WEBVTT - Jenny Greenteeth: Horror at the Water’s Edge 0:00:01.240 --> 0:00:05.160 With respect to jinny green teeth. Well do I remember 0:00:05.160 --> 0:00:10.360 in childhood's days and isolated Gorton farmstead, with a yeoman's 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:13.560 house dating back to the early part of the seventeenth century. 0:00:14.200 --> 0:00:19.120 Almost overshading It was a somber old yew tree, doubtless coeval, 0:00:19.520 --> 0:00:23.240 but then beginning to decay. The end was being hastened 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:26.720 by the annual Yuletide custom of lopping off the branches 0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:31.160 in order to decorate the tiny leaden casemented windows than 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:34.800 existing in the house, and also in a chapel hard 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:38.239 by the green of a neighboring village. Lying at some 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:41.800 depth beneath the grassy hillock on which the fine old 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:45.599 tree had so long stood sentinel, was a deep dismal 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:49.400 pool which had sometime been excavated as a moral pit. 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:53.200 Of course, little lads and lasses, with no other playmates 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:56.480 than themselves, would now and then, when other pastimes had 0:00:56.480 --> 0:01:00.880 been run through, amuse themselves by sailing mimic flats and 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:05.160 boats in order to deter them from approaching so dangerous 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:08.120 a spot. When caught upon the steps leading down to 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:12.640 the lading hole, an anxious mother would affirm solemnly, as 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:16.560 we then thought that jinny green teeth was artfully lurking 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:20.080 in the waters below. Proof of the story was afforded 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:23.720 to our unsophisticated minds by the exhibition of a set 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:28.039 of human teeth enameled with green tartar. These were said 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:30.680 to bear only a faint resemblance to those of the 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:34.760 demonus below, who, with her long, sinewy arms, first drew 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:42.720 children in and then devoured them. Welcome to Stuff to 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:51.560 Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:53.720 you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:56.440 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. I'm 0:01:56.520 --> 0:02:00.000 so excited. It's October. Yes, we are into our our October. 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:05.280 Were offerings here a full month of of Halloween flavored 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:08.560 content Monster Science a whole month. It's it's the most 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:10.440 wonderful time of the year. And I think I say 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:12.600 that every year it is. Now. Granted, we do let 0:02:12.639 --> 0:02:16.080 a few other monsters, uh you know, leak out and 0:02:16.200 --> 0:02:18.720 crawl out during the rest of the year, but but 0:02:18.800 --> 0:02:21.600 we do set aside a number of different topics just 0:02:21.919 --> 0:02:25.720 for this month's celebration. So that passage that I read 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:28.000 at the beginning of the episode was from a letter 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:32.760 by a folklorist named John Higson, English folklorist from Lee's 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:37.040 who chronicles stories of fairies and Boggert's uh. And it 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:41.040 was published in Notes and Queries, a medium of intercommunication 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:45.400 for literary men, general readers, et cetera, from Oxford University 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:48.440 Press in eighteen seventy. And I'm going to be quoting 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:51.280 a little bit more from Higgson's work, But as you 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:53.480 may have detected from that passage, today we're going to 0:02:53.560 --> 0:02:58.239 be focusing on a particular malicious water spirit, a a 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:02.800 sodden hag, a fairy of the depths named Jenny green 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:06.680 Teeth who will pull you in Yes, to invoke one 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:10.160 of my favorite ClickHole videos. If you don't follow the rules, 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:12.880 Jenny green Teeth will kill you with their sharp things. 