WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Exploring Irish Monk

0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:07.280
<v Speaker 1>Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.

0:00:07.440 --> 0:00:10.480
<v Speaker 1>Dave's here in spirit. So that's a short stuff quorum.

0:00:10.520 --> 0:00:13.960
<v Speaker 1>That's all you need. And this is short stuff. That's right,

0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:17.520
<v Speaker 1>and we're here. We're here to dispel the rumor that

0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:23.120
<v Speaker 1>Christopher Columbus discovered America. That's so old. That is pretty old.

0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:25.400
<v Speaker 1>Are we really going to talk about that? No, No,

0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:27.080
<v Speaker 1>we don't have to do that. That was definitely a

0:00:27.120 --> 0:00:30.200
<v Speaker 1>two thousand eightish two thousand nine is kind of thing

0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:32.560
<v Speaker 1>to say. But what are we going to dispel? Well,

0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:35.800
<v Speaker 1>so I think one of the things we should at

0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:38.800
<v Speaker 1>least say, because not everybody knows this is like the

0:00:38.880 --> 0:00:45.160
<v Speaker 1>first Europeans definitively to reach North America. We're the Vikings.

0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:47.239
<v Speaker 1>I know a lot of people know that, but not

0:00:47.320 --> 0:00:50.839
<v Speaker 1>everybody knows that, Chuck. Not everybody knows that there's a

0:00:50.960 --> 0:00:53.880
<v Speaker 1>Viking settlement that was discovered. I think they suspected for

0:00:53.920 --> 0:00:56.200
<v Speaker 1>a long time because I think in the North Sagas

0:00:56.520 --> 0:01:00.000
<v Speaker 1>they basically said, yeah, we made it to Newfoundland, um

0:01:00.560 --> 0:01:03.280
<v Speaker 1>that the Vikings actually had made it to North America.

0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:05.880
<v Speaker 1>And then finally in the sixties, I think they found

0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:10.720
<v Speaker 1>a real deal bona fide, totally incontrovertible Viking settlement from

0:01:10.760 --> 0:01:14.280
<v Speaker 1>about one thousand CE at a place called Lanceo Meadows,

0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:17.240
<v Speaker 1>which I've always wanted to go to because I've always

0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:20.440
<v Speaker 1>wanted to go to to Newfoundland for one, but to

0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:24.120
<v Speaker 1>see like a Viking settlement in America would just that

0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:26.920
<v Speaker 1>would be something else that would be great. We could

0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:30.920
<v Speaker 1>go berserker, right, take a bunch of shrooms, get a

0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:34.399
<v Speaker 1>battle axe. Yeah, and and then celebrate the fact that

0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:38.479
<v Speaker 1>they were the very controvertibly, the very first Europeans to

0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:42.600
<v Speaker 1>touch that soil. And that's I was gonna wrap up

0:01:42.640 --> 0:01:45.840
<v Speaker 1>short stuff. You're right, there is a chance that the

0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:48.240
<v Speaker 1>Vikings were even beat So the Vikings would have beat

0:01:48.400 --> 0:01:51.920
<v Speaker 1>the age of exploration by about five hundred years. There's

0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:57.200
<v Speaker 1>a theory, and it's got some legs conceivably that somebody

0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:00.960
<v Speaker 1>else beat the Vikings by five years themselves, and that

0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:04.720
<v Speaker 1>some sometime in about the sixth century showed up somewhere

0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:08.880
<v Speaker 1>in North America. And who was that? Chuck the Oirish

0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:11.280
<v Speaker 1>And I don't buy this, but I think it's a

0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:14.320
<v Speaker 1>great story. You don't buy it, and now I think

0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:17.960
<v Speaker 1>it is folklore. But we'll we'll talk about it anyway,

0:02:17.960 --> 0:02:20.400
<v Speaker 1>because it is a fun story. But in the sixth century,

0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:26.200
<v Speaker 1>as the story legend tail goes, St. Brendan was an

0:02:26.200 --> 0:02:31.239
<v Speaker 1>Irish monk, very good sailor and seafair, uh very what

