From the Vault: Jenny Greenteeth

that this originally published on October two. We got a lot of good listener mail about this one. So if you enjoyed this Vault episode and you want to hear more here people doing doing feedback about Jenny green Teeth, go check out whatever was our listener mail episode following this when this episode originally aired. With respect to Jenny Green Teeth, well, do I remember in childhood stays and isolated Gordon Farmstead with a yeoman's house dating back to

the early part of the seventeenth century, almost overshading. It was a somber old yew tree, doubtless coeval, but then beginning to decay. The end was being hastened by the annual Yule tide custom of lopping off the branches in order to decorate the tiny leaden casemented windows than existing in the house, and also in a chapel hard by the green of a neighboring village. Lying at some depth beneath the grassy hillock on which the fine old tree had so long stood sentinel was a deep dismal pool

which had sometimes been excavated as a marl pit. Of course, little lads and lasses, with no other playmates than themselves, would now and then, when other pastimes had been run through, amused themselves by sailing mimic flats and boats in order to deter them from approaching so dangerous a spot. When caught upon the steps leading down to the lading hole, an anxious mother would affirm solemnly, as we then thought that jinny green teeth was artfully lurking in the waters below.

Proof of the story was afforded to our unsophisticated minds by the exhibition of a set of human teeth enameled with green tartar. These were said to bear only a faint resemblance to those of the demonus below, who, with her long, sinewy arms, first drew children in and then devoured them. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert. I'm so excited. It's October. Yes, we

are into our our October offerings. Here a full month of of Halloween flavored content, monster science, a whole month. It's it's the most wonderful time of the year. And I think I say that every year it is. Now. Granted, we do let a few other monsters, uh, you know, leak out and crawl out during the rest of the year, but but we do set aside a number of different

topics just for this month's celebration. So that passage that I read at the beginning of the episode was from a letter by a folklorist named John Higson, English folklorist from Lee's who chronicles stories of fairies and Boggart's uh.

And it was published in Notes and Queries, a medium of intercommunication for literary men, general readers, et cetera, from Oxford University Press in eighteen seventy, and I'm going to be quoting a little bit more from Higson's work, but as you may have detected from that passage, today we're going to be focusing on a particular malicious water spirit, a sodden hag, a faery of the depths named Jenny green Teeth, who will pull you in. Yes, to invoke

one of my favorite ClickHole videos. If you don't follow the rules, Jenny Green Teeth will kill you with their sharp things. And I love knowing that. Now there are a couple of ways that you could classify Jinny Green Teeth, like what categories she goes in. I guess one would be to say that she's part of this this class of bogies, and Boggert's and Higgson's term fair and frightful things, the sort of English or or UK tradition of frightful spirits, Yes,

and nursery bogies. Uh, that's certainly the term that folkloris Carol Rose uses in her her encyclopedias of various magical creatures, including giants, monsters, and dragons. I think the nursery bogie categorization was applied by the folkloris Catherine Briggs, who does

a lot on English fairies and the nursery bogie. Bogie specifically were bogies that were invoked to frighten children, often with an instructive angle, and it seems like they wouldn't usually have much in the way of real mythic roots beyond their role, as you know, an educational and instructional entity. But on the other hand that they very much could have roots, they could have inspirations because uh, water hags like Jenny green Teeth, they're not unique to the British isles.

They're not unique to Jenny green Teeth especially, we will discuss seems to be situated in like northern England, especially Northwest England around Liverpool in Lancashire. Yeah, and we'll will reference a few of her ken that live in the area, as well as some of her more distant relatives that

live elsewhere. But it does make I kept wondering as I was looking at these different examples, some of which that were very much just a folklore nursery bogie and others that had more of a mythic air about them. You wonder, like, to what extent is a particular nursery bogie a stripped down version of some older, deeper mythological creature. Or is it something entirely new or mostly new? I feel like it's probably a a little bit of both. There's probably an ebb and flow uh that can be

found there. If the nursery bogie is a horrific schoolhouse rock video, is it inspired by something horrific from the past, that is having that is being somewhat tamed or bent to the will of the warning instructive parent. Indeed, indeed, so let's let's go back to Carol Rose. What what does Rose have to say about old Jenny? Alright? So Rose wrote that Jenny grin teeth is an evil quote predator of humans and in particular awaits the unwary child

who may go too close to the water. So you get too close and she'll come at you with her long green things. Then she'll pull you into the depths, and she can haunt virtually any pond that's covered in green slime. And again, she's, of course a nursery bogi um, a monster used to instruct children and enforce a wide variety of rules. For example, another bogey that that exists out there is the red legged scissor man. Uh. And there's a delightful grotesque rhyme about the red legged says man.

And essentially, if you suck your thumb um, the red legged scissor man will come and cut off your thumbs, which is terrifying. But you see, it's very much just a monster that's made up to scare children out of doing something they're not supposed to do. But then with Jenny Green teeth, the steaks are much higher. This isn't about prevention preventing uh, you know, thumb sucking. This is about preventing a child from wandering too close to the water,

falling in and drowning. Now, as we go through the episode, I think we will steadily learn more and more about exactly what that water threat is. Or sometimes Jenny is deployed in ways that have nothing to do with water, though clearly her home is in the water. She she is a water faery, a water hag. Yeah. I can't help but think of what is it Meg muckle Bones from the Riddley Scott a filmed legend Exactly. I think

Meg muchacle Bones is directly inspired by Jenny. She she's got to be Yeah, just the grotesque hag like monstrosity, this troll like creature of this loathsome entity that rises up out of the swampy muck. Now I want to continue with what Higson wrote which was published in in that Notes and Queries in eighteen seventy, where he's talking about the role of Jenny Green Teeth in in English folklore.

Picking up where my first quote left off, he says that some of the pits in the locality, and this is generally gonna be talking about Northwest England, in the

locality were likely patronized by a Jenny Green Teeth. And in my Gorton Historical Recorder, published in eighteen fifty two, there are briefly noticed a dozen places in the township once supposed to be haunted with Boggarts and fair and in addition there were nut NaN's clap cans, Wills with the whisp, oh yeah and Will of the whisps, Buddy Jack with the lantern lantern or Lanthorne it seems to

be spelled and peg with the iron teeth. And lastly, which is more to the point, he says quote, to restrain their children from venturing too near the numerous pits and pools which were to be found in every fold and field. A demonus or guardian was stated to crouch at the bottom. She was known as Jenny Green Teeth, and was reported to prey upon children who ventured too near her domain. Sometimes the water demonus was termed grind Low. This incarnation, of course, might be more familiar to fans

of Harry Potter. Oh do they invoke Grendil or the grindy Low as I've seen it written? Yeah, Rowling mentions grindy Lows. I don't really remember exactly how I think they are water dwelling monsters, but that's all I recall. I like to maybe think that the grind Low is the species and Jenny as the individual. Oh I like that. Yeah,

Jenny is one particular grindy Low. Though, as many authors point out, if there's just one Jenny, she really gets around, right, because she's in every stagnant pool and marl pit filled in with water, and every dangerous pit of any kind in Northwest England. Well, I mean, on one hand, it makes sense that if you've just about any loathsome pool in in England, if you've go back far enough in time,

you'll probably encounter some sort of horrific tragedy. One thing I like about Jenny green Teeth is that, for some reason her name actually sounds scary to me, whereas many of these Boggers and fair End and stuff, they their names are funny. Unfortunately something has been lost over time. Uh, and so you get like Boum Rapid and the Grizzlehurst Boggert and cleg Hoboggert and stuff. Well, it's it's it's interesting.

