Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday, so we are
Speaker 2: heading into the vault for an older episode of the show.
Speaker 2: This one was originally published on September twenty ninth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, but it was part of our Halloween offerings
Speaker 2: for last year. This was part one of our series
Speaker 2: on elf shot.
Speaker 1: That's right. I mean, if you're not sure what this
Speaker 1: is about, well, I mean, does it get any spookier
Speaker 1: than strange, unseen, unknowable beings in the woods just firing
Speaker 1: off strange missiles that may well be invisible, And when
Speaker 1: they lodge themselves in the bodies of your livestock, or
Speaker 1: even worse, your body, they bring about untold destruction.
Speaker 2: Beware of the fairy weapons.
Speaker 1: It was my fault for letting the cattle graze so
Speaker 1: near the old wood, in the circular stones, where the
Speaker 1: roots grow elf twisted and rain water fill the elf
Speaker 1: cups in the rock where strange lights dance some nights
Speaker 1: and the moonlight shines brighter than elsewhere. I'd lost cows before,
Speaker 1: but never like this. I found her bloated and dead
Speaker 1: by the tree line. As I strolled up to the
Speaker 1: poor heifer, I saw neither bite nor puncture on her hide.
Speaker 1: I scanned the surrounding grass for signs of tracks or blood.
Speaker 1: I saw neither. But that's when something caught my eye,
Speaker 1: A small stone point like an arrow head, with neither
Speaker 1: shaft nor fletchings, and carved by some art, not practice
Speaker 1: by mortal men. I stooped to pick it up, and
Speaker 1: that's when I felt a white hot pain in my
Speaker 1: upper left side. I felt for blood underneath my shirt,
Speaker 1: such was the pain, but found only unpierced flesh, even
Speaker 1: as the agony of it brought me to my knees.
Speaker 1: In the tall grass, I scanned the tree line. They
Speaker 1: were invisible to my eyes, but I felt them somehow,
Speaker 1: the elves watching on from the chateaus of the wood,
Speaker 1: perhaps snickering in their sublime odd tongue. As the elf
Speaker 1: bolt racked my body, but I clutched the stone in
Speaker 1: my hand, I knew what I had to do. I
Speaker 1: dragged myself back across the field, sweat pouring down my
Speaker 1: face and my spleen swelling fit to burst with elfcake.
Speaker 1: Even then, when I arrived back at the house, I
Speaker 1: dropped the little of stone in a pan of water.
Speaker 1: I clutched my Bible for good measure. I strained remember
Speaker 1: words and incantations by either priest or wise woman. But
Speaker 1: the best I could manage was a vague prayer to
Speaker 1: be interpreted by whatever heard me. In my moment of need,
Speaker 1: I drank the stone, touched water down all of it,
Speaker 1: though it chilled my teeth and stung my tongue. And
Speaker 1: then I realized too late that the charm was no good,
Speaker 1: for it had touch the ground, sunlight had fallen upon it.
Speaker 1: The power of the elves had all but drained from
Speaker 1: the thing, and I was afforded only passing relief. And
Speaker 1: so I write this letter by candlelight, will weigh it
Speaker 1: down on the table with the Queer stone as proof,
Speaker 1: for I am now elf marked and elf taken. I swell,
Speaker 1: I ache the moon rises once more, and the sound
Speaker 1: of their music fills the night.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And that little cold open definitely takes some liberties with
Speaker 1: the folklore we're going to be discussing here today, and
Speaker 1: you're trying to get a little seasonal Halloween flavor here
Speaker 1: going in this episode, which I guess is kind of
Speaker 1: kickstarting our Halloween season here on stuff to blow your mind.
Speaker 1: But today we're going to be talking about, as you
Speaker 1: might guess from the opening, elf shot or elf stone,
Speaker 1: pixie arrows, elf arrows, and many other names.
Speaker 2: The missiles of the others.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So the basic idea here, I think is
Speaker 1: basically embedded in the fiction we just shared here. The
Speaker 1: idea that and this is just roughly so with many
Speaker 1: folk traditions, as we'll discuss, there are a number of
Speaker 1: variations over time and space. But the idea here is
Speaker 1: that the elves, out of trickery or pure malice, they
Speaker 1: might shoot cattle or humans in some cases with their
Speaker 1: invisible arrows, and these invisible arrows leave little or no
Speaker 1: physical trace in many tellings, but cause otherwise unexplainable pain
Speaker 1: or disease or perhaps even death. The notion was supported
Speaker 1: via the evidence of discovered neolithic arrowheads and other curios,
Speaker 1: and the ideas especially tied to the British Isles, but
Speaker 1: one sees examples of it from elsewhere in Europe as
Speaker 1: well as from the America after colonial arrival.
Speaker 2: Right, So the belief in elfshot, I think is best
Speaker 2: understood not as a single belief but as a sort
Speaker 2: of complex of related explanations for totally different types of
Speaker 2: natural phenomena that are all sort of unified under a
Speaker 2: common theory of fairy weapons and fairy malice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and without diving any deeper, we can see
Speaker 1: the appeal of these ideas, right. It's a superstitious, supernatural
Speaker 1: script that can help explain several different things, help explain
Speaker 1: and otherwise unexplained illness, otherwise unexplained pain or another malady,
Speaker 1: otherwise unexplained illness or death in cattle, and otherwise unexplained
Speaker 1: artifacts found on or in the earth. Now it makes sense,
Speaker 1: I think at this point to discuss the elves a bit,
Speaker 1: because I know for many of us out there, you
Speaker 1: say the word elf and there are probably a few
Speaker 1: different key images and ideas that are going to immediately
Speaker 1: come to life in your mind. I mean, especially now
Speaker 1: with the Rings of Power on TV and so forth,
Speaker 1: many of and also you know the resurgence of dungeons
Speaker 1: and dragons. People are going to think about the fantasy
Speaker 1: elves of Tolkien and Tolkien derived works like Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 1: For others of you out there, you might instantly think
Speaker 1: about Santa's elves or keebler elves. Little you know, curious
Speaker 1: people making novelties and imaginary idealistic workshops.
Speaker 2: Right, I would say that the influence of Tolkien is
Speaker 2: so strong that, at least in America. I don't know
Speaker 2: if this would be as true in the rest of
Speaker 2: the English speaking world even, but at least in America.
