February 21, 2019 • 47 mins
Irish myth tells of a spear so deadly, that its deployment is certain death. Forged from the bones of sea monsters, the Gáe Bulg would send barbs through its victim’s every vein -- but only if the hero threw it with their foot. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick unravel the myth, history and science of this impractical Irish wonder weapon.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
By this time the two combatants were at the edge
feet of swords. Then for Dee had caught kou Holland
unguarded and dealt him a blow with his ivory hilted blade,
which he plunged into Koholand's breast, and Kohland's blood had
dripped into his belt, and the ford was red with
the blood from the warrior's body. Ko Holand brooke not
(00:23):
this wounding, for for Dead attacked him with a succession
of deadly stout blows, and he asked lug for guy bolga.
Such was the nature of the guy bolga. It used
to be set down stream and cast from between the toes.
It made a one wound as it entered a man's body,
but it had thirty barbs when one tried to remove it,
(00:46):
and it was not taken from a man's body until
the flesh was cut away about it. And when for
Dea had heard mention of the guy bolga, he thrust
down the shield to shelter the lower part of his body.
Kou Holland asked the fine spear from off the palm
of his hand, over the rim of the shield, and
over the breast piece of the horn skin so that
(01:08):
it's farther half was visible after it had pierced for
Diad's heart in his breast. For Dead thrust up the
shield to protect the upper part of his body, but
that was helped that came too late. The charioteer sent
the guy bulga downstream ku Holland caught it between his
toes and made a cast of it at for Dead.
(01:28):
And the guy bulga went through the strong, thick apron
of smelted iron and broke in three the great stone
as big as a millstone, and entered for Dead's body
through the anus, and filled every joint and limb of
him with its barbs. That suffic is now said, for Dead,
I have fallen by that cast. But indeed strongly do
(01:51):
you cast from your right foot. And it was not
fitting that I should fall by you. And as he spoke,
he uttered these words, oh hound of the fair feats,
it was not fitting that you should slay me. Yours
is the guilt which clung to me on you. My
blood was shed. Doomed men who reached the gap of betrayal,
(02:12):
do not flourish. Sad is my voice, alas heroes have
been destroyed. My ribs like spoils are broken. My heart
is gore. Would that I had not fought, I have fallen.
Oh hound, Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from
(02:32):
how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to stuff to
blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick. And that opening reading was from the Cecil
a Rahai translation of and I'm gonna do my best
the tying bow colonge. Um, we're gonna be obviously talking
(02:56):
about Irish mythology today, and unfortunately that means we're gonna
be trying to pronoun It's a lot of words and
probably sometimes failing. Please bear with us, but it's done
out of love and we do our best. That's right.
And it feels good to come back around some Irish
mythology here because Irish Irish smith is rich with fantastic ideas, uh, magic,
(03:16):
magical beings, monsters, and in this case a very interesting
magical weapon that is the unreally unlike anything else I've
read about. Robert, you have been on such a kick
of magical weapons these days. You you're you're big into cupids,
leaden arrows. We did the trident. No, I'm down with it.
(03:37):
This is funny. We also have the older episode about
the about various spinning weapons of death that I did
with the Christian But even after all those, the episode
today about Guy Bolga, the spear of the hero Ku Holland.
I think this is this takes the cake. This is
the weirdest, best magical weapon with with biological connections that
we have discussed yet I am pretty certain of it. Yeah.
(04:00):
In fact, it's gonna be maybe a fun exercise for
listeners to try and predict where we're gonna land biologically, Okay,
at the end of this episode, to to get into
the science of the of the Guy Bolga. Now, Robert,
I admit, before we did this episode, I had no
idea who k Holland was, and I probably would have
pronounced it like Ku Kuklane or whatever this is. So
(04:22):
this is a hero of Irish mythology who I had
never even heard of before. Yeah, you know, I think
I'd run across the mention of him in passing, but
I don't think i'd ever actually read any of the
tales about him or even the poems about him. I mean,
there's a there's a Yates poem co holand Comforted. So
he's not an obscure character in Irish myth by any
(04:43):
stretch of the imagination. But Holland is so cool. How
could I have not heard about this? I feel like
the people who study Irish mythology, I've got to get
in touch with Hollywood or something. Get some movies going
so people know these myths better. Well, yeah, he's quite
a figure. So co Holand is, you know, mythological hero
that has been described as the Irish Achilles or even
(05:05):
the Irish Incredible Hulk maybe a little closer. Yeah, And
if you can probably already get a sense here, we're
talking about yet another mythological killing machine, an ancient soldier,
you know, streaked in gore and honor. So in many respects,
he is what you expect from from a mythological hero.
You know, he's mighty warrior, he has a sense of nobility,
(05:27):
and he's sort of pushed into tragic circumstances. Yeah, he's tough,
he's brave, he's brutal. He meets a tragic end right now.
He's the He's a central character in the Ulster cycle,
one of the four great cycles of medieval Irish myth
and the This cycle takes place in the first century
Sea and was written in Old and Middle Irish um.
(05:48):
He also appears to factor into a certain Scottish traditions
as well, so but largely Irish. So well, let's do
the life story of Kohlan. So he wasn't born uh
koh holand he was born Satanta satantas has given name
co Holan is more like like Kyle l becomes Superman. Right.
So he's the nephew of the Irish king, King Connor,
(06:13):
and he's the offspring of the union between Connor's sister
and the god lug we we Lug was mentioned in
that dramatic reading earlier, and Lug is a member of
the Tuatha di don and the sort of spiritual god
elf beings of of Irish myth. So like it would
(06:33):
be so as with the likes of say Achilles and Hercules,
we have a hybrid on our hands here, part human,
part divine. And and he certainly looked like a like
a half divine creature. He has uh, he has some
some unnatural aspects to his appearance to definitely line up
with what you might expect from a demi god, what
like maybe a few too many of certain body parts. Yes,
(06:56):
for starters, he's just just unnaturally beautiful. He's a paragon
of masculine beauty and strength. And then he has seven
fingers on each hand, seven toes on each foot, and
then seven pupils in each eye, seven pupils in each oild. Well,
that sounds like a paragon of beauty. Now, even as
a child, his exploits made him famous. And then King
(07:18):
Connor himself ends up bestowing the new name on him
Holland after he kills the great guard dog, the Hound
of Holland, Holland being a smith here with his bare
hands at a banquet, and so he has to take
on this new name as a penance. Yeah, Like, after
he kills the smith's hound, he I think, offers to
serve himself as the guard of the smith's forge, and
(07:41):
so now he is co Holand. And then you know,
at the end of that dramatic reading, he's referred to
as the Hound. So I'm thinking, because he's this paragon
of masculine beauty and strength, there's got to be like
a trend setting kind of thing that people just can't match. Right.
So it's the same way that after you have a
famous movie star, he starts wearing a certain kind of
hairstyle or something. Now, that's what's cool, and everybody wants
(08:02):
to do it. In this case, in first century Ireland,
everybody would want to have seven pupils in each eye.
And so that's what everybody's going to the local witches about.
It's not like, you know, make me live forever, give
me huge strength. That's give me seven pupils in each eye. Now.
Of course, as always when we're talking about mythology, it's
it's worth noting that, um, you know, they're varying sources,
(08:23):
they're varying tellings, and some of the details are going
to change with the telling at the time. Yeah, they're
definitely very radically different accounts of Kohlan now. But but
so we've arrived at this version of Kohol and already
he has a beautiful, powerful warrior with some unnatural characteristics.
But then, but then he also has an additional superpower.
(08:43):
But wait, there's more. So he can essentially hulk out.
It is the thing he can. He can enter into
a berserker state during battle. But it's not just like
a mental state like it actually said, to twist and
deform his body. As he becomes this just unreasonable killing machine. Yeah,
the reastrade as this process. Yeah, and apparently apparently one
(09:09):
Thomas Kinsella translated this state as the quote warp spasm.
That sounds like something straight out of the X Men. Yeah,
it sounds it sounds rather chaotic. I definitely don't want
to be around a warrior when they were entering the
warp spasm. It sounds rather dangerous. All right, Well, we've
got another quote from the cecil A Rahalli translation of
(09:30):
the timebo culuing from the book of Leinster, and this
is about what happens in the warp spasm. Quote then
occurred cou Hollen's first distortion. He swelled and grew big
as a bladder does when inflated, and became a fearsome, terrible,
mini colored strange arch and the valiant hero towered above
(09:52):
for dead, as big as a famore or a pirate.
And I think the famar you're you were saying, Robert,
that that's like a giant of Irish smith. He has
like a giant ogre type good type being from Irish myth,
so like the Irish version of Yottenheim might be full
of these. Yeah, yeah, so so clearly co Holand is
nobody to mess with, Like this is a this is
(10:12):
a terrifying force on the battlefield. Why why does the
author of this work they'll believe that pirates are gigantic. Yeah,
I don't know. I'm less sure on that one. So
co Holand fights bravely throughout his his military career. Um,
he fights off the forces of Queen maybe at the
age of seventeen, Uh believe virtually like single handedly, like
(10:34):
he's that powerful warrior. But he's eventually tricked by warriors
in the employee of Mayve and slain at the age
of twenty seven. So not a long life. But then again,
you know you're an Irish warrior um during the first century. Uh,
there's not a long life expectancy there now. And they
kind of have to employ some trickery in order to
(10:56):
overcome his strength, which I think is a common feature
in like mythic hero cycle. You see that with like
Samson in uh in Jewish legend, and you sort of
see a version of it with Achilles, with like them
finding out his one weakness. And indeed there's basically like
a three part plan that has to be employed here.
I mean that the first one being key. They trick
him into eating dog meat, which breaks a taboo and
(11:17):
weakens his spirit. Yeah, I read somewhere that this came
about by pitting two taboos against each other. Like there's
a taboo against refusing hospitality on one hand, but there's
also a taboo against eating dog meat. So what if
somebody shows you hospitality by offering you dog meat. You're caught. Yeah,
you're caught. You're there. That's you know, it's silla and charyptus. Uh.