You have to wonder were they given fun names intentionally or was the or was the the fun name terrifying within contexts? For instance, take Pennywise the clown. It's a pretty sinister sounding name if you have decades of familiarity with Stephen King's it. But was the name initially sinister or was it initially just a ridiculous sounding clown name. That's a very good point. You know. This will actually go with something that we're going to talk about in

a minute. There's a paper I read by a folklorist and sort of like folk song researcher named Annie Gilchrist. Two chronicles these horrific children's songs of like early twentieth century England, and they're all about like murder and cannibalism and infanticide and family members eating each other and all that stuff. But they're set to these like happy little nursery rhyme tunes. I guess that makes them more creepy, more creepy, but also more memorable. I guess maybe it

helps in in relaying the content to young minds. To explore Jenny a little bit more. Through Higson's letter, I

want to read another passage he writes quote. A clerical friend whose juvenile years were spent in the vicinity of Stockport, Cheshire, states that he remembers being threatened more than once with Jenny Green Teeth, but in that case, probably as there was no pond near the house, she was said to perch in the tops of the trees at least after nightfall, his young imagination having been wrought up to the proper pitch, he was led into the garden and bade to listen

to the site of the night wind through the branches, and then told it was the moaning of Jenny Green Teeth. It may be just then disturbed with the nightmare. Another clergyman born in Walton Ladale informs me that he remembers an old pit, since filled up but then existing in his native village and in which it was affirmed, lived Jenny green Teeth, ever on the watch, and therefore woe betided the urchin who ventured too near her domain. Jenny

was also known in Manchester. Some fifty years ago, says an antiquarian friend, shooters Brook passes in a culvert under the aqueduct which carries the Manchester and Ashton under Lynn Canal over Shore Street near the London road Station. At that period, there existed an opening or break left in the culvert, forming a dangerous spot for children to play beside,

and yet they often selected it. Their mothers tried to destroy the fascination by stating that Jenny Green Teeth laid in wait at the bottom in order to nab children playing there, and highlights something that I think will come back to throughout the episode, which is that it's interesting that children are drawn specifically, it is said, to these dangerous locations, the break in the culvert, the dangerous pond

or pit. It's like the children specifically want to go right to where the danger to their lives is the highest, and they have to be warned with another kind of danger to keep them away. Oh yeah, I I. I see this this all the time with with my son and his various friends, when we take them out for

walks and in the nature trails and whatnot. If there's some sort of dangerous little area where it's like a sheer drop off or something like, that's what they're drawn to, and then you have to you have to urge them away and say, like, look, there's a zero entry like, uh, you know, creek area up ahead, Let's go playing that, not this, uh, this scary little bog that you've picked

out here for yourself. Uh. And indeed, some of the places that that I've seen them drawn to just in the past few weeks are are very very much to the sort of place that a Jenny Green Teeth might be said to reside in. So, Robert, I have a question. Have you ever invoked a fictional monster or supernatural threat in order to scare your child away from a real threat? No? I haven't um that. That being said, you know some people are against utilizing, say Santa Claus of the Tooth Fairy.

We have Santa Claus, we have the Tooth Fairy, we have the Switch which for Halloween. But beyond these beneficial entities, we have not invoked any other supernatural entities, uh in our daily practice. I guess we just try and be

honest about what dangers are. But you know, I can understand the temptation here because with Jenny Green teeth, you that the parent is invoking or creating an imagine a monster, a fantastic lethal monster, instead of having like a frank discussion about the more mundane but equally like traumatic dangers that are involved. And sometimes you want to protect them from the truth of of real danger, like setting down and explaining the dangers of drowning to a child like

that can be intimidating. You want to shield them from drowning, but you there's also this instinct to shield them from knowledge of that world. And so I can understand the temptation to utilize the fantastic to create something horrific but fictional as a like almost a gentler way of teaching them the same lesson, uh, which is weird because that can be they can I guess be even more harmful in some respects uh, because you're creating this nightmare creature

to live in their heads. But I can see where you could reach that point, um with only the best intentions. That's a really interesting point, and we will talk a little bit more about the real dangers of water and drowning later in the psychology of of how this works out. But um, yeah, is it possible that the monster is actually a defanged version of the threat in a way, not a more threatening version of the threat, but putting the threat into a form that feels more comfortable and

less depressing. Yes, I think so. I think there's a strong case to be made for that. Now, Robert, if you are right with it, I'd like to look at a couple of older a couple more older books and papers that mentioned Jenny Green Teeth. One is a book by Percy B. Green called A History of Nursey Rhymes. Oh really, Percy B. Green? Okay, Yeah, that guy didn't need a pseudonym, or maybe that is the pseudonym anyway, So I want to quote him later, also because he

mentions another fascinating story about a water monster. But Green writes in a middle in the middle of a section about water spirits, he writes, in England, to the North Country, people speak of a river sprite as Jenny Green Teeth, and the children dread to the Green slimy covered rocks on the streams bank or on the brink of a black pool. Wait, I should I want to throw in this is key too, right, because we're talking about the slime covered rocks themselves, like that's a key danger that

kid's gonna slip and fall. Um. Yeah, sorry, I had I had to jump in on that. No, that's a very good point. I mean, there's actually specific information about real dangers being conveyed in the superstition though. So it's like you see the green covered rocks, that that might be a sign that the rock is going to be something you could slip off of, and the child might not know that naturally, but the child sees it and says, oh,

there's green on the rocks Jenny green Teeth is about huh. So, you know that's that feels a lot more calibrated, where the example we heard earlier about Jenny Green Teeth living in the trees that felt like the tail had become unhinged, you know. Yeah, Well, that's part of the problem with creating superstitions and myths about monsters like this is that if you're trying to do it for a specific purpose, like to warn children, myths go wild, and it's always

become untamed. They roam loose, and they become their own thing. Yeah, I mean, as does a logical fear itself. I mean, even as adults, we can probably think of things in our lives where they're not really you know, they're not monsters, but they're at least a little illogical. And if you don't watch them, if you don't curb them, then yeah, they can start living in the trees. They go ferrell. But Green writes that a warning of a Lancashire mother to her child is quote Jenny Green, teeth will have

the goist onto river banks. Now, I think I already mentioned the the author An E. G. Gilchrist, who has done some work chronicling folk songs discovered in the wild, and she wrote a paper for the Journal of the Folk Song Society in nineteen nineteen that is called Note on the Lady Dressed in Green and Other Fragments of tragic ballads and folk Tales Preserved among Children. So this is about folk songs sung by children in early twentie cent England. And these songs are just messed up. They

are I think I mentioned earlier. They're they're all about murder, cannibalism, hiding dead bodies in your house. It is fascinating that we often think that children need to be protected from horror, Like I can understand that impulse, but I don't know. This just seems to me like an indication that children naturally gravitate to themes of murder and death and gore. Yeah, and they can be rather severe in their invocation of

these ideas. Now, the main song talks about in this paper is uh is one called the Lady Dressed in Green, which gil Christ heard sung by a girl named Margaret in a Southport orphanage, and Margaret apparently brought it from a Lancashire workhouse. And gil Chris goes on to discuss how versus of the in verses of this song, the Lady Dressed in Green is holding a baby and then she murders her baby with a pen knife, and then

three bobbies come and haul her off to prison. And so gil Christ is talking about the significance of the song and it's parallel us to other similar children's rhymes, songs, murder ballads and so forth. And one of the interesting things is the significance of the color green, and this leads her to talk about the color green in its relation to curses and bogies and evil fairies and spirits.

