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- [00:01]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Jaenega and we're just popping up here to tell you some insider info. If you would like to listen to Gone Medieval ad free and get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With the History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries such as my new series on everyone's favorite conquerors, the Normans, or my recent exploration of the castles that made Britain. There's a new release to enjoy every week. Sign up now by visiting history hit.com subscribe or find the link in the show notes for this episode.
- [00:49]
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- [01:19]
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- [02:22]
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- [02:55]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Jaunega and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to Popes to the Crusades, we delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were and how we Got here. In early medieval Ireland, supernatural immortal beings moved unseen in and out of our world. These were the residents of the otherworld, the Sidhe who crossed over through concealed portals. Their stories were set down in Ireland's monastic libraries, tales that told of what happens when human and supernatural lovers cross boundaries. Who was the mysterious woman who appeared each night and sung at the bedside of a prince until he fell sick in love with her? And what about the determined hero who tracked his beloved through several incarnations, determined to win her back? Or the young warrior seeking an elusive woman who turned into a swan? You know as you do, these tales of heroes, demigods, warrior queens and other folk inspired some of the earliest fairy tales of frank France and England. But it has to be said the Irish ones are sexier, funnier and bloodier than many of the better known medieval myths and romances. For example, this is the oldest existing story about love and the otherworld, probably written about 1300 years ago. But the action described took place five centuries before that.
- [05:02]
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One day, Conla Rua, son of Khan Kedhar, was standing next to his father on the top of the hill at Isnak, in the very centre of eru, when he saw a woman in unusual clothing approaching. He asked her, where have you come from, unearthly woman? She responded, I have come from lands of the living, where there's no death, no sin, no guilt. Whom are you addressing? Asked Khan Kaed. Haha. For no one could see the woman. Except Kunla. The woman replied, he is speaking to a lovely young lady who does not expect death or age. I have always loved Connla the Ruddy. I summon Connla to the Plane of Delights where Bodarg the Immortal reigns. No woe or weeping exists in his land since that king began to rule. Come with me, O Connla Rua. You with a red freckled neck, golden curls above a blushing face. Your kingly appearance marks you. If you come with me, your youth will not wither until the dreamed of doomsday. Everyone heard the woman, but no one could see her. Khan, the king said to Coran the Druid, I beseech you, O Coran, of great song and skill. An undue demand is being made beyond my wisdom, beyond my power, as has never afflicted me since I began to rule. Canny phantoms constrain me while snatching my splendid son, taking him for my royal hand with the wily spells of women. The druid then chanted protective magic over the place where the woman stood, so that her voice could not be heard. And so that Kongla could no longer see the woman as she fled the druids chanting, she grew an apple to Connla.
- [07:23]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
That story is just one of nine included in the book Otherworld by historian and novelist Lisa M. Bittell, in which she retells nine magical Irish myths, drawing upon all her expertise in Irish history and literature. I'm Dr. Eleanor Jaenega and today on Gone Medieval from History hit, I am delighted to be joined by Lisa Patel. Lisa, welcome to Gone Medieval.
- [07:49]
Lisa M. Bittell
Thanks for having me.
- [07:50]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I am absolutely delighted to have you. Because I have learned so much from Otherworld recently and I bothered all of my relatives about it all through December, which was fantastic. You know, you are in this really enviable position because you have this great academic background that lets you not only bring us great new translations of Irish stories, but you're able to do it in this really entertaining way because you know, fundamentally there's great history here, there's a lot to learn, but this is also something that people did for fun. And these are stories that people were telling because they're really quite interesting. So what inspired you to bring these particular stories together in Otherworld?
- [08:36]
Lisa M. Bittell
My husband.
- [08:38]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Ah, I love that.
- [08:40]
Lisa M. Bittell
Not for any deep reason, just because we had the year in Oxford. He was in a visiting professorship and I had nothing to do. I was between books and he said, eh, just translate something. You know, my field, Irish history and literature and stuff, it's a very insider, outsider field. And so if you're not first rate philologist of Irish birth, growing up speaking the language, there's a little suspicion in the field about translations by people like that. So I did actually translate these tales. It took me a couple years and then the editor said, you know, you cannot call them translations because you'll get nailed. So they are in fact retellings. But I chose these ones because I'm working on the religious supernatural in my other life.
