WEBVTT - The Siren: Talons and Song 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:07.040 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:15.440 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:16.640 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:20.080 And I am Joe McCormick. And once again October content 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:21.960 has spilled over the edge of the month. 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:25.880 That's right. In today's episode, we're continuing our Halloween twenty 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:29.400 twenty four express with an episode that was originally scheduled 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:33.360 for late October, but our episode on the Hogs of 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:36.239 Hell went a little long, ended up going to two episodes, 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:38.879 so we bumped this one back a bit. It's a 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:42.520 topic we've touched on briefly before, but it's a great one, 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:45.080 taking us back to the world of oceanic monsters of 0:00:45.120 --> 0:00:48.680 myth and legend. We're going to be talking about the siren. 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:52.920 The siren, so I realized, Rob correct me if I'm wrong, 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:56.720 But I realized, I think we both had we had 0:00:56.840 --> 0:01:02.000 different theeomorphic hybrids in my and when we were separately 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:05.160 thinking about the siren. Because when I thought of the siren, 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:08.880 I first thought of sort of half woman, half bird 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:11.800 creatures that sing to the sailors. But I get the 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:17.280 impression that your mind first went to half human, half fish. 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:19.840 So I guess those are both within the siren tradition, 0:01:19.880 --> 0:01:20.360 aren't they? 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:24.040 They are. This is one of the things about the siren, 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:26.840 as we'll discuss, is that there are takes on them 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:31.560 in which they are essentially mermaids. It's essentially some version 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:36.720 of the European North European mermaid tradition. There are versions 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:39.880 of it in which they are just sort of beautiful 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:44.200 ladies who sing sailors to their death, that sort of thing. 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:46.400 And then other times they are essentially what we might 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.720 think of as a harpie, you know, they are a 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:54.200 winged creature, perhaps like an all out vulture type being, 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:56.960 with even just the head of a maiden or the 0:01:56.960 --> 0:01:57.840 face of a maiden. 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:01.000 But in either case, I think we're to assume that 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.600 their voices may be lovely, but they sing sailors to 0:02:04.640 --> 0:02:05.160 their doom. 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:07.880 Yes, And that's one thing we can be sure on 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:11.720 when we look to really the most famous literary account 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:15.880 of the sirens, but also the one that continues to 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:19.799 raise a lot of questions because it does skim over 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.920 some of the details. As we'll discuss, we are, of 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:25.920 course talking about Homer's the Odyssey. I'm just going to 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:29.280 read a quote here. This is from the Samuel Butler translation. 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:35.079 I believe this is Circe warning Odysseus and his men 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:39.800 about the challenges ahead. First, you will come to the sirens, 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:43.639 who enchant all who come near them. If anyone unwarily 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:47.160 draws in too close and hears the singing of the sirens, 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:50.760 his wife and children will never welcome him home again, 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:54.800 for they sit in a green field and warble him 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.360 to death with the sweetness of their song. There is 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:01.600 a great heap of dead men's bones lying all around, 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:04.519 and the flesh still rotting off them. 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:09.680 Number one, that's intense. Number two does not describe them physically, 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:12.240 and number three warbled to death. 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:15.880 Warbled to death. You know which, if you got to go, 0:03:16.840 --> 0:03:21.120 why not choose warbling? Why not? So this is you know, considered, 0:03:21.160 --> 0:03:23.600 You know this is This is probably the most famous 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:28.640 literary description and non description of the sirens. But we 0:03:28.720 --> 0:03:32.800 have a lot of other materials that have depicted the sirens, 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:37.040 described them or depicted them visually that also sort of 0:03:37.080 --> 0:03:40.840 compete with our imaginations here and end up in This 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:43.160 is often the case with these things ends up coloring 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:48.320 our absorption of Homer's original writings. We've had some great 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:52.480 cinematic sirens over time, we've have, for example, to get 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:56.320 into the adaptations of the Odyssey itself. There, of course 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.520 the Three Sirens and No Brother, Where art thou? The 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:04.760 three strange women that appear as beautiful washer women singing 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:07.080 go to sleep, Little Baby. They of course lure in 0:04:07.280 --> 0:04:10.360 del Mar and turn him into a horny toad sort of. 