Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,
Speaker 2: and it's Saturday, so we are bringing you a vault episode.
Speaker 2: This one originally aired on October fourth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: It's part two of our series on elf Shot.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 2: This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 2: we're back with part two of our series on elf Shot. Now,
Speaker 2: this is an idea we introduced in part one. If
Speaker 2: you haven't listened to that yet, you should go back
Speaker 2: check that one out first. But basically, elf Shot is
Speaker 2: a what would you say, Rob, Look, it's a complex
Speaker 2: of interlocking folk beliefs, not a single belief, but it's
Speaker 2: found especially in the British Isles and essentially centering on
Speaker 2: the idea of fairies or elves attacking mortal humans and
Speaker 2: especially their livestock with supernatural weapons. Would you say that's
Speaker 2: fair Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, There's a lot going on in it, as we
Speaker 1: discussed in the first episode. I mean, on one hand,
Speaker 1: there's the interpretation of artifacts, of artifacts that from various
Speaker 1: time periods, both ancient and relatively recent. There's also the
Speaker 1: attempt to understand mysterious ailments, mostly in livestock, but sometimes
Speaker 1: in human beings as well, and then various folk traditions
Speaker 1: getting wrapped up into these scripts. And it's also it
Speaker 1: seems to be highly regional too, so there's not just
Speaker 1: one elf erroscript. We have multiple scripts and it ends
Speaker 1: up tying into folk medicine and so forth as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that folk medicine aspect is very interesting. I
Speaker 2: want to come back to that in just a minute.
Speaker 2: So in the last episode we did talk about some
Speaker 2: direct accounts of folk beliefs about elf shot, especially in Scotland,
Speaker 2: I think is where a lot of these accounts came from,
Speaker 2: and they included things like, okay, you'd have a story
Speaker 2: where a calf suddenly falls ill and dies with no
Speaker 2: apparent explanation, and then the farmer confirms that elf shot
Speaker 2: was the cause because he and his neighbor open up
Speaker 2: the cow's body and they find a hole in its heart,
Speaker 2: even though there was no hole in the hide, So
Speaker 2: it must have been some kind of supernatural fairy weapon
Speaker 2: that can pierce through the hide without actually breaking it
Speaker 2: and strike only the internal organs. And then, of course,
Speaker 2: when it was believed that there was an injury of
Speaker 2: this kind caused by an elf for a fairy weapon,
Speaker 2: there were plenty of magical remedies, and rob, can you
Speaker 2: characterize what some of the main themes and these remedies were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some of the main themes included, of course, being
Speaker 1: able to fetch either the elf arrow or have an
Speaker 1: elf arrow that you found, or elf arrows that were
Speaker 1: in the possession of the town or local community, and
Speaker 1: using those in the treatment. Oftentimes this would take the
Speaker 1: form of immersing them in water and then using that
Speaker 1: water either as a drink for the afflicted or as
Speaker 1: something that is rubbed on the afflicted 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: so various wrinkles get added depending on which tradition you're
Speaker 1: looking at, which account.
Speaker 2: Yeah, other things were just like, hey, mix up some
Speaker 2: gunpowder with some eggs and stuff like that and then
Speaker 2: feed that to the cow. Right delicious. But anyway, I
Speaker 2: wanted to address a question that came up while we
Speaker 2: were talking talking last time. I didn't have the answer
Speaker 2: to it at the time, so I decided to look
Speaker 2: it up before we recorded this episode. And the question
Speaker 2: is is there such a thing as the placebo effect
Speaker 2: for non human animals? Of course, the placebo effect in
Speaker 2: humans is something that often comes up when we're talking
Speaker 2: about well, talking about medicine in any context, but it's
Speaker 2: especially important when you're talking about like the history of
Speaker 2: pre scientific medicine, Like why did people think that soaking
Speaker 2: a stone arrowhead in water and then pressing it to
Speaker 2: their skin had actually healed them of a disease? Like
Speaker 2: if you have any a tumor or a bacterial infection
Speaker 2: or something, we can be relatively confident that this intervention
Speaker 2: does not actually shrink the tumor or kill the bacteria.
Speaker 2: And yet people often thought interventions like this had healed them.
Speaker 2: So what made them think that? I think some of
Speaker 2: that can be chalked up to a concept that we
Speaker 2: did an episode about, I think last year. It was
Speaker 2: a statistical phenomenon called regression toward the mean or regression
Speaker 2: to the mean. But you can also think of this
Speaker 2: concept as returning to the baseline. So as a quick explainer,
Speaker 2: for that. Imagine you suddenly get a pain in your
Speaker 2: foot and you've never had that pain before, and you're like, ah,
Speaker 2: it really hurts. I don't know what to do, but
Speaker 2: your friend says, well, I know what to do. You
Speaker 2: have to sing a Gregorian chant and then you have
Speaker 2: to lick the morning dew from a spider's web. So
Speaker 2: you try that out. You want your foot to stop hurting,
Speaker 2: and then what do you know, sometime after that, your
Speaker 2: foot does stop hurting. Now, in a situation like this,
Speaker 2: we really all have a tendency to think something has
Speaker 2: been proved here, like, ah, the spider doo did work,
Speaker 2: But actually, how do you know that your foot wouldn't
Speaker 2: have stopped hurting on its own just as soon if
Speaker 2: you didn't do any of that stuff. In fact, the
Speaker 2: whole point is that your foot doesn't usually hurt. The
Speaker 2: state of pain is an outlier. That's an anomalous condition,
Speaker 2: So things going back to normal on a certain timescale
Speaker 2: is a totally expected outcome, all things being equal, and
Speaker 2: regression to the mean is especially important in medicine because
Speaker 2: it tends to be specifically when we're in an anomalous condition,
Speaker 2: a condition that is not normal. For us that we
Speaker 2: seek medical interventions. So if you want to know if
Speaker 2: a medical intervention actually works or not, you have to
Speaker 2: compare its efficacy against a say, placebo control group, instead
