Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media book Club book Club, book Club book Club.
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the Cool Zone Media book Club,
Speaker 1: the only book club where you don't have to do
Speaker 1: the reading because I do it for you. My name
Speaker 1: is Margaret Kiljoy and I'm the host of the show,
Speaker 1: which makes sense because I'm the one talking to you.
Speaker 1: And okay, you might remember last week when I read
Speaker 1: you a story, a nurse fairy tale, and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I know, I'm out on a limb here.
Speaker 1: This feels a little trans to me. And I really
Speaker 1: was out on a limb there, but I'm pretty comfortable
Speaker 1: out on limbs. I clamber around a lot. But a
Speaker 1: friend of mine sent me another fairy tale, this one
Speaker 1: from Ireland, and I don't think I have to go
Speaker 1: out on a limb here. When I say that this
Speaker 1: story is a trans allegory, it might not even be
Speaker 1: an allegory. It's just kind of a trans fairy tale
Speaker 1: because this story is the story of the abbot of
Speaker 1: Drummech who is changed into a woman. And this story
Speaker 1: has been written down a lot in different medieval manuscripts
Speaker 1: in Irish, and there's a couple other versions of it.
Speaker 1: There's like a whole lot of different written down versions,
Speaker 1: including some I believe in Scotland. But Ireland and Scotland
Speaker 1: are the only places in the West where this particular
Speaker 1: style of fairy tale seems to exist, and I think
Speaker 1: that's cool. This particular version was translated by Barbara Hillers.
Speaker 1: It's pretty short, so I'll probably end up talking about
Speaker 1: it a bunch. It's called the story of the Abbot
Speaker 1: of Drummeh who has changed into a woman. A certain
Speaker 1: young man who held the abbyssy of Drumh endeavored to
Speaker 1: make a great and fine banquet in observation of Easter.
Speaker 1: After preparing the banquet, the young man goes out of
Speaker 1: the house and sits on a big, pleasant hill that
Speaker 1: was above the settlement. And it is thus the young
Speaker 1: man was a very comely linen hood around his head,
Speaker 1: and a tunic of royal silk closely fitted to his
Speaker 1: white skin, and an excellent, very beautiful rope on top
Speaker 1: of that, and a cloak of dark brown scarlet flowing
Speaker 1: around him, and a gold hilted sword fit for assembly
Speaker 1: in his hand. And when he had reached the top,
Speaker 1: he put his elbow to the ground and slept. And
Speaker 1: after he woke up from his sleep. When he wanted
Speaker 1: to take his sword, he found only a woman's weapon
Speaker 1: in its place, i e. A distaff. And this is
Speaker 1: how he was. The skirt of a woman's tunic on
Speaker 1: him down to the ground, and on his head there
Speaker 1: was a woman's hairdo long, golden, very beautiful hair falling
Speaker 1: in fine curls from the top of his head. And
Speaker 1: when he passed his hand over his face, he did
Speaker 1: not find any hair of a beard or mustache there.
Speaker 1: And he put his hand between his thighs and he
Speaker 1: found the sign of womanhood there. Nevertheless, the young man
Speaker 1: did not believe those various signs, for he thought it
Speaker 1: was shape shifting and magic which had been played on him.
Speaker 1: Then a certain big woman comes past him, and she
Speaker 1: was very ugly, brown and exceedingly hideous. I want to
Speaker 1: point out here that I am under the impression of
Speaker 1: brown is around, like coloration of hair and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: although I certainly wouldn't put it past medieval Ireland to
Speaker 1: just be being blatantly racist here, but I believe it's
Speaker 1: instead as this. It's so obviously like he's so beautiful,
Speaker 1: he's so white, and he has blonde hair and then
Speaker 1: you know it's comparing to this other thing. It's still
Speaker 1: not like good. But I am under the impression that
Speaker 1: is what that particular part means. A certain big woman
Speaker 1: comes past him, and she was very ugly, brown and
Speaker 1: exceedingly hideous, an aperation with gray bristles and deep set eyes.
