Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for a vault episode. This is an older episode
Speaker 1: of our show. This one originally published March seventeenth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, and it's part two of our series on
Speaker 1: Finn McCool, the legendary Irish hero. Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
Speaker 1: of our series about the legendary Irish hero Finn McCool.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard part one, you should go back
Speaker 1: and listen to that one first. This one will make
Speaker 1: a lot more sense if you do. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the last episode, we promised you that this
Speaker 1: episode would be the one that's all thumb, because, of course,
Speaker 1: one of the great legends about Finn McCool is the
Speaker 1: so called Thumb of knowledge. We teased it a few
Speaker 1: times in the previous episode, but now we're finally here.
Speaker 1: We're finally to the thumb factory. That's right, Finn is
Speaker 1: not merely a warrior and a hunter and a defender
Speaker 1: of his people. He also has the gift of divination.
Speaker 1: His prescience puts him in keeping with the likes of
Speaker 1: Paula Treads, But he doesn't take spice or enter a
Speaker 1: Prana Bindu trance in order to see the future, or
Speaker 1: is it sometimes described to gain wisdom. Instead, he puts
Speaker 1: his thumb in his mouth. Is the most heroic thing
Speaker 1: I can picture. I mean, imagine the movie poster. It's
Speaker 1: like your action movie hero. They've got the sword, their
Speaker 1: hair is blowing in the wind, maybe their armor is
Speaker 1: splattered with blood and mud. And also he's just got
Speaker 1: his thumb in his mouth. Now. In the last part
Speaker 1: of the series, we referenced a few works by a
Speaker 1: scholar named James McKillop, who has written extendly on Finn
Speaker 1: McCool and on Irish smith and legend. For example, I
Speaker 1: cited him when I was talking about the version of
Speaker 1: the Giant's Causeway story that involves that involves the the
Speaker 1: Ben and Donner Giant, the rival giant being replaced with
Speaker 1: one named Kucullen, which is totally confusing because that's the
Speaker 1: name of a different Irish folk hero. But this was
Speaker 1: also the version of the story where Finn McCool bites
Speaker 1: off the rival giant's finger when the giant is tricked
Speaker 1: into putting the finger into his mouth. But I think
Speaker 1: you were also reading something by James McKillop on on
Speaker 1: the origins of this thumb story, right, yeah, yeah. According
Speaker 1: to McKillop, the details on how the thumb is utilized
Speaker 1: vary according to the you know, the different tellings. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's described as a sucking of the thumb, much like
Speaker 1: an infant would would suck on a thumb or fingers.
Speaker 1: Other Times it's described as a chewing of the thumb,
Speaker 1: And sometimes it's specifically that the thumb is placed behind
Speaker 1: the upper teeth, which I guess is something that is
Speaker 1: as more or less happening with any kind of infantile
Speaker 1: sucking of the thumb anyway, but they seem to make it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the point is made that it's like the thumb
Speaker 1: is coming into contact with the palette and pressing. All right, So,
Speaker 1: as amusing as the image of an action hero sucking
Speaker 1: his thumb might be the idea of an action hero
Speaker 1: biting his thumb, that's pretty close, But that seems a
Speaker 1: little more maybe on the money, especially when you take
Speaker 1: into account some historical considerations, because the idea of biting
Speaker 1: his thumb immediately made me think of the classically confusing
Speaker 1: scene from Shakespeare the infamous do you bite your thumb
Speaker 1: at us, sir? The scene from Romeo and Juliet, rob
Speaker 1: Do you remember coming across this in school and having
Speaker 1: no idea what to make of it? Yes, I distinctly
Speaker 1: remember this, probably when we were watching an adaptation of it,
Speaker 1: and yeah, there's the whole scene with I bite my
Speaker 1: thumb at you, and I remember everyone getting a real
Speaker 1: kick out of that. Yeah, it's like it's one of
Speaker 1: those where you know what it means, but you don't
Speaker 1: know what it means, Like you get the gist, but
Speaker 1: you don't understand what they're talking about. Because so the scene,
Speaker 1: for anybody who hasn't read it, it's in Romeo and Juliet,
Speaker 1: Act one, Scene one. We get servants of the two
Speaker 1: rival houses, the Montagues and the Capulets. They run into
Speaker 1: each other in the street and they're they're trying to
Speaker 1: stir things up there. They're trying to provoke a fight
Speaker 1: because they hate each other. And so a character from
Speaker 1: one house says, do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
Speaker 1: And the guy from the other house says, I do
Speaker 1: bite my thumb, sir? Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
Speaker 1: And then the guy who's biting his thumb lead leans
Speaker 1: aside to his friend and he says, is the law
Speaker 1: on our side if I say I? And his friend
Speaker 1: says no, it is not. So he says, no, sir,
Speaker 1: I do not bite my thumb at you, sir. But
Speaker 1: I bite my thumb, sir. So it's it's sort of
Speaker 1: like I'm just punching the air, and if you happen
Speaker 1: to walk into the air that I'm punching, you know,
Speaker 1: so be it. I think the implication is that if
Speaker 1: he says outright that he is biting his thumb at
Speaker 1: the other guy, then if a fight breaks out, it'll
Speaker 1: be considered his fault because he provoked it. So he's
Speaker 1: just saying, no, I'm just biting my thumb. In general,
Speaker 1: all right, makes sense, makes sense. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: if here is, if there's a difference between flashing the
Speaker 1: middle finger and making a middle finger and scratching your face,
Speaker 1: you have plausible deniability and saying I know, I wasn't
