Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. Time to hit
Speaker 2: that vault. This episode originally aired August ninth, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: and it's part three of our series on whistling.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go right in.
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.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 2: three of our series on whistling. Now, if you haven't
Speaker 2: heard the first two parts, you might want to go
Speaker 2: check those out first. In the previous sections, we talked
Speaker 2: about the physics of what happens in the mouth when
Speaker 2: you whistle. We talked about whistling based languages or variants
Speaker 2: of languages, and we talked about the fascinating practice of
Speaker 2: Chinese transcendental whistling, as well as some various psychonogical beliefs
Speaker 2: about the world changing power of whistling. But today, it
Speaker 2: might be interesting to turn our eyes to ancient history
Speaker 2: and say, did people whistle in the ancient world? And
Speaker 2: if so, how would we know about it.
Speaker 1: This is such a great question that I'd never really
Speaker 1: thought about because I kind of took it for granted,
Speaker 1: like this is a sound that the human body can make,
Speaker 1: Therefore people would have made this sound. And I think
Speaker 1: for the most part, this is a good way of
Speaker 1: looking at it things. But then the other side of
Speaker 1: the equation is, all right, well, let's look at the evidence.
Speaker 1: What evidence do we have in the literature of the
Speaker 1: ancient world that people whistled? And then if they did whistle, well,
Speaker 1: what are the attitudes concerning whistling? Because one thing that
Speaker 1: I think we've already been able to distress in this
Speaker 1: series is that that whistling is fascinating as it is,
Speaker 1: it is not a neutral thing. We end up having
Speaker 1: these various culture and, as we'll discuss, superstitious weights attached
Speaker 1: to the practice of whistling.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm just generally fascinated by the idea of
Speaker 2: ancient music. I guess in part because for the most
Speaker 2: part we don't know what it sounded like. And so
Speaker 2: when you find, for example, people who have tried to
Speaker 2: render into performances some of the oldest recorded like a
Speaker 2: written notation of music that we have, such as the
Speaker 2: famous Hurriyan songs or Hurriyan hymns that are from the
Speaker 2: ancient city of Yugurt, which are these hymns to the
Speaker 2: goddess Nicoll. They're written on quneiform tablets, and people have
Speaker 2: tried to turn that music notation into performances that you
Speaker 2: can hear today, and it's very haunting. The same is true.
Speaker 2: I think there's an ancient Greek tombstone that has some
Speaker 2: music notation on it that has been translated into modern music.
Speaker 2: I think it's known as the Sekloss or Seculoss epitaph.
Speaker 2: And when you hear those sounds, they really do feel
Speaker 2: very alien. They're like they're from another world, and it
Speaker 2: just opens the mind all these possibilities that the ancient
Speaker 2: world was full of music that we will never know
Speaker 2: because it wasn't recorded, of course it couldn't be, and
Speaker 2: it also wasn't written down or notated in any way
Speaker 2: that we can understand today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all this is definitely worth thinking about it
Speaker 1: and again coming down to like why it is whistling
Speaker 1: important enough to take note of? This is a question
Speaker 1: that remains on one's mind as we look at these
Speaker 1: different examples. But the main paper that I was looking
Speaker 1: at that was really getting into this was a two
Speaker 1: thousand paper by AV Van Stakelenberg titled Whistling in Antiquity,
Speaker 1: and the author dives into the basic question of, well,
Speaker 1: what evidence do we have that, particularly the ancient Greeks
Speaker 1: and the ancient Romans whistled or didn't whistle? And again,
Speaker 1: on one hand, it's hard to believe that they didn't,
Speaker 1: and Stackkellenberg points out that we know the Romans, for instance,
Speaker 1: had many songs for different occasions, and yet whistling would
Speaker 1: also probably have been considered vulgar and not something that
Speaker 1: a person of status would do compared to other sounds
Speaker 1: that one might make. Proper Romans were not even supposed
Speaker 1: to sing, for example, I did not know that, not
Speaker 1: me neither. And yet sta Kelenberg writes, quote, whistling a
Speaker 1: tune would therefore not have been compatible with the characters
Speaker 1: of many, if not most, of the persona in ancient literature.
Speaker 1: Apart from that, however, it is a remarkable fact that
Speaker 1: we also never meet a slave, a fisherman, pimp, or
Speaker 1: soldier whistling a tune, not even in comedy. So what
Speaker 1: sta Kellenberg is pointing out here is that, okay, if
Speaker 1: whistling is not the proper thing to do, it's not
Speaker 1: the thing that your heroes and your proper Romans would
Speaker 1: would have done. What about the improper characters in your
Speaker 1: various writings. Surely somebody would come along and they would whistle,
Speaker 1: and by whistling signify that they are an improper for
Speaker 1: a character and therefore deserving a ridicule or the villain
Speaker 1: of the piece, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean not when you look at what
Speaker 2: kind of Roman literature survives to us, it's not all
Speaker 2: lofty royal drama. You know. There are some really body
Speaker 2: satirical Roman literature that still exists today. And so you
Speaker 2: would expect the characters in this to engage in all
Speaker 2: manner of vulgarity that the Romans knew about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I think of our own cinematic history here.
Speaker 1: And also this gets in a literature as well. Spitting
Speaker 1: spitting on the ground in front of you generally considered uncouth,
Speaker 1: but in most circles, and yet you definitely see it
Speaker 1: a lot in cinema because it's a great way to
Speaker 1: establish that well, this character is a little rough around
Speaker 1: the edges, and I think the cowboy movies where their spitting,
Speaker 1: or Cormy McCarthy novels where there's a lot of spitting.
Speaker 2: So what stick Kellenberg is saying is that even though
Speaker 2: we have Roman literature that has lower class characters and
Speaker 2: characters who are on nderstood as doing body and vulgar things,
Speaker 2: we never in the existing corpus see them whistling, or almost.