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:13.000 Wait does he get turned back? I haven't seen this 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:13.760 movie in a while. 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:18.480 Well, he doesn't. Actually, we end up finding out later 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:20.479 that he was never turned into a horny toad. He 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:24.159 was captured by authorities because he was wanted. 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:26.680 Oh yeah, and they find him again in the movie 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:28.440 theater Do Not Seek the Treasure. 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:31.719 Yeah, but you know, it's a great sequence in the film, 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:34.560 a lot of laughs, and it works nicely in comparison 0:04:34.560 --> 0:04:37.239 to the theme of baptism that's also employed in the work. 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:41.919 Elsewhere in cinema, we tend to see the idea of 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:45.599 sirens employed more in terms of the evil mermaid. You 0:04:45.600 --> 0:04:47.720 want to have a mermaid, but you want an evil one. Well, 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:50.960 you lean into this idea of the siren. Just a 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:53.920 few quick mentions, and I'm missing a lot of them. 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:56.640 I'm sure there's two thousand and one's Daygone. This is 0:04:56.640 --> 0:04:59.360 the Stuart Gordon film you have neat Split Tail that 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:03.240 kidnaped Mermaids. In that, There's a two and another two 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:05.960 thousand and one film titled She Creature that I have 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:08.200 not seen since two thousand and one, but I remember 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:11.279 having a nice little cast to it, and also having 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:16.000 a monstrous mermaid. More recently, I don't know much about 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:17.640 the plot details here, so I don't know where this 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:22.120 falls in terms of sirens, but there's a Polish musical 0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:25.520 horror film titled The Lure that seems to have resonated 0:05:25.520 --> 0:05:27.600 with a number of viewers. I've seen some nice reviews 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:29.839 of that. And then I think we've had at least 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:33.680 a couple of different Mermaids slash Siren TV shows in 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:36.560 recent decades, but I have not seen them, So we'll 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:38.800 have to lean on our listeners to write in and 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:41.920 tell us what those are like. Now again, to get 0:05:41.960 --> 0:05:44.000 back to what we were just talking about earlier, Though 0:05:44.839 --> 0:05:51.880 sirens are not definitively sea creatures or definitively mermaids, however, 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:58.880 it's impossible to separate the two completely, so you know, 0:05:58.920 --> 0:06:03.320 we do have to acknowledge that to whatever extent. Sirens 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:07.039 are based in this idea of undersea creature as well, 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:09.880 you know, the idea of people and creatures from beneath 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:13.200 the waves. Naturally, it goes back very long ways. As 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:15.520 long as humans have gazed out across the waves or 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:18.279 peered down through clear waters from the side of their boats, 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:21.359 they've dreamed of a mirror world to our own, a 0:06:21.360 --> 0:06:25.120 place where every animal has its watery reflection, where intelligent 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:29.240 human like beings, no doubt dwell as well, along with 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:33.800 various monsters and gods and so forth. There is a 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:36.960 paper by Nancy Easterlin. This is a two thousand and 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:40.039 one paper again back to two thousand and one that 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:43.000 we've we cited in a munch Older episode of the 0:06:43.040 --> 0:06:46.960 podcast titled Hans Christian Andersen's Fish out of Water, and 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:50.400 she points out that the Babylonians recognize gods with fish 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:55.039 features or hybridity. You have like what Adappa, the fishermen 0:06:55.520 --> 0:07:00.240 of Oneius, the teacher of wisdom, even Mighty Inky, the 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:03.120 ancient Sumerian water god, is sometimes depicted as having a 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:07.520 cloak of fish or scaled skin, and the chief place 0:07:07.520 --> 0:07:10.440 of worship was a ziggurat known as the House of 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:16.000 the subterranean waters, and additionally fishtailed gods, water dragons and 0:07:16.000 --> 0:07:18.840 so forth found throughout the cultures of India, China and 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:24.200 Japan and so forth. There's a quote from that Easter 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:29.640 paper she writes some other mythological sea beings and deities, 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:32.840 such as Poseidon and the Sirens were not originally associated 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:37.560 with water and piicine anatomy. The sirens were originally birds. 