Speaker 1: floping you off, I was. I just the side of
Speaker 1: my face itches and I needed to relieve it. And see,
Speaker 1: my middle finger is my longest finger, and therefore it
Speaker 1: is the ideal finger to use for scratching. Said notes. Right, Oh,
Speaker 1: oh it's itching again. Oh here I go again. Oh
Speaker 1: now both sides are itching. Yeah. So yeah, that is
Speaker 1: clearly what's going on in the scene. But it is
Speaker 1: interesting to ponder, like, what is what is the origin
Speaker 1: of this thumb biting thing, because of course this was
Speaker 1: localized to specific cultures, but it's clear what it means
Speaker 1: in context. It seems to bite one's thumb at someone
Speaker 1: was a gesture of disrespect or contempt. It was kind
Speaker 1: of like giving the finger. It was a way of
Speaker 1: saying you stink. And in trying to find something about
Speaker 1: the origins of this gesture, I found an excerpt from
Speaker 1: a book called How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan, England
Speaker 1: by a British historian named Ruth Goodman, and she writes
Speaker 1: as follows quote in modern sicily, you can still see
Speaker 1: a form of this gesture and use an upright thumb
Speaker 1: held so that the pad points outwards. Is tucked behind
Speaker 1: the top front teeth and then flicked forwards out of
Speaker 1: the mouth towards the intended insultee. Okay, so are you
Speaker 1: picturing that It's not the thumb going straight into the
Speaker 1: mouth as you might think with like when a child
Speaker 1: is sucking their thumb. Instead, it's like the thumb kind
Speaker 1: of goes upward into the mouth behind the top teeth,
Speaker 1: and then you kind of flick the thumb out pad out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But then DMan also writes, I've also seen a version
Speaker 1: in action on the outskirts of Venice, although I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was a native Venetian performing it, where
Speaker 1: the pad of the thumb was placed horizontally between the
Speaker 1: top and bottom teeth in a bite, and then flicked out,
Speaker 1: rotating as it went so that the bitten pad was
Speaker 1: thrust forwards. And so because of the Finn McCool biting
Speaker 1: the thumbthing, I started to wonder if there were any
Speaker 1: interesting connections between this gesture we see in Shakespeare that
Speaker 1: appears to have mostly gone out of style today, though
Speaker 1: maybe you might still see it in isolated cases here
Speaker 1: or there, such as in Sicily or somewhere in Italy.
Speaker 1: But I'm going to have to say that for me,
Speaker 1: this investigation was a failure. I couldn't find any evidence
Speaker 1: of a connection between these two story elements, though it
Speaker 1: did raise interesting questions on its own, like where would
Speaker 1: this type of thumb biting gesture come from? And from
Speaker 1: what I turned up. Like many obscene gestures, its origins
Speaker 1: are unknown. But I did find a book that had
Speaker 1: some interesting informed guesses, and this was in an academic
Speaker 1: book called Historical Social Psychology by Kenneth Gurgen and Mary Gurgan,
Speaker 1: published by Taylor and Francis, twenty fourteen. And so, first
Speaker 1: of all, they dispense with a few alternatives. They say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the thumb biting insult gesture has something
Speaker 1: to do with thumb sucking, but that doesn't really fit
Speaker 1: what's described in the Shakespearean usage. And they say the
Speaker 1: same goes for the act of biting the knuckle of
Speaker 1: your thumb, which is a gesture that sometimes people still
Speaker 1: use today, but it seems demean something different. Biting the
Speaker 1: knuckle of your thumb seems to denote someone desperately trying
Speaker 1: to contain rage, and that also it also just doesn't
Speaker 1: fit what's described in these sources. So instead, they argue
Speaker 1: that the thumb biting described by Shakespeare is something that
Speaker 1: has generally fallen out of fashion today, it's mostly not
Speaker 1: used anymore, and that in order to understand it we
Speaker 1: would need to look to the historical context. So what's
Speaker 1: the context? Well, I thought their answer was pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: They write, quote. The clue, it seems, is to be
Speaker 1: found in the fact that during the latter half of
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century, men were in the habit of wearing gloves,
Speaker 1: and these were usually removed prior to any confrontation, not
Speaker 1: unlike the present day Irish habit of taking off one's
Speaker 1: jacket to show that one means business. In fact, the
Speaker 1: practice of removing and throwing down one's glove had become
Speaker 1: ritualized as a challenge long before Shakespeare's time, and it
Speaker 1: is common knowledge that medieval knights use this device to
Speaker 1: invite each other into the lists. It seems likely that
Speaker 1: the medieval convention, or some version of it, was still
Speaker 1: around in a stylized form during Shakespeare's time, but it
Speaker 1: had become abbreviated to the point where an intention movement
Speaker 1: of removing one's gloves would suffice. So how does an
Speaker 1: early modern hater remove a glove, well, one way would
Speaker 1: be to remove it with the opposite hand, but another
Speaker 1: way would be to bite at one of the fingers
Speaker 1: of the glove with your teeth and then pull the
Speaker 1: hand away from inside. You've probably seen people take gloves
Speaker 1: off this way. The latter method they claim is well attested,
Speaker 1: and it was not unusual to remove a glove this
Speaker 1: way by by biting the thumb and pulling the hand out.
Speaker 1: Though when I was trying to imagine doing this myself,
Speaker 1: to just sort of give it a quick thought experiment check,
Speaker 1: I think you probably can do it, though it seems
Speaker 1: to me be easier to get to get your hand
Speaker 1: out of the glove by biting one of the long
Speaker 1: fingers than by biting the thumb. But I'm no glove expert.