- [09:27]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Oh, I love that. I mean I'm. I'm afraid that I. You saw me coming from a mile away with this book. I'm such a mark because I too am a huge fan of the religious supernatural. And you know, I think that it really comes across in these retellings how much fun you're having. And I mean, because it's really, really fun to read and you've got this really great way of presenting these specific Irish tales where they have an interesting cosmology. Right. Because you've called the book itself Otherworld. And they all hinge on the fact that there is in Irish mythology, this otherworld. I suppose a great question to ask here is, can you explain that concept within these Irish stories? I mean, can anyone?
- [10:17]
Lisa M. Bittell
Loads of scholars have tried, yeah. And it's not just in the mythology. These stories were written by educated men in Christian communities, religious communities. So they were recording a sort of heritage, really, something that wasn't quite history and wasn't quite biblical, but it was there and it was in the landscape, you know. So these are stories that were well thought out and carefully crafted, even if they had some oral origins. And so the other world, to an Irish, what, an ordained man, a monk in the early Middle Ages, what would the other world have been? It was a different reality. It was like an alternate reality. And yet at the same time, it wasn't necessarily true to everyone. And it functioned at once as a device and as an imaginative place, I think, as well as to some people being real. I mean, you still go to Ireland, people would tell you to stay away from that mound or that lone tree. You know, they might be having you on because you're American, but, you know, there are still stories about people who don't want to pull out a tree or level a mound because it's important. It's a connection to the other world. So, I mean, I've always thought that maybe the other world was and wasn't real to people, but it's not Christian and it's certainly not religious in any way. That's obvious. It's just other.
- [11:43]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I mean, that's the thing about something being other, right? Is it exists in these cracks in between, you know, what historians want, which is nice, clear, concise boundaries which we very rarely get, no matter how much we want them. Right. And I mean, I suppose one thing that's happening with the otherworld is that it's also home to other people, right? You have this group of sort of supernatural beings. And I mean, this is another one. I mean, how do we define these guys? I think they. The thing that people tend to say now is they'll say, oh, these are the Fae or the Fair Folk or something like that. But that's also not quite exactly right either. And so we get this really very specific, interesting set of Irish beliefs around the people there.
- [12:34]
Lisa M. Bittell
This is something I've been working on for a while, and I'm going to work on some more. When did they turn into fairies? You know, I mean, some of these stories, as I suggest and other people have written, were the basis for what became fairy tales, you know, especially the French ones. The fae, as you said. But they weren't. They weren't fairy tales. These were larger than life people. They weren't a little fella. And they were sort of immortal, except you could chop their heads off or kill them in some instances. But they were beautiful and long lived and they could disappear and appear and like do magical things. And, you know, people have theorized that these guys were a pantheon at some point or some of them were merely gods, but, you know, who's to say? We can't say. We don't know. There's no evidence really for religion before Christianity in Ireland. So they're sort of like the otherworld itself. By the time we get them, they're other. They're what it would be cool to be if you had a clue, you know?
- [13:30]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Well, yeah, I mean, they almost function kind of as superheroes.
- [13:33]
Lisa M. Bittell
Right.
- [13:33]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
You know, they're these people who can come in and do these great works. I mean, you know, now we might not say, oh, wow, this guy really built some great bridges, you know, like.
- [13:42]
Lisa M. Bittell
That might not be down that drag over the cog, then open the bog.
- [13:45]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Wow, that. That might not be things that we find really impressive now. But I guess that one of the recurring things that I really picked up on is this idea, though, that these are a bunch of really sexy, cool people. And one of the things that they do is they show up and they make you go, oh, man, am I gonna abandon my family? You know, they're these kind of like dangerously attractive people that make you risk it all kind of.
- [14:12]
Lisa M. Bittell
Oh, yeah, that. I. I think that's part of the point, actually. Well done. Yeah. It's like, besides being another reality there, like in the very first tale, Kamala story, you know, do they represent something that is better than real life or just, again, other. Are you wise if you want to chase it? Are there repercussions? Yes, there are. To your. Your going away with these guys, is it good or bad? It's never quite clear.
- [14:38]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah. Are there any other big motifs that you sought to bring out across these nine stories? I mean, the, you know, hot people who can do cool things being kind of sexy notwithstanding.