We will talk more about the significance of the color green later, but as for Jenny Green Teeth, Gilchrist writes quote of still more sinister import is the color In the case of Jenny Green Teeth, the evil water spirit appearing is the green scum on stagnant water what claws you in, as country children say, if you go too near or in the obscure and horrible English folk tale of the green Lady, who appears to be a sort of lamia or vampire, living on or delighting in blood,

and perhaps deriving her name and Hugh from a classic serpent ancestry. But Jenny Green Teeth and perhaps green Lady also is allied with the German water nicks and green hats, the hat appearing to be a tuft of beautiful vegetation growing in the water, who dragged down the unwary to the depths. They're horrible fate being visible in a fountain of blood which spouts up through the surface of the water.

This is interesting the the the mention of of serpents, because as I was looking through Carol Rose and looking at various uh aquatic uh you know, fresh water, especially monsters. There are a lot of serpents in various beliefs, weird serpents in uh Native American beliefs as well. And this makes a certain amount of sense, right, because you will

encounter snakes around the water sometimes. Yeah, and this would be a very old fear and human culture, but also even predating some of that, you know, just sort of an ingrained thing to be afraid of. Yeah, we're all the cat with the cucumber behind us. Yes, Now, I can't move on without mentioning what Gilchrist writes about this other story, the green Lady story, that may have its

origins in some kind of serpent ancestry. She writes that she's never found a version of the green Lady folktale in print, but there's there's a version she heard from a person named Ethel Kidson, and this is how it goes. A little girl took service with the Green Lady. The next morning, after preparing breakfast for her, she called up the stair, green Lady, Green Lady, come down to your breakfast.

But the Green Lady did not come down. The formula was repeated for dinner and supper, but still she did not appear. At last, the little girl went upstairs to the chamber door, and, urged by curiosity, looked through the keyhole and saw the green lady dancing in a basin of blood. Now, this paper is actually worth a look if you want to just go look it up to see the absolutely depraved folk songs that children sing. Oh, yes, one of these that you highlighted here, My mama did

kill me? Uh, And it has the sheet music with it. I'm gonna attempt to sing just a little of it, with fair warning I'm not very good at reading sheet music. But it goes something like this, my mama did kill me and put me in a pie. My dad da did eat me and say it was I. And then it goes on my brother and sister did pick my bones and bury them under cold marble stones, and bury

them under cold marble stones. We we were emailing with our producer Alex about this, and Alex was trying to make sense of the line my Dada did eat me and say it was I. Now, one way of reading that could be like, I don't know the dada knows what the child's flesh tastes like like, oh, that's that's him, that's the one I'm eating, or maybe the dad da is saying, no, you're eating yourself. It's you that's doing the eating of you. I tend to favor the earlier interpretation,

but either way you slice it, it's pretty unsettling. One more paper I came across that mentioned Jenny green Teeth I thought had a really kind of sad but fascinating story about something that happened in the sixteen century. So this is a paper by Terence R. Murphy called Woeful Child of Parents, Rage, Suicide of Children and Adolescence in Early Modern England fifteen o seven to seventeen ten in

the sixteenth Century Journal. And so the author writes that there was a case of an adolescent suicide in Cambridgeshire in fifteen sixty five, where a quote twelve year old Agnes Adam went horseback riding with her girlfriend and accidentally got her clothes dirty. She came toward home, but fearing that her father would punish her, she rushed to a

pond in her father's clothes and drowned herself. And then there's a footnote saying, quote the coroner's jury swore that Agnes adams motives were timur parentium correct shetionis and met us castigatitionis. The jury could or would not recognize her hostility toward her parents. How when and where she killed herself suggested that she intended to become in death a life demanding water spirit. The motive was childish and silly. This spirit was a nursery bogey, which adults customarily and

cynically used to intimidate children into behaving themselves properly. Little children like Agnes believed in nursery bogies, but wiser adults did not. This is one instance where adult duplicity and terrorization of children backfired when a child believed her elders lies enough to act on them in order to get revenge. Well, there we go. We've reached a like pique bleakness for

this episode. That's a sad story, but it does illustrate something interesting about how, you know, we've been talking about using the idea of a specter or a water hag or a monster to warn children away from real danger. But this tends to show that, if, if this is really what happened in this case, a child's belief in the existence of this kind of creature could actually cause her to call it to kill herself, to cause harm to herself. Yeah, it's it's it's powerful magic to start

messing with the magic of belief. All right, I think we should a quick break and when we come back we will talk about other specters of the water than all right, we're back, Robert, tell me about Nelly Long Arms. All right, Yeah, so these are We're gonna run through a few different versions of of old Jenny Green Teeth here and these are all from again, that that excellent

book by Carol Rose. Uh. If you look up Carol Rose and Monsters or Fairies, you'll find her Encyclopedia's um they're all still in print and I always highly recommend them. Lots of wonderful illustrations. But yeah, we have Nelly Long Arms, and she's essentially just Jenny Green Teeth with the fangs and the green skin, but with added elongated arms and spidery fingers. And you'll find her in the folklore of Derbyshire, Cheshire, Lancashire,

Shropshire and Yorkshire. And there's also a nearly identical long armed monster named We've discussed this in already the Grindy Low and it's tied more spec typically New Yorkshire. And then there's peg Powler. This is another creature of the same sword. And this one is just straight up identical to Jenny green Teeth. But she said to live specifically in the River Tys and belongs to the folklore of

the border region between Yorkshire and Durham. Now. Carol Rose also mentions a male incarnation of the same entity named Cutty Dyer. This is from the folklore of Ashburton in Somerset, England, and he said to haunt the bridge over the river. Yo, I believe it is hy Yo, yeah, I guess i'll e o. And he was in a normal he described as an enormous man with eyes like saucers, and he'd emerge behind you and either pull you into the river

or slit your throat and drink your blood. And she she shares the following little ditty that's attributed to an old I believe blind Ashburton resident in nineteen seventy two, remembering this is you know, from from his childhood. It goes, don't he go down the river's eye? Cut he die? Or do a bide, cut you die, or ain't no good cuttie die, or drink your blood. This one didn't come with sheet music, so I don't know if if it had a tune to it, or is just like

something you might chant. I kind of like the idea of it just being a dirge. Now. Water monsters have just got to be one of the best kind of monsters, right, because they can play on several different fears at once. Right, they can be near you without you knowing it because they're underneath the surface and maybe the water is dark or murky and you can't see down there. But they also play on fears of drowning. Once they get you

down into their world, they've got all the power. You're not going to be able to defend yourself much underwater. So there's a lot of great water monsters around the world, far too many for us to talk about today. Right. For example, we've talked about the Japanese monster, the Kappa before. That's right, the Japanese spirit. It kind of looks like a ninja turtle, but with a little pool of water and its skull, and if you get it to bow to you and the water or spills out and it

loses its vital essence. Yeah. So so they're all over the world. But since we're talking about Jenny Green Teeth today, I think we can specifically focus on like water monsters of the British Isles. Right, So, another one I know about that Katherine Briggs wrote about is the idea of the kelpie. Katherine Briggs wrote that Scotland has a kelpie in every lonely lock. Yeah, the kelpy is very interesting.