Speaker 1: Well this makes sense, Yeah, the gloves are off. This
Speaker 1: is the classic challenge, and I had to We had
Speaker 1: to check this with Seth whose Simpsons knowledge knows no bounds.
Speaker 1: But on the Simpsons we had the episode where we
Speaker 1: had the glove slap, where our Homer is challenging everyone
Speaker 1: to a duel in town by slapping them with his glove,
Speaker 1: which he has removed right so in this case, the
Speaker 1: authors suggest their hypothesis is that over time, this familiar,
Speaker 1: highly salient activity of taking off a glove to demand
Speaker 1: a duel could be abbreviated to a simple gesture of
Speaker 1: just biting your thumb to show scorn or disrespect, whether
Speaker 1: or not you're actually wearing a glove. They do say
Speaker 1: they could find no direct evidence supporting this hypothesis, though
Speaker 1: it does fit well with the observation that the gesture
Speaker 1: mostly fell into disuse when dueling disappeared as a legitimate
Speaker 1: way of settling beef. So anyway, I think interesting question
Speaker 1: on its own, but I couldn't really find that this
Speaker 1: much informs Finn McCool right, right. I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that makes the thumb of knowledge here
Speaker 1: so fascinating, is that it does, to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: feel like kind of an island in mythology, Like it's
Speaker 1: something that it's not like there's something universal about heroes
Speaker 1: biting or sucking their thumb or placing their thumb in
Speaker 1: their mouth. But but we'll get into some of the
Speaker 1: connections that are in place in a bit here. The
Speaker 1: next question is, of course, well, why what's the story
Speaker 1: There's got to be a story. There's always a story
Speaker 1: behind why something is the way it is in mythology,
Speaker 1: and the main origin story for the miraculous thumb of
Speaker 1: Finn McCool is the salmon of knowledge. Salmon is in
Speaker 1: the fish, the delicious fish, where we're familiar with, and
Speaker 1: McKillop points out that, Okay, in addition to this, the
Speaker 1: salmon has plenty of mystical connotations, in part due to
Speaker 1: it's observed leaping out of the water. So it wasn't
Speaker 1: a stretch to think there might be something magical about
Speaker 1: a salmon. It's not like an inherently secular animal or
Speaker 1: mundane animal. It is one that already has all these
Speaker 1: various mystical connotations, and so it makes sense that it
Speaker 1: might play into such a story. Rob Can I reveal though,
Speaker 1: when I was trying to see, okay, are there other
Speaker 1: magical salmon out there? So I google the phrase magical
Speaker 1: salmon and the first result is, of course, Chef Paul
Speaker 1: Prudom's salmon Magic seasoning blend. There you go. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it was a magical recipe that that he earned by
Speaker 1: catching a magical fish, because that's that's that's basically what
Speaker 1: we have going on here. So the stories goes that
Speaker 1: you have a druid by the name of Phinegus who
Speaker 1: lives on the banks of a river, and he has
Speaker 1: long waited for and intends to catch the salmon of Knowledge.
Speaker 1: There are other versions of the story that say that
Speaker 1: he's he's camping out at a waterfall, or that there's
Speaker 1: some sort of a you know, some sort of an
Speaker 1: underground reservoir sort of situation going on. But the idea
Speaker 1: is that at some point this uh, this marvelous salmon
Speaker 1: is going to present itself, and if the druid can
Speaker 1: catch it, he can eat it and he can gain
Speaker 1: all of that wonderful wisdom for himself. Now, is it
Speaker 1: ever explained how he knows that the salmon, the salmon
Speaker 1: of knowledge, will give him all this wisdom? Or is
Speaker 1: that just he is just something he knows? Well, there
Speaker 1: are a few different There's at least one really good
Speaker 1: uh story behind this, and this is account. This is
Speaker 1: an account mentioned by Patricia Monigan in Celtic Mythology and Folklore.
Speaker 1: According to this author, the fish is sometimes identified is
Speaker 1: Finton a bard who lived many lifetimes in many incarnations.
Speaker 1: Thus he has all of this accumulated knowledge, and in
Speaker 1: this incarnation he just happens to be a salmon. And
Speaker 1: so I guess, you know, through the druidic arts, this
Speaker 1: particular druid knows, hey, I can catch him this time,
Speaker 1: and if I eat him, and I'll gain all of
Speaker 1: that knowledge. So it's it's literally that I'm going to
Speaker 1: eat your brains and gain your knowledge logic, right, well,
Speaker 1: you know, but not maybe not. The brains may just
Speaker 1: all that delicious. Uh maybe, I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you have to eat like absolutely
Speaker 1: all of the fish, or you have to eat the brain,
Speaker 1: but you're already cooking a salmon, so you might as
Speaker 1: well make a meal out of it. I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: I actually I guess, as Wills, we're about to learn
Speaker 1: it's not just the brains, and in fact that it
Speaker 1: may be a little more subtle than that, because what
Speaker 1: apparently happens is the druid finally succeeds in catching it
Speaker 1: after waiting for it for seven years, which incidentally, it's
Speaker 1: been seven years since Finn McCool was born, and seven
Speaker 1: year old Finn McCool is hanging out there at the
Speaker 1: druid camp with him, and you know he's shadowing him,
Speaker 1: you know, as you do. And so Finnegus he's caught
Speaker 1: the salmon. He's overjoyed. So he starts cooking the salmon,
Speaker 1: puts it on a spit. It's roasting there, and Finn's
Speaker 1: trying to help out, and he accidentally burns his thumb
Speaker 1: on the cooking fish. And what does he do? What
Speaker 1: do you do in your thumb is burnt, while you
Speaker 1: immediately seek to soothe that pain by thrusting your thumb
Speaker 1: into your mouth. And Finn does just this, and when
Speaker 1: he does, he inherits the power of the salmon before
Speaker 1: the old druid even gets a shot at it. So
Speaker 1: it's the oil from the salmon that contains the knowledge.