Speaker 1: And this is what she said, Why are you here, smooth,
Speaker 1: young blonde girl, alone on this hillock at the end
Speaker 1: of the day and the very beginning of night. And
Speaker 1: he was gloomy and tearful and sad at this news.
Speaker 1: And he said after that, I do not know where
Speaker 1: I will go or what I will do. Hence, because
Speaker 1: if I go to my house, my people would not
Speaker 1: recognize me, and if I should leave, I'm in danger
Speaker 1: as a single woman going about on her own. Therefore,
Speaker 1: then this is best for me to go through the
Speaker 1: world until God may pass judge on me, for it
Speaker 1: is he who has distorted my shape in my form
Speaker 1: and put me in disfigurement and repulsiveness. But still, although
Speaker 1: God has given me this change of appearance, I swear
Speaker 1: in the presence of the Creator that I have not
Speaker 1: hung a person or wronged anyone, that I have not
Speaker 1: committed an outrage against bell or relic or staff, nor
Speaker 1: persecuted a church, nor spoken evil against anyone, Nor has
Speaker 1: a guest ever gone dissatisfied from my dwelling and my house.
Speaker 1: He descended then from the gnoll and from the pleasant,
Speaker 1: beautifully sloping hill, and he raised a sore lament and
Speaker 1: a heavy sorrowful cry. And this is what he said
Speaker 1: going down the hill.
Speaker 2: Pity.
Speaker 1: He said that the ground of the hill does not
Speaker 1: swallow me up at this very moment, because I do
Speaker 1: not know whither I will go or what I will do.
Speaker 1: She went off after that down across the slope of
Speaker 1: the hill until she reached the Green of Crome Glen,
Speaker 1: a church that was to the west of Drumaic. After that,
Speaker 1: she meets a certain tall soldierly young man on the
Speaker 1: village green, and the young man felt eager excessive love
Speaker 1: for her and began to entreat her, and did not
Speaker 1: leave off until he had union and intercourse with her.
Speaker 1: And after they had slept together, the young man asked
Speaker 1: the girl from the place she came and who she was,
Speaker 1: and the girl told him why I'm here selling goods
Speaker 1: and services. That's not what she said, but that's what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, because here's a bunch of ads, let's
Speaker 1: you have cooler zone media, which case you can skip
Speaker 1: these ads. Well, actually you can skip them anyway, but
Speaker 1: they're automatically skipped for you. You have cooler zone media. Anyway,
Speaker 1: here they are, and we're back. And after they had
Speaker 1: slept together, the young man asked the girl from what
Speaker 1: place she came and who she was. The girl told
Speaker 1: him that he would not get that knowledge from her,
Speaker 1: whether they would be together for long or short. I, however,
Speaker 1: he said, will tell you my name for I'm Ernech
Speaker 1: of this church. And then Erneck is. I had to
Speaker 1: look this up so I couldn't find a lot of
Speaker 1: the pronunciations for a lot of the Irish. And I'm
Speaker 1: very sorry, but medieval Irish is hard for me to
Speaker 1: find pronunciations of. And Erneck is the person who kind
Speaker 1: of like handles a lot of the day to day
Speaker 1: stuff at a medieval Irish monastery. It's a role that
Speaker 1: went away I think in like the fifteen hundreds or something.
Speaker 1: Because this story is old as shit, which is cool
Speaker 1: as hell. Anyway, I will tell you my name for
Speaker 1: I Aernach of this church which is called Cromglen, and
Speaker 1: my wife died two years ago, and you will be
Speaker 1: my harmonious and well matched wife. And they went together
Speaker 1: then to the Aernach's house, and the people of the
Speaker 1: house bade her a friendly and courteous welcome. And she
Speaker 1: was with him for seven years as his wife, and
Speaker 1: his spouse and seven children she bore him during that time.