Speaker 2: When you say elf, I think what people mostly think
Speaker 2: is a Tolkien style high elf, an l Rond or
Speaker 2: Galadrial type figure, a kind of noble and elegant fantasy
Speaker 2: aristocrat who has, you know, wisdom and magic arts to offer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and generally just super blonde hair like a real,
Speaker 1: real pristine blonde wig going on in many cases. So
Speaker 1: I guess l Ron Elron didn't have blonde hair.
Speaker 2: Elrond have red hair.
Speaker 1: I don't know, dark hair, I don't know he's I mean,
Speaker 1: there's an the young el Ron, the younger version of Elrond,
Speaker 1: is in the Rings of Power, and I'm I'm suddenly
Speaker 1: at a loss to remember what colors hair is mainly
Speaker 1: remember the ears.
Speaker 2: I remember thinking around the ear in two thousand and
Speaker 2: two or so. It's like liv Tyler, that's an elf.
Speaker 1: I guess. The interesting thing is that, of course both
Speaker 1: of these ideas, Obviously Tolkien's ideas of elves have have
Speaker 1: their roots in actual folklore and mythology, as one would expect.
Speaker 1: But even like Santa's elves and Keepler elves I guess
Speaker 1: are they're not completely removed from the mythological roots here,
Speaker 1: but perhaps less connected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as you're saying, once you get outside of the
Speaker 2: very sort of narrowly Tolkien influenced idea, the elf is
Speaker 2: actually an extremely broad tradition.
Speaker 1: Right right, And you get into many of these traditions
Speaker 1: and beliefs of old and elves get more mysterious and
Speaker 1: also more dangerous. They become less human and harder to fathom.
Speaker 1: So two of the sources I often turn to when
Speaker 1: when thinking about these things are Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase
Speaker 1: and Fable, which is which is a pretty pretty good
Speaker 1: book even today for for highlighting some of this stuff.
Speaker 1: And then, of course I always look at the books
Speaker 1: of folklorous Carol Rose in particular for this one Spirits Theories,
Speaker 1: Leprechauns and Goblins, which is still very much in print.
Speaker 1: I always recommend that one to fans of mythological and
Speaker 1: folkloric beings. But in Brewer's Dictionary, Phrase and fable, the
Speaker 1: definition of elf is quote a dwarfish being of Teutonic
Speaker 1: mythology possessed of magical powers which is used for the
Speaker 1: good or ill of mankind. Carol Rose in in the
Speaker 1: Spirits Faries, Lepriicuns and Goblins, mentions that in Teutonic mythology
Speaker 1: the alphar are subdivided into dark elves and light elves,
Speaker 1: and Rose refers to them as well as a type
Speaker 1: of sprite found in British, Icelandic, Scandinavian and Teutonic legend.
Speaker 1: They are the alf the alf. There are several different
Speaker 1: spellings that are kind of like elf or alf or
Speaker 1: yield or in some cases you have like the ellen
Speaker 1: or el folk, and Danish you have the elvore in
Speaker 1: Swedish traditions, and then they're the spey wives in Icelandic traditions,
Speaker 1: and many more. Now there have been attempts to understand
Speaker 1: elves as both sort of folkloric and mythological reverberations of
Speaker 1: our understandings of indigenous peoples, which certainly ties in with
Speaker 1: some of the themes we'll be exploring here, as well
Speaker 1: as with people born with certain birth defects or people
Speaker 1: that have certain illnesses, and these are perhaps broader explorations,
Speaker 1: but I think we can see the validity of both
Speaker 1: avenues combined. Of course, as always with the self sustaining
Speaker 1: power of myth, folklore, and belief. You know, as we
Speaker 1: often mentioned on the show, we can't we can't discount
Speaker 1: the power of human imagination and creativity, be that you know,
Speaker 1: imagination acting out of pure whimsy, or imagination seeking to
Speaker 1: understand things, or does even make shape of various realities
Speaker 1: of life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And another way I would put that is that yes,
Speaker 2: people often did probably see something they didn't understand and
Speaker 2: then try to put together a mythical theory of it,
Speaker 2: a kind of supernatural explanation that would make sense of it.
Speaker 2: But then other times, clearly people just make things up.
Speaker 2: I mean, people have imagination and they dream things up.
Speaker 2: So get you get both in our mythical traditions, I think.
Speaker 2: And it's limiting to assume that you're always looking at
Speaker 2: one thing or the other right right.
Speaker 1: But once the Once the script is established, the script
Speaker 1: is generally nourished and maintained. So like other similar beings
Speaker 1: in folklore, such as say, the Irish tradition of the
Speaker 1: Tuaphatadan and fairies and so forth, there's kind of a
Speaker 1: ghost species are to the elves. They're the sublime other
Speaker 1: that occupies places that we cannot occupy. They hold powers
Speaker 1: that we scarcely comprehend, and they may wish as well.
Speaker 1: They may wish us ill, or they may just sort
Speaker 1: of be neutral in all matters, and their reasons are
Speaker 1: hard to fathom. They might do the things they do
Speaker 1: on a whim, or they might have seemingly good reason
Speaker 1: to act against us or for us. They are also
Speaker 1: associated with a host of unexplained phenomena, including visual phenomena,
Speaker 1: making them a core supernatural script for the unexplained that
Speaker 1: I think aligns. Many have pointed this outlined closely with
Speaker 1: twentieth and twenty first century uses of the UFO script
Speaker 1: of the alien visitor script for the unexplained as a
Speaker 1: way of shaping and processing things that we don't understand.
Speaker 1: For example, as pointed out by both in both Roses book,
Speaker 1: and in brewers. We have a number of elf related
Speaker 1: phenomenon in folk traditions, and they include the following. There's
Speaker 1: elf bore, which is this is apparently a piece of
Speaker 1: wood from which the knot has been dropped out. I
Speaker 1: don't know how much I really need a supernatural script
Speaker 1: to explain that, but fair enough. There's elf cake. This
Speaker 1: is an enlargement of the spleen elf child. This is
Speaker 1: a changeling getting into changeling traditions. This one was new
Speaker 1: to me. An elf cup elf cup. This would be
Speaker 1: where you have stone that has a hollow formed from
Speaker 1: dripping water and water collects there. Well, that's the elf cup,
Speaker 1: and I guess the elves drink from it. Elf fire.