Speaker 1: Never seems to be the case, though Sti Keelenberg does
Speaker 1: point out a few areas where we're not entirely sure,
Speaker 1: and this is where we get into the imprecise nature
Speaker 1: of language and translations. They point to a part in
Speaker 1: Petronius's Satiricon from the first century CE that describes a
Speaker 1: person who quote put his hand to his mouth and
Speaker 1: whistled out some terrible stuff I couldn't identify. Afterwards, he
Speaker 1: told us it was Greek air. Now it's apparently an
Speaker 1: open question if the proper translation is whistling, and if
Speaker 1: it is whistling, what are we really talking about? Is
Speaker 1: it whistling like or is it finger whistling where you create,
Speaker 1: you know, the loud sound by blowing through your fingers,
Speaker 1: or is this just bad singing the idea that you
Speaker 1: know some sounds are coming out of this person's mouth.
Speaker 1: They call it Greek air. It's just bad sin.
Speaker 2: Oh I see. So like, in order to be insulting,
Speaker 2: you might describe someone singing as wheezing or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sort of thing. They point out that even today,
Speaker 1: a fictional character whistling often means that they're they're what
Speaker 1: like they think of a whistling character in a film
Speaker 1: you've seen. It often means they're care free, or they're happy,
Speaker 1: or they're perhaps a bit of a dufiss. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: whistling is like, what's going to happen to this poor
Speaker 1: dope that's just a whistling and a little unprepared for
Speaker 1: the circumstances ahead of them.
Speaker 2: Does Buster scrugs whistle? I feel like I think he does.
Speaker 1: I think he does, if memory serves you know. And
Speaker 1: the Coen Brothers Buster scugs the first bit in that
Speaker 1: anthology film. Yeah, he's this white suited cowboy who at
Speaker 1: first we think, yeah, he's just too he's just too
Speaker 1: much of a goodie two shoes. He's just going to
Speaker 1: be eat up by the world that he's riding into.
Speaker 1: And of course we find out that he's more than
Speaker 1: a match for the violence of the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess that is the joke that he's like
Speaker 2: the whistling, singing cowboy, but he's also a cold blooded killer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that fab was short. I love that. But in
Speaker 1: any rate, we do see some variations on this. For instance,
Speaker 1: stakellerg points out that in Western literature we see whistling
Speaker 1: associated with the Squire and the Canterbury Tales in the
Speaker 1: fourteenth century. And this is a quote here singing he
Speaker 1: was or fluting all the day. This is from the prologue.
Speaker 1: And I guess the fluting here is what might be whistling.
Speaker 2: Fluting without a flute. That's what I've always called whistling.
Speaker 1: Stackellenberg points out that, okay, this character, though the Squire,
Speaker 1: is also a lusty lut, and we don't really see
Speaker 1: a precursor to this character type in Roman and Greek writing,
Speaker 1: but here we have an early example of the lusty
Speaker 1: lut who is also potentially whistling. Stackellenberg also raises the
Speaker 1: question of perhaps humming was more calm and then whistling,
Speaker 1: But the problem there is we also don't know much
Speaker 1: about humming and antiquity either. They write quote, whatever the case,
Speaker 1: whistling apparently formed no part of the parallinguistic stock used
Speaker 1: by Greek and Roman authors. This stock was considerable, as
Speaker 1: recent studies show, and a few studies are cited from
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties and include such emotional indicators as jumping
Speaker 1: for joy and nail biting. So saying here that, okay,
Speaker 1: if you're going to have characters do things to indicate
Speaker 1: what's going on in their heads or what kind of
Speaker 1: emotions are supposed to be emoting on the stage or
Speaker 1: on the page, whatever the case may be, you're going
Speaker 1: to have things that are being used like jumping for joy,
Speaker 1: like nail biting, and yet there's no whistling. Now, they
Speaker 1: also get into this concept of whistling in the dark bit,
Speaker 1: which of course is a well worn turn of phrase
Speaker 1: for us, in which one whistles to stave off fear.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite examples of this, or at least
Speaker 1: one that I think I encountered the earliest and therefore
Speaker 1: always think about this is the Ichabod Crane and Headless
Speaker 1: Horseman cartoon from Disney. This was in nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: The Adventures of Ichabod and Mister Toad, though this would
Speaker 1: have been This was also a segment that was often
Speaker 1: aired on Disney TV Halloween specials, So there's definitely some
Speaker 1: whistling in the dark in that one, and of course
Speaker 1: it doesn't really work. Ultimately, the things in the dark
Speaker 1: come out to chase Ichabod Crane around.
Speaker 2: Now, Rob, maybe we will get more into this in
Speaker 2: a subsequent part when we talk about some psychology. I'm
Speaker 2: not sure, but maybe. But anyway, I wonder what you
Speaker 2: think of the function of whistling in this type of
Speaker 2: scenario where you're afraid. Maybe you're wandering by yourself past
Speaker 2: a graveyard or wandering by yourself in the dark, and
Speaker 2: there's a breeze blowing through the trees and you're a
Speaker 2: little bit apprehensive, so you start to whistle. Now, I
Speaker 2: think the phrase like whistling past the graveyard or whistling
Speaker 2: in the dark is supposed to denote like somebody showing bravada.
Speaker 2: You know, they're saying they're like trying to show off
Speaker 2: that they're not afraid, when in fact they are. But
Speaker 2: what I noticed, and that comes up in the example
Speaker 2: I just mentioned, is that people often do this when
Speaker 2: they're alone, when there's nobody there to see them. Nobody
Speaker 2: to show off too. So if whistling is to show
Speaker 2: off that you're not afraid, it seems like the showing
Speaker 2: off must either be to yourself somehow or to like
Speaker 2: the scary creature that you imagine is watching you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it would have to be one or the other.