Speaker 1: After that, a messenger comes to the Airnech from the congregation,
Speaker 1: an assembly of Drummech, to invite him for Easter. And
Speaker 1: she goes together with the Aernak to the hill on
Speaker 1: which her shape was first transformed, and she falls immediately
Speaker 1: asleep on the hill, and the Airnch goes with his
Speaker 1: people to the church. And after the girl woke up
Speaker 1: from her sleep, it was thus she was a man
Speaker 1: with the same appearance she had in the first place.
Speaker 1: And she found her gold hilted ornamented sword on her knee.
Speaker 1: And this is that's what she said, Oh powerful God,
Speaker 1: the lamenting in which I am is great. And after
Speaker 1: a great lamentation, he went to his original home and
Speaker 1: his wife says to him, then it's long that you
Speaker 1: are absent from home. Then the drinking hall had been arranged,
Speaker 1: and that strange story was told to the people of
Speaker 1: the house. However, that story was not believed by them,
Speaker 1: for his wife said that he had not been absent
Speaker 1: for more than an hour of that day. Finally, after
Speaker 1: giving them many various proofs, his case is presented and
Speaker 1: a judgment made between him and the Airneck of Crome Glen.
Speaker 1: And this is the judgment that was made between them
Speaker 1: to divide the children in half, giving the extra son
Speaker 1: to the Airneck for fosterage. And this is how they
Speaker 1: parted from each other. Etc. You know, a story is
Speaker 1: good when it ends with etc. Okay. I always say
Speaker 1: I like that story so much.
Speaker 2: That story so much, And one of the reasons is
Speaker 2: that it doesn't sound like a fairy tale. Like there's
Speaker 2: some stuff right, There's like, oh, I'm on a hillock
Speaker 2: and you know this thing happened and time passed differently.
Speaker 1: Right. There is this whole thing, you know with Faery,
Speaker 1: where if you go to Faery, time passes very differently
Speaker 1: and you'll spend years there and when you leave it's
Speaker 1: only been a day, or vice versa. You spend a
Speaker 1: day there and you come out it's been years. And
Speaker 1: I've always liked that because I think time dilation is
Speaker 1: a really interesting part of life, and it's especially a
Speaker 1: part of drug use, but it's also a part of
Speaker 1: just like general living in very different ways. Like when
Speaker 1: I traveled full time, you know, only a summer had
Speaker 1: passed the first summer I was traveling, only a summer
Speaker 1: had passed, and it felt like an entire lifetime. I
Speaker 1: felt like half of my life had been led before that,
Speaker 1: and the other half had been lived during those like
Speaker 1: three or four months. And so I was like that
Speaker 1: thing about fairy But overall, this isn't a very fairy
Speaker 1: tale feeling story. It doesn't have a lot of the
Speaker 1: sort of repetition and kind of a lot of the
Speaker 1: things you expect out of certain types of oral tradition.
Speaker 1: But this story is absolutely part of the oral tradition
Speaker 1: as well. There's actually a lot of like This particular
Speaker 1: translation was written as part of an academic piece by
Speaker 1: Barbara Hillers called The Abbot of Dromaic Gender Bending and
Speaker 1: the Gaelic Tradition, and it's specifically around whether or not
Speaker 1: medieval Irish literature is rooted in the oral tradition or not.
Speaker 1: Because people were like, nah, there's no way that all
Speaker 1: of the stuff in the medieval manuscripts is actually what
Speaker 1: people were saying around that time. But there actually seems
Speaker 1: to be a lot of evidence that this particular story
Speaker 1: does come close to what people were saying around the time,
Speaker 1: and that fascinating. But you know what I find even
Speaker 1: more fascinating the fact that goods and services are available
Speaker 1: for purchase by you through our advertisers. I find that
Speaker 1: endlessly fascinating. You can tell by the tone of my
Speaker 1: voice how enthused I am about all of this. And
Speaker 1: we're back, Okay, more things that are interesting about this.