Speaker 1: Getting into traditions of the will of the wisp, which
Speaker 1: we've covered on the show before. Now here's one that
Speaker 1: people with longer hair or with children with longer hair
Speaker 1: can definitely comment on. Elf locks. These are tangles and
Speaker 1: knots in the hair caused by elves in the night.
Speaker 1: If one is elf marked, that may refer to birth
Speaker 1: defects or birth marks caused by the elves. If you
Speaker 1: are elf taken, that means you're a bewitched or an
Speaker 1: enchanted person. Elf twisted may refer to someone who has
Speaker 1: suffered a stroke, but it also can refer to deformed
Speaker 1: vegetation elf twisted vegetation. And then this was an interesting
Speaker 1: when I ran across as well. I don't think this
Speaker 1: was in either of these texts, but elf milling the
Speaker 1: sound of woodworms chewing. And then of course we have
Speaker 1: our elf arrows our elf shot, which again is a
Speaker 1: perfect script to turn to in an attempt to explain
Speaker 1: the unexplainable. And also, as alluded to in the Cold Open,
Speaker 1: the artifacts associated with elf shot, the little found stones
Speaker 1: and arrowheads, are also associated with various folk medicine and
Speaker 1: magical practices, generally thought to heal or deviate illness in
Speaker 1: animals or humans. Generally, illness is caused or perceived to
Speaker 1: be caused by the elf shot, Like if you get
Speaker 1: shot by a fantasy arrow, by a magical arrow from
Speaker 1: the elves, well, if you can find that artifact, well
Speaker 1: then maybe we have a chance of curing things. Or
Speaker 1: if we happen to have any in the collection of
Speaker 1: the local healer, maybe a little satchel of elf stones somewhere, well,
Speaker 1: those can be used in the curative.
Speaker 2: Arts, drawing on the traditional logic of like cures like
Speaker 2: or sympathetic magic, the idea that if your ailment is
Speaker 2: caused by a certain type of object or action, then
Speaker 2: it can also be maybe cured by a similar or
Speaker 2: related type of object or action.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And sometimes these stones, these elf arrows and
Speaker 1: so forth, they're thought to be essentially the ones that
Speaker 1: were fired. Other times they may have been dropped by
Speaker 1: the elves, and some other cases you have situations where
Speaker 1: these things are interpreted as having fallen from the sky
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of the older sources that I read
Speaker 2: quoted said that they were dropped from the air.
Speaker 1: Now for a couple of related concepts. Here in Scotland,
Speaker 1: there are also tales of faery riding, by which a
Speaker 1: livestock's paralysis is explained as being due to exhaustion caused
Speaker 1: by fairies riding the animals around as mounts all through
Speaker 1: the night. There's also the use of thunderstones, of which
Speaker 1: I guess elfshot is kind of a subset or at
Speaker 1: least the very related concepts in which people have reinterpreted stone,
Speaker 1: axe heads, tools, and also fossils as sacred objects that
Speaker 1: may have fallen from the sky or experienced some other
Speaker 1: supernatural entry into our world, and we see examples of
Speaker 1: this in European, Native American and Asian traditions as well.
Speaker 1: I found an interesting quote on this. This is from
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four and need Fire, published in The Illustrated
Speaker 1: arche Geologists by archaeologist J. Romilly Allen. Quote, there is
Speaker 1: hardly a single prehistoric remain in the country whose name
Speaker 1: does not show that common people associated with fairies, which
Speaker 1: is hags or the devil. So too with the implements
Speaker 1: and objects found on ancient sites, the stone celts looked
Speaker 1: upon as a thunderbolt, the flint arrow and elf arrow,
Speaker 1: the spindle wheel, a fairies millstone, the colored glass bead,
Speaker 1: an adder bead adder beads. By the way, these were
Speaker 1: thought to have been created by snakes, and they were
Speaker 1: used in folk medicine as well, and of course in general,
Speaker 1: the idea of invisible missiles sent by a supernatural enemy
Speaker 1: that causes illness. This is also comparable to other concepts
Speaker 1: of magic, spells and curses that can be found in
Speaker 1: cultures throughout the world from their examples, like the traditions
Speaker 1: of the skin walkers, among the Navajo, the concept of
Speaker 1: goo poison and the Han Chinese traditions. You know, many
Speaker 1: such traditions around the world that involve the word work
Speaker 1: of outsiders or secret outsiders that bring about sickness in
Speaker 1: a given people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, I thought it would be a good idea
Speaker 2: for elfshot, specifically to look at a paper that collected
Speaker 2: some direct accounts of folk beliefs about elfshot, especially in
Speaker 2: Scotland where a lot of this folklore work was done.
Speaker 2: And this paper is by Thomas Davidson. It's called Elfshot Cattle.
Speaker 2: It was published in the journal Antiquity in nineteen fifty six. Now,
Speaker 2: I do want to preface. In the next episode, I
Speaker 2: think we're going to talk about a couple of papers
Speaker 2: that offer some criticism of the subject of elfshot, maybe
Speaker 2: questioning some things about this alleged folk belief. But I
Speaker 2: thought it would be good to first look at some
Speaker 2: of the more prevailing notions from previous scholarship. Now, this
Speaker 2: paper by Davidson kicks off offering a number of accounts.
Speaker 2: The first one is one that was recorded in Scottish
Speaker 2: Notes and Queries in the first series, and this is
Speaker 2: rendered with a wonderful bit of transliterated Scottish accent, which
Speaker 2: I will not attempt to do in my own voice
Speaker 2: as I read it. But it is quoting a buckin' farmer.
Speaker 2: This is a region of Scotland, a buckin farmer in
Speaker 2: the late autumn of eighteen eighty four, and his complaint
Speaker 2: was as follows, quoted in Scottish Notes and queries. Oh
Speaker 2: and there are a couple of terms in here I'll
Speaker 2: have to come back and define in a minute, probably,
Speaker 2: But the quote goes like this, I've gotten an ill
Speaker 2: job this morning, in the death of a fine stirk
Speaker 2: by elfshot. And the pity is he wasn't fastened to
Speaker 2: a hair tether, which is a halter made of hair
Speaker 2: fan the weapon would have fallen short of him. And
Speaker 2: then Davidson writes, when asked whether it might not have
Speaker 2: been due to quarter ill, he replied that couldn't be.
Speaker 2: My neighbor and me open up the beast and there
Speaker 2: was a hole through his heart. So a couple of
Speaker 2: things there. He says that this happened to a sterk.