Speaker 1: But I guess in some of these cases, especially when
Speaker 1: you're thinking about graveyards, there's definitely an imagined other out there,
Speaker 1: and it might not be an imagined other that you
Speaker 1: give a lot of weight most of the time, but
Speaker 1: at least right now it's on your mind. So we're
Speaker 1: going to get into several different examples of whistling as
Speaker 1: a potential means of summoning or accidentally summoning or drawing
Speaker 1: the attention of things that should not be drawn in
Speaker 1: to your vicinity. So on one level, yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: a bit dangerous if you're going to actually fall in
Speaker 1: line with some of these supernatural beliefs, like I don't
Speaker 1: want to summon the devil if I'm afraid of the
Speaker 1: devil coming out of the graveyard at me. But maybe
Speaker 1: part of it is like proving not only am I
Speaker 1: not afraid of the devil in the graveyard, I'll go
Speaker 1: ahead and summon him. If he's here, he can come
Speaker 1: on out, and we'll go ahead and do this. But
Speaker 1: I'm done with just being afraid of the devil somewhere
Speaker 1: hiding in the graveyard.
Speaker 2: Okay, But I guess the question is whether it's actually
Speaker 2: whistling or whether it's just singing or humming some version
Speaker 2: of this idea singing when you are afraid, or singing
Speaker 2: through the graveyard. Does this come up in ancient history
Speaker 2: as well? Do we have any evidence of this from
Speaker 2: thousands of years ago?
Speaker 1: It seems like we might, s to Kellenberg brings up
Speaker 1: another example again from Petronius, and this is again from
Speaker 1: the satirra con and it also concerns a were wolf.
Speaker 2: Did you know that there were ancient Roman stories about
Speaker 2: were wolves?
Speaker 1: There absolutely are, Yeah, And this one's a pretty good one.
Speaker 1: This is I'm going to read part of it, at least.
Speaker 1: This is from a nineteen eighteen Heseltine translation. Quote. I
Speaker 1: seized my opportunity and persuaded a guest in our house
Speaker 1: to come with me as far as the fifth Milestone.
Speaker 1: He was a soldier and as brave as hell, so
Speaker 1: we trotted off about cockrow, the moon shone like high noon.
Speaker 1: We got among the tombstones. My man went aside to
Speaker 1: look at the epitaphs. I sat down with my heart
Speaker 1: full of song, and began to count the grades. Hmmm,
Speaker 1: so Stekelenberg writes the following on this, how tempting to
Speaker 1: interpret this scene as a clever application of psychological para
Speaker 1: language which has a superstitious and frightened slave indulged in
Speaker 1: an ancient equivalent of our whistling in the dark. Since
Speaker 1: the kenar represents many forms of musical expressions, we would
Speaker 1: even be justified in translating it here with whistling. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there is no straightforward indication that Petronius had this in mind.
Speaker 2: Okay, so, despite the fact that our expression is often
Speaker 2: like whistling past the graveyard or whistling in the graveyard,
Speaker 2: this is a word cantare, which, in whatever its Latin
Speaker 2: form is, could have meant whistling, but could also just
Speaker 2: mean singing.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, So again we get into the imprecise nature
Speaker 1: of language, which continues to be a theme with trying
Speaker 1: to figure out whistling or not whistling or making other
Speaker 1: sounds and various old texts.
Speaker 2: You know this is kind of a tangent, but I
Speaker 2: feel like, since we're on the werewolf story, it would
Speaker 2: be kind of a shame not to tell the werewolf story.
Speaker 2: What happens in this story by Petronius here.
Speaker 1: Okay, I can read the next little bit, which I
Speaker 1: think brings it to a nice closure. Then when I
Speaker 1: looked round at my friend, he stripped himself and put
Speaker 1: all his clothes by the roadside. My heart was in
Speaker 1: my mouth, but I stood like a dead man. He
Speaker 1: made a ring of water around his clothes and suddenly
Speaker 1: turned into a wolf. Please do not think I am joking.
Speaker 1: I would not lie about this for any fortune in
Speaker 1: the world. But as I was saying, after he had
Speaker 1: turned into a wolf, he began to howl and ran
Speaker 1: off into the woods. At first I hardly knew where
Speaker 1: I was. Then I went up to take his clothes,
Speaker 1: and they had all turned to stone. No one could
Speaker 1: be nearer dead with terror than I was. But I
Speaker 1: drew my sword and went slaying shadows all the way
Speaker 1: till I came to my love's house. I went in
Speaker 1: like a corpse, nearly gave up the ghost. The sweat
Speaker 1: ran down my legs. My eyes were dull, I could
Speaker 1: hardly be revived. My dear Melissa was surprised at my stake,
Speaker 1: at my being out so late, and said, if you
Speaker 1: had come earlier, you might at least have helped us.
Speaker 1: A wolf got into the house and worried all our
Speaker 1: sheep and let their blood like a butcher. But he
Speaker 1: did not make fools of us, even though he got off,
Speaker 1: for our slave made a hole in his neck with
Speaker 1: a spear. When I heard this, I could not keep
Speaker 1: my eyes shut any longer. But at break of day,
Speaker 1: I rushed back to my master Gaius's house like a
Speaker 1: defrauded publican. And when I came to the place where
Speaker 1: the clothes were turned into stone, I found nothing but
Speaker 1: a pool of blood. When I reached home, my soldier
Speaker 1: was lying in bed like an ox, with a doctor
Speaker 1: looking after his neck. I realized that he was a werewolf,
Speaker 1: and I never could sit down to a meal with
Speaker 1: him afterwards, not if you had killed me first. Other
Speaker 1: people may think what they like about this, but may
Speaker 1: all your guardian angels punish me if I am lying. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's pretty fun, pretty staple werewolf sort of story there.
Speaker 2: It's a great werewolf story. But my biggest question is
Speaker 2: do oxes normally lie in human beds? What does he
Speaker 2: mean I was lying in my bed like an ox?
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, not him. My soldier was lying in
Speaker 2: bed like an ox.