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:17.160 And I love knowing that. Now. There are a couple 0:03:17.160 --> 0:03:20.320 of ways that you could classify Jinny Green Teeth, like 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:22.680 what categories she goes in. I guess one would be 0:03:22.720 --> 0:03:25.400 to say that she's part of this, this class of 0:03:25.480 --> 0:03:30.560 Bogeys and Boggarts, and Higson's term fair and frightful things 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:36.520 the sort of English or or UK tradition of frightful spirits. Yes, 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:41.800 and nursery bogies. Uh, that's certainly the term that folkloris 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:47.360 Carol Rose uses in her her encyclopedias of various magical creatures, 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:51.080 including giants, monsters, and dragons. I think the nursery bogey 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:55.040 categorization was applied by the folkloris Catherine Briggs, who does 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:58.320 a lot on English fairies and the nursery bogie. Bogie 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:02.960 specifically were bogies that were invoked to frighten children, often 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:06.160 with an instructive angle, and it seems like they wouldn't 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.760 usually have much in the way of of real mythic 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:13.600 roots beyond their role, as you know, an educational and 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:16.560 instructional entity. But on the other hand that they very 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:20.680 much could have roots, they could have inspirations because uh, 0:04:20.839 --> 0:04:23.960 water hags like Jenny green Teeth, they're not unique to 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:27.600 the British isles. They're not unique to Jenny Green Teeth especially. 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:31.320 We will discuss seems to be situated in like northern England, 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:35.960 especially northwest England around Liverpool in Lancashire. Yeah, and we'll 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:39.159 will reference a few of her ken that live in 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:41.479 the area, as well as some of her more distant 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:45.479 relatives that live elsewhere. But it does make. I kept 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:47.839 wondering as I was looking at these different examples, some 0:04:47.920 --> 0:04:51.600 of which that were very much just a folklore nursery bogie, 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:54.360 and others that had more of a mythic air about them. 0:04:54.480 --> 0:04:57.360 You wonder, like, to what extent is a particular nursery 0:04:57.360 --> 0:05:03.640 bogie a stripped down version of some older, deeper mythological creature, 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:08.000 or is it something entirely new or mostly new? I 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:09.960 feel like it's probably a little bit of both. There's 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:13.040 probably an ebb and flow uh that can be found there. 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:16.719 If the nursery bogey is a horrific schoolhouse rock video, 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:20.320 is it inspired by something horrific from the past, that 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:23.080 is having that is being somewhat tamed or bent to 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:27.320 the will of the warning instructive parent. Indeed? Indeed, so 0:05:27.400 --> 0:05:29.320 let's let's go back to Carol Rose. What what does 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:33.039 Rose have to say about old Jenny? Alright? So Rose 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:36.800 wrote that Jenny grin teeth is an evil quote predator 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:40.160 of humans, and in particular awaits the unwary child who 0:05:40.200 --> 0:05:42.760 may go too close to the water. So you get 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:44.880 too close and she'll come at you with her long 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:48.360 green things. Then she'll pull you into the depths, and 0:05:48.920 --> 0:05:52.640 she can haunt virtually any pond that's covered in green slime. 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:56.000 And again she's of course a nursery bogie um, a 0:05:56.040 --> 0:05:59.200 monster used to instruct children and enforce a wide variety 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:03.400 of rules. Example, another bogey that that exists out there 0:06:03.440 --> 0:06:06.880 is the red legged scissorman uh. And there's a delightful, 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:09.920 grotesque rhyme about the red legged scissor man. And essentially, 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:13.680 if you suck your thumb, um, the red legged scissor 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:17.320 Man will come and cut off your thumbs, which is terrifying. 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:19.480 But you see, it's very much just a monster that's 0:06:19.520 --> 0:06:22.320 made up to scare children out of doing something they're 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:25.360 not supposed to do. But then with Jenny Green teeth, 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:28.960 the steaks are much higher. This isn't about prevention preventing uh, 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:31.520 you know, thumb sucking. This is about preventing a child 0:06:31.560 --> 0:06:35.560 from wandering too close to the water, falling in and drowning. Now, 0:06:35.600 --> 0:06:37.280 as we go through the episode, I think we will 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:40.440 steadily learn more and more about exactly what that water 0:06:40.640 --> 0:06:45.120 threat is. Or sometimes Jenny is deployed in ways that 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:47.520 have nothing to do with water, though clearly her home 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:50.520 is in the water. She she is a water fairy, 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:53.240 a water hag. Yeah. I can't help but think of 