0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:38.760
<v Speaker 1>saley saintly, saintly and saley. Yeah, supposedly undertook this this voyage,

0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:43.320
<v Speaker 1>a joyous voyage of joyage, and with some fellow monks

0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:46.840
<v Speaker 1>and went looking for paradise, the land of promise of

0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:50.880
<v Speaker 1>the Saints, And after seven years came upon what he

0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:54.919
<v Speaker 1>thought was this place, an island so vast that they

0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:57.080
<v Speaker 1>did not reach the far shore after forty days of

0:02:57.120 --> 0:02:59.360
<v Speaker 1>walking the head a river that was too wide to

0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:03.640
<v Speaker 1>be crossed, a forested, wooded land with lush fruits, and

0:03:03.880 --> 0:03:06.639
<v Speaker 1>he and the fellows filled their boats full of gems

0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:10.280
<v Speaker 1>and returned home. So the Irish found it first, Yeah,

0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:12.440
<v Speaker 1>And I mean, like, if you like he ain't talking

0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:15.040
<v Speaker 1>about the Azores, you can definitely walk across them in

0:03:15.120 --> 0:03:18.760
<v Speaker 1>forty days. There's not a lot of islands in between

0:03:19.320 --> 0:03:24.160
<v Speaker 1>Ireland and North America, so it's really not clear. Uh

0:03:24.520 --> 0:03:28.560
<v Speaker 1>you know what same Brendan was talking about where he went,

0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:31.680
<v Speaker 1>and he wasn't like a dummy. He didn't accidentally stumble

0:03:31.760 --> 0:03:34.440
<v Speaker 1>onto Europe like he sailed to Europe before. He was

0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:39.080
<v Speaker 1>like a skilled navigator. So he is assumed as presumed

0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:42.640
<v Speaker 1>to know have known enough that he knew what direction

0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:44.760
<v Speaker 1>he was traveling in and that this really was like

0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.360
<v Speaker 1>an all new place that that that his kind had

0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:52.080
<v Speaker 1>never set foot in before. That's right. And in the

0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:57.160
<v Speaker 1>ninth century, so several hundred years later, there was an

0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:01.320
<v Speaker 1>this account, actual an account of this sir fist called

0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:08.560
<v Speaker 1>Travels of St. Brendan Uh Navigatio sancti brendani magna carta

0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:11.000
<v Speaker 1>master charge. If you take the bus, we all take

0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:13.640
<v Speaker 1>the bus. Uh. It was a big hit. It was

0:04:13.640 --> 0:04:17.880
<v Speaker 1>translated into a bunch of languages, and um, you know,

0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:19.800
<v Speaker 1>it was the account of the journey. They are all

0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:23.760
<v Speaker 1>sorts of crazy things in here, which, um, maybe we

0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:26.280
<v Speaker 1>should save that for the second half because that's where

0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:29.080
<v Speaker 1>it falls apart a bit with me. But should we

0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:32.200
<v Speaker 1>talk a little bit about the vikings, uh, maybe lending

0:04:32.240 --> 0:04:36.200
<v Speaker 1>some support to this idea? Sure? Yeah, Um, so the

0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:40.560
<v Speaker 1>North have those sagas that I was talking about right

0:04:40.760 --> 0:04:43.200
<v Speaker 1>where it's basically like we did this, this is neat,

0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:46.280
<v Speaker 1>this is cool. Here's something else we did, and there's

0:04:46.320 --> 0:04:49.039
<v Speaker 1>like a lot of um, there's a lot of uh

0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:52.400
<v Speaker 1>like cre credulity to it, Like there's it's not just

0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:55.840
<v Speaker 1>like um Norse mythology, that's almost like a separate thing,

0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:59.280
<v Speaker 1>although it's definitely intertwined. Like they they think that these

0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:02.160
<v Speaker 1>are actual historical documents in a lot of cases, or

0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:06.920
<v Speaker 1>at least have a large kernel of historicity in them.