Speaker 1: Hmmm. I don't know. I'm not sure about that.
Speaker 2: I feel like we're missing some kind of historical context there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean maybe it's like he's light, his body
Speaker 1: is like that of an ox. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't nothing comes to mind when I try and picture
Speaker 1: an ox laying down.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's really funny. How Okay, So this is
Speaker 2: the satiricon by Petronius is first century CE, so it's
Speaker 2: like two thousand years later, and werewolf movies are still
Speaker 2: using the exact same trope where somebody figures out it's
Speaker 2: a werewolf because they see the monster get wounded on
Speaker 2: a certain part of the body, and then later they
Speaker 2: see a human wounded on the same part of the body.
Speaker 2: That's in like half the werewolf movies they make.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right. And
Speaker 1: I think if I've seen this in other animal transformation
Speaker 1: myths and stories before, like perhaps some wear tigers stories
Speaker 1: from China and so forth.
Speaker 2: I agree it still works all right.
Speaker 1: So for the next bit that sta Kellenberg gets into
Speaker 1: is that they break down a couple of things we've
Speaker 1: kind of we've at least touched on, if not already discussed,
Speaker 1: and when they break these out further later on. But
Speaker 1: we have a semaphoric whistling or whistling as a form
Speaker 1: of signaling, and this has been around for a very
Speaker 1: long time. This is something that goes back to archaic humans.
Speaker 1: Citing Peter f Otswald, they share quote, whistles are here
Speaker 1: to hear than words because they concentrate sound energy into
Speaker 1: a narrow segment of the frequency spectrum instead of spreading it. Generally,
Speaker 1: they occur in the frequency range of one thousand to
Speaker 1: four thousand cycles per second, to which the human ear
Speaker 1: is most sensitive.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, so this is the same fact that was
Speaker 2: cited in slightly different terms in that linguistics paper that
Speaker 2: we looked at in the previous section by Meyer that
Speaker 2: was about how whistling tends to be a good medium
Speaker 2: for transmitting information because it's in that frequency range of
Speaker 2: one to four killihertz, which is a good place to
Speaker 2: concentrate energy if you wanted to travel the forest and
Speaker 2: be audible and carry distinct information the longest distance, because
Speaker 2: that's like, that's that's sort of the bull's eye for
Speaker 2: what our ears can detect and separate out from ambient noise.
Speaker 1: Now, the next part here is where things get very biblical,
Speaker 1: because Stekellenberg points out that the oldest reference to semaphoric
Speaker 1: use of whistling can be found in the Book of
Speaker 1: Isaiah five twenty six, where the lower whistles to summon people.
Speaker 1: He will raise a signal for a nation afar off
Speaker 1: and whistle for it from the ends of the earth,
Speaker 1: and lo, swiftly, speedily it comes.
Speaker 2: So I started off looking into this just by checking
Speaker 2: it in my Oxford NRSV to see if the translation
Speaker 2: was different in any significant way, and it's not. That
Speaker 2: translation is almost exactly the same as what stck Kellenberg
Speaker 2: has here, But in reading it this passage, I thought
Speaker 2: I should explain more about the context because it makes
Speaker 2: that quote especially interesting and even scary. This is one
Speaker 2: of the most i think one of the most powerful
Speaker 2: and chilling passages in the Hebrew Bible. So what's going
Speaker 2: on here? Well, this is actually a prophecy of doom
Speaker 2: in this part of the Book of Isaiah. The author
Speaker 2: is pronouncing a verdict of divine judgment and punishment against
Speaker 2: the people of Israel and Judah, because he says they
Speaker 2: have ignored God's instructions and chosen to live in wickedness.
Speaker 2: So there's a section before this where he's just talking
Speaker 2: about the evil they do, and you might recognize some
Speaker 2: lines from this because they're pretty famous. The prophet says,
Speaker 2: ah you who call evil good and good evil, who
Speaker 2: put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put
Speaker 2: bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter, You who are
Speaker 2: wise in your own eyes and shrewd in your own sight,
Speaker 2: Ah you, who are heroes in drinking wine and valiant
Speaker 2: at mixing drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe
Speaker 2: and deprive the innocent of their rights.
Speaker 1: Oh man, God coming up strong against mixed drinks.
Speaker 2: Here, Yeah, against mixed drinks and against bribing, so that
Speaker 2: the guilty win in court. But then it starts getting
Speaker 2: with the really scary expressive metaphors. From here it goes
Speaker 2: into Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble,
Speaker 2: and as dry grass sinks down in the flame, so
Speaker 2: their root will become rotten. And their blossom go up
Speaker 2: like the dust. For they have rejected the instruction of
Speaker 2: the Lord of Hosts, and have buys the word of
Speaker 2: the Holy One of Israel. Therefore the anger of the
Speaker 2: Lord was kindled against his people, and he stretched out
Speaker 2: his hand against them and struck them. The mountains quaked,
Speaker 2: and their corpses were like refuse in the streets. For
Speaker 2: all this his anger has not turned away, and his
Speaker 2: hand is stretched out still. Then comes the line about
Speaker 2: God whistling. From that it goes straight into he will
Speaker 2: raise a signal for a nation far away, and whistle
Speaker 2: for a people at the ends of the earth. Here
Speaker 2: they come swiftly, speedily, and in this line the people
Speaker 2: being referenced there, who are they? These are the armies
Speaker 2: of the Assyrian Empire, described in the following passages and
Speaker 2: terrifying detail. The prophet says, they march without rest. Their
Speaker 2: arrows are sharp, their horses hoofs are like flint, their
Speaker 2: wheels like a whirlwind. They roar like lions. They roar
Speaker 2: like the sea. And it in saying the light grows
Speaker 2: dark with clouds. And so the prophet is saying here
Speaker 2: that the Lord will whistle to summon an invading army
Speaker 2: to slaughter his people because they have done evil and
Speaker 2: turned away from him.