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:39.720 We'll get back to that in a minute, indicating that 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:43.680 divine power and womanly allure became combined with the power 0:07:43.760 --> 0:07:47.240 and promise of the sea when ancient cultures overtook maritime 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:51.320 war and trade. So in that paper she gets into 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:53.720 a familiar theme on this show when we're talking about 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:56.920 deities and supernatural beings, is that, of course they are 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.440 passed down and they do not stay in one form 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:06.360 or another. They are reused, recreated, you know, different different, 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:11.200 various relaunches and reboots of the brand over time, and. 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:16.680 In past episodes we've even talked about reasons for questioning 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:19.520 the very idea of such a thing as a canonical 0:08:19.680 --> 0:08:22.560 form of a deity or a monster or something that 0:08:23.320 --> 0:08:25.280 you know, that makes sense when you have something like 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:28.320 intellectual property like if a monster is the creation of 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:31.080 a specific author and they describe it a certain way, 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:33.440 and then other people could take the idea and vary it, 0:08:33.480 --> 0:08:34.960 but you would want to refer back to what is 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:37.840 the original one, you know, with like gods and monsters 0:08:37.840 --> 0:08:40.280 and things that come out of folklore. You know, maybe 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:43.400 sometimes it makes sense to say there's basically an authoritative 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:45.880 version of a story, but most of the time there's not. 0:08:46.160 --> 0:08:50.120 Sometimes the characteristics aren't even given in the earliest works 0:08:50.160 --> 0:08:53.320 that are still extant today. So like searching after the 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:57.439 canonical form of the monster or deity or whatever is fruitless. 0:08:57.520 --> 0:09:00.640 There just is no original that we can access. 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:03.120 Yeah, I think we've talked about this before. You get 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:05.000 kind of close to this idea when you look at 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:08.240 a multi author of franchise, like say Marvel Comics, where 0:09:08.240 --> 0:09:09.840 you can set you know, you try to explain, like, well, 0:09:09.840 --> 0:09:13.000 who's Venom. Oh he's a villain of Spider Man. Oh well, no, 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:14.880 he's also kind of a hero, he's kind of an 0:09:14.880 --> 0:09:18.319 anti hero. Oh yeah, And sometimes he's just straight up 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:21.080 what we would think I was the protagonist of a story, 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:23.440 So it just it changes. And there are probably better 0:09:23.440 --> 0:09:25.040 examples than Venom to turn to there. 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:27.480 Yeah, well, I think that's a good one, except it's 0:09:27.600 --> 0:09:30.920 it's like that. But imagine if most Marvel comics were 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:33.000 lost and we don't know what they said or what 0:09:33.120 --> 0:09:36.120 was in them, and we don't know where the first 0:09:36.120 --> 0:09:37.280 appearance of Venom was. 0:09:37.720 --> 0:09:41.440 Yeah, all right, But coming back to the siren and 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:47.000 getting into the Greek traditions here, we as the quote 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:50.400 we read earlier attests to we certainly experienced the sirens 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:53.760 and Homer's eighths century BCE work The Odyssey, and they 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:59.040 are described as malicious, doomy women when we put in 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:03.559 asterisk by that woman description, malicious do me entities anyway, 0:10:03.600 --> 0:10:06.280 who hang out on rocks and sing to passing sailors. 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:12.480 But Homer neglects to physically describe them at all. So again, 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:16.280 even by just briefly mentioning them as women, I'm airing 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:20.000 because he does not ascribe gender to these creatures. But 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:22.560 the thing is, it's really hard not to be infected 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:26.160 by the various visual treatments of this encounter of these 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:29.760 creatures from throughout Western art, you know, which has often 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:32.640 served as a great opportunity to create dramatic and evocative 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:36.160 scenes that make use of, you know, the the unclothed 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:40.840 or partially unclothed male and female bodies. I was talking 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:44.760 about this with my son yesterday when I was researching this, 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:47.000 and I mentioned to him, and he already knows his 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:49.000 way aroun myths and monsters pretty well. I mentioned, you 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:52.480 know that that Homer never actually describes them. So they 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:54.480 could look like a woman, they could look like a 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:56.720 fish monster, they could look like a bird person. We 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:58.320 don't know. And he asked, well, could they just be 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:01.040 like a banana peal? And I I dare say they could. 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:03.000 And he does not say that they do not look 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:08.319 like banana peels, and provides no other physical description at all. 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:10.880 They could literally be Ronald MacDonald. 