- [14:51]
Lisa M. Bittell
Yeah. You know, one was the gender aspect of these stories. I've always been amazed at the way that the female characters are. They're often the human ones anyways, are quiet or have no agency or seem to have no agency. And yet the story itself makes you aware of that. So it's not like the writers and the audiences were insensitive to the gender issues in here. Maybe to some of Them. But it's also not like anybody's rooting for the girls in these stories. But I really wanted to bring out some of those hints in the stories that women were getting a rough deal this society. And then the other thing was the humor of these tales. That's the first thing that drew me to these stories when I was just in college, you know, okay, the first joke for me was a mistranslation. But the story was funny even without it. And so, you know, I realized what a great sense of humor lies in these stories.
- [15:53]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Okay, wait. I can't let you get away without telling me what the mistranslation was.
- [15:58]
Lisa M. Bittell
Now, it's not a story in this volume, but it's called the tale of MacDotho's pig. It was just a line about each warrior getting his cut of the meat, but the pig, but I thought it was each warrior went up and gave it a whack on the nose. I don't know what I was thinking. Whack roasted pig. But, you know, it was an exotic society, wouldn't I know.
- [16:20]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Although I love that. That's fantastic.
- [16:22]
Lisa M. Bittell
Right on the wristbig.
- [16:23]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Well, I mean, I guess that is one of the things that I really thought was cool actually across these stories, though, is that there is still this kind of like mundanity that happens. I mean, even if you go to the other world, like, you still have to milk the cows, you know, you still have to. It's like, you know, oh, well, it's really great. You get a really good wife in the other world and she's super hot, but she could also bring the cows in on her own and she's gonna get all the milking done and you're like, great.
- [16:48]
Lisa M. Bittell
Cool.
- [16:49]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah. I mean, you are just in other world. And it's one where, you know, the cows are very tractable and the milk is really good and your wife can handle it when you skive off for a year or something like that.
- [17:01]
Lisa M. Bittell
Red eared white cows. No, but I mean, you know, you got to wonder, what were they seeing? Like, what did the writers not notice was so ordinary about their world? Right. They were taken a lot for granted that we see as exotic the cows. So like, if we were imagining our other world, I don't know, would it be, you know, like in the Marvel movies or something? Would it be, you know, Asgard as in the films or something? I don't know. So some of that stuff is just our distance from them, I think.
- [17:34]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah. I mean, speaking of that, right. You, because you have this background in history and religion already are able to approach these stories in a really interesting way because we do have this distance. It doesn't necessarily work as instantly recognizable literature. In the same way that, I don't know, Arthuriana is. You know, we're used to the Knights of the Round Table when they show up. But, you know, even when you have kind of the more household. Yeah. Names like, I don't know, Finn McCool or like Cook Lane or so, you know, you know, the ones that, like, people can rattle off their tongues, it still kind of exists over here. So how were you able to kind of capture these and bring them out using your historical background? I guess.
- [18:24]
Lisa M. Bittell
These stories are such a source of argument and have been for more than a century in Ireland by the experts, you know, and we've seen them go through so many different interpretations. And what else has gone through different interpretations is the. The idea of who wrote and for whom. And, you know, are they hiding their paganism in there? Or, you know, is it all a Christian allegory? Or, like, all this stuff just knowing about what the houses were like, as I say in the intro, or, you know, what gender relations were like in the sources and probably on the ground and, you know, what the weather is like. You know, it rains a lot. Knowing the fights about them over where they came from and knowing where they were written and who probably wrote them and then what the world was like, that helped a lot. It helped make more clear what was cool about the stories to people at the time.
- [19:22]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I have to say, some of my favorite parts were the descriptions of the halls and things like this, where you're like, oh, wow. And they've got. They've got gold on the ceiling and how big is this hall?
- [19:32]
Lisa M. Bittell
Those descriptions go on and on. You know, you see some of that in Beowulf, but not this much, you know, and it took me years and years. I still don't know if I have it right to figure out what those couches were like. You. And they talk concentric rings of couches or something. You know, how the heck did that work? Especially with the partitions and the bronze bits and so forth. And, you know, there are still some mysteries about histories.