Speaker 2: of just giving somebody a treatment and saying did you
Speaker 2: get better? If you do that, you don't know if
Speaker 2: they would have gotten better anyway, Having the comparison between
Speaker 2: the two groups gives you confidence in the efficacy. But
Speaker 2: on top of just the regression to the mean as
Speaker 2: a baseline effect, you've also got psychological effects where if
Speaker 2: you actually compare people who receive an intervention like a
Speaker 2: medicine or a ritual or a doctor's visit versus people
Speaker 2: who don't receive any intervention, sometimes people who receive an
Speaker 2: intervention have better outcomes on average, even if there's no
Speaker 2: way that intervention is actually doing anything. If it's like
Speaker 2: you know, pressing the arrowhead deer skin, this might be
Speaker 2: considered the pure placebo effect, improved outcomes associated with an
Speaker 2: intervention even though it's not doing anything mechanistically or chemically
Speaker 2: to solve the problem. And though the placebo effect shows
Speaker 2: up for a range of conditions and treatments, it seems
Speaker 2: to be especially powerful for conditions that are modulated by
Speaker 2: the brain, such as the perception of pain and other
Speaker 2: types of discomfort. So, to bring it back to the
Speaker 2: question of elfshot cattle, could it be possible that a
Speaker 2: non human animal benefits from the placebo effect of a
Speaker 2: magical cure in some way, even though they can't understand
Speaker 2: the concept of medicine or develop expectations that the magical
Speaker 2: cure would heal them. And you know, the thing I
Speaker 2: was wondering about with this is there's evidence that some
Speaker 2: placebo effects and humans are created not so much by
Speaker 2: the expectation that the treatment is efficacious, but by the
Speaker 2: reassurance felt in the presence of a doctor or a
Speaker 2: nurse who has a good bedside manner. And I thought, well,
Speaker 2: maybe it's possible that animals could be calmed or soothed
Speaker 2: by certain kinds of human attention, even if they're not
Speaker 2: able to understand that it is for the intended purpose
Speaker 2: of healing. So anyway, I went looking this up and
Speaker 2: I found an interesting article by Emily Anthis who is
Speaker 2: also the author of a book we've talked about on
Speaker 2: the show before called The Great Indoors. It's all about
Speaker 2: the effects of living and spending time indoors. But this
Speaker 2: was an article published in the Atlantic in twenty nineteen
Speaker 2: called a Crucial blind Spot in Veterinary Medicine. So the
Speaker 2: top line answer here is a clear yes, there is
Speaker 2: such a thing as the placebo effect in non human
Speaker 2: animals in veterinary medicine, but it probably works by different
Speaker 2: means than the human version of the placebo effect. So
Speaker 2: here's an example. Anthis begins by talking about a particular
Speaker 2: study of treatments for canine epilepsy, epilepsy and dogs. This
Speaker 2: research was being carried out in the early two thousands.
Speaker 2: I think this was in the year two thousand and three,
Speaker 2: and the citation here is the Journal of Veterinary Medicine.
Speaker 2: The article was called Placebo Effect in Canine Epilepsy Trials
Speaker 2: and the authors were Munyana, Jong and Patterson, eventually published
Speaker 2: in twenty ten, and the story is that the researchers
Speaker 2: were testing an anti convulsant drug called levetaracetam and it
Speaker 2: was intended to curtail epileptic seizures in dogs. So in
Speaker 2: the test group, the group that was actually getting the drug,
Speaker 2: eighty six percent of dogs of their owners reported a
Speaker 2: reduction in seizure frequency, which bodes very well for the drug.
Speaker 2: But then the study also happened to have a placebo
Speaker 2: control group, which we're receiving a dummy treatment that was
Speaker 2: supposed to do nothing, and in that group, seventy nine
Speaker 2: percent also saw it reduction in reported.
Speaker 1: Seizures seventy nine compared to eighty six.
Speaker 2: That's that's impressive, right, Well, it would tend to make
Speaker 2: you doubt that the test group is that it's actually
Speaker 2: the drug that is making the difference. So at the
Speaker 2: time of this study, anthis notes that the double blind,
Speaker 2: placebo controlled trials were not all that common in veterinary medicine,
Speaker 2: which makes sense on one hand because again, like non human,
Speaker 2: animals are not thought to be able to develop expectations
Speaker 2: about a drug treatment or the efficacy of medicine, So
Speaker 2: how could you expect a placebo effect to exist in dogs.
Speaker 2: But it's a good thing the study did use such
Speaker 2: a controlled design, because otherwise the medicine would have looked
Speaker 2: really good until you realize that fake medicine leads to
Speaker 2: results that look about the same or almost as good.
Speaker 1: I guess it's just the healing power of pill pockets, right.
Speaker 2: My god, you can never doubt though. Man, those things
Speaker 2: stink so much and dogs love them. What do they
Speaker 2: put in those things? Do do you work in a
Speaker 2: pill pocket factory? Tell oh, maybe we don't want to
Speaker 2: know what goes in a pill pocket. That would be
Speaker 2: that's Halloween content.
Speaker 1: I have not had a good run with with feline
Speaker 1: pill pockets.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sorry, And.
Speaker 1: Not to say they don't. You know, they work in
Speaker 1: some some cats, and some cats are not crazy about them.
Speaker 1: My cat will spit it out and then like dissect it.
Speaker 1: And some brands of pill pockets you just didn't want
Speaker 1: to want a piece off anyway, She's like, no, not
Speaker 1: eating that.
Speaker 2: So do you ever use the trick this? This worked
Speaker 2: for us in the past. Or if if the animal
Speaker 2: is skeptical of the pill pocket with the pill in it,
Speaker 2: you first have to give them an empty pill pocket
Speaker 2: that has no pill in it, so they get used
Speaker 2: to like, oh, yeah, I can just eat this straight up.
Speaker 2: And then the second one or the third one you
Speaker 2: give them. I mean, that's a lot of pill pockets
Speaker 2: if you're stacking it out. But if you're desperate, you
Speaker 2: can try the empty pill pocket first to lower their defenses.
Speaker 1: Well, you'd think that would work, but we ended up
Speaker 1: using the waters ringe to just blast it into the
Speaker 1: back 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 it's tough getting the meds
Speaker 1: in these animals sometimes.