0:11:11.080 --> 0:11:13.920 They could be. There's nothing in the Odyssey that says 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:16.720 they're not. So I was reading a bit more about 0:11:16.760 --> 0:11:21.400 this in this is an older book. This is older publication. 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:26.080 This is from nineteen seventy The Homeric Sirens by Gerald K. Gressith. 0:11:26.720 --> 0:11:29.360 This was publishing the Transactions and Proceedings of the American 0:11:30.360 --> 0:11:36.960 Philological Association, and in it the author spends a lot 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:39.920 of time talking about what at the time were like 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:44.040 two dueling interpretations of the sirens in Homer's the Odyssey, 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:46.960 and I think it's interesting to look at them here. 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:50.120 So the first one that he references is the idea 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:54.400 that the sirens are soul birds, again playing on the 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:58.960 idea that in other texts we have the sirens described 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:02.000 an Avian term. And the connection here is that they 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:05.280 would be representations of the souls of the dead in 0:12:05.400 --> 0:12:09.440 bird form, an idea that extends back through ancient Egyptian religion. 0:12:09.760 --> 0:12:13.079 This was an idea champion by the German classical archaeologist 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:17.480 Georg Viker. In short, this view sees the sirens as 0:12:17.559 --> 0:12:21.000 things that emerge from hades and or the grave and 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:25.240 as Grethis explains, Homer likely wouldn't have thought that the 0:12:25.280 --> 0:12:28.920 soul became a bird upon death in this scenario, but 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:31.920 he might have been influenced by older ideas still present 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:36.360 in art and culture of his time. Okay, then there's 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:38.480 this other idea, and that is that the sirens are 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:42.960 other world enchantresses. So an idea in this case champion 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:47.440 by German archaeologist and translator Ernst Bouscher in response to 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:52.400 Vicker arguing that homer sirens are anthropomorphic. This view sees 0:12:52.440 --> 0:12:56.040 the sirens not as creatures of the afterlife, but as 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:59.679 something else that doesn't reside in Hades, though perhaps does 0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:04.960 resis guide in a different other world and might not 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:07.960 even be directly malicious. That's the interesting thing about this 0:13:08.120 --> 0:13:10.719 kind of view. They might be more in line with 0:13:11.240 --> 0:13:15.240 muses offering song and information that were just not equipped 0:13:15.240 --> 0:13:18.960 to resist. We just can't handle a song this beautiful 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:23.200 and or information that's tantalizing, and therefore we are just 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:26.319 drawn into it. And this actually gets into the vagueness 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:30.079 of how they actually bring about these men's dooms, because, 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:33.120 as Aggressive points out, we don't have an answer for 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:37.040 this in Homer either, and elsewhere, interpretations range from an 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:39.880 overt and then the sirens ad him sort of situation 0:13:40.400 --> 0:13:44.160 to this idea that enraptured individuals just slowly die of 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:47.640 exposure on the shores of the sirens, like they're drawn 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:50.080 by the song, and then they just, you know, forget 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:52.439 to eat, forget to stay out of the sun, and 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:55.600 just waste away. And so in that scenario, it's like, well, 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:58.800 the muses, like they may not even be entities that 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:01.360 are aware of what they are doing. They're just sharing 0:14:01.400 --> 0:14:04.800 song and information, but we just can't handle it as mortals. 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:08.760 That's fascinating, and it's funny because the interpretation I always 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:10.600 just had in the back of my mind isn't even 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:13.679 listed there, which is the idea that they sit on 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:16.439 the rocks and they sing to the sailors and they 0:14:16.520 --> 0:14:19.280 draw the sailors in close, and the ship's wreck on 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:22.080 the rocks and the sailors drone. I don't know where 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:24.120 that idea came from, but that is what I thought 0:14:24.640 --> 0:14:26.280 was being described in the Odyssey. 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:28.400 You know, Like I said, there are a lot of 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:34.680 paintings of the sirens and or Odysseus, and I think 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:41.000 they also almost at times subliminally charge one's understanding of 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:43.600 this scenario. And there are several of these that I 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:45.840 think I've just seen most of my life. There are 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:47.800 a couple in particular that pop up in the time 0:14:47.880 --> 0:14:50.640 Life Enchanted World book series, of course makes use of 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:53.240 a lot of excellent original art, but also a lot 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:56.920 of classic art as well too. In particular, John William 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:59.760 Waterhouse is the Siren from nineteen hundred. This is a 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:03.880 like a vertical piece in which there is a nude 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:07.560 woman with a harp some kind of or is this 0:15:07.560 --> 0:15:08.000 a lute? 