- [20:00]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Well, I think it's nice to have mysteries, you know, and I think it's also interesting, you know, we get these great descriptions of, you know, couches and molding and all of these things. And I'm thinking about the scribes who are writing this down, and it's really interesting. You've got these Christian usually Monks who are, in theory, you know, really devoted to asceticism and living a very austere life where they think about God and then you give them five seconds and they're like, yeah, man, they've got the best couches over there. And also all the chicks are hot.
- [20:34]
Lisa M. Bittell
So, I mean, you know. But there's been a lot of work too on that. Our idea of monks in Ireland is a little too continental and a little outdated. You know, I'm just reading this excellent book by Adil Renack about monasticism. And, you know, these were big communities, the ones that were wealthy enough to have scriptoria, big communities with all sorts of people going through them. And even the word for monk in Middle Irish, you know, which comes from Monicus monach, didn't necessarily mean a guy in orders, avowed guy. It might have meant a tenant of the community or somebody sort of attached to it in one way or another. Some of them, I suppose, could have been well educated. They could have been the storytellers or, and. Or the writers. We don't know. We have no clue. So these were quite mixed communities. How word got round and who told the stories to whom is a. Is a question.
- [21:25]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And I mean, I guess within that there is of course the eternal question, like, what. What are we supposed to make of these blending of stories? Because you have people doing these big supernatural things, but there's also these Christian contexts within that, you know, where people are still having to make it to mass on a Sunday after, you know, carrying dead guys around all night and, you know, things like this. And everybody seems fairly comfortable bull with this idea. And, you know, I think there's kind of a modern desire to see things as either pagan or Christian. And, you know, here, what do we even mean by pagan? You know, it's a mess. It's a mess. And they seem so comfortable with that. But, you know, we kind of want to sieve these things out. I mean, do we get any kind of insight? Does this actually tell us about what's going on with society? Or am I just being too modern looking at it that way at all?
- [22:23]
Lisa M. Bittell
Yes and yes or no and no. I mean, one thing, I think, you know this well, one thing we forget about people in the Middle Ages is they had imaginations like, you know, they could think up cool stuff. There's a lot of looking back at an imagined past in these stories, obviously. It's like if we write another retelling about King Arthur, right? Our own lives creep in there, and our own, as you point out, you know, our own ideas about how things should work and our own attitudes creep in there too. So it's useful to read these stories for what little they can tell you about the period when they were written. If only we knew when they were written, because, you know, they were written and written and written and written again, so and so, you know, it's hard to sort really through what they're making up and through what they're just assuming. That's where being an historian comes in. But I think I, and others get a lot of it wrong.
- [23:22]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Well, I mean, I suppose that we're never going to be able to get it perfectly right. I mean, even considering, as you say, you have iterations upon iterations of written forms of these stories. And in theory, maybe they've also come out of oral traditions and then we don't know how far back that goes. But can we use these to kind of excavate some understanding of oral tradition, or is that just a pipe dream?
- [23:48]
Lisa M. Bittell
That's a big fight. In fact, less so now than it used to be. But, you know, there used to be, especially around the beginning of the 1900s, nationalist interpretations of these as sort of a like a fly in amber, you know, here's your paganism, here's your pantheon, here's your religion. Druids. Oh, great. And now we don't think so so much. But, you know, I have to keep asking myself, even if they're reconstructing a vaunted past, these writers, why tell the stories in this way? Why tell the stories about these figures that some people knew of and other people didn't? Some famous, some not so famous, you know, with weird sort of magic all over the place. I mean, granted, they're really entertaining, we know that. So, I mean, if you needed a story on a cold night in a rainy season, then, yeah, these are good entertainment. But why the elaborate? Seems like mythology behind them. You know, there are folks who have gone through and pointed at some of the figures in these tales who actually do turn up in other places, like inscriptions in Britain or in Gaul, like Luke, for example, the many skilled. So obviously there are hints here, there are hints, but there's nothing we can use, I think, to reconstruct beliefs or religion per se, whatever religion is.
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Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
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- [27:38]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Ah yeah. I'm constantly having to let people down with that. I get lots of questions about it and, and also lots of questions from interested people who are specifically wanting to know about the place of women in, you know, pagan society. And. And what?
- [27:53]
Lisa M. Bittell
I like the way you roll your eyes when you say pagan because I.
- [27:56]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, well, I mean, I mean, what does that mean?
