After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Mythical Origins of Britain

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

The British Isles were once thought of as the edge of the Ancient World, a land of giants and other mysteries. According to these myths, survivors of the Trojan War set sail to establish a kingdom here which was destined to rule one day rule the world...In today's episode Anthony and Maddy are joined by Dr. Amy Jeffs author of Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain" to explore the mythological origins of the British Isles...Edited by Tom Delargy produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up now for your 14-day free trial http://access.historyhit.com/checkout/subscribe/purchase?code=afterdark&plan=monthlyYou can take part in our listener survey here.Edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Discover the past with exclusive history documentaries and ad-free podcasts presented by world-renowned historians from History Hit. Watch them on your smart TV or on the go with your mobile device. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up now for your 14-day free trial http://access.historyhit.com/checkout/subscribe/purchase?code=afterdark&plan=monthlyYou can take part in our listener survey here.

Wendy's has a new breakfast deal. Mix and match two items of your choice for only $4. Breakfast wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small seasoned potatoes or small hot coffee. Choose two for $4 at Wendy's. Available for a limited time at participating Wendy's in Canada. Taxes extra. Picture this, in the warmth of a Mediterranean, starry night, a Trojan man has been making offerings to a goddess others have forgotten, Diana. A milk-white stag lies dead at his feet,

proud antlers slumped on the ground. Wine and its blood have been poured onto the altar fire with prayers of worship. Now embers from the fire fly up into the sky and smoke begins to billow, thicken and take shape until towering above the Trojan is the goddess herself, so huge she covers the night sky. She's pointing out across the sea of stars, showing the man where he must go to found a kingdom that will one day, she says, rule the world. She points to the ends of the earth, to the island of giants, an island we now call Britain. Hello there and welcome to After Dark, Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. I am Dr. Anthony Delaney. And I'm Dr. Maddy Pelling.

And if you have visited sites like Stonehenge, Cadbury Castle, Menacuddle Well in Cornwall, or the Stipperstones, I believe I'm saying that correctly, in Shropshire, then you won't be unfamiliar with some of the mythical origin stories of Britain. Now, whether it's the Buddock or the Cailach in Perthshire, the unending Arthurian legends, or the water spirits of Gwynedd in Wales, it's impossible to deny that these isles are steeped in mythic folklore that has now become intertwined in British history. And today we are going to explore some of those lost origin stories.

We are joined by none other than Dr. Amy Jeffs, who is an author, an artist and a historian who has created two unique and really beautiful, Maddy has just been showing it to me today, just before we started recording, books that mix her illustrations with her retellings of British myths, folklore and deep histories. And we're talking about three stories in particular from her first book, Storyland, which is a book all about the origin myths of Britain. Yes, absolutely. So excited to talk about this. Amy, first things first, welcome to After Dark. Thank you so much for having me. It's really fun to be here. And I loved that amazing telling of the Diana prophecy. That was beautiful. Well, it's very much inspired by the gorgeous

image in your book that you produced. The image that is on the cover of the book, actually, isn't it? On Storyland that hopefully listeners will be familiar with. Before we get into some of these stories, and we're going to get you to sort of tell, retell some of them to us. I wanted to ask a little bit about your practice because you're a trained historian. You're also an artist. You're an author. I know in your most recent book, you've done an audio book version where you've included songs and you've written music and performed it as well. So do you see yourself as a storyteller in the tradition of those ancient bards or maybe you know sort of medieval monks who write down stories in vellum and illustrate them in with these incredible details do you see

yourself sitting within that sort of tradition if they say yes it might sound really cocky but i think a tradition is is such a when you're a bit nervous doing something for the first time and storyland was my first book i felt felt very exposed. But because I did have training as an art historian, especially in medieval manuscripts and the stuff I was writing about had all come out of my doctoral research. So cleaving to a tradition was very comforting and it made me feel like it wasn't about me. I wasn't out there on my own. I could kind of honour this heritage, I suppose. And so when I was retelling the stories there was a certain amount of calculated embellishment in terms of description of scenery or in the

interior worlds of the characters I tried to be very faithful to plot but I took my cue from medieval authors who had done the same thing in their retellings of the same stories and that was kind of whenever I had a moment of doubt, then referring back to the tradition was very helpful and comforting. So yes, but hopefully not in an arrogant way. I don't think that's arrogant at all. And I think it shows a really interesting approach

to the past and bringing that past into the present and what it can say about the present. But I'd be so interested to know, I actually am very unfamiliar, obviously, I'm Irish, and I'm unfamiliar with a lot of these stories. And we're going to be covering three today. And I think maybe if we could start with the origins of the Britons. So we started with this image of Diana in the sky, and this beautiful image that is, you know, has its origins in fire. And we've talked about dead stags lying and milk and blood. How does this feed into the origin story of the

