WEBVTT - From the Vault: Finn McCool, Part 2 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:07.760 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:11.080 name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday. 0:00:11.200 --> 0:00:13.960 Time for a vault episode. This is an older episode 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:17.599 of our show. This one originally published March seventeenth, twenty 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:20.360 twenty two, and it's part two of our series on 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:28.240 Finn McCool, the legendary Irish hero. Welcome to Stuff to 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:37.960 Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to 0:00:38.000 --> 0:00:40.280 Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:43.200 and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two 0:00:43.240 --> 0:00:48.000 of our series about the legendary Irish hero Finn McCool. 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:50.080 If you haven't heard part one, you should go back 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:51.720 and listen to that one first. This one will make 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:53.680 a lot more sense if you do. But at the 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:57.200 end of the last episode, we promised you that this 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:00.440 episode would be the one that's all thumb, because, of course, 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:03.280 one of the great legends about Finn McCool is the 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:06.280 so called Thumb of knowledge. We teased it a few 0:01:06.319 --> 0:01:09.319 times in the previous episode, but now we're finally here. 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:13.000 We're finally to the thumb factory. That's right, Finn is 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:16.080 not merely a warrior and a hunter and a defender 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:19.200 of his people. He also has the gift of divination. 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:22.560 His prescience puts him in keeping with the likes of 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:26.440 Paula Treads, But he doesn't take spice or enter a 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:30.680 Prana Bindu trance in order to see the future, or 0:01:30.800 --> 0:01:34.479 is it sometimes described to gain wisdom. Instead, he puts 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:37.440 his thumb in his mouth. Is the most heroic thing 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.600 I can picture. I mean, imagine the movie poster. It's 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:44.360 like your action movie hero. They've got the sword, their 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:47.200 hair is blowing in the wind, maybe their armor is 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:51.240 splattered with blood and mud. And also he's just got 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:54.160 his thumb in his mouth. Now. In the last part 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:56.920 of the series, we referenced a few works by a 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:00.880 scholar named James McKillop, who has written extendly on Finn 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:05.000 McCool and on Irish smith and legend. For example, I 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:07.480 cited him when I was talking about the version of 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:12.800 the Giant's Causeway story that involves that involves the the 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:16.040 Ben and Donner Giant, the rival giant being replaced with 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:19.600 one named Kucullen, which is totally confusing because that's the 0:02:19.680 --> 0:02:22.880 name of a different Irish folk hero. But this was 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:26.080 also the version of the story where Finn McCool bites 0:02:26.160 --> 0:02:29.400 off the rival giant's finger when the giant is tricked 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:32.919 into putting the finger into his mouth. But I think 0:02:32.960 --> 0:02:37.160 you were also reading something by James McKillop on on 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:41.360 the origins of this thumb story, right, yeah, yeah. According 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:45.280 to McKillop, the details on how the thumb is utilized 0:02:45.440 --> 0:02:48.919 vary according to the you know, the different tellings. Sometimes 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:51.800 it's described as a sucking of the thumb, much like 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:54.080 an infant would would suck on a thumb or fingers. 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:57.320 Other Times it's described as a chewing of the thumb, 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:02.520 And sometimes it's specifically that the thumb is placed behind 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:05.960 the upper teeth, which I guess is something that is 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:09.680 as more or less happening with any kind of infantile 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:13.040 sucking of the thumb anyway, but they seem to make it. 