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:57.080 what is it, meg muckle Bones from the Riddlely Scott 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:01.640 filmed legend exactly. I think Megma Bones is directly inspired 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:05.520 by Jenny She She's gotta be yeah, yeah, just the grotesque, 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:10.800 hag like monstrosity, this troll like creature, this loathsome entity 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:13.680 that rises up out of the swampy muck. Now I 0:07:13.680 --> 0:07:16.040 want to continue with what Higson wrote, which was published 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:19.440 in in that Notes and Queries in eighteen seventy, where 0:07:19.480 --> 0:07:22.480 he's talking about the role of Jenny Green Teeth in 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:25.960 in English folklore. Picking up where my first quote left off, 0:07:26.240 --> 0:07:28.320 he says that some of their pits in the locality, 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:31.200 and this is generally gonna be talking about Northwest England 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:34.840 in the locality were likely patronized by a Jenny Green Teeth. 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:38.760 And in my Gorton Historical Recorder, published in eighteen fifty two, 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:41.800 there are briefly noticed a dozen places in the township 0:07:42.080 --> 0:07:44.880 once supposed to be haunted with Boggarts and fair and 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:50.800 in addition there were nut NaN's clap cans, Wills with 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:54.520 the wisp oh yeah, and Will of the Whisps. Buddy 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:58.120 Jack with the landern lantern or Lanthorne it seems to 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:02.400 be spelled and Peg with the iron teeth. And lastly, 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:05.000 which is more to the point, he says quote, to 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:08.440 restrain their children from venturing too near the numerous pits 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:11.160 and pools which were to be found in every fold 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.480 and field, a demonus or guardian was stated to crouch 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:17.560 at the bottom. She was known as Jenny Green Teeth, 0:08:17.840 --> 0:08:20.440 and was reported to prey upon children who ventured too 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:25.000 near her domain. Sometimes the water demonus was termed grind Low. 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:28.920 This incarnation, of course, might be more familiar to fans 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:32.600 of Harry Potter. Oh do they invoke Grendilo or the 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:36.000 grindy Low as I've seen it written? Yeah, Rowling mentions 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:38.480 grindy lows. I I don't really remember exactly how I 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:41.240 think they are water dwelling monsters, but that's all I recall. 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:43.560 I like to maybe think that the grindi Low is 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:47.640 the species and Jenny as the individual. Oh I like that. Yeah, 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:50.520 Jenny is one particular grindi Low, though, as many authors 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:53.320 point out, if there's just one Jenny, she really gets 0:08:53.320 --> 0:08:57.200 around right, because she's in every stagnant pool and marl 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:00.199 pit filled in with water and every Dane you're a 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:03.719 pit of any kind in northwest England. Well, I mean, 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:05.960 on one hand, it makes sense that if you've just 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:09.120 about any loathsome pool in in England, if you go 0:09:09.160 --> 0:09:12.320 back far enough in time, you'll probably encounter some sort 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:15.560 of horrific tragedy. One thing I like about Jenny green 0:09:15.600 --> 0:09:18.640 Teeth is that, for some reason her name actually sounds 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:21.680 scary to me, whereas many of these Boggers and fair 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:25.319 End and stuff, they their names are funny. Unfortunately something 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:28.040 has been lost over time. Uh, and so you get 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:32.479 like Boum Rapid and the Grizzlehurst Boggert and cleg Hoboggert 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:35.920 and stuff. Well, it's it's it's interesting. You have to 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:39.240 wonder were they given fun names intentionally or was the 0:09:39.760 --> 0:09:43.960 or was the the fun name terrifying within contexts? For instance, 0:09:44.240 --> 0:09:47.840 to take Pennywise the clown. It's a pretty sinister sounding 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:52.280 name if you have decades of familiarity with Stephen King's it. 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:57.080 But was the name initially sinister or was it initially 0:09:57.360 --> 0:10:01.280 just a ridiculous sounding clown name. That's a very good point. 