From the Vault: Gáe Bulg

into the tales of Mighty Colanko Holland. We ran into some difficulties pronouncing the title the name of the hero in this episode, but it is a pretty fun one that we originally published What To nineteen and it's we figured it's a perfect one to unleash once more, right before St. Patty's Day. Let's jump right in. By this time, the two combatants were at the edge feet of swords.

Then ford It caught Koo Holland unguarded and dealt him a blow with his ivory hilted blade, which he plunged into co Holand's rest, and Kohland's blood had dripped into his belt, and the ford was red with the blood from the warrior's body. Kohlan brooke not this wounding, for for thea had 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, 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 cast 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 its farther half was visible. After it had pierced for

Dead's heart in his breath. 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. Kuholland caught it between his toes and made a cast of it at for Dead, 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 service is now said for dead. I have fallen by that cast. But indeed strongly do 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 do not flourish. That 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 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 going to

do my best the tying bow colonge. Um, we're gonna be obviously talking about Irish mythology today, and unfortunately that means we're gonna be trying to pronounce 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 stick ideas, uh, magic, 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 Cupid's leaden arrows. We did the triedent. No, I'm down with it. 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. 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 befo four we did this episode. I had no idea who ko Holland was, and I probably would have pronounced it like ku kuk Lane or whatever this is. So 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 stretch of the imagination. But co Holand is so cool.

How could I have not heard about this? I feel like the people who study Irish mythology have 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 uh, you know, mythological hero that has been described as the Irish Achilles.

Or even the Irish Incredible Hulk custom maybe a little closer. Yeah, and if you can, but 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, 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. 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

ko Holand. So he wasn't born ko Holand he was born Satanta satantas his given name co Holand is more like like kylel becomes Superman. Right, So he's the nephew of the Irish king King Connor, and is the offspring of the union between Connor's sister and the god lug we we Lug was mentioned in that dramatic reading earlier.

Lug is a member of the Chuatha di don and the sort of spiritual god elf beings of of Irish myth so like, So as with the likes to 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 demigod, what like maybe a few too many of certain body parts. Yes,

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 other. Well, that sounds like a aragon of beauty now, even as

a child, his exploits made him famous. And then King 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. Yeah,

and 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

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, has 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, 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 so we've arrived at this version of cohol and already he is a beautiful, powerful warrior with some unnatural characteristics. But then, but then he also has an additional superpower. But wait, there's more. Yes, 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. The reastrade does this process. Yeah, and apparently apparently one Thomas Kinsella translated this state as the quote war 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 Rahalli translation of the Timebo clung from the book of Leinster, and this is about what happens in the warp spasm quote then occurred to Holland'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 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 mythology. It's like a giant ogre type good type being from Irish myth So like the Irish version of Yettenheim might be full of these. Yeah, yeah, So so clearly Coo Holand is nobody to mess with, Like this is a this is 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 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 overcome his strength, which I think is a common feature in like mythic hero cycles. 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 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 a you know, as Scilla

and charyptus. Uh. 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 disemboweing spear that is

enchanted to kill kings. The apparently had three of these, and they used too on his on his accomplices, including the charioteer. It was like the King of Chariots, which seems kind of like a a loop hole in 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 ca Holan has like a really bad dude moment here, 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 going to die standing up fighting. So he like tucks his innerage 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 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. And 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, 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 is brilliant light that like cuts off one of the

attackers a sword hands, I believe. And then it's not until they cut off k holand sword arm that the light dies away and that he's definitely dead. So it's like you don't have there's one thing to cut away the seat of reason from this mighty war. You also have to cut away like 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, 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 kooh Holan movie? Yeah, it 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 cah Holand enterprise here. Now, we were talking before the episode about who to cast as Coo holand we could not come up with 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 is also a really good actor. Yeah.

I think some of my favorite Irish actors. Let's see, 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, 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 Samus 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 ko holand you could do kind of u you know, like the Incredible Hulk TV show. We had to loof Rigno playing the the actual Hulk. Oh no, wait, this

has given me a great idea. Actually, like the main normal ko 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. But maybe our Irish listeners especially, we'll have some ideas about who who could be cast in such a film. Are Irish listeners also, I'm sure we're 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 the the unnatural death weapon of Ko holand we're gonna talk about, uh, the guy Bolga. Thank alright, 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 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 a particular text that we turn 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, the belly dart, the dart of belly, barbed spear, spear of bella 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 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 to something that floats. Oh, that's interesting. And then likewise it's also been potentially connected to the fair bolg Uh. These, according to to Carol Rose, the folklores that often refer 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 deadon and then driven into mountain caves and forests where they became

loathsome monsters. So possible connection there as well. But okay, whatever bul a means, they're bellows bulge whatever. We know that there's some kind of special magic spear. So how does it work? What does it do? Well? One of one of the things is that co Holand 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 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 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, 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 of from the cattle raid of Kolong. Uh. That really gives you some of the key attributes of the weapon here. So it is brought to coholand 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 toed 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 pierces his opponent through 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 they're battling each other, and