Speaker 2: A sterk is a yearling bullock or heifer, so think
Speaker 2: a calf young cattle. And then there's this reference to
Speaker 2: quarter ill as the opposite explanation. Quarter Ill is a
Speaker 2: common disease found in livestock, also known as black leg.
Speaker 2: It's caused by an infection, often in one of the limbs,
Speaker 2: by Clostridium bacteria. And I've read in other sources that
Speaker 2: death can be very rapid after symptoms first present, sometimes
Speaker 2: just a matter of hours, So you could have a
Speaker 2: calf fall dead of quarter ill without really much warning
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 1: I love the detail about the whole through the heart.
Speaker 1: This lines up with some other accounts I was looking
Speaker 1: at where while in which elfshot is not thought to
Speaker 1: present a traditional wound. In some cases there's no wound
Speaker 1: at all, but other times there is a wound if
Speaker 1: you know what to look for, if you look closely enough.
Speaker 1: And of course this easily falls in with the realities
Speaker 1: we see mirrored and other supernatural scripts, like if you
Speaker 1: know the mark of the witch, well, if you look
Speaker 1: closely enough and you want to find it enough, you
Speaker 1: will find the mark of the witch. If you want
Speaker 1: to find the you know the hidden censor that the
Speaker 1: aliens put in a person's flesh, well, just keep looking.
Speaker 1: You'll find something that seems a little odd and surely
Speaker 1: that is the mark.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are all kinds of methods to detect the mark.
Speaker 2: I'll talk about that a bit in a minute. One
Speaker 2: of them I read about is like the oldest member
Speaker 2: of the family should wear a blue bonnet, and then
Speaker 2: the blue bonnet will be rubbed all over the cow.
Speaker 2: And somehow the rubbing of the flower or the actually,
Speaker 2: I don't know if that refers to a flower or
Speaker 2: an actual bonnet. It says blue bonnet in the paper.
Speaker 2: But whichever one it is, you rub that on the
Speaker 2: cow and that will reveal the where the animal was struck.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so to recap this story from eighteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: this farmer is saying a healthy young calf drops dead
Speaker 2: in its first year, suddenly, no apparent explanation. Again, of course,
Speaker 2: there are diseases that cause sudden death in bovines, and
Speaker 2: the farmer and his neighbor confirm the cause of death
Speaker 2: was elf shot because they did an autopsy and found
Speaker 2: that even though the animal had no external wounds, there
Speaker 2: was a hole in the animal's heart. Okay, second account
Speaker 2: cited by Davidson. This was originally published in Proceedings of
Speaker 2: the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland, and it goes like this,
Speaker 2: Davidson writes. Quote some years before, in eighteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: a mister Hugh Morrison saw a cow which was said
Speaker 2: to have been killed by the fairies. When he pointed
Speaker 2: out to the farmer that her death had been caused
Speaker 2: by rolling over and her long horns penetrating the ground
Speaker 2: had kept her in a position from which she could
Speaker 2: not rise, he was told that that was a common
Speaker 2: way in which cows fall when struck by the And
Speaker 2: then this is something that is spelled like it looks
Speaker 2: like saghead scyth, but I believe this is safe she
Speaker 2: or side she, which is Scott's Gaelic for fairy arrow.
Speaker 2: So Davidson connects these beliefs too, as we already mentioned
Speaker 2: the discovery of neolithic flints in the fields and the countryside,
Speaker 2: where he claims that these were not generally associated with
Speaker 2: prehistoric human technology. Now there are some associations of that
Speaker 2: kind going all the way back to the seventeenth century,
Speaker 2: but they're not generally accepted by the people, Davidson says,
Speaker 2: and he quotes the story of a reverend John Fraser,
Speaker 2: who was writing a letter dated to the year seventeen
Speaker 2: o two was recorded in a work called The Darker
Speaker 2: Superstitions of Scotland by J. G. Dalyell. And the letter
Speaker 2: is talking about how Fraser thought it was strange quote
Speaker 2: that these elfstones, whether little or mickel, mikel meaning large,
Speaker 2: little or mickel, has still the same figure, though certainly
Speaker 2: known to fall from the air. The commonality superstitiously imagines
Speaker 2: that the fairies hath made and gives them that shape,
Speaker 2: and that they do hurt by them, which we call
Speaker 2: elf shot. And then he goes on to quote a
Speaker 2: wonderful work the seventeenth century minister and proto folklorist Robert
Speaker 2: Kirk's treatise The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fawns and Fairies,
Speaker 2: which is a fantastic historical read if you ever get
Speaker 2: time to check that out. So Kirk is describing the
Speaker 2: beliefs of the people of Scotland and talking about the
Speaker 2: weapons made by elves and fairies, and so to quote
Speaker 2: here from Davidson. Similarly, Kirk describes the weapons as being
Speaker 2: quote most what solid earthly bodies, nothing of iron, but
Speaker 2: much of stone, like to a soft flint spa shaped
Speaker 2: like a barbed arrowhead, but flung like a dart with
Speaker 2: great force. These arms cut by airt and tools. It
Speaker 2: seems beyond humane. And I think aert as a noun
Speaker 2: often means like a compass point, but it could mean
Speaker 2: like art or guidance. But again Kirk is saying that
Speaker 2: they're beyond human. I think I said humane, but I'd
Speaker 2: probably just be human. Here have something of the nature
Speaker 2: of thunderbolt subtlety and mortally wounding the vital parts without
Speaker 2: breaking the skin. So I love this idea. They have
Speaker 2: something of the nature of thunderbolt subtlety. This description from
Speaker 2: the seventeenth century reminds me of what the farmer in
Speaker 2: the much later account in the nineteenth century said about
Speaker 2: opening up the calf and finding that even though the
Speaker 2: skin had not been broken, the heart had been pierced
Speaker 2: with a fairy arrow, and they could tell by the whole.
Speaker 2: And here Kirk says that these weapons have this thunderbolt subtlety.
Speaker 2: If I understand that right, I think he's suggesting almost
Speaker 2: kind of a semi spectral quality, that like lightning, they
Speaker 2: can kill you without eving a hole in the skin.