- [27:58]
Lisa M. Bittell
I know. You know, I guess some people won't use a word anymore. So. I know.
- [28:01]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, I think it's. It's very difficult because, you know, it's such a term used by Christians to describe such a huge number of things that it's really difficult. So I mean oftentimes I like to say something like pre Christian religion, you know, Just because.
- [28:16]
Lisa M. Bittell
Teleological.
- [28:18]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, there you go. Well, I'm a historian. I can't help myself.
- [28:20]
Lisa M. Bittell
Okay, so what are you going to say? Not Christian, everybody, but.
- [28:23]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, I know. I know that. You know, I think one of the things you do really well here, and you've already touched on this, is look at the gender dynamics of Ireland at this time here, because you have women who are integral to most of these stories, but they're often quite silent. You know, we hear very, very little from them. You know, when we get women who've come over from the she, you could sometimes hear them, but literally not.
- [28:53]
Lisa M. Bittell
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [28:54]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Which I think is quite funny. So it's like. I feel like there's. Either the women are incredibly visible and don't say anything, or they're invisible and they talk and cause problems.
- [29:05]
Lisa M. Bittell
Sometimes they're both. If they come from the she. No, no. It is interesting. And women. Women are sort of the most exotic, I think, of the she. But maybe that's just because the dynamic of the story is, you know, to have these hero figures usually who interact with the exotic and overcome it or succumb to it. It's never quite clear. But, you know, in that, the one tale you were referencing there, that the dream of Conla, the vision of Conla, the woman is invisible, and there's something going on with, seen and unseen in all these stories. You know, that's what I first wanted to work on with these stories, and I got led away into retelling them, is the unseen. What's unseen? You know, there's the woman who cannot be seen by the king and the druid. In the first story, only Kamala being seduced can see her. Of course, people think that story might be a Christian allegory who can see heaven. But then you have Mither in the Wooing of a dean. He's a supernatural figure, obviously, but he tells humans at one point, you can't see us. We can see all of you. And you can't see us because your vision is obscured by what? Original sin. Wait a minute. You're from the sea. What are you telling me that for? There's something about who can and cannot see that's really interesting. You know, Nera in the Adventure of Nera can follow these guys from the she into the she. Nobody else can, you know, so who can see? I don't.
- [30:39]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
You describe in your introduction to these stories, and I think quite rightly, as sexier, funnier and more exotic than fairy tales generally. And I guess how, like, how do we define this? And, like, what. What are like, for example, like, concepts of love and desire, I think, are really, really different. You know, you have lots of couples, for example, who are like, oh, well, we're married to other people, but we really want to have sex. So I'm gonna, like, contrive strange magic, using time so that we could hang out for a year, get pregnant, have a baby and conceive.
- [31:17]
Lisa M. Bittell
Not fair. Those guys were definitely the two of the day. So they don't.
- [31:20]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, but, you know, you have these things and does this, like, tell us. I don't know. Is this something particular to Irish culture, do you think? Or is this just, hey, if you could do anything and wave a magic wand, what would you do? And people are like, ooh, I've got a new way to cheat on my wife.
- [31:39]
Lisa M. Bittell
Well, I mean, to be fair, there does seem to have been a. I don't know, was this true of all Europe? You know, I mean, if you have the money, you can have as many chicks as you want. You know, it's resource polygony. But for women to have the same sort of possibilities is really interesting. People used to think maybe Ireland had less strict rules about that kind of thing. I don't know. If you read the monastic documents, the Christian canons and stuff, that's not the case. But there does seem to have been, at the. The most elite levels, sort of looseness about who fell into bed with whom. And I don't know if that's supposed to be the effect of the other world, you know. Oh, chicks from the other world, they're easy, you know, or, you know, you meet someone from the other world, and it's like, yes, of course I'm gonna fall at your feet. Cause you're from the other world. So I don't know what's at work there or if it's the story. So, like, people gotta get it on.
- [32:34]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I mean, like, otherwise, what's the point of a story? I mean, come on. Like, just fighting.
- [32:38]
Lisa M. Bittell
Come on, that's boring.
- [32:41]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
All right. Well, one of my favorite stories was I really enjoyed the Adventure of Neera. And what I thought was really interesting in this is it kind of hinges on these ideas about the portals to the shield can get blown open and, you know, you can then be brought into the other world or, you know, kind of vice versa. So this is an interesting way, I think, to kind of think about the relationship between the other world or the she and normal earthly power. So what can we tell about this dynamic from the story itself, about the.