Speaker 1: It's not eat your brains and gain your knowledge. It's
Speaker 1: eat your omega threes and gain your knowledge right right now.
Speaker 1: In some variations, however, he gains he said to gain
Speaker 1: the power of divination by eating magical hazel nuts, or
Speaker 1: he gains it from the salmon because the salmon ate
Speaker 1: magical hazel nuts. There's also one version in which he
Speaker 1: enters a fairy mound. Fairy mounds are these circular ancient dwellings, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, from from ancient Ireland that were later associated
Speaker 1: with supernatural tales, and you know, stuff like the two
Speaker 1: author to done and so anyway, he enters a fairy ground,
Speaker 1: he gains the magical ability from three fairy women he
Speaker 1: encounters there, but then as he's leaving, he accidentally smashes
Speaker 1: his thumb in the door of the fairy mound. But
Speaker 1: it seems like the fish version of the story, the
Speaker 1: Salmon of Knowledge is the primary tale. It's the most
Speaker 1: popular now. It's it's often stated that it's not just
Speaker 1: putting the thumb in his mouth that sets off the
Speaker 1: divination trance, but that Finn also has to recite a
Speaker 1: kind of poetic chanting incantation called the I think probably
Speaker 1: pronouncing this wrong, but the teinem latia lata. And this
Speaker 1: also may have some connection to hazel nuts, according to
Speaker 1: mccellop in the Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. McKellop adds that
Speaker 1: the thumb allowed him to enter quote and I love
Speaker 1: this an altered visionary state in which he could see past,
Speaker 1: present and future in which he could see present. Wow,
Speaker 1: I mean that that is a real well maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it means he could see all of the present, like
Speaker 1: things that are not present with him at the present,
Speaker 1: or to see the present clearly. I don't know. There's
Speaker 1: another interesting wrinkle here. The Celtic languages and literature professional
Speaker 1: Patrick k Ford suggests that one connection here may be
Speaker 1: that the Old Irish word for thumb was ordu, which
Speaker 1: may also signify a morsel, particularly a morsel of meat,
Speaker 1: that you would you consume. And McKellop points out that
Speaker 1: that the consumption of a morsel of magical flesh is
Speaker 1: a common folkloric motif. So if I'm to understand this correctly,
Speaker 1: the interpretation would mean that Finns morsel slash thumb becomes
Speaker 1: the sacred flesh by coming into burning contact with the
Speaker 1: cooking sacred fish of the Salmon of wisdom. But is
Speaker 1: it also suggesting that there may possibly have been the
Speaker 1: kind of semantic contagion in the evolution of this story,
Speaker 1: where originally the story was about eating a magical morsel
Speaker 1: of meat, but because you can use the same word
Speaker 1: for morsel of meat and thumb, that it came to
Speaker 1: represent a thumb in later tellings. Yeah, that's absolutely the
Speaker 1: sense I'm getting from this. Yeah, So we have, you know,
Speaker 1: a semantics and linguistic shift going on here in addition
Speaker 1: to just a you know, a cool story of magic
Speaker 1: fish consumption. Oh this is great because I'm imagining other
Speaker 1: variations of that kind of evolution of a story. Like
Speaker 1: the thumb slash morsel makes sense because like a little
Speaker 1: morsel of meat that might be about the size of
Speaker 1: your thumb. But there are other ways that we use
Speaker 1: body parts to measure quantities in reality. Like I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of people who would say, hey, I want two fingers
Speaker 1: of whiskey in the glass. So you could have a
Speaker 1: story about somebody who drinks a magical draft of something.
Speaker 1: They get two fingers of it, but then in later
Speaker 1: tellings it gets confused and it's like, well, yeah, they
Speaker 1: drank their own fingers and then they gained this power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could have like a sort of a Popeye Asque
Speaker 1: character if he has if he's sticks two fingers in
Speaker 1: his mouth, then he gets all riled up and is
Speaker 1: ready to fight, puts him into a drunken brawling spade.
Speaker 1: So as we'll discuss. The thumb pops up in a
Speaker 1: few other places, but it's largely thought to be quite
Speaker 1: emblematic of Finn McCool his only real defining feature in iconography.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes they're our hounds or dogs that are
Speaker 1: associated with Finn McCool. But but the thumb especially is
Speaker 1: something where you know, historians and art historians are looking
Speaker 1: at various images. If they see the thumb being, you know,
Speaker 1: poked towards the mouth, they can they can generally say
Speaker 1: with some certainty that this must be Finn McCool. And
Speaker 1: I haven't found an example of this online or in
Speaker 1: the books I was looking at, but apparently many Celtic
Speaker 1: crosses have various figures in the design, and sometimes you'll
Speaker 1: see this thumb brandishing Finn McCool. Characters pop up, or
Speaker 1: it's assumed that it's Finn McCool because who else would
Speaker 1: it be. So if you've if you've never, if you
Speaker 1: can't imagine what a Celtic cross tense will look like,
Speaker 1: they tend to be be a cruciform shape. But then
Speaker 1: with all these kind of compartments for further illustrations and symbols, Now,
Speaker 1: how is it the thumb is usually emphasized in the psychonography.