(11:38):
So he had to pick, and he picked not refusing hospitality,
but he ate the dog meat, and that that screwed
him up. Now, the next thing that helps if you're
trying to take out a half divine warrior is to
have a divine weapon of your own, a magical weapon
of your own that will will help you slay them.
And so that's what the trio do here. They hit
him with a magical disemb oowling spear that is enchanted
(12:02):
to kill kings. They apparently had three of these, and
they used to on his on his accomplices, including the
charioteer who's like the King of chariots, which seems kind
of like a a loophole and the whole king thing,
Like you don't have to actually be a king, you're
just kind of quote unquote a king of something. But
co Holan has like a really bad dude moment here,
(12:23):
Like he gets hit with the spear, but he's like,
I'm not going down that easy. Yeah, yeah, he's not
gonna die uh like that, He's gonna die standing up fighting.
So he like tucks his innerds back into his body,
um and then like stumbles over to a pillar, lashes
himself to the pillar so that he can fight and
die standing up. Like they're gonna have to come and
(12:45):
take him on his feet. But okay, so he's tied there, dying,
and they got to be afraid, right because co Holan
is this this killing machine. Even dying cut open with
a with a kill spear, tied to a rock or
a pillar, he's gonna be scary. So they don't want
to get too close. I think. One source says that
they had to wait until a bird landed on him
in order to know that he had actually died. Yeah,
(13:08):
and then they move in. What do you do? You
cut off his head to be sure. But when they
cut off his head, there's this brilliant light that like
cuts off one of the attackers sword hands, I believe,
and then it's not until they cut off ko Holand's
sword arm that the light dies away and that he's
definitely dead. So it's like you don't have any It's
(13:29):
one thing to cut away the seat of reason from
this mighty war, you also have to cut away like
the the physical sword hand of the warrior. There's a
wonderful like full telling of this final battle of one
in particular that I light came from Lady Augusta Gregory
um uk Helen of Murrath Fimney from nineteen o two. Uh,
(13:50):
that's all online. I recommend checking that out if you
want the full blow by blow death of ko Holand.
So how do we not have a full kou Holand movie? Yeah,
it's seems like we should. I mean, how many Hercules
movies do we have? Right? Way too many. We could
easily peel off some of that money into the ca
Holand enterprise here. Yeah. Now, we were talking before the
episode about who to cast as Kohland. We could not
(14:13):
come up with a good idea because all of the
best Irish actors we were thinking of to cast as
this Irish hero are now old. But like Pierce Brosnan, Yeah,
Pierce is right there in his name. Yeah, but but sadly,
like we said, he died at twenty seven. You need
you need a young, like powerful and imposing irishman who
(14:33):
is also a really good actor. Yeah. I think some
of my favorite Irish actors. Let's see. Uh there's uh,
there's Brendan Gleeson. I guess he's older. Now there's uh.
I love Liam Cunningham, the guy who plays Sir Davos
on Game of Thrones. But I don't know. I don't
know who the young guy is. Yeah, I don't know.
Everybody can think of as too old, like even you know,
(14:53):
there's a thinking, well, maybe a professional wrestler. I get
a big muscle bound dude to play ko Holand okay,
there's there's a guy named Shamus who's like a big,
pale Irish wrestler, but he's too old for the part.
Maybe he could play the hulked out version of koh
holand you could do kind of um, you know, like
the Incredible Hulk TV show. We had to lufer Igno
(15:14):
playing the the actual Hulk. Oh no, wait, this has
given me a great idea actually, like the main normal
Koo holand before he hulks out, he should be like
super wafy, like a very very wafy, boyish, like teen
heartthrob kind of Irish actor, and then when he hulks out,
he gets replaced by the bodybuilder. Okay, I like this,
so well, maybe our Irish listeners especially, we'll have some
(15:37):
ideas about who who could be cast in such a film.
Are Irish listeners also, I'm sure are going to get
in touch with us to let us know how badly
we're saying all these words. I'm sorry. All Right, Well,
we're gonna take a break, but when we come back,
we're gonna get into the real meat of this episode.
We're going to talk about uh, the the unnatural death
weapon of Koo holand we're gonna talk about uh Guy Bolga. Alright,
(16:03):
we're back. So every hero needs a mighty weapon, and
co holand certainly had one in the Guy Bolga like
a weapon so mighty that it is the it is
the death weapon of last resort. He only even turns
to it if he's basically fighting an opponent that is
on his own level. Now, it is not known exactly
(16:25):
how to translate the term guy bulga. Right, It's translated
many different ways. I think we know that guy basically
means spear, right, But the bulga, there's questions about what
that means. Yeah, that's correct. Guy certainly means spear or dart,
But the bolga part is open to some discussion. There's
(16:45):
a particular text that we turned to by by a
writer by the name of Edward Pettit. I'm not going
to give you the full name of that article because
it will give away what we're gonna get to in
the later later portions of this episode. We will say
the name of the article. We will say it and
say it later. But he points out that that the
guy bolga has been translated as just here's a sampling
(17:09):
the belly dart, the dart of belly, barbed spear, spear
of bellows, body spear, bagged spear, spear of swelling uh,
the spear of the sack, forked spear, gapped spear, solar spear,
the spear of mortal pain, the evil spear, spear of
the lightning god, spear of the thunderbolt. And he also
(17:31):
adds that the bolga part has also been interpreted to
perhaps refer to an inflated bladder that one. So essentially
this would be a fishing spear like one would have
tethered two something that floats. Oh, that's interesting. And then
likewise it's also been potentially connected to the fear bolg Uh. These,
according to to Carol Rose, the folklore's that often refer
(17:54):
to when we're talking about mythological creatures and monsters. She
says that these were the mythic first inhabitants of Ireland,
defeated by the Tuatha Dedan and then driven into mountain
caves and forests where they became loathsome monsters. So possible
connection there as well. But okay, whatever bolga means, they're
bellows bulge whatever. We know that there's some kind of
(18:17):
special magic spear. So how does it work? What does
it do? Well? One of one of the things is
that Kohland alone knows how to really wield the weapon.
You know, I mean he he is taught depends it
depends on which version you're reading. He's either taught by
a god or by you know, a skilled master, and
he alone has mastery of the guy Bolga. But it
(18:38):
is again, it is a spear, a weapon that you
only turn to as like basically just a last resort.
And also if you're just really willing to to absolutely
murder your opponent. I'm sorry, I'm just suddenly reminded of
one of those newspaper articles from the nineteen twenties that
we quoted in our death Ray episode of Invention, and
(19:00):
where the guy was like, the death ray is mine
and only I can have it. Yeah, this was his
death ray in a sense. Now in that fantastic reading
at the top of the episode, that story from the
cattle raid of Coolong, Uh, that really gives you some
of the key attributes of the weapon. Here. So it
(19:21):
is brought to Koholand via a stream. His charity here
puts it in a stream and it like floats down
to him, and then it is cast by the foot,
so he picks it up with his seven toad foot
and casts it. Thus Lee aims it with his seven
people die right and uh. And then also in that
telling we see that it it pierces his opponent through
(19:43):
the anus, which is not a detail that is present
in every telling of this story, but it is there. Uh.
And part of it has to do with the fact
that his like you know, these are two you know,
former friends, you know that, I mean, they're still friends,
but they're battling each other, and and they each have
sort of magical abilities, you know, uh so cool and
(20:07):
alone has the mastery of this uh fabulous barbed weapon,
and then his opponent has his horn skin that protects
most of his body but not the the anus. So
you might say that ford It has an achilles heel,
and it is his anus. It's his Achilles anus. So
maybe instead of saying achilles heel from now on, we
should substitute for dead Zanus. It's going to be challenging
(20:28):
to drop that into just casual conversation. I'm good. I'm
gonna darn well try Robert for the rest of my
life for dead Zanus. Alright. So that that that Edward
pettit Um article that we mentioned earlier, and I believe
this is Edward G. Pettit from Lostale University, who is
apparently something of an Edgar Allan Poe expert and a
(20:50):
monster expert I'm reading, teaches classes on vampire literature and
so forth. But he drives home that there are several
key attributes that are that are generally consistent in the
various tellings here. So first of all, only co Helen
can wield the guy Bolga. Here he alone was taught
it's it's martial art, and the teacher varies from immortal
(21:13):
to a sea god. Okay. Another thing he mentions is
that it's sort of a single use weapon, right, you
get one shot. Now that being said, I don't think
he ever misses with the thing, or at least I
have not read the story where he busted out and
misses like accidentally hits I don't know, nearby bird in
the an s instead, right. Um. Also, it's sometimes sent
(21:34):
to him by water, such as in our our opening
story there it's it is like it traveled down a
stream to him, but it doesn't just appear in the
context of water. He also it's like thrown from below
the water. So it's also it is a fearsome weapon,
so for deed more special armor in an attempt to
protect himself from it. And you know it's clearly you know,
(21:57):
when he sees that the that this weapon is is
coming out, uh, you know, he takes notice like it's
gotten dire. It's not just a normal spirit is something
that is known to be very dangerous, just mechanically and
its characteristics as a weapon. Pettit says that it is
quote accurate, sharp, strong, and highly penetrative, to say the least.
(22:18):
It's also inescapable and deadly, and in later tellings it's
also said to be venomous and cursed with an incurable
poison that fills the body. Now, one really interesting feature
about it is the idea that it is many barbed.
But at first it's cast as like a single spear
that is straight and thin, but that once it pierces
the body, it is said to spread out its barbed
(22:41):
so that it has to be cut out in order
to be removed. He can't just pull it out. Uh.
