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