This is this is one um. I don't know if I read about it before Dungeons and Dragons or if I was initially introduced to it in Dungeons and Dragons, but it's I think long been um, an inmate of the monster manual. But it's a traditional Scottish monster said to haunt the shores of locks forwards and fairy points. And it seems to be more robust than a mirror nursery bogeye, or or at least it evolved beyond that point.

Maybe it ended up influencing some of these other entities we've been discussing, but it does have a far more robust air of legend about it. It can appear as a shaggy old man, a handsome young man, or, most famously, a beautiful black or gray horse. WHOA, that's a departure. Yeah. Never, it's a beautiful woman though, which it seems unnecessary for to take that form, because the horse form was sufficient to attract women, young men, and children alike. Everybody loves

a gorgeous horse. Do they do you when you just see a horse? Do you walk up to it? Yeah? I mean, especially back in the day, like a horse like this, it was value. I love. Also the mythic dimension of it. You know, there's this kind of idea that maybe more tender individuals they want to go and meet the animal, and maybe harsher individuals they just see maybe the monetary value or the raw power of the thing,

I guess. So, oh yeah, the monetary value is I guess like seeing a horse without an owner or a parent would be what kind of seeing like a free car somewhere? Yeah? Yeah, I mean horse thieves were everywhere, right, So there's kind of this idea that an unattended horse is also you know, it's something that maybe it belongs to somebody and maybe you're just gonna try and steal it. But the idea here is that the creature, the kelpie was it was a portent of drowning, an aquatic doom.

But if you could force a bridle over it, you could harness the power of the kelpie and ride it. And there are various tales of like individuals who successfully rode the kelpie and and what one might do with the harness power of the kelpie that sort of thing, Well, what would you do? Um, you would basically just just run them up for a little bit. There are also some tales of like the kelpie powering water wheels at mills. So there's this interesting idea of like the kelpie being this, uh,

the embodiment of just the raw power and danger of water. Yeah, that's really interesting. It's kind of like a horse, you know, something that may be tamed and used if done so respectfully, but that if if if you step out of line or you don't know what you're doing, you can easily be killed by it. Yeah. And of course a brook can gallop the same way a horse can. Uh. Yeah. So we see some more dualities like that in other

water creatures. Like one that comes to mind I think is is it would it be the marrow or the mirrow marrow of Ireland yes, there there's some versions of this that are more purely monstrous, and other versions that appear to be less less dangerous, less monstrous. Yeah, like is described by Carol Rose. He gives a pretty friendly account of them, that they're peaceful and they generally get along with humans. They have a little red cap that allows them to shape shift and walk on land and uh,

and they sometimes breed with humans as well. But from that Percy B. Green book I mentioned earlier. Now, who knows this is from the eighteen hundred, so maybe Green's folklore work is is not super rigorous. But Green has a much darker vision of the mirrow. He writes, quote the Irish fisherman's belief in the soul's cages and the mirror or man of the sea was once held in general esteem by the men who earned a livelihood on

the shores of the Atlantic. This mirrow or spirit of the utters, sometimes took upon himself a half human form, and many a sailor on the rocky coast of Western Ireland has told the tale of how he saw the mirrow basking in the sun watching a storm driven ship. His form is described as that of a half man, half fish, a thing with green hair, long green teeth, legs with scales on them, short arms like fins of

fish's tail, and a huge red nose. He wore no clothes and had a cocked hat like a sugar loaf, which was carried under the arm. Never did be put on the head unless for the purpose of diving into the sea. At such times, he caught all the souls of those drowned at sea and put them in cages

made like lobster pots. Oh wow, I love how that this invokes plenty of you know, much older ideas of aquatic human ollids, and even like they an old man of the sea, uh, you know, much like like Proteus himself, but depresent is this weird twist of him essentially taking a lobster pots to catch souls. Well, it strikes me as a perhaps intentionally ironic or blasphemous in version of the Christian idea of ben fisher of men the marrow

as a fisher of men. Interesting. Now, I also have to mention one of one of my favorite depictions of of of a fresh water monster, and that's the illustration What Came of Picking Jessamine by Henry justice Ford, an illustration in Andrew Lang's The Gray Fairy book. Okay, this is a great illustration, right and I'm going to make sure to include this on the landing page for this episode. It's stuff to Goo your Mind dot com so everybody can check it out. But it's but the book itself,

The Gray Fairy. This is available as well on the web. I think Project Gutenberg has it and you can you can get the PDF and scroll through it and read these various uh fairy tales from throughout Europe and uh and and even beyond I believe, but they all have these wonderful illustrations as well. But um, I'm gonna kind of just roll through the story really quickly. It's an illustration though from the Portuguese fairytale what came of picking flowers?

And I'm gonna try and roll through it real quick for everybody. Basically, a woman three daughters are lost in the process of picking three different plants, a pink carnation arose and then some Jessamine or Jasmine. Their brother, the only survivor in the family, grows up, acquires some magical

items and decides to get his lost sisters back. But as it turns out, the first sister was not dead, but locked away in the magic castle, trapped in I guess you can just say a magical marriage arrangement with the King of the Birds. So he fixes that, and then he becomes a friend of the King of the Birds. Wait, so removes the King of the Bird's wife who is his sister, but also becomes friends with the King of

the Birds. Well, I'm just gonna just just to simplify things, I'm just gonna say he fixes their magical scenario because the first two sisters here are are less important for our purposes here. But then he goes off and heaches searches for the second sister. He finds that she too is trapped in a magical marriage to the King of the Fish. And here it sounds like there's more of a Lady Hawk scenario where husband's a fish half the time,

and it's it's a kind of annoying. So he manages to fix this scenario as well and becomes a friend of the King of the Fish. Is the brother Rutger howerd I And when I was reading, I certainly pictured him like that, like Rudgar Howard, but with more of a fishy look to him. And then Finally, he sets out for the third a sister, and find finds that she was in fact captured by a monster. This monster that we see in this illustration what came of picking Jessamine.

This troll like entity that grabbed her, came up out of the water and pulled her in. But this monster has been keeping her prisoner in his castle because she refuses to marry him. So the brother sneaks in and he talks to her about this, and he says, look, here's what you need to do. Promise to marry the monster, but only if he tells you how he can die.

Tell make sure that he tells you the secret of his death, because like a lot of magical creatures, you know, there's only one way, one specific way you can kill it. That is a smart pre nup. Yeah, so I mean, yeah, if you're a horrible monster. But anyway, this uh, the monster here he just kind of laughs and says, oh, yeah, I'll tell you because this information will be completely useless,

especially to you. And he tells her that there's an iron casket at the bottom of the sea and it contains a magical dove, and that dove's egg if dashed against the monster's forehead will kill it. Okay, so um, you know, he laugh has a good laugh at that. And meanwhile the brother uh sneaks away and he goes to the King of the fish and convinces the King of the fish, who you know owes in one to fetch the casket, which he does. Uh. They bring the casket up, and then the bird flies out of the casket.

