Speaker 1: I remember, indeed that in later years, the lord of
Speaker 1: my country, knowing I was acquainted with Italy, asked me why,
Speaker 1: as he had seen down there some lords went out
Speaker 1: to pasture their pigs, And I laughed, realizing that on
Speaker 1: the contrary, they were going in search of truffles. But
Speaker 1: when I told him that these lords hoped to find
Speaker 1: the truffle underground to eat it, he thought, I said,
Speaker 1: they were seeking dear Typhon the devil, and he blessed
Speaker 1: himself devoutly, looking at me in amazement. Then the misunderstanding
Speaker 1: was cleared up, and we both laughed at it. Such
Speaker 1: as the magic of human languages that, by human accord,
Speaker 1: often the same sounds mean different things. Had so of milk,
Speaker 1: humberto echoes, the name of the Rose.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: All right. In today's episode, as the title indicates, and
Speaker 1: as the quote suggest, we're turning our attention once more
Speaker 1: to beings and monsters that may verge on the demonic,
Speaker 1: And this time it is, of course, hogs of hell
Speaker 1: pigs of hell, bores of the underworld, and so forth.
Speaker 1: We've of course discussed the Garricene demoniac on the show
Speaker 1: before this being Christ's exorcism of the demonic Legion into
Speaker 1: a herd of swine, out of a man and into swine.
Speaker 1: We did a whole episode about that in the past.
Speaker 1: This time, though, it's more about hell pigs of one
Speaker 1: sort or another. We're gonna explore some different territory and
Speaker 1: different interpretations.
Speaker 3: That's right, monster pigs, bls of bores, and pigs of
Speaker 3: a more heavenly sort as well. But we start a
Speaker 3: lot of these October episodes with examples from horror movies
Speaker 3: of the types of creatures we're talking about, and so
Speaker 3: I figured we should do the same today. I know
Speaker 3: this has come up on the show several times. I'm
Speaker 3: not quite sure why we keep pinging back on this
Speaker 3: movie so often, but when it comes to horror movies
Speaker 3: with monster pigs, I have to mention the nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: four Russell Mulkaheek killer pig movie from before the same
Speaker 3: director made Highlander in nineteen eighty six. This was eighty four,
Speaker 3: and the movie is called Razorback. Now I've described the
Speaker 3: plot in the past as something like a combination of
Speaker 3: Australian Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jaws, but with a pig
Speaker 3: instead of a shark. I stand by that. I think
Speaker 3: that is a pretty that gives you a pretty good
Speaker 3: idea of what you're dealing with. It's been a while
Speaker 3: since I've seen it. I don't super highly recommend it,
Speaker 3: Like my memory is that is extremely gooey and gross
Speaker 3: like at one of the major settings of the movie
Speaker 3: is a gray market dog food factory in the Australian outback,
Speaker 3: so you can imagine the kind of chainsaw massacre connotations
Speaker 3: you'd get there. There's a lot of body slop. But
Speaker 3: it is worth mentioning as a movie because it's one
Speaker 3: of the relatively few horror films I can think of
Speaker 3: where the monster is a pig. I was looking it
Speaker 3: up and it seems there have been several more movies
Speaker 3: on this theme in recent decades, but I haven't seen
Speaker 3: any of those, so this is the one I'm aware of.
Speaker 3: And I recall that the movie does actually do a
Speaker 3: pretty commendable job of making the bores mouth a mind
Speaker 3: rending terror. It's just this hot, steaming maze of teeth
Speaker 3: and tusks, and for most of the movie, in fact,
Speaker 3: almost never really, you really don't see the creature's whole body.
Speaker 3: You just see its mouth, almost like all there is
Speaker 3: is a mouth, which I think is a strong choice.
Speaker 3: You get a similar kind of thing in some shark movies.
Speaker 3: Basically all you see are the gaping jaws.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not what I've seen, but I know
Speaker 1: you admire it, or it might past backs of it,
Speaker 1: And uh, I'm looking at some stills here right now,
Speaker 1: and yeah, this monster pig looks amazing, like this is
Speaker 1: this is the thoroughly deserving of the title Jaws, but
Speaker 1: with a pig.
Speaker 3: I mean it does take serious boldness to approach that
Speaker 3: as a concept, because do you can keep the You
Speaker 3: can keep the monster hidden much more easily in Jaws
Speaker 3: because it's underwater, right, But a boor is just running around.
Speaker 3: Uh so, Yeah, it takes some clever photography to make
Speaker 3: the scene convincing and heighten the tension without ever showing
Speaker 3: us too much of the bore until the very end.
Speaker 1: I guess the thing about a bore is you can
Speaker 1: have the boar moving through like the tall grass or
Speaker 1: the undergrowth. To some extent and it's sort of like
Speaker 1: it's underwater.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, you can have that. Uh though,
Speaker 3: this boar, I from what I re call it's taller
Speaker 3: than any grass in the setting. It's like a fan
Speaker 3: sized bore. Okay, Now, as I said, I haven't really
Speaker 3: seen any of these other recent pig monster movies. Maybe
Speaker 3: there's some really the good ones. I don't know. I
Speaker 3: can't say. But of course, beyond the realm of horror movies,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of fascinating pig beings in mythology, religion,
Speaker 3: and ancient literature, including good pigs, bad pigs, and everything
Speaker 3: in between.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I have to admit I never really
Speaker 1: looked into them all that much before, and I think
Speaker 1: I probably kind of glossed over mentions of bores and
Speaker 1: pigs in mythology in the past just because I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm I didn't have really strong opinions about wild boars.