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:15.000 Sometimes the point is made that it's like the thumb 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:18.120 is coming into contact with the palette and pressing. All right, So, 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:20.960 as amusing as the image of an action hero sucking 0:03:21.000 --> 0:03:24.640 his thumb might be the idea of an action hero 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:28.320 biting his thumb, that's pretty close, But that seems a 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:31.440 little more maybe on the money, especially when you take 0:03:31.480 --> 0:03:36.880 into account some historical considerations, because the idea of biting 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:41.880 his thumb immediately made me think of the classically confusing 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.360 scene from Shakespeare the infamous do you bite your thumb 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:48.440 at us, sir? The scene from Romeo and Juliet, rob 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:51.600 Do you remember coming across this in school and having 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:55.040 no idea what to make of it? Yes, I distinctly 0:03:55.080 --> 0:03:58.640 remember this, probably when we were watching an adaptation of it, 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:01.640 and yeah, there's the whole scene with I bite my 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:04.600 thumb at you, and I remember everyone getting a real 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.480 kick out of that. Yeah, it's like it's one of 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:09.840 those where you know what it means, but you don't 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:12.040 know what it means, Like you get the gist, but 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:15.960 you don't understand what they're talking about. Because so the scene, 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:18.640 for anybody who hasn't read it, it's in Romeo and Juliet, 0:04:18.680 --> 0:04:22.800 Act one, Scene one. We get servants of the two 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:25.840 rival houses, the Montagues and the Capulets. They run into 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:28.560 each other in the street and they're they're trying to 0:04:28.600 --> 0:04:31.440 stir things up there. They're trying to provoke a fight 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:34.000 because they hate each other. And so a character from 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:36.200 one house says, do you bite your thumb at us, sir? 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:38.120 And the guy from the other house says, I do 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.400 bite my thumb, sir? Do you bite your thumb at us, sir? 0:04:41.880 --> 0:04:45.359 And then the guy who's biting his thumb lead leans 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:47.320 aside to his friend and he says, is the law 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:49.520 on our side if I say I? And his friend 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:52.159 says no, it is not. So he says, no, sir, 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:54.560 I do not bite my thumb at you, sir. But 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:56.839 I bite my thumb, sir. So it's it's sort of 0:04:56.880 --> 0:04:59.640 like I'm just punching the air, and if you happen 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.719 to walk into the air that I'm punching, you know, 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:07.360 so be it. I think the implication is that if 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:10.760 he says outright that he is biting his thumb at 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:13.800 the other guy, then if a fight breaks out, it'll 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:16.719 be considered his fault because he provoked it. So he's 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:19.240 just saying, no, I'm just biting my thumb. In general, 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:21.560 all right, makes sense, makes sense. It's kind of like 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:23.800 if here is, if there's a difference between flashing the 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:27.839 middle finger and making a middle finger and scratching your face, 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:30.279 you have plausible deniability and saying I know, I wasn't 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:32.599 floping you off, I was. I just the side of 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:35.120 my face itches and I needed to relieve it. And see, 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:37.640 my middle finger is my longest finger, and therefore it 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:41.719 is the ideal finger to use for scratching. Said notes. Right, Oh, 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:44.760 oh it's itching again. Oh here I go again. Oh 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:49.520 now both sides are itching. Yeah. So yeah, that is 0:05:49.560 --> 0:05:51.760 clearly what's going on in the scene. But it is 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:54.520 interesting to ponder, like, what is what is the origin 0:05:54.680 --> 0:05:58.880 of this thumb biting thing, because of course this was 0:05:59.320 --> 0:06:02.359 localized to specific cultures, but it's clear what it means 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.800 in context. It seems to bite one's thumb at someone 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:09.360 was a gesture of disrespect or contempt. It was kind 0:06:09.400 --> 0:06:12.080 of like giving the finger. It was a way of 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:15.640 saying you stink. And in trying to find something about 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:19.080 the origins of this gesture, I found an excerpt from 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:22.560 a book called How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan, England 