Britons, Amy? So the character that Diana is speaking to, Brutus, is a Trojan and he has descended from Aeneas. So the Middle Ages inherited much from the classical world. It knew the Aeneid, the story of the fall of Troy and what the Trojans did next, going out of the burning city into Italy and Aeneas founding Rome. The story of the Britons begins in Rome with the birth of a boy called Brutus descended from Aeneas. There are various kind of portents surrounding his birth. He then kills his father in a hunting accident and is exiled. Now, this is a common mythic trope that the hero is cast adrift from his community and has to find a new homeland.

He has no ties to anything or anyone and anything can happen. So he comes across a Greek island where there are lots of Trojan slaves and it's ruled by a king called Pandrasus. Brutus stirs up rebellion among the Trojans. ruled by a king called Pandrasus. Brutus stirs up rebellion among the Trojans. They overthrow the Greek king Pandrasus. He offers his daughter in marriage and a load of money and ships to Brutus, as well as all his Trojan slaves to get him to go away. So now Brutus is saving the Mediterranean with a fleet, with people, like a community, and with a wife, unfortunately for her. She cries, I think, a lot, it says in an original source, which is Geoffrey of Monmouth's

History of the Kings of Britain. They then end up on an island called Logese, where there's an abandoned temple to the goddess Diana and they sacrifice a white heart. And then this is making use of a lot of tropes from classical literature, the sacrifice of the heart, the spreading out the skin before the altar. Brutus lies down on it and goes

to sleep. And then the goddess Dana appears to him and makes this prophecy, telling him to go west beyond Gaul into the great ocean. There's nothing beyond that. There's no America in the medieval imagination, at least the medieval European one. And there's an island there. It's uninhabited, but for a few giants, Don't worry about those. There you will found a race of kings that will rule the whole round world, she says. And so Brutus gets up, takes off with his crew. And they head out of Straits of Gibraltar. It said through the Pillars of Hercules.

They see the sirens. They somehow don't end up falling for them. They go off up the coast of Spain north. They pick up somebody called Coroneus en route, another Trojan with a band of Trojans. And Coroneus is famous for slaying giants, which is really useful. So they get him on board and they head to Britain and they fight. Well, at this point, it's called Albion and they set up camp off the river Dart. So they land near modern day Totnes and eventually the giants sort of show themselves and there's a sort of climax to the story there. I'm incredibly fascinated, Amy,

by the fact that this myth of Britain really sets it up in the tradition of these other classical empires. So we have Rome emerging from the ruins of Troy and everyone kind of escaping from that city and coming to Italy to found that great empire. And then Britain is being set up as a sort of an inheritance of that, that it's the descendant of that tradition. So that's very interesting. Yes. And actually, Diana does say you will found a new Troy in Britain and that city later becomes London, which is completely consistent with what you're saying. Yes absolutely so we have Brutus he's arrived in Britain or Albion as it's called then and I love that he arrives at Totnes that's that's fantastic and I want to ask you

later on actually about the rich tradition of myths that come out of the West Country more generally because I think it is a sort of hotbed for this kind of storytelling as well. And I know that you live in that area as well. And I'm kind of interested in how you perceive that culture. But we're with Brutus in Albion. He's arrived at Totnes and he has to deal with the giants that are in this land, doesn't he? And one particular giant.