Speaker 2: Oh and I should also note that so the main
Speaker 2: study anthis is talking about here in this article is
Speaker 2: in dogs, but she also cites studies that have reported
Speaker 2: placebo effects in cats and in horses. So, anyway, how
Speaker 2: on earth could this be? Like, Again, we're assuming that
Speaker 2: dogs themselves are not developing expectations that a drug will
Speaker 2: be effective. I think that's a very fair assumption. They
Speaker 2: don't understand what's going on. How on earth could such
Speaker 2: a strong placebo effect manifest? And a number of ideas
Speaker 2: are discussed in this article. One is one we already
Speaker 2: talked about, regression to the mean, Right, People are more
Speaker 2: likely to enroll in a clinical trial for their dogs
Speaker 2: epilepsy if seizures have been especially bad lately, and conditions
Speaker 2: like epilepsy tend to sort of wax and weigan on
Speaker 2: their own anyway, So you could enroll the dog at
Speaker 2: a time when their seizures are bad, and then that
Speaker 2: would just tend to, by the law of averages, give
Speaker 2: way to a period where they return to the baseline
Speaker 2: and have fewer seizures. So again, a good reason to
Speaker 2: have a placebo control group to compare your test group to.
Speaker 2: Second thing that I thought was interesting and this site's
Speaker 2: something called the Hawthorn effect, which is the idea that
Speaker 2: people often behave differently when they know they're being studied
Speaker 2: or observed. I think the name of this effect comes
Speaker 2: from some anecdote about industrial productivity research, which found all
Speaker 2: kinds of spurious effects for things like, oh, what would
Speaker 2: happen if we change the lighting in this room? Are
Speaker 2: workers more productive? Oh, it turns out they are. But
Speaker 2: then one ex post facto explanation for all these spurious
Speaker 2: results is just that when employees know that they're part
Speaker 2: of an experiment, they are more productive because they know
Speaker 2: they're being closely scrutinized. This would not apply so much
Speaker 2: to the dogs themselves, but probably to the owners. So
Speaker 2: in the case of the epilepsy study in dogs, Anti
Speaker 2: writes that all of the dogs in the study were
Speaker 2: already on at least one other anti seizure medication, and
Speaker 2: levetteractam was being studied as a supplemental drug, So one
Speaker 2: possibility is that once enrolled in a study, pet owners
Speaker 2: may have been more consistent about making sure their dogs
Speaker 2: got all doses of their pre existing, pre tested epilepsy
Speaker 2: medication on time. Other possible explanations what about more attentive
Speaker 2: veterinary care. It's possible that while enrolled in the study,
Speaker 2: the animals were getting special attention from vets, and this
Speaker 2: would be partially in line with the explanation I was
Speaker 2: guessing about beforehand, something roughly parallel to the effect of
Speaker 2: a reassuring doctor or nurse. And I think it is
Speaker 2: a pre existing finding that some gentle affectionate attention from
Speaker 2: humans can help animals like dogs and horses show fewer
Speaker 2: symptoms of discomfort or anxiety and things like that. In
Speaker 2: some cases you could actually have classical conditioning. Probably it's
Speaker 2: hard to see how it would apply to this case,
Speaker 2: but anthis writes quote. For example, rats that have regularly
Speaker 2: been getting insulin injections will still experience blood sugar changes
Speaker 2: if they suddenly start receiving saline injections instead. Again, I
Speaker 2: don't think this would apply directly to the epilepsy study,
Speaker 2: but you could imagine it applying to other studies. But
Speaker 2: then the primary explanation favored by anthis in this article
Speaker 2: is something called the caregiver placebo effect or the placebo
Speaker 2: effect by proxy. And this one's pretty straightforward when you
Speaker 2: think about it. Animals can't report or explain their own symptoms.
Speaker 2: Understanding the symptoms experienced by an animal, whether that's something
Speaker 2: like a seizure or whether it's something even more elusive
Speaker 2: like discomfort or pain, that requires human observation of some kind,
Speaker 2: usually reports by the pet owners, and the pet owner
Speaker 2: absolutely can form expectations about improvement based on believing that
Speaker 2: their pet is getting a treatment of some kind, even
Speaker 2: though their pet might actually be in the placebo arm
Speaker 2: of the study. They don't know that if it's a
Speaker 2: good if it's a well designed study, so they think
Speaker 2: their pet might be receiving the actual drug. They form
Speaker 2: expectations that the pet will be getting better, and thus
Speaker 2: they interpret everything they see in light of those expectations.
Speaker 2: Because again, seizure frequency in the study in question was
Speaker 2: measured by owner reports, and you might imagine, well, okay,
Speaker 2: you know, it's pretty clear whether a dog is having
Speaker 2: a seizure or not. Well, you might assume that, but
Speaker 2: in fact, pet owners are not always there to see
Speaker 2: a seizure take place. Sometimes you have to interpret ambiguous evidence.
Speaker 2: So the example given in the article is if there's
Speaker 2: a spot of saliva on the floor, is that a
Speaker 2: sign that the dog had a seizure unobserved and drooled
Speaker 2: on the floor or is that just nothing? Did the
Speaker 2: dog just drip rool because they just dripped rule. If
Speaker 2: the owners believe their dogs are receiving a drug that
Speaker 2: will help reduce the seizures, does that actually make the
Speaker 2: owner less likely to interpret that evidence as evidence of
Speaker 2: a seizure.