Speaker 2: Even though they are actual physical missiles. They've got kind
Speaker 2: of a transparent or subtle quality that allows them to
Speaker 2: kind of warp through solid matter. And later in the text,
Speaker 2: Davidson writes that there was a belief in Ireland where
Speaker 2: you could have an animal that had been hit by
Speaker 2: by an elf arrow and you would not find a
Speaker 2: hole in the skin, but if you feel with your fingers,
Speaker 2: you could find a hole in the flesh beneath, even
Speaker 2: though again the skin is intact. And I love thinking
Speaker 2: about that because even if you just you know, feel
Speaker 2: around on your own body, you can find all kinds
Speaker 2: of little, like, I don't know, textual differences in the
Speaker 2: flesh underneath the skin you're pressing on, which you could
Speaker 2: interpret to be like a hole.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's you. You can go wild, you know,
Speaker 1: reinterpreting your own physiology if you think there might be
Speaker 1: some sort of a like a hole there made by
Speaker 1: elves or what have you. Yeah, yeah, So it's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Well, and it makes me think about like hypochondria, you know,
Speaker 2: in this era. So now you might have a more
Speaker 2: realistic catalog of diseases to draw upon when you are
Speaker 2: are sort of like getting in your head about that
Speaker 2: and assuming that you might have all kinds of things
Speaker 2: affecting you. You can like look up real medical conditions
Speaker 2: on the O app, but like, you know, at a
Speaker 2: time before that, instead of hypochondriac googling the Mayo Clinic
Speaker 2: website and stuff people are thinking about like elf arrows
Speaker 2: and all kinds of curses and things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did I pull a muscle or do I have
Speaker 1: elf cake? You know, it's both would seem equally possible
Speaker 1: in these cases.
Speaker 2: I also think there's an interesting tension here that if
Speaker 2: there was some belief that these weapons were somehow ghostly
Speaker 2: or subtle in a more archaic sense, like able to
Speaker 2: pass through solid objects like a ghost, that's an interesting
Speaker 2: tension with the evidence of them often being literally an
Speaker 2: artifact made of stone. The stone the most perfectly solid
Speaker 2: and earthly substance people can think of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that is interesting, the idea that this is
Speaker 1: some sort of at once it is somehow a magical,
Speaker 1: invisible weapon that cuts right through flesh and pierces organs
Speaker 1: and brings about mysterious elf illnesses, and yet at the
Speaker 1: same time, yeah, here's the stone. You can hold it,
Speaker 1: you can pick it up. It outlives us all.
Speaker 2: One final account, I wanted to mention from Davidson. He
Speaker 2: quotes a testimony allegedly given during trials for witchcraft in Scotland,
Speaker 2: and this is in a book by Pitcairn, And this
Speaker 2: is citing the alleged testimony of a woman convicted for
Speaker 2: witchcraft in sixteen sixty two named Isabel Goudie, who reports
Speaker 2: having seen the elf arrows being made. Quote, the devil
Speaker 2: them with his own hand and delivers them to elf boys.
Speaker 2: What whittles and dights them? I think dytes means to
Speaker 2: like adorn, equip or ready something and dights them with
Speaker 2: a sharp thing like a packing needle. And a packing
Speaker 2: needle was a large, heavy needle used for sewing rough
Speaker 2: materials like canvas. Now that's an interesting account for a
Speaker 2: number of ways. One is that, of course, while we
Speaker 2: should always be skeptical readers of any historical account, remember
Speaker 2: that there are like several extra layers of skepticism you
Speaker 2: should apply to alleged confessions of witches, not just because
Speaker 2: they involve supernatural elements, but because you have to often
Speaker 2: suspect coercion in the circumstances of the confession, and also
Speaker 2: suspect alterations made by the persons allegedly recording the testimony.
Speaker 2: But interesting nonetheless that somebody at least put together this
Speaker 2: account of so Satan is making these weapons and then
Speaker 2: handing them off to elf boys to be refined to
Speaker 2: the elf boys will whittle them and then adorn them
Speaker 2: with like a sharp prick on the end, like a
Speaker 2: packing needle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was reading in one of my sources that
Speaker 1: I was looking at that you see a lot of
Speaker 1: picking and choosing from both Christian and pre Christian traditions
Speaker 1: and working out exactly how elf shot works in this case,
Speaker 1: but also how one alleviates elf shot, like are you
Speaker 1: are you calling out to the Holy ghost or are
Speaker 1: you sort of calling out maybe with a little a
Speaker 1: little more vaguely to other powers in the world.
Speaker 2: I would say this is also evidence of a tradition
Speaker 2: that you see. I think we talked about this a
Speaker 2: bit in some episodes we did last year called the
Speaker 2: Holy Undead that involves some stories of stories from the
Speaker 2: frontiers of Christianity in the medieval period. But the idea
Speaker 2: would be that sometimes beings that were not necessarily devils
Speaker 2: or could have multiple moral valances in the original context
Speaker 2: of a religion, once the area is taken over by
Speaker 2: a new religion, these beings undergo a kind of formal
Speaker 2: demonization where now they're just turned into well, those were demons,
Speaker 2: actually those are devils now.
Speaker 1: I'm reminded of an example that this was something from
Speaker 1: one of our episodes last year that came out during Halloween,
Speaker 1: Ghosts of wind and Rain, I believe with the title,
Speaker 1: we mentioned Herne the Hunter as being a kind of
Speaker 1: kind of wild Hunt related ghost that was said to
Speaker 1: ride through the woods surrounding Windsor Castle. And there are
Speaker 1: various stories about him, but I remember one of the
Speaker 1: details from that, and I won't go through all of it,
Speaker 1: but there was one account, and this one was actually
Speaker 1: shared by Carol Rose in one of her books. There
Speaker 1: is a story told or retold by folklorist Ruth Tongue
Speaker 1: about three British youths decked out in the teddyboy style
Speaker 1: of the nineteen sixties and they're out there in the
Speaker 1: woods near Windsor Castle. They find a horn in the woods,
Speaker 1: they blow it, and then an unseen spirit pursues them
Speaker 1: through the woods and shoots one of them with a
Speaker 1: ghost arrow, slaying them dead without any physical wound. So
Speaker 1: that of course is easily playing with the same palwet
Speaker 1: of colors that we have in elf shot. I mean
Speaker 1: it is essentially elf shot.
Speaker 2: So there could be like a hole in the brain
Speaker 2: without mustling of the pompadour. Right, the story is much funnier,
Speaker 2: by the way, if you know what the Teddy Boys
Speaker 2: style looks like, so you should look that up if
Speaker 2: you're not familiar.
