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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. We have a vault episode for you

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Speaker 1: here today. Of course, this is going to be the

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Speaker 1: Folkloric Cats of the British Isles. This one originally published

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Speaker 1: eight five, twenty twenty five as part of a cat

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Speaker 1: themed week, and in this we're going to discuss some

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Speaker 1: of the magical and folkloric cats of the British Isles.

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Speaker 1: What they're up to, what they want, what are the

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Speaker 1: dangers that they pose to the humans who glimpse them

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Speaker 1: in the night. All right, let's go ahead and have

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Speaker 1: at it.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it

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Speaker 1: is Cat Week here on Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 1: So chosen because August eighth is apparently International Cat Day,

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Speaker 1: or has been since around two thousand and two thanks

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Speaker 1: to the International Fund for Animal Welfare that's IFAW dot org.

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Speaker 1: They're involved in a vast array of animal welfare and

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Speaker 1: conservation products around the world, and that includes cats.

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Speaker 3: And telling you when it's a cat related holiday.

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Speaker 1: That's right, right, I believe International Dog Day is actually

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Speaker 1: later in the month. So if some of you out

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Speaker 1: there are like, well, we need equal time for dogs,

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Speaker 1: write in and demand it and we can do the

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Speaker 1: same treatment for dogs. We have tons of dog related

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Speaker 1: topic ideas that we haven't gotten to yet.

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Speaker 3: Now wait, somehow we decided we're doing a whole week

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Speaker 3: of cat themed stuff. What's going on? Where'd that come from? Rob?

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Speaker 1: Well, just I like the idea of doing theme weeks.

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Speaker 1: So we actually got a couple other theme weeks related

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Speaker 1: to other things that are not pets. So I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I like a good theme.

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Speaker 3: Keeps us disciplined.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So you know, if listeners out there have

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Speaker 1: any ideas for other theme weeks that you would like,

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Speaker 1: write in and let us know. But today is going

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Speaker 1: to be about cats. All the episodes this week are

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Speaker 1: about cats one way or another, And in today's episode,

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Speaker 1: we're going to return to a topic that we previously

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Speaker 1: discussed with a focus on Japanese traditions supernatural cats, only

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Speaker 1: this time we're going to draw from the rich folk

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Speaker 1: traditions of the British Isles. They have quite a few

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Speaker 1: to select from. We're not going to be able to

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Speaker 1: get to them all, of course, but we've picked out

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Speaker 1: a few of them here, and we should note that,

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Speaker 1: of course, as far as the house cat goes in Britain,

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Speaker 1: these seem to date back at least to the Roman occupation.

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Speaker 1: And then, of course then we also have wildcats in

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Speaker 1: the British Isles as well, and those of course predate

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Speaker 1: the Romans. And so a lot of the stories we're

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Speaker 1: going to be talking about here today, you can kind of,

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Speaker 1: like I guess, you can sort of pick and choose, like,

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Speaker 1: how much of this is inspired by traditions involving the

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Speaker 1: domesticated cat, how much of this is involving traditions about wildcats,

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Speaker 1: And then you know the melding of the two.

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Speaker 3: That gets especially funny when some of these monster cat

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Speaker 3: stories do not specify the size of the cat. Yeah. So,

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Speaker 3: throughout research for this episode, you know, in learning about

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Speaker 3: cats that killed one hundred and eighty men or killed

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Speaker 3: famous folk heroes, I certainly was in a mindset of

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Speaker 3: like the Beast of Cayirbannag from Monty Python and the

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Speaker 3: Holy Grail, where it's a regular size bunny that attacks

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Speaker 3: and kills. I was thinking about a regular sized cat

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Speaker 3: the sources don't say that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think with a lot of these stories, you

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Speaker 1: have to sort of think about these varying inspirations. Like

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Speaker 1: you can definitely think about various actual wildcats. You can

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Speaker 1: then think about sort of cryptids and wildcats that were

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Speaker 1: supposed to exist or thought to exist by some and

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Speaker 1: then of course just purely mythological imaginings as well. But

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Speaker 1: even if you're just limiting things to the domestic cat,

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Speaker 1: being around a domestic cat is in and of itself

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Speaker 1: kind of a contemplation of these different dimensions, because a

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Speaker 1: domestic cat that never leaves your home at times acts

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Speaker 1: like this comforting little snuggle buddy, other times like a

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Speaker 1: vicious hunter, other times like some sort of strange specter

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Speaker 1: of the night eyes twinkling in the dark. So you

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Speaker 1: know that experience alone lends itself to a lot of

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Speaker 1: these ideas. Oh.

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Speaker 3: I didn't tell you this yet, but just yesterday last evening,

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Speaker 3: my daughter for the first time got too full on

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Speaker 3: like hold a kitty cat.

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Speaker 1: Oh.

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Speaker 3: She's been very cat brained for some time now, at

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Speaker 3: least the past six months to a year or sometime,

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Speaker 3: and that she thinks about cats a lot, talks about

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Speaker 3: them a lot, and of course sees them sometimes when

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Speaker 3: we visit friends who have cats. But last night we

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Speaker 3: were walking. We were out on a walk in her

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Speaker 3: neighborhood and a neighbor who we know has a cat

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Speaker 3: because she walks around the neighborhood with the cat in

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Speaker 3: a mesh backpack kind of carrying it. Have you seen

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Speaker 3: one of these?

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Speaker 1: Ye?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like a little sort of playpen with mesh,

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Speaker 3: and so she's seen the cat before that way. But

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Speaker 3: our neighbor brought the cat out for her to hold,

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Speaker 3: and she just sat there beaming, like her eyes literally

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Speaker 3: were emitting light. It's a very special time. But I

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Speaker 3: was but I was thinking about monster cats while while

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Speaker 3: that was going on, and just turning my mind over.

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Speaker 3: You know what savagery lay in the intentions of this beautiful,

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Speaker 3: pitiful little creature in my you know two year old

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Speaker 3: daughter's arms.

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Speaker 1: Well that they scratch, so there is always the threat

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Speaker 1: of the scratch.

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Speaker 3: This one was being gentle.

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Speaker 1: All right, Well, I want to start by talking about

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Speaker 1: a particular cat that I actually don't have a lot

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Speaker 1: on this one, but it's going to lead into some

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Speaker 1: more lengthy discussions. But there's one that comes to us

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Speaker 1: from Celtic traditions that is known as the cat she.

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Speaker 1: It looks like cat sith as it's often spelled, but

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Speaker 1: I'm to understand this is pronounced cat she or something

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Speaker 1: close to that that I'm unable to actually capture. So

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Speaker 1: this is sometimes described as a black cat that is

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Speaker 1: about the size of a large dog, and it's said

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Speaker 1: to have a white mark on its front, and visual

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Speaker 1: depictions of this it's often a white mark on the

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Speaker 1: cat's chest. According to Carol Rose and her Monster Encyclopedia books,

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Speaker 1: it's a rough, bristly creature and it's often seen arching

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Speaker 1: its back, so you know, classic Halloween cat scenario here,

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Speaker 1: and she points out that in Scottish Island traditions this

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Speaker 1: is sometimes thought to be the animal form of a witch.

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Speaker 1: And on that note, I do want to drive home

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Speaker 1: that a lot of the cat traditions in the British Isles,

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Speaker 1: and this implies elsewhere in the world too. Eventually a

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Speaker 1: lot of these pre existing pre Christian traditions eventually get

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Speaker 1: wound up in witchcraft lore that comes up about much later.

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Speaker 1: So you know, these ideas of which is familiar as

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Speaker 1: being cats and so forth.

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Speaker 3: The Grimalkin and stuff like that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and at times it can be difficult to

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Speaker 1: sort of remove all of that trying to get at

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Speaker 1: the the the much older ideas of various supernatural cat

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Speaker 1: like beings. Now, as far as the cat She itself goes,

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Speaker 1: I've been having a hard time finding solid sources for

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Speaker 1: these traditions, and this can This is often the case

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Speaker 1: with folk traditions. What are folk traditions? They are often

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Speaker 1: alive and carried on the tongue and not always recorded

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Speaker 1: or recorded all that well in the written form. But

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Speaker 1: the cat She is sometimes associated with the theft of

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Speaker 1: the soul from the newly dead. Sometimes the lore of

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Speaker 1: nine Lives is mentioned when talking about the cat She,

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Speaker 1: and again, like everything supernatural involving cats, in these parts,

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Speaker 1: it ends up factoring in details of witches and their

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Speaker 1: familiar as much later. Now. A related creature that Rose

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Speaker 1: brings up, though, is one that she refers to as

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Speaker 1: big Ears, a demonic cat with glowing yellow eyes that

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Speaker 1: in Highland traditions she says was summoned via Satanic seventeenth

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Speaker 1: century cat sacrifices known as the tam Now she uses

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Speaker 1: the word Satanic here, and I have no doubt that

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Speaker 1: this is how some sources end up describing it, because

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Speaker 1: again you get into the Christian tradition and the witchcraft

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Speaker 1: persecution era, and it all gets retold and reframed. But

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Speaker 1: apparently the Taguram might be more properly thought of as

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Speaker 1: an older Gaelic divination ceremony that when you dig into

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Speaker 1: it it often involves a hide and a river bank

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Speaker 1: or a waterfall, these implements used in order to seek

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Speaker 1: the guidance of an oracle, and then other times it

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Speaker 1: does involve the summoning of a supernatural cat, one of

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Speaker 1: the sots as I was looking at here for this

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Speaker 1: is a paper from twenty ten by andrew E. M.

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Speaker 1: Wiseman titled Catterwauling and demon Raising the Ancient Right of

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Speaker 1: the Tegurum. This was published in Scottish Studies thirty five

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Speaker 1: and it gets into a great deal of detail here.

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Speaker 1: If anyone out there wants to do a much deeper

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Speaker 1: dive into this topic, I recommend this paper. So. Wiseman

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Speaker 1: discusses that historically authors tended to associate this particular ride

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Speaker 1: with the Isle of Sky, and at least one historic

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Speaker 1: author described it as a practice of an extinguished race

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Speaker 1: of wicked people. To summarize, though, it seems that the

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Speaker 1: hide ritual was all about seeking divination via a person

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Speaker 1: that has been forced into an altered state of consciousness

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Speaker 1: through some possible mix of sensory deprivation and agitation. So

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Speaker 1: the individual would be covered with a hide sometimes described

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Speaker 1: as a fresh hide, so like freshly cut from a

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Speaker 1: cow or something, and then putting this hide on your

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Speaker 1: body you're somehow suspended between life and death.

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Speaker 3: Goody.

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Speaker 1: And then you would be placed in a remote spot,

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Speaker 1: perhaps on a riverbank or near a roaring waterfall, and

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Speaker 1: then perhaps poked or beaten with sticks of a particular

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Speaker 1: sort of wood, essentially terrorized until the question may be

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Speaker 1: put to you because you have now reached the oracular state.

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Speaker 1: So you're in this altered, agitated state, and they're like, okay,

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Speaker 1: he's ready, now ask him what we need to know

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Speaker 1: about the future.