Speaker 1: Yeah? OK, see what you're talking about here. Okay, well
Speaker 1: he's on the medicine, so I guess that's not a
Speaker 1: seizure drool, that's just druel.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The article also cites a veterinary surgeon at the
Speaker 2: University of Minnesota named Michael Conzimius, who gives a really
Speaker 2: interesting example from a different study. This was a study
Speaker 2: on anti inflammatory treatments for arthritis in dogs, and they
Speaker 2: did a trial that involved both subjective and objective measurements
Speaker 2: of how well this anti inflammatory was doing to reduce
Speaker 2: our th that's pain in the limbs. And so the
Speaker 2: subjective measure was you would ask both pet owners and
Speaker 2: veterinarians to observe the dog and rate how much pain
Speaker 2: they seemed to be in. And then there were also
Speaker 2: objective measures, and this would be having the dog walk
Speaker 2: a on a complicated setup of digital scales to determine
Speaker 2: how much weight the dogs were putting on each limb
Speaker 2: while walking, because if the dog, if one of the
Speaker 2: dog's limbs is in pain, they will tend to put
Speaker 2: less weight on that limb. And this study found conflicts
Speaker 2: between the subjective measures and the objective measures. So in
Speaker 2: the placebo group, owners and vets who thought the dog
Speaker 2: might be receiving the drug but actually they were just
Speaker 2: getting a placebo, reported improvements, but the objective measure, the
Speaker 2: scales did not show improvement. So in the placebo group,
Speaker 2: they're getting a fake treatment. The owners and the veterinarians
Speaker 2: are like, yeah, we think the dog is doing better,
Speaker 2: but when you put them on the scales, they're still
Speaker 2: not putting weight on that limb. So the dog itself
Speaker 2: is not affected by receiving the placebo, but the human
Speaker 2: observers are interestingly even the veterinarians.
Speaker 1: This is interesting because when we first raised the question
Speaker 1: about bolicebo effected animals, and then when you brought up
Speaker 1: dogs here, my first thought was, while dogs are highly
Speaker 1: social animals, so perhaps there is some sort of social
Speaker 1: dynamic between the way that their human is treating them,
Speaker 1: like maybe it has to do and maybe it has
Speaker 1: to do with pill pockets, like oh, I'm getting more
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's about the human observers, like the cow
Speaker 2: whatever is making it into these reports that are in
Speaker 2: like anthropological texts or you know, folklore journals or whatever.
Speaker 2: The cow doesn't actually get to write that report that's
Speaker 2: made by humans, and it's usually going to be like
Speaker 2: the farmer saying, yeah, my cow got better or something
Speaker 2: like that. And they could well be affected by caregiver
Speaker 2: placebo effect. They form expectations of efficacy and they interpret
Speaker 2: what they see through that lens. Another thing is that
Speaker 2: this article reports how sometimes animal pain is observable to
Speaker 2: one human onlooker but not to another. Again, just based
Speaker 2: on expectations, Like our emotional biases are very strong in
Speaker 2: this area. And one example given would be, you know,
Speaker 2: a pet owner brings an animal into the vet and
Speaker 2: it was in pain before, and the vet observes that
Speaker 2: the animal does still appear to be in pain, but
Speaker 2: the owner says, no, no, no, he's not he's he's
Speaker 2: much better now. I've been giving him these homeopathic treatments
Speaker 2: I found. And you know, that's a mix of things.
Speaker 2: Like the pet owner, they love their pet, so they
Speaker 2: desire to believe that the beloved animal is doing better.
Speaker 2: And then on top of that, you could have like
Speaker 2: a choice supportive bias bias to you know, where you
Speaker 2: interpret reality in a way that supports the idea that
Speaker 2: what you have decided to do was the right decision.
Speaker 2: So the choice supportive bias says your selected intervention is working.
Speaker 2: And that may be a magical treatment or a non
Speaker 2: science based intervention like homeopathy or something, and that can
Speaker 2: blind you to signs of distress that other unbiased onlookers
Speaker 2: could see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because at least you feel like you're doing
Speaker 1: something in those cases, and or you're a consultant. You
Speaker 1: may be consulting experts in the local community that are
Speaker 1: also assuring you like, yeah, this is the way to go,
Speaker 1: this is what will we'll get results.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think the important thing to stress here
Speaker 2: is that this occurs. You don't have to be like
Speaker 2: an uncaring you know, companion to your non human animal
Speaker 2: of whatever type. It is like you can care very
Speaker 2: much about their well being and have this kind of bias.
Speaker 2: It's not like a result of being cold and unfeeling cruel.
Speaker 2: So just a couple final notes on this article. One
Speaker 2: is just that a big takeaway is you should be
Speaker 2: careful when observing the symptoms of a non human animal,
Speaker 2: of a pet or whatever, not to let these kinds
Speaker 2: of biases prevent you from finding the most effective treatment
Speaker 2: or solution. You know, whenever possible, try to look for
Speaker 2: objective pieces of behavioral evidence that remove your subjective evaluation
Speaker 2: from things. And then the other thing is about these
Speaker 2: standards of evidence within veterinary medicine. Unfortunately, the history of
Speaker 2: veterinary studies has included fewer double blind placebo controlled trials
Speaker 2: than human medicine, because again, for a long time, nobody
Speaker 2: really thought placebo effect would come into play in a
Speaker 2: major way in veterinary medicine. But it looks like, at
Speaker 2: least in some cases, it really does, especially when that
Speaker 2: reported outcomes are based on owner's perceptions. And so this
Speaker 2: is changing and more evidentiary standards like this are being
Speaker 2: introduced into veterinary medicine. But it may mean that the
Speaker 2: evaluation of the true efficacy of veterinary medicine has in
Speaker 2: some cases, especially when the basis is older, maybe on
Speaker 2: a lower standard of evidence than in human drug trials.
Speaker 2: But fortunately that that is changing. But anyway, so I'm
Speaker 2: bringing all this back to thoughts about how this could
Speaker 2: relate to like a Scottish farmer in the seventeenth century
Speaker 2: who believes that his cow is sick or his horse
Speaker 2: is sick because it has been elf shot, it has
Speaker 2: been hit by a fairy arrow and summon someone to
Speaker 2: provide a magical cure that maybe involves neolithic flints or
Speaker 2: egg mixed with gunpowder and healing their cow. I wonder
Speaker 2: how it relates to that. I mean, I would guess
Speaker 2: that the specifically that last one, the caregiver placebo effect
Speaker 2: would be a major factor here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think so. That seems to be. That
Speaker 1: would seem to be the key.
Speaker 2: Though it also makes me wonder about the idea of
Speaker 2: an inverse thing. This is not addressed in the article
Speaker 2: at all, but a a caregiver no cebo effect. I mean,
Speaker 2: it makes me wonder how you could have anxieties or
Speaker 2: beliefs about danger, other kinds of things taking place purely
Speaker 2: within the mind of the animal caregiver that give rise
Speaker 2: to spurious diagnoses of illness or symptoms in the animal.