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:03.199 You know, this will actually go with something that we're 0:10:03.200 --> 0:10:05.160 going to talk about in a minute. There's a paper 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:09.280 I read by a folklorist and sort of like a 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:13.640 folk song researcher named Annie Gilchrist to chronicles these horrific 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:18.360 children's songs of like early twentieth century England, and they're 0:10:18.400 --> 0:10:22.760 all about like murder and cannibalism and infanticide and family 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:26.160 members eating each other and all that stuff. But they're 0:10:26.160 --> 0:10:29.680 set to these like happy little nursery rhyme tunes. I 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:32.840 guess that makes them more creepy, more creepy, but also 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:36.359 more memorable. I guess maybe it helps in in relaying 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:40.400 the content to young minds. To explore Jenny a little 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:42.680 bit more through Higson's letter, I want to read another 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:46.880 passage he writes. Quote a clerical friend whose juvenile years 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:50.280 were spent in the vicinity of Stockport, Cheshire, states that 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:53.640 he remembers being threatened more than once with Jenny Green Teeth, 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:56.360 but in that case, probably as there was no pond 0:10:56.480 --> 0:10:58.760 near the house, she was said to perch in the 0:10:58.760 --> 0:11:02.400 tops of the trees at least after nightfall. His young 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:05.360 imagination having been wrought up to the proper pitch, he 0:11:05.480 --> 0:11:07.800 was led into the garden and bade to listen to 0:11:07.840 --> 0:11:10.800 the site of the night wind through the branches, and 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:13.520 then told it was the moaning of Jenny green Teeth. 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:17.320 It may be just then disturbed with the nightmare. Another 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:21.600 clergyman born in Walton Ladale informs me that he remembers 0:11:21.640 --> 0:11:24.559 an old pit, since filled up, but then existing in 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:27.960 his native village, and in which it was affirmed lived 0:11:28.080 --> 0:11:31.600 Jenny green Teeth, ever on the watch, and therefore woe 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:35.600 betided the urchin who ventured too near her domain. Jenny 0:11:35.720 --> 0:11:38.560 was also known in Manchester. Some fifty years ago, says 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:42.880 an antiquarian friend, shooters Brook passes in a culvert under 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:46.280 the aqueduct which carries the Manchester and Ashton under Lynn 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:50.280 Canal over Shore Street near the London road Station. At 0:11:50.320 --> 0:11:53.240 that period there existed an opening or break left in 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:56.880 the culvert, forming a dangerous spot for children to play beside, 0:11:57.160 --> 0:12:00.400 and yet they often selected it. Their mother's tried to 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:04.079 destroy the fascination by stating that Jinny Green Teeth laid 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:07.120 and wait at the bottom in order to nab children 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:10.480 playing there. And this highlights something that I think will 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:13.360 come back to throughout the episode, which is that it's 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:17.880 interesting that children are drawn specifically, it is said to 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.640 these dangerous locations, the break in the culvert, the dangerous 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:24.800 pond or pit. It's like the children specifically want to 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:27.560 go right to where the danger to their lives is 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:30.280 the highest, and they have to be warned with another 0:12:30.400 --> 0:12:33.160 kind of danger to keep them away. Oh yeah, I 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:35.959 I I see this this all the time with with 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:38.839 my son and his various friends, when we take them 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:42.319 out for walks and uh, in the nature trails and whatnot. 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:45.079 If there's some sort of dangerous little area where it's 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:47.440 like a sheer drop off or something like, that's what 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:49.440 they're drawn to, and then you have to you have 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:51.520 to urge them away and say, like, look, there's a 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.360 zero entry like, uh, you know, creek area up ahead, 0:12:55.640 --> 0:12:58.760 Let's go playing that, not this, uh, this scary little 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:02.040 bog that you've picked doubt here for yourself. Uh. And indeed, 0:13:02.080 --> 0:13:04.559 some of the places that that I've seen them drawn 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:08.560 to just in the past few weeks or are very 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:10.720 very much the sort of place that a Jenny Green 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:14.200 Teeth might be said to reside in. So, Robert, I 0:13:14.240 --> 