So he asked the King of the birds to grab the dove and bring it back. So the King of the Birds goes off, gets the dove, brings it back. He ends up with that egg, and he rushes back to where the monster is waiting impatiently for the go ahead to marry the sister. And he's becoming, you know, impatient. So I'm just gonna read the last little bit from Andrew Lang's version of the story quote. At a sign from her brother, she sat down and invited the old

monster to lay its head on her lap. He did so with delight, and her brother, standing behind her back, passed her the egg unseen. She took it and dashed it straight at the horrible head, and the monster started and with a groan that people took for the rumblings of an earthquake, he turned over and died. That's a boss fight for the ages. Yeah, I love it. It's it's one of those fairy tales. It's maybe a little shaky in the early goings, but it totally delivers the end.

I like how the the alliance with the King of the Birds and the King of the Fish comes through. Yeah. Yeah, this is one I would have loved to have seen Jim Hinson's storyteller bring the life because it's it's it's a little bit perfect, because it's a little bit weird, and it has a really hideous monster in it and a kind of whimsical way of defeating it. That is

a great story. But I want to go back to Jenny Green Teeth and discuss a little bit more about what the Jinny Green Teeth lore means, like what it tells us about culture, about our values, our psychology, and so one of the things that's explored is the the importance of the color green in the Jenny Green Teeth lore. Anny Gilchrist, in her paper on The Lady Dressed in Green,

talks about this a good bit. She says that in in England at the time, the color green is widely believed to be a quote ill omened hue for a garment because it symbolizes the loss of maidenhood or the loss of a lover. U. And there's this saying apparently that green is forsaken and yellows forsworn or green can also symbolize being passed over for a younger bride quote, as in the case of the green stockings or garters, in which the elder unmarried sisters had to dance at

a younger sister's wedding. But she also writes that quote the unluckiness of green clothing must be a very old belief and perhaps had reference originally to a fear of incurring the hostility of the spirits of the woods by borrowing their livery. So the idea there is that the fairies, the fairies are not nice. I mean, this is a sort of modern thing that we think fairies are. Oh, fairies are sweet, they're fun. Traditionally, I think fairies are

much more nasty creatures. Oh yeah, the fairy folk are are generally best thought of as uh, poorly understood magical alien folk that kind of lived and live in the folds of realities. Yeah, and and so if the fairies dress in green, they can easily be made jealous to

see humans dressing in green. Apparently, uh, and so gil Christ talks about how there's a book called Folklore of the Northern Countries by a writer named Henderson, and Henderson writes, quote green, ever an ominous color in the Lowlands of Scotland, must on no account be worn there at a wedding. The fairies whose chosen color it is is would resent

the insult and destroy the wearer. Henderson also claims that mothers in the south of England sometimes forbid their daughters from wearing green, and avoid even having green furniture in their houses. And also there's a general belief in the folk rhymes of the time that the color green is a sign of hatred when given as a token from someone, so like you would give someone a blue ribbon as a sign of true love, but you'd give someone a

green ribbon as a sign of hatred. Gil Christ also says that a tailor once told her that his workers hated to see a green garment come into their come into their shop for mending, since they believe that there's this rotten curse of the color and it could fall on them as well, for for for working on it. And then she also says, of course that the color green is associated with poison. So I think this is interesting because I think of green as a very nice, RESTful,

pleasant color. In fact, I think green is my favorite color. Well, I'm trying to think of of modern uh individual is associated with green. Like, what's the greenest superhero? I guess like green lantern, writer's green. There's another green Well, there's green Goblin, but he's he's bad. What's the green hornet? Green hornet? I don't know much about green hornet, and I'm sure you where's all that much green? Confession, I don't know that much about superheroes. There's Peter Pan, kind

of a superhero. Well he you know, Pan embodies sort of the spirits of wildness in the forest. He's sort of wearing green because he is a fairy in a way. Peter Pan is like Pan. You know Robin Hood as well. Yeah, these green garments, I think are associated with the fact that a person is sort of is of nature, is of the fairy world, is untamed and uncivilized and not not necessarily subject to say the Christian authorities. You know, this would I think this would be a topic for

another day. But then you could you could also explore the whole realm of the green man the green night from our Thoritian legend. Well, yeah, I think that that

would be a great thing to explore. Whatever is going on with the color green in Gilchrist time is is definitely, as far as I can tell, not reflected in the color psychology of late twentie and nearly twenty first century scientific journals, and as far as I can tell, most of this research appears to be on Americans, And I can see how color psychology could be hugely influenced by culture, of course, like it would really depend on like the

culture of the people you're testing. Yeah, I mean one modern example of this, if I'm remembering the antidote, the anecdotea correctly. Um. We've touched on before the importance of red uh in Chinese culture uh, and I believe it has to do with phone uh smartphone design uh. The idea of something going from red to green being a positive movement and say checking off a tab or something. But I've my understanding is correct. For Chinese markets, you'll often see an inversion of that, like to go to

the positive movement, cannot be away from red. It must be towards red, because red is the most auspicious color. Yeah, that's interesting, and so I think it's pretty clear that color psychology is going to be heavily influenced by culture. I doubt that there is just like a you know, a universal color association thing across human beings that's part

of our biological brains or something. Oh yeah, Like I've read before about interpretations of the color pink and about how we we fell into this kind of you know, grotesque cohole of just assuming that like pink is a feminine color, whereas you see older traditions where pink was very much a masculine color, and ultimately like what is what is the color of fresh wounds on the battlefield? You know? But pink and red, you know, I think of the I believe pink is the color and Game

of Thrones attributed to the Bolton's. It's like red and pink or their colors because they don't like playing human flesh. Those creeps. Yeah they're no good. Well anyway, just whatever all the caveats are and how this is influenced by culture and everything. I was poking around in a few studies about color psychology, and generally what it seemed to be.

What seemed to be the case to me is that green is not usually viewed by the subjects of these studies as something that's cursed or scary or or an ill omen Blue and green are generally seen as more psychologically relaxing, whereas red and yellow or more arousing and more associated with anxiety. States Um and the authors of

one study described how green was described. The word green was associated with the quality of being good, whereas like the word yellow was associated with the quality of being bad, and that blue and blue, green and green were colors that cause subjects to feel more pleasure than colors like yellow and yellow. Green. Here's another significant thing in the Jinny green teeth folklore, and it is the significance of

a particular green plant. So I want to talk about a paper called Lemna Minor and Jinny Green Teeth by a botanist in English, hotanist named Roy Vickery, who has apparently written a good deal about the folklore of plants. And this was published in the journal Folklore in nine three.

And this was a great paper about Jenny Green Teeth because he's picking up on the work of people like Catherine Briggs and Vickery wants to give a fuller account of Jenny Green Teeth and explore the relationship between Jenny and this water plant known as lesser duck weed or Lemna minor. Now LiMnO minor you've probably seen before. I added a picture to our our outline here, Robert, so you can take a look at it. But Lemno minor.