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Speaker 3: Interesting to imagine the practical pressure to confabulate on a

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Speaker 3: person in that situation.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, In some ways, it's very different from our

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Speaker 1: modern ideas about altered states of consciousness, and even some

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Speaker 1: of the ancient ideas we may turn to involving oracles

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Speaker 1: and divination. You tend to think of an individual who's

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Speaker 1: in a very serene, calm environment. You don't think somebody

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Speaker 1: wrapped in a hide and then beaten with sticks on

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Speaker 1: a river bank. But then again, there are countless examples

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Speaker 1: of altered states of consciousness that are achieved through ritualistic means,

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Speaker 1: both ancient and modern primitive that entail pain or discomfort,

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Speaker 1: So you know, there are other examples of this. This

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Speaker 1: is not something that stands entirely on its own here.

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Speaker 3: I guess the difference from the stories of that sort

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Speaker 3: that I'm familiar with is that would often be a

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Speaker 3: self imposed kind of denial of comfort or of pleasures.

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Speaker 3: You know, I think of hermits or people living in

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Speaker 3: a setic lifestyle who, yeah, they might get into another

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Speaker 3: state by fasting or by doing something of their own will,

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Speaker 3: But here it's being imposed externally. They put a hide

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Speaker 3: on you, and people beat you a poke with sticks

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Speaker 3: and take you out to the lonely place. That just

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Speaker 3: feels like a totally different dynamic.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and this may just be my reading of it,

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Speaker 1: but I'm not entirely certain what degree of agency the

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Speaker 1: would be oracle here had, Like I don't know if

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Speaker 1: you were, And maybe this is just completely unknown if

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Speaker 1: you were selected for it or you were asked to

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Speaker 1: do it, or just what was the selection process like

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Speaker 1: for this, right?

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Speaker 3: Is it like, you know, it's not going to be fun,

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Speaker 3: but it's what I have to do to generate the

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Speaker 3: knowledge of the future or the information from the gods.

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Speaker 3: Or is it like this is what we do to

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Speaker 3: a prisoner to get knowledge of the future from them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so you can you can imagine it breaking

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Speaker 1: down in either direction. But some historians also associate this

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Speaker 1: or a similar practice with the Welsh, and it looks like,

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Speaker 1: however you slice it, it certainly does seem to be

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Speaker 1: a pre Christian, perhaps Druidic practice. So I want to

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Speaker 1: read a quote here from Wiseman where he sort of

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Speaker 1: summarizes some of these ideas about the takaram. He says, quote,

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Speaker 1: one can theorize that the methods employed in performing the

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Speaker 1: tagaram cause sensory deprivation or a continuation, and that this

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Speaker 1: in turn caused heightened mental awareness or consciousness, thus inducing

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Speaker 1: a trance like meditation receptive to higher or preternatural intelligences.

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Speaker 1: This type of method is common enough in shamanistic operations

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Speaker 1: where there is need to heighten concentration to dull normal

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Speaker 1: sensory input, control, breathing, and so forth, in order for

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Speaker 1: the desired effect to occur an alternate, usually higher state

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Speaker 1: of consciousness. Such a type of process may have, in

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Speaker 1: fact brought the practitioner into contact with the workings of

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Speaker 1: the subconsciousness or higher self rather than incorporeal elements.

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Speaker 3: Right, and this will be a familiar theme to longtime

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Speaker 3: listeners of this show. You know, there are plenty of

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Speaker 3: studies of different ways that people can achieve altered states

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Speaker 3: of consciousness, even basically psychedelic experiences, without the use of drugs.

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Speaker 3: You know, you don't necessarily have to take acid or

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Speaker 3: mushrooms to induce hallucinations in an otherwise mentally typical person.

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Speaker 3: You can do it. It can have and with certain kinds

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Speaker 3: of sensory deprivation or certain kinds of sensory stimulation. We've

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Speaker 3: talked about how common it is for people to have

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Speaker 3: hallucinations if they simply look in a mirror in a

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Speaker 3: dark room for long enough or Yeah, sensory deprivation going

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Speaker 3: into total darkness will tend to cause hallucinations over time. Now,

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Speaker 3: of course, this is not necessarily talking about hallucinations. This

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Speaker 3: is just talking about various sorts of mental phenomena thinking

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Speaker 3: you're receiving messages or something. But that seems like you

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Speaker 3: could work by a similar mechanism.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and I can also imagine this is taking off

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Speaker 1: as a new trend in Silicon Valley with various highly

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Speaker 1: placed individuals. Instead of microdose thing psilocymon, they just they

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Speaker 1: wrap themselves up very loosely in a hide every morning

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Speaker 1: and are at least lightly tapped.

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Speaker 3: With a stick. Have their interurns poke them.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, so that's the hide side of the

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Speaker 4: ritual of the takaram.

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Speaker 1: But what about the cats? Yes, there is also the

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Speaker 1: summoning of cats, and Wiseman acknowledges that this practice is

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Speaker 1: not easily set alongside the hide rights without a fair

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Speaker 1: amount of work. So it does seem it's rather different.

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Speaker 1: And one way that he describes it is kind of

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Speaker 1: it's another rite that you could do sometimes to check

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Speaker 1: the work of the hide ritual. So like, we put

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Speaker 1: this individual through all this and we got them to

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Speaker 1: the oracular state, we ask them this question about the

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Speaker 1: future or about you know, the will of the gods

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Speaker 1: or God, what have you? They gave us an answer,

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Speaker 1: but how do we know that is correct? Is there

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Speaker 1: perhaps another inhuman method that we could turn to in

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Speaker 1: order to also ask the question, and then we can

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Speaker 1: compare the answers.

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Speaker 3: Okay, trust, but verify? Yes.

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Speaker 1: Now, I want to issue a content content warning here

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Speaker 1: though I'm going to be discussing historic animal cruelty and

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Speaker 1: sacrifice in this section. I absolutely understand if you want

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Speaker 1: to skip ahead, maybe five minutes or so here, though

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Speaker 1: I will keep descriptions as PG as possible. Animal cruelty

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Speaker 1: is indefensible, especially in its most overt forms, but in

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Speaker 1: cases such as this, in which historical peoples seem to

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Speaker 1: have engaged in it for religio magical purposes, I imagine

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Speaker 1: we should at least try to place it within the

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Speaker 1: context of the times and try to imagine the perceived

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Speaker 1: stakes involved. Again, none of that makes it any easier

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Speaker 1: to swallow, though. All right, so you've been warned. I'm

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Speaker 1: going to proceed here. So what we're talking about here

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Speaker 1: is go ahead and pull off the band aid. Roasting

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Speaker 1: a live cat over a fire after it has been pierced,

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Speaker 1: skewered through in a way so as to not hit

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Speaker 1: any vital organs supposedly, and you can also see why

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Speaker 1: this practice was easily interpreted within the context of witchcraft

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Speaker 1: and devil worship as well, like the sacrifice of an animal,

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Speaker 1: the use of fire, and so forth. The idea here

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Speaker 1: boiling it down. And there are many different versions of

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Speaker 1: this and many different stories that involve it, but the

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Speaker 1: basic idea seems to be that by torturing like a

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Speaker 1: small normal cat, this might be like a wild cat

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Speaker 1: that you've that you've you've caught. By tormenting it, you

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Speaker 1: would summon a much larger, supernatural cat out of the

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Speaker 1: darkness along with its smaller kin. And then the question

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Speaker 1: might be put to this great cat or this king

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Speaker 1: of cats in exchange for the alleviation of the sacrificial

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Speaker 1: cats suffering.

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Speaker 3: WHOA, That is grim logic but interesting that yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 3: that you would think it worked that way, that the

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Speaker 3: small and pitiful beasts have large and magical patrons or cousins,

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Speaker 3: and that you can you can summon them to sort

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Speaker 3: of investigate the suffering of their kin.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, one thing, the one thing that I don't

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Speaker 1: have an answer to though, is, Okay, we've been talking

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Speaker 1: about the right involving the hide carrying that out. You're

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Speaker 1: probably you're dealing with a human being. So you're going

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Speaker 1: to reach a point where that human being tells you something.

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Speaker 1: They are going to answer your question, either because they've

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Speaker 1: reached some state of altered consciousness, or because they simply

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Speaker 1: want you to stop, perhaps hitting them with a stick,

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Speaker 1: or they don't want to wear the hide anymore. With this,

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Speaker 1: I mean, you're not going to actually summon a great

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Speaker 1: supernatural cat. You cannot summon that which does not exist.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I guess there are various ways you could

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Speaker 1: slice this. Maybe again, you're it's involving the human imagination.

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Speaker 1: Maybe it involves just speaking to the night and imagining

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Speaker 1: the answer. Maybe it is a situation where the calls

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Speaker 1: of a cat that is being tormented does call to

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Speaker 1: other cats in the vicinity, and you might see them

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Speaker 1: or hear them, and then somehow interpret that for your oracle.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't have any special insight about this, but

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Speaker 3: my but my OPRIORI guess would be that it would

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Speaker 3: yet again involve like somebody would be translating from this being.

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Speaker 3: You know, you might have a priest or shaman of

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Speaker 3: some type of figure who's saying like ah, yeah, here

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Speaker 3: the here is the cat, and it's speaking to me,

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Speaker 3: and this is what it's saying. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So I'm gonna have less to say about the actual

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Speaker 1: cat torment moving forward, because I think we've discussed that enough.

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Speaker 1: But the stories about it, some of these are rather interesting.

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Speaker 1: And again there are many different accounts, many different stories.

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Speaker 1: The one that Wiseman shares tells the story of a

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Speaker 1: man named Ewan who undergoes the ritual of the Cat

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Speaker 1: in order to find out this, and this seems rather ironic,

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Speaker 1: what amends he needs to do in order to write

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Speaker 1: his past misdeeds. So, like, I feel like I've done

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Speaker 1: some terrible things in the past. What can I do

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Speaker 1: to make those better? I'm going to torture this cat

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Speaker 1: so that I can find out.

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Speaker 3: It's like if going to confession and a Catholic church involved,

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Speaker 3: you know, like bashing the priest with a glass bottle.

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Speaker 3: It's like, Father, I have committed some kind of sin.

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Speaker 3: I'm not sure what it is. Help me figure it.

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Speaker 1: Out, all right. So, in the context of the story here, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he turns to this this this known right so that

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Speaker 1: he can find out what he needs to do. And

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Speaker 1: so he goes through the through all the steps, skewer

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Speaker 1: as a cat puts it over a fire, begins to

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Speaker 1: slowly roast this cat, which you know, it might be

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Speaker 1: a Scottish or European wild cat, but you know, I

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Speaker 1: guess it doesn't particularly matter. But he's he's torturing this cat,

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Speaker 1: roast in it, roasting it over the fire. It's turning

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Speaker 1: over the fire on a spit. And this does in

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Speaker 1: fact draw the attention of the Great King of the

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Speaker 1: Cats and his many feline attendants, and they kind of

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Speaker 1: like swell in number in the darkness outside of the

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Speaker 1: hut where he is carrying on with the spit and

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Speaker 1: the tortured cat. And interesting here it's described as a

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Speaker 1: very tense ceremony. So these cats have come with the

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Speaker 1: intent to not only free their fellow feline from torment,

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Speaker 1: but to also rip the human torture to bloody.

