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