- [33:17]
Lisa M. Bittell
Way people can just sort of stumble into the she or about, you know, where the she is in earthly form. I mean, I like the idea that, you know, that story takes place on Samhain, right? So called modern Halloween. And that's the time of year, one of the times of year when those portals to the she open and things come out and things go in. And I always tell my students, you know, it's Halloween, don't go out tonight. You might want to read the she, never come back. They're like, what? But there is this notion that every now and then you're not going to be able to tell, you know, the days. So be careful. And if you're not careful, who knows what'll happen, where you'll end up. There's a regular season, right, when the otherworld is available or even stalking you. The other part is that it's a normal landscape. You're looking around like the portal in the story of Nera that he stumbles into or follows the guys into. It's a little cave opening behind Roth Krahan out in the west, you know, and you can crawl in there, you can go there now and crawl inside if you're not claustrophobic and aren't scared of the dark and wild animals. And so, you know, it was a landscape you lived with, but every now and then it might open up and snatch you if you weren't watching out.
- [34:35]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
See, and I find that so interesting, right, because there's also almost this interplay with, I guess, the concept of social norms here because, you know, we have this way of living our life here in the regular old world. And, you know, we have certain customs. One doesn't go out on Halloween and you go to mass on Sundays and you try your very best to be this sort of person, but it's almost like you might just stumble into doing the wrong thing or not even the wrong thing, just a different thing. Right? Yeah.
- [35:12]
Lisa M. Bittell
You make it sound like life was kind of orderly, but it wasn't. It was probably preferable for most people, you know, die young either because you didn't get enough to eat or, you know, raiders came through when you happened to be out in the field or, you know, your king was mad at another king and so they burned everything. And especially for women, you know, where. I mean, even in later medieval society, I'm sure, you know, like infant mortality, half the kids died before they were the age of one, probably so. And women died all the time of birth related, you know, it's just. And not being Fed enough and stuff like that. So, I mean, yeah, it kind of sucked to live in early Madrid. Plus the weather wasn't good, you know, and it was a very poor. Relatively poor compared to the other parts of Europe, I think. Pasturage based society, agriculture on the side. So here are these stories where anybody, anybody could be from the other world or anybody could stumble in there. And I think that's how we have to receive them.
- [36:15]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, I mean, it's. What, are we talking about the she or are we talking about literally the afterlife? You know, this is kind of a.
- [36:22]
Lisa M. Bittell
Yeah, you know, there is some association. There are a couple scholars who argued about the she, the other world being the afterlife. And I don't know, seems pretty lively to me in most of these stories. So.
- [36:33]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I know it's pretty lifelike, isn't it? Yeah, they're doing pretty.
- [36:36]
Lisa M. Bittell
And they knew. I mean, these guys, they knew what heaven was in hell. And this wasn't either of them.
- [36:41]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Mm. I love that for them.
- [36:56]
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Lisa M. Bittell
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- [37:53]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Well, okay, but here's the thing, right? You. You've mentioned that you as an ordinary person, which we all would have been, you know, we would have just been peasants out there slogging in the field. But your king might at any point in time get in a fight with another king and just do something wild that results in all of your crops being burnt and your child dying. Right. And I think that it's possible to look at some of these stories and kind of understand a little bit about kingship and governance, or at least maybe some hope that you can influence that a little bit with literature.
- [38:30]
Lisa M. Bittell
Yeah, that's an excellent point. Maybe. Yeah. You can learn about kings from these. You can learn about bad kings and good kings. And there's even One of the stories, as you know, has a long list of rules, sort of advice from Cuhulan about how to be a good king, as if he knew he was never a king. But anyway, he was never, you know, what's he got to say about this? Which is part of the whole, you know, speculum thing. Like, you know, lists of what good kings should be like. And there are other texts like that in Irish stuff in other cultures. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if they thought they could make good suggestions to kings, the writers of these tales, because they had other genres in which to do that.
- [39:06]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Right.
- [39:07]
Lisa M. Bittell
You know, you'll go to hell if you burn my crops again. Come and say you're sorry. But they certainly did know how to represent good kings and bad kings. And there are a lot of stories about good and bad kings that are more sort of pseudo historical in the Irish canon.
