rocks. And it would turn out that 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:30.920 these were like the terms of their power, that if 0:20:30.960 --> 0:20:36.040 their song ever failed to enthrall someone, then they have 0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:38.000 to die. They were done for. And there are similar 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:40.399 accounts with the Sphinx as well, you know, like if 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:42.560 it's riddle as guest, it has to throw itself off 0:20:42.600 --> 0:20:43.640 a mountain, that sort of thing. 0:20:44.359 --> 0:20:46.119 Wait, now that I said it, I'm trying to remember 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:48.000 what happens to the devil at the end of Devil 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:50.000 Went Down to Georgia. BET's a fiddle of gold against 0:20:50.080 --> 0:20:53.560 your soul. But what happens if Johnny wins, he. 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:54.880 Gets to keep the golden. 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:59.840 Golden Devil's just out of gold fiddle, that's it. Yeah. 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:02.280 There was some I forget who was some stand up 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:04.360 comedian I think was talking about how you know, it's 0:21:04.400 --> 0:21:08.440 clear that the Devil's music is more impressive in that 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:11.920 particular song, we still give the wind to the mortals. 0:21:12.119 --> 0:21:14.159 But yes, I agree, it is like very much like 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:16.080 the Devil goes down to Jordan. 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:18.280 Which text came first. I'm not sure. 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:23.080 Now the exact number of sirens fairies. They're like between 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:26.280 two and five depending on what telling you're looking at. 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:31.240 They have various names different there are different takes on 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:34.040 their parentage as well. Again it's just how many there 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:38.359 are to begin with, but their exact nature in large 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:41.479 part due to Homer being vague about it, This has 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:44.040 always been an area of discussion, and apparently it's not 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:47.880 the only area that Homer's vague, And for instance, according 0:21:47.920 --> 0:21:51.800 to Gressith, he never explains that the Cyclops as one eye. 0:21:54.040 --> 0:21:57.359 So I think there are moments like that where we 0:21:57.480 --> 0:22:01.720 just kind of like assume, like we knows as the 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:03.920 reader what it's supposed to be or what it becomes 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:07.560 canonized as later. But you can apparently get into discussions 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:09.479 with any of this of like, well, what did the 0:22:09.520 --> 0:22:12.040 original author intend? What was the shape of it? Then? 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:15.800 Yeah, of course, then again that because most of these 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:19.360 stories would be drawing on pre existing concepts and stuff 0:22:19.480 --> 0:22:23.000 you never know, like what did people just naturally assume 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:25.280 when you name a character or type of being, Like 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:27.800 what did the reader bring to the reader or listener 0:22:27.880 --> 0:22:28.639 bring to the table. 0:22:29.080 --> 0:22:31.200 Yeah, And that's one thing that Gressith gets into as well, 0:22:31.280 --> 0:22:32.919 is that you have to end up looking for these 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:36.919 answers in the contemporary religion, but also in contemporary folklore. 0:22:37.760 --> 0:22:40.960