Speaker 1: I had to look it up again to see what
Speaker 1: the style consisted of, and it's hard to nail down,
Speaker 1: Like it's hard to really like, how do I explain
Speaker 1: this weird suits, strange hair, kind of a a youth
Speaker 1: style that did not quite become iconic, at least not
Speaker 1: to modern minds. Maybe it has more staying power in Britain.
Speaker 2: I see some elaborate upswept hair styles. I guess you
Speaker 2: would call these pompadors or I don't know, maybe something else.
Speaker 2: But then I see it very long coats, some skinny ties.
Speaker 2: I don't know what else to group this with. It's
Speaker 2: not exactly mod it's not exactly greaser, it's something else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, British subculture of the mid fifties to the mid sixties.
Speaker 1: I guess the big thing would be, like, what are
Speaker 1: the teddy boy movies. I think there was just a
Speaker 1: movie called Teddy Boys from what it is, nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: nine starring Cliff Richard. But again I have to hear
Speaker 1: from perhaps our listeners in the UK who have thoughts
Speaker 1: on the teddyboy style, teddy boy or not. You don't
Speaker 1: want to go messing around in the woods and picking
Speaker 1: up strange horns and blowing on him, because it's one
Speaker 1: way to catch a Gostero, right.
Speaker 2: And one last thing I do want to say about
Speaker 2: this paper before we move on for now, is that,
Speaker 2: even by Davidson's account, not everybody who found an arrowhead
Speaker 2: in Great Britain in centuries past thought that they were
Speaker 2: made by elves, fairies, witches or the devil. Davidson quotes
Speaker 2: a Welsh naturalist named Louied. I think is how you
Speaker 2: say his name? I spelled Lhwyd. But who this guy is?
Speaker 2: Early as the seventeenth century was arguing that these l
Speaker 2: pharaohs were in fact relics of a previous regime of
Speaker 2: human manufacture. In fact, he was arguing against multiple theories,
Speaker 2: one that they'd been made by supernatural beings, the other
Speaker 2: that they had just been made as charms. And he
Speaker 2: was like, I don't think they were made as charms.
Speaker 2: In fact, they look a lot like the arrows that
Speaker 2: are still used by some people today to hunt food.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they were probably used for shooting by people
Speaker 2: who used to live here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like we said, they do end up getting
Speaker 1: used as amulets and charms and also have their place
Speaker 1: in folk remedies of the day. One of the sources
Speaker 1: I was looking at with a focus on Irish traditions
Speaker 1: is Flint and Lithic Lore by Marion Dowd from twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen published in Archaeology Ireland and down Pints out that
Speaker 1: the artifacts in question in Ireland in this case, and
Speaker 1: collected by the Irish Folklore Committee in the late nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties were primary collected and originally interpreted in post medieval
Speaker 1: and modern Irish rural communities, and the various elfstones or
Speaker 1: elf shots they consisted of various things including post medieval
Speaker 1: gun flints, fossils, unusual pebbles, but they also included Neolithic
Speaker 1: and Bronze age arrow heads, so I think that's important
Speaker 1: to keep in mind. Like, basically, anything could be an
Speaker 1: elf stone or an elf arrow if it were if
Speaker 1: it were found if it were, and if it were
Speaker 1: found to be novel in some way, and then gets
Speaker 1: reinterpreted with this supernatural script. Reminds me a bit of
Speaker 1: the I've brought the sub numerous times with the idea
Speaker 1: of star Jelly, the idea that if you see see
Speaker 1: some sort of it looks like something fell from the
Speaker 1: sky in the nearby woods. So you go out into
Speaker 1: the nearby woods and you keep poking around, and do
Speaker 1: you find something slimy that you're like, I've never seen
Speaker 1: that before. This must be the thing that fell from
Speaker 1: the sky. There there are plenty of slimy things in
Speaker 1: the woods, you just usually aren't looking for them. But
Speaker 1: if you look for them with the script in mind.
Speaker 2: The mucus of the universe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so doubt also points out some It basically goes
Speaker 1: over some of the general ideas caught up in the
Speaker 1: traditions of elf shop. Sometimes the effects were human targeted
Speaker 1: in order to take the person away to the fairy realm,
Speaker 1: but it seems like most cases you're dealing with the
Speaker 1: targeting of cattle, and in some cases this might be intentional.
Speaker 1: Other times it's described as being due to an accident,
Speaker 1: like basically there are battles between groups of elves and
Speaker 1: the night, and well, your cattle just happened to stray
Speaker 1: between these two groups, and one of them caught an
Speaker 1: elfharaoh by accident. And then there are other things, of course,
Speaker 1: one can do to anger the elves and some of
Speaker 1: these traditions. One of the ex samples that she specifically
Speaker 1: mentions is the cutting down of a white thorn tree
Speaker 1: that especially that could earn you an elf shot right there.
Speaker 1: And then she gets into a lot of She also
Speaker 1: spends a lot of time talking about the cures for
Speaker 1: elf shot, and a lot of these do end up
Speaker 1: involving the little elfstones and elf arrows that one might
Speaker 1: find these various stone artifacts that are very often Neolithic
Speaker 1: or Bronze age arrowheads. But she mentions other cures that
Speaker 1: don't involve this. For instance, one was to travel silently
Speaker 1: and wordlessly to a bog and fetch water for the
Speaker 1: animal to drink, but you had to keep your silence
Speaker 1: the whole time, where it wouldn't work. She discusses a
Speaker 1: collection of elfstones known as the tawny white duff Sades,
Speaker 1: and the collection, she says, consisted of fifteen flint and
Speaker 1: chirt lithics, including a neolithic hollow scraper, two convex scrapers,
Speaker 1: several complete and broken blades and flakes, waste flakes, and
Speaker 1: a post medieval gunflint. And these had apparently also been
Speaker 1: used in various folk medicine treatments over the years. As
Speaker 1: she points out later, you would often have in a community,
Speaker 1: you would have a collection of these like these would
Speaker 1: be the elf stones that were kept. And if there's
Speaker 1: some sort of suspected case of an animal having been
Speaker 1: elf shot or experiencing elf bolt, then you would turn
Speaker 1: to these artifacts and somebody you know who knew how
Speaker 1: to use them. I included a picture here of these
Speaker 1: particular stones from this paper, Joe, and you can see
Speaker 1: them here there. These have not been or at least
Speaker 1: to my eye, they don't seem to have been changed
Speaker 1: in any way shape or form. I know. I saw
Speaker 1: some other images where it looks like in the sort
Speaker 1: of reinterpretation of the item, there might be something added
Speaker 1: to them. But these seem very much as they would
Speaker 1: have been found. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'd seen some mounted in I don't know what the
Speaker 2: term is a little sort of like frame for a
Speaker 2: stone charm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So how would these be used well, As you mentioned,
Speaker 1: we mentioned the water already, and indeed the use of
Speaker 1: water seems to be a common theme in treatments, where
Speaker 1: you'll have the lfshot will be placed in the water.