0:13:18.160 have a question, have you ever invoked a fictional monster 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:22.120 or supernatural threat in order to scare your child away 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:26.400 from a real threat. No, I haven't um that. That 0:13:26.480 --> 0:13:30.280 being said, you know some people are against utilizing, say 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:32.480 Santa Claus of the Tooth Fairy. We have Santa Claus, 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:34.440 we have the Tooth Fairy, we have the Switch which 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:40.560 for Halloween. But beyond these beneficial entities, we have not 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:45.800 invoked any other supernatural entities in our daily practice. I 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:50.600 guess we just try and be honest about what dangers are. 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:53.720 But you know, I can understand the temptation here because 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:58.360 with Jenny Green teeth, you that the parent is invoking 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:02.760 or creating and in an imagine a monster, a fantastic, 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:08.160 lethal monster, instead of having like a frank discussion about 0:14:08.160 --> 0:14:13.000 the more mundane but equally like traumatic dangers that are involved. 0:14:13.600 --> 0:14:17.800 And sometimes you want to protect them from the truth 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:22.360 of of real danger, like setting down and explaining the 0:14:22.440 --> 0:14:25.920 dangers of drowning to a child like that can be intimidating. 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:28.320 You want to shield them from drowning, but you there's 0:14:28.320 --> 0:14:32.040 also this instinct to shield them from knowledge of that world. 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:38.280 And so I can understand the temptation to utilize the fantastic, 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:42.200 to create something horrific but fictional as a like almost 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:45.640 a gentler way of teaching them the same lesson, uh, 0:14:46.000 --> 0:14:49.440 which is weird because that can be they can I guess, 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:53.320 be even more harmful in some respects uh, because you're 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:56.200 creating this nightmare creature to live in their heads. But 0:14:56.280 --> 0:15:00.160 I can see where you could reach that point, um, 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:03.600 with only the best intentions. That's a really interesting point. 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:05.440 And we will talk a little bit more about the 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.320 real dangers of water and drowning later in the psychology 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:12.240 of of how this works out. But um, yeah, is 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:17.080 it possible that the monster is actually a defanged version 0:15:17.160 --> 0:15:21.120 of the threat in a way, not a more threatening 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:24.440 version of the threat, but putting the threat into a 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:29.840 form that feels more comfortable and less depressing. Yes, I 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:31.560 think so. I think there's as a strong case to 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:33.680 be made for that, Robert, if you are right with it. 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:35.760 I'd like to look at a couple of older a 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:39.280 couple more older books and papers that mentioned Jenny Green Teeth. 0:15:40.120 --> 0:15:43.360 One is a book by Percy B. Green called A 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:47.520 History of Nursey Rhymes Really Percy B. Green? Okay, Yeah, 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:50.600 that guy didn't need a pseudonym, or maybe that is 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:54.640 the pseudonym anyway, So I want to quote him later, 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:57.760 also because he mentions another fascinating story about a water monster. 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:00.520 But Green writes in a middle in the middle of 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:03.720 a section about water spirits, he writes, in England, to 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:06.800 the north Country, people speak of a river sprite as 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:10.600 Jenny green Teeth, and the children dread the green, slimy 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:13.520 covered rocks on the streams bank or on the brink 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:16.120 of a black pool. Wait, I should I want to 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:19.520 throw in this is key too, right, because we're talking 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:22.760 about the slime covered rocks themselves. That like, that's a 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:26.600 key danger that kid's gonna slip and fall. Um. Yeah, sorry, 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:28.280 I had I had to jump in on that. No, 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:31.280 that's a very good point. I mean, there's actually specific 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:36.240 information about real dangers being conveyed in the superstition though. 