Speaker 1: I don't have any experiences with them. You know. I've
Speaker 1: seen various you know, pig and pig kin animals at
Speaker 1: the zoos, and they're interesting, but you know, I just
Speaker 1: wasn't inspired. So I of course, when we were going
Speaker 1: to do this episode, I said, sure, let's do it,
Speaker 1: let's dive in, and I turned to one of my
Speaker 1: favorite sources initial sources for this sort of thing. I
Speaker 1: looked to one of folk lore's Carol Rose's books, in
Speaker 1: this case, Giants, Monsters and Dragons and Encyclopedia Folklore, Legend
Speaker 1: and Myth Great Vogue, easily one of my most loved
Speaker 1: and falling apart books. But when I started looking around
Speaker 1: for bores and pig like creatures, I was surprised at
Speaker 1: how many there were. There are a lot of them.
Speaker 1: Dozens of creatures are referenced in this book, and I
Speaker 1: should stress that while she's pretty exhaustive in these volumes,
Speaker 1: she is by no means complete in her chronicling of
Speaker 1: global traditions. So if she has dozens, there are more
Speaker 1: out there as well. So there are a lot of monstrous,
Speaker 1: hellish and even divine pig bore and bore like beings
Speaker 1: in global traditions.
Speaker 3: This just popped into my head. So it's not a
Speaker 3: fully formed thought, maybe it is not worthy yet, but
Speaker 3: it just struck me that, you know, a lot of
Speaker 3: these animals that we see having a major role in
Speaker 3: religion in mythology are animals that exist in both a
Speaker 3: wild and domesticated form around the culture. So like you see,
Speaker 3: you know, very common to have cattle related, cattle related imagery.
Speaker 3: We were just talking about cattle related beings in ancient
Speaker 3: Mesopotamian religion, and of course they would have had both
Speaker 3: domesticated cattle and the wild orx around them. And we've
Speaker 3: seen similar things with goats. You could have domestic goats
Speaker 3: and wild goats around you. Maybe something about that kind
Speaker 3: of dichotomy where you're seeing like the same animal body
Speaker 3: both you know, roaming and running around and doing its
Speaker 3: own thing in the wild, but also in a only
Speaker 3: slightly altered form as an animal that you keep on
Speaker 3: your farms, and that that seems to hit something in
Speaker 3: the brain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and definitely seems to influence the way we use
Speaker 1: those animals in our language and our symbols and in
Speaker 1: our mythology, you know, coming back to for instance, you know,
Speaker 1: donkeys and assids. We talked about this in the Mesopotamian
Speaker 1: demon episode, the idea of a ferocious sheeting and being
Speaker 1: associated with a donkey, and how it seems perhaps laughable
Speaker 1: if you're thinking from a modern standpoint about a domestic donkey,
Speaker 1: but we're talking here about a wild creature. It was swift,
Speaker 1: and therefore it's a fitting steed for a demons.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's right. So what was it? The demonus
Speaker 3: Lamashetu is said to ride on a wild donkey, but
Speaker 3: also occasionally was depicted maybe with donkey ears.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And to your point, we also see this
Speaker 1: with cattle versus the you know, the wilder forms of
Speaker 1: that creature. And we'll see that again time and time
Speaker 1: again when it comes to pigs, bores, and pig like creatures.
Speaker 1: The various species that compose the suborder of Suena known
Speaker 1: as the seu of forms. These can be found around
Speaker 1: the world, from wild and ferocious bores to pig like cavalinas,
Speaker 1: and of course the wild and domestic pigs of the
Speaker 1: genus Sus. When I told my son about this, he
Speaker 1: thought this was rich. I was like, you're never going
Speaker 1: to forget the genus of wild and domestic pigs because
Speaker 1: they're Sus.
Speaker 3: Is it not Sus? I would have said, Sus, but oh,
Speaker 3: it's got to be Saus.
Speaker 1: It's well Sus maybe, but when I read it, I'm like, Sus.
Speaker 1: Their genus is Sus perfect us Okay, So human relationships
Speaker 1: with these animals, of course, has entailed many different things. Hunting, consumption,
Speaker 1: sort of just acknowledgment of their wild status, observation of
Speaker 1: their behavior in the wild, and then poresigne, imagery, and associations.