Speaker 1: When I did episodes about medieval Ireland on my podcast,
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, and if you're listening
Speaker 1: to this on it could happen here, why aren't you
Speaker 1: also listening to cool People who did cool stuff? Where
Speaker 1: I talk about history. When I did episodes around medieval
Speaker 1: Irish history, especially around Grace O'Malley, the Pirate Queen of Ireland,
Speaker 1: one of the things that came up is that we
Speaker 1: have these assumptions about medieval Ireland that it was this
Speaker 1: very Catholic place right after the Irish Revolution of nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty one. Unfortunately, despite that being a pretty cool and
Speaker 1: lefty revolution. The Catholic Church kind of stepped in in
Speaker 1: a sort of theocratic mode and pushed Ireland towards a
Speaker 1: certain cultural conservatism. But that's not actually Ireland's heritage even
Speaker 1: as a Catholic country. For example, in medieval Ireland, women
Speaker 1: were getting divorced and like initiating divorce and that's not
Speaker 1: supposed to be the case if you're like super Catholic,
Speaker 1: but it was just normal. And it's worth pointing out
Speaker 1: here that the abbot here is fucking married. Like in
Speaker 1: this case, that bitch gets married twice. She's married as
Speaker 1: a man and then she's married as a woman, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's like kind of chill. They just gotta split
Speaker 1: the kids in the end. And okay, but another thing,
Speaker 1: isn't that weird that you know, it doesn't work out
Speaker 1: for it doesn't work out like time wise, right, like oh,
Speaker 1: you were only gone an hour, but like the airneck
Speaker 1: is like, what are you talking about? I was married
Speaker 1: as lady. Here are my seven children with her? You know.
Speaker 1: But also like no one's like mad. He's not like
Speaker 1: what you were a man all along. He's just kind
Speaker 1: of like sad. He doesn't get to be married to
Speaker 1: her anymore. And so gender bending in this context is
Speaker 1: presented as a curse at first, right, and it uses
Speaker 1: he pronouns for the protagonist until she starts accepting what's happened,
Speaker 1: you know, he wakes up and curses God, and then
Speaker 1: and it uses the trope of like an ugly woman
Speaker 1: as like a sign that magic has happened, which I'm
Speaker 1: totally down with. I know, there's a lot of shit
Speaker 1: that's like rooted and misogyny that sometimes I'm like, whatever,
Speaker 1: we can own that shit, Like, you know, we can
Speaker 1: be like spooky signs of magic. That's fine. But you know,
Speaker 1: as soon as she is used to the idea of
Speaker 1: being a woman, suddenly she's she in the story and
Speaker 1: she's used to it, and then she feels just as
Speaker 1: much cursed when she is transformed back into a man.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I think what happened. I'm willing to
Speaker 1: bet what happened is this story is about like an abbot.
Speaker 1: Like the real thing that happened. I bet an abbot
Speaker 1: like was like, oh, I'm wearing my prettiest clothes. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go take a nap in the sun. And then
Speaker 1: like had like a day dream or a normal nap
Speaker 1: dream where she woke up a woman and was like,
Speaker 1: this fucking rules, I'm gonna go around to sleep with
Speaker 1: people as a girl. I'm gonna have babies and shit.
Speaker 1: And then like woke up and was like it was
Speaker 1: all a dream and was kind of bummed, and then
Speaker 1: told everyone the story, and then it slowly became that's
Speaker 1: that's what I bet happened, because trans women have been
Speaker 1: part of society forever. But what's interesting is that so
Speaker 1: much folklore across Western Europe, and I think actually extending
Speaker 1: into Eastern Europe, but I'm not as certain about that.