0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.440
<v Speaker 1>And so in those sagas they talked about arriving in

0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:14.159
<v Speaker 1>Greenland around a thousand see, around the same time they

0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:17.720
<v Speaker 1>would have set up the place in Newfoundland, um, and

0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:21.719
<v Speaker 1>finding Irish missions that were already there. It's a little odd.

0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:24.640
<v Speaker 1>And and also we should say the Norse were familiar

0:05:24.680 --> 0:05:27.200
<v Speaker 1>with the Irish already, so they would have known in

0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:31.599
<v Speaker 1>Irish mission if they came upon an Irish mission. Yeah. Sure,

0:05:31.800 --> 0:05:34.440
<v Speaker 1>So that that would suggest that the Irish beat them

0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:38.599
<v Speaker 1>to Greenland at least, which is pretty pretty significant. Yeah.

0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:41.800
<v Speaker 1>There was another saga where they talked about meeting some

0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:44.880
<v Speaker 1>of the Native Americans who already had seen white men.

0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:48.120
<v Speaker 1>They're like, we know guys like you, and we've encountered

0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:49.920
<v Speaker 1>guys sort of like you. They were dressed in white

0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:53.440
<v Speaker 1>and they came from Land across from their own or

0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:56.920
<v Speaker 1>our own I guess if I'm in character. And then

0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.520
<v Speaker 1>there was a third saga that talks about the Norse

0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:03.560
<v Speaker 1>encountering a tribe of Native Americans who spoke a language

0:06:03.560 --> 0:06:06.560
<v Speaker 1>that even sounded like Irish. Right, So a lot of

0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:08.640
<v Speaker 1>little clues here. Yeah, these are recorded by the North

0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:13.039
<v Speaker 1>and they definitely do suggest that there was possibly some

0:06:13.279 --> 0:06:16.200
<v Speaker 1>Irish who made their way over to the New World

0:06:16.240 --> 0:06:19.680
<v Speaker 1>before the Vikings even did. But like you said, there

0:06:19.839 --> 0:06:22.240
<v Speaker 1>is a lot of um. There's a heaping helping of

0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:25.960
<v Speaker 1>folklore along with all of this, and for people like you, Chuck,

0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:29.520
<v Speaker 1>it breaks down everything. I like to hold out hope

0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.239
<v Speaker 1>that this is possible and true. And let's talk about

0:06:32.240 --> 0:07:08.080
<v Speaker 1>it a little more after these commercial breaks. All right,

0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:13.840
<v Speaker 1>we're in a divided camp. How divided? Uh? This is

0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:17.720
<v Speaker 1>when the petroglyph comes in. Barry Fell, who was a

0:07:17.760 --> 0:07:23.680
<v Speaker 1>marine biologist at Havid University, found some petroglyphs, which are

0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:29.920
<v Speaker 1>rock carved writings in West Virginia, and he said, you

0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:33.280
<v Speaker 1>know what these are. This is ogam script. This is

0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:36.480
<v Speaker 1>this is an Irish alphabet and it was used from

0:07:36.520 --> 0:07:38.960
<v Speaker 1>the sixth to the eighth century. And I even think

0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:40.920
<v Speaker 1>I know what it's saying. They're talking about the Christian

0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:47.880
<v Speaker 1>Nativity write on a rock, sure, and that's Irish, clearly, Uh,

0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:51.800
<v Speaker 1>it's not, you know, from Native Americans. And Fell said, here,

0:07:51.840 --> 0:07:54.000
<v Speaker 1>everyone take a look at this stuff. And the academic

0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:57.440
<v Speaker 1>world said, I don't know about that. I don't even

0:07:57.480 --> 0:08:00.440
<v Speaker 1>know if this, I don't know about your methods is

0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:05.400
<v Speaker 1>definitely not a fact, I said, aren't you a marine biologists? Exactly?