Speaker 1: Wow. So first he just wrecks and destabilizes everything in
Speaker 1: this sinful nation, and then he calls to an invading
Speaker 1: army to come on over and finish him off.
Speaker 2: Yes. And so the whistle here, I think that takes
Speaker 2: on a totally different context that makes it a whistle
Speaker 2: of absolute terror from on high. It is something that
Speaker 2: should chill you to the bone.
Speaker 1: But then it gets even stranger because to Kellenberg points
Speaker 1: out that the Hebrew word for whistle here leaves some
Speaker 1: room for interpretation. And apparently there's still some discussion about this,
Speaker 1: with some arguing that what we're talking about here is
Speaker 1: indeed a whistle, but others say that it is a hiss,
Speaker 1: the hiss of God. Wow.
Speaker 2: So you shared that fact with me earlier, and I
Speaker 2: don't know what to do. That is one of the
Speaker 2: scariest images I have ever heard of, the hiss of God.
Speaker 1: I mean, the whistle is already scarier with the additional
Speaker 1: context that you provided here, but the idea of God
Speaker 1: God hissing, and especially in such a wrathful mode of behavior, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of chilling.
Speaker 2: Okay, But so if there's some ambiguity in the translation here,
Speaker 2: I guess that would mean that whatever word is used
Speaker 2: has something to do clearly with an expressive expelling of breath.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's the thing we're getting into breath language
Speaker 1: here and breath related sounds, and apparently in various ancient
Speaker 1: texts there's a fair amount of leeway and how we
Speaker 1: might think of a hiss or a whistle as it
Speaker 1: relates to not only human sounds, but also non human
Speaker 1: sounds like leaves, arrows in the wind. Quote, hissing and whistling,
Speaker 1: when produced by humans, results the same interaction between respiratory
Speaker 1: and oral agents. The only difference is that in hissing,
Speaker 1: the oral obstruction placed in the way of the airstream
Speaker 1: is the teeth, while in the case of whistling, it
Speaker 1: the lips. In antiquity, this difference was apparently felt as
Speaker 1: too slight for differentiation between the two sounds and for
Speaker 1: the establishment of separate terminology. The lack of differentiation continues
Speaker 1: in some of the daughter languages.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's interesting, because so we're trying to understand the
Speaker 2: cultural significance of whistling, which, in our context very often
Speaker 2: means something like, you know, it's just kind of like innocent,
Speaker 2: care free sound making, whereas a hiss, I think, is
Speaker 2: almost universally acknowledged to be one of the most hostile
Speaker 2: sounds a person could make.
Speaker 1: Yes, my son would hiss for a while. I forget
Speaker 1: where he picked this up, Like it's something animal world.
Speaker 1: You know, kids have this central affinity with animals. But
Speaker 1: I always approved of it because they're like, yes, if threatened,
Speaker 1: like hissing sends a certain signal like that, we're past
Speaker 1: language now. Now we're in the hissing hissing zone.
Speaker 2: I am so mad at you. I've become an animal.
Speaker 2: I am a snake, I am a cat.
Speaker 1: It was probably a cat connection for sure. Now. Sta
Speaker 1: Kelenberg points to various examples in Greek writings, including Homer,
Speaker 1: in which we also encounter this hiss whisper confusion. Both
Speaker 1: are nonverbal language substitutes, they point out, but there is
Speaker 1: still a distinct difference, at least to our modern understanding
Speaker 1: of all this. But yeah, it just becomes difficult to
Speaker 1: try and sort all of this out, especially in these
Speaker 1: ancient texts. Was this a whistle? Was this a hiss?
Speaker 1: Is this other thing. Are we describing the wind as
Speaker 1: hissing or as the wind whistling? How do we think
Speaker 1: of these? And that connection between whistling and the wind
Speaker 1: is important in other regards as well when we get
Speaker 1: into superstition and magic. But Sta Kellnberg also gets into
Speaker 1: some other areas that I hadn't even really thought about
Speaker 1: in connection to whistling. For instance, the subject of cat
Speaker 1: calls not to be confused with the wolf whistle. So
Speaker 1: this is interesting because I think I would tend to
Speaker 1: think when I hear cat calls, I tend to think
Speaker 1: of what sta Kelenberg is actually describing as the wolf whistle.
Speaker 1: So s to Kellenberg points out that we do have
Speaker 1: clear Roman references to the cat call, to some kind
Speaker 1: of whistling used offensively against actors, speakers, or performers in
Speaker 1: order to drive them off the stage. You don't like
Speaker 1: the performers on the stage, you don't like the speaker,
Speaker 1: will everybody just just sort of whistles at them? They
Speaker 1: just kind of use a bunch of these cat calls
Speaker 1: in order to drive them away.
Speaker 2: So whistling as just straightforward harassment or abuse.
Speaker 1: Yes, Cicero even makes reference to the Cicero of course,
Speaker 1: the famous orator who lived one o six through forty
Speaker 1: three PCE. Basically, it's a letter from Cicero to Atticus,
Speaker 1: and he's boasting about how popular he is and how
Speaker 1: the last time he gave a particular of speech he
Speaker 1: did not hear a single shepherd's whistle. So the idea
Speaker 1: is that he's referring to a complete absence of cat
Speaker 1: calls during his appearance because he was just so captivating.
Speaker 1: And apparently the language is key here, because if Cicero
Speaker 1: had been referring to hissing instead of whistling, he would
Speaker 1: have used a different particular bit of terminology.
Speaker 2: Okay, So while earlier Sta Kellenberg was arguing that we
Speaker 2: don't have references to fictional characters in Roman literature whistling,
Speaker 2: there are some references to whistling in the in the
Speaker 2: broader sort of descriptive literature about society.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so first of all, this cat call area,
Speaker 1: which you know, my mind didn't go here immediately. And
Speaker 1: also I don't know that I've encountered this much. Maybe
Speaker 1: I just haven't been to performances in a while where
Speaker 1: were that were where there was like a negative audience
Speaker 1: experience that is. I don't think that's maybe where at
Speaker 1: least like modern Western audiences are going to go immediately
Speaker 1: if they want to express their negative feelings, like they're
Speaker 1: probably gonna boo or something.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I'd say booing is more common in American culture. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've never heard an audience whistle as a form of disapproval.