Speaker 1: Is it like glowing or something? Or is he sucking it?
Speaker 1: Is it in his mouth. Um. Well, like I said,
Speaker 1: I couldn't find a direct example of this that stood
Speaker 1: out to me, but I I just they're they're they're
Speaker 1: going to be smaller figures and they're I don't think
Speaker 1: they're gonna's going to be necessarily obvious that like the
Speaker 1: thumb is glowing or anything, but just by by virtue
Speaker 1: of having some sort of emphasis on the thumb and
Speaker 1: a visible thumb or even a thumb in the mouth,
Speaker 1: it's going to be pretty obvious that it's Finn McCool.
Speaker 1: Now this is not related to the thumb, but just
Speaker 1: as a quick side note on you mentioned that some
Speaker 1: stories of Finn McCool emphasizes dogs. I was reading a
Speaker 1: few of those. There are actually some really great dog
Speaker 1: buddy uh legends of of Finn, and one of them
Speaker 1: is about how he how he gains a wife who
Speaker 1: is a person who I think she's like a fairy,
Speaker 1: but in any case, she's transformed into a fawn by
Speaker 1: an evil wizard and uh, and he finds her by
Speaker 1: by virtue of the fact that he's out with his
Speaker 1: hunting dogs and when he comes across this fawn, his
Speaker 1: dogs don't go after the fawn and like attack it,
Speaker 1: but instead settle down and cuddle with it. And so
Speaker 1: then he brings the fawn back with him to his castle.
Speaker 1: And once they arrive there, the fawn turns into this
Speaker 1: woman who becomes his wife. But then unfortunately she is
Speaker 1: she is tricked and stolen away by the evil wizard.
Speaker 1: Again interesting. Interesting. Now, in terms of other accounts of
Speaker 1: thumbs in Celtic mythology, I did run across another interesting example,
Speaker 1: and this was this is from the ninety two or
Speaker 1: ninety three Nordic Celtic Legends Imposium, an article by Rannock
Speaker 1: Ogan titled music Learn from the Fairies, And according to
Speaker 1: the author here there are many tales of mortals learning
Speaker 1: the music of fairy folk music from beyond our world,
Speaker 1: and usually they learn it by hearing it in just
Speaker 1: the right place at just the right time, you know,
Speaker 1: something like an ancient ruin strange rocks in the world woods,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of place that fairies might appear
Speaker 1: or hang out, and such was also around the time
Speaker 1: of Solin, like this is the time of the year
Speaker 1: when the veil is thin between our world and the next.
Speaker 1: And there's at least one account in in Celtic tradition
Speaker 1: of a man hearing fairy music. He's you know, he
Speaker 1: hears it in the woods or wherever, and what does
Speaker 1: he do. He sticks his thumb in his mouth whilst
Speaker 1: hearing the music, and as a result he remembered the music.
Speaker 1: And of course this this caused to mind Finn McCool interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean, what does that suggest about our intuitions about
Speaker 1: the power of sucking a thumb that it like, I
Speaker 1: don't know what that means, That it has some kind
Speaker 1: of grounding power that it can like cause you to uh,
Speaker 1: sort of like hold fast against maybe currents of magic
Speaker 1: or forgetfulness that would otherwise wash away the memory. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a great question because I guess on one hand,
Speaker 1: let's let's start by let's go ahead and assume that
Speaker 1: that sticking your thumb in your mouth actually doesn't have
Speaker 1: any effect on you know, your your your memory, or
Speaker 1: your your your your stress level or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It does make you wonder if there is, if there's
Speaker 1: something culturally in place where where just the idea of
Speaker 1: sticking your thumb in your mouth is like a novel
Speaker 1: thing that is done that is associated with insight. Um
Speaker 1: I wonder if it is the kind of thing where
Speaker 1: you could stick your thumb in your mouth thinking about
Speaker 1: this tradition and it would actually help you remember something better,
Speaker 1: because it's also like that thing I heard while I
Speaker 1: was sticking my thumb in my mouth. Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 1: In fact, that even connects to a mnemonic device I've
Speaker 1: I've heard of before, which is basically like, if if
Speaker 1: suddenly something happens and you want to remember it very well,
Speaker 1: you should do something really weird immediately so that you
Speaker 1: like form a link in your mind between that weird
Speaker 1: memory bol thing you did, and whatever thing it is
Speaker 1: you're trying to remember. Interesting now, of course, the thing
Speaker 1: is when it comes with thumb sucking, it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be just a completely neutral gesture, if you will.
Speaker 1: And we actually have quite a lot of research out
Speaker 1: there on thumb sucking, particularly as it relates to children. Right,
Speaker 1: So I was actually reading a brief article in a
Speaker 1: pediatric medicine journal reviewing the existing literature on thumbs sucking
Speaker 1: as of two thousand and eight. So this article was
Speaker 1: called Thumb and Finger Sucking by Lynn Davidson in the
Speaker 1: journal Pediatrics in Review. Again, this was the year two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, and a few major takeaways from this
Speaker 1: brief ride up. Number one is that different studies across
Speaker 1: time have found some different rates of the prevalence of
Speaker 1: thumb sucking or finger sucking. A lot of times these
Speaker 1: studies just lump thumb and finger sucking in together, so
Speaker 1: you're not necessarily getting a breakdown by which finger it is.