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Speaker 3: Shreds oh cat revenge.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's described here that Ewan is terrified as

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Speaker 1: he's doing this, like like these death is awaiting him outside,

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Speaker 1: but he knows that he absolutely has to quote keep

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Speaker 1: turning the spit or he's doomed. Like if he stops

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Speaker 1: turning the spit, then the cats will just descend on

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Speaker 1: him and so, and this reminds us of various, you know,

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Speaker 1: supernatural accounts where there's some sort of ritual involved, like

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Speaker 1: not breaking the magic circle or else the creatures that

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Speaker 1: you have summoned will destroy you.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, don't open your eyes.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So he keeps turning it, and then he treats

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Speaker 1: with the King of the Cats, and he asks the cat, hey,

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Speaker 1: what amends can I make for my wrongs in the

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Speaker 1: past and maybe a rather recent past? And he's told

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Speaker 1: to build seven churches. And so he releases the tormented cat,

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Speaker 1: and then the cat horde to depart with the tormented cat,

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Speaker 1: they jump into the river and they all.

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Speaker 3: Swim away into the river. Huh, we'll get back to this, right,

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Speaker 3: This will become a theme. Yeah, but a cat owners

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Speaker 3: out there. If you had a cat in distress, do

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Speaker 3: you think the first place it would likely jump to

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Speaker 3: would be into the water?

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Speaker 1: Probably not so. Wiseman discussedes that these rights may relate

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Speaker 1: to ancient worship of cat based deities among the pre

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Speaker 1: Christian Celts. He also writes that while the origins of

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Speaker 1: this ritual are obscure, there doesn't seem to be a

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Speaker 1: direct ancient source of the practice quote. There are too

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Speaker 1: many liminal elements within the tradition to dismiss it as

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Speaker 1: something which could be described as relatively new. It has

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Speaker 1: been argued that cats were venerated during pagan times, and

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Speaker 1: then during medieval times cats came to be associated with witchcraft.

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Speaker 1: He also notes that these practices and Christian era witchcraft

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Speaker 1: hysteria apparently resulted in large scale cat sacrifices that may

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Speaker 1: have actually increased the severity of the black plague. For

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Speaker 1: when the cats have all been sacrificed, who is going

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Speaker 1: to kill the rat that carries the flea? Oh wow,

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Speaker 1: so interesting food for thought there. Now there's no mention

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Speaker 1: in Wise Men of Big Ears. I'm not entirely sure

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Speaker 1: where big Ears comes from, but I want to come

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Speaker 1: back to this idea of the king of the cats

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Speaker 1: sometimes given a name, particularly the name of Erosan son

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Speaker 1: of Arosan in Irish traditions, and in fact, William Butler

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Speaker 1: Yeates included mention of Eroson in Irish fairy and folk

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Speaker 1: tales recounting the tale of Shan Shan, the Bard and

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Speaker 1: the King of the Cats.

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Speaker 3: Oh okay, I've read a good bit of Yates over

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Speaker 3: the years. But I don't I don't know this one.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a This is a story that he

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Speaker 1: accounted that he collected from other sources and includes here

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Speaker 1: in the book. And he includes a couple of cat stories.

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Speaker 1: The other cat story has a lot of humans blinding

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Speaker 1: each other with with hot pokers, and so I'm not

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Speaker 1: gonna I'm not gonna get into that one. But this

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Speaker 1: one about shan Chan is really good. It's it's ritually amusing,

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Speaker 1: pretty funny. So I'm gonna sort of summarize some elements

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Speaker 1: of it here and also read some quotes from Yates

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Speaker 1: as well. Okay, so we have shan Chan here. He's

436
00:24:26,400 --> 00:24:30,040
Speaker 1: a moody and righteous poet who has been invited to

437
00:24:30,200 --> 00:24:33,720
Speaker 1: King Guari's banquet, where all the other poets of Ireland

438
00:24:33,760 --> 00:24:36,359
Speaker 1: have gathered, and there's gonna be a lot of feasting,

439
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:39,520
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of one assumes a lot of

440
00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:44,120
Speaker 1: song and poetry. But shan Chan takes offense at how

441
00:24:44,280 --> 00:24:47,639
Speaker 1: well the nobles are eating and you know, how nice

442
00:24:47,680 --> 00:24:51,320
Speaker 1: everything is, and he ends up refusing all food and

443
00:24:51,400 --> 00:24:55,800
Speaker 1: drink and spends the time sulking instead. The king learns

444
00:24:55,800 --> 00:24:58,040
Speaker 1: about this, and he's He's like, why is shan Chan

445
00:24:58,119 --> 00:25:00,600
Speaker 1: over there sulking? And he's a great poet. This is

446
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:05,080
Speaker 1: all about celebrating poetry. So he calls for his own

447
00:25:05,119 --> 00:25:09,000
Speaker 1: favorite server, the king's favorite server, and says, bring this

448
00:25:09,040 --> 00:25:13,760
Speaker 1: food to shan Chen, and he does, and Shannchen rejects

449
00:25:13,760 --> 00:25:18,240
Speaker 1: the food and insults the server. So the king says, okay,

450
00:25:18,520 --> 00:25:20,919
Speaker 1: I'll send my own foster daughter over to him with

451
00:25:21,240 --> 00:25:24,640
Speaker 1: a fine salmon dish, and the poet also insults her

452
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:28,760
Speaker 1: and refuses the food, and so this finally pisses the

453
00:25:28,800 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 1: king off, and he wishes quote, may the kiss of

454
00:25:32,040 --> 00:25:34,879
Speaker 1: a leper be on Sean Chan's lips before he dies.

455
00:25:35,560 --> 00:25:36,400
Speaker 1: So he's had enough.

456
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:38,920
Speaker 3: I guess that was a really bad one back then.

457
00:25:41,080 --> 00:25:41,320
Speaker 4: Now.

458
00:25:41,520 --> 00:25:43,840
Speaker 1: While this is going on, though, finally a young serving

459
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:45,960
Speaker 1: girl comes up to shan Chen and says, hey, I've

460
00:25:45,960 --> 00:25:49,240
Speaker 1: got a hens egg I can bring you if that's enough.

461
00:25:49,359 --> 00:25:50,880
Speaker 1: I mean it's not much, but it's what I got

462
00:25:50,920 --> 00:25:54,480
Speaker 1: and he's like, okay, that will suffice. She goes to

463
00:25:54,520 --> 00:25:57,200
Speaker 1: fetch it, and then she comes back and says, actually, sorry,

464
00:25:57,240 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 1: the egg's gone. I can't offer that to you. And

465
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:03,680
Speaker 1: this that's sean Chan off. He immediately accuses the girl

466
00:26:03,680 --> 00:26:05,600
Speaker 1: of eating the eggs. He's like, oh, you couldn't bring

467
00:26:05,600 --> 00:26:08,600
Speaker 1: it because you ate it nice, And she said, no, no,

468
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 1: it wasn't me. It was probably the mice. They're mice

469
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:13,920
Speaker 1: all over this place. They probably ate the egg That's

470
00:26:13,920 --> 00:26:14,800
Speaker 1: probably what happened.

471
00:26:15,600 --> 00:26:17,520
Speaker 3: A lot of twist and turns in the story.

472
00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:21,400
Speaker 1: But the poet here, yeah, he's in a mood at

473
00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:24,520
Speaker 1: this point, and he says, then I will satirize them

474
00:26:24,880 --> 00:26:28,960
Speaker 1: in a poem, said Sean Shan, and forthwith he chanted

475
00:26:29,080 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 1: so bitter a satire against them, that ten mice fell

476
00:26:32,920 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: dead at once in his presence. WHOA, Yeah, I mean again,

477
00:26:37,119 --> 00:26:38,919
Speaker 1: this guy is a great poet.

478
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:41,240
Speaker 3: That's also a lot of mice to have just been

479
00:26:41,280 --> 00:26:42,400
Speaker 3: present anyway.

480
00:26:43,720 --> 00:26:45,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it did. I mean, that makes sense. That's

481
00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:46,800
Speaker 1: probably what happened to the egg.

482
00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:49,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, affair is a veritable schmorgasbord.

483
00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:54,120
Speaker 1: Now one assumes that shan Chan pauses, catches his breath

484
00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:56,360
Speaker 1: a little bit, but he's still in a foul mood

485
00:26:56,440 --> 00:26:58,920
Speaker 1: over all of this, and he continues, this is this

486
00:26:58,960 --> 00:27:02,560
Speaker 1: is from Yates tis well, said Sean Jan. But the

487
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:05,080
Speaker 1: cat is the one most to blame for it. Was

488
00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:09,800
Speaker 1: her duty to suppress the mice. Therefore, I shall satirize

489
00:27:10,200 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 1: the tribe of the cats and their chief lord, Urusan,

490
00:27:14,160 --> 00:27:17,280
Speaker 1: son of Arosan, for I know where he lives, with

491
00:27:17,359 --> 00:27:21,360
Speaker 1: his wife's spitfire, and his daughter Sharptooth, with her brothers,

492
00:27:21,600 --> 00:27:24,840
Speaker 1: the Purr and the Growler. But I shall begin with

493
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:28,320
Speaker 1: Rousan himself, for he is a king and answerable for

494
00:27:28,440 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 1: all the cats.

495
00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure my child made up these cat names.

496
00:27:33,320 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 1: It does sound a little bit like Cat's the musical, right.

497
00:27:36,080 --> 00:27:37,680
Speaker 3: He's the Purr and the growler.

498
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:41,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is already seeming like a bad decision.

499
00:27:41,280 --> 00:27:44,280
Speaker 1: But he's again, he's in a mood. He's gonna keep going.

500
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:49,000
Speaker 1: Quote and he said, rosan monster of claws, who strikes

501
00:27:49,000 --> 00:27:52,000
Speaker 1: at the mouse, but lets it go, weakest of cats,

502
00:27:52,240 --> 00:27:54,879
Speaker 1: the otter did well, who bit off the tips of

503
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:59,200
Speaker 1: thy progenitor's ears, so that every cat sens is jagged eared.

504
00:27:59,560 --> 00:28:02,800
Speaker 1: Let thy tale hang down. It is right for the

505
00:28:02,920 --> 00:28:06,800
Speaker 1: mouse jeers at thee. Now Erosan heard these words in

506
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:09,359
Speaker 1: his cave, and he said to his daughter, sharp tooth,

507
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:15,480
Speaker 1: Shanshan has satirized me, But I will be avenged. Nay, father,

508
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:18,400
Speaker 1: she said, bring him here alive, that we may all

509
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:21,760
Speaker 1: take our revenge. I shall go then and bring him,

510
00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:26,879
Speaker 1: said Eusan, So send thy brothers after me. So obviously

511
00:28:26,960 --> 00:28:29,800
Speaker 1: things are about to really get out of hand. Shan

512
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 1: Chhan gets the sense that this is about to happen,

513
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:34,760
Speaker 1: so he asked the king and all the people he's

514
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:37,920
Speaker 1: been insulting to protect him. But none of them can

515
00:28:37,960 --> 00:28:40,920
Speaker 1: protect him from the coming of the King of the cats.