Speaker 1: Well, apparently it was such a thing that it was
Speaker 1: and still is, at least at the writing this was
Speaker 1: again written in two thousand, in the British theater, the
Speaker 1: whistling was just such a fear, like this would be
Speaker 1: the force trying to drive you off the stage. That
Speaker 1: whistling was just not done in a British theater dressing room,
Speaker 1: and it's possibly linked to this. Now it's to Kellnberg
Speaker 1: stresses that there seems to be a divide between whistling
Speaker 1: with the British stage and the American stage again as
Speaker 1: of two thousand. Anyway, when this was written, pointing out
Speaker 1: that Okay, sometimes it seems okay and positive for American
Speaker 1: audiences to whistle at the performers on stage, and this
Speaker 1: does click for me. I know, I've been to performances
Speaker 1: where there is a certain amount of whistling, clapping, wooing,
Speaker 1: you know, all sorts of different sounds that are made
Speaker 1: as a positive sound at the end of a performance,
Speaker 1: eululations as well. You know, various different nonverbal sounds. But
Speaker 1: this could include whistling, whereas in the British context you
Speaker 1: still wouldn't whistle. You might have gotten a dirty look
Speaker 1: from English theater goers if you were there whistling at
Speaker 1: the end of a performance of Shakespeare and you were
Speaker 1: trying to say, oh, this is great, I'm gonna whistle.
Speaker 2: So you're saying that might have been interpreted by some
Speaker 2: as like praising a performance by yelling get off the stage.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Now, finally, stick Kellenberg gets to this topic
Speaker 1: of wolf whistling, which again is what I thought what
Speaker 1: a cat call was. But I guess I had my
Speaker 1: terminology mixed up on that. The wolf whistle is a
Speaker 1: whistle to indicate sexual interest, not unlike a cartoon wolf
Speaker 1: in an old animated short.
Speaker 2: Now, I was reading a little bit about people trying
Speaker 2: to locate the origin of the wolf whistle, which is
Speaker 2: a specific intonation. It's like a rising whistle followed by
Speaker 2: a falling whistle. You can probably hear it in your
Speaker 2: head right now. And for a while there was an
Speaker 2: explanation going around that this was traceable back to specific
Speaker 2: whistles used on naval ships, that there was like a
Speaker 2: whistle with that intonation would be used to get sailor's attention.
Speaker 2: But I've also seen some undermining of that explanation, so
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if it's exactly known where the sexual
Speaker 2: harassment form of the whistle comes from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when we go to look for evidence and antiquity,
Speaker 1: this is another case Whereasta Kellenberg says, there's just we
Speaker 1: just don't know. There's like one account of possible wolf
Speaker 1: whistling in Platyus's Mercator. This would have been from the
Speaker 1: very early fifth century, and it's unclear if it's a
Speaker 1: hiss or a whistle. Once again, it might have been
Speaker 1: a hit, so it might have been a hiss, could
Speaker 1: have been a whistle, some other sound of the mouth.
Speaker 2: Even Okay, but Rob, I think we should switch over
Speaker 2: to talking about some of the superstitions about whistling, because
Speaker 2: whistling apparently is widely believed in many cultures to have
Speaker 2: some kind of power, often negative power, beyond just being
Speaker 2: perceived as rude or a form of harassment or something
Speaker 2: like that, that it actually could have dangerous magical power.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, there are numerous examples of this to discuss,
Speaker 1: and they have some similar trends. There's sort of the
Speaker 1: idea of whistling as wind magic, and therefore there are
Speaker 1: potential elemental ramifications for whistling, especially kind of reckless whistling.
Speaker 1: I guess that's what a lot of these team to
Speaker 1: get to the idea that when we whistle, we are
Speaker 1: engaging in some sort of wind magic, and we probably
Speaker 1: don't know what we're doing and the effects could just
Speaker 1: be completely out of control. Other ideas are that whistling
Speaker 1: is some sort of connection to the spirit world, and
Speaker 1: whistling can summon or attract the attention of things that
Speaker 1: we don't want the attention of, and so forth. Then
Speaker 1: there are also some other sort of environmental specific examples
Speaker 1: that get into the dangers of whistling.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't have proof that this is the
Speaker 2: causal connection here, but I wonder if a lot of
Speaker 2: these beliefs about the supernatural power of whistling comes from
Speaker 2: the linguistic tradition of associating spirits with breath, you know,
Speaker 2: like in Greek, you would often use the same word
Speaker 2: to indicate both that like a person's breath leaving their
Speaker 2: body would be the numa, which is the same word
Speaker 2: you use to indicate a certain kind of animating divine
Speaker 2: spirit or like the holy ghost the numa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I imagine there might be something to that. Now.
Speaker 1: The first idea I want to touch on, though, it's
Speaker 1: just the idea of and this is a pretty big one,
Speaker 1: whistling at sea. And this is discussed in a paper
Speaker 1: by Christina Hole that is titled Superstitions and Belief of
Speaker 1: the Sea. This came out in a nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 1: edition of the journal Folklore, and in it she writes
Speaker 1: that at least in Western traditions, the whistle was just
Speaker 1: a bad omen as it created a little wind quote,
Speaker 1: and by imitative magic may produce a greater one. So
Speaker 1: you've got to be careful whistling because that whistle could
Speaker 1: turn into a fearsome gale that could blow the ship over, etc.