Speaker 1: But I think it is clear that thumbs are the
Speaker 1: most most common finger for infants to suck. But older
Speaker 1: studies found rates in the range of seventy to ninety
Speaker 1: percent of children showing a thumb or finger sucking behaviors,
Speaker 1: and more recent studies have found rates more like thirty
Speaker 1: percent by the end of the first year after birth,
Speaker 1: along with forty percent using a pacifier. Though with that
Speaker 1: thirty to forty percent, I don't know if that's an
Speaker 1: either or situation or an and situation to some children
Speaker 1: suck thumb and a pacifier, I'm not sure. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't have a lot of direct experience with that,
Speaker 1: but I mean, I guess in some cases you're going
Speaker 1: to have a situation where the child is gravitating towards
Speaker 1: sucking on on digits and you want to get a
Speaker 1: pacifier in there instead, and you're like, here, here, you
Speaker 1: use this instead. Anyway. There's some variations on these rates
Speaker 1: with the within the first few years of life, but
Speaker 1: Davidson writes that by the time most children reach the
Speaker 1: age of four, these rates have gone way down. On average,
Speaker 1: only twelve percent of children in one study sucked a finger,
Speaker 1: including a thumb, by the age of four, and pacifier
Speaker 1: use had gone down to four percent by that time.
Speaker 1: Now here's something I thought was interesting. Apparently, during the
Speaker 1: first few months of life, infants are most likely to
Speaker 1: suck their thumbs during sleep, but by the end of
Speaker 1: the first year more infants do it while awake. There
Speaker 1: were no differences in rates of thumb sucking prevalence by sex.
Speaker 1: And oh, and I thought this was interesting. Up to
Speaker 1: fifty percent of children who suck their thumbs or fingers
Speaker 1: also tend to hold a special object while doing so.
Speaker 1: This is, yeah, sort of the classic I suck my
Speaker 1: thumb or my fingers and I have to hold on
Speaker 1: to a special blanket or a special stuffy that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah. Now, there have been a number of
Speaker 1: historical explanations for thumb sucking. One that must be cited
Speaker 1: unfortunately as Freud. Freud being Freud believed it to be
Speaker 1: an expression of what he called quote infantile sexuality, and
Speaker 1: that when it persisted beyond infancy, it was a symptom
Speaker 1: of emotional disturbance. Obviously, Freudianism held a lot of sway
Speaker 1: for a while, despite it being profoundly weird and not
Speaker 1: actually being subject to empirical testing. But there are some
Speaker 1: more recent theories that seem better grounded and experimental research,
Speaker 1: and they generally suggest that thumbsucking grows out of instinctual
Speaker 1: behaviors in infants, that sucking behaviors are a universal instinctual
Speaker 1: behavior in newborns that they use for breastfeeding or bottle feeding,
Speaker 1: and that after that, for some reason, in some children,
Speaker 1: this instinctual behavior continues beyond the point of nutritional relevance,
Speaker 1: and the instinctual behavior might be reinforced through conditioning, and
Speaker 1: in some cases it just continues with a substitute, such
Speaker 1: as a thumb or a finger. I don't know if
Speaker 1: there is a good agreed upon answer as to why
Speaker 1: this reinforced behavior would be continued in some children but
Speaker 1: not others, Like what makes the difference? I'm not sure. However,
Speaker 1: it might be informative to note that some studies have
Speaker 1: found that thumb sucking appears to be especially common when
Speaker 1: children are bored, tired, or anxious, and this suggests that
Speaker 1: it plays some kind of self soothing role. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I was finding some evidence to back this up as well.
Speaker 1: There's a twenty fifteen article published in Minerva Pediatrica that
Speaker 1: concluded that quote, a thumbsucking subject puts the thumb in
Speaker 1: the mouth to stimulate the nasal pilatal receptors of trigeminists
Speaker 1: and obtain muscular balance and a release of physical and
Speaker 1: psychological tension. Now that's also interesting when you think about
Speaker 1: the Okay, we have Finn McCool doing this as an adult.
Speaker 1: You can certainly find adult thumbsuckers who speak to the
Speaker 1: calming effects of the practice. So I wonder if it
Speaker 1: is too much of a stretch to imagine an Irish
Speaker 1: warrior of old who you know, you know, he's his
Speaker 1: wonderful hunter and warrior in all this, but he needs
Speaker 1: to calm down every now and then, and this stressful
Speaker 1: role in society, And if you're going to ponder an
Speaker 1: important decision, you need to reach a place of relative peace,
Speaker 1: and perhaps placing his thumb inside of his mouth allows
Speaker 1: him to do so, and maybe you end up seeing
Speaker 1: the creation of magical explanations for what's going on here,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just saying, well, he never quite stopped
Speaker 1: sucking his thumb when he's nervous or stressed. Oh man,
Speaker 1: that would be an amazing origin story. Yes, so it
Speaker 1: begins with this beast of a warrior, great hunter, you know,
Speaker 1: blow the hunting horn. I will defend the shores of Ireland.