516
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:46,040
Speaker 1: And there's this great description here where this is originally

517
00:28:46,200 --> 00:28:47,960
Speaker 1: all I was going to include, but then the story

518
00:28:48,040 --> 00:28:52,080
Speaker 1: was too good. But here's the description. And when the

519
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 1: cat appeared, he seemed to them the size of a bullock,

520
00:28:55,600 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 1: so a steer. And this was his appearance, rapacious, panting,

521
00:29:00,560 --> 00:29:08,800
Speaker 1: jagged eared, snub nosed, sharp toothed, nimble, angry, vindictive, glare eyed, terrible,

522
00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:13,480
Speaker 1: sharp clod. Such was his similitude. But he passed on

523
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:16,240
Speaker 1: amongst them, not minding till he came to Shan Shan

524
00:29:16,680 --> 00:29:18,920
Speaker 1: and him he seized by the arm and jerked him

525
00:29:19,040 --> 00:29:21,320
Speaker 1: up on his back and made off the way he

526
00:29:21,440 --> 00:29:24,680
Speaker 1: came before anyone could anyone could touch him, for he

527
00:29:24,800 --> 00:29:27,360
Speaker 1: had no other object in view but to get hold

528
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 1: of the poet. So he swept him up, He's taken

529
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:32,720
Speaker 1: him away. Okay, So at this point, the King of

530
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:35,200
Speaker 1: the Cats rides off into the night with the terrified

531
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:38,840
Speaker 1: poet on his back. Sean Shan, clearly in a tight spot,

532
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:44,080
Speaker 1: tries flattery. He starts on telling Irasan love what a

533
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:48,080
Speaker 1: marvelous beast he is, and this is not working, so

534
00:29:48,120 --> 00:29:51,280
Speaker 1: he invokes the saints, but Irasan is having none of it,

535
00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:53,719
Speaker 1: and he brings the bard straight to a forge at

536
00:29:53,720 --> 00:29:57,400
Speaker 1: a monastery, apparently so he can roast the poet within it.

537
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: And maybe there's some sort of maybe, maybe there's some

538
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 1: sort of intended twist here, right, the cat is not

539
00:30:04,520 --> 00:30:08,160
Speaker 1: being roasted here, the human is going to be roasted. Yeah,

540
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:11,120
Speaker 1: But at this point, who's hanging out here by the forge?

541
00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:14,320
Speaker 1: But Saint Kiran, one of the twelve Apostles of Ireland,

542
00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:17,760
Speaker 1: and he refuses to see such a fine poet incinerated,

543
00:30:18,000 --> 00:30:19,600
Speaker 1: so he hits the King of the Cats with a

544
00:30:19,640 --> 00:30:23,840
Speaker 1: bar of red hot iron, killing him, and then Sean

545
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:28,480
Speaker 1: Chan tells off the saint. He says, quote, I would

546
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 1: rather Irosan had killed me and eaten me every bit,

547
00:30:31,920 --> 00:30:35,680
Speaker 1: so that I might bring disgrace on guari the King

548
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 1: for the bad food he gave me for it was

549
00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:41,000
Speaker 1: all owing to his wretched dinners that I got into

550
00:30:41,000 --> 00:30:44,680
Speaker 1: this plight. I love that he's such a such a

551
00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 1: grumpus and just so committed to this grudge that he's like,

552
00:30:50,680 --> 00:30:53,280
Speaker 1: I wish you hadn't saved me because I'm just so

553
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:54,200
Speaker 1: mad at the king.

554
00:30:54,480 --> 00:30:56,760
Speaker 3: Amazing all time grouch. Yeah.

555
00:30:56,880 --> 00:30:59,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, But anyway, the story ends up with the king

556
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:02,240
Speaker 1: and the art eventually make up and Sean Jen gets

557
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:04,320
Speaker 1: on it gets an honored seed at all the feasts

558
00:31:04,360 --> 00:31:07,400
Speaker 1: moving forward. So in a way, I feel like the

559
00:31:07,440 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 1: King of the Cats really catches astray in this in

560
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:11,880
Speaker 1: the story, if you ask me, Like he was just

561
00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:14,440
Speaker 1: kind of mining his own business until he was just

562
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:17,760
Speaker 1: wretchedly insulted by this poet. And you know, he couldn't

563
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:19,480
Speaker 1: He's the king. He can't just stand there and let

564
00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:22,440
Speaker 1: this pass. He has to go off and kill this poet,

565
00:31:22,640 --> 00:31:25,120
Speaker 1: and he gets just drawn into all of this drama.

566
00:31:25,280 --> 00:31:27,840
Speaker 3: But so do you think this captures the spirit of

567
00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:30,720
Speaker 3: the King of Cats that is summoned by that the

568
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:33,960
Speaker 3: horrible ritual, Like it's the same sort of being as

569
00:31:33,960 --> 00:31:34,800
Speaker 3: being imagined.

570
00:31:35,040 --> 00:31:38,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, here given you know, given treatment within an amusing

571
00:31:38,320 --> 00:31:41,360
Speaker 1: story that I is clearly playing for laughs and places.

572
00:31:42,440 --> 00:31:45,000
Speaker 1: But yeah, they both seem to get at this idea

573
00:31:45,080 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 1: of some sort of a great cat, some sort of

574
00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:53,520
Speaker 1: a supernatural cat being that has knowledge, uh, you know,

575
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:57,840
Speaker 1: beyond that of a of a mortal so something like

576
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:01,160
Speaker 1: a god, perhaps like Wiseman pointing out, connected to some

577
00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:06,720
Speaker 1: sort of a feline deity of you know, of pagan, dridic,

578
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:10,640
Speaker 1: pre Christian origin. So it's yeah, it's interesting to see

579
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:12,400
Speaker 1: that you kind of see it like peeking out of

580
00:32:12,440 --> 00:32:14,800
Speaker 1: the out ofus, you know, almost like a cat in

581
00:32:14,800 --> 00:32:17,040
Speaker 1: the night, but it's peaking out of adadus from these

582
00:32:17,120 --> 00:32:18,920
Speaker 1: various folk tales and traditions.

583
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, that takes a fence and comes to the aid

584
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:25,520
Speaker 3: of its smaller, more mundane brethren, and that we can,

585
00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:29,960
Speaker 3: at our peril, get its attention by irritating or harming

586
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:30,960
Speaker 3: those little brethren.

587
00:32:31,680 --> 00:32:34,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that in its you know that that feels

588
00:32:34,520 --> 00:32:36,760
Speaker 1: very twisted in so many ways, right, because on one hand,

589
00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:38,840
Speaker 1: it seems like it should be a cautionary tale don't

590
00:32:38,840 --> 00:32:41,000
Speaker 1: mistreat a cat because the King of the cats could

591
00:32:41,040 --> 00:32:42,760
Speaker 1: come for you. But then it gets turned into a

592
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:45,160
Speaker 1: whole ritual. It's like, well, we're counting on that because

593
00:32:45,160 --> 00:32:48,240
Speaker 1: we actually need some sage advice from the King of

594
00:32:48,280 --> 00:32:50,360
Speaker 1: the cats. But we've got to play it just right

595
00:32:50,440 --> 00:32:51,800
Speaker 1: otherwise he'll destroy us.

596
00:32:52,080 --> 00:32:54,200
Speaker 3: But the advice is always just going to be build

597
00:32:54,280 --> 00:32:57,160
Speaker 3: seven churches. What it's going to tell you that every time?

598
00:32:57,320 --> 00:32:57,880
Speaker 3: You already know.

599
00:32:58,840 --> 00:33:00,680
Speaker 1: That's why there's just so many over there.

600
00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:13,280
Speaker 3: Now, I guess, okay, are you ready to shift to

601
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:14,680
Speaker 3: a new supernatural cat?

602
00:33:15,080 --> 00:33:16,560
Speaker 1: Let us summon it out of the dark.

603
00:33:16,880 --> 00:33:19,040
Speaker 3: I would like to take a look at a monster

604
00:33:19,160 --> 00:33:24,360
Speaker 3: cat that appears in Welsh folklore and Arthurian literature, known

605
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:28,600
Speaker 3: as cath polyg if you're trying to look it up. Unfortunately,

606
00:33:28,640 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 3: there are a bunch of different spelling and pronunciation variants

607
00:33:31,840 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 3: for the name of this creature. Usually the cat part

608
00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:36,960
Speaker 3: of the name is spelled with the thch at the end,

609
00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:40,320
Speaker 3: like Kathy without the y, so cat or cath, and

610
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 3: then the second word in the name could be pa

611
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:45,800
Speaker 3: l u s b A l u g b a

612
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:48,040
Speaker 3: l u s something like that, but I think it's

613
00:33:48,040 --> 00:33:53,040
Speaker 3: pronounced cat polog. The name comes from Welsh and it

614
00:33:53,120 --> 00:33:57,400
Speaker 3: is usually at least in the mainline tradition taken to

615
00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 3: mean Pollug's cat, as in a cat below, looking to

616
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:04,920
Speaker 3: a proper noun polag. There is also a French literary

617
00:34:05,000 --> 00:34:10,280
Speaker 3: variation known as Kappalou or Chappalou, which by a false etymology,

618
00:34:10,360 --> 00:34:13,200
Speaker 3: seems to have evolved to mean a bog cat. Will

619
00:34:13,200 --> 00:34:14,719
Speaker 3: come back to that in a bit, because I think

620
00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:20,120
Speaker 3: that's interesting. In some stories, cath Pollog is a monster

621
00:34:20,320 --> 00:34:24,440
Speaker 3: cat that does battle with a hero from Arthurian legend

622
00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:29,799
Speaker 3: named k sometimes spelled c Ai or Cei or Kay.

623
00:34:30,520 --> 00:34:33,360
Speaker 1: Yeah. Fans of the nineteen sixty three Disney film The

624
00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:36,279
Speaker 1: Sword in the Stone will remember this character. This is

625
00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:39,000
Speaker 1: based on the nineteen thirty eight novel by T. H. White,

626
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:41,600
Speaker 1: but it plays a prominent role in that picture.

627
00:34:41,800 --> 00:34:44,279
Speaker 3: The version in The Sword in the Stone is very

628
00:34:44,360 --> 00:34:48,080
Speaker 3: much the k you get in later Arthurian literature, where

629
00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:53,400
Speaker 3: he is an obnoxious, loudmouth bully Arthur's older foster brother,

630
00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:57,360
Speaker 3: but he's also he's a buffoon. In these earlier Arthur stories,

631
00:34:57,440 --> 00:35:02,360
Speaker 3: K is a much more honorable and uncomplicatedly heroic character.

632
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:06,920
Speaker 3: But Kath Palack's enemy is not always Kay. In some

633
00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:11,600
Speaker 3: later yarns, the creature is fought by King Arthur himself,

634
00:35:11,680 --> 00:35:15,880
Speaker 3: and especially in some French tellings, the cat actually wins

635
00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:18,799
Speaker 3: this fight. What kills Arthur. We're gonna have to come

636
00:35:18,880 --> 00:35:19,399
Speaker 3: back to that.

637
00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:23,360
Speaker 1: This is crazy. Is that is not any version of

638
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:26,080
Speaker 1: the theory and legend that I've ever read or seemed

639
00:35:26,080 --> 00:35:26,920
Speaker 1: committed to film.

