Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi. My name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind, focusing on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time.
Speaker 2: When I was a kid, my aunt gave me a
Speaker 2: number of volumes from the Time Life Enchanted World book series,
Speaker 2: which was originally published between the years nineteen eighty four
Speaker 2: and nineteen eighty seven. I love these books growing up,
Speaker 2: and in recent years I've been steadily accumulating the volumes
Speaker 2: that I missed out on because I didn't have a
Speaker 2: complete collection when I was a kid. Over Christmas, my
Speaker 2: family gave me the nineteen eighty five volume Dwarves, and
Speaker 2: it of course contains some excellent retellings of Norse mythology.
Speaker 2: There's some tales of mining spirits, which we have of
Speaker 2: course discussed on the show before, and like all volumes
Speaker 2: of the world, Dwarves contains excellent artwork, including a number
Speaker 2: of dwarf illustrations by the legendary Wayne Anderson. This is
Speaker 2: the guy who illustrated the nineteen seventy nine book Flight
Speaker 2: of Dragons, which was made into an animated film that
Speaker 2: we've discussed on Weird House Cinema. There's a section in
Speaker 2: the book titled a Sampling of Dwarf types, and this
Speaker 2: is where we see multiple Wayne Anderson illustrations, and one
Speaker 2: illustration and in particular, depicts a slightly mustachioed but otherwise
Speaker 2: clean shaven dwarf dressed in red cardinal robes and a
Speaker 2: wide brimmed grillo hat. He holds a staff and stands
Speaker 2: beside an open treasure chest. This is the Munachello or
Speaker 2: little Monk of Naples, Italy, as the art indicates. He
Speaker 2: was said to guard hidden treasure and would part with
Speaker 2: some of it only to reclaim his splendid hat should
Speaker 2: someone be lucky or tricky enough to steal it from him.
Speaker 2: He could also be a bit of a trickster himself,
Speaker 2: wealth stealing a person's clothes or even pinching them, we're told. So,
Speaker 2: having read this, and not being familiar with this particular spirit,
Speaker 2: I wanted to learn more. So I turned to a
Speaker 2: few different texts. I turned to eighteen ninety three's Folklore
Speaker 2: Volume four, edited by Jacobs at All and published by
Speaker 2: the Folklore Society. They cite the seventeenth century Neapolitan fairy
Speaker 2: tale collection Pentemeroni by Italian poet Jean Bautista Basila as
Speaker 2: a key resource. The authors mentioned that the whole house
Speaker 2: could sometimes become abandoned due to the nuisance of the
Speaker 2: occupying Monticello, and that these little people otherwise lived in
Speaker 2: the ravines of coastal Sorrento. As translator Nancy L. Canepa
Speaker 2: points out in her translation of Basila's text that Monticello
Speaker 2: can largely be thought of as a household or kitchen spirit,
Speaker 2: engaging in both assistance and mischief. On the assistant side,
Speaker 2: the spirit might aid the ladies of the house with
Speaker 2: warnings of disaster, cures for illness, lottery numbers, and even
Speaker 2: the location of buried treasure. I guess the lottery number
Speaker 2: is kind of an upgrade of the tradition of bury
Speaker 2: treasure information. The men of the house, however, would experience
Speaker 2: none of these benefits, and instead have to put up
Speaker 2: with them on a cellow, occasionally sneaking into their wife's bed.
Speaker 2: General household mischief was said to consist of water faucets
Speaker 2: and stoves mysteriously turning on or off, disappearing objects, and
Speaker 2: so forth. So in some tellings quite beneficial. In other tellings, however,
Speaker 2: the entity takes on a darker nature. In twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three's Souls of Naples Corporeal Ghosts and Spiritual Bodies in
Speaker 2: Early Modern Naples by ottore Vari, the author classifies the
Speaker 2: entity as a kind of anti clerical incubus, a male
Speaker 2: sex demon closely aligned with dreams and the experience of
Speaker 2: night terrors, and in this case said to be linked
Speaker 2: to melancholy. Tune in for additional episodes of the Monster, Fact,
Speaker 2: The Artifact, or Anomali Stupendium each week. As all ways.
Speaker 2: You can email us at contact at Stuffdblow your Mind
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