And this would be kind of like the barbs on
some existing spheres, like fishing spears sometimes would have barbs
like this in order to make sure that the thing
stays on there once you stab it. But it's not
just that it's barbed. It's that there's this idea that
it's sort of spreads out within the body. So like
(23:01):
once you pierce somebody, the point and the barbs it
is said spread to all of the veins, or spread
to all of the joints and limbs. I'm not quite
sure exactly what it means there, except I'm sort of
uh considering, when do you remember in our episode about missiletoe,
the plant, you know, the plant parasite, it's a parasite
on other plants, where we talked about the idea of
(23:23):
the house story. Um, it's this base sort of root
structure for missiletoe that grows on the surface of a
tree or another plant and then pierces its stem and
sometimes grows down and spreads out little filaments and roots
structures within the host plant. Uh. And we talked about
how so this is a parasite. It's not just like
(23:44):
a vampire sticking its fangs into you, but as if
it sticks its fangs in and sometimes the fangs like
continue to grow out inside the body and fill all
your blood vessels. Yeah, I think this is a great
reference because I definitely get that kind of like growing
barbed root like like just rap apid growth of barbs
through the entire body, like a real true body horror
(24:05):
weapon to employ here. But another way to think about
that is that's just sort of like it could be
a mechanical metaphor for a chemical property. The idea that
you stab something and it's got venom or poison or
something on it. And even though you only stab the
body in one place, the poison spreads out to all
the blood, right And yeah, so there's you can make
(24:25):
various interpretations of it, for sure. Um. It's often described
as being white or bright color. Uh. And of course
it's often drenched in blood in these tellings because it
doesn't seem to miss and when it hits, it's gonna
be gory, now, pettit says. It's also often associated with
demons or fire or hell. It's sort of an infernal weapon. Yeah,
(24:46):
and even described as being used against actual demons in
hell and later traditions apparently. And along those lines, it's
also described as sometimes is behaving in some ways like
a bellows. So again, anytime we're talking about, say, say
a magical weapon in mythology, you know, we're not so
much talking about a single thing, but we're talking about
(25:08):
a tradition of a thing, various tellings of a thing,
and different influences who are going to become involved in
sort of recolor. Uh. And you know exactly how it
is described. Either way you shake it, it is a
It is a treacherous weapon, even for a mighty hero
to employ. But then there's one final detail, a key
(25:29):
detail here, and it has to do with where this
weapon comes from. Because every great weapon that a mythical
hero uses it has to have an origin story, right
of course. And one of my favorite origin stories for
for like a weapon or a piece of armor or
something like that, is something that's taken from the body
of a monster, like like Hercules, you know, he makes
(25:50):
his cloak out of the Nemean lions, hard to pure skin.
And in this case, we we have a weapon that
is made from a sea monster, from the remains from
the bones of a sea monster. Now it's described in
some translations is being made from the skin of a
monster from Hell, but hell, Pettit says, could have been,
you know, the depths of the ocean. And this is supported,
(26:11):
he says, by later tales in which our hero coh
holand defeats barb tailed beasts from the ocean. Now, I
think Pettit also talks about versions where it is said
to come from the skull of something called like a doghead, yeah,
which could be interpreted as some version of like shark
or dog fish type creature. But also as in some
way seen as a sea monster. Right, So at this
(26:34):
point in the episode, I'm going to tell you what
the full title of his paper is. Cool, Holland's a
guy Bolga from Harpoon to sting Ray Speer. That's the
that's the title. So we're gonna take a quick breaking.
When we come back, we're going to get into Pettit's
Stingray hypothesis. Alright, We're back, all right. So here's the
(26:55):
part of the podcast where we play a game we
often like to play, which is taking a story or
an object from myth and wondering like, could there be
a natural world explanation for for what inspired this myth
or this image or this creature from mythology? And of
course this this type of game we always like to
point out, does have a weakness. It has a for diazanus,
(27:16):
you might say, which is that we we don't want
to overlook the fact that there's lots of creative imagination
involved in mythology, and you don't always have to explain
the contents of a myth by pointing to something that
really happened in history or really exists in nature and
saying that inspired it. We don't always know that that's
what happened. Maybe sometimes that happened, maybe sometimes as people
just using their imagination. But in any case, this can
(27:38):
be really interesting game to play because there is no
doubt that, at least in many cases, things in myths
were inspired by stuff people saw in nature. And Edward
Pettitt's hypothesis here is that this mighty weapon was the
spine of a stingray, or at least at some point
in its legacy. UH is interpreted as such stories of
(27:59):
sting ray but barbed weapons are employed then to describe
this weapon the cohol and wheels. Yeah, and this this
inspiration could go multiple ways if in fact there is
such an element of this kind of inspiration in the stories.
It could be that people saw a stingray spine in
nature and this led to the original idea of the
(28:19):
guy Bolga sphere. But it could also be that ideas
about stingray spines colored later tellings of an existing mythical
spear that was already in some stories. But let's see
if there's anything to this idea and start by looking
at what's the stingray. So a stingray is a type
of ray and raise or cartilaginous fish cousins of sharks.
(28:40):
This this family of sharks and rays, they're called the
Elasma bronx. Their fish with skeletons made of cartilage instead
of bone. It's the same bendy stuff you've gotten your ears.
And the super order of rays is batoy dea uh.
Stingrays in particular are found in the suborder of rays
known as my leo battaforms. Now, like other rays, stingrays
(29:01):
kind of have a flattened body and a large, somewhat
rounded pectoral set of fins that are fully fused with
the head in the body, and this makes them sort
of rounded off like a pancake fish. Often, stingrays tend
to swim by sort of undulating their their their wide
pectoral fins sort of just like waves rather than flapping
(29:22):
like wings. And stingrays in particular tend to have flat
bodies that blend in with the seafloor. Often they're camouflaged uh,
and that's because they spend most of their time on
the sea floor hiding out, often partially buried in sediment.
You'll sometimes see sting rays like down down in the
sediment with like sand piled on top of their little wings,
(29:43):
and some researchers believe that their eyes are poorly placed
for hunting, given that their body is this sort of
flat disc shape and their mouths are down on the
bottom and their eyes are up on the top. But
that's okay because they don't need to rely entirely on
their eyes for hunting. Like sharks, stingrays have organs that
are known as the ampullae of Lorenzini, and these are
(30:05):
small pores in the skin that can detect electric fields
in the water. And of course all animals generate electric
fields in the water, especially when they contract their muscles.
So if there is a prey animal out there swimming,
moving around, or even just with a beating heart, you
can probably sense some kind of electric voltage difference that
it is causing in the water with your ampulae of Lorenzini.
(30:28):
But they've also got a magnificent spine, and that's what
we're going to be focusing on today. The stingray has
a spine with venom, sometimes deadly venom that can in
some cases kill humans. Now, to be clear, stingrays very
rarely attack or kill humans. Yes, they are not considered
aggressive at all. That generally, if there's an incident between
(30:51):
humans and stingrays. It's defensive because the human like stepped
on the stingray or loomed over it, right, And the
latter seems to have probably been the case. With the
most famous case in recent history of a stingray related
death out of the crocodile hunter Steve Irwin. Oh yeah,
that was sad. Yeah, yeah, it was a tragic case
two thousand six. Uh. And he died after he sustained
(31:13):
numerous stabs from an eight foot wide stingray. He was
in a shallow water. Um, he was. He was in
close proximity to the creature they were filming, and the
theory I read is that the ray might have thought
Irwin's shadow was a tiger shark and the shallow water there,
and then it reportedly stabbed him hundreds of times and
(31:35):
one of the stabs pierced his heart and then he
bled to death. Yeah, that's it's a sad story. But
it's not the only time that the people have actually
been killed by stingray spines. There they can, um, they
cause I mean severe just direct trauma, like can pierce
the skin and cause a lot of bleeding. But they
also in many cases do have very powerful venom. So,
(31:55):
but I think it is worth noting like, given especially
that this case occurred in shallow water, that it's not
unbelievable that medieval or even older people would a certainly
people that made their their livelihoods at the seaside would
have encountered and even encountered fatally uh sting rays at
(32:15):
some point or another. No, it's not unlikely at all.
And in fact, we know for a fact that the
ancient people that ancient people's, you know, long before the
medieval Irish myths, ancient people's knew about stingrays, and they
knew about the venom on their spines, and they knew
some things about how these spined UH spears worked. In fact,
stingray spine tipped spears already exist in ancient hero myths.
(32:38):
Do you know this? I was not aware of this.
So you know the story the Greek myth of Odysseus uh.
This is told in in the Odyssey. For example, Odysseus
and the witch Searcy had a son named Teleganus uh.
And remember of course that the story of how Odysseus
and Searcy got together is that while Odysseus is on
his way home, he ends up at the man or
(33:00):
of Searcy, and Searcy is this witch sorceress figure who
turns all of Odysseus's men into swine, but Odysseus saves
them with the help of the gods, and then he
ends up essentially being Searce's living boyfriend for a while.
Um Meanwhile, while his wife Penelope is home being very
dutiful and waiting on him, he's like shacking up with Sarcey.
So as usual, Odysseus is kind of a jerk. But
(33:22):
uh so he's doing that. And while he's there, he
apparently he has a son with Searcy, and this son's
name is Teleganus. But of course, eventually Odysseus has to
get home to his home of Ithaca, his wife Penelope,
and his son Telemachus. And so here is a passage
from Fraser's translation English translation of a passage from Apollodorus quote.
(33:45):
When Teleganus learned from Searcy that he was a son
of Ulysses, who is also that's another name for Odysseus,
he sailed in search of him, and having come to
the island of Ithaca, he drove away some of the cattle,
and when Ulysses de ended them, Teleganus wounded him with
the spear he had in his hands, which was barbed
with the spine of a stingray, and Ulysses died of
(34:08):
the wound. Pettitt, in his article also quotes a second
century Greek text on fishing by an author named Oppien,
which tells another version of this story. And I'll read
this quote as well. While the stingray lives, a terrible
and fiery weapon attends it such I ween as a
man trembles to hear of. And it lives when the
stingray itself has perished, and preserves its unwearied strength unchanged.