640
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:30,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, don't remember that from Sword in the Stone. But

641
00:35:30,719 --> 00:35:34,240
Speaker 3: so for more information on kath Pallag, I was trying

642
00:35:34,239 --> 00:35:36,200
Speaker 3: to find a solid source and I eventually settled on

643
00:35:36,239 --> 00:35:39,719
Speaker 3: a good one. So it's a twenty fourteen edition of

644
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:43,319
Speaker 3: the Triads of the Island of Britain, edited by a

645
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:47,200
Speaker 3: scholar named Rachel Bromwich from the University of Wales Press,

646
00:35:47,239 --> 00:35:51,160
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen. So this book is a translation of the

647
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:56,640
Speaker 3: Welsh Triads. Very interesting literary form that I really didn't

648
00:35:56,680 --> 00:35:59,480
Speaker 3: know anything about before this. So it's a literary form

649
00:35:59,640 --> 00:36:03,640
Speaker 3: preserve served in Middle Welsh manuscripts from the medieval period,

650
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:08,160
Speaker 3: where you would essentially have three names of people or

651
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 3: things listed together under a common conceptual grouping. So examples

652
00:36:14,160 --> 00:36:17,760
Speaker 3: would be three generous men of the Island of Britain,

653
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:20,000
Speaker 3: and then it would give you a list of three names,

654
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:23,840
Speaker 3: all with an epithet the generous. You know Mordaff the generous.

655
00:36:25,120 --> 00:36:28,360
Speaker 3: A lot of these are lists of famous people, lists

656
00:36:28,360 --> 00:36:31,080
Speaker 3: of chieftains or rich people who add a lot of

657
00:36:31,120 --> 00:36:35,120
Speaker 3: sheep or something, or warriors and heroes from history and

658
00:36:35,160 --> 00:36:40,240
Speaker 3: from legend. Some of them are interesting, They've got interesting names,

659
00:36:40,280 --> 00:36:42,160
Speaker 3: and they're kind of confusing. One I remember I came

660
00:36:42,200 --> 00:36:45,480
Speaker 3: across in this book is three slaughter Blocks of the

661
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:48,279
Speaker 3: Island of Britain. But I think it's not actually talking

662
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:51,160
Speaker 3: about literal blocks. From the notes, it seems this means

663
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:54,160
Speaker 3: like a leader who stands his ground firmly in battle.

664
00:36:55,080 --> 00:36:58,360
Speaker 3: Another one that was funny was three Frivolous Bards of

665
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:02,279
Speaker 3: the Island of Britain. And some of these contain not

666
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:07,600
Speaker 3: only three names with epithets, some actually have whole narratives attached.

667
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:11,320
Speaker 3: So where does kath Pallag come in? The kath Pallag

668
00:37:11,480 --> 00:37:16,239
Speaker 3: creature is referenced in a narrative attached to one of

669
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:20,360
Speaker 3: these Middle Welsh triads, specifically number twenty six in this edition,

670
00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:25,840
Speaker 3: called three Powerful Swine Herds of the Island of Britain.

671
00:37:27,040 --> 00:37:29,359
Speaker 3: This triad, this is one of the ones that has

672
00:37:29,360 --> 00:37:32,120
Speaker 3: some story attached to it, and it's talking about these

673
00:37:32,280 --> 00:37:37,560
Speaker 3: awesome dudes who commanded awesome legions of swine, and it

674
00:37:37,680 --> 00:37:43,280
Speaker 3: leads into a story about Henwin Hnwn Henwin, a mythical

675
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:48,000
Speaker 3: magical monster pig whose name means old White. I think

676
00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:51,279
Speaker 3: we might have referenced Old White or Henwen in our

677
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:53,799
Speaker 3: series on the Hogs of Hell last year.

678
00:37:54,280 --> 00:37:57,640
Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah, I remember at least reading about

679
00:37:57,920 --> 00:38:01,240
Speaker 1: King Arthur chasing pigs all over the British Isles.

680
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:04,560
Speaker 3: Right, So here I'm going to read from Bromwich's translation

681
00:38:04,640 --> 00:38:07,239
Speaker 3: of the Triad narrative, and please forgive my attempts to

682
00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:11,800
Speaker 3: pronounce these Middle Welsh names here, I'm doing my best.

683
00:38:12,000 --> 00:38:14,560
Speaker 3: So it's listing the three great swineherds, and it gets

684
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:16,759
Speaker 3: to the third one, and then it says, and the

685
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:20,680
Speaker 3: third call son of koul Ruey, with the swine of

686
00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:25,200
Speaker 3: Dolweir Dalbin in Glenn dahlwere in Cornwall, and one of

687
00:38:25,239 --> 00:38:29,080
Speaker 3: the swine was pregnant. Henwin was her name, And it

688
00:38:29,120 --> 00:38:31,680
Speaker 3: was prophesied that the island of Britain would be the

689
00:38:31,760 --> 00:38:35,799
Speaker 3: worse for the womb burden. Then Arthur assembled the army

690
00:38:35,840 --> 00:38:38,440
Speaker 3: of the Island of Britain and set out to seek

691
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:42,960
Speaker 3: to destroy her. So now being hunted, Henwin goes on

692
00:38:43,080 --> 00:38:45,719
Speaker 3: to give birth to a pharaoh. It says, in order

693
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:48,160
Speaker 3: to give birth, she goes into the sea. But then

694
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:51,239
Speaker 3: later it's describing where these creatures are born, and it

695
00:38:51,239 --> 00:38:53,640
Speaker 3: sounds like it's different locations on land, so it's kind

696
00:38:53,680 --> 00:38:56,640
Speaker 3: of confusing. Maybe she gets to these locations by sea

697
00:38:56,680 --> 00:39:00,919
Speaker 3: travel in between giving birth to them. Yeah, it comes

698
00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:04,280
Speaker 3: back on land to have each batch or something. But anyway,

699
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:06,760
Speaker 3: it says she ends up giving birth to a grain

700
00:39:06,840 --> 00:39:09,920
Speaker 3: of wheat and a bee, and it explains that's why

701
00:39:10,040 --> 00:39:14,200
Speaker 3: one location has good wheat crops. And then at another

702
00:39:14,200 --> 00:39:16,920
Speaker 3: place she gives birth to a grain of barley and

703
00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:20,760
Speaker 3: a grain of wheat, and that's again some crop related

704
00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:24,879
Speaker 3: futures there. But then things start getting bad. She gives

705
00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:28,080
Speaker 3: birth to a wolf, cub and a young eagle, and

706
00:39:28,120 --> 00:39:30,400
Speaker 3: it says these monsters are sent to different parts of

707
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:33,439
Speaker 3: the British Isles, and you know, cause much trouble there.

708
00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:37,480
Speaker 3: And then from here we learn quote and at Landfair

709
00:39:37,640 --> 00:39:41,000
Speaker 3: in our fun under the black Rock, she brought forth

710
00:39:41,040 --> 00:39:44,440
Speaker 3: a kitten, and the powerful swineherd threw it from the

711
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:48,000
Speaker 3: rock into the sea, and the sons of Polyag fostered

712
00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:51,279
Speaker 3: it in Man to their own harm, and that was

713
00:39:51,360 --> 00:39:54,280
Speaker 3: Polyg's cat, and it was one of the three great

714
00:39:54,360 --> 00:39:58,160
Speaker 3: oppressions of Man nurtured therein. So it brings it all

715
00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:00,680
Speaker 3: back to another triad, three great a press of Man.

716
00:40:01,600 --> 00:40:04,520
Speaker 3: So yes, this monster cat, first of all born not

717
00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:07,319
Speaker 3: to a previous generation of monster cats, but to one

718
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:12,600
Speaker 3: very special swine some pig Man seems to be a

719
00:40:12,800 --> 00:40:17,440
Speaker 3: reference to a place. This a real place now called Anglesey,

720
00:40:17,520 --> 00:40:20,280
Speaker 3: which is a large island just off the northwest coast

721
00:40:20,280 --> 00:40:23,560
Speaker 3: of Wales. So if you're trying to picture it on

722
00:40:23,600 --> 00:40:27,120
Speaker 3: a map, yeah, the cat Poalag's hunting grounds. It was

723
00:40:27,280 --> 00:40:30,759
Speaker 3: up on Anglesey, and especially I think around the sort

724
00:40:30,760 --> 00:40:35,000
Speaker 3: of mainland facing coast of that island. It was said

725
00:40:35,040 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 3: that it could swim the straits. However, despite the fact

726
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:43,120
Speaker 3: that in the core text here Pallag is treated as

727
00:40:43,160 --> 00:40:45,880
Speaker 3: a proper name, it is a person to which the

728
00:40:45,920 --> 00:40:50,239
Speaker 3: cat belongs Pallag's cat, there also seems to be a

729
00:40:50,360 --> 00:40:55,880
Speaker 3: more descriptive etymology that some scholars have proposed. Bromwich points

730
00:40:55,880 --> 00:41:01,360
Speaker 3: out that the Middle Welsh word pallock or baloch comes

731
00:41:01,400 --> 00:41:06,439
Speaker 3: from a root word which means to dig, pierce wound, hit,

732
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:10,280
Speaker 3: scratch or claw, so it's kind of an all purpose

733
00:41:10,400 --> 00:41:15,000
Speaker 3: striking and gouging verb. And Bromwich cites another scholar named

734
00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:19,080
Speaker 3: Lloyd Jones, who argues that pollock was originally an adjectival

735
00:41:19,239 --> 00:41:24,000
Speaker 3: descriptor of the cat, as in scratching cat. So kat

736
00:41:24,080 --> 00:41:26,440
Speaker 3: pallag not the cat that belongs to pallick, but the

737
00:41:26,480 --> 00:41:30,120
Speaker 3: scratching cat. The aren't most cats scratching cats?

738
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:33,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you look at them the wrong way.

739
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:36,919
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's supposed to make this monster cat

740
00:41:37,040 --> 00:41:40,080
Speaker 3: sound dangerous and deadly. So maybe scratching isn't the best

741
00:41:40,120 --> 00:41:43,160
Speaker 3: English translation in terms of connotations. Maybe it should be

742
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:45,240
Speaker 3: like striking or gouging cat.

743
00:41:46,000 --> 00:41:48,759
Speaker 1: Perhaps some more severe version of scratching, because you can

744
00:41:48,760 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 1: get a pretty friendly scratch from even a very nice cat,

745
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:54,080
Speaker 1: but a gouging is different.

746
00:41:54,480 --> 00:41:56,680
Speaker 3: As I said earlier, this version of the story does

747
00:41:56,719 --> 00:41:58,919
Speaker 3: not say how big the cat is though, so maybe

748
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:01,520
Speaker 3: maybe it is scratching. Maybe we should understand it that way,

749
00:42:02,480 --> 00:42:05,560
Speaker 3: but anyway, The name of the caath polaic here may

750
00:42:05,600 --> 00:42:09,800
Speaker 3: also have survived in the common name for an herb

751
00:42:10,239 --> 00:42:16,080
Speaker 3: called pallagspaul, known in English as silverweed. So apart from

752
00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:20,720
Speaker 3: this triad about very powerful swineherds. The only other early

753
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:25,320
Speaker 3: reference to Catho polog in written sources is a tenth

754
00:42:25,440 --> 00:42:30,040
Speaker 3: or eleventh century old Welsh poem called pah Gurr, which

755
00:42:30,239 --> 00:42:34,480
Speaker 3: only exists in a fragmentary state now. And this poem

756
00:42:34,840 --> 00:42:38,359
Speaker 3: is in one passage it's talking about the adventures of

757
00:42:38,520 --> 00:42:41,240
Speaker 3: k Again, we're back to Kay, who later would become

758
00:42:41,640 --> 00:42:45,759
Speaker 3: Arthur's buffoonish older foster brother. In this earlier story about k,

759
00:42:46,120 --> 00:42:51,040
Speaker 3: it says, quote fair Ka went to Man to destroy monsters.