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:27.760 by a British historian named Ruth Goodman, and she writes 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:31.000 as follows quote in modern sicily, you can still see 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:34.080 a form of this gesture and use an upright thumb 0:06:34.240 --> 0:06:37.960 held so that the pad points outwards. Is tucked behind 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:41.320 the top front teeth and then flicked forwards out of 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:45.800 the mouth towards the intended insultee. Okay, so are you 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:48.240 picturing that It's not the thumb going straight into the 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:50.360 mouth as you might think with like when a child 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:53.000 is sucking their thumb. Instead, it's like the thumb kind 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:55.880 of goes upward into the mouth behind the top teeth, 0:06:55.880 --> 0:06:59.560 and then you kind of flick the thumb out pad out. Yeah. 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:02.279 But then DMan also writes, I've also seen a version 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:05.160 in action on the outskirts of Venice, although I don't 0:07:05.160 --> 0:07:07.840 know if it was a native Venetian performing it, where 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:10.600 the pad of the thumb was placed horizontally between the 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:13.800 top and bottom teeth in a bite, and then flicked out, 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:16.600 rotating as it went so that the bitten pad was 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:22.040 thrust forwards. And so because of the Finn McCool biting 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:24.200 the thumbthing, I started to wonder if there were any 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:28.240 interesting connections between this gesture we see in Shakespeare that 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:31.000 appears to have mostly gone out of style today, though 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:33.520 maybe you might still see it in isolated cases here 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:36.440 or there, such as in Sicily or somewhere in Italy. 0:07:36.920 --> 0:07:38.800 But I'm going to have to say that for me, 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:42.120 this investigation was a failure. I couldn't find any evidence 0:07:42.160 --> 0:07:46.040 of a connection between these two story elements, though it 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:49.840 did raise interesting questions on its own, like where would 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.760 this type of thumb biting gesture come from? And from 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:56.880 what I turned up. Like many obscene gestures, its origins 0:07:56.920 --> 0:07:59.840 are unknown. But I did find a book that had 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:04.720 some interesting informed guesses, and this was in an academic 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:10.480 book called Historical Social Psychology by Kenneth Gurgen and Mary Gurgan, 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:14.200 published by Taylor and Francis, twenty fourteen. And so, first 0:08:14.240 --> 0:08:17.280 of all, they dispense with a few alternatives. They say, well, 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:21.280 you know, maybe the thumb biting insult gesture has something 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:23.560 to do with thumb sucking, but that doesn't really fit 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:26.720 what's described in the Shakespearean usage. And they say the 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:29.080 same goes for the act of biting the knuckle of 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:32.600 your thumb, which is a gesture that sometimes people still 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:36.560 use today, but it seems demean something different. Biting the 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:40.560 knuckle of your thumb seems to denote someone desperately trying 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:44.440 to contain rage, and that also it also just doesn't 0:08:44.480 --> 0:08:48.360 fit what's described in these sources. So instead, they argue 0:08:48.400 --> 0:08:51.000 that the thumb biting described by Shakespeare is something that 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:53.920 has generally fallen out of fashion today, it's mostly not 0:08:54.040 --> 0:08:57.080 used anymore, and that in order to understand it we 0:08:57.080 --> 0:09:00.600 would need to look to the historical context. So what's 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:03.240 the context? Well, I thought their answer was pretty interesting. 