- [39:24]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And so, like, the bad kings are the ones who are simply out cattle rustling and, you know, ignoring things. And the good kings seem to be those who are like, oh, no, I do actually have people that I'm responsible for. Yeah.
- [39:38]
Lisa M. Bittell
Except that, you know, the tale of the wooing Maeddine, and she's a character herself, but in her last iteration, she's married to erud, the ploughman. They thought maybe he was an historical king and he does what's necessary. You know, his people say, we can't make you king till you have a queen. So he gets one, you know, and his name is the plowman. Obviously he's responsible for, you know, making the land prosperous and so forth. So he is a good king, but he doesn't win the girl anyways, because he's a bad fistful player. He just is not, you know, from the other world. He's not bitter.
- [40:17]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Well, this is one of the things that I think is quite interesting. And, you know, we see these kings who are, oh, he's good power. So this is like some guy who's good at agriculture. I think that one of the real characters in Otherworld is the Irish landscape itself. You know, it's so significant, you know, these demands that people from the other world make causeways or, you know, clear forests. There's all this direct talking about what the landscape does and how significant it is.
- [40:49]
Lisa M. Bittell
I come to see that as more and more the. The guiding principle. A lot of this literature. It's like people in Ireland were and still are living amongst these unignorable, unavoidable mounds, burial monuments from the Neolithic and the Bronze Age and the Iron Age that remained in use sporadically. People knew they were sacred places. Whether they knew they were the places of the dead. I think so, yeah. And these were the shi as well. And so you can't avoid the past, you can't avoid so called paganism, you know, the ancestors religion and what they believed in. So how do you live with that if you're a good Christian, you turn it into the past, but still it's there and there. You know, Irish literature is infamous, I think the early stories for their endless mention of place names. Why is it called the Ford of so and so? Because so and so had a battle here and he got his head chopped off and they buried him. And so it's his ford. And there's a whole genre of literature, automatic literature, the denhelaches that are just place names. It was called this for this reason or maybe this reason, but it was also called this for this reason. And the later end, they changed the name to that for that reason. And you know, there's this endless fascination and it's where the history and the myth were located, quite literally, I think, in the land. That's how you knew of the past because you saw it.
- [42:20]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Which is really interesting because I think that we still have that. I mean, you and I both as well. I like to think of myself as formerly North American, thank you very much. You know, I do think that there, there is something about being around sites of history and certainly I find it useful when I'm trying to imagine the historical past to look at a castle. And I think it's important. And what otherworld manages to do really well is point out that this isn't kind of a new and modern thing. You know, we're all living in a historical context and people seem to see that.
- [42:57]
Lisa M. Bittell
Yeah, I think they were very much aware of it. And I suppose it was like this in other parts of Europe. I don't know for sure. You know, there's been work as you know, on English places and not as many mounds still there, not to say, but lots of monuments. And you know how people in the early Middle Ages understood them. They used them for different purposes. They executed criminals on top of the mountains, you know, or they had judgment or whatever. So it was clear to people all over the place where the past lay. It's just like in Ireland, it was more obvious or something.
- [43:35]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I also noticed just, you know, though that I do occasionally pick up some, I guess, echoes in other mythologies. So, you know, famously some of my grandparents were Czech and Slovak. On one side and Irish on the other. You can tell by the accent, obviously. But so over in the Czech lands, one of their big mythologies, the story of the ruling dynasty. Over in the Czech land, they're called the Przemyslids, and they are the descendants of a ploughman called Przemysl and a fairy named Levuje. And they get together and then he becomes like this great king of the Czechs, and it's, you know, this farming prowess. And, you know, he got a hot babe from the other worlds, you know, And I was like, look, that's the same, you know, And I'm like, finally, you know, like, I'm getting together both sides of my heritage, and they get. We can all agree that, you know, plowman are kind of hot with it.
- [44:32]
Lisa M. Bittell
Although, you know, it reminds me of Melusine. Right. The story of Melusine. It's handy to have a fairy or someone from the other world or God. The genealogy, like the Lombards and the Franks, and everybody had them. If they didn't have Adam, they had a God. Or maybe they had Adam, too. Like Charlemagne.