So could you just tell us what is the sort of climax of this story? Because there's the most incredible image of it in your book as well that you've produced. Thank you. So yes, it's such a great story. And it really, that image of Gog Magog, which I'll come to,

was one of the first I produced before the book was even a twinkle. It was just, and it was the one that made me think, oh my goodness, these are really good stories. You know, I've just been doing a PhD on these and sort of assuming they were boring because all PhDs are boring and then realizing like, oh my gosh. so basically Brutus you know and his people land at Totnes

they live there for a while then they're having a celebration and all of the giants turn up the giants of Albion Brutus and his men are heroes they defeat all the giants and they tie up their leader Gog Magog and Gog Magog's name is quite a conscious choice I think on the part of whoever came up with it let's say it's Geoffrey of Monmouth but he might have got it from somewhere earlier it combines Gog and Magog which appear in various traditions but in the book of revelations as these kind of two terrifying hostile tribes that will wipe out all civilization and they're cannibals as well that's a big part of it and so gog magog is this like cannibalistic monstrous apocalyptic demon creature you know

he's really scary and brutus has him tied up on the cliffs he says to coroneus i've got an idea you're such a famous giant killer why don't you wrestle him we're not just gonna kill him that would be you know unsportsmanlike so coroneer's like yeah man of course so he starts fighting gogmagog on the cliffs it looks like gogmagog's gonna win he actually squeezes coroner so hard he cracks his ribs at that moment there's a kind of strength of desperation takes over or rage or something and coroner's lifts him up runs the edge of the cliffs and launches gogmagog into the sea and that was when i was kind of rereading jeffrey of monmouth's history of the kings of the cliffs and launches Gog Magog into the sea. And that was when I was kind of rereading Geoffrey of Monmouth's history of the Kings of Britain with a view to illustration.

It was that moment of the giant kind of caught and that the confusion around how big he was, I actually, it does say that he was something like 12 cubits high, whatever that means, you know, something like that. But there's a kind of, how big is this giant? Is he sort of magically big or is he just a really big human? You know, what, what are we talking? And so I wanted with the image, I've got kind of Gog Magog in the foreground falling out of the sky, it looks like, but you can't tell how far away he is from Koroneus. He could be really, really close to the camera as it were. And, you know, it's a father Ted situation. So the amazing thing about this story is that so my

supervisor for my master's was professor alex bovie at the court old she works on the giant imagery of the giants of albion and she cites a man called john clark who worked at the museum of london anyway he says there's this evidence of a chalk image of a man wrestling a giant at plymouth hoe that was destroyed in the 17th century. So Geoffrey of Monmouth, the earliest record of the story says, and we call the place where it happened Gog Magog's Leap, and no one knows where that is. But if there was indeed a big chalk image like the Cern Abbas giant on Plymouth Ho, it thinks that I think the earliest record is 15th century, and then it's destroyed in the 17th. Presumably, at least in the late medieval

imagination Plymouth Ho was the site of the wrestling match and of this moment of man triumphing over nature or something you know like one of those old sort of birth of civilization moments and at which point Brutus tells his me actually tells his followers before this that you know this is now Britain named after me Br Brutus, you know, that's how Britain gets its name. And it says from then on, the Britain spread out across the land and they spoke a tongue called crooked Greek. So that's Welsh. I love that you have depicted Gog Magog as this sort of shock of white flesh as well. And I guess that's a nod to the possible chalk figure that existed. Let's talk a little bit about Geoffrey of Monmouth.

So he writes his History of the Kings of Britain around about 1136. Now, he is Welsh by birth. Just tell us a little bit about who he is and why he comes to write this history. Why is it important at that moment to write down the history? And where is he drawing that information from? Yeah, so Geoffrey of Monmouth is writing as a Welsh cleric to an elite Norman audience and he dedicates his history of the Kings of Britain to Robert, Duke of Gloucester. The Normans are still conscious of themselves as having conquered this land and they are eager

to know how exciting and wonderful is this of the history of this land that they've taken over. The more illustrious it is, the better. Geoffrey of Monmouth says he has an ancient book in the British tongue that he is translating into Latin prose. That may or may not be true. Historians have picked apart the history of the kings of Britain. And there are references to earlier British historians whose work survives like Gildas and Nennius, sort of question mark Nennius, he's a bit of a mysterious figure. So it could also be a kind of coming together of early traditions, but it just was easier to say a big book, or maybe it was a big book with lots of things, different things it who knows so um this is what he says he's doing and he does offer this amazing and very cohesive narrative of

britain that really did set the normans up and then the plantagenets you know very well for a long time to come well into the shakespeare's age well sets the kings and queens of england up with a really illustrious history well into shakespeare's age but of course it's about the britain's not the english and these kings are sitting on the English throne. But the whole history ends with the arrival of the Saxons proper, not the first arrival with Hengist and Horsa, it's a slightly different story, but when they really come into a takeover and start driving the Britons west. And so I think they're seeing it as like multiple concessions to conquerors. So there's this great race of the Britons, and they have amazing start, but then it kind of decays and the Anglo-Saxons come in and they have their time in the sun.