(34:33):
And not only on the living creatures which it strikes.
Does it belch mysterious bain, but it hurts even tree
and rock, and wherever it comes nigh. That sting it was,
which his mother Circe, skilled in many drugs, gave of
old to let to telegan Us for his long hilted spear,
that he might array his foes death from the sea.
(34:55):
And he beached his ship on the island that pastured goats,
and he knew not that he was harrying the flocks
of his own father, and on his aged sire who
came to the rescue, even on him whom he was seeking,
he brought an evil fate. They're the cunning Odysseus who
had passed through countless woes of the sea in his
laborious adventures. The grievous Stingray slew with one blow. So
(35:19):
that's kind of combining, uh weirdly enough, like the like
the the Odysseus tradition and sort of the Oedipus tradition, right,
like accidentally coming across and killing your own father. Well, um,
it's interesting too to bring it back to co holand
I believe they're in the part of the story there
is the co holand ends up accidentally killing his own
(35:40):
son with the Guy Bolga at one point, like he
does not know that hiss his son and ends up
engaging in combat with him. Well yeah, Pettit seems to
notice some pretty strong similarities between these myths, and so
he's I think this is one reason he has for
wondering if the idea of the stingray is actually incorporated
into the Guy Bulga legend. Uh hell. Pett It also
(36:03):
mentions that some sources claim Cercy had the stingray tipped
spear made by the Greek forge god have faced us
out of a spine stolen from a stingray by the
sea god force Us. And of course we know that
the guy Bulga was made, at least in some tellings,
from the body of some kind of sea monster or
sea creature, right, And in some tellings the art of
the guy Boga is instructed to Koholand by a god
(36:26):
of the sea. But just as further evidence of what
the ancients knew or thought they knew about stingray spines. Look,
why not have a look at our old friend Plenty
of the Elder as well. There's a pet Pettit points
to this passage quote. But there is nothing in the
world more execrable than the sting projecting above the tail
of the stingray, which are people called the pastanaka. It
(36:47):
is five inches long and kills trees when driven into
the root. That's sort of like what Opian said right there.
He kills not just animals, but like trees and stones.
I don't know how you kill a stone, um, but
a Plenty continues and penetrates armor like a missile with
the force of steel and with deadly poison. So Pettit
(37:09):
sees really strong parallels between the myths of Kuhland and
telegan Us, and sees some of these parallels between what
was understood by the ancients about the stingray spine and
the myth of the guy bulga. The guy bolga is
said to come from the water. It gets thrown from
under the water. It's associated with shallow water. Sometimes it's
(37:29):
said to be made from the body or skull of
some type of sea monster. And of course it is
true that sting rays can be found in the coastal
waters of Ireland, and they can grow to quite a
monstrous size, and like the underside of them, Pettit points out,
can resemble a grinning or grimacing face. That's true that certainly,
if you've ever been to an aquarium, you know they
if they come up to the glass, Uh, you see
(37:51):
what looks like a face there, But the eyes are
on the other side. Obviously, and crucially, the one of
the issues here is that a stingray spine is not
like the fang of a snake or something which, once removed,
is just like a piece of tooth. You know, there's
nothing to it. Uh. The ancients understood that a stingray
spine could remain deadly for some time after the ray
(38:14):
was dead, or after it's removed from the ray, So
maybe maybe some like forty eight hours afterwards. So detaching
it from the ray and attaching it to a weapon
wouldn't immediately render it harmless. It could still have of
course the normal like piercing potential, but the venom as well. Uh.
Now this is interesting because that that epic battle that
Koholand has with three did It's supposedly rages for three
(38:37):
days before they finally reached the point where Koholand calls
for the guy bolga Um. So he couldn't just based
on this sort of forty eight hour rule is like
a rough guideline for utilizing a magical sting ray weapon
in battle. Like, he wouldn't be able to bring that
to the field with him. Thus he has to call
on his charioteer to send it down the water to him,
(39:00):
and then he can, uh, he can fetch it with
his fabulous seven toed foot and fling it up the
anus of his opponent. Yeah, so I I don't know
if Pettit's right about this connection. I mean, he he
Also he adduces a lot of evidence that we didn't
even have time to get into. It's a lot of
stuff about like the minut chief, the translation of the
word bolga and how that could point to stingrays and
stuff like that. But I'll be sure to link to
(39:22):
the entire article on the Landing page through this episode
of Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. So anybody
who wants to really dive into the evidence there and
risk getting stung, you'll be able to do so. Yeah.
So I I don't know if he's correct about this,
but it's a really interesting case and another wonderful example
of bio mythology. Yeah. I love the way that myth
(39:44):
and legend traditions present us with these little mysteries, like
that they can be these little puzzle boxes because of
the odd characteristics of elements within them, you know, like
the idea of the spear being thrown through the seven
toed foot from under the water into the this and
you just wonder like, Okay, is this just weird just
because it's weird? Or does all this weird disappoint to something?
(40:07):
Is there something I'm missing? Yeah? Or to what extent
are we dealing with errors? And translation. Uh, you know,
things that should be a notable um metaphor or symbol,
but out of context just sounds like something just really
whack adoodle looking. Uh. These are always questions one has
to ask. But that being said, I feel like you
(40:27):
can always just embrace just the raw alien nature of
the myth you're presented with two and just enjoy it
on that level as well. Yeah. Nothing nothing more fun
than a really impractical weapon. Yes. Uh. Speaking of which, um,
I have to say, as a fan, a longtime fan
(40:48):
of the Mortal Kombat games, you know they put one
on somebody have a Guy Balla in there. No, but
they should, like one of the things that you have
in these games, especially today, increasingly overly implicated fatalities where
you know, one fighter finishes off the other one by
doing something just predict you know, like not only slicing
off their head, but then slicing the head in half,
(41:09):
that sort of thing. But really, when you look at
the story of the Guy Bolga, they've got nothing, you know,
like the Irish mythology has has has all the Mortal
Kombat you need. I'd like to see Raid in versus Kuhlan. Yeah,
they could put him in there, make him, make him
a downloadable character. What they have started crossing genres, haven't they?
I think, I said, I don't play the Mortal Kombat
(41:31):
games anymore, but I feel like I saw that they're
They've got like Aliens and Jason Vorhees and stuff. Yeah,
they've definitely brought in characters from other franchises, but but
I don't think they've brought in any I don't know
if they brought in any additional mythological figures. They should,
I mean, they already play with a little bit of that.
So um. Now, one additional question I had based on
all of this, is all right, with the with the
(41:52):
guy Bolga, you have a kind of impractical weapon that
is also sure fire like it is gonna end the
fight if you ever actually pull it out, But yet
Hill Kohlan will wait three days to actually do it.
Do we have other examples in our fiction and other
myths where you have this this sure shot weapon that
(42:13):
for some reason your heroes never actually produced until the
last minute. I feel like that happens a lot, but
I'm struggling to think of an example right now. The
only one that really came to mind recently was in
the original Pacific Rim film, like the big Robots, the
what do they call the the the the agers, they're
they're beat down there on the point of being defeated
(42:36):
by the giant Kaiju monsters, and then only then do
they start using these big swords that pop out of
their their limbs and just completely decimate the the creatures
that they're battling. Oh, I know an example. You remember
the Mighty morphin Power Rangers, How like they would have
to keep when they faced a more powerful monster, they'd
have to keep like upgrading to like the next level
(42:58):
of robots, And you always wondered, like, why don't they
just go to the top level of robots every time
so they instantly defeat their opponent no matter Why? Yeah,
why why isn't that your first move to go and
do exactly instead of destroying half a city battling the
monster for sure? Yeah, Or for instance, Voltron is another example,
Like I feel like they would try and battle whatever
(43:19):
the rob east or the threat of the week happened
to be with just the lions, and then they're like,
I guess we need to form Voltron to actually deal
with this scenario. Just go ahead and form Voltron. That's
exactly the same thing as the Power Rangers. Yeah, first
they'd fight it hand to hand, and then it would
get big magic wand make the monster grow it get big,
and then they'd form a bigger robot. Uh, and then
(43:40):
they'd fight it and then they'd have it would get
bigger again or something, and then they'd have to do
another thing. They'd have to go to the like the
final robot level. Well, and I guess maybe in all
of this there is a certain amount of like martial
arts storytelling, like like I am reminded in professional wrestling,
for instance, especially in like the Japanese of varieties. Uh.
(44:00):
They'll be like a super finisher that an individual has,
like a move that they rarely bust out because it's
like too dangerous. But if the matches is you know,
goes on long enough, uh, and there are other finishers
haven't worked, then they will turn to uh, you know,
to something like that. You know, the like the gonzo bomb.
You know something that is that the kind of the
equivalent of the guy bolga. What is the gonzo bomb?
(44:22):
It's this guy named uh Kawata would use it and
it's like a power bomb where he just drops you
right on your neck. Um, you know, Brutal movie only
busted it out like a few times. But it was
kind of like his his super move, his super form
that he would assume. And so I guess it makes
sense from a storytelling point of view, if you're you're
(44:42):
telling the story of epic mythic combatants going at each other,
that there would be this one move beyond that they
might turn to. And in the case of the guy Bolga,
it's not a pleasant weapon. It's a treacherous weapon. It's
kind of like your hero cheating a little bit at
the very end out of desperation. Well they had to
cheat to defeat him in the end too, that's true.
(45:04):
So yeah, though I guess he did that. I guess
it's the opposite order. But but still, yeah, some treachery
ends up being employed. Uh, even on the mythic battlefield.
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(45:24):
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(45:46):
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By this time the two combatants were at the edge
feet of swords. Then for Dee had caught kou Holland
unguarded and dealt him a blow with his ivory hilted blade,
which he plunged into Koholand's breast, and Kohland's blood had
dripped into his belt, and the ford was red with
the blood from the warrior's body. Ko Holand brooke not
(00:23):
this wounding, for for Dead attacked him with a succession
of deadly stout blows, and he asked lug for guy bolga.