Speaker 2: Like what if, actually the cow is fine. The farmer
Speaker 2: just gets freaked out about the idea that, oh, no,
Speaker 2: something bad is happening to my cow for some reason,
Speaker 2: and that brings on the illusion of distress, which could
Speaker 2: then be treated by some kind of magical intervention, and
Speaker 2: then what do you know, the cow's fine afterwards.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This is especially possible given some of the linked
Speaker 1: or perceived to be linked activities to elfshot. The case
Speaker 1: is where humans did something they shouldn't have to attract
Speaker 1: the attention of the elves, be it, you know, tramping
Speaker 1: on sacred ground cutting down of a sacred tree or
Speaker 1: or something of this nature, or even just the finding
Speaker 1: of the elf era like this was curious. I was
Speaker 1: out with my cattle and I found this artifact on
Speaker 1: the ground. It's clearly an artifact of the elves. I
Speaker 1: better check on my cattle and see how they're doing. Uh, oh,
Speaker 1: this one's not doing too well.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I didn't make that connection with the picking
Speaker 2: up of the flint, but yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: There was a paper we talked about a little bit
Speaker 2: in the previous episode that I wanted to come back
Speaker 2: to and just mention a couple of more interesting little
Speaker 2: stories from it. Was that paper called Elfshot Cattle by
Speaker 2: Thomas Davidson that was published in the journal Antiquity in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty six. Remember, this is the one that was
Speaker 2: collecting a lot of those reports about elfshot. One of
Speaker 2: the things that caught my attention was the claim that
Speaker 2: a lot of times these injuries from elfshot are not
Speaker 2: inflicted directly by fairies or elves themselves. Davidson cites an
Speaker 2: author named Luied writing that there's a belief among some
Speaker 2: that fairies have to use humans as intermediaries in order
Speaker 2: to inflict these injuries, since the fairies have little power
Speaker 2: to cause direct physical injury to animal bodies themselves. So
Speaker 2: sometimes these stories say humans are like sucked up into
Speaker 2: the air by fairies and then given fairy weapons and
Speaker 2: then forced to shoot at men or cattle.
Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, so sort of possession going on here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One example of this is a story called the
Speaker 2: Tale of Black Donald of the Fairy Throng, And this
Speaker 2: is a story where there's this guy named Donald and
Speaker 2: he's out plowing. He's plowing the land, he's working in
Speaker 2: the furrows, and this is on the Isle of Tyree,
Speaker 2: which is off the coast of Scotland. And Donald he's
Speaker 2: plowing and he gets sucked up by a fairy convoy
Speaker 2: and then they force him to drop an arrow from
Speaker 2: the sky that kills a speckled cow. And this actually
Speaker 2: connects with some of the critical stuff I was reading
Speaker 2: about the elfshot tradition, which says that actually, in a
Speaker 2: lot of these stories, it is being alleged that it's
Speaker 2: humans who are doing the inflicting, like witches or something
Speaker 2: who are inflicting damage with these weapons rather than elves directly.
Speaker 1: Interesting and in yeah, it gets into a common trope
Speaker 1: in many cultures of the sort of the like the
Speaker 1: outsider within somebody within the community, either somebody from outside
Speaker 1: the community or somebody within the community that has been
Speaker 1: corrupted somehow. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one thing I had to mention just because it
Speaker 2: was funny. There's a long section of this paper that
Speaker 2: talks about alleged cures for elfshot, and one is a
Speaker 2: recorded anecdote of a wise woman curing a cow in
Speaker 2: the Shetlands by asking the crofter the farmer to bring
Speaker 2: her a Bible, and he brings the Bible, and she
Speaker 2: rips pages out of the Bible and balls them up
Speaker 2: into a pellet, and then crams the Bible page pellet
Speaker 2: into a dimple in the cow's skin. Then there's another
Speaker 2: one I have to share because it involves crabs and
Speaker 2: raises a mystery for me that I cannot solve. So
Speaker 2: maybe the listeners have some input on this. So this
Speaker 2: is from a source Davidson sites called Shetland Folklore. This
Speaker 2: is a book by Spence, and I'm going to read
Speaker 2: directly from Davidson's summary here. Oh sorry, this is still
Speaker 2: about traditions in the Shetlands. Quote a variant prescription from
Speaker 2: the same area directs the wise woman to take tar,
Speaker 2: a needle, a bible, a firebrand, and some fairy crabs.
Speaker 2: Waving the burning brand, she walked three times wittershens round
Speaker 2: the cow. That means counterclockwise, three times around the cow,
Speaker 2: jabbing the animal with the needle, waving a leaf of
Speaker 2: the Bible over its back, and muttering an incantation. The
Speaker 2: firebrand was placed in a pot of tar and set
Speaker 2: at the cow's head so the fumes would make her cough.
Speaker 2: She was then given the fairy crabs to eat alive.
Speaker 2: The ashes of the fire brand were later mixed with
Speaker 2: the tar into three pills, which were administered to the
Speaker 2: animal on three successive mornings. WHOA, what so involves eating
Speaker 2: the fairy crabs alive? It says she, And I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if that means the cow or the
Speaker 2: wise woman. I think that means the cow.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember reading this in the source during the
Speaker 1: initial research phase, and I could not figure out what
Speaker 1: fairy crabs were. I was like, A, yeah, it was trying.
Speaker 1: My mind was struggling to form. I was just imagining
Speaker 1: like a glowing blue crab.
Speaker 2: I was confused too, and I tried to look this up.