Speaker 1: And that's if men did it, and if women did it,
Speaker 1: it could be even worse. Because it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the idea it seems read very sexist here, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, well, if men are at sea and they
Speaker 1: are near a boat and they're whistling, they might accidentally
Speaker 1: bring about a catastrophic wind that destroys everything. But if
Speaker 1: a woman's doing well, she might be a wind summoning witch.
Speaker 2: She might actually know what she's doing, and that's even
Speaker 2: more dangerous.
Speaker 1: Yes, So, either way, though, whistling at sea was bad
Speaker 1: luck for any by the rare exception hole rites is
Speaker 1: that you did have cases where you'd have sailors stuck
Speaker 1: at sea in a dead calm. So they're out there
Speaker 1: on the ship and there's no wind, the ship is
Speaker 1: not moving. It's the opposite of the threat of the
Speaker 1: catastrophic wind. It's the threat of no wind and a
Speaker 1: slow death out on the waters. So in some of
Speaker 1: these cases there are accounts of the of sailors daring
Speaker 1: to make like small whistles, slight whistles, in the hopes
Speaker 1: that they'll stir up just enough wind to get them
Speaker 1: out of this predicament.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is the scene from the horror movie where
Speaker 2: a character is in such a jam that they have
Speaker 2: no choice but to do the dangerous ritual that they
Speaker 2: have been warned against by a wise old person. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I thought this was an interesting paper in general,
Speaker 2: this one by Christina Hole, and she argues that the
Speaker 2: sea is a place where old, otherwise long vanished tensions
Speaker 2: between gods and religions tend to rise up again. And
Speaker 2: part of the explanation here is that for many Pagans,
Speaker 2: the sea not only had a god, but in a
Speaker 2: sense kind of was a god. It was like a
Speaker 2: living entity with thoughts and desires and whims, and the
Speaker 2: sea brought both blessings and curses. It's, you know, it's
Speaker 2: the bringer of riches, but it can also destroy, and
Speaker 2: for this reason probably God's embodying the sea are often
Speaker 2: depicted as temperamental, unpredictable, alternately generous and murderous. And one
Speaker 2: interesting fact I'd never heard before, but Hole talks about
Speaker 2: how in European seafaring traditions for hundreds of years, priests, nuns,
Speaker 2: and clergy have been considered bad luck on the sea,
Speaker 2: like you don't want to carry monks or nuns on board.
Speaker 2: And she even tells a story of a sea voyage
Speaker 2: taken by a friend of hers, which, when I think
Speaker 2: it was crossing the Atlantic, had some Trappist monks on
Speaker 2: board and the sailors were blaming the monks for the
Speaker 2: fact that there was bad weather and the boat kept
Speaker 2: rolling and everybody was nauseated and throwing up. So in
Speaker 2: many cases, you're on a boat, and not only do
Speaker 2: you not want to be carrying monks or nuns or whatever,
Speaker 2: you don't even want to say a word like priest.
Speaker 2: So why would that be You would think? Okay? And
Speaker 2: these are Christian sailors, so they would at least probably
Speaker 2: think that the clergy would be a good omen, not
Speaker 2: a bad. But the author here speculates as follows quote,
Speaker 2: these beliefs have nothing to do with anti clerical feeling,
Speaker 2: and many who hold them are devout Christians. When on land,
Speaker 2: they probably run back to that transition period when Paganism
Speaker 2: was slowly giving way to Christianity, and many people, especially
Speaker 2: those who like sailors, led a dangerous life, had a
Speaker 2: foot in both camps, acknowledging christ on shore but taking
Speaker 2: care not to offend the old gods when at sea. Moreover,
Speaker 2: whatever was wholly and consecrated was once regarded as a
Speaker 2: center of mystical power, which was as likely to be
Speaker 2: dangerous as to be beneficent, and was therefore to be
Speaker 2: guarded against and so, of course that's just an interpretation.
Speaker 2: We don't know that's the reasoning here. It's always hard
Speaker 2: to get at the ultimate reasoning for folk beliefs, but
Speaker 2: that seems plausible to me, and I really like that.
Speaker 2: It's the idea that there's a power in it, and
Speaker 2: just the fact that there's a power in it is dangerous.
Speaker 2: Even if the priest is supposedly the good guy based
Speaker 2: on your current religious beliefs, just the fact that the
Speaker 2: priesthood is a center of power makes it potentially dangerous
Speaker 2: when you're in a dangerous situation like the sea. And
Speaker 2: I think you could maybe say the same thing of
Speaker 2: whistling itself, that whistling is perceived as having a power,
Speaker 2: and therefore, even if the power isn't always evil, it's
Speaker 2: just the fact that there is the power in it
Speaker 2: that makes it scary.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, all this on top of just sort of
Speaker 1: the other idea of falling back into older beliefs when
Speaker 1: things heat up when you're in a dangerous place, and
Speaker 1: of course, again this is the ocean, It is inherently dangerous. Therefore, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can imagine this this not only this idea of
Speaker 1: like I'm going to slide back into old belief systems
Speaker 1: because I feel like there's heightened danger. But I wonder
Speaker 1: too if if you have more specific gods and traditions
Speaker 1: that you can fall back on. Whereas you know, the
Speaker 1: New Christianity it might not it might not have any
Speaker 1: like specific things you can do to avoid a watery death.
Speaker 1: But the old ways they might have had particular rights,
Speaker 1: particular things you could do, things you were not supposed
Speaker 1: to do, a path you might follow through the uncertain
Speaker 1: which I think, you know, I think some of us
Speaker 1: might be able to relate to that in a modern
Speaker 1: sense too. Like it's you can have more of an
Speaker 1: atheistic mindset when you're on the airplane and there's no turbulence,
Speaker 1: But when the turbulence kicks in, well what can you do?
Speaker 1: You might you might let a prayer slip out here
Speaker 1: or there, just because you know, if there is nothing
Speaker 1: practically you can do in that scenario beyond you know,
Speaker 1: the safety parameters, then there are these other scripts you
Speaker 1: can turn to, these other models of reality that at
Speaker 1: least give you, like somewhere to devote your attention. And
Speaker 1: just from the standpoint of the ocean, I mean, we
Speaker 1: could easily come back and discuss these at greater length.