Such was the nature of the guy bolga. It used
to be set down stream and cast from between the toes.
It made a one wound as it entered a man's body,
but it had thirty barbs when one tried to remove it,
(00:46):
and it was not taken from a man's body until
the flesh was cut away about it. And when for
Dea had heard mention of the guy bolga, he thrust
down the shield to shelter the lower part of his body.
Kou Holland asked the fine spear from off the palm
of his hand, over the rim of the shield, and
over the breast piece of the horn skin so that
(01:08):
it's farther half was visible after it had pierced for
Diad's heart in his breast. For Dead thrust up the
shield to protect the upper part of his body, but
that was helped that came too late. The charioteer sent
the guy bulga downstream ku Holland caught it between his
toes and made a cast of it at for Dead.
(01:28):
And the guy bulga went through the strong, thick apron
of smelted iron and broke in three the great stone
as big as a millstone, and entered for Dead's body
through the anus, and filled every joint and limb of
him with its barbs. That suffic is now said, for Dead,
I have fallen by that cast. But indeed strongly do
(01:51):
you cast from your right foot. And it was not
fitting that I should fall by you. And as he spoke,
he uttered these words, oh hound of the fair feats,
it was not fitting that you should slay me. Yours
is the guilt which clung to me on you. My
blood was shed. Doomed men who reached the gap of betrayal,
(02:12):
do not flourish. Sad is my voice, alas heroes have
been destroyed. My ribs like spoils are broken. My heart
is gore. Would that I had not fought, I have fallen.
Oh hound, Welcome to stuff to blow your mind from
(02:32):
how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to stuff to
blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Joe McCormick. And that opening reading was from the Cecil
a Rahai translation of and I'm gonna do my best
the tying bow colonge. Um, we're gonna be obviously talking
(02:56):
about Irish mythology today, and unfortunately that means we're gonna
be trying to pronoun It's a lot of words and
probably sometimes failing. Please bear with us, but it's done
out of love and we do our best. That's right.
And it feels good to come back around some Irish
mythology here because Irish Irish smith is rich with fantastic ideas, uh, magic,
(03:16):
magical beings, monsters, and in this case a very interesting
magical weapon that is the unreally unlike anything else I've
read about. Robert, you have been on such a kick
of magical weapons these days. You you're you're big into cupids,
leaden arrows. We did the trident. No, I'm down with it.
(03:37):
This is funny. We also have the older episode about
the about various spinning weapons of death that I did
with the Christian But even after all those, the episode
today about Guy Bolga, the spear of the hero Ku Holland.
I think this is this takes the cake. This is
the weirdest, best magical weapon with with biological connections that
we have discussed yet I am pretty certain of it. Yeah.
(04:00):
In fact, it's gonna be maybe a fun exercise for
listeners to try and predict where we're gonna land biologically, Okay,
at the end of this episode, to to get into
the science of the of the Guy Bolga. Now, Robert,
I admit, before we did this episode, I had no
idea who k Holland was, and I probably would have
pronounced it like Ku Kuklane or whatever this is. So
(04:22):
this is a hero of Irish mythology who I had
never even heard of before. Yeah, you know, I think
I'd run across the mention of him in passing, but
I don't think i'd ever actually read any of the
tales about him or even the poems about him. I mean,
there's a there's a Yates poem co holand Comforted. So
he's not an obscure character in Irish myth by any
(04:43):
stretch of the imagination. But Holland is so cool. How
could I have not heard about this? I feel like
the people who study Irish mythology, I've got to get
in touch with Hollywood or something. Get some movies going
so people know these myths better. Well, yeah, he's quite
a figure. So co Holand is, you know, mythological hero
that has been described as the Irish Achilles or even
(05:05):
the Irish Incredible Hulk maybe a little closer. Yeah, And
if you can probably already get a sense here, we're
talking about yet another mythological killing machine, an ancient soldier,
you know, streaked in gore and honor. So in many respects,
he is what you expect from from a mythological hero.
You know, he's mighty warrior, he has a sense of nobility,
(05:27):
and he's sort of pushed into tragic circumstances. Yeah, he's tough,
he's brave, he's brutal. He meets a tragic end right now.
He's the He's a central character in the Ulster cycle,
one of the four great cycles of medieval Irish myth
and the This cycle takes place in the first century
Sea and was written in Old and Middle Irish um.
(05:48):
He also appears to factor into a certain Scottish traditions
as well, so but largely Irish. So well, let's do
the life story of Kohlan. So he wasn't born uh
koh holand he was born Satanta satantas has given name
co Holan is more like like Kyle l becomes Superman. Right.
So he's the nephew of the Irish king, King Connor,
(06:13):
and he's the offspring of the union between Connor's sister
and the god lug we we Lug was mentioned in
that dramatic reading earlier, and Lug is a member of
the Tuatha di don and the sort of spiritual god
elf beings of of Irish myth. So like it would
(06:33):
be so as with the likes of say Achilles and Hercules,
we have a hybrid on our hands here, part human,
part divine. And and he certainly looked like a like
a half divine creature. He has uh, he has some
some unnatural aspects to his appearance to definitely line up
with what you might expect from a demi god, what
like maybe a few too many of certain body parts. Yes,
(06:56):
for starters, he's just just unnaturally beautiful. He's a paragon
of masculine beauty and strength. And then he has seven
fingers on each hand, seven toes on each foot, and
then seven pupils in each eye, seven pupils in each oild. Well,
that sounds like a paragon of beauty. Now, even as
a child, his exploits made him famous. And then King
(07:18):
Connor himself ends up bestowing the new name on him
Holland after he kills the great guard dog, the Hound
of Holland, Holland being a smith here with his bare
hands at a banquet, and so he has to take
on this new name as a penance. Yeah, Like, after
he kills the smith's hound, he I think, offers to
serve himself as the guard of the smith's forge, and
(07:41):
so now he is co Holand. And then you know,
at the end of that dramatic reading, he's referred to
as the Hound. So I'm thinking, because he's this paragon
of masculine beauty and strength, there's got to be like
a trend setting kind of thing that people just can't match. Right.
So it's the same way that after you have a
famous movie star, he starts wearing a certain kind of
hairstyle or something. Now, that's what's cool, and everybody wants
(08:02):
to do it. In this case, in first century Ireland,
everybody would want to have seven pupils in each eye.
And so that's what everybody's going to the local witches about.
It's not like, you know, make me live forever, give
me huge strength. That's give me seven pupils in each eye. Now.
Of course, as always when we're talking about mythology, it's
it's worth noting that, um, you know, they're varying sources,
(08:23):
they're varying tellings, and some of the details are going
to change with the telling at the time. Yeah, they're
definitely very radically different accounts of Kohlan now. But but
so we've arrived at this version of Kohol and already
he has a beautiful, powerful warrior with some unnatural characteristics.
But then, but then he also has an additional superpower.
(08:43):
But wait, there's more. So he can essentially hulk out.
It is the thing he can. He can enter into
a berserker state during battle. But it's not just like
a mental state like it actually said, to twist and
deform his body. As he becomes this just unreasonable killing machine. Yeah,
the reastrade as this process. Yeah, and apparently apparently one
(09:09):
Thomas Kinsella translated this state as the quote warp spasm.
That sounds like something straight out of the X Men. Yeah,
it sounds it sounds rather chaotic. I definitely don't want
to be around a warrior when they were entering the
warp spasm. It sounds rather dangerous. All right, Well, we've
got another quote from the cecil A Rahalli translation of
(09:30):
the timebo culuing from the book of Leinster, and this
is about what happens in the warp spasm. Quote then
occurred cou Hollen's first distortion. He swelled and grew big
as a bladder does when inflated, and became a fearsome, terrible,
mini colored strange arch and the valiant hero towered above
(09:52):
for dead, as big as a famore or a pirate.
And I think the famar you're you were saying, Robert,
that that's like a giant of Irish smith. He has
like a giant ogre type good type being from Irish myth,
so like the Irish version of Yottenheim might be full
of these. Yeah, yeah, so so clearly co Holand is
nobody to mess with, Like this is a this is
(10:12):
a terrifying force on the battlefield. Why why does the
author of this work they'll believe that pirates are gigantic. Yeah,
I don't know. I'm less sure on that one. So
co Holand fights bravely throughout his his military career. Um,
he fights off the forces of Queen maybe at the
age of seventeen, Uh believe virtually like single handedly, like
(10:34):
he's that powerful warrior. But he's eventually tricked by warriors
in the employee of Mayve and slain at the age
of twenty seven. So not a long life. But then again,
you know you're an Irish warrior um during the first century. Uh,
there's not a long life expectancy there now. And they
kind of have to employ some trickery in order to
(10:56):
overcome his strength, which I think is a common feature
in like mythic hero cycle. You see that with like
Samson in uh in Jewish legend, and you sort of
see a version of it with Achilles, with like them
finding out his one weakness. And indeed there's basically like
a three part plan that has to be employed here.
I mean that the first one being key. They trick
him into eating dog meat, which breaks a taboo and
(11:17):
weakens his spirit. Yeah, I read somewhere that this came
about by pitting two taboos against each other. Like there's
a taboo against refusing hospitality on one hand, but there's
also a taboo against eating dog meat. So what if
somebody shows you hospitality by offering you dog meat. You're caught. Yeah,
you're caught. You're there. That's you know, it's silla and charyptus. Uh.
(11:38):
So he had to pick, and he picked not refusing hospitality,
but he ate the dog meat, and that that screwed
him up. Now, the next thing that helps if you're
trying to take out a half divine warrior is to
have a divine weapon of your own, a magical weapon
of your own that will will help you slay them.