Speaker 1: Other times they'll be wrapped in a rag, and then
Speaker 1: that bundle of rag and stones will be placed in
Speaker 1: the water, and then you give the water to the
Speaker 1: animal to drink. Sometimes the water is heated up, other
Speaker 1: times it's not. Sometimes iron is added to the mixture,
Speaker 1: sometimes coins. In one case that she cites, the mixer
Speaker 1: added quote a florin, a penny and a halfpenny, so
Speaker 1: very very specific amount of money added to the mix.
Speaker 2: Who keeps the money afterwards?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like I don't guess the money is
Speaker 1: considered as special as the stone, So I guess the
Speaker 1: money might go back in your pocket, but it could
Speaker 1: be wrong on that. She also mentions a treatment method
Speaker 1: by which quote a plow culter was heated in the
Speaker 1: fire and passed around the cow several times, repeating incantations
Speaker 1: until the elf dart quote melted into the animal's body.
Speaker 1: And I really love that one, in part because it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to involve water or the use of one
Speaker 1: of these stones. It uses like another sort of magical
Speaker 1: modern artifact, like magical power is attributed to the plow culture.
Speaker 1: And then you're you're using incantations and making this like
Speaker 1: the supernatural dart that is inside the animal melt away
Speaker 1: and become part of the animal. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: this particularly reminded me of a bit of both like
Speaker 1: psychic surgery and ufol the ufology concept of alien implants
Speaker 1: like you know, there's this, there's something inside, it's not
Speaker 1: supposed to be there. Let's use a you know, psychic
Speaker 1: surgery to remove it. And of course you know that'll
Speaker 1: be a situation where you know, it is a it's
Speaker 1: a con act where one is is is pretending, putting
Speaker 1: on a show of removing something from the body without
Speaker 1: actually making an indention in the body. Right now. What's
Speaker 1: interesting to think about there, though, is that, on one hand,
Speaker 1: dealing with modern concepts of psychic surgery and ufology uphoology
Speaker 1: versus these older ideas, when you're dealing with the human context,
Speaker 1: some sort of ritual like this could have a placebo
Speaker 1: effect on the human individual, and so you could never
Speaker 1: discount the placebo effect completely. But with the cow. I mean,
Speaker 1: the cow doesn't know what's going on. They don't know
Speaker 1: what The cow doesn't know why you're heating up a
Speaker 1: plow culture and going in circles around it, et cetera.
Speaker 2: The wait, though, that's actually a fantastic question that I
Speaker 2: have never thought to look into before. Could there be
Speaker 2: a placebo effect on animals? It would probably need to
Speaker 2: work by a different mechanism, because, like in humans, it
Speaker 2: does seem to make a difference if the human thinks
Speaker 2: there's a mechanism of repair or something, even if there's not.
Speaker 2: In the case of an animal, though, I could still
Speaker 2: imagine there could be placebo like effects, maybe like that
Speaker 2: an animal feels better by receiving attention from its human,
Speaker 2: like the same human that feeds it is paying attention
Speaker 2: to it now, or by I don't know, other sort
Speaker 2: of calming effects of certain types of attention or intervention.
Speaker 1: I don't know, like that the licking of a like
Speaker 1: a dog licking its wound, that sort of thing. I
Speaker 1: guess that's a more complicated topic, like to what extent
Speaker 1: is the licking actually helping, and then to what extent
Speaker 1: is it just a calming action on the part of
Speaker 1: the dog.
Speaker 2: Oh, I imagine that dog's licking wounds is to some
Speaker 2: extent adaptive. I again, I haven't checked this. I would
Speaker 2: assume that it would be to remove contaminants from wounds.
Speaker 1: Now, Dowd shares other healing measures here. This one I
Speaker 1: think was from the modern period. Quote the fairy shot
Speaker 1: cow was cured by feeding her gunpowder mixed with an egg.
Speaker 2: M my favorite breakfast. Wait a minute, hold on, No,
Speaker 2: gunpowder has has ingredients that that are used in cooking sometimes, right,
Speaker 2: like like nitrates. Am I wrong about that? Hold on? Okay,
Speaker 2: I was right about that. So gunpowder is like the
Speaker 2: main constituent of it is potassium nitrate, also known as saltpeter,
Speaker 2: and that is also a major ingredient in like cured meats.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, maybe you're having like a cured
Speaker 2: egg gilt. I guess I'm reaching here.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put on a strong warning against trying this
Speaker 1: at home, though, please do not try cooking. Do not
Speaker 1: cook with gunpowder down shoes. Some other fascinating tidbits from
Speaker 1: these various accounts of elf shot. One is that disrupting
Speaker 1: a ring fort could earn you potential elf shot. These
Speaker 1: were these are This also gets into the reinterpretation of
Speaker 1: remains of of old civilizations and cultures, because ring Fort's
Speaker 1: certainly in Ireland, and outside of Ireland as well, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the remains of brown age circular fortified settlements.