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:38.600 So it's like you see the green covered rocks, that 0:16:38.600 --> 0:16:40.280 that might be a sign that the rock is going 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:42.080 to be something you could slip off of, and the 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:45.400 child might not know that naturally, but the child sees 0:16:45.440 --> 0:16:47.920 it and says, oh, there's green on the rocks, Jenny 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:50.560 Green Teeth is about huh. So you know that's that 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:52.640 feels a lot more calibrated, where the example we heard 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:55.600 earlier about Jenny Green teeth living in the trees that 0:16:55.720 --> 0:17:01.160 felt like the tail had become unhinged. You know. Yeah, 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:03.760 well that's part of the problem with creating superstitions and 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:07.399 myths about monsters like this is that if you're trying 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:10.000 to do it for a specific purpose, like to warn children, 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:14.119 myths go wild, it's always become untamed. They roam loose, 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:16.240 and they become their own thing. Yeah, I mean, as 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:19.320 does the logical fear itself. I mean, even as adults 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:21.480 we can probably think of things in our lives where 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:24.600 they're not really you know, they're not monsters, but they're 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.040 at least a little illogical. And if you don't watch them, 0:17:27.040 --> 0:17:29.560 if you don't curb them, then yeah, they can start 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:33.720 living in the trees. They go ferrell. But Green writes 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:36.600 that a warning of a Lancashire mother to her child 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:40.640 is quote Jenny Green teeth will have the goist onto 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:45.560 river banks. Now, I think I already mentioned the the 0:17:45.600 --> 0:17:49.639 author An E. G. Gilchrist, who has done some work 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:53.960 chronicling folk songs discovered in the wild, and she wrote 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:56.280 a paper for the Journal of the Folk Song Society 0:17:56.320 --> 0:18:00.080 in nineteen nineteen that is called Note on the Late d. 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:03.199 Dressed in Green and other fragments of tragic ballads and 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:06.520 folk tales preserved among children. So this is about folk 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:09.639 songs sung by children in early twentieth century England. And 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:12.600 these songs are just messed up. They are I think 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:16.760 I mentioned earlier, they're They're all about murder, cannibalism, hiding 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:20.080 dead bodies in your house. It is fascinating that we 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:23.600 often think that children need to be protected from horror, 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:26.159 Like I can understand that impulse, but I don't know. 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:28.600 This just seems to me like an indication that children 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:33.879 naturally gravitate to themes of murder and death and gore. Yeah, 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:37.520 and they can be rather severe in their invocation of 0:18:37.680 --> 0:18:40.520 these ideas. Now, the main song talks about in this 0:18:40.560 --> 0:18:44.400 paper is uh is one called the Lady Dressed in Green, 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:47.400 which gil Christ heard sung by a girl named Margaret 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.560 in a Southport orphanage, and Margaret apparently brought it from 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:54.400 a Lancashire workhouse, and gil Chris goes on to discuss 0:18:54.440 --> 0:18:57.280 how versus of the in verses of this song, the 0:18:57.359 --> 0:19:00.280 Lady Dressed in Green is holding a baby and then 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:02.680 she murders her baby with a pen knife, and then 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:05.919 three bobbies come and haul her off to prison. And 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:08.080 so gil Christ is talking about the significance of the 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:11.400 song and it's parallels to other similar children's rhymes, songs, 0:19:11.480 --> 0:19:14.400 murder ballads, and so forth. And one of the interesting 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:17.359 things is the significance of the color green, and this 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:20.240 leads her to talk about the color green in its 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:23.920 relation to curses and bogeys and evil fairies and spirits. 0:19:24.160 --> 0:19:26.200 We will talk more about the significance of the color 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:29.640 green later, but as for Jenny Green Teeth, gil Christ writes, 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:32.800 quote of still more sinister import is the color in 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:35.800 the case of Jenny Green Teeth, the evil water spirit 0:19:36.040 --> 0:19:40.080 appearing as the green scum on stagnant water, what claws 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:43.400 you in, as country children say, if you go too near? 