And so that's what the trio do here. They hit
him with a magical disemb oowling spear that is enchanted
(12:02):
to kill kings. They apparently had three of these, and
they used to on his on his accomplices, including the
charioteer who's like the King of chariots, which seems kind
of like a a loophole and the whole king thing,
Like you don't have to actually be a king, you're
just kind of quote unquote a king of something. But
co Holan has like a really bad dude moment here,
(12:23):
Like he gets hit with the spear, but he's like,
I'm not going down that easy. Yeah, yeah, he's not
gonna die uh like that, He's gonna die standing up fighting.
So he like tucks his innerds back into his body,
um and then like stumbles over to a pillar, lashes
himself to the pillar so that he can fight and
die standing up. Like they're gonna have to come and
(12:45):
take him on his feet. But okay, so he's tied there, dying,
and they got to be afraid, right because co Holan
is this this killing machine. Even dying cut open with
a with a kill spear, tied to a rock or
a pillar, he's gonna be scary. So they don't want
to get too close. I think. One source says that
they had to wait until a bird landed on him
in order to know that he had actually died. Yeah,
(13:08):
and then they move in. What do you do? You
cut off his head to be sure. But when they
cut off his head, there's this brilliant light that like
cuts off one of the attackers sword hands, I believe,
and then it's not until they cut off ko Holand's
sword arm that the light dies away and that he's
definitely dead. So it's like you don't have any It's
(13:29):
one thing to cut away the seat of reason from
this mighty war, you also have to cut away like
the the physical sword hand of the warrior. There's a
wonderful like full telling of this final battle of one
in particular that I light came from Lady Augusta Gregory
um uk Helen of Murrath Fimney from nineteen o two. Uh,
(13:50):
that's all online. I recommend checking that out if you
want the full blow by blow death of ko Holand.
So how do we not have a full kou Holand movie? Yeah,
it's seems like we should. I mean, how many Hercules
movies do we have? Right? Way too many. We could
easily peel off some of that money into the ca
Holand enterprise here. Yeah. Now, we were talking before the
episode about who to cast as Kohland. We could not
(14:13):
come up with a good idea because all of the
best Irish actors we were thinking of to cast as
this Irish hero are now old. But like Pierce Brosnan, Yeah,
Pierce is right there in his name. Yeah, but but sadly,
like we said, he died at twenty seven. You need
you need a young, like powerful and imposing irishman who
(14:33):
is also a really good actor. Yeah. I think some
of my favorite Irish actors. Let's see. Uh there's uh,
there's Brendan Gleeson. I guess he's older. Now there's uh.
I love Liam Cunningham, the guy who plays Sir Davos
on Game of Thrones. But I don't know. I don't
know who the young guy is. Yeah, I don't know.
Everybody can think of as too old, like even you know,
(14:53):
there's a thinking, well, maybe a professional wrestler. I get
a big muscle bound dude to play ko Holand okay,
there's there's a guy named Shamus who's like a big,
pale Irish wrestler, but he's too old for the part.
Maybe he could play the hulked out version of koh
holand you could do kind of um, you know, like
the Incredible Hulk TV show. We had to lufer Igno
(15:14):
playing the the actual Hulk. Oh no, wait, this has
given me a great idea actually, like the main normal
Koo holand before he hulks out, he should be like
super wafy, like a very very wafy, boyish, like teen
heartthrob kind of Irish actor, and then when he hulks out,
he gets replaced by the bodybuilder. Okay, I like this,
so well, maybe our Irish listeners especially, we'll have some
(15:37):
ideas about who who could be cast in such a film.
Are Irish listeners also, I'm sure are going to get
in touch with us to let us know how badly
we're saying all these words. I'm sorry. All Right, Well,
we're gonna take a break, but when we come back,
we're gonna get into the real meat of this episode.
We're going to talk about uh, the the unnatural death
weapon of Koo holand we're gonna talk about uh Guy Bolga. Alright,
(16:03):
we're back. So every hero needs a mighty weapon, and
co holand certainly had one in the Guy Bolga like
a weapon so mighty that it is the it is
the death weapon of last resort. He only even turns
to it if he's basically fighting an opponent that is
on his own level. Now, it is not known exactly
(16:25):
how to translate the term guy bulga. Right, It's translated
many different ways. I think we know that guy basically
means spear, right, But the bulga, there's questions about what
that means. Yeah, that's correct. Guy certainly means spear or dart,
But the bolga part is open to some discussion. There's
(16:45):
a particular text that we turned to by by a
writer by the name of Edward Pettit. I'm not going
to give you the full name of that article because
it will give away what we're gonna get to in
the later later portions of this episode. We will say
the name of the article. We will say it and
say it later. But he points out that that the
guy bolga has been translated as just here's a sampling
(17:09):
the belly dart, the dart of belly, barbed spear, spear
of bellows, body spear, bagged spear, spear of swelling uh,
the spear of the sack, forked spear, gapped spear, solar spear,
the spear of mortal pain, the evil spear, spear of
the lightning god, spear of the thunderbolt. And he also
(17:31):
adds that the bolga part has also been interpreted to
perhaps refer to an inflated bladder that one. So essentially
this would be a fishing spear like one would have
tethered two something that floats. Oh, that's interesting. And then
likewise it's also been potentially connected to the fear bolg Uh. These,
according to to Carol Rose, the folklore's that often refer
(17:54):
to when we're talking about mythological creatures and monsters. She
says that these were the mythic first inhabitants of Ireland,
defeated by the Tuatha Dedan and then driven into mountain
caves and forests where they became loathsome monsters. So possible
connection there as well. But okay, whatever bolga means, they're
bellows bulge whatever. We know that there's some kind of
(18:17):
special magic spear. So how does it work? What does
it do? Well? One of one of the things is
that Kohland alone knows how to really wield the weapon.
You know, I mean he he is taught depends it
depends on which version you're reading. He's either taught by
a god or by you know, a skilled master, and
he alone has mastery of the guy Bolga. But it
(18:38):
is again, it is a spear, a weapon that you
only turn to as like basically just a last resort.
And also if you're just really willing to to absolutely
murder your opponent. I'm sorry, I'm just suddenly reminded of
one of those newspaper articles from the nineteen twenties that
we quoted in our death Ray episode of Invention, and
(19:00):
where the guy was like, the death ray is mine
and only I can have it. Yeah, this was his
death ray in a sense. Now in that fantastic reading
at the top of the episode, that story from the
cattle raid of Coolong, Uh, that really gives you some
of the key attributes of the weapon. Here. So it
(19:21):
is brought to Koholand via a stream. His charity here
puts it in a stream and it like floats down
to him, and then it is cast by the foot,
so he picks it up with his seven toad foot
and casts it. Thus Lee aims it with his seven
people die right and uh. And then also in that
telling we see that it it pierces his opponent through
(19:43):
the anus, which is not a detail that is present
in every telling of this story, but it is there. Uh.
And part of it has to do with the fact
that his like you know, these are two you know,
former friends, you know that, I mean, they're still friends,
but they're battling each other, and and they each have
sort of magical abilities, you know, uh so cool and
(20:07):
alone has the mastery of this uh fabulous barbed weapon,
and then his opponent has his horn skin that protects
most of his body but not the the anus. So
you might say that ford It has an achilles heel,
and it is his anus. It's his Achilles anus. So
maybe instead of saying achilles heel from now on, we
should substitute for dead Zanus. It's going to be challenging
(20:28):
to drop that into just casual conversation. I'm good. I'm
gonna darn well try Robert for the rest of my
life for dead Zanus. Alright. So that that that Edward
pettit Um article that we mentioned earlier, and I believe
this is Edward G. Pettit from Lostale University, who is
apparently something of an Edgar Allan Poe expert and a
(20:50):
monster expert I'm reading, teaches classes on vampire literature and
so forth. But he drives home that there are several
key attributes that are that are generally consistent in the
various tellings here. So first of all, only co Helen
can wield the guy Bolga. Here he alone was taught
it's it's martial art, and the teacher varies from immortal
(21:13):
to a sea god. Okay. Another thing he mentions is
that it's sort of a single use weapon, right, you
get one shot. Now that being said, I don't think
he ever misses with the thing, or at least I
have not read the story where he busted out and
misses like accidentally hits I don't know, nearby bird in
the an s instead, right. Um. Also, it's sometimes sent
(21:34):
to him by water, such as in our our opening
story there it's it is like it traveled down a
stream to him, but it doesn't just appear in the
context of water. He also it's like thrown from below
the water. So it's also it is a fearsome weapon,
so for deed more special armor in an attempt to
protect himself from it. And you know it's clearly you know,
(21:57):
when he sees that the that this weapon is is
coming out, uh, you know, he takes notice like it's
gotten dire. It's not just a normal spirit is something
that is known to be very dangerous, just mechanically and
its characteristics as a weapon. Pettit says that it is
quote accurate, sharp, strong, and highly penetrative, to say the least.
(22:18):
It's also inescapable and deadly, and in later tellings it's
also said to be venomous and cursed with an incurable
poison that fills the body. Now, one really interesting feature
about it is the idea that it is many barbed.
But at first it's cast as like a single spear
that is straight and thin, but that once it pierces
the body, it is said to spread out its barbed
(22:41):
so that it has to be cut out in order
to be removed. He can't just pull it out. Uh.