Speaker 1: In particular. She mentions one account that was shared of
Speaker 1: a woman driving cattle past a ring fort and then
Speaker 1: suddenly the herd is attacked by a fairy shooting one
Speaker 1: of these arrows through the air, and a cow is
Speaker 1: struck and collapses. But then she's able to search around
Speaker 1: find various bits of flint fragments, boil these quote in
Speaker 1: the cow's drink and thereby cured her. And there's some
Speaker 1: other fun accounts. There's some sort of like near misses
Speaker 1: that I also thought were very, very fun. There's one
Speaker 1: account in which you have a woman returning home and
Speaker 1: she has a wooden pail of milk with her, and
Speaker 1: when she gets home, she realizes that there are two
Speaker 1: elfstones embedded in the pail, and these were thrown by
Speaker 1: the fairies, by the elves. There's another story of a
Speaker 1: woman carrying a baby and when she gets home, she
Speaker 1: finds that the baby has one of the elfstones in
Speaker 1: its hand and is chewing on it, which I like
Speaker 1: that one as well, like did the baby catch it
Speaker 1: out of the air or did the elves like give
Speaker 1: it to the baby? Like I kind of like that
Speaker 1: later interpretation because it's like, you know, the elves see like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a baby. This is really you know this,
Speaker 1: this isn't like the other humans. Let's give let's give
Speaker 1: the baby an el pharaoh. And also let's kind of
Speaker 1: just mess with the mom by doing.
Speaker 2: This catching it in the air. Word, that's a nimble baby.
Speaker 2: That baby's got a future in professional sports.
Speaker 1: But anyway, conventional wisdom is that if there is elf
Speaker 1: shot thrown at you and you having to find some
Speaker 1: an elfstone on the ground, you better take it as
Speaker 1: a productive amulet and or to use as it for
Speaker 1: its curative effects if you were hit or if the
Speaker 1: you know more particularly of a cow in your keeping
Speaker 1: was hit. And there are sort of common interchangeable features
Speaker 1: of the cure that Dowd shares, So we touched on
Speaker 1: several stories that mentioned this already. It's placing the stones
Speaker 1: in water and perhaps adding something like a piece of
Speaker 1: metal or particular coins to the water as well. Then
Speaker 1: the water may be consumed by the sick or in
Speaker 1: some cases rubbed on like the cow's body. There may
Speaker 1: be prayers, they may be incantations, and I saw some
Speaker 1: examples of these that some of them like blean more
Speaker 1: into Christian traditions and mention the Holy ghost. Others seem
Speaker 1: a little more pre Christian. The water itself that's used
Speaker 1: may come from a particular place, such as a stream
Speaker 1: at a crossroads, or a particular bog. And then at
Speaker 1: least in one case, I saw a situation where once
Speaker 1: you have the water prepared, instead of giving it to
Speaker 1: the cow, you pour it on the ground near where
Speaker 1: the elf shot occurred. So so treat the place where
Speaker 1: the wounding occurred to treat the wound. Also, silence during
Speaker 1: journeys factors into some of these where you mentioned one
Speaker 1: account of that, again a mixing of pagan and Christian traditions.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so these are just some of the basic
Speaker 1: properties you see in the treatment, though there are again
Speaker 1: a lot of variations here. There's a lot of drift
Speaker 1: into exactly how one might cure elf shot and exactly
Speaker 1: how or to what extent or if you might incorporate
Speaker 1: elfstones in the cure. Now, I didn't look, but I
Speaker 1: can only imagine that various conspiracy thinkers have a lot
Speaker 1: of fun with us in terms of like ancient aliens
Speaker 1: and perhaps ancient time travelers. Like clearly they might argue
Speaker 1: this is referring to a time when a time traveler
Speaker 1: went back in time and fired a revolver at somebody
Speaker 1: fired a handgun and there was a shell casing left
Speaker 1: on the ground, or or you know, an alien used
Speaker 1: a phaser or something to that effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking phasers, because there you could have
Speaker 2: some kind of you know, sort of science fantasy explanation
Speaker 2: of how it zaps the inside the inside without burning
Speaker 2: the skin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and of course I love the argument of well,
Speaker 1: the elves were actually aliens, because yes, that is absolutely correct,
Speaker 1: but not in the way that you're trying, not in
Speaker 1: the way that you're you're saying it, like the idea
Speaker 1: of the elf, the idea of the alien visitor, Like
Speaker 1: these are the highly related concepts. These are linked concepts
Speaker 1: that do the same thing, that fulfill the same purpose
Speaker 1: in our attempt to understand the unknown. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's always amusing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's quite clear that at the very
Speaker 2: least in most cases, what you're looking at is extremely
Speaker 2: similar mental and social phenomena getting a new code of
Speaker 2: paint or getting a reskin.
Speaker 1: Basically, and I certainly don't want to speak ill of
Speaker 1: the elves. I will read everybody a quote from the
Speaker 1: Wikipedia entry on elves. This is one I shared with
Speaker 1: you just the other day, Joe quote. This is from
Speaker 1: the Wikipedia entry. From a scientific viewpoint, elves are not
Speaker 1: considered objectively real.
Speaker 2: Citation needed. Have you where has anyone ever proven that
Speaker 2: elves are not objectively real?
Speaker 1: Well, there's a citation on this line, and it is
Speaker 1: from an article titled Elves and Anglo Saxon, England Matters
Speaker 1: of belief, health, gender and Identity by Alaric Hall from
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've got a couple of papers by Alericall that
Speaker 2: I think I'm going to talk about in the next episode.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, it sounds like he'll be a good source
Speaker 1: because he does seem to the Wikipedia citation here's correct,
Speaker 1: does seem to side with the argument that elves are
Speaker 1: not objectively real.
Speaker 2: Okay, we got to redo our whole approach to this
Speaker 2: and consult only journals that are dedicated to the premise
Speaker 2: that elves are objectively real.
Speaker 1: All right, well, yeah, we'll be back in the next episode.
Speaker 1: We have more to say about elf shot and elve
Speaker 1: disease and so forth. In the meantime, Yeah, welcome to
Speaker 1: Halloween season. We hope to have multiple episodes here for
Speaker 1: you that align with the Halloween season. As usual, here
Speaker 1: on stuff to blow your mind. We like to really
Speaker 1: like to lean into this holiday particularly, so yeah, stick
Speaker 1: with us. We have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 1: We have listener mail on Mondays. On Wednesday you'll find
Speaker 1: a monster fact or artifact episode and again during this
Speaker 1: season they'll definitely be be monstrous and horror themed. And
Speaker 1: then on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our
Speaker 1: time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk
Speaker 1: about a weird film. And of course during the month
Speaker 1: of October, those weird films are are are definitely going
Speaker 1: to be more of the horror variety.
Speaker 2: I imagine huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 2: producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get
Speaker 2: in touch with us with feedback on this episode or
Speaker 2: any other to suggest a topic for the future, or
Speaker 2: just to say hello. You can email us at contact
Speaker 2: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.