Speaker 2: There is an animal called a faery crab. You can
Speaker 2: see it if you google that phrase. But it's clearly
Speaker 2: not what this is referring to, because it's a species
Speaker 2: of squat lobster called the scientific name is Lauria siagianni,
Speaker 2: and it's native to the Pacific. It's found like off
Speaker 2: the coast of Australia and Indonesia. I think, so this
Speaker 2: is clearly not what they're talking about in the Shetlands,
Speaker 2: and I was trying to find more information and I
Speaker 2: just could not, So I wonder if this refers to
Speaker 2: I don't know, if this is a local Shetland name
Speaker 2: for a certain type of animal, like an actual crab
Speaker 2: or some type of insect or something. I really have
Speaker 2: no idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can imagine it going in different directions, some
Speaker 1: sort of novel crab that's found on the shore or
Speaker 1: turned up in nets, or indeed something that is found
Speaker 1: in streams, or is not a crab at all, but
Speaker 1: some sort of an insect with some sort of folk
Speaker 1: edison properties to it. Or I mean, certainly we have
Speaker 1: examples in plenty of cultures where if something is named
Speaker 1: after an animal but is not itself an animal. It
Speaker 1: could be you know, you can imagine a situation where
Speaker 1: the fairy crab is actually some sort of a root
Speaker 1: something into that effect. So there's so many different directions
Speaker 1: that could go in not knowing exactly what this is
Speaker 1: referring to.
Speaker 2: Well, hey listeners, if you've got insight on this, you
Speaker 2: know what the faery crabs are right in. One last
Speaker 2: subject that Davidson brings up with respect to elfshot is
Speaker 2: the idea of curved plow furrows and ridges in order
Speaker 2: to quote Wander the Ferry, which I found so interesting.
Speaker 2: It's the idea that if you go throughout Scotland and
Speaker 2: you look at some old cultivated fields, you'll find that,
Speaker 2: you know, these places that are there, they're dug with
Speaker 2: a what's known as like a ridge and furrow system.
Speaker 2: So you'll see a series of basically you know, lines
Speaker 2: where like you have a plot area and then like
Speaker 2: a sort of ridge of moved earth piled up in
Speaker 2: between them. And an interesting thing about a lot of
Speaker 2: these is they are created with so that the ridges
Speaker 2: and the furrows are not straight lines, but are curved
Speaker 2: or crooked or s shaped even and it is believed
Speaker 2: by some that the purpose of this is to confuse
Speaker 2: or quote wander the fairy, to maybe lead the ferry
Speaker 2: off course or lead the elf off course. This is
Speaker 2: not the only system, by the way, that would use this.
Speaker 2: Like Davidson notes that a lot of amulets that are
Speaker 2: designed for protection against fairies have a rays of kind
Speaker 2: of spiral patterns or can you know, complex whirls within them,
Speaker 2: or labyrinths or something, and this is designed to confuse
Speaker 2: the evil spirits, to kind of send them on a
Speaker 2: maze like journey that will lead them astray and keep
Speaker 2: them from harming you.
Speaker 1: These If you haven't seen these ridge and furrow features,
Speaker 1: definitely look them up and do an image search, because
Speaker 1: you can see lots of wonderful aerial photographs of this
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and you know, you can sort of
Speaker 1: imagine the trail of the of the elf going astray. Here.
Speaker 2: Oh, some of the ones you're looking at are the
Speaker 2: curved ones, because some are just straight, but others some
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: So the magical understanding here again is that this, well,
Speaker 2: it could throw fairies off, just generally because you know,
Speaker 2: you make twisting paths in order to confuse evil spirits.
Speaker 2: But the other thing would be it doesn't allow them
Speaker 2: to get a clear straight line shot at the cattle,
Speaker 2: like at the oxen that you're using to plow the field.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is strange, Like this idea of the l
Speaker 1: is kind of like this. 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
Speaker 1: traditions 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 traditions 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: ne faariaus force is out there in the world, and
Speaker 1: you do not want it aware of your presence or
Speaker 1: your fortune, so you 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 shouting about how beautiful your child is.
Speaker 1: You know. In the case of some of the evil
Speaker 1: eye traditions, and particularly in Judaism, I remember hearing about
Speaker 1: reading about or in this case, like a physical line
Speaker 1: through the altered landscape.
Speaker 2: I think this type of belief is still present and
Speaker 2: in like modern day Christianity. Like I remember when I
Speaker 2: was a kid hearing about the dangers of playing with
Speaker 2: a wija board, and the idea was it attracts demonic attention.
Speaker 2: I mean that's literally like the it's it's like when
Speaker 2: you play with a wija board. It's not so much
Speaker 2: something about the board as evil, but it it sort
Speaker 2: of like puts up a beacon to demons that says, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm available, you know, pay attention to me, and they
Speaker 2: will hone in on you because you have done that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh. In quick note, I mentioned Judaism and the
Speaker 1: evil eye and so forth. The evil eye is not
Speaker 1: necessarily like a part of Judaism. I don't want to
Speaker 1: imply that but it is something that is sort of
Speaker 1: in the folkloric traditions of various peoples in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: including you'll see that in Judic culture. Yeah, and certainly
Speaker 1: we see similar site case with this here because we
Speaker 1: have people who are discussing that have taken you know,
Speaker 1: head that have converted to Christianity, and but there's still
Speaker 1: there's still practicing beliefs. They're still engaging in belief of
Speaker 1: the elves, but they're also incorporating in some of these
Speaker 1: Christian traditions like well, maybe we're you know, lought up
Speaker 1: a Bible page and stick it into that furrow in
Speaker 1: the cow. That'll help too.
Speaker 2: This is this next thing is not really addressed in Davidson,
Speaker 2: But I was wondering about this because I was reading
Speaker 2: about the ridge and furrow system elsewhere after reading this
Speaker 2: passage from Davidson, and it seems to me that sometimes
Speaker 2: the strips that are plowed in this system are curved
Speaker 2: for totally mundane reasons that have nothing to do with
Speaker 2: magical beliefs. So I think that they're often curved just
Speaker 2: because of it was a sort of necessary consequence of
Speaker 2: the types of plow rigging and oxen pulling teams that
Speaker 2: they used at the time. They would lead to a
Speaker 2: furrow or a ridge being kind of like curved off
Speaker 2: at each end every time the team turned around to
Speaker 2: make a new line. And that makes me wonder if
Speaker 2: something like twisting twisting in these rows could have originally
Speaker 2: been a totally mundane thing that somebody saw and then
Speaker 2: in trying to explain why it was like that without
Speaker 2: understanding it, they came up with this explanation about confusing
Speaker 2: the fairies, and then afterwards did it like that on purpose.