Speaker 1: But I also suck my thumb and people are like,
Speaker 1: why is he sucking his thumb? And somebody else is like, well,
Speaker 1: it's what he does when he needs to, you know,
Speaker 1: see into the future. Yeah, now another possible connection. I
Speaker 1: was thinking about a related connection. Anyway, Sometimes there's more
Speaker 1: stress placed on the idea that Finn is placing his
Speaker 1: thumb behind his upper teeth, and of course thumb sucking
Speaker 1: itself impacts the palette. I was reminded of traditions in
Speaker 1: meditation that you encounter in which one is asked to
Speaker 1: hold the tip of one's tongue to the roof of
Speaker 1: the mouth. Sometimes this is described in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: of course, bodily energy flow, other times as just being
Speaker 1: a way of altering the flow of saliva in the mouth,
Speaker 1: though it is sometimes described as a way of eliminating
Speaker 1: negative thoughts or even a way of sort of weeding
Speaker 1: out speech based thoughts. Well, and I'd wonder if you
Speaker 1: know any kind of meditative practice that involves unusual activities
Speaker 1: with the body is essentially just trying to trying to
Speaker 1: direct your concentration away from the sort of default mode
Speaker 1: flow of thoughts that arise normally. If if you're thinking
Speaker 1: about doing a sort of strange repetitive action with your body,
Speaker 1: you're probably less inclined to start thinking about, oh, man,
Speaker 1: next Thursday. I really yeah, yeah exactly. So I feel
Speaker 1: like that is I couldn't find any like real research
Speaker 1: on this, and perhaps I'm missing something, but this seems
Speaker 1: plausible to me, like if there was some sort of
Speaker 1: like ritual we see in meditation. This is a ritual
Speaker 1: touching of something to the roof of your mouth that
Speaker 1: is then associated with some degree of anxiety relief and
Speaker 1: some degree of relaxation. We see some evidence to support
Speaker 1: the idea that that thumb sucking itself can reduce anxiety,
Speaker 1: and then We have this idea too that just sort
Speaker 1: of novel behaviors and rituals of relaxation, rituals of grounding
Speaker 1: can can very much be be helpful. I'm not advising
Speaker 1: anybody to take up sucking of the thumb as a
Speaker 1: as a way to try and uh, you know, find
Speaker 1: balance or to see into the future, but I feel
Speaker 1: like there's some there's some interesting leads here to potentially
Speaker 1: pull on to sort of try and make sense of
Speaker 1: of where this may come from, and uh and and
Speaker 1: how such a either at the very least such a
Speaker 1: myth comes together, but but also the possibility that this
Speaker 1: is something that had could have been practiced to some
Speaker 1: limited degree in uh, you know, in Ireland of Old. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also another note, Yes, so we were not encouraging thumb
Speaker 1: sucking for adults, especially because that can cause dental problems
Speaker 1: if if you're doing chronic thumb sucking after the baby
Speaker 1: teeth have been replaced. Yeah, that's the that's of course,
Speaker 1: the the prime reason that that adults discourage the act
Speaker 1: and want to to wean kids away from the sucking
Speaker 1: of fingers and thumbs, because yeah, once the baby teeth
Speaker 1: are going, you've got the adult teeth going in. You
Speaker 1: can you can jack up those adult teeth by continually
Speaker 1: pressing the thumb up there into the palette. It's seems
Speaker 1: like the methods used to discourage thumbsucking and train children
Speaker 1: not to do it have become more humane over time,
Speaker 1: because I was reading about some of the older methods
Speaker 1: people used to try to, you know, get their kid
Speaker 1: to get the thumb out of the mouth, and it
Speaker 1: was brutal, like one was about these ideas of having
Speaker 1: the sharp implements put on the backs of the teeth
Speaker 1: that would like cause pain in the thumb. Have you
Speaker 1: read about this, Yeah, yeah, I think I've heard about
Speaker 1: that before. Yeah, obviously that does not sound good. Or
Speaker 1: of course putting putting noxious chemicals or something on the thumb. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think people have better methods now. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the interesting thing we talked about, this idea
Speaker 1: of the thumbsucking being, you know, the thumb in the
Speaker 1: mouth being kind of an island for this mythology of
Speaker 1: Finn McCool and certainly again it is a defining one
Speaker 1: of the defining factors of this particular hero. But you
Speaker 1: do see thumb sucking, thumb in the mouth motifs popping
Speaker 1: up with some other heroes, particularly. A few examples that
Speaker 1: have come to mind include um Sigurd, the hero there.
Speaker 1: Actually I saw an image of him that it's like
Speaker 1: a carving, and you see him with thumb in the mouth,
Speaker 1: So that seems to be very much related to what
Speaker 1: we're looking at here. Another hero that we see lined
Speaker 1: up with the thumb is Taliesin, So there seems to
Speaker 1: be some connection between Finn McCool and these heroes as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: McKillop notes in his book that there was a controversial
Speaker 1: suggestion by Robert Graves that Heracles or Hercules, the Greek hero,
Speaker 1: was associated with the thumb in the same way that
Speaker 1: Achilles is associated with the heel, kind of these body
Speaker 1: parts that are emblematic of the person. But McKillop brings
Speaker 1: that association up specifically in the context of it being
Speaker 1: kind of kind of doubtful. Now, outside of these these
Speaker 1: three heroes, I wasn't really really finding much that that
Speaker 1: even resembled Finn McCool. But there is an interesting thumb
Speaker 1: sucking bit of myth making that pops up in Hindu traditions.
Speaker 1: In the Hindu Epic, the Mahabarata. There's the story of
Speaker 1: King yuvan Ashva, who apparently has trouble conceiving a child
Speaker 1: with any of his concubines, and so he winds up
Speaker 1: drinking a magic potion that makes him pregnant. So when
Speaker 1: this occurs, his he realizes, well, there's some additional problems
Speaker 1: now that I have to deal with. So he turns
Speaker 1: to the divine physicians and they cut open his thigh
Speaker 1: so that he can actually give birth to the baby.