Speaker 1: These are going to vary somewhat from culture to culture
Speaker 1: and from time to time, and at times too and
Speaker 1: kind of counterintuitive ways that I think sometimes breaks down to,
Speaker 1: you know, the the the idea of looking to the
Speaker 1: wild suiforms as well as to the domestic suiform and
Speaker 1: then also having different cultural influences enter into an area.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thinking about the cultural associations we have with pigs
Speaker 3: got me thinking on several different frequencies. I was like,
Speaker 3: for one thing, in our culture, isn't it funny how
Speaker 3: we we really associate pigs with eating when eating is
Speaker 3: something all animals do. Yeah, Like why is that? And
Speaker 3: my best guess is maybe it has something just to
Speaker 3: do with the relatively omnivorous appetites of a pig that
Speaker 3: you know, they famously will kind of they're kind of
Speaker 3: not picky about what kinds of things they eat. But
Speaker 3: that's also true of many other animals that you think
Speaker 3: of less that way.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, we end up comparing ourselves more to
Speaker 1: the pig. And they're probably a number of ways to
Speaker 1: sort of slice that up, right. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: focus on the intelligence of the pig, and the domestic
Speaker 1: pig is a pretty bright creature. You could maybe focus
Speaker 1: on it's relative hairless. I mean, I say the pigs
Speaker 1: are hairless. They do have hair, but a lot of
Speaker 1: times they are you're seen or certainly depicted as being
Speaker 1: kind of hairless, especially when you're dealing with like cartoon pigs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're very very strange in the way that we are,
Speaker 1: especially with like roadside barbecue restaurants are very quick to
Speaker 1: personify the pig and invote cartoon pigs. Eat at a
Speaker 1: place where the flesh of pigs is served under the
Speaker 1: name of pork.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the pulled pork restaurant where it shows a pig
Speaker 3: and a chef's hat wearing just a shirt with like
Speaker 3: a knife and a fork.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's gonna often be horrific. So, yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot to unpack and like American associations of the pig,
Speaker 1: but if you go, you know, across the board and
Speaker 1: throughout time, you you'll find a lot more to look at.
Speaker 1: For instance, the wild boar is a powerful image in
Speaker 1: medieval heraldry. It's also pretty powerful and Hindu iconography, where
Speaker 1: it's at times linked to the divine, as we'll explore.
Speaker 1: In the Chinese zodiac, the pig is associated with wealth
Speaker 1: and good fortune. And I've heard other you know, sort
Speaker 1: of takes on how the pig is considered in say
Speaker 1: Thai culture, where I'm to understand that the term for pig,
Speaker 1: which I believe is MoU, is a common nickname of endearment.
Speaker 1: So something you might call a child with some endearment,
Speaker 1: you know, some kid that you love, or your baby brother,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't be a put down, it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: an insult, that sort of thing. But meanwhile, elsewhere in
Speaker 1: time and space, here on Earth, poresine imagery of course,
Speaker 1: has all these negative connotations tied to, as you said,
Speaker 1: gluttony or sloth, or even to the unclean and the demonic.
Speaker 3: That's right, and as we often bring up in these
Speaker 3: episodes about monster traditions, looking at beliefs about monsters, especially
Speaker 3: monsters based on an animal, I think usually tells us
Speaker 3: more about us and our relationship to that animal. It
Speaker 3: does about the animal itself. That's right.
Speaker 1: So you know, we're going to dive into some examples
Speaker 1: from global traditions here, but I will say that as
Speaker 1: I was going through them and reading about them, and
Speaker 1: some of which they couldn't find enough to really mention here,
Speaker 1: but overall I found that you could basically divide them
Speaker 1: into sort of three categories with a certain amount of overlap.
Speaker 1: So there are primordial bores, often with a real emphasis
Speaker 1: on a connection to the earth. You know, they run
Speaker 1: around in the earth, they dig in the earth, kind
Speaker 1: of as referenced in our cold open here. You know,
Speaker 1: they are concerned with things under the soil, and they
Speaker 1: go under the soil to get them. So they have
Speaker 1: this connection.
Speaker 3: But by primordial, are you saying that they have something
Speaker 3: to do with like an initial state of the universe
Speaker 3: or with the creation of the world.
Speaker 1: Yes, like something about like the state of at least
Speaker 1: the surface world, and we'll get into some examples of this.
Speaker 1: Then there are also divine bores. Often these are ethereocephalic,
Speaker 1: so you know, it's the head of a bore on
Speaker 1: a humanoid body, but not always. There are also divine
Speaker 1: bores that are just straight up like a mighty boar
Speaker 1: that is also a god. And then another huge area
Speaker 1: and this is one that I think ties directly into
Speaker 1: the horror movie example that we kicked off the episode with,
Speaker 1: and that is the bore that hunts humans, which is
Speaker 1: basically not a huge twist because I mean, history and
Speaker 1: just basic understanding of wild boars will tell you that
Speaker 1: they are they can be dangerous prey, and we can
Speaker 1: point to examples throughout history of even famous people, members
Speaker 1: of nobility dying in the conquest of a prized boar,
Speaker 1: say a boar that they have injured in an attempt
Speaker 1: to kill, and then they themselves die of injuries sustained
Speaker 1: from the boar.
Speaker 3: So the famous and within context somewhat ignoble death of
Speaker 3: Robert Barrathian in fiction is based somewhat on real incidents
Speaker 3: something it's not implausible in royal history.
Speaker 1: No, not at all. Yeah, I mean, and to be clear,
Speaker 1: like wild bars can be dangerous today, and there are
Speaker 1: fatal incidents that occur. They can be very defensive and
Speaker 1: even aggressive if the circumstances are right. But these mythic
Speaker 1: treatments often take it one step beyond. It's not just
Speaker 1: that this is a dangerous game to hunt. But this
Speaker 1: game actively not only hunts you back, but might hunt
Speaker 1: you of its own accord. Like you're not even trying
Speaker 1: to hunt the monster boar. It just goes out and
Speaker 1: hunts people at night, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Okay, So to recaps, you've got bores from the creation,
Speaker 3: or bores from the beginning, you've got divine bores or
Speaker 3: heavenly bores, and then you've got the boar that eats people.