Speaker 1: So it's like somebody like the landowner whoever, comes out
Speaker 1: to check on the work. It's like, Dale, what's going
Speaker 1: on with these ridges and furrows? Look look at it.
Speaker 1: It's just like I can tell it's crooked. And Dale's like, well,
Speaker 1: do you want the fairies coming straight at you? I
Speaker 1: didn't think, so you're welcome. This, of course, also reminds
Speaker 1: me of on one hand, and this may well be
Speaker 1: connected the idea that vampires might be deterred by hanging
Speaker 1: some sort of a nodded item or or carefully woven
Speaker 1: item out for them like a complex pattern, then will
Speaker 1: draw their attention and they have to deal with and
Speaker 1: maybe get they'll either spend all their time doing that
Speaker 1: and leave you alone, or perhaps even get caught in
Speaker 1: the sunlight the loose track of time. And then of
Speaker 1: course 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 a
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 intention to do this, and there are several
Speaker 1: factors that can play into that someone which may actually
Speaker 1: come up in our next episode of so to blow
Speaker 1: your mind, But the idea of like just seeing that field,
Speaker 1: like I wonder if there's some sort of draw that like, no,
Speaker 1: the lines are too too perfect, everything is just too
Speaker 1: pristine like this this this, this land has been too
Speaker 1: finely transformed. We got to get some swirls in there.
Speaker 1: We got to get some circles, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a good comparison. I didn't think you
Speaker 2: were going to crop circles though.
Speaker 1: I thought you were.
Speaker 2: Gonna mention the jung she being being warded off by
Speaker 2: spilling glutinous rice on the floor because they'll I think
Speaker 2: they'll be counting the grains, right.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that that also, that's a good point as well.
Speaker 1: I forgot about that one, something about yeah, the inhuman
Speaker 1: analytical mind of non human beings in folklore, and that
Speaker 1: they can be led astray by either randomized patterns or
Speaker 1: things of human creation that have some sort of eloquence
Speaker 1: to them, which is kind of ironic given that we're
Speaker 1: talking about situations where human beings may in some cases
Speaker 1: have just like completely flipped their wig over finding an
Speaker 1: old flint arrow in the dirt. So I guess it
Speaker 1: cuts both ways.
Speaker 2: Now, there's one more paper I wanted to briefly mention
Speaker 2: that gets way more into the weeds about a particular
Speaker 2: text that is believed or has been believed to reference Elfshot.
Speaker 2: But I thought this was interesting too. So this was
Speaker 2: a paper by a professor of English at the University
Speaker 2: of Leeds named Alaric Hall called Calling the Shots the
Speaker 2: Old English Remedy Gift Horror off Scott and Sea and
Speaker 2: Anglo Saxon elf Shot, published in two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: So this paper is mainly an attempt to critically re
Speaker 2: examine an Anglo Saxon text called Gift Horse of Scott
Speaker 2: and Sea, which is a passage from a medieval Anglo
Speaker 2: Saxon medical text that has been widely interpreted as being
Speaker 2: about elf shot. The title Gift Horse of Scott and
Speaker 2: Sea translates to if a horse be and then the
Speaker 2: word is off scotten. And the question is what does
Speaker 2: off scotton mean. It's been traditionally translated as elf shot
Speaker 2: if a horse be elf shot. Hall argues that it
Speaker 2: should not be understood that way, and yet there are
Speaker 2: still references to elf attacks within the passage. So this
Speaker 2: is Hall's translation of this text, which is interesting in itself.
Speaker 2: If a horse be off scotten, take then a dagger
Speaker 2: whose halft is of fallow Ox's horn, and in which
Speaker 2: there are three brass nails. And then there's a term
Speaker 2: that every time is rendered as right slash. Inscribe. I'm
Speaker 2: just going to say, inscribe, inscribe on the horse on
Speaker 2: the forehead, Christ's mark, so it bleeds. Inscribe then Christ's
Speaker 2: mark on the spine, and on each of the limbs
Speaker 2: which you can grasp. This, shall you do take a
Speaker 2: staff strike on the back. Then the horse will be
Speaker 2: well and inscribe on the dagger's handle. These words been
Speaker 2: a decetae omnia opera domini dominum, which means bless all
Speaker 2: the works of the Lord of Lords. Should it be
Speaker 2: alps which is on it, this will do as a
Speaker 2: remedy for it. And so Hall makes the argument in
Speaker 2: this paper that the primary condition being described in this
Speaker 2: text under the word oafscotten should not be translated as
Speaker 2: elf shot as it traditionally has been, but it is
Speaker 2: something like badly pained. It's more more mundane condition that
Speaker 2: is prompting this entire remedy. However, even if that's correct,
Speaker 2: the last line of the remedy does mention the idea
Speaker 2: of this word alf the ae combined vowel and then
Speaker 2: l fe, though this sentence is also kind of difficult
Speaker 2: to translate the one that's got the alph in it.
Speaker 2: I think the understanding that makes the most sense is
Speaker 2: this whole remedy is for regular bad pain in horses,
Speaker 2: and then there's an additional remedy, the one that's riding
Speaker 2: on the dagger's handle, the words bless all the works
Speaker 2: of the Lord of Lords. That additional remedy is like
Speaker 2: a special extra dose of holiness that should be applied
Speaker 2: if the cause of the horse's pain is injury by
Speaker 2: an elf, though it doesn't explain how you tell the
Speaker 2: difference between normal bad pain and bad pain caused by
Speaker 2: an elf. You know, of course, the elf injury being
Speaker 2: even more unholy and requiring more holiness or or more
Speaker 2: piet in order to undo.
Speaker 1: Either way you shake it. From a modern perspective, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of cutting and striking of a pained horse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, jeez, you feel bad for the horse.
Speaker 1: You know. Now, as we as we go to close
Speaker 1: out this look at Elfshot, I did want to come
Speaker 1: back to some basic questions, some of which we've already
Speaker 1: got into, concerning the archaeology of elf Shot. Who were
Speaker 1: the people who made these artifacts, and how did they
Speaker 1: get to the regions where the artifacts were found, and
Speaker 1: then of course, you know, interpreted and reinterpreted within these
Speaker 1: folkloric traditions. This, of course, is a broad question because
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned already, we're talking about multiple areas. We're
Speaker 1: talking about locations throughout the British Isles and even outside
Speaker 1: of the British Isles. But just limiting the question of
Speaker 1: the British Isles, we're still looking at close to a
Speaker 1: million years of occupation by various human species, including Neanderthals.