Speaker 1: There's just certain tropes that are repeated over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. But there's only a couple stories, and
Speaker 1: I believe they are only found, according at least to
Speaker 1: some of the stuff that I read, they're only found
Speaker 1: in Ireland and Scotland about a man being turned into
Speaker 1: a woman and the other place that you find this
Speaker 1: apparently and I haven't read these stories yet, but I
Speaker 1: want to go find them soon. The other place where
Speaker 1: you find this style of folk tale is India. And okay,
Speaker 1: this is now I'm back on a limb. I'm completely
Speaker 1: on a limb here. I am probably wrong about this,
Speaker 1: but one of the things that this reminds me of
Speaker 1: is something that came up. I did episodes about hunger
Speaker 1: strikes a long time ago, and how the tradition of
Speaker 1: hunger strikes as a sort of legal idea, as a
Speaker 1: way to get recourse from someone who is like a
Speaker 1: rich person who owes you money, for example, is that
Speaker 1: you go to their door and you starve yourself. And
Speaker 1: this is found in two cultures. It is found in
Speaker 1: Irish traditional law and it is found in parts of
Speaker 1: northern India. And the argument that I ran across for
Speaker 1: that is the same reason that you have some language
Speaker 1: similarity between Irish and I don't remember what language. I
Speaker 1: don't have notes in front of me. I'm totally doing
Speaker 1: this for a memory and some language in India is
Speaker 1: that the culture that both of those come from the
Speaker 1: language group of Indo European comes from this like proto
Speaker 1: Indo European language and culture, which started in the kind
Speaker 1: of middle of Asia, and then it made its way
Speaker 1: west and east. And stuff often lasts the longest at
Speaker 1: the fringes of culture, you know. So if you have
Speaker 1: like a culture and empire and it extends out super wide. Well,
Speaker 1: then the next thing that comes along is also going
Speaker 1: to extend out and extend out or whatever. But the
Speaker 1: very fringes sometimes hold on to the stuff from the
Speaker 1: earlier culture. And so this is theoretically why there's hunger
Speaker 1: strikes in both of those places. A sort of a
Speaker 1: legal idea is that they come from this same source.
Speaker 1: And it's cool because it means that these places that
Speaker 1: are thousands and thousands of miles apart and are like
Speaker 1: on different continents, are coming from the same place. And
Speaker 1: as a side note about multiple continents, whenever people are
Speaker 1: like I just don't understand the idea of social constructs.
Speaker 1: How can gender be a social construct? They probably believe
Speaker 1: that Europe and Asia are two different continents. And the
Speaker 1: reason that Europe and Asia are two different continents is
Speaker 1: the social construction they are, and they are different continents.
Speaker 1: You know, geographically they are not separate continents, but culturally
Speaker 1: they are. So I could not actually tell you I
Speaker 1: am completely on a limb is a conjecture that I'm
Speaker 1: probably wrong about that. The fact that you're going to
Speaker 1: find this like folklore around men becoming women in Ireland
Speaker 1: and India is from the same idea of it coming
Speaker 1: from a proto culture. That's probably not the case, but
Speaker 1: it's like neat to think about, and I like thinking
Speaker 1: about neat stuff. And it's also a curse, right, This
Speaker 1: is a very important part that this is like a curse.
Speaker 1: Whereas you do find folklore and cultural stuff happening a
Speaker 1: little bit more the other way around, where people are
Speaker 1: talking about girls becoming boys in folklore, and that almost
Speaker 1: always is actually very specifically as babies, and it's because like, oh,
Speaker 1: we kind of like need a man, We need to
Speaker 1: have a man show up, and so we're gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: decide that this girl is going to have the social
Speaker 1: roles of masculinity. Thousands of years and thousands of miles
Speaker 1: of culture is too large of a place to make
Speaker 1: generalizations about the mutability of gender. But gender has been
Speaker 1: mutable in different ways, in different directions, across the world,
Speaker 1: in different ways, and I don't know, so hopefully I'll
Speaker 1: slowly learn more about gender bending in history and specifically folklore,
Speaker 1: but for now, this is what I've got. If you
Speaker 1: knew how to pronounce those words properly, I am sorry,
Speaker 1: but I could not find pronunciations online because they are
Speaker 1: medio Irish And I'll talk to you next week when
Speaker 1: I'll have more stories, because that's what this is, a
Speaker 1: storytelling podcast. It's cool Zone Media book Club. Talk to
Speaker 1: you soon. It could happen here as a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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Speaker 2: You can find sources where it could happen here, updated
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.