0:09:03.640 --> 0:09:06.320 They write, quote. The clue, it seems, is to be 0:09:06.320 --> 0:09:08.320 found in the fact that during the latter half of 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:11.800 the sixteenth century, men were in the habit of wearing gloves, 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:15.560 and these were usually removed prior to any confrontation, not 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:18.559 unlike the present day Irish habit of taking off one's 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:22.480 jacket to show that one means business. In fact, the 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:25.720 practice of removing and throwing down one's glove had become 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:29.640 ritualized as a challenge long before Shakespeare's time, and it 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:32.760 is common knowledge that medieval knights use this device to 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:36.480 invite each other into the lists. It seems likely that 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:39.200 the medieval convention, or some version of it, was still 0:09:39.280 --> 0:09:43.240 around in a stylized form during Shakespeare's time, but it 0:09:43.280 --> 0:09:46.920 had become abbreviated to the point where an intention movement 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:51.200 of removing one's gloves would suffice. So how does an 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:55.000 early modern hater remove a glove, well, one way would 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:57.320 be to remove it with the opposite hand, but another 0:09:57.320 --> 0:09:59.720 way would be to bite at one of the fingers 0:09:59.760 --> 0:10:02.120 of the glove with your teeth and then pull the 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:04.880 hand away from inside. You've probably seen people take gloves 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:08.320 off this way. The latter method they claim is well attested, 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:10.680 and it was not unusual to remove a glove this 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:13.040 way by by biting the thumb and pulling the hand out. 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:16.400 Though when I was trying to imagine doing this myself, 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:20.360 to just sort of give it a quick thought experiment check, 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:22.600 I think you probably can do it, though it seems 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:24.880 to me be easier to get to get your hand 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:26.560 out of the glove by biting one of the long 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:30.240 fingers than by biting the thumb. But I'm no glove expert. 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:33.040 Well this makes sense, Yeah, the gloves are off. This 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:36.240 is the classic challenge, and I had to We had 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:41.200 to check this with Seth whose Simpsons knowledge knows no bounds. 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:43.960 But on the Simpsons we had the episode where we 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:47.440 had the glove slap, where our Homer is challenging everyone 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:50.280 to a duel in town by slapping them with his glove, 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:53.120 which he has removed right so in this case, the 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:57.400 authors suggest their hypothesis is that over time, this familiar, 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:01.520 highly salient activity of taking off a glove to demand 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:05.640 a duel could be abbreviated to a simple gesture of 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:09.880 just biting your thumb to show scorn or disrespect, whether 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:12.680 or not you're actually wearing a glove. They do say 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:15.880 they could find no direct evidence supporting this hypothesis, though 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:18.600 it does fit well with the observation that the gesture 0:11:18.640 --> 0:11:24.040 mostly fell into disuse when dueling disappeared as a legitimate 0:11:24.080 --> 0:11:27.360 way of settling beef. So anyway, I think interesting question 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:29.560 on its own, but I couldn't really find that this 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:33.440 much informs Finn McCool right, right. I think that's one 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:35.880 of the things that makes the thumb of knowledge here 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.920 so fascinating, is that it does, to a certain extent, 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:42.600 feel like kind of an island in mythology, Like it's 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:46.080 something that it's not like there's something universal about heroes 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:49.199 biting or sucking their thumb or placing their thumb in 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:51.640 their mouth. But but we'll get into some of the 0:11:51.640 --> 0:12:01.120 connections that are in place in a bit here. The 0:12:01.160 --> 0:12:03.760 next question is, of course, well, why what's the story 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:05.439 There's got to be a story. There's always a story 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:09.319 behind why something is the way it is in mythology, 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:13.360 and the main origin story for the miraculous thumb of 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:18.040 Finn McCool is the salmon of knowledge. Salmon is in 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:22.040 the fish, the delicious fish, where we're familiar with, and 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:26.760 McKillop points out that, Okay, in addition to this, the 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:30.840 salmon has plenty of mystical connotations, in part due to 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:34.880 it's observed leaping out of the water. So it wasn't 0:12:34.880 --> 0:12:37.160 a stretch to think there might be something magical about 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:42.280 a salmon. It's not like an