- [44:50]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, you can always get yourself a Roman, too, cat, you. Or like, you know, someone from Troy.
- [44:55]
Lisa M. Bittell
You're not Newblast. That's the Brit. You do wonder if the past is necessarily then mythological.
- [45:05]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
So when you were going through all these stories, was there anything in particular that really surprised you when you were putting these together? I mean, there must have been 8 million things, but.
- [45:15]
Lisa M. Bittell
Yeah, and it wasn't so much plot or character, although I began to see similarities and themes and so forth through the stories that I hadn't thought about before. I'll tell you what really surprised me, though, was going back and actually, I did translate them all before I retold them. And, you know, it's a devilish language. It's really horrible and difficult and it can be pretty, but it's hard for, certainly for me to appreciate the beauty sometimes, but realizing that a turn of phrase carried such weight that I didn't appreciate before, or that a word could be so full of connotations that I hadn't thought of, really. Just puzzling word by word. Open the tails to me and made me think about things like, well, silence about who didn't get the words and stuff like that.
- [46:10]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Well, that's always the question, isn't it? And the problem with doing medieval history and certainly early medieval history, is that silence, you know, all the people that we're not hearing from, you know, for every great king who has a wonderful Cattle raid. You know, there's a normal guy on the other side who's lost his cows, you know.
- [46:29]
Lisa M. Bittell
Yeah, right. Well put, well put. I like that. I'm gonna start telling that to my students.
- [46:34]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Well, so I suppose there kind of an obvious question here perhaps, is do you think that these stories, you know, these. These quite old, very Irish quintessential stories have any influence now on modern Irish literature? Or are we being too romantic when we say things like that?
- [46:57]
Lisa M. Bittell
I already mentioned the sort of nationalist revival, the cultural revival. You know, they put a statue of Cuhulling in the post office, for heaven's sake. Maeve was on the buy pound note or something. I forget which. So, no, they're. They're very alive in the culture and in the literature, too, and not just because of the revival, although that's a lot of it. How could you avoid such great characters, you know, in writing? So there have been some really terrible novels and things based on all these stories. I'm just waiting for the anime film of the time. I think that would be brilliant, but.
- [47:30]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Oh, wow. Yeah. No, they could take my money right now. Maya.
- [47:36]
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- [47:37]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Anybody, like, copyright Lisa?
- [47:39]
Lisa M. Bittell
Yep, yep, yep.
- [47:40]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Absolutely. All right. Well, I mean, I guess to finish this off, what do you hope that readers are going to take away from Otherworld about, I guess, specifically medieval Irish culture and literature?
- [47:53]
Lisa M. Bittell
I love. I love that question. I think about it a lot. My great hope for the book was that people other than medievalist nerds were going to read it. I really hope they do, and I think that's happening and that they would appreciate that. Wait a minute. You know, fairy stories aren't like, you know, the only source of our fantasy here. Something was happening a long, long time before that. And these stories are more beautiful and touching and exciting and, as I said in the book, bloodier and sexier and funnier. Here's a literature you don't know about, and it's so cool. Couldn't you please, you know, dip in?
- [48:28]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
I think that is such a good way of putting it. I think that people forget that fairy tales, these are early modern inventions about what they think the medieval period was like. But we've got real medieval stories about real weird things, and they don't have the romanticism and they're.
- [48:45]
Lisa M. Bittell
And you know what? The Grimms didn't screw with those stories. We have them.
- [48:49]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, there's a place to go if you really. If you want the good stuff.
- [48:55]
Lisa M. Bittell
Yeah, right.
- [48:56]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
You know, all you gotta do is go check out Ireland it's uncut baby.
- [49:02]
Lisa M. Bittell
I'm not sure they'd appreciate that, but heck.
- [49:07]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Lisa, thank you so much. It has been an absolute delight talking to you. As I say, this book was just such a highlight of my reading last year. So thank you so so much for coming along.
- [49:20]
Lisa M. Bittell
Thank you and thanks for getting your relatives copies. Yay.
- [49:23]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
Yay. Thanks to Lisa Battelle and to you for listening to Gone Medieval from History hit. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award winning original TV documentaries, including my recent series Meet the Normans and ad free podcasts by signing up@historyhit.com subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify where you can leave us comments and suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.
- [50:11]
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Lisa M. Bittell
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