Speaker 1: Right, One more quick fictional example before we dive into
Speaker 1: these examples from global traditions, I should note that in
Speaker 1: Dante's Inferno, there are twelve named demons that compose the
Speaker 1: Malagrantia in the eighth circle of Hell, and one of
Speaker 1: them is clearly named with hogs in mind. This is Curiato,
Speaker 1: whose name means swine or a little pig, and we
Speaker 1: meet him in Canto twenty one, verse one two. So
Speaker 1: that's just a quick example of a literary pig in hell.
Speaker 3: I don't remember what the context was, but we've talked
Speaker 3: about the Mala bronca before they were the I think
Speaker 3: that name translates to evil claws. And this is the
Speaker 3: circle of demons who are shown like surrounding a boiling
Speaker 3: lake of pitch, and there are the I don't know,
Speaker 3: like corrupt people and grafters or something that they keep
Speaker 3: having to force back down under the pitch. Pretty pretty
Speaker 3: nasty job.
Speaker 1: They're demons with jobs, though they have a rope. All right,
Speaker 1: enough of the like straight up demonic here, let's get
Speaker 1: into some other examples. So I'd like to start in
Speaker 1: Hindu traditions, since these traditions feature some of the most
Speaker 1: divine and I think powerful invocations of poresine imagery. So
Speaker 1: I turned once more to Nanditha Krishna's excellent book Sacred
Speaker 1: Animals of India, in which the author chronicles a number
Speaker 1: of different animals and talks about like their you know,
Speaker 1: their their role in the natural world in India, conservation status,
Speaker 1: and then also the different ways that they're infolked and
Speaker 1: so the author here describes across the size and power
Speaker 1: of wild bares creatures that are that are of course
Speaker 1: closely tied to the earth. As I mentioned earlier, they
Speaker 1: dig for roots in the soil and in doing so
Speaker 1: they turn over the soil, perhaps as the author suggests,
Speaker 1: informing humans about the value of tilled soil oh.
Speaker 3: So they could be one of the sort of like
Speaker 3: agricultural knowledge givers in a way.
Speaker 1: Exactly at the same time, they're also like this natural
Speaker 1: force that you know, might be beneficial but might also
Speaker 1: be destructive. They can certainly hurt and kill humans, but
Speaker 1: they can also be destructive to human agricultural pursuits because
Speaker 1: they may raid crops, they may dig around in your gardens,
Speaker 1: and so forth. So in essence, we have a fierce, wild,
Speaker 1: but not universally hostile creature that is closely tied to
Speaker 1: the earth. The bore both tills and fertilizes the soil,
Speaker 1: and tradition holds that they're also tied to rain and
Speaker 1: monsoon seasons as well, digging right before the beginning of
Speaker 1: the monsoon. So one of the major uses of bor
Speaker 1: iconography and Hindu traditions is the tenth incarnation of the
Speaker 1: god Vishnu, and that is of Fadaha. And there are
Speaker 1: different stories, of course concerning this incarnation, as you'll find
Speaker 1: with just about any particular detail and the Hindu traditions,
Speaker 1: but one of the big tales does involve a demon
Speaker 1: of sorts. Now more precisely, it involves an Osra. This
Speaker 1: is the kind of power seeking demi god that is
Speaker 1: often in conflict with the benevolent devas. So one of
Speaker 1: these is one of these cases where the word demon
Speaker 1: in English seems a precise enough descriptor, but with certain caveats,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's the system of supernatural beings can
Speaker 1: be compared to that that you find in Christian mythology.
Speaker 1: But there's still a lot of important differences, right.
Speaker 3: We just recently talked about this in our series on
Speaker 3: the so called demons of ancient Mesopotamia. To what extent
Speaker 3: that term does sort of apply and in other ways doesn't.
Speaker 1: In this case, we have a demon or by the
Speaker 1: name of Hironyaksha that steals the earth itself, so rolls
Speaker 1: up the earth like a mat we are told, and
Speaker 1: then takes it into the ocean depth wo and yeah,
Speaker 1: And so Vishnu is not crazy about this. So Vishnu
Speaker 1: takes the form of a great boar, this is Vardaja,
Speaker 1: and dives into the ocean to retrieve it, slaying here
Speaker 1: in Yaksha. In the fierce battle that ensues. Then Vardaja
Speaker 1: restores the earth, and while he's at it, teaches humans agriculture,
Speaker 1: because again this is connection between bors and tilling of
Speaker 1: the earth, fertilizing the soil. And I want to note
Speaker 1: that while many illustrations and depictions of this battle show
Speaker 1: Vardaja as a bore and here in Yaksha as a
Speaker 1: human or a humanoid demon, there's at least one illustration
Speaker 1: that depicts them both as human boar hybrids. I included
Speaker 1: this one here for you, Joe. This is a seventeen
Speaker 1: forty illustration by Indian painter Manaku of gular Oh.
Speaker 3: I like this painting though, so they're they're shown in
Speaker 3: conflict here. Do you know which of the two beings
Speaker 3: in the painting is supposed to be the incarnation of Vishnu?
Speaker 3: Is the one with the grayer skin or the green skin.