Speaker 1: You get their other whole lists of various bad luck
Speaker 1: omens that include things like, of course the albatross is
Speaker 1: tied up in some of these, but also things like bananas,
Speaker 1: and then various interesting touch based positive good luck like
Speaker 1: everyone has to touch the same part of the ship,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing collar touching. I think cats end
Speaker 1: up playing a role in some of these. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a whole interesting world of like the heightened danger
Speaker 1: of the sea and some of the superstitious approaches to
Speaker 1: survival on the sea.
Speaker 2: Apparently seeing a drowned cat was one of the worst omens,
Speaker 2: she says, that would sometimes make people just turn around
Speaker 2: and go back. Oh wow, oh, but come back to whistling.
Speaker 2: Another thing that Christina Hole says here is that whistling
Speaker 2: is not just a locusts of superstition on the sea.
Speaker 2: There seem to be all kinds of fears about the
Speaker 2: power of whistling even on land.
Speaker 1: Right, and that she gets into this idea again that
Speaker 1: whistling may attract the attention of things that you don't
Speaker 1: want to attract. And some of these relate to the sea,
Speaker 1: some are more related to the land. She points that
Speaker 1: in the East Anglian Fins, sportsmen out at night never
Speaker 1: whistle to their dog because they might call up the
Speaker 1: lantern man, which would have been a type of willow
Speaker 1: the wisp creature that you did not want attracted to
Speaker 1: your whereabouts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fire fiend. And you know what, I wonder if
Speaker 2: there is just a general similar line of thinking, or
Speaker 2: if it could actually be based in that biblical passage
Speaker 2: about you know again, one of the oldest references to
Speaker 2: whistling as a signal to like attract a tension is
Speaker 2: God whistling to attract the attention of a ravaging army
Speaker 2: that will come and destroy you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, in terms of this is an interesting one.
Speaker 1: This one is when I read and Carol Rose and
Speaker 1: her Compendium of Monsters, she points to the murrhman known
Speaker 1: as the denny Maara that was considered a threat in
Speaker 1: some cases by the people of the Isle of Man,
Speaker 1: the Manx people generally the man of the sea. That
Speaker 1: Denniemara was generally more benevolent than other forms of the myth,
Speaker 1: because you have you have some truly awful mirror creatures
Speaker 1: out there in the world of folklore. But this one
Speaker 1: in particular, though if you were to whistle, you could
Speaker 1: stir him up and cause excess wind. So on one hand,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a supernatural creature whose attention you might
Speaker 1: get through whistling. But also we get back into the
Speaker 1: basic wind magic of the thing, like, be careful whistling.
Speaker 1: You're toying with the wind magic. And you're at sea,
Speaker 1: and that's where the wind is particularly dangerous and the
Speaker 1: least little thing can stir it up. Hole mentions another
Speaker 1: omen related to whistling, and that is the omen of
Speaker 1: the seven Whistlers. And this from her description, it sounds
Speaker 1: basically like a particular chorus of bird song that would
Speaker 1: spell disaster for those who heard it, particularly say before
Speaker 1: a battle. Now, coming back at least briefly to Stakelenberg,
Speaker 1: sta Kellenberg points to Roman writer Colomela, who shares that
Speaker 1: whistling could be used to encourage oxen to drink, which
Speaker 1: sta Kellenberg links to the possible sound similarities between whistling
Speaker 1: and flowing water. So again, instead of the wind, this
Speaker 1: time we're talking about water, and we're talking about the
Speaker 1: similarities of the sound. Here this idea seems to have
Speaker 1: survived into English traditions concerning horses at least into the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century.
Speaker 2: Well wait, so if you're an ancient Roman, you can
Speaker 2: whistle to make oxen drink, But will that make oxen
Speaker 2: lie in your bed?
Speaker 1: I'm not certain about that.
Speaker 2: Now, somebody who has Roman history knowledge it, can you
Speaker 2: explain the ox in the bed metaphor to us? I
Speaker 2: want to know what that means.
Speaker 1: It is interesting, though, to think about this idea of
Speaker 1: like the whistle as a sound that is imitating not
Speaker 1: birds or other organisms, but but imitating elemental forces the
Speaker 1: wind or in this case, the water, and therefore allowing
Speaker 1: just the average person to tap in to those the
Speaker 1: streams of terrific and at times, you know, catastrophic energies.
Speaker 2: Well, I would also say the same thing for hissing.
Speaker 2: Hissing kind of takes away your humanity. You're you're you
Speaker 2: don't sound like a person speaking or expressing an opinion.
Speaker 2: You sound like a hostile animal or even a hostile landscape.
Speaker 1: I guess sometimes there is hissing in theater, right, like a.
Speaker 2: Negative Yeah, that's hiss at the villain. Yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: you boo hiss when the ago comes on stage or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, all right, we're we're looking at the clock
Speaker 1: now and we realize that we're out of time for
Speaker 1: this episode, but oh, we still have a lot more.
Speaker 1: So we're going to go to a four parter on whistling,
Speaker 1: but we got some great stuff to come back to.
Speaker 1: We're going to dive back in a bit to some
Speaker 1: Eastern traditions of magic and whistling. We're going to discuss
Speaker 1: some more examples of whistling, superstition and folklore, and then oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to get into the psychology of whistling a
Speaker 1: bit as well.
Speaker 2: Does the spirit dwell within you if it does come
Speaker 2: back and expel that breath one more time?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Is it okay to whistle while you work? Should
Speaker 1: we be listening to dwarves on this matter to begin with? Well,
Speaker 1: it'll all be discussed in the next episode. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you would like to check out other episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, our core episodes published on
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Speaker 1: focus on a weird film and weird house cinema.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent you producer, Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
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