And this would be kind of like the barbs on
some existing spheres, like fishing spears sometimes would have barbs
like this in order to make sure that the thing
stays on there once you stab it. But it's not
just that it's barbed. It's that there's this idea that
it's sort of spreads out within the body. So like
(23:01):
once you pierce somebody, the point and the barbs it
is said spread to all of the veins, or spread
to all of the joints and limbs. I'm not quite
sure exactly what it means there, except I'm sort of
uh considering, when do you remember in our episode about missiletoe,
the plant, you know, the plant parasite, it's a parasite
on other plants, where we talked about the idea of
(23:23):
the house story. Um, it's this base sort of root
structure for missiletoe that grows on the surface of a
tree or another plant and then pierces its stem and
sometimes grows down and spreads out little filaments and roots
structures within the host plant. Uh. And we talked about
how so this is a parasite. It's not just like
(23:44):
a vampire sticking its fangs into you, but as if
it sticks its fangs in and sometimes the fangs like
continue to grow out inside the body and fill all
your blood vessels. Yeah, I think this is a great
reference because I definitely get that kind of like growing
barbed root like like just rap apid growth of barbs
through the entire body, like a real true body horror
(24:05):
weapon to employ here. But another way to think about
that is that's just sort of like it could be
a mechanical metaphor for a chemical property. The idea that
you stab something and it's got venom or poison or
something on it. And even though you only stab the
body in one place, the poison spreads out to all
the blood, right And yeah, so there's you can make
(24:25):
various interpretations of it, for sure. Um. It's often described
as being white or bright color. Uh. And of course
it's often drenched in blood in these tellings because it
doesn't seem to miss and when it hits, it's gonna
be gory, now, pettit says. It's also often associated with
demons or fire or hell. It's sort of an infernal weapon. Yeah,
(24:46):
and even described as being used against actual demons in
hell and later traditions apparently. And along those lines, it's
also described as sometimes is behaving in some ways like
a bellows. So again, anytime we're talking about, say, say
a magical weapon in mythology, you know, we're not so
much talking about a single thing, but we're talking about
(25:08):
a tradition of a thing, various tellings of a thing,
and different influences who are going to become involved in
sort of recolor. Uh. And you know exactly how it
is described. Either way you shake it, it is a
It is a treacherous weapon, even for a mighty hero
to employ. But then there's one final detail, a key
(25:29):
detail here, and it has to do with where this
weapon comes from. Because every great weapon that a mythical
hero uses it has to have an origin story, right
of course. And one of my favorite origin stories for
for like a weapon or a piece of armor or
something like that, is something that's taken from the body
of a monster, like like Hercules, you know, he makes
(25:50):
his cloak out of the Nemean lions, hard to pure skin.
And in this case, we we have a weapon that
is made from a sea monster, from the remains from
the bones of a sea monster. Now it's described in
some translations is being made from the skin of a
monster from Hell, but hell, Pettit says, could have been,
you know, the depths of the ocean. And this is supported,
(26:11):
he says, by later tales in which our hero coh
holand defeats barb tailed beasts from the ocean. Now, I
think Pettit also talks about versions where it is said
to come from the skull of something called like a doghead, yeah,
which could be interpreted as some version of like shark
or dog fish type creature. But also as in some
way seen as a sea monster. Right, So at this
(26:34):
point in the episode, I'm going to tell you what
the full title of his paper is. Cool, Holland's a
guy Bolga from Harpoon to sting Ray Speer. That's the
that's the title. So we're gonna take a quick breaking.
When we come back, we're going to get into Pettit's
Stingray hypothesis. Alright, We're back, all right. So here's the
(26:55):
part of the podcast where we play a game we
often like to play, which is taking a story or
an object from myth and wondering like, could there be
a natural world explanation for for what inspired this myth
or this image or this creature from mythology? And of
course this this type of game we always like to
point out, does have a weakness. It has a for diazanus,
(27:16):
you might say, which is that we we don't want
to overlook the fact that there's lots of creative imagination
involved in mythology, and you don't always have to explain
the contents of a myth by pointing to something that
really happened in history or really exists in nature and
saying that inspired it. We don't always know that that's
what happened. Maybe sometimes that happened, maybe sometimes as people
just using their imagination. But in any case, this can
(27:38):
be really interesting game to play because there is no
doubt that, at least in many cases, things in myths
were inspired by stuff people saw in nature. And Edward
Pettitt's hypothesis here is that this mighty weapon was the
spine of a stingray, or at least at some point
in its legacy. UH is interpreted as such stories of
(27:59):
sting ray but barbed weapons are employed then to describe
this weapon the cohol and wheels. Yeah, and this this
inspiration could go multiple ways if in fact there is
such an element of this kind of inspiration in the stories.
It could be that people saw a stingray spine in
nature and this led to the original idea of the
(28:19):
guy Bolga sphere. But it could also be that ideas
about stingray spines colored later tellings of an existing mythical
spear that was already in some stories. But let's see
if there's anything to this idea and start by looking
at what's the stingray. So a stingray is a type
of ray and raise or cartilaginous fish cousins of sharks.
(28:40):
This this family of sharks and rays, they're called the
Elasma bronx. Their fish with skeletons made of cartilage instead
of bone. It's the same bendy stuff you've gotten your ears.
And the super order of rays is batoy dea uh.
Stingrays in particular are found in the suborder of rays
known as my leo battaforms. Now, like other rays, stingrays
(29:01):
kind of have a flattened body and a large, somewhat
rounded pectoral set of fins that are fully fused with
the head in the body, and this makes them sort
of rounded off like a pancake fish. Often, stingrays tend
to swim by sort of undulating their their their wide
pectoral fins sort of just like waves rather than flapping
(29:22):
like wings. And stingrays in particular tend to have flat
bodies that blend in with the seafloor. Often they're camouflaged uh,
and that's because they spend most of their time on
the sea floor hiding out, often partially buried in sediment.
You'll sometimes see sting rays like down down in the
sediment with like sand piled on top of their little wings,
(29:43):
and some researchers believe that their eyes are poorly placed
for hunting, given that their body is this sort of
flat disc shape and their mouths are down on the
bottom and their eyes are up on the top. But
that's okay because they don't need to rely entirely on
their eyes for hunting. Like sharks, stingrays have organs that
are known as the ampullae of Lorenzini, and these are
(30:05):
small pores in the skin that can detect electric fields
in the water. And of course all animals generate electric
fields in the water, especially when they contract their muscles.
So if there is a prey animal out there swimming,
moving around, or even just with a beating heart, you
can probably sense some kind of electric voltage difference that
it is causing in the water with your ampulae of Lorenzini.
(30:28):
But they've also got a magnificent spine, and that's what
we're going to be focusing on today. The stingray has
a spine with venom, sometimes deadly venom that can in
some cases kill humans. Now, to be clear, stingrays very
rarely attack or kill humans. Yes, they are not considered
aggressive at all. That generally, if there's an incident between
(30:51):
humans and stingrays. It's defensive because the human like stepped
on the stingray or loomed over it, right, And the
latter seems to have probably been the case. With the
most famous case in recent history of a stingray related
death out of the crocodile hunter Steve Irwin. Oh yeah,
that was sad. Yeah, yeah, it was a tragic case
two thousand six. Uh. And he died after he sustained
(31:13):
numerous stabs from an eight foot wide stingray. He was
in a shallow water. Um, he was. He was in
close proximity to the creature they were filming, and the
theory I read is that the ray might have thought
Irwin's shadow was a tiger shark and the shallow water there,
and then it reportedly stabbed him hundreds of times and
(31:35):
one of the stabs pierced his heart and then he
bled to death. Yeah, that's it's a sad story. But
it's not the only time that the people have actually
been killed by stingray spines. There they can, um, they
cause I mean severe just direct trauma, like can pierce
the skin and cause a lot of bleeding. But they
also in many cases do have very powerful venom. So,
(31:55):
but I think it is worth noting like, given especially
that this case occurred in shallow water, that it's not
unbelievable that medieval or even older people would a certainly
people that made their their livelihoods at the seaside would
have encountered and even encountered fatally uh sting rays at
(32:15):
some point or another. No, it's not unlikely at all.
And in fact, we know for a fact that the
ancient people that ancient people's, you know, long before the
medieval Irish myths, ancient people's knew about stingrays, and they
knew about the venom on their spines, and they knew
some things about how these spined UH spears worked. In fact,
stingray spine tipped spears already exist in ancient hero myths.
(32:38):
Do you know this? I was not aware of this.
So you know the story the Greek myth of Odysseus uh.
This is told in in the Odyssey. For example, Odysseus
and the witch Searcy had a son named Teleganus uh.
And remember of course that the story of how Odysseus
and Searcy got together is that while Odysseus is on
his way home, he ends up at the man or
(33:00):
of Searcy, and Searcy is this witch sorceress figure who
turns all of Odysseus's men into swine, but Odysseus saves
them with the help of the gods, and then he
ends up essentially being Searce's living boyfriend for a while.
Um Meanwhile, while his wife Penelope is home being very
dutiful and waiting on him, he's like shacking up with Sarcey.
So as usual, Odysseus is kind of a jerk. But
(33:22):
uh so he's doing that. And while he's there, he
apparently he has a son with Searcy, and this son's
name is Teleganus. But of course, eventually Odysseus has to
get home to his home of Ithaca, his wife Penelope,
and his son Telemachus. And so here is a passage
from Fraser's translation English translation of a passage from Apollodorus quote.
(33:45):
When Teleganus learned from Searcy that he was a son
of Ulysses, who is also that's another name for Odysseus,
he sailed in search of him, and having come to
the island of Ithaca, he drove away some of the cattle,
and when Ulysses de ended them, Teleganus wounded him with
the spear he had in his hands, which was barbed
with the spine of a stingray, and Ulysses died of
(34:08):
the wound. Pettitt, in his article also quotes a second
century Greek text on fishing by an author named Oppien,
which tells another version of this story. And I'll read
this quote as well. While the stingray lives, a terrible
and fiery weapon attends it such I ween as a
man trembles to hear of. And it lives when the
stingray itself has perished, and preserves its unwearied strength unchanged.
(34:33):
And not only on the living creatures which it strikes.
Does it belch mysterious bain, but it hurts even tree
and rock, and wherever it comes nigh. That sting it was,
which his mother Circe, skilled in many drugs, gave of
old to let to telegan Us for his long hilted spear,
that he might array his foes death from the sea.