The duckweed is a is a green plant that floats on the top of stagnant water and ponds and pools, and it has very small leaves and can end up looking like a flat matte of green on top of the water. If it collects enough, it can make a watery surface look just sort of like a flat pudding green or something. It's like the hard phone cap a top and old school cappuccino, except green. It totally is

so uh so. Vickory writes the stories of Jinny Green Teeth are still told around the Liverpool area, and Liverpool is of course in northwest England, near Lancashire, and he writes quote usually she's considered to be a bogey who inhabits quiet pools and drags venturesome children down into the depths. Sometimes she's considered to be the harmless water plant lesser duckweed, and occasionally she can be found far away from any pool.

And in his eighteen thirty nine book of book The Flora of Liverpool, author TV Hall notes that quote marl pits abound on both sides of the Mercy, which is a river going through that area, and are caused in most instances by excavating clay for the purpose of making bricks. Before these pits are a year old, they're filled with aquatic plants, and specifically, of course, that plant is generally

lesser duckweed. This small green plant that floats on the top of the water has these little root ten drils that extend down into the water. It can look like this matt from above, and Vickery writes quote. In summer, such pools are frequently covered with a dense mat composed of thousands of floating duckweed plants, so that their surfaces

appear solid. Lesser duckweed is one of the world's smallest flowering plants, each plant measuring one point five to four millimeters in diameter, with tiny and significant flowers and a thread like root which may reach several centimeters in length. Obviously, any child who attempted to walk across a pond covered with duckweed would soon find himself in serious difficulty, and so,

of course this creates an interesting association that for some children. Apparently, Jenny green Teeth was not a name for a magical monster, but was literally the name for the duckweed itself, and Vickery quotes the experience of a woman who recounted her childhood memories about Jenny green Teeth to him in the

December of nineteen eighty. She starts by talking about the area where she was brought up, and then she says, quote, it was and still is largely a farming area, and many of the fields contained pits, never ponds, which I believe our old marl pits. Some of them have quite steep sides. Jenny was well known to me and my contemporaries, and was simply the green weed duck weed which covered the surface of stagnant water. Children who strayed too close to the edge of these pits would be warned to

watch out for Ginny green teeth. But it was the weed itself which was believed to hold children under the water. There was never any suggestion that there was a witch of any kind there. And then another firstthand account of the Vicary quotes quote, as a child in the countryside of Cheshire, I heard the name Jinny green Teeth given to the bright green water plant that lies on the

surface of stagnant ponds. The minute leaves are rather like tiny teeth, and imagine that if one fell into the pond, the green scum like plant would close over one's head. Thus Jinny green Teeth had got you. Now that's an interesting development there. There's still this predatory aspect being imputed to Jenny Green Teeth. But she's not a hag, she's

not a witch. It's the plant that kills you. It lures you into the water by making it look like a solid surface, and then when you fall in, the children imagined this plant would close over top of you

like a like a membrane, ceiling you under the water. Interesting, so we kind of have a their meeting is halfway between like actual realistic fear and an outlandish monstrous invention, right, because there's no indication that duck weed will actually close over you and prevent you from getting out of the water, but it can be dangerous because it can make a deep pit of water look like a solid surface that

you could just run straight into. So one question is did this association between the Jenny green Teeth monster and duck weed begin earlier late like, was Jenny a pre existing bogey figure who later came to be identified with duck weed or was she always a creature of the weed?

And I think the answer is not quite clear. Vicary cites one scholar who wrote that the association had to be recent, since he believed Jenny quote had descended from the water spirits of Gothic mythology, whose great seductive beauty was somewhat marred by their green teeth. And of course this makes me think about a principle we've talked about

several times. From that book The Demon Lovers by Walter Stevens, Yeah and Demon Lovers, Witchcraft, Sex, and Crisis of Belief, he examines a number of different texts associated with which with witchcraft, persecution, witchcraft, theory of the day, and one of the texts that he looks at is The witch or on the Illusions of Demons by Jeanne Francesco Pica

del Mirandola, who died in fifteen thirty three. Now Pico was the nephew of the influential philosopher Giovanni Pico, and Pico the younger here was wasn't was an influential thinker of the day as well. He was an intellectual who championed quote, the truths of Christianity against the crescendo of skepticism that he felt era Statlian science fostered by encouraging an empirical attitude towards the world. So Stevens wrote that he quote brilliantly understood the way to fight skepticism was

with skepticism itself. So in other words, Pico was an enemy of reason who used his intellectual gifts to champion religious worldview over skepticism. His works enforced quite literally the

idea of a demon haunted world. But Pico in his work, he describes a conversation between four individuals, including the inquisitor Dicasti so which means judge who quote healthfully explains that all the trial records of the inquisition revealed that the devil can create a nearly perfect facsimile of the human body, but never can get the feet to come out right.

Never the feet. God makes the feet come out in verse those at preposteros, so that people will know that they are in the presence of a devil and not be fool into thinking that he is human. Thus they have no excuse for sinning. The corollary, which Decosts does not state, is equally important. Imperfect feet are an infallible way of recognizing demons, So we should not fear that

which is mistake ordinary humans for demons. So perhaps you know Jenny works along some more lines or or plays upon these trends and storytelling, right, well, I think the idea here would not necessarily be Jenny herself, but would be the creatures that this scholar is saying that Jenny descends from. The idea of the green teeth comes to us from the fact that there would be the seductive water spirits who might they might be beautiful to lure

men into the water and drown them. But like like the witches that Dicostys is talking about, here, would have one feature that would be a tell that would let you know that God has not allowed this demon to be a perfect mimicking of human beauty, and that tell is that she's got disgusting green teeth well, and from storytelling standpoint, it's always great to have that that little uh, that that little detail at the last minute that clears

everyone in, Oh, it's not a woman, it's a demon, etcetera. Uh. Incidentally, this also reminded me of a line from C. S. Lewis is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where it's written, quote, when you meet anything that is going to be human and isn't yet or it used to be human once and isn't now or ought to be human, and isn't you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet. Sound advice, sound violent advice, sound advice. Alright, on that note, we're gonna take one more break and

we'll come back. We're gonna discuss duckweed a little bit more. We're gonna discuss Jenny Green Teeth a little bit more, and then we're going to close out. Alright, we're back. So Vickery also in his paper sites other first hand accounts that the association with duckweed also also goes the other way. It's not just that Jinny green Teeth is a nickname for the lesser duckweed. It's that lesser duckweed could be a sign that Jinny green Teeth is lurking

underneath uh. In an interview with a thirty four year old woman in nineteen eighty UH, the interview goes quote, I remember, as a very small child being told by my mother to stay away from ponds, as Jenny green Teeth lived in them. However, I only recall Jenny living in ponds which were covered in green weed, of a type which has tiny leaves and covers the entire surface of the pond. The theory was that Jinny enticed little children into the ponds by making them look like grass

and safe to walk on. As soon as the child stepped onto the green it of course parted, and the child fell through into Jenny's clutches and was drowned. The green weed then closed over, hiding all traces of the child ever being there. This last point was the one which really terrified me and kept me well away from the ponds, and indeed my own children have also been told about Jenny, although ponds aren't as numerous these days.