inherently secular animal or 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:45.439 mundane animal. It is one that already has all these 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:50.079 various mystical connotations, and so it makes sense that it 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:52.920 might play into such a story. Rob Can I reveal though, 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:54.680 when I was trying to see, okay, are there other 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:57.640 magical salmon out there? So I google the phrase magical 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:01.280 salmon and the first result is, of course, Chef Paul 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:07.720 Prudom's salmon Magic seasoning blend. There you go. I'm sure 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:12.160 it was a magical recipe that that he earned by 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:16.120 catching a magical fish, because that's that's that's basically what 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:19.360 we have going on here. So the stories goes that 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.720 you have a druid by the name of Phinegus who 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:24.959 lives on the banks of a river, and he has 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:30.240 long waited for and intends to catch the salmon of Knowledge. 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:32.440 There are other versions of the story that say that 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:35.360 he's he's camping out at a waterfall, or that there's 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:37.360 some sort of a you know, some sort of an 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:43.079 underground reservoir sort of situation going on. But the idea 0:13:43.200 --> 0:13:46.240 is that at some point this uh, this marvelous salmon 0:13:46.360 --> 0:13:48.719 is going to present itself, and if the druid can 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:51.120 catch it, he can eat it and he can gain 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.400 all of that wonderful wisdom for himself. Now, is it 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:57.520 ever explained how he knows that the salmon, the salmon 0:13:57.559 --> 0:13:59.520 of knowledge, will give him all this wisdom? Or is 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:02.440 that just he is just something he knows? Well, there 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:05.160 are a few different There's at least one really good 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:08.960 uh story behind this, and this is account. This is 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:14.520 an account mentioned by Patricia Monigan in Celtic Mythology and Folklore. 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:18.959 According to this author, the fish is sometimes identified is 0:14:19.040 --> 0:14:23.800 Finton a bard who lived many lifetimes in many incarnations. 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:27.400 Thus he has all of this accumulated knowledge, and in 0:14:27.400 --> 0:14:30.440 this incarnation he just happens to be a salmon. And 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:33.720 so I guess, you know, through the druidic arts, this 0:14:33.840 --> 0:14:37.000 particular druid knows, hey, I can catch him this time, 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:38.720 and if I eat him, and I'll gain all of 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:42.400 that knowledge. So it's it's literally that I'm going to 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:46.000 eat your brains and gain your knowledge logic, right, well, 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:48.000 you know, but not maybe not. The brains may just 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:51.560 all that delicious. Uh maybe, I don't know. I don't 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:53.640 I'm not sure if you have to eat like absolutely 0:14:53.680 --> 0:14:55.680 all of the fish, or you have to eat the brain, 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:57.880 but you're already cooking a salmon, so you might as 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:00.440 well make a meal out of it. I don't know. Well, 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:03.840 I actually I guess, as Wills, we're about to learn 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:06.320 it's not just the brains, and in fact that it 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:08.680 may be a little more subtle than that, because what 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:12.720 apparently happens is the druid finally succeeds in catching it 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:16.840 after waiting for it for seven years, which incidentally, it's 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:19.880 been seven years since Finn McCool was born, and seven 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:22.520 year old Finn McCool is hanging out there at the 0:15:22.600 --> 0:15:25.640 druid camp with him, and you know he's shadowing him, 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.200 you know, as you do. And so Finnegus he's caught 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:31.680 the salmon. He's overjoyed. So he starts cooking the salmon, 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:35.320 puts it on a spit. It's roasting there, and Finn's 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:38.480 trying to help out, and he accidentally burns his thumb 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:40.880 on the cooking fish. And what does he do? What 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.040 do you do in your thumb is burnt, while you 0:15:44.040 --> 0:15:47.200 immediately seek to soothe that pain by thrusting your thumb 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:50.280 into your mouth. And Finn does just this, and when 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:54.200 he does, he inherits the power of the salmon before 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:56.360 the old druid even gets a shot at it. So 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:59.920 it's the oil from the salmon that contains the knowledge. 