Speaker 1: And as for the how they got there, the predominant
Speaker 1: theories involved land bridges between Europe and Britain that were
Speaker 1: president at the time. And regarding Ireland, I've seen hypotheses
Speaker 1: that involve boats, land bridges and also ice bridges. But
Speaker 1: just to give a few examples that really sort of
Speaker 1: drive home the times we're talking about here, there are
Speaker 1: stone tool and footprints in Norfolk that date back and
Speaker 1: estimated nine hundred thousand years and these would be the
Speaker 1: work and or the footprints of Homo antecessor. Notable here
Speaker 1: are the Happisburg footprints in Norfolk, and also a black
Speaker 1: flint hand axe was also found in this area. So
Speaker 1: Homo antecessor they were makers of simple stone tools, and
Speaker 1: it looks like many experts think that they might not
Speaker 1: have had mastery of fire. By four thousand BCE, Neolithic
Speaker 1: culture was firmly established on the British Isles and lasted
Speaker 1: till roughly it's just you know, the rough time period
Speaker 1: of our histories two thousand, five hundred BCE and of
Speaker 1: course between three thousand BCE in two thousand BCE, we
Speaker 1: see the construction of Stonehinge, one of course the most famous,
Speaker 1: if not the most famous testament to prehistoric Britain. And
Speaker 1: of course even Stone Hinge gets wrapped up into various folklore,
Speaker 1: traditions and folkloric interpretations and reinterpretations that involve at times
Speaker 1: the wizard Merlin, but also the Christian devil, and even
Speaker 1: during the Roman period which would have been roughly forty
Speaker 1: three CE to four ten CE, the Roman sky god Kalus.
Speaker 1: More realistically, or more on the sort of realistic interpretation
Speaker 1: and reinterpretation standpoint, it was at one point thought to
Speaker 1: be credited to the work of Druidic culture, but this
Speaker 1: culture didn't exist till three hundred BCE, 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 talking about found arrowheads in the British Isles. In
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, archaeologists from the University of Reading discovered a
Speaker 1: four thy five hundred year old flint arrowhead a few
Speaker 1: miles from Stonehenge, and according to David Dawson, director of
Speaker 1: the Wiltshire Museum, this particular arrowhead is not only finally preserved,
Speaker 1: but incredibly fragile, suggesting that it was never actually intended
Speaker 1: for use in war or hunting, but it was rather
Speaker 1: ceremonial or decorative and or decorative this was. You can
Speaker 1: look up images of this. There were some news articles
Speaker 1: of the time. The arrowhead was unearthed in two parts,
Speaker 1: two different digs, five years apart. And it is quite
Speaker 1: eloguant looking. It has like one it has barbs, but
Speaker 1: one really long barb and elongated barb on one side.
Speaker 1: So I don't know about you, but I find that
Speaker 1: really interesting because I think it's easy to think of
Speaker 1: folkloric interpretation of found objects to be a luxury of
Speaker 1: later civilizations on the British Isles, to think supernaturally about
Speaker 1: about these about these items. But certainly, and certainly there
Speaker 1: was a lot we don't know about concerning pre Roman
Speaker 1: and prehistoric Britain. But even forty five hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: this find would suggest that people here were already capable
Speaker 1: of sublime interpretations and perhaps mystical meanings for their own
Speaker 1: created artifacts. That you could have this sacred arrow that
Speaker 1: wasn't found, that was made, but some of the same
Speaker 1: energy that goes into the interpretation of these artifacts, you know,
Speaker 1: thousands of years later, was already present in the cultures
Speaker 1: that made their home here.
Speaker 2: Right, And so we don't know what it would have
Speaker 2: been used for, but it's clear that it would not
Speaker 2: have been useful for actual shooting of an arrow. So
Speaker 2: you know, it could be decorative, it could be medicinal,
Speaker 2: some kind of amulet. It could be magical or ceremonial.
Speaker 2: We don't know, but in any case, it would be
Speaker 2: a symbolic arrowhead rather than one used for the literal,
Speaker 2: direct mundane purpose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you can imagine at some point in
Speaker 1: history after this point if someone were to find an
Speaker 1: arrow had like this, especially, I mean any arrow had
Speaker 1: obviously any kind of novel lump of stone could find
Speaker 1: itself interpreted as an elf arrow and incorporated into elf
Speaker 1: shot folklore. But imagine if you found this, you know,
Speaker 1: clearly an arrow that looks too fine to be shot.
Speaker 1: You know, that's almost ephemeral in its construction, Like who
Speaker 1: would make this? Why would they make this? Clearly this
Speaker 1: is the work of the elves. But also I think
Speaker 1: it's just yeah, it's just worth remembering the deep history
Speaker 1: of people on the British Isles. You know, it might
Speaker 1: not be as deep as some other areas, Like you know,
Speaker 1: you're looking at what in France. I think it's what
Speaker 1: one point fifty seven million years ago. We have some
Speaker 1: of the earliest known evidence of human beings. But still
Speaker 1: you have human species on the British Isles as early
Speaker 1: as almost a million years ago, different species, different cultures,
Speaker 1: different waves of technology and arrivals in the subsequent centuries
Speaker 1: and millennium millennia, and of course different waves of interpretation
Speaker 1: and reinterpretation of what came before. All right, we're going
Speaker 1: to go ahead and close it out there, but obviously
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there. We'd especially
Speaker 1: love to hear from folks listening to the show on
Speaker 1: the British Isles, or folks who have spent time on
Speaker 1: the British Isles. Perhaps you have some tidbits some local
Speaker 1: lore to share with us. If so, we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. A reminder that Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind is a primarily a science podcast that publishes on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed, but on Mondays we do a listener mail
Speaker 1: episode where we read various missives from our listeners. On
Speaker 1: Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster fact.
Speaker 1: On Fridays 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.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 2: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 2: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 2: say hello, you can email us at contact stuff to
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