As far as I know, Jenny had no known form due to the fact that she never appeared above the surface of the pond. So here the mat on the surface of the pond is it's like a trick that Jenny green Teeth uses. She is a hag, she is a witch, but she uses the duck weed to lure

people to her. But then, also interestingly, Vickery mentions that Jenny would sometimes get dislocated from her home turf like children who grew up in Liverpool recount how they believe Jenny Green Teeth didn't live in ponds or pools, but in churchyard cemeteries, and that she would reach out and drag children into the graveyard and then into burial vaults.

And then here's a really interesting one. In the nineteen forties, parents in South Cheshire told children that Jenny would get them if they ventured too close to the railroad tracks. So Jenny, Jenny green Teeth of the the industrial world. Now that is interesting because it seems like the idea that the train could run you over that seems far more overt, Like do you really need to invoke mythology, uh to make that that that threat reel. Yeah, that's a good question. I think we we can come back

to that at the very end. But you know, one of the things that we haven't really talked about yet, is the idea that, uh, that water's edge attack strategies are actually a pretty common ambush tactic of some predators. Right. Oh yeah, Well, let's let's discuss a few of them here,

because some of them are are really impressive. I think the most obvious one and maybe it's just most obvious to us because who watch enough nature documentaries uh and or terrible movies, but croco crocodilian species their attack strategies. So crocodilians, you know, everything from alligators and crocodiles to more you know, to lesser known creatures such as the cayman. Uh. Crocodilians are specialized in hunting both in the water and

at the water's edge, so they're they're ambush predators. They wait for prey to come close, such as near the water to drink, and then they lash out with amazing speed. Uh. And there's a some fabulous nature documentary documentary footage out there of, for instance, nile crocodiles attacking wild the beast that are either drinking or preparing to cross bodies of

water during migration. And much like the stories of Jenny Green Teeth, one of the things about a lot of crocodilian attack strategies is that they get you into their world,

into the water world that they control. So like, if you're just out on land, you might easily be able to get away from a crocodile, But if the crocodile can get up close to you and can snatch you and get you into the water and do this thing that's often referred to as the death roll, this twisting ocean in the water that breaks your bones, that disorients you, and then you can allow it to drown you in the water before it feasts on you. Um. Yeah, this is a way that it gets you into its domain.

It's like Jenny Green teeth pulling you down underneath the mat of the duck weed. I have to admit I was nearly pulled in and overtaken by just research related to crocodilians because I ran across um a paper titled on terrestrial Hunting by Crocodilians by Vladimir Dennets uh and and he points, uh, you know, out that purely terrestrial attacks even on humans are documented. So we're talking about attacks that take place not in the water, not at

the water's edge, but outside of the water. Now, I don't mean like you know, you know, downtown New York City or anything. I'm talking about area near the water. Wouldn't rule anything out. But but but but they do occur. Uh. For and this is a particularly interesting You have the Cuban crocodile, which apparently is is the most terrestrial of of today's crocodilian species, in that it is more adapt at at moving about and uh and even hunting out

of the water. And uh it's thought that the Cuban crocodiles ancestors may have used pack hunting behavior to take down giant ground sloths in a past giant ground sloths. Yeah. So it's just again just a tantalizing tidbit that maybe we can come back to in a later episode, the idea of pack hunting Cuban crocodile ancestors. So that would be the what the megatherium? Yeah, those things look like I wouldn't imagine anything would mess with them. Yeah, but

if you have enough enough land crocs then who knows. Now. Another really impressive organism to talk about here is the archer fish. And this one also is kind of superstar of certain nature documentaries. So it's a family of fish

that's evolved an amazing means of hunting prey. Uh. They shoot a highly specialized stream of water at insects on branches that are overhanging the water, and they spit this stream in such a way that high the higher velocity rear portion of the stream catches up to the lower velocity front portion of the stream right before it hits the target, jamming everything into a glob, just one solid glob of so it just really pops. It's like a

it's a water bomb. Yeah, it's just a water bomb that hits them and then knocks the insect off into the water where it can get them. It uses exceptional eyesight to aim, as well as an ability to compensate for the refraction of light as it passes through the air water interface, which is impressive in and of itself right. And then it's also interesting to know that they're they're not born dead eyes. They actually have to practice and learn by observing other fish in their school. Interesting, so

usually think of fish is learning very much. I know that these are from several different angles. These are fascinating creatures. They also use their water jet attack underwater and they've been observed jumping out of the water to catch prey as well. Now their their jet of water. It has a functional range of something like one to two meters or three ft three inches to six ft seven inches, but they can shoot it further than that, but it

just doesn't have particularly good aim beyond that point. You know. Another example I would like to mention is the fact that we all know seals and sea lions can be fearsome predators themselves, right, but sometimes, of course they have to flee a more powerful flesh gobbler, which is the orca, the killer whale. Goodness, and this is another superstar of

nature documaries. Yes, Now, normally, if you're a seal sea lion, the best way to escape a killer whale is going to be what swim full speed for sure, get onto the beach or the rocks of the orca can't reach you. Right then you can just lay around all day and for the most part, nothing's gonna miss with you. Right, I'm thinking of the you know, the swim Charlie swim scene in Jaws. Right, the shark won't follow you onto

the beach. There are no land sharks, but one of the strangest attack strategies I've ever seen in nature is the way that the orca has learned to defy this logic. Sometimes orcas will deliberately beach themselves to catch prey that has escaped onto land. For example, the orcas of the Valdes Peninsula on the Atlantic coast of Argentina are known

for doing this. They will chase a seal or sea lion that's on the ground or in the in the shallow water like the surf or just up on the rocks, and the orca will rock it towards the water line, crash over it onto land at snag a seal, and then flop around and slide back into the water, dragging the seal with them. It's an impressive and just awesome

sight and and it's like the ultimate nightmare. Right. There are so many just unbelievably powerful predators in the water that you always think like, well, at least I'm safe on land, and to be clear of the target here is the seal. So yes, humans are safe from beach based oorca attacks, right at least generally, I wouldn't rule out that it could never happen. Well, but I would not lose any sleepover, right not Yeah, nothing to go

about your life worthy and about. But hey, let's go to another similar example, Robert, I want you to put yourself in a in a city in France. Imagine yourself wandering along the river Tarn in southern France, in the commune of Albi. Like a lot of urban areas, Albi has its resident population of pigeons. We all know about city pigeons, and they're probably out there getting fat off the bread that falls off the edges of cafe tables

and stuff like that. The winged rats of civilization. Now in the river dwells a mighty leviathan, the European catfish. The European catfish Silarus glanis is not not native to this river, but it is this invasive species that has taken over rivers in in all throughout Europe, and it is Europe's largest freshwater fish. I believe it's the third largest freshwater fish in the world. And these things get big. I've read like a meter to even a meter and

a half long, and they are thick. Now, I want to remind everybody that the catfish is generally regarded as a bottom feeder. Um I imagine you you haven't grown up in Tennessee like I like I have. There were a lot of stories of the catfish that grow gigantic the like the depths near dams, for instance. Yeah, exactly. And there weren't a lot of stories about them being I mean, I guess they were occasionally stories about them, you know, biting or whatnot. But for the most part, yeah,

they're down there in the deep. They're not really concerned with the surface until you catch one on your reel and you bring it up. Right. So you're in Albe, You're going along the river and the river tarn, and you notice the pigeons are hanging out on a little gravel island to clean themselves by the water, and you, of course also see these invasive catfish, the monstrous catfish,

floating around at the water's edge. And then suddenly what you see is that one of these leviathans lashes out of the shallows, partially beaches itself, clamps its jaws down on a pigeon's head or leg or wing, and then drags the bird down into the deeper part of the

water to feast. There was a study in two thousand twelve and pl os one that that characterized this behavior by Julian coukro Set, Stephanie Bullatrouw, fred drick as, Amar, Arthur Compeen, Matthew Guillaume, and Frederick Santool, and the authors characterized the catfish in this case as freshwater killer whales.