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:02.640 It's not eat your brains and gain your knowledge. It's 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:07.080 eat your omega threes and gain your knowledge right right now. 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:10.440 In some variations, however, he gains he said to gain 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:14.160 the power of divination by eating magical hazel nuts, or 0:16:14.200 --> 0:16:17.200 he gains it from the salmon because the salmon ate 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:20.880 magical hazel nuts. There's also one version in which he 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:26.520 enters a fairy mound. Fairy mounds are these circular ancient dwellings, uh, 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:30.680 you know, from from ancient Ireland that were later associated 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:33.560 with supernatural tales, and you know, stuff like the two 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:37.720 author to done and so anyway, he enters a fairy ground, 0:16:37.920 --> 0:16:40.920 he gains the magical ability from three fairy women he 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:44.560 encounters there, but then as he's leaving, he accidentally smashes 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:48.160 his thumb in the door of the fairy mound. But 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:50.680 it seems like the fish version of the story, the 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:54.920 Salmon of Knowledge is the primary tale. It's the most 0:16:54.960 --> 0:16:58.720 popular now. It's it's often stated that it's not just 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:02.400 putting the thumb in his mouth that sets off the 0:17:02.680 --> 0:17:06.760 divination trance, but that Finn also has to recite a 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:11.879 kind of poetic chanting incantation called the I think probably 0:17:11.920 --> 0:17:17.440 pronouncing this wrong, but the teinem latia lata. And this 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:20.440 also may have some connection to hazel nuts, according to 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:24.800 mccellop in the Dictionary of Celtic Mythology. McKellop adds that 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.240 the thumb allowed him to enter quote and I love 0:17:27.320 --> 0:17:31.040 this an altered visionary state in which he could see past, 0:17:31.440 --> 0:17:35.200 present and future in which he could see present. Wow, 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.080 I mean that that is a real well maybe maybe 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:39.840 it means he could see all of the present, like 0:17:40.000 --> 0:17:43.400 things that are not present with him at the present, 0:17:43.720 --> 0:17:46.600 or to see the present clearly. I don't know. There's 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:50.720 another interesting wrinkle here. The Celtic languages and literature professional 0:17:51.240 --> 0:17:55.119 Patrick k Ford suggests that one connection here may be 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:59.280 that the Old Irish word for thumb was ordu, which 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:03.879 may also signify a morsel, particularly a morsel of meat, 0:18:04.000 --> 0:18:07.359 that you would you consume. And McKellop points out that 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:11.240 that the consumption of a morsel of magical flesh is 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:15.200 a common folkloric motif. So if I'm to understand this correctly, 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:21.040 the interpretation would mean that Finns morsel slash thumb becomes 0:18:21.119 --> 0:18:25.159 the sacred flesh by coming into burning contact with the 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:28.800 cooking sacred fish of the Salmon of wisdom. But is 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:31.920 it also suggesting that there may possibly have been the 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:35.480 kind of semantic contagion in the evolution of this story, 0:18:35.600 --> 0:18:39.920 where originally the story was about eating a magical morsel 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:42.080 of meat, but because you can use the same word 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:45.560 for morsel of meat and thumb, that it came to 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:49.199 represent a thumb in later tellings. Yeah, that's absolutely the 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:51.760 sense I'm getting from this. Yeah, So we have, you know, 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:56.480 a semantics and linguistic shift going on here in addition 0:18:56.520 --> 0:18:58.639 to just a you know, a cool story of magic 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:01.520 fish consumption. Oh this is great because I'm imagining other 0:19:01.600 --> 0:19:05.800 variations of that kind of evolution of a story. Like 0:19:05.880 --> 0:19:10.320 the thumb slash morsel makes sense because like a little 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:12.159 morsel of meat that might be about the size of 0:19:12.160 --> 0:19:14.800 your thumb. But there are other ways that we use 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:18.560 body parts to measure quantities in reality. Like I'm thinking 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:21.200 of people who would say, hey, I want two fingers 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:23.480 of whiskey in the glass. So you could have a 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:26.919 story about somebody who drinks a magical draft of something. 