(34:55):
And he beached his ship on the island that pastured goats,
and he knew not that he was harrying the flocks
of his own father, and on his aged sire who
came to the rescue, even on him whom he was seeking,
he brought an evil fate. They're the cunning Odysseus who
had passed through countless woes of the sea in his
laborious adventures. The grievous Stingray slew with one blow. So
(35:19):
that's kind of combining, uh weirdly enough, like the like
the the Odysseus tradition and sort of the Oedipus tradition, right,
like accidentally coming across and killing your own father. Well, um,
it's interesting too to bring it back to co holand
I believe they're in the part of the story there
is the co holand ends up accidentally killing his own
(35:40):
son with the Guy Bolga at one point, like he
does not know that hiss his son and ends up
engaging in combat with him. Well yeah, Pettit seems to
notice some pretty strong similarities between these myths, and so
he's I think this is one reason he has for
wondering if the idea of the stingray is actually incorporated
into the Guy Bulga legend. Uh hell. Pett It also
(36:03):
mentions that some sources claim Cercy had the stingray tipped
spear made by the Greek forge god have faced us
out of a spine stolen from a stingray by the
sea god force Us. And of course we know that
the guy Bulga was made, at least in some tellings,
from the body of some kind of sea monster or
sea creature, right, And in some tellings the art of
the guy Boga is instructed to Koholand by a god
(36:26):
of the sea. But just as further evidence of what
the ancients knew or thought they knew about stingray spines. Look,
why not have a look at our old friend Plenty
of the Elder as well. There's a pet Pettit points
to this passage quote. But there is nothing in the
world more execrable than the sting projecting above the tail
of the stingray, which are people called the pastanaka. It
(36:47):
is five inches long and kills trees when driven into
the root. That's sort of like what Opian said right there.
He kills not just animals, but like trees and stones.
I don't know how you kill a stone, um, but
a Plenty continues and penetrates armor like a missile with
the force of steel and with deadly poison. So Pettit
(37:09):
sees really strong parallels between the myths of Kuhland and
telegan Us, and sees some of these parallels between what
was understood by the ancients about the stingray spine and
the myth of the guy bulga. The guy bolga is
said to come from the water. It gets thrown from
under the water. It's associated with shallow water. Sometimes it's
(37:29):
said to be made from the body or skull of
some type of sea monster. And of course it is
true that sting rays can be found in the coastal
waters of Ireland, and they can grow to quite a
monstrous size, and like the underside of them, Pettit points out,
can resemble a grinning or grimacing face. That's true that certainly,
if you've ever been to an aquarium, you know they
if they come up to the glass, Uh, you see
(37:51):
what looks like a face there, But the eyes are
on the other side. Obviously, and crucially, the one of
the issues here is that a stingray spine is not
like the fang of a snake or something which, once removed,
is just like a piece of tooth. You know, there's
nothing to it. Uh. The ancients understood that a stingray
spine could remain deadly for some time after the ray
(38:14):
was dead, or after it's removed from the ray, So
maybe maybe some like forty eight hours afterwards. So detaching
it from the ray and attaching it to a weapon
wouldn't immediately render it harmless. It could still have of
course the normal like piercing potential, but the venom as well. Uh.
Now this is interesting because that that epic battle that
Koholand has with three did It's supposedly rages for three
(38:37):
days before they finally reached the point where Koholand calls
for the guy bolga Um. So he couldn't just based
on this sort of forty eight hour rule is like
a rough guideline for utilizing a magical sting ray weapon
in battle. Like, he wouldn't be able to bring that
to the field with him. Thus he has to call
on his charioteer to send it down the water to him,
(39:00):
and then he can, uh, he can fetch it with
his fabulous seven toed foot and fling it up the
anus of his opponent. Yeah, so I I don't know
if Pettit's right about this connection. I mean, he he
Also he adduces a lot of evidence that we didn't
even have time to get into. It's a lot of
stuff about like the minut chief, the translation of the
word bolga and how that could point to stingrays and
stuff like that. But I'll be sure to link to
(39:22):
the entire article on the Landing page through this episode
of Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. So anybody
who wants to really dive into the evidence there and
risk getting stung, you'll be able to do so. Yeah.
So I I don't know if he's correct about this,
but it's a really interesting case and another wonderful example
of bio mythology. Yeah. I love the way that myth
(39:44):
and legend traditions present us with these little mysteries, like
that they can be these little puzzle boxes because of
the odd characteristics of elements within them, you know, like
the idea of the spear being thrown through the seven
toed foot from under the water into the this and
you just wonder like, Okay, is this just weird just
because it's weird? Or does all this weird disappoint to something?
(40:07):
Is there something I'm missing? Yeah? Or to what extent
are we dealing with errors? And translation. Uh, you know,
things that should be a notable um metaphor or symbol,
but out of context just sounds like something just really
whack adoodle looking. Uh. These are always questions one has
to ask. But that being said, I feel like you
(40:27):
can always just embrace just the raw alien nature of
the myth you're presented with two and just enjoy it
on that level as well. Yeah. Nothing nothing more fun
than a really impractical weapon. Yes. Uh. Speaking of which, um,
I have to say, as a fan, a longtime fan
(40:48):
of the Mortal Kombat games, you know they put one
on somebody have a Guy Balla in there. No, but
they should, like one of the things that you have
in these games, especially today, increasingly overly implicated fatalities where
you know, one fighter finishes off the other one by
doing something just predict you know, like not only slicing
off their head, but then slicing the head in half,
(41:09):
that sort of thing. But really, when you look at
the story of the Guy Bolga, they've got nothing, you know,
like the Irish mythology has has has all the Mortal
Kombat you need. I'd like to see Raid in versus Kuhlan. Yeah,
they could put him in there, make him, make him
a downloadable character. What they have started crossing genres, haven't they?
I think, I said, I don't play the Mortal Kombat
(41:31):
games anymore, but I feel like I saw that they're
They've got like Aliens and Jason Vorhees and stuff. Yeah,
they've definitely brought in characters from other franchises, but but
I don't think they've brought in any I don't know
if they brought in any additional mythological figures. They should,
I mean, they already play with a little bit of that.
So um. Now, one additional question I had based on
all of this, is all right, with the with the
(41:52):
guy Bolga, you have a kind of impractical weapon that
is also sure fire like it is gonna end the
fight if you ever actually pull it out, But yet
Hill Kohlan will wait three days to actually do it.
Do we have other examples in our fiction and other
myths where you have this this sure shot weapon that
(42:13):
for some reason your heroes never actually produced until the
last minute. I feel like that happens a lot, but
I'm struggling to think of an example right now. The
only one that really came to mind recently was in
the original Pacific Rim film, like the big Robots, the
what do they call the the the the agers, they're
they're beat down there on the point of being defeated
(42:36):
by the giant Kaiju monsters, and then only then do
they start using these big swords that pop out of
their their limbs and just completely decimate the the creatures
that they're battling. Oh, I know an example. You remember
the Mighty morphin Power Rangers, How like they would have
to keep when they faced a more powerful monster, they'd
have to keep like upgrading to like the next level
(42:58):
of robots, And you always wondered, like, why don't they
just go to the top level of robots every time
so they instantly defeat their opponent no matter Why? Yeah,
why why isn't that your first move to go and
do exactly instead of destroying half a city battling the
monster for sure? Yeah, Or for instance, Voltron is another example,
Like I feel like they would try and battle whatever
(43:19):
the rob east or the threat of the week happened
to be with just the lions, and then they're like,
I guess we need to form Voltron to actually deal
with this scenario. Just go ahead and form Voltron. That's
exactly the same thing as the Power Rangers. Yeah, first
they'd fight it hand to hand, and then it would
get big magic wand make the monster grow it get big,
and then they'd form a bigger robot. Uh, and then
(43:40):
they'd fight it and then they'd have it would get
bigger again or something, and then they'd have to do
another thing. They'd have to go to the like the
final robot level. Well, and I guess maybe in all
of this there is a certain amount of like martial
arts storytelling, like like I am reminded in professional wrestling,
for instance, especially in like the Japanese of varieties. Uh.
(44:00):
They'll be like a super finisher that an individual has,
like a move that they rarely bust out because it's
like too dangerous. But if the matches is you know,
goes on long enough, uh, and there are other finishers
haven't worked, then they will turn to uh, you know,
to something like that. You know, the like the gonzo bomb.
You know something that is that the kind of the
equivalent of the guy bolga. What is the gonzo bomb?
(44:22):
It's this guy named uh Kawata would use it and
it's like a power bomb where he just drops you
right on your neck. Um, you know, Brutal movie only
busted it out like a few times. But it was
kind of like his his super move, his super form
that he would assume. And so I guess it makes
sense from a storytelling point of view, if you're you're
(44:42):
telling the story of epic mythic combatants going at each other,
that there would be this one move beyond that they
might turn to. And in the case of the guy Bolga,
it's not a pleasant weapon. It's a treacherous weapon. It's
kind of like your hero cheating a little bit at
the very end out of desperation. Well they had to
cheat to defeat him in the end too, that's true.
(45:04):
So yeah, though I guess he did that. I guess
it's the opposite order. But but still, yeah, some treachery
ends up being employed. Uh, even on the mythic battlefield.
This is the new version of the han shot first
T shirt and well uncheated first. Oh man, you have
printed had where it? Speaking of? You know, we do
(45:24):
have a T shirt store? Um you can, you can?
Can we get those made? I would love to see
it maybe maybe it will. It will be there soon.
For the time being that we have all sorts of
fun like squirrel related and great basilisk related and black
hole related designs, as well as just you know what
you might expect, like logo based designs as well. You
can find that if you go to our mother ship
(45:46):
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. There is a
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(46:09):
In each episode a new life changing, world altering inventions.
Life changing the world altering sometimes just weird and small
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still it ultimately changes the shape of life in some
way or another, like even things that didn't quite come
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(46:29):
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(46:49):
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