Now they noticed something interesting. Only moving pigeons were attacked, and the catfish that hunted pigeons would tend to hold their you know those whiskers catfish have on their faces, the barbels, they would tend to hold those erect while they were hunting. And this led the authors to conclude that the catfish were probably hunting by sensing vibrations in the water. But fascinating question, how did this hunting strategy

come about? How did the how did the catfish start going from just you know, normal aquatic feeding behaviors to saying, yeah, I'll jump out of the water into the air onto the land that would probably kill me, grab a pigeon and drag it in. How did it decide to become Jenny Green teeth. I'm guessing it probably started off as a like a crime of opportunity, right, yeah, But it's always I mean, it's just hard to imagine, Like how

all behaviors like that originate? What how did it start happening? Well, it makes me think of our old friends, the squirrels, the scugs, and uh, their their their predatory side. And what point does a creature that is not that is clearly not evolved for such behavior begin, you know, dipping its little toes into that, right. Yeah, but then again when you think about it, I mean, it is a great opportunity, right because the water's edge is sort of

a perfect ambush. Point is the crocodilians have caught onto the attacker can get so close to the prey while remaining hidden, just like Jenny lurking under the duck weed. And and this emphasizes that there are actually multiple reasons that water's edge fears are not just you know, psychologically salient, but they're entirely justified in many ways, especially when you're

talking about children. Yeah, this this really brings us back to what we talked about at the very beginning, the the idea that there is this, this real and perhaps you know, very honest reason for for crafting these men so or at least embracing these these folkloric beliefs and then passing them onto children. Uh, you know, and I definitely want to be sensitive about this because accidental drowning deaths are are a very serious matter and a traumatic matter,

especially when it concerns children. I've known people personally affected by tragedies like this, and and it is it's difficult to find words to even even talk about them. You know, there's just such a such a you know, a bleak traumatic experience to even contemplate. Uh. And I know that some of you out there listening to this episode you may have lost people in this matter. And I do want to drive home that you do have our our sympathies even as we discuss the you know, the human

myth making that builds up around the truth. But but let's let's stop just to consider some of the modern stats about accidental drowning. According to the CDC, from two thousand five to two thousand and fourteen, there were an average of three thousand, five hundred and thirty six fatal unintentional drownings non voting related annually in the United States, about ten deaths per day. An additional three d and thirty two people died each year from drowning in boat

related incidents. About one in five people who die from drowning our children fourteen and younger, and for every child who dies from drowning, another five receive emergency department care for non fatal submersion injuries. This is worth noting here as well, because if you haven't if you don't have any firsthand account with drowning, or you're not trained as a lifeguard, you might not realize that it's it's not just this definite line between drowning and almost drowning, between

you know, dying in the water and surviving. Um. The CDC page points out that uh more than fifty percent of drowning victims treated in emergency departments require hospital treatment, and non fatal drowning injuries can still cause severe brain damage, the result in long term disabilities. Yeah. I mean, this kind of thing emphasizes and we should be clear that

these are modern statistics. These are based on a time where I think it is more common for people to know how to swim, like to have been taught how to swim. Um that this is probably not referring as often to people living in places where it's common for there to be stagnant pools that are covered in a map that make them look like grass. Um. I mean, so, so yeah, this is different circumstances even but it highlights

how dangerous water can be. If you're an adult who knows how to swim and you don't think about dangers to children, you just really might not realize how real of a threat a standing body of water is. So the myth making of Jenny Green Teeth as a as a warning to keep children away from the duckweed ponds and the moral pits filled in it seems like a

very very reasonable thing to do in a way. I mean, I'm not necessarily advocating making up fictional monsters to scare children, but you can see why people did it, And so Jenny is often used educationally as a safety warning. The monster is invoked to keep children from playing near dangerous bodies of water or in other contexts that are dangerous, like around railroad tracks, like Vickery talked about. But here's this interesting part we were talking about earlier that I

feel like we still haven't necessarily solved. The thing you're warning children to stay away from is real, life threatening danger, and in order to get the message across, you have to create a fictional supernatural life threatening danger. Children are obviously motivated by self preservation or the fictional supernatural life threatening danger wouldn't work. But for some reason, some risks to their body safety and their survival don't seem to

be as salient or as as effective as others. And apparently mothers and fathers are wagering that children are just not likely to obey warnings about the risks of deep water that says you could fall in and drown. They think children are more likely to obey a warning that says the green Lady will get you. So why is the fictional threat more compelling and more useful than the

actual threat? Now I come back again to what I said earlier about how I feel like the monster is actually still a sanitized version of the threat um And and isn't it interesting too that we see these examples where you're personifying the threat, you're turning the threat into

the human identity. But then you're making it an old woman, which also feels like a sanity, like you're sanitizing it because you're not making it into a man, which if you look at the if you look at the chances of a of an individual posing a significant bodily and certainly a lethal threat to a child. That individual is far more likely to be male. Um, you know, without certainly getting into into stranger danger and the more, you know,

inflated aspects of this sphere. But but you've you've, You've chosen. There seems to be there's an active choice here in making Jenny been teeth, making it an older female entity instead of a male entity, which would, again, I think, bring it too close to horrific real life situations that you're trying to avoid and crafting the myth. I think I agree with that, though, then again, I wonder if this is this is a sort of modern American cultural bias on our part that makes us feel this way.

I mean, we might not feel like old women are necessarily less dangerous. If we say we're in a context in which we believed witchcraft was real, that's true, that's true. If we have we're taking this and we're we're steeping it in, uh, the age of witchcraft persecution and then the an age in which which tales of hags and

witches are are are found everywhere. Then again a lot of this is taking place, and say the early twentieth century in which case, I don't know how many people in north Northwest England in the early twentieth century thought witchcraft was real. But then again, it wasn't that far removed from from witchcraft persecution. Again, we have to remember that witchcraft persecution was was what was not a medieval

um uh practice, it was post medieval so early modern. Yeah. Um. Before we we closed out here, I do want to quickly reference another green in today that I forgot to mention that I should have mentioned, that I can only imagine is based in part on some of these ideas, and that is the Hitcher from the Mighty Bush, the green skinned hag like male Cockney character. I'm not familiar. Oh you haven't he sings the song about eels. No,

I don't know. Well, those of you out there who have watched The Mighty Bush you know what I'm talking about. If not, um, do a do a search for for Bush and Hitcher, and I think you'll be delighted with what you find. I thought you were going to say, Cheddar Goblin, ch cheddar Goblin. It is a more recent phenomenon, but but I think probably unrelated to this particular fairy tale. Well, Robert, I have had massive fun with this epic exploration of water hags Jenny Green teeth. Yeah, this has been a

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