But they end up having some issues. And eventually that falls to the Normans who are now coming in with Christianity. And that's that's the narrative that starts being built up by the later medieval kings of England. Wendy's has a new breakfast deal. Mix and match two items of your choice for only $4. Breakfast wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small seasoned potatoes or small hot coffee. Choose two for $4 at Wendy's. Available for a limited time at participating Wendy's in Canada. Taxes extra. Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and this month on Not Just the Tudors I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the

six queens of Henry VIII who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. There is a distinction, is there not, between the origin of the Britons and the origin of the Scots. Could you tell us a little bit more about that, perhaps? Yeah, so the Britons, they go up into Scotland when Brutus founds Britain. It's supposedly all his. Albenac, the son, ends up there. But during the reign of Loughran, the Huns invade, led by King Humber, who gives his name to

the estuary. Ultimately, Albenac is killed and the Britons are driven out of the north. And it's kind of, that's maybe how it's set up to why it's sort of left empty. In actual history, by the kind of sixth century, the Dalriada are setting up in southwest Scotland, setting up a kingdom that will become the kingdom of the Scots and they've come from Ireland and in actual history by the late 13th century Edward I is claiming overlordship of Scotland, Edward I of England is claiming overlordship of the Scottish king and the justification he gives for this is that Loughran of Brutus's three sons was the eldest and therefore had natural authority over his brothers who received the territories that would become Scotland and Wales. And he puts this in a letter to the Pope and the Pope says, yeah, fair enough, you know,

go ahead and conquer Scotland or be overlord of Scotland, whatever you want to do. The Scots come back by saying, we reject your myth. We have a separate one that ignores whatever's going on with Brutus, this guy Brutus and his sons. According to the chronicles of our forebears in Ireland, the Scotty, as they were known in Latin, we came from Egypt. And they say that it was in the court of Ramesses II, who's the same pharaoh who has the kind of altercations with Moses. There was a Greek prince called Gaethelos and Ramesses II's daughter, Skota, and they fall in love. And when the Israelites are led in rebellion by Moses, when Ramesses II is swallowed by the Red Sea, all of the Israelites go east and they wander to the east. Skota and

Gathelos take a load of Egyptian Greek nobles and they wander to the west. And it's this mirroring that we saw again, like we're seeing again, as we did with the Brutus myth. They're kind of taking authority from a really important story in the Bible and applying it to their own. So they wander west, they spend some time in Spain, but the locals are hostile to them. Eventually they send their sons, Heiber and Heimek, to find an island on which or somewhere else they can live where there's no one yet there. And they find this island right out in the west. It's not Albion or Britain, it's Hibernia. Heiber gives it his name. It becomes Ireland. He also gives his name to Iberia and the Iberian Sea.

And he goes back to his parents. Gaethel is on his deathbed and he's like, son, go and colonize this island. Yes, there are a few tribes there. Just kill them off or make them slaves, whatever. This myth is written down in the mid 14th century

in a text called the Scotta Chronicon. And it's very much, it's very clear that the Scots behind the kind of retelling of this are making their claim of independence from the English crown. He says, there is nothing more important than ruling by hereditary right and nothing worse than bowing to foreign rule. So go off and found your kingdom there. High Bear goes off, he found his kingdom. They're called the Scotty after Scoter. They speak Gaelic after Gaethelos. And eventually they travel into Northern Britain