0:19:27.040 --> 0:19:29.120 They get two fingers of it, but then in later 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:31.959 tellings it gets confused and it's like, well, yeah, they 0:19:32.280 --> 0:19:35.800 drank their own fingers and then they gained this power. Yeah, 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:38.480 you could have like a sort of a Popeye Asque 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:41.119 character if he has if he's sticks two fingers in 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:43.960 his mouth, then he gets all riled up and is 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:47.560 ready to fight, puts him into a drunken brawling spade. 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:50.639 So as we'll discuss. The thumb pops up in a 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:53.840 few other places, but it's largely thought to be quite 0:19:53.960 --> 0:19:58.560 emblematic of Finn McCool his only real defining feature in iconography. 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:01.880 I think sometimes they're our hounds or dogs that are 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:07.280 associated with Finn McCool. But but the thumb especially is 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:11.639 something where you know, historians and art historians are looking 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:15.879 at various images. If they see the thumb being, you know, 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:18.920 poked towards the mouth, they can they can generally say 0:20:18.920 --> 0:20:22.000 with some certainty that this must be Finn McCool. And 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:25.680 I haven't found an example of this online or in 0:20:25.720 --> 0:20:28.440 the books I was looking at, but apparently many Celtic 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:33.520 crosses have various figures in the design, and sometimes you'll 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:39.480 see this thumb brandishing Finn McCool. Characters pop up, or 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:41.560 it's assumed that it's Finn McCool because who else would 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:44.960 it be. So if you've if you've never, if you 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:46.960 can't imagine what a Celtic cross tense will look like, 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:49.439 they tend to be be a cruciform shape. But then 0:20:49.480 --> 0:20:53.640 with all these kind of compartments for further illustrations and symbols, Now, 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:56.960 how is it the thumb is usually emphasized in the psychonography. 0:20:57.040 --> 0:20:59.520 Is it like glowing or something? Or is he sucking it? 0:20:59.640 --> 0:21:02.560 Is it in his mouth. Um. Well, like I said, 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:05.200 I couldn't find a direct example of this that stood 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:08.040 out to me, but I I just they're they're they're 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:10.199 going to be smaller figures and they're I don't think 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:12.919 they're gonna's going to be necessarily obvious that like the 0:21:12.960 --> 0:21:15.880 thumb is glowing or anything, but just by by virtue 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:17.920 of having some sort of emphasis on the thumb and 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:20.600 a visible thumb or even a thumb in the mouth, 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:22.880 it's going to be pretty obvious that it's Finn McCool. 0:21:24.280 --> 0:21:26.400 Now this is not related to the thumb, but just 0:21:26.440 --> 0:21:28.880 as a quick side note on you mentioned that some 0:21:29.320 --> 0:21:32.560 stories of Finn McCool emphasizes dogs. I was reading a 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:34.640 few of those. There are actually some really great dog 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:38.680 buddy uh legends of of Finn, and one of them 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:43.440 is about how he how he gains a wife who 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:46.880 is a person who I think she's like a fairy, 0:21:48.080 --> 0:21:51.320 but in any case, she's transformed into a fawn by 0:21:51.359 --> 0:21:55.800 an evil wizard and uh, and he finds her by 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:57.320 by virtue of the fact that he's out with his 0:21:57.440 --> 0:22:00.720 hunting dogs and when he comes across this fawn, his 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:03.679 dogs don't go after the fawn and like attack it, 0:22:03.760 --> 0:22:06.560 but instead settle down and cuddle with it. And so 0:22:06.600 --> 0:22:10.080 then he brings the fawn back with him to his castle. 0:22:10.680 --> 0:22:13.920 And once they arrive there, the fawn turns into this 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:17.199 woman who becomes his wife. But then unfortunately she is 0:22:17.600 --> 0:22:20.320 she is tricked and stolen away by the evil wizard. 0:22:20.320 --> 0:22:26.520 Again interesting. Interesting. Now, in terms of other accounts of 0:22:26.680 --> 0:22:32.720 thumbs in Celtic mythology, I did run across another interesting example, 0:22:32.720 --> 0:22:35.639 and this was this is from the ninety two or 0:22:35.720 --> 0:22:39.800