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:46.679 Or in the obscure and horrible English folk tale of 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:49.119 the green Lady, who appears to be a sort of 0:19:49.200 --> 0:19:52.840 lamba or vampire, living on or delighting in blood, and 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:57.280 perhaps deriving her name and Hugh from a classic serpent ancestry. 0:19:57.720 --> 0:20:00.720 But Jenny Green Teeth and perhaps green lay he also 0:20:01.200 --> 0:20:04.440 is allied with the German water nicks and green hats, 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:07.880 the hat appearing to be a tuft of beautiful vegetation 0:20:08.320 --> 0:20:11.119 growing in the water, who dragged down the unwary to 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.720 the depths. They're horrible fate being visible in a fountain 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:17.639 of blood which spouts up through the surface of the water. 0:20:18.080 --> 0:20:21.359 This is interesting, the the the mention of of serpents, 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:24.120 because as I was looking through Carol Rose and looking 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:30.040 at various uh aquatic uh you know, fresh water especially monsters. 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:34.199 There are a lot of serpents in various beliefs, weird 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:39.639 serpents in uh Native American beliefs as well. And this 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:41.200 makes a certain amount of sense, right, because you will 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:45.000 encounter snakes around the water sometimes. Yeah, and this would 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:47.800 be a very old fear and human culture, but also 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:50.960 even predating some of that, you know, just sort of 0:20:51.040 --> 0:20:54.240 an ingrained thing to be afraid of. Yeah, we're all 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:57.040 the cat with the cucumber behind us. Now. I can't 0:20:57.080 --> 0:20:59.760 move on without mentioning what Gilchrist writes about this other 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:02.679 or the green Lady story that may have its origins 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:05.960 in some kind of serpent ancestry. She writes that she's 0:21:06.000 --> 0:21:08.760 never found a version of the Green Lady folktale in print, 0:21:09.240 --> 0:21:11.640 but there's there's a version she heard from a person 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:15.439 named Ethel Kidson and This is how it goes. A 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:19.119 little girl took service with the green Lady. The next morning, 0:21:19.160 --> 0:21:22.280 after preparing breakfast for her, she called up the stair, 0:21:22.920 --> 0:21:26.320 green Lady, Green Lady, come down to your breakfast. But 0:21:26.400 --> 0:21:29.560 the Green Lady did not come down. The formula was 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:33.639 repeated for dinner and supper, but still she did not appear. 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:37.000 At last, the little girl went upstairs to the chamber door, and, 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:40.639 urged by curiosity, looked through the keyhole and saw the 0:21:40.720 --> 0:21:44.639 Green Lady dancing in a basin of blood. Now this 0:21:44.720 --> 0:21:47.119 paper is actually worth a look if you wanted to 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:51.720 just go look it up to see the absolutely depraved 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:55.800 folk songs that children sing. Oh. Yes, one of these 0:21:55.880 --> 0:21:59.200 that you highlighted here, My mama did kill me? Uh, 0:21:59.240 --> 0:22:00.960 And it has that this sheet music with it. I'm 0:22:01.000 --> 0:22:03.399 gonna attempt to sing just a little of it, with 0:22:03.520 --> 0:22:06.560 fear warning. I'm not very good at reading sheet music. 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:11.840 But it goes something like this, My mama did kill 0:22:12.080 --> 0:22:16.320 me and put me in a pie. My dad da 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:20.800 did eat me and say it was I. And then 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:23.400 it goes on, my brother and sister did pick my 0:22:23.440 --> 0:22:27.000 bones and bury them under cold marble stones, and bury 0:22:27.080 --> 0:22:30.840 them under cold Marble Stones. We we were emailing with 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:33.439 our producer Alex about this, and Alex was trying to 0:22:33.480 --> 0:22:35.800 make sense of the line my Dada did eat me 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:39.200 and say it was I. Now, one way of reading 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:41.879 that could be like, I don't know the dada knows 0:22:42.080 --> 0:22:45.440 what the child's flesh tastes, like like, oh, that's that's him, 0:22:45.560 --> 0:22:48.120 that's the one I'm eating. Or maybe the dad da 0:22:48.280 --> 0:22:51.680 is saying, no, you're eating yourself. It's you that's doing 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:54.960 the eating of you. I tend to favor the earlier interpretation, 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:58.359 but either way you slice it, it's that pretty unsettling. 0:22:59.200 --> 0:23:02.080 One more paper came across that mentioned Jenny green Teeth 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:05.920 I thought had a really kind of sad but fascinating 0:23:05.960 --> 0:23:09.520 story about something that happened uh in the sixteenth century. 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:11.840