Speaker 1: It would be the gray skin, I believe, because here
Speaker 1: you see a regal, multi armed, noble looking poor sign
Speaker 1: individual por sign being. And then on the other hand
Speaker 1: you see this wild green monster that is also poor sign,
Speaker 1: that also has the features of a bore. And I
Speaker 1: love this imagery because you get in one image these
Speaker 1: two drastically different ways of invoking the imagery of the boar,
Speaker 1: the noble and the savage, the good and the evil,
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So the vicious demonic boar here is
Speaker 3: mouth open, its jaws kind of like to compare it
Speaker 3: to the movie Razorback, it's just all mouth ah reaching
Speaker 3: out with its arms to attack, whereas the Vishnu version
Speaker 3: of the boar, yeah, it's standing with its chin up,
Speaker 3: you know, raised in kind of lofty defiance.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you'll find other depictions of Varaha in which pretty
Speaker 1: much looks like this with gray skin, the head of
Speaker 1: a boar, multiple arms. But then you'll also find depictions
Speaker 1: where he is just a great boar. H And I
Speaker 1: included an image of some sculpture art that depicts this.
Speaker 1: Now Naraka, the lord of the underworld Krishna rights is
Speaker 1: also held to be the offspring of Vadaha and the
Speaker 1: Earth via his spouse Budhevi, which I believe the sculpture
Speaker 1: I included here, if you look at it, there is
Speaker 1: a female figure on there, kind of like hanging from
Speaker 1: one of his tusks. I believe that is Budhvi.
Speaker 3: Whoa Oh okay, So I initially interpreted this humanoid figure
Speaker 3: to be climbing the boar, as if to climb up
Speaker 3: its side and ride it, you know, she's hanging from
Speaker 3: its tusk. Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Krishna also points to a couple of other Hindu entities
Speaker 1: that feature boar iconography. There's the goddess Vadahai, an aspect
Speaker 1: of the Goddessa. The author also mentions that the boar
Speaker 1: is also invoked in Jainism and in Buddhism, where the
Speaker 1: goddess ma Rici or Marisi drives a chariot drawn by
Speaker 1: seven boors. I believe this figure also factors into Hinduism
Speaker 1: and has sometimes depicted as writing a single boar, though
Speaker 1: not always. All right, let's let's turn to the world
Speaker 1: of monstrous boars, because one really important example in Greco
Speaker 1: Roman traditions is, of course the Caledonian boar or the
Speaker 1: Ittolian boar. This is a monstrous boar sent by the
Speaker 1: goddess Artemis to punish the king of Kaleden for lack
Speaker 1: of proper sacrifices. You didn't throw up the right sacrifices.
Speaker 1: You ticked off a god. Now you have to deal
Speaker 1: with a monster pig. It brings. Oh, it just destroys everything.
Speaker 1: It destroys people, It destroys the town, it destroys the
Speaker 1: land itself, and then you end up having to have
Speaker 1: the heroes Meleager and Atalanta hunt it with their friends,
Speaker 1: their allies, slay it, and then get into a big
Speaker 1: fight with their allies over who gets what part of
Speaker 1: the spoils from the monster pig, because we see this
Speaker 1: time and time again, you'll have some sort of supernatural pig.
Speaker 1: But then once you have killed that pig, its parts
Speaker 1: are used. You know, it is it is, it is food,
Speaker 1: it is you know, it's hide has value and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the drama is not done when the monster Boor
Speaker 3: is slain. In fact, that factors into the next one
Speaker 3: you're gonna mention.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, the Arimanthean bore. This is another monster bore
Speaker 1: of Greek myth. This is the one that ravaged Arcadia,
Speaker 1: and it ends up being one of the twelve labors
Speaker 1: of Hercules having to dispose of this monster bore. King
Speaker 1: Eurystheus tells herk you can't slay it, You've got to
Speaker 1: bring it back alive. And in most of these tellings
Speaker 1: you have this wonderful scene where of course Hercules pulls
Speaker 1: this off, brings back this ferocious bore alive, and just
Speaker 1: the sight of Hercules carrying this thing is so terrifying
Speaker 1: that the tyrant king jumps inside of a jar and hides.
Speaker 3: So I thought this was interesting because of the way
Speaker 3: the story ties into a weird art meme from the
Speaker 3: ancient world that I've noticed. I'll get to that in
Speaker 3: a second. But first of all, I was wondering if
Speaker 3: there was any like really good ancient texts that describes
Speaker 3: this hunt in detail. Maybe there is, but if so,
Speaker 3: I couldn't. I couldn't find it. I didn't really come
Speaker 3: across anything all that great. It's pretty sparse, you know.
Speaker 3: It's just like, oh, and he hunted the boar down.
Speaker 3: The best example I came across was from the text
Speaker 3: of Pseudo Apollodorus the Library. This is the Phraser translation,
Speaker 3: which says, well, first of all, there's a bunch of
Speaker 3: drama with Hercules going out to hunt the boar, and
Speaker 3: then get gets into a bunch of stuff with some
Speaker 3: cinaurs and his companion gets killed. But then when Hercules,
Speaker 3: it says quote, when Hercules had chased the boar with
Speaker 3: shouts from a certain thicket, he drove the exhausted animal
Speaker 3: into deep snow, trapped it, and brought it to myceny.
Speaker 3: Now here's the funny art. Note. If you look up
Speaker 3: ancient Greek pottery depicting this scene where Heracles in the
Speaker 3: Greek returns with the boar, multiple pieces I found have
Speaker 3: the same style of depicting the scene, so little things
Speaker 3: about it are different. It's not like a tracing, you know.