760
00:42:51,800 --> 00:42:55,240
Speaker 3: And the word here that it uses is luon, which

761
00:42:56,200 --> 00:42:59,759
Speaker 3: the authors have suggested might possibly be in some way

762
00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:02,560
Speaker 3: related to the word lions, So it seems to refer

763
00:43:02,640 --> 00:43:06,920
Speaker 3: to monsters here. But it goes on to say his

764
00:43:07,040 --> 00:43:11,160
Speaker 3: shield was a fragment against cath Pallag. When people ask

765
00:43:11,440 --> 00:43:15,640
Speaker 3: who killed kath Pallag, nine score fierce men fell for

766
00:43:15,719 --> 00:43:20,480
Speaker 3: its food, nine score warriors. All right, So this this

767
00:43:20,719 --> 00:43:23,560
Speaker 3: cat killed one hundred and eighty warriors, and then the

768
00:43:23,680 --> 00:43:28,080
Speaker 3: night Ka probably killed it, at least that's what's implied.

769
00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:30,359
Speaker 3: The version of the poem we have here cuts off

770
00:43:30,360 --> 00:43:32,360
Speaker 3: in the middle of the tail, so we don't actually

771
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:34,800
Speaker 3: get the part where he kills it if he does,

772
00:43:34,920 --> 00:43:37,880
Speaker 3: but that seems to be implied because Kay like survives

773
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:38,960
Speaker 3: the encounter, and.

774
00:43:38,920 --> 00:43:42,600
Speaker 1: That's usually where these stories go with yeah somes, not

775
00:43:42,640 --> 00:43:43,520
Speaker 1: always but often.

776
00:43:44,480 --> 00:43:47,600
Speaker 3: In another later Welsh source, there's a reference to a

777
00:43:47,640 --> 00:43:51,040
Speaker 3: monster cat in Anglesey, which may be the same creature.

778
00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 3: It's not called kath Pallag, but it says may the

779
00:43:55,080 --> 00:43:59,360
Speaker 3: speckled cat and her strangers make an uproar? Seems to

780
00:43:59,400 --> 00:44:01,080
Speaker 3: be phrased the kind of curse.

781
00:44:01,880 --> 00:44:04,000
Speaker 1: That in that of course, that makes me think about

782
00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:06,440
Speaker 1: these ideas of like a king of cats and its

783
00:44:06,440 --> 00:44:10,000
Speaker 1: attendants in the night, which I want to mention I

784
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 1: think it was. Wiseman pointed out that there are also

785
00:44:12,160 --> 00:44:16,480
Speaker 1: some tellings in which that particular cat is described as

786
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:20,320
Speaker 1: not being attended by other cats, but even but perhaps

787
00:44:20,360 --> 00:44:24,040
Speaker 1: even by like humans holding their own heads. So you

788
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:27,840
Speaker 1: maybe get some mixed ideas of like are these demons?

789
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:32,239
Speaker 1: Are these specters of the grave? And so forth? And

790
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:35,000
Speaker 1: certainly the speckled cat and her strangers makes me think

791
00:44:35,080 --> 00:44:37,320
Speaker 1: of that, like who are these strangers? Are the other cats?

792
00:44:37,320 --> 00:44:39,800
Speaker 1: Are they? You know? Phantoms from beyond?

793
00:44:40,080 --> 00:44:42,120
Speaker 3: That's all. That's a ten out of ten band name

794
00:44:42,160 --> 00:44:48,160
Speaker 3: as well. Yes, it's just like the marquee at the Masquerade.

795
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:51,640
Speaker 3: But so Bromwich says that the cat Pollag legend is

796
00:44:51,960 --> 00:44:56,720
Speaker 3: probably related to another cat monster, a horrible sea cat

797
00:44:56,880 --> 00:45:01,319
Speaker 3: from Irish folklore called the Merchada. And this beast gets

798
00:45:01,320 --> 00:45:03,800
Speaker 3: a description in the Lives of the Saints from the

799
00:45:03,800 --> 00:45:06,440
Speaker 3: Book of Lismore, in a subsection on the life of

800
00:45:06,440 --> 00:45:09,879
Speaker 3: Saint Brendan that Bromwich includes in her EndNote. So I'm

801
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:11,720
Speaker 3: going to read from that here to give an idea

802
00:45:13,000 --> 00:45:17,320
Speaker 3: talking about Saint Brendan. It says there is a great

803
00:45:17,360 --> 00:45:20,279
Speaker 3: sea cat here, like a young ox or like a

804
00:45:20,320 --> 00:45:23,960
Speaker 3: three year old horse, overgrown by feeding on the fish

805
00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:27,200
Speaker 3: of this sea and this island. And then there's a

806
00:45:27,200 --> 00:45:29,239
Speaker 3: part where the monster is said to be chasing the

807
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:31,760
Speaker 3: saint's boat. I think Saint Brendan was like a sailor

808
00:45:31,800 --> 00:45:35,800
Speaker 3: and a navigator. And it says bigger than a brazen cauldron.

809
00:45:35,960 --> 00:45:39,160
Speaker 3: Was each of his eyes a bores tusks, had he

810
00:45:39,920 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 3: furzy hair upon him. And when I saw a furzy

811
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:45,040
Speaker 3: I was like, is that a TYPEO? No, that is

812
00:45:45,080 --> 00:45:49,480
Speaker 3: not a type furze. F r Ze means the thorny

813
00:45:49,520 --> 00:45:53,040
Speaker 3: foliage on an evergreen shrub, so think of a cat,

814
00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:56,640
Speaker 3: a monstrous sea cat with like evergreen kind of pine

815
00:45:56,640 --> 00:46:01,680
Speaker 3: needle hair or brambly hair. And then it goes on

816
00:46:01,719 --> 00:46:03,839
Speaker 3: to say he had the maw of a leopard, with

817
00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:07,680
Speaker 3: the strength of a lion and the veracity of a hound,

818
00:46:08,000 --> 00:46:10,520
Speaker 3: which the comparisons kind of lose steam for me there

819
00:46:10,520 --> 00:46:13,520
Speaker 3: at the end, because it's saying this monstrous cat had

820
00:46:13,560 --> 00:46:16,520
Speaker 3: a mouth like a big cat. You know, it had

821
00:46:16,560 --> 00:46:19,600
Speaker 3: a mouth like a lion. So it was like a lion,

822
00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:21,000
Speaker 3: like the real animal, like.

823
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:24,520
Speaker 1: WHI, she is a cat, But it is to be clear,

824
00:46:24,640 --> 00:46:26,920
Speaker 1: some sort of sea creature in this.

825
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:29,439
Speaker 3: That's what they're saying here. Yeah, so this monster cat

826
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:32,960
Speaker 3: is said to live in the sea. Kath Pallack also

827
00:46:33,040 --> 00:46:37,480
Speaker 3: apparently has sea related powers, since it is said to

828
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:40,719
Speaker 3: swim the Mini Straits, the waterway that separates the Isle

829
00:46:40,760 --> 00:46:44,960
Speaker 3: of Anglesea from the mainland of Whales. We don't know

830
00:46:45,160 --> 00:46:48,759
Speaker 3: exactly how much of the story of cath Pallack is

831
00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:53,239
Speaker 3: influenced by these Irish cat beast tails, but they seem

832
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:57,799
Speaker 3: probably related. There are more sources on these Irish monster cats,

833
00:46:57,800 --> 00:47:00,839
Speaker 3: and Bromwich says that they were sometimes sort of a

834
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:03,920
Speaker 3: ware cat a human being who has been bewitched, or

835
00:47:04,239 --> 00:47:08,239
Speaker 3: one who can magically transform themselves with a cat skin disguise.

836
00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:12,560
Speaker 3: They sometimes guard hidden treasure troves, so that's kind of cool. Again,

837
00:47:12,600 --> 00:47:15,640
Speaker 3: this is not necessarily cath Pallag, but the Irish ones.

838
00:47:15,680 --> 00:47:20,240
Speaker 3: They guard treasure troves, and they are sometimes witnessed coming

839
00:47:20,320 --> 00:47:24,240
Speaker 3: out of she mounds. These would be hills where fairies

840
00:47:24,360 --> 00:47:27,279
Speaker 3: or elves dwell underneath the earth. They thought of his

841
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:41,279
Speaker 3: portals to the hidden world. Now I mentioned earlier the

842
00:47:41,360 --> 00:47:46,320
Speaker 3: French variation on caath Pallag, the Capellou or the Chappalou.

843
00:47:47,040 --> 00:47:50,640
Speaker 3: Whereas in Welsh texts the slayer of the cat is

844
00:47:50,800 --> 00:47:55,760
Speaker 3: k in some medieval French Arthurian romances it is actually

845
00:47:56,120 --> 00:48:00,040
Speaker 3: Arthur himself, King Arthur, who fights the creature and so

846
00:48:00,160 --> 00:48:04,839
Speaker 3: sometimes loses the fight disastrously. So I'm going to start

847
00:48:04,880 --> 00:48:08,600
Speaker 3: with that version. So from a late twelfth century text

848
00:48:09,040 --> 00:48:13,640
Speaker 3: known as Romance de France, describing a poem in which

849
00:48:13,719 --> 00:48:17,160
Speaker 3: this story is told, the author says, quote, the French

850
00:48:17,160 --> 00:48:20,000
Speaker 3: have made a poem about him, that King Arthur was

851
00:48:20,040 --> 00:48:23,640
Speaker 3: pushed by Capellalou into the bog and the cat killed

852
00:48:23,680 --> 00:48:27,040
Speaker 3: him in war, then passed over to England and was

853
00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:29,880
Speaker 3: not slow to conquer it, then wore the crown in

854
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:32,920
Speaker 3: the land and was the lord of the country. Where

855
00:48:32,920 --> 00:48:35,840
Speaker 3: did they get such a tale? It is a proven lie,

856
00:48:36,080 --> 00:48:40,400
Speaker 3: God knows.

857
00:48:40,800 --> 00:48:42,520
Speaker 1: I love that. That's amazing.

858
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 3: It is not true.

859
00:48:45,120 --> 00:48:49,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm very much imagining the French people from Monty

860
00:48:49,360 --> 00:48:53,120
Speaker 1: Python in the Holy Grail here creating a scandalous story

861
00:48:53,120 --> 00:48:55,920
Speaker 1: about a cat killing King Arthur and becoming the King

862
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:57,040
Speaker 1: of the Britons. Yeah.