and they each have sort of magical abilities, you know. Uh. So coholand alone has the mastery of this u fabulous barbed weapon. And then his opponent has his horn skin that protects most to 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 Zanies. It's going to be challenging

to drop that into just casual conversation. I'm gonna I'm gonna dart Well dry Robert for the rest of my life for dead zanis. Alright. So that that that Edward pettit Um article that we mentioned earlier, and I believe this is Edward G. Pettit from the Sale University, who is apparently something of an Edgar Allan Poe expert and a monster expert I'm reading, uh 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 Helen can wield the guy bowl Gay here he alone was taught it's it's martial art, and the teacher varies from immortal to a see god. Okay. Another thing he mentions is that it's sort of a single use weapon,

right 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 to him by water, such as in 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 or special armor in an attempt to protect himself from it. And you know, it's clearly you know when he sees that 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. Yes, to

say the least. 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 barbs so that it has to be cut out in order to be removed. You 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 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 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 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 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 rapid growth of barbs through the entire body, like a real true body

horror 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 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, and even described as being used against actual demons in hell and later traditions apparently. And along those lines, it's also described as is sometimes is behaving

in some ways like a bellows. So again, anytime we're talking about say it, say a magical weapon in mythology, you know, we're not so much talking about a single thing, but we're talking about 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 to shake it. It is a it is a treacherous weapon, okay, even

for a mighty hero to employ. But then there's one final detail, a key 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 arm or something like that, is something that's taken from the body of a monster, like like Hercules.

You know, he makes 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, pet It says, could have been, you know, the depths of the ocean. And this is supported, he says, by later tales in which our hero Cooh 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 dog head, 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 point in the episode, I'm going to tell you what the full title of this 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 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, 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 there's people just using their imagination.

But in any case, this can be a 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 sting ray or at least at some point in its legacy. Uh it is interpreted as such. Stories of stingray. Barbed weapons are employed then to describe this weapon at 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 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. 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 raised stingrays 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, sting rays tend to swim by sort of undulating their their their wide pectoral fins sort of just like waves rather than flapping 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 seafloor hiding out, often partially

buried in sediment. You'll sometimes see stingrays like down down in the sediment with like sand piled on top of their little wings. 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 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 the

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 ambulae of Lorenzini. 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,

sting rays very rarely attack or kill humans. They are not considered aggressive at all. That generally, if there's an incident between 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 sting ray 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 sustain a numerous stabs from an eight foot wide stingray. He was in 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 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 that 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 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 as certainly people that that made their their livelihoods at the seaside would have encountered and even encounter entered fatally uh sting rays at 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. 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. 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, the story of how Odysseus and Cercy got together is that while Odysseus is on his way home, he ends up at the manner of Searcy, and Cearcy 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 Sarcey's living boyfriend for a while. Um, I mean, while while his wife Penelope is home being very dutiful and waiting on him, he's like shacking up

with Searcy. So as usual, Odysseus is kind of a jerk. But 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.

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 defended 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 the wound. A Pettant 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. 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. 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. There, the cunning Odysseus, who had passed through countless woes of the sea in his laborious adventures, the grievous stingray slew with one blow. So that's kind of combining, uh weirdly enough, like the like 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 Kohland. But believe they're in the part of the story there is the Kohland ends up accidentally killing his own son with the guy Bolga at one point, like he does not know that it's 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. Pettit also 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 forced this, And of course we know that the guy Bolga 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 Kohland by a god 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 is five inches long and kills trees when driven into the root. That's sort of

like what Opien said right there. It 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 Pettits sees really strong parallels between the myths of Kohland 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 Bolga. 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 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 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 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 third. It's supposedly rages for three days before they finally reached the point where ko Holand 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, and then he can, uh, he can fetch it with his fabulous seven towed 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 a so, stuff about like the minut chef, 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 the entire article on the Landing page for 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 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 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 anus and you just wonder like, Okay, is this just weird just because it's weird, or does all this weird disappoint to something?

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 you know, metaphor 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 can always just embrace just the raw alien nature of the myth you're presented with two and just to enjoy it on that level as well. Yeah. Nothing nothing more

fun than a really impractical weapon. Yes. Uh, speaking of which I have to say, as a fan, a longtime fan of the Mortal Kombat games, you know they put 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 complicated 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,

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 Kohlan. Yeah, they could put him in there, make him, make him a downloadable character. Wait, they have started crossing genres, haven't they. I think I said, I don't play the Mortal Kombat 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 played 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 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 he'll ko holand will wait three days to actually do it. Do we have other examples in our fiction and other myths where you have this this this sure shot weapon that 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 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 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 the monster for sure? Yeah, or for instance, Voltron is another example, Like I feel like they would try and battle whatever the ro beast 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 my monster grow it get big, and then they'd form a bigger robot. Uh, and then 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 I am reminded in professional wrestling, for instance, especially in like the Japanese of varieties. Uh. 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 and there are other finishers haven't worked, then they will turn into 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? 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 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. 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 is well uncheated first. Oh man, you have printed? I'd where it? Speaking of you know, we do have a T shirt store. Um you can, you can? Can we get those made? I would love to see it.

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