Speaker 3: You might have different characters on the sides of the scene,
Speaker 3: or different sort of posture or ways of rendering the
Speaker 3: Hercules's face and body, but the thing being shown is
Speaker 3: the same in every case. So you will have down
Speaker 3: below there's an opening of a large jar I guess
Speaker 3: this is the type of Greek jar known as a pithos,
Speaker 3: with the king hiding down in the jar, and you
Speaker 3: can see like his head and hands popping up out
Speaker 3: of it like oh. And then up above you will
Speaker 3: have Hercules standing above the opening of the jar, holding
Speaker 3: the boar up as if to dump it on top
Speaker 3: of the king, or like to plug the king in
Speaker 3: the jar with the boar as a cork. Uh. And
Speaker 3: I've got at least four different m foy from ancient
Speaker 3: Greece that depict the scene almost exactly like this Robi.
Speaker 3: You can take a look and see what you notice
Speaker 3: about all of these. The first one I've got in
Speaker 3: the outline here is from the British Museum. It's a
Speaker 3: it's a Greek amphora from the sixth century BCE, and
Speaker 3: M four is also a type of jar that was
Speaker 3: a smaller jar jar that would usually be used to
Speaker 3: store wine or perfume or oil or something like that.
Speaker 3: So this in for a Hercules is wearing some kind
Speaker 3: of armor, but also his thighs and butt cheeks are
Speaker 3: showing a little bit, and he's.
Speaker 1: He's remarkably clothed, though, I have to say yes for Heracles.
Speaker 3: Yes, so Heracles. He's got the boar up on his shoulder,
Speaker 3: and the king is down in the jar like, no,
Speaker 3: don't dump the boar on me, and the boar is
Speaker 3: just going straight down on top of him. It looks
Speaker 3: like he's gonna to plug him up in there. And
Speaker 3: in most versions of this scene he's dropping the boar
Speaker 3: head first on the king, but in one I found,
Speaker 3: it's the last one I've got for you to look
Speaker 3: at here, Rob in this case he's dropping the boar
Speaker 3: taale first onto the king. So I don't know what
Speaker 3: the difference is there. I am in no way. An
Speaker 3: expert on ancient Greek art, I couldn't find anything that's
Speaker 3: saying why this scene appears so often and looks so similar.
Speaker 3: And I could be totally wrong about this, but I
Speaker 3: wonder if this scene is popular to depict on Mpori
Speaker 3: on jars because the king is hiding in a jar
Speaker 3: in the scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Heracles or Hercules, hero of the people
Speaker 1: we discussed in the pad. I can't remember we're talking
Speaker 1: about it this on a Core episode or a Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema episode. I think it was Weird House because
Speaker 1: we're talking about the Mario Bava Hercules in the Underworld film.
Speaker 1: But Hercules stands up to power like this, but he
Speaker 1: does not proclaim himself a king, so he's kind of
Speaker 1: and he's kind of a workingman's hero in that regard.
Speaker 1: I guess, you know. Yeah, take this job and shove it,
Speaker 1: Take this pig and shove it, right, That is.
Speaker 3: Exactly the vibe of these scenes here. Yeah, take this
Speaker 3: pig and shove it.
Speaker 1: I like how the fourth image that you shared Hercules
Speaker 1: is the most naked here, varying levels of nudity for
Speaker 1: Hercules in each of them, but then the second one
Speaker 1: you shared, Hercules is making this wild Gargonian face that
Speaker 1: is really great, almost as if he is saying, wa
Speaker 1: was up?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's tough as Yeah, any experts on ancient Greco
Speaker 3: Roman art out there you want to fill us in
Speaker 3: on why this scene appears so often and looks so similar? Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: in contact that stuff to blow your mind dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, let's see which what other monster pig should
Speaker 1: I mention here? There's some that I couldn't find a
Speaker 1: lot on. Like, for instance, there's one in Icelandic tradition.
Speaker 1: It is called by God by God, it's a pig,
Speaker 1: but like b E I G A D And this
Speaker 1: apparently roughly translates to bringer of fear, which I like.
Speaker 1: But then there's one from Irish legend that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: This one is the bore of being Goldbain and in
Speaker 1: this there's a whole story for this one. So this
Speaker 1: is a monster that was once the mortal human son
Speaker 1: of Angus, but upon his son's death in a quarrel,
Speaker 1: the father you know, refused to accept this and refused
Speaker 1: to accept the custom of death gold from his killer
Speaker 1: to sort of settle the dispute. Instead, he raises his
Speaker 1: son from the dead with dark magic into the form
Speaker 1: of a great bore that Carol Rose says has neither
Speaker 1: tail nor ears. I'm not sure what the significance of
Speaker 1: that detail is, but if nothing else, it tends to
Speaker 1: show you that this is an unnatural bore. It is
Speaker 1: somehow not quite bore and certainly not man. Now. In
Speaker 1: doing this and raising up his son like this, he's
Speaker 1: also cursing his son's killer, Diarmid, and for telling that
Speaker 1: the two of them, the reincarnated son here and his
Speaker 1: killer Domed, are going to be the death of each other.
Speaker 1: That he will live as long as this unnatural bore
Speaker 1: that he's raised up, And indeed that's exactly how it
Speaker 1: goes down. They fight, they gore and stab each other.