863
00:48:57,080 --> 00:48:58,640
Speaker 3: I want to come back to that the question of

864
00:48:58,680 --> 00:49:02,520
Speaker 3: how to take this story. But another interesting thing in

865
00:49:02,600 --> 00:49:05,880
Speaker 3: the secondhand description of the story here the fight takes

866
00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:08,560
Speaker 3: place in a bog or in a swamp, which in

867
00:49:08,600 --> 00:49:11,600
Speaker 3: the French language would have been in la palou, meaning

868
00:49:11,760 --> 00:49:16,120
Speaker 3: in the bog. Bromwich writes that this is evidence that,

869
00:49:16,480 --> 00:49:22,719
Speaker 3: by way of a false etymology, the French misunderstood kathpollog

870
00:49:22,840 --> 00:49:27,440
Speaker 3: to mean bog cat, and note that this allows the

871
00:49:27,680 --> 00:49:31,760
Speaker 3: capellou or chappalou to retain the characteristics of a water

872
00:49:32,000 --> 00:49:37,120
Speaker 3: monster like the Irish sea cats. These false folk etymologies

873
00:49:37,120 --> 00:49:39,640
Speaker 3: are always really interesting to me. We've talked about a

874
00:49:39,719 --> 00:49:41,319
Speaker 3: number of them on the show before. I know one

875
00:49:41,320 --> 00:49:45,360
Speaker 3: that's come up is the English. This is certainly the

876
00:49:45,400 --> 00:49:49,560
Speaker 3: case for English speakers. Is the word muskrat. People assume

877
00:49:50,280 --> 00:49:53,279
Speaker 3: that because of the way the name sounds, it must

878
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:56,840
Speaker 3: be a rat that produces a musk, meaning a smelly rat.

879
00:49:57,200 --> 00:50:01,080
Speaker 3: But actually muskrat is an English trans literation of an

880
00:50:01,080 --> 00:50:04,160
Speaker 3: Algonquin word. And so it seems like that may have

881
00:50:04,200 --> 00:50:07,680
Speaker 3: been going on with the French understanding of capealou here

882
00:50:07,719 --> 00:50:11,160
Speaker 3: that it's like sounds like the French for cat from

883
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:13,959
Speaker 3: a bog bog cat, so that's what they thought it meant.

884
00:50:14,000 --> 00:50:16,680
Speaker 3: So the stories are set in a bog or a swamp.

885
00:50:16,719 --> 00:50:19,400
Speaker 1: Wow, and that ends up coloring the shape of the

886
00:50:19,760 --> 00:50:20,319
Speaker 1: folk tale.

887
00:50:21,400 --> 00:50:25,120
Speaker 3: The French bog cat was like some of these Irish monsters,

888
00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:27,839
Speaker 3: said to be a man who morphed into a cat

889
00:50:27,920 --> 00:50:31,960
Speaker 3: body form by the power of magic. There's another version

890
00:50:31,960 --> 00:50:35,680
Speaker 3: of the story where this time Arthur actually manages to

891
00:50:35,760 --> 00:50:39,040
Speaker 3: kill the cat. This is from a text called Estoi

892
00:50:39,120 --> 00:50:41,960
Speaker 3: de Merlin I think the History of Merlin or the

893
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:46,640
Speaker 3: Story of Merlin, which takes place in a real location

894
00:50:47,040 --> 00:50:50,719
Speaker 3: around the Lake of Le Bourgeais, which Bromwich says was

895
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:54,759
Speaker 3: known from the fourteenth century as Mont duchat ar two

896
00:50:55,000 --> 00:50:58,800
Speaker 3: I think that means Mount Arthur's cat something like that,

897
00:51:00,200 --> 00:51:04,400
Speaker 3: and another version with the French Capelou says that this

898
00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:10,560
Speaker 3: bog cat captures Arthur, kidnaps him, takes him away to Avalon,

899
00:51:10,800 --> 00:51:13,359
Speaker 3: which is where Arthur comes to rest at the end

900
00:51:13,400 --> 00:51:15,920
Speaker 3: of the more well known stories, you know, the Lancelot

901
00:51:15,960 --> 00:51:18,279
Speaker 3: Guenevere romances, where they have a big battle and then

902
00:51:18,400 --> 00:51:23,759
Speaker 3: Arthur's laid to rest in Avalon. Bromwich speculates that this

903
00:51:23,960 --> 00:51:27,319
Speaker 3: weird story where the cat takes the cat takes him

904
00:51:27,320 --> 00:51:30,520
Speaker 3: there may have arisen in an attempt to like blend

905
00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:36,160
Speaker 3: together popular Arthur versus bogcat battle stories with the more

906
00:51:36,200 --> 00:51:40,000
Speaker 3: well known or canon details of Arthur's biography in these

907
00:51:40,080 --> 00:51:43,680
Speaker 3: big stories. So I was trying to think of an analogy,

908
00:51:43,719 --> 00:51:46,520
Speaker 3: and it's kind of like if there were a popular

909
00:51:46,640 --> 00:51:50,880
Speaker 3: stream of Star Wars fan fiction where obi Wan Kenobi

910
00:51:51,040 --> 00:51:53,520
Speaker 3: fights the Fluke Man from the X Files, you know,

911
00:51:53,600 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 3: the toilet Monster, and so in one of these stories

912
00:51:57,000 --> 00:52:00,279
Speaker 3: has the Toilet Monster abducting Obi Wan Kenoba be in

913
00:52:00,320 --> 00:52:02,439
Speaker 3: taking him to the Death Star so he can meet

914
00:52:02,480 --> 00:52:03,880
Speaker 3: his canonical ending.

915
00:52:04,040 --> 00:52:07,560
Speaker 1: Right right, Because it's like, well, we're talking about ob Wan,

916
00:52:08,000 --> 00:52:09,479
Speaker 1: so of course we have to have the Fluke band,

917
00:52:09,480 --> 00:52:13,200
Speaker 1: but we need to actually come back to the the

918
00:52:13,239 --> 00:52:16,000
Speaker 1: major beats in the overarching story, and we've got to

919
00:52:16,000 --> 00:52:18,160
Speaker 1: have Fluke band there for that as well.

920
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:21,479
Speaker 3: Right, So yeah, I like that. But also I wanted

921
00:52:21,480 --> 00:52:24,480
Speaker 3: to come back to the question you raised about the

922
00:52:24,560 --> 00:52:27,120
Speaker 3: version where Arthur is killed in the bog or killed

923
00:52:27,120 --> 00:52:31,440
Speaker 3: by the bogcat, because Arthur he just gets crumpled and

924
00:52:31,480 --> 00:52:35,000
Speaker 3: the cat becomes king. Is it possible this was meant

925
00:52:35,080 --> 00:52:38,440
Speaker 3: as a spoof or a kind of cross channel national

926
00:52:38,520 --> 00:52:41,760
Speaker 3: ridicule by the French. I don't know of a strong

927
00:52:41,840 --> 00:52:44,520
Speaker 3: reason for thinking that's the case, though I'm very tempted

928
00:52:44,560 --> 00:52:47,279
Speaker 3: to wonder along those lines. I'm by no means an

929
00:52:47,280 --> 00:52:50,359
Speaker 3: expert on Arthurian literature, so you know, maybe there are

930
00:52:51,440 --> 00:52:55,360
Speaker 3: nuances there that I'm missing. On the other hand, Bromwich

931
00:52:55,440 --> 00:52:59,600
Speaker 3: says that the version of the story where Arthur dies

932
00:53:00,440 --> 00:53:04,960
Speaker 3: is actually the oldest known variant of the Arthur versus

933
00:53:05,000 --> 00:53:09,319
Speaker 3: the Bogcat story, and thus she argues it's possible that

934
00:53:09,360 --> 00:53:13,920
Speaker 3: this reflects a quote genuine variant tradition of Arthur's end

935
00:53:14,280 --> 00:53:18,400
Speaker 3: which existed in antecedent Welsh and or Breton tradition, but

936
00:53:18,480 --> 00:53:21,080
Speaker 3: which by the time of the extant records has given

937
00:53:21,120 --> 00:53:25,800
Speaker 3: place to other alternative traditions. Arthur's death at Camlin became

938
00:53:25,920 --> 00:53:29,719
Speaker 3: conflated with a story of his removal to Avalon, so

939
00:53:29,760 --> 00:53:32,240
Speaker 3: that the story of his terminal fight with the cat

940
00:53:32,280 --> 00:53:36,120
Speaker 3: monster is yet another variant which survives only in certain

941
00:53:36,200 --> 00:53:40,120
Speaker 3: tantalizing illusions. So does that make sense that this is

942
00:53:40,160 --> 00:53:42,959
Speaker 3: obviously here limited to the realm of speculation. We don't

943
00:53:42,960 --> 00:53:45,279
Speaker 3: know about what the earliest versions of the story were,

944
00:53:45,280 --> 00:53:50,080
Speaker 3: but in Bromwich's opinion, it could be that this bizarre

945
00:53:50,239 --> 00:53:53,719
Speaker 3: version of the story of King Arthur, where King Arthur

946
00:53:53,840 --> 00:53:57,720
Speaker 3: is killed by a wicked swamp cat, may actually reflect

947
00:53:57,800 --> 00:54:01,439
Speaker 3: a genuine early variant of the case Arthur's story, which

948
00:54:01,480 --> 00:54:05,640
Speaker 3: has since disappeared in Welsh and Breton sources, but survives

949
00:54:05,680 --> 00:54:09,800
Speaker 3: in this altered derivative form in these references from French

950
00:54:09,880 --> 00:54:12,680
Speaker 3: texts like what if? What if it were that the

951
00:54:12,719 --> 00:54:15,920
Speaker 3: actual og King Arthur was pushed into a bog by

952
00:54:15,960 --> 00:54:16,680
Speaker 3: a kitty cat?

953
00:54:17,320 --> 00:54:20,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's amazing to think about. Yeah, the idea

954
00:54:20,320 --> 00:54:22,120
Speaker 1: that this is not just some sort of one off,

955
00:54:22,640 --> 00:54:25,920
Speaker 1: not the result of some you know, just from some

956
00:54:25,960 --> 00:54:29,319
Speaker 1: translation accidents and and so forth. It kind of gives

957
00:54:29,400 --> 00:54:31,960
Speaker 1: us this this curio of a tale, but it may

958
00:54:32,000 --> 00:54:36,560
Speaker 1: represent like a significant strain of fiction or ar Theian

959
00:54:36,600 --> 00:54:40,920
Speaker 1: tradition going back quite a ways. That's that's fascinating to

960
00:54:40,920 --> 00:54:43,600
Speaker 1: think about. And it makes sense too if you again

961
00:54:43,719 --> 00:54:46,720
Speaker 1: think about this, this idea that Wiseman brings up about

962
00:54:47,360 --> 00:54:51,080
Speaker 1: some of these cat stories being connected to much older

963
00:54:51,120 --> 00:54:55,960
Speaker 1: traditions of even feline deities in the British Isles. Uh,

964
00:54:56,000 --> 00:54:58,080
Speaker 1: you know, those are exactly the sort of entities that

965
00:54:58,160 --> 00:55:00,840
Speaker 1: a hero might might die fighting.