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:11.600 I believe it's a liar's Yeah, yeah, there you go, 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:13.480 U shaped stringed instrument. 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:15.960 Yeah. So she's playing it on the rocks, and there 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:20.120 down in the water below her is an enraptured male, 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:23.560 like a youthful male, who looks like he is probably 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:26.280 going to drown. And so like, I think this really 0:15:26.320 --> 0:15:28.520 matches up with your read on it, and you know, 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:31.200 I often I think thought about it in similar terms 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:34.040 looking at these images, like the sirens just draw you 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:37.080 in and then you know, stuff happens, but it's not 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:39.560 like they're biting into you or anything that's right. 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:44.120 But she in this in the waterhouse painting, the siren 0:15:44.160 --> 0:15:46.720 does not look malicious. She does not look like she's 0:15:47.280 --> 0:15:50.760 even really attempting to lure him. She's just kind of 0:15:50.840 --> 0:15:54.880 there existing, And he is up to his neck in 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:57.640 the water, clearly about to die, looking like he has 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:02.040 this combination of just joy and tear or yeah. 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:04.480 And then the other piece that was definitely in the 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:07.920 Enchanted World series is Herbert James Draper's nineteen oh nine 0:16:07.920 --> 0:16:11.000 painting Ulysses and the Sirens. This is a very captivating 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:14.520 piece in which you see the familiar scenario that I 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:16.840 may again describe her in a second where, of course, 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:21.200 how does Odysseus how does he get past the sirens? Well, 0:16:21.200 --> 0:16:24.560 of course he clogs the ear holes of all of 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:28.680 his men with wax, and then he himself is strapped 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:31.920 to the mast of the ship, and then they just 0:16:32.000 --> 0:16:36.680 keep moving that way. The siren song doesn't infect the oarsman. 0:16:37.800 --> 0:16:39.840 It infects him, but he can't do anything about it 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:41.040 because he's strapped to the mast. 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:45.160 And this is usually presented as a result of curiosity, 0:16:45.280 --> 0:16:48.400 like Odysseus wants to hear what the siren song is like, 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:52.080 but doesn't want to allow himself under its spell to 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:54.920 command his men to do otherwise, so he has himself 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:55.920 tied up on purpose. 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:59.960 Yeah, and so in this particular piece by Draper, which 0:17:00.080 --> 0:17:02.200 you know is widely available you can find it on 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:04.879 wiki commons, and so forth, we see, you know, this 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:08.840 crazed look on Odysseus's eye. He's completely enraptured, straining against 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:12.520 the ropes that bind him. Meanwhile, the naked sirens in 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:16.359 this case seemingly seeming to transform out of mermaid form 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:20.520 into humanoid form, just like the movie Splash as they 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:23.399 crawl on the ship. And of course this is a. 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:27.760 This image, of course, like a lot of the later 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:31.359 treatments of Sirens, is of course very there's a certain 0:17:31.359 --> 0:17:33.800 sexual politics to all this and gender politics to it, 0:17:33.840 --> 0:17:37.040 because it's clearly showing like the feminine form is the 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:43.040 aggressively alluring temptation that is coming at the men on 0:17:43.119 --> 0:17:43.560 the ship. 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:46.800 Yeah, and it looked There are very different implied situations 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:49.840 in these two paintings, Like in the Waterhouse painting, I 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:51.919 don't know, you could interpret it multiple ways, but it 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:54.159 doesn't look obvious to me. Like I said that the 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:56.840 siren is even trying to attract the man, She's just 0:17:56.880 --> 0:17:59.359 sitting there. She might just be minding her own business. Yeah, 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:02.520 and he's raptured. In the second painting, the Draper painting 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:06.720 from nine These these are beings that are obviously trying 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:11.199 to seduce the men, and they are posed with seductive 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:12.040 ill intent. 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:15.840 Yes, So these are the two that I was most 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:17.640 familiar with. But there's a third I want to mention, 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.760 and this is the Sirens and Ulysses from eighteen thirty 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:24.240 seven by William Edie or Eddie I'm not sure which, 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:27.280 but this one is also tremendous. I was not familiar 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:29.959 with this but in this one, we see the sirens 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:34.119 on their rocky island in the foreground, and in the 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:37.280 background we see Ulysses send a ship and there's a 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:40.440 lot of struggling going on there. But in the foreground 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:43.600 the sirens are just kind of like, hey, sirens, party, 0:18:45.000 --> 0:18:47.400 come on over, guys. And then next to them we 0:18:47.440 --> 0:18:51.760 see rotting bodies and bones. It's quite quite a quite 0:18:51.760 --> 0:18:52.240 a scene. 