Speaker 1: And I think we may have touched on this story
Speaker 1: before in our episode about Finn McCool, because this is
Speaker 1: where Finn McCool jumps in and tries to bring healing
Speaker 1: waters to the dying warrior, and he tries three times,
Speaker 1: but it slips through his fingers the first two times,
Speaker 1: and by the third time the hero has already died.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: This next one comes from Welsh traditions and I'm going
Speaker 1: to butcher this. I know, my apologies, but it is
Speaker 1: something like Holts do and it is. It is the
Speaker 1: bobtailed black soal. It is definitely in the category of
Speaker 1: the boar that hunts. It was said to be active.
Speaker 1: I've seen it. I believe Carol Rose discusses it as
Speaker 1: being connected with Salin and then with the introduction of
Speaker 1: Christianity war that of course that has warped more in
Speaker 1: the direction of Halloween, and then this creature becomes associated
Speaker 1: with the devil. But in essence we're dealing with a
Speaker 1: with just another boar who hunts that is monstrous and terrible,
Speaker 1: certainly kind of like an evil monster spirit. Again, I
Speaker 1: think the name here is hawk de Geta or something
Speaker 1: to that effect. Again, I'm not not really good with
Speaker 1: the Welsh tongue here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know how to pronounce it. Hats off
Speaker 3: to you, Rob, But I was looking at the entry
Speaker 3: on this one in the Oxford Dictionary of Celticthology, and
Speaker 3: it says that this is the spectral pig later often
Speaker 3: associated with the devil in Christianity. But the idea is
Speaker 3: that it's a spectral pig that would rise up out
Speaker 3: of the embers of a dying bonfire on the night
Speaker 3: of this this like sort of autumn festival night, and
Speaker 3: it would rise up out of the embers of the
Speaker 3: dying bonfire and it would catch the last person, I
Speaker 3: guess to the last person in some case to like
Speaker 3: leave the festivities or to arrive.
Speaker 1: Oh fascinating. Well, let's see we have some other ones here.
Speaker 1: There's a comapua. This is a Hawaiian primordial monster boar
Speaker 1: from Hawaiian mythology the pig child who raised up the
Speaker 1: ocean mud with his snout to form the islands and
Speaker 1: some tellings. So again another primordial vision of the boar.
Speaker 3: And I like the resonance is there with the Hindu
Speaker 3: idea of the incarnation of Vishnu that like has to
Speaker 3: swim down into the ocean to retrieve the matt of
Speaker 3: the earth and bring it back in this case raising
Speaker 3: up the ocean mud from beneath.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Like is there an actual connection there, a
Speaker 1: reverberation of belief or is it just come from familiarity
Speaker 1: with the animal, you know? And these these sort of
Speaker 1: metaphors and ideas emerging from human observation of these animals
Speaker 1: that they live in close contact.
Speaker 3: With Yeah, to be clear, I was not suggesting a
Speaker 3: causal connection. No, no, no, no, those two myths.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but if there if there isn't a causal connection,
Speaker 1: it's it's clearly like observing the animal, and you know
Speaker 1: the ideas that emerge when we see the animal and
Speaker 1: it's on its natural turf. Let's see. Oh, Celtic legends
Speaker 1: tell of a monstrous family of bores, like you could
Speaker 1: probably call these ogre bores. I think that fought King
Speaker 1: Arthur and his knights. May come back to some of this,
Speaker 1: but the tellings have a lot of gorings, like just
Speaker 1: just a whole series of gorings. They're chasing these bores
Speaker 1: around on killing off certain boars. Uh. Yeah, we'll come
Speaker 1: back to these, because there are a few like examples
Speaker 1: of the King of Boars.
Speaker 3: Did your source say which of King Arthur's knights got
Speaker 3: got gord? Because I was just thinking because it's funny.
Speaker 3: I know one of the knights in Arthurian legend is
Speaker 3: sir Bars, and it would be somewhat hilarious if Sir
Speaker 3: Bors got gored by a boar.
Speaker 1: I do I don't know. I don't know if any
Speaker 1: like name Knights were God, but it's it's possible. Like
Speaker 1: some of the particular ones I'm scanning down, I do
Speaker 1: have notes on this. Let's say twitrich Tritch. This is
Speaker 1: a This is one of the wicked Kings who was
Speaker 1: transformed into a monstrous boar. So, uh, this is one
Speaker 1: of the ones that they did battle with. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then there Yeah, there are various other ones that have
Speaker 1: names and factor into this whole like series of battles
Speaker 1: between humans and boars. Oh, now here's another one that
Speaker 1: Carol ro shares that that is really interesting and has
Speaker 1: a very cool story to it. And this is concerning
Speaker 1: a particular monster pick by the name of Totoima or
Speaker 1: I've seen it also spelled dodo Ema. It's a monster
Speaker 1: pig of the Oro Kaiva people of Papua New Guinea.
Speaker 1: So essentially, this monster pig is a father of mortal
Speaker 1: humans who hunts them from their birth and devours them
Speaker 1: if he finds them. So the basic story concerning this
Speaker 1: monster pig is that I guess at night it takes
Speaker 1: the form of the monster pig, but during the day
Speaker 1: it takes the form or can take the form of
Speaker 1: a mortal man. And in this form, toto Ema couples
Speaker 1: with human women, producing human offspring, which then at night,
Speaker 1: in the form of the beast, he seeks out and
Speaker 1: he consumes if he finds them.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: But then one woman ends up birthing twins, and of
Speaker 1: course he does what he always does in bore form.