966
00:55:01,239 --> 00:55:03,320
Speaker 3: I mean, if you come up on the more familiar

967
00:55:03,440 --> 00:55:06,200
Speaker 3: Arthur stories, it sounds comical that he's killed in a

968
00:55:06,239 --> 00:55:10,440
Speaker 3: bog by a cat. But but like you know, Beowulf

969
00:55:10,560 --> 00:55:13,080
Speaker 3: is killed while fighting a dragon. You know this, Yeah,

970
00:55:13,400 --> 00:55:16,520
Speaker 3: and you would have plenty of these medieval stories that

971
00:55:16,560 --> 00:55:19,640
Speaker 3: are about a great heroic warrior and is in fact

972
00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:22,000
Speaker 3: at some point killed in the story by a monster

973
00:55:22,200 --> 00:55:24,160
Speaker 3: in the way that make in a way that makes

974
00:55:24,200 --> 00:55:27,000
Speaker 3: sense of the narrative. Like it, it's not an accident

975
00:55:27,040 --> 00:55:29,439
Speaker 3: that Beowulf gets killed by a dragon. That's like part

976
00:55:29,480 --> 00:55:31,120
Speaker 3: of the arc of the story. And then you know,

977
00:55:31,160 --> 00:55:32,239
Speaker 3: wiggleff steps up.

978
00:55:32,960 --> 00:55:36,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And now I am going to refuse

979
00:55:36,600 --> 00:55:39,120
Speaker 1: to imagine this as anything less than like a tiger

980
00:55:39,200 --> 00:55:43,279
Speaker 1: sized cat, though I just can't. I can't imagine King

981
00:55:43,400 --> 00:55:45,480
Speaker 1: Arthur falling to something that's housecats sized.

982
00:55:45,600 --> 00:55:47,680
Speaker 3: Well, I can imagine it. Maybe I've got a better

983
00:55:47,719 --> 00:55:50,719
Speaker 3: imagination than you. No, I'm thinking. I'm full on thinking.

984
00:55:50,760 --> 00:55:52,919
Speaker 3: It's like the rabbit and Monty Python. This is a

985
00:55:53,040 --> 00:55:56,239
Speaker 3: regular sized house cat that is killing King Arthur. It's

986
00:55:56,320 --> 00:56:00,000
Speaker 3: killing one hundred and eighty fine warriors, It's getting them all.

987
00:56:00,840 --> 00:56:04,680
Speaker 1: Well, this does bring us to an interesting notion here,

988
00:56:05,120 --> 00:56:08,680
Speaker 1: thinking about again about the size of a killer cat.

989
00:56:10,000 --> 00:56:12,960
Speaker 1: On one hand, like a big cat is a killer cat.

990
00:56:13,000 --> 00:56:15,080
Speaker 1: That makes sense. We see a big cat at a

991
00:56:15,160 --> 00:56:17,319
Speaker 1: zoo and we feel it in our bones. We know

992
00:56:17,440 --> 00:56:19,960
Speaker 1: that that is something that is a threat to us.

993
00:56:20,520 --> 00:56:23,000
Speaker 1: And if you're dealing with a giant sized cat, I

994
00:56:23,000 --> 00:56:26,640
Speaker 1: mean that's of course been a very popular area of

995
00:56:26,640 --> 00:56:30,400
Speaker 1: focus in fiction. In fact, the Weird House Cinema episode

996
00:56:30,440 --> 00:56:34,120
Speaker 1: that we just re ran, which of course is the

997
00:56:34,120 --> 00:56:37,320
Speaker 1: Incredible Shrinking Man from nineteen fifty seven, has a great

998
00:56:37,360 --> 00:56:41,080
Speaker 1: sequence in which our Incredible Shrinking Man has to flee

999
00:56:41,160 --> 00:56:44,360
Speaker 1: for his life from a normal sized house cat that

1000
00:56:44,440 --> 00:56:48,200
Speaker 1: to him is an enormous monster, like a kaiju that

1001
00:56:48,320 --> 00:56:50,400
Speaker 1: is trying to get at him in a doll's house.

1002
00:56:50,560 --> 00:56:53,600
Speaker 3: There's no kaiju as cruel as a cat, though.

1003
00:56:53,560 --> 00:56:56,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it goes back to that

1004
00:56:56,200 --> 00:56:59,080
Speaker 1: old bit of folk wisdom that you know, if you

1005
00:56:59,160 --> 00:57:01,839
Speaker 1: were reduced to the size of a mouse, your cat

1006
00:57:01,880 --> 00:57:04,759
Speaker 1: would eat you. It would not be your friend, which

1007
00:57:04,800 --> 00:57:09,359
Speaker 1: you know, I love cats, but I think that's totally true.

1008
00:57:09,480 --> 00:57:11,279
Speaker 1: But then on the other end, we have plenty of

1009
00:57:11,320 --> 00:57:15,600
Speaker 1: examples of house cat sized cats that are depicted as

1010
00:57:15,719 --> 00:57:19,240
Speaker 1: vicious monsters, sometimes played for laugh certainly, but although other

1011
00:57:19,360 --> 00:57:21,560
Speaker 1: times there's at least an attempt to play it seriously.

1012
00:57:21,840 --> 00:57:24,360
Speaker 1: The movie we'll be watching this Friday for Weird House

1013
00:57:24,400 --> 00:57:28,360
Speaker 1: Cinema has such a creature. Another film that comes to

1014
00:57:28,440 --> 00:57:30,960
Speaker 1: mind is Tales from the Dark Side. The movie, which

1015
00:57:30,960 --> 00:57:34,000
Speaker 1: has in it one of the segments is an adaptation

1016
00:57:34,040 --> 00:57:36,720
Speaker 1: of Stephen King's The Cat from Hell, and we get

1017
00:57:36,760 --> 00:57:39,800
Speaker 1: to see that cat running around and killing people, even

1018
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:42,520
Speaker 1: though it's not shooting lightning out of its eyes. It's

1019
00:57:42,560 --> 00:57:45,160
Speaker 1: not the size of a tiger, it's just the size

1020
00:57:45,160 --> 00:57:47,880
Speaker 1: of a house cat. But it's really fast and really vicious.

1021
00:57:48,440 --> 00:57:50,920
Speaker 3: We shall not underestimate them. I don't think you and

1022
00:57:50,960 --> 00:57:53,720
Speaker 3: I would have anyway, but especially not after today.

1023
00:57:54,280 --> 00:57:57,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, even with a house cat, you know,

1024
00:57:57,280 --> 00:58:00,080
Speaker 1: there'll be times when they will go into hunter mode

1025
00:58:00,200 --> 00:58:02,560
Speaker 1: and they may attack your feet or you know, run

1026
00:58:02,600 --> 00:58:04,200
Speaker 1: through the house, and in those moments you get a

1027
00:58:04,240 --> 00:58:06,920
Speaker 1: sense of it and you're like, what if this creature

1028
00:58:07,000 --> 00:58:10,440
Speaker 1: was suddenly not my friend or not my partner, not

1029
00:58:10,520 --> 00:58:14,680
Speaker 1: my roommate, and what if it saw me as something else?

1030
00:58:14,920 --> 00:58:16,040
Speaker 1: Maybe I would be in trouble.

1031
00:58:16,600 --> 00:58:18,640
Speaker 3: But you gotta be nice to it anyway. I mean,

1032
00:58:18,800 --> 00:58:20,600
Speaker 3: not only because it's the right thing to do. If

1033
00:58:20,600 --> 00:58:23,520
Speaker 3: you don't, you might summon the King of cats exactly.

1034
00:58:23,640 --> 00:58:27,280
Speaker 1: And yeah, and the king will not take kindly to you.

1035
00:58:27,760 --> 00:58:33,000
Speaker 1: And that includes just slight, slight errors on your part,

1036
00:58:33,120 --> 00:58:36,600
Speaker 1: like not giving them the wet food and so forth,

1037
00:58:37,800 --> 00:58:41,400
Speaker 1: delaying feeding by even fifteen minutes. So just be very

1038
00:58:41,440 --> 00:58:42,600
Speaker 1: careful out there, everyone.

1039
00:58:43,440 --> 00:58:45,520
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, a little late for dinner time. There's

1040
00:58:45,520 --> 00:58:47,720
Speaker 3: a knock on the door. It's a soft knock, a

1041
00:58:47,800 --> 00:58:48,960
Speaker 3: kind of furry knock.

1042
00:58:50,880 --> 00:58:53,439
Speaker 1: All right. So that is our look at folkloric cats,

1043
00:58:53,480 --> 00:58:56,480
Speaker 1: or the British isles. Again, we couldn't cover everything here, and

1044
00:58:56,680 --> 00:58:58,520
Speaker 1: when you start following some of the threads you also

1045
00:58:58,560 --> 00:59:01,440
Speaker 1: get into cryptids. Certainly there are a lot of modern

1046
00:59:02,000 --> 00:59:06,200
Speaker 1: cat cryptids and supposed sightings of big cats. And then

1047
00:59:06,200 --> 00:59:08,400
Speaker 1: of course again you have the reality of wildcats and

1048
00:59:08,400 --> 00:59:11,880
Speaker 1: feral cats and so forth. So there's a lot. There's

1049
00:59:11,880 --> 00:59:16,360
Speaker 1: a lot else out there. But hopefully you found this enjoyable,

1050
00:59:16,440 --> 00:59:19,400
Speaker 1: and perhaps those of you listening have some additional stories

1051
00:59:19,400 --> 00:59:21,000
Speaker 1: you want to bring to mind. Maybe it's a different

1052
00:59:21,080 --> 00:59:23,840
Speaker 1: twist on some of the stories we shared here today,

1053
00:59:24,000 --> 00:59:26,360
Speaker 1: some of the traditions we shared here today, or a

1054
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:30,480
Speaker 1: treatment of these traditions in fiction one way or another,

1055
00:59:30,800 --> 00:59:33,280
Speaker 1: write in with those. We would love to read those,

1056
00:59:33,320 --> 00:59:35,760
Speaker 1: perhaps on a future episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

1057
00:59:35,800 --> 00:59:38,240
Speaker 1: Listener mail. Just a reminder to everyone out there, the

1058
00:59:38,240 --> 00:59:40,360
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and

1059
00:59:40,360 --> 00:59:42,919
Speaker 1: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursday, short

1060
00:59:42,920 --> 00:59:45,880
Speaker 1: form episode on Wednesdays and on Fridays, we set aside

1061
00:59:45,880 --> 00:59:49,160
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to talk about a weird movie on

1062
00:59:49,200 --> 00:59:52,320
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. And again, this is cat Week. Cat

1063
00:59:52,360 --> 00:59:55,360
Speaker 1: episodes will continue all week, and dog People, if you

1064
00:59:55,400 --> 00:59:57,280
Speaker 1: want a dog Week, write in and let us know

1065
00:59:57,320 --> 00:59:59,680
Speaker 1: that we should do talk week and we'll try and

1066
00:59:59,680 --> 00:59:59,920
Speaker 1: make it.

1067
01:00:00,000 --> 01:00:03,360
Speaker 3: Also, we had ideas for cat content that we don't

1068
01:00:03,360 --> 01:00:05,320
Speaker 3: have time for this week, so we may have to

1069
01:00:05,880 --> 01:00:07,520
Speaker 3: we can come back and do Cat Week.

1070
01:00:07,320 --> 01:00:09,760
Speaker 1: Part due yeah next year for Cat Week.

1071
01:00:10,960 --> 01:00:14,840
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

1072
01:00:15,080 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

1073
01:00:16,520 --> 01:00:19,280
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

1074
01:00:19,280 --> 01:00:21,320
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

1075
01:00:21,440 --> 01:00:24,400
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your

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Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

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Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 2: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.