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:55.760 It is wonderful. But to your point, yeah, I interpret 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:58.080 this one more along the lines of the waterhouse painting. 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:02.120 There's no indication that that their attention even has anything 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:03.440 to do with the men on the ship. 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:17.480 Yeah, all right, So I already rolled through the basic 0:19:17.720 --> 0:19:21.320 scenario with Odysseus and the Odyssey and how they get 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:27.240 past the sirens. But we have another encounter, and this 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:31.040 one is detailed in the Argonautica from the third century BCE, 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:34.720 and this one involves Jason in the Argonauts, how did 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:39.400 they defeat the sirens? Well, they brought Orpheus along with them, 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:44.040 the most famous bard of Greek mythology, at least as 0:19:44.080 --> 0:19:47.760 far as mortals go, and his song is even sweeter 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:50.879 than the sirens. So you know, they explode or something. 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:52.480 It's the Devil went down to Georgia. 0:19:52.840 --> 0:19:57.919 Yeah, actually, as Apollodorus described it, I believe the sweet 0:19:57.920 --> 0:20:00.560 song of Orpheus causes them to throw them selves into 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:03.719 the sea and become rocks. And it would turn out 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:06.040 that these were like the terms of their power, that 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:11.040 if their song ever failed to enthrall someone, then they 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:13.000 have to die. They were done for. And there are 0:20:13.040 --> 0:20:15.639 similar accounts with the Sphinx as well, you know, like 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:17.840 if it's riddle as guest, it has to throw itself 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:19.000 off a mountain, that sort of thing. 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:21.520 Wait, now that I said it, I'm trying to remember 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:23.360 what happens to the devil at the end of Devil 0:20:23.400 --> 0:20:25.439 went Down to Georgia. BET's a fiddle of gold against 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:28.720 your soul. But what happens if Johnny wins. 0:20:28.840 --> 0:20:32.040 He gets to keep the golden golden. 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:34.280 Devil's just out of gold fiddle. That's it. 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:37.679 Yeah, there was some I forget who, some stand up 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:39.760 comedian I think, was talking about how you know, it's 0:20:39.800 --> 0:20:43.840 clear that the Devil's music is more impressive in that 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:47.280 particular song, we still give the wind to the mortals. 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:49.520 But yes, I agree, it is like very much like 0:20:49.560 --> 0:20:50.920 the Devil goes down. 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:53.679 To Geordia which text came first. I'm not sure. 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:58.480 Now the exact number of sirens fairies. They're like between 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:01.640 two and five, depending on what telling you're looking at. 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:06.639 They have various names, different there are different takes on 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:09.439 their parentage as well. Again, it's just how many there 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:13.720 are to begin with, but their exact nature in large 0:21:13.760 --> 0:21:16.840 part due to Homer being vague about it. This has 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:19.439 always been an area of discussion, and apparently it's not 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:23.280 the only area that Homer's vague, and for instance, according 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:27.200 to Gressith, he never explains that the cyclops as one eye. 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:32.760 So I think there are moments like that where we 0:21:32.840 --> 0:21:35.600 just kind of like assume, like we like we know 0:21:35.800 --> 0:21:38.399 as the as the reader what it's supposed to be 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:41.600 or what it becomes canonized as later. But you can 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:43.920 apparently get into discussions with any of this of like, well, 0:21:43.920 --> 0:21:46.920 what did the original author intend? What was the shape 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:47.440 of it? Then? 0:21:48.080 --> 0:21:51.200 Yeah, of course, then again, they because most of these 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:54.760 stories would be drawing on pre existing concepts and stuff, 0:21:54.840 --> 0:21:58.359 you never know, like what did people just naturally assume 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:00.679 when you name a character or type of being, Like 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:03.240 what did the reader bring to the reader or listener 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:04.040 bring to the table. 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:06.560 Yeah, And that's one thing that Gressi gets into as well, 0:22:06.640 --> 0:22:08.320 is that you have to end up looking for these 0:22:08.359 --> 0:22:12.320 answers in the contemporary religion, but also in contemporary folklore, 0:22:13.160 --> 0:22:18.280 to whatever extent you can pick at it through other sources. Now, 0:22:18.320 --> 0:22:21.840 I picked up a couple of my favorite monster books 0:22:21.840 --> 0:22:26.399 for a little more on these sirens, and I was 0:22:26.400 --> 0:22:31.560 looking at Jorge Luis Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings, and 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:34.720