0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:10.880
<v Speaker 1>And this could be ogam script, but it's really not

0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:16.480
<v Speaker 1>proving anything. No, so the the it's still not definitively

0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:19.720
<v Speaker 1>been shown. Who wrote that. It's called the Horse Creek

0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:24.600
<v Speaker 1>petroglyphs near Clear Fork, West Virginia, UM And they don't

0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:28.640
<v Speaker 1>know who wrote it. But I think the local um

0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:33.160
<v Speaker 1>Archaeological Society came out and said it's pretty racist to

0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:37.479
<v Speaker 1>assume that rather than the local indigenous people leaving these petroglyphs,

0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:41.840
<v Speaker 1>that it was some mythical Irish um monk who made

0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:45.040
<v Speaker 1>his way over here allegedly rather than the people we

0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:48.840
<v Speaker 1>know we're here in this area at that time. UM.

0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:52.559
<v Speaker 1>But regardless of whether that's the case or not, like

0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:54.559
<v Speaker 1>no one has said, oh, well, it was these people

0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:56.880
<v Speaker 1>and this is what it said, So there's still definitely

0:08:56.920 --> 0:08:59.960
<v Speaker 1>room for speculation. But from what I understand, there's there's

0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:03.640
<v Speaker 1>virtually no academic who who believes that this is in

0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:06.560
<v Speaker 1>fact ogham script, and even if it is an ogam,

0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:10.720
<v Speaker 1>that it doesn't necessarily talk about the Nativity, so we

0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:14.040
<v Speaker 1>can kind of discard that as evidence, like there's there's

0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:18.520
<v Speaker 1>not certainly not in controvertible evidence of Irish presence because

0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:22.319
<v Speaker 1>of that those petroglyphs. Yeah, and where it follows apart

0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.560
<v Speaker 1>for me, but not not. I've been thinking about it,

0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:29.280
<v Speaker 1>maybe not completely. Is when you start to look at

0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:33.320
<v Speaker 1>the account the Navagaccio, the Travels of St. Brendan, which

0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:36.920
<v Speaker 1>was the account of his voyage, it is it is

0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:40.720
<v Speaker 1>really out there and wacky. It talks about an island

0:09:40.720 --> 0:09:44.800
<v Speaker 1>with an Ethiopian devil, an island with monks who celebrated

0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:48.200
<v Speaker 1>Christmas who were just there. Uh, they fought a griffin

0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:52.480
<v Speaker 1>at one point and killed a griffin, um, all kinds

0:09:52.520 --> 0:09:55.640
<v Speaker 1>of fantastical stuff. They went to one island and set

0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:57.840
<v Speaker 1>up camp and then it turned out, oh, my goodness,

0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:00.400
<v Speaker 1>is not an island. We're actually on a giant whale.

0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:03.839
<v Speaker 1>So let's hold communion so let's have communion. I don't

0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:05.240
<v Speaker 1>know if that was where the communion was. It was

0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:07.440
<v Speaker 1>a bunch of whale stuff, but they definitely held communion

0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:09.160
<v Speaker 1>on a whale at some point. It might have been

0:10:09.200 --> 0:10:11.640
<v Speaker 1>that chapter. But it's kind of crazy stuff. And I

0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:14.880
<v Speaker 1>started looking into it. There were what it is is

0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:18.280
<v Speaker 1>an Irish im ram, which were the seventh and eighth

0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:23.000
<v Speaker 1>century uh seafaring adventure tales written by the Irish, and

0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:27.199
<v Speaker 1>it fits in with that, and so I immediately dismissed.

0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:29.199
<v Speaker 1>I was like, no, this is just an uh m

0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:31.400
<v Speaker 1>rom and it's you know, it's just made up. But

0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:34.280
<v Speaker 1>I thought, well, maybe not. Maybe it took the style

0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:38.040
<v Speaker 1>of that because that was what was popular, and maybe

0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:40.720
<v Speaker 1>it really did happen, but it just they gussies it

0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:43.800
<v Speaker 1>up with these fantastical tales. They dressed it up. Yeah.