Speaker 1: But then how is he to nourish the child? Well,
Speaker 1: then we have Indra, the King of Davis, to cut
Speaker 1: open his thumb and this allows milk to leak forth
Speaker 1: from the thumb so that he can nurse his infant
Speaker 1: son in this manner. And this is why the story
Speaker 1: goes that babies sometimes suck their thumbs. Wow. Interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: no direct connection between this and Finn McCool, but just
Speaker 1: another kind of cool thumbsucking mythology to reference here. The
Speaker 1: more I think about the idea of a of a
Speaker 1: thumbsucking warrior action hero, the more I love it, Like
Speaker 1: I want to see a movie like this. Or it
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be thumbsucking, it could also be um,
Speaker 1: you know, your your great warrior, great swinger of the sword,
Speaker 1: like has a blankie. Yeah yeah, I mean we had
Speaker 1: let's see, who's the tell us of all his character?
Speaker 1: That does it? Kolchak uh Kojack that that had the
Speaker 1: sucker like that was his whole thing, right, Oh, lollipops
Speaker 1: the lollipop. Yeah, uh, that's not too far removed from it.
Speaker 1: I cannot do detective until I get my lolly. Yes, well, Rob,
Speaker 1: I have greatly enjoyed this journey into Finn McCool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one has been a lot of fun. Like I say,
Speaker 1: I wasn't super familiar with Finn McCool prior to this,
Speaker 1: and I certainly had had somehow skipped over or forgotten
Speaker 1: anything about the Thumb of Knowledge. So this was this
Speaker 1: was a fun journey into Irish mythology. Always fun to
Speaker 1: do that around this time of year. You know. On
Speaker 1: previous episodes of the show, we have talked about our
Speaker 1: love for the time Life Enchanted World books that were
Speaker 1: fabulously advertised on TV commercials with Vincent Price where you
Speaker 1: know he's I love to carl up with a good book.
Speaker 1: Did his eyes glow green in those commercials? I think so?
Speaker 1: They may have, well, a couple of the volumes of
Speaker 1: the Time Life Enchanted World have stories of Finn McCool,
Speaker 1: and they're you know what I got to say, By
Speaker 1: and large, those books are really good. They're good syntheses
Speaker 1: of their sources and pretty well written, much better than
Speaker 1: you would expect for something that was advertised on TV
Speaker 1: that way. Oh absolutely, yeah. I'm actually reading through the
Speaker 1: Dragon volume from that collection right now with my son,
Speaker 1: and there's some sections of it that I feel like
Speaker 1: we're a little a little wordier than they need to be,
Speaker 1: but we're having a lot of fun with it. You
Speaker 1: have the longer sections, the short order sections, you have
Speaker 1: this wonderful mix of original artwork as well as traditional
Speaker 1: artwork to illustrate these tales. So yeah, there there are
Speaker 1: a lot of fun do you do? You have them all? Joe?
Speaker 1: It was a wonderful gift from my wife, Rachel got
Speaker 1: me the complete Time Life Enchanted World collection. Oh nice.
Speaker 1: It's something like twenty something volumes all told. Right, Uh,
Speaker 1: that might be about right. I haven't read them all yet.
Speaker 1: So the stories about Finn McCool are in the ones
Speaker 1: called Acts of Valor or maybe Tales of Valor. This
Speaker 1: the one with Valor and the title, and then the
Speaker 1: one called Fabled Lands. Yeah, okay, I have one of those,
Speaker 1: but not the other. For the longest I just I
Speaker 1: kind of assumed that I had the full collection that
Speaker 1: had been gifted to me from an aunt when I
Speaker 1: was a child. But I've come to realize, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't have them all. So, like, just the other day,
Speaker 1: as we were recording this, I was looking at oh,
Speaker 1: which I was looking at, like, Okay, which ones do
Speaker 1: I not have that I really should have? And I
Speaker 1: noticed that I had two of the Black books, not
Speaker 1: the third. So I immediately had to order that one up.
Speaker 1: One of the great things about these books is that
Speaker 1: I guess they were just so mass produced. You can
Speaker 1: pick these volumes up for you know, for reasonable sums. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes you'll find one's even like dirt cheap. Uh.
Speaker 1: So there there are plenty. There's plenty of Enchanted World
Speaker 1: to go around if anyone's interested. I'm incredibly proud of
Speaker 1: my Enchanted World collection. It's a it's a treasure all right,
Speaker 1: where we're going to go ahead and close it out here.
Speaker 1: And and I guess I wish everybody to Saint Patrick's
Speaker 1: day while we're at it. But we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from everyone out there. We'd love to hear from uh
Speaker 1: Irish folk and non Irish folk alike regarding these uh,
Speaker 1: these myths, these these tales, uh you know, thumbs in
Speaker 1: the mouth, thumbsucking in general, or even just an enchanted
Speaker 1: world book chat. What's your favorite volume? Did you have
Speaker 1: these growing up or did you just want them? Have
Speaker 1: you have you rectified this in your adult life, etc.
Speaker 1: Just let us know we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, you can find core episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed On Mondays, we
Speaker 1: do listener mail. On Wednesdays we do an artifact or
Speaker 1: a monster fact. The one we did this week is
Speaker 1: also Irish themed. And then on Fridays we set most
Speaker 1: serious matters aside and we just talk about a strange film.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 1: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind dot com Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.