Speaker 1: He chases after them to consume them. But when them
Speaker 1: he's only able to consume the boy twin and the
Speaker 1: female escapes. Well, the twins mother, she's not gonna take this,
Speaker 1: she stands up to it. So she goes to a
Speaker 1: shaman and the shaman casts a spell that causes the
Speaker 1: boy to grow rapidly into adulthood inside of Totoima's stomach
Speaker 1: and then bursting out of him, killing the monster pig
Speaker 1: in the process. And then the shaman marries the daughter.
Speaker 1: The people feast on the body of Totoima, and in
Speaker 1: doing so they consume his power, his supernatural power. They
Speaker 1: absorb it, and then this story is echoed in all
Speaker 1: of the boar feasts to follow in this culture.
Speaker 3: Oh. Interesting, So the boy explodes out of the belly
Speaker 3: of the boar by growing rapidly, But does that mean
Speaker 3: the boy survives?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess he either I'm not sure of the
Speaker 1: details of the spell. Maybe he reforms and then grows,
Speaker 1: or maybe the monster consumed him whole, as we see,
Speaker 1: of course, in a lot of stories of monsters consuming people.
Speaker 1: They are swallowed whole, and then there's this chance for
Speaker 1: them to escape somehow, you know, clearly a popular idea,
Speaker 1: even in modern fiction and science fiction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess I'm more familiar with stories along these
Speaker 3: lines where like, oh, you know, the little red Riding Hood,
Speaker 3: the hunter comes along and cuts open the wolf's stomach
Speaker 3: and everybody and everybody gets out. But I love this
Speaker 3: version with the magic spell that causes the yeah, the
Speaker 3: eating child to grow and explode from the inside, and.
Speaker 1: Then they eat the monster. Again. We see allusion to
Speaker 1: this in the Greek traditions as well. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: every monster boar ends up being consumed, but it does
Speaker 1: seem to be kind of a frequent idea, like it
Speaker 1: is a rare kind of this rare case where the
Speaker 1: monster is both ferocious and also on the menu for
Speaker 1: human beings.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I guess that's interesting. Where you know that
Speaker 3: the pig occupies this middle space between somewhere between just
Speaker 3: herbivorous prey animal and carnivore, which is, you know, carnivore
Speaker 3: is not usually thought of as great eating. Uh, not
Speaker 3: to say people wouldn't eat a you know, eat a
Speaker 3: wolf or whatever, but yeah, exactly, but that, like the
Speaker 3: pig is sort of it's in both camps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, two more, just real quick ones here. Speaking
Speaker 1: of pigs that are eaten there, there is also the
Speaker 1: eternally regenerating roasting pig of Valhallah. This is SATs from
Speaker 1: there or so Soakram there, whose name just means blackened.
Speaker 3: I believe.
Speaker 1: I think we've touched on him before, but that's his
Speaker 1: entire role. I don't think he has much of a backstory.
Speaker 1: He's just a never ending feast pig that regenerates.
Speaker 3: So this is not so much pig as pig, but
Speaker 3: divine pig as pork.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, yeah. And then there is at least one
Speaker 1: supernatural pig or boar worth talking about here from Chinese traditions,
Speaker 1: and that is pingfing or bingfing. This is a black
Speaker 1: boar with either I think some tellings the head of
Speaker 1: a human, but most of the sellings that I was
Speaker 1: reading about it's a boar head at either end. So
Speaker 1: kind of like the what the push me, pull me
Speaker 1: from Doctor Dolittle, Doctor Dolittle, Of course, yes, there's like
Speaker 1: a creature like this to push me, pull me in
Speaker 1: that where it has a head on either side. It's
Speaker 1: the This is the push me pull me of bores
Speaker 1: and Chinese mythology. Wow, this is the variation that appears
Speaker 1: in the classic texts of the Shanghaijing, the classic of
Speaker 1: mountains and seas that we've touched on the show before,
Speaker 1: and as with other two headed creatures, said to be
Speaker 1: quite obstinate, according to Richard Strasburg in the book A
Speaker 1: Chinese Bestiary. So, I guess in this, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like you have a two headed animal. Which one's in charge,
Speaker 1: which one's the boss? Well, they're both the boss. You
Speaker 1: have to talk to both ends of the.
Speaker 3: Pig, especially stubborn. Yeah. Stubbornness comes from the head.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again, this is just a brief overview of
Speaker 1: some of the varieties and and some of like the
Speaker 1: basic tropes you seem to encounter with mythic pigs, mythic bores,
Speaker 1: and so forth. I'm sure there are some other interesting
Speaker 1: ones that I didn't run across enough details regarding so
Speaker 1: if you have a favorite, write in share them. We
Speaker 1: would love to hear about your hell pig.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, it looks like we're out of time
Speaker 3: for today, but we are not done with the topic
Speaker 3: of monster pigs. So if you can't get enough you
Speaker 3: want to learn about more monster pigs, and in fact,
Speaker 3: monster pigs not only in myth and legend, but in reality,
Speaker 3: come back and join us on Tuesday. All right.
Speaker 1: Just a reminder to everyone out there that Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, episodes that are
Speaker 1: more likely to be monstrous and horror themed during the
Speaker 1: month of October, and then we do a short form
Speaker 1: episode on Wednesdays, and then on Fridays we set aside
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
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