0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:47.400
<v Speaker 1>And then Navogaccio was written about two to three hundred

0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:51.079
<v Speaker 1>years after St. Brennan would have lived, right, so it

0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:54.760
<v Speaker 1>certainly wasn't his own account of it. But the it's

0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:57.679
<v Speaker 1>almost like, to me, it's almost like Hamilton's Like if

0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:00.920
<v Speaker 1>you came along and saw Hamilton's the musical, You're like,

0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:05.960
<v Speaker 1>this is ridiculous. They didn't rap right. Um, You're like,

0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:07.880
<v Speaker 1>there's a larger point to and that there was a

0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:11.640
<v Speaker 1>person named Alexander and Alexander Hamilton's he did do these things,

0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:13.640
<v Speaker 1>you know, but it is dressed up to make it

0:11:13.720 --> 0:11:17.640
<v Speaker 1>palatable or understandable to people at the time and then embellished.

0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:20.719
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure, although I don't think Alexander Hamilton's would have

0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:23.640
<v Speaker 1>given commune on the back of a whale. Um, but

0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:26.440
<v Speaker 1>it's still in the same ballpark. And to me, just

0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:30.040
<v Speaker 1>because somebody came along and dressed it up with with folklore,

0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:34.000
<v Speaker 1>clearly folklore doesn't mean that there's It doesn't remove the

0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:36.839
<v Speaker 1>possibility that there is a lot of kernels of truth

0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.760
<v Speaker 1>still in there somewhere. Yeah, I kind of, I kind

0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:42.160
<v Speaker 1>of got there during the last eight minutes. I'm glad

0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:46.080
<v Speaker 1>about that. What is interesting is one of the things

0:11:46.120 --> 0:11:48.280
<v Speaker 1>that they kind of used to say no, this probably

0:11:48.280 --> 0:11:51.800
<v Speaker 1>couldn't have happened was the fact that the sailing technology

0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:53.840
<v Speaker 1>at the time, the boating technology that he would have

0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:57.880
<v Speaker 1>likely used is this little boat called a curoc and

0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:00.800
<v Speaker 1>it a see you are are a c h and

0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:04.080
<v Speaker 1>it's this you know, it's a it's a homemade boat.

0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:07.080
<v Speaker 1>Basically made out of wood with an ox hide and

0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:10.000
<v Speaker 1>like tar and stuff to put it together. And they're like,

0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:11.440
<v Speaker 1>there's no way this guy could have made it that

0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:16.720
<v Speaker 1>far in one of these crocs, and in UH, an author,

0:12:16.760 --> 0:12:19.600
<v Speaker 1>an adventurer named Tim Severin, said, you know what, I'm

0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:21.920
<v Speaker 1>going to see if this is possible, And he built

0:12:21.920 --> 0:12:24.560
<v Speaker 1>one of those, supposedly in the style that they would

0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:27.520
<v Speaker 1>have built them back then, and he retraced that route

0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:30.920
<v Speaker 1>that Brendan is believed to have taken from Ireland to

0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:36.040
<v Speaker 1>Iceland and Greenland and eventually Newfoundland, and he made it. Yeah,

0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:40.959
<v Speaker 1>he showed it is entirely possible. And again this this

0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:43.920
<v Speaker 1>same Brendan was supposed to be a very skilled navigator.

0:12:44.000 --> 0:12:49.480
<v Speaker 1>So it's possible at least that that that happened if

0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:54.079
<v Speaker 1>sing Brendan actually did exist. Like many stuff you should know,

0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:57.000
<v Speaker 1>shorties the ends with a big shoulder shrug, a big

0:12:57.040 --> 0:13:04.080
<v Speaker 1>shoulder shrug, puffy question mark with a heart for the dot. Amen. Uh.

0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:07.360
<v Speaker 1>And by the way, you can read this article um

0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:10.360
<v Speaker 1>that we found on how stuff works. I wrote it

0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.920
<v Speaker 1>myself back in the day and with that short Stuff

0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:19.760
<v Speaker 1>is out. Stuff you Should Know is a production of

0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:23.120
<v Speaker 1>I Heart Radio For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit

0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:26.280
<v Speaker 1>the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen

0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:30.000
<v Speaker 1>to your favorite shows. H