and they conquer it. That's the crucial thing. And they claim it by superior military might, and they owe nothing to Brutus and his sons and his heirs and successors. So that's how they distinguish themselves. Amy, something that's really striking me as you're telling these stories is just how Mediterranean-centric the tales are and how they place Britain and Ireland on the edge of that world. And you're talking there about that they're borrowing from classical traditions, but they're also borrowing now from biblical traditions. And that's to be expected of sources that are being written down in the medieval period. How important do you think biblical storytelling, biblical traditions are when it comes to how these stories are being

written down in the medieval period? And is there a possibility that earlier sources, maybe oral sources for these original tales, vary slightly differently and that people like Geoffrey of Monmouth and people writing a little bit later in the 14th century are adding in sort of Christianized elements to them? Do you think that's fair to say that there is that kind of development taking place? Yeah, so I think the Bible offers absolute authority. And so if you can echo biblical narratives in your own origin myth, then you're giving it real heft. And the same with the classical tradition, that's also got this sort of aura of great superiority or authority,

all of these things. There's a really funny bit in Gerald of Wales. He's a sort of later 12th century chronicler who hated Geoffrey of Monmouth. He says, well, we Welsh are descended from Trojans who came from these hot heartlands. We say what we think, we're kind of dark and hot headed and we speak our minds and we're confident. And the English, the oppressed English are from cold, limp lands. They don't say what they think. They beat around the bush.

And, you know, it's just such a funny sort of his cultural stereotyping. But you can see in that this idea of the Mediterranean and North Africa being places of great nobility. But what you are asking about, are there kind of folkloric fossils or fossils from non-biblical or non-classical traditions in these texts then i'd say yes definitely in jeffrey of monmouth the names of some of the mortal kings of england are very similar to known names for pre-christian celtic gods and goddesses so for instance there's an amazing story about two brothers, one of whom is king of Britain. He's called Belenus. His brother, Brennius, is trying to get the throne and has no claim to it.

And there's this wonderful story about them meeting on the battlefields, have this final kind of settle it once and for all. And one's going to kill the other for sure. And their mother runs on to the battlefield and bears her breasts and says, by the body that suffered to deliver you, Brennius, you have absolutely no legs to stand on on this fight. Give it up. Think how much I... She does this big speech and Brennius is like, oh, fair enough, mum. And the whole thing ends. Their names are possibly related to the Celtic gods, Beli and Bran. There is another Celtic god called Cluth. I think that's the right pronunciation. He's possibly also fossilized in the character of a king by the same name, who in Geoffrey of Monmouth gives his name to Ludgate.

And he's found in Irish mythological sources. It's really, it's kind of fascinating how there are kind of traditions that haven't been written down up to that point being preserved in these texts that otherwise draw a lot of their authority from the Bible and from classical literature. One of the things that's particularly fascinating about this is that when you're hearing these stories or reading these stories in the past, you're supposed to feel something. It's supposed to inspire something in you. And it sounds like from what you're saying, Amy, it did actually inspire a lot of people to this kind of nationalistic pride. As a side note, it's one of the great things about your work where you actually have art intertwined with it because it's so art so easily evokes feeling even above words.

Often it just is that immediate way in. But one of the things that's striking me is the longevity of those feelings even beyond the myths. So say, for instance, I have not heard a lot of these myths. This is my first time coming to them. But what you're saying is drawing a lot of comparisons between some of the feelings that still exist now between people in Ireland and people in certain parts of Scotland, for instance, where there is this camaraderie, there's this almost kinship, again, not, you know not you know 100 of the time but it's there nonetheless yeah and it's interesting to hear some of the origins of that kinship and that feeling

and that identity come across in these ancient ancient myths yeah i think we we get so preoccupied with dates and battles and all these kind of things but it was stories that held those bonds and that people bought into and that, you know, gave rise to the battles, gave rise to the marriages. You know, that was, I think it's so easy for myths and stories to be dismissed as whimsy. You know, so much of this was perceived as history then. And if we don't understand what people were kind of imbibing in that way, then we can't really understand their actions. I think on this show in particular, we do love a good story. And we're very interested in across history, really how people tell stories

and how those stories hold power. So that's a really good point, I think. Well, listen, I think that's a really good place for us to wrap up today's episode of After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal. Amy, thank you so much for telling us these myths. I mean, as I say, these are new to me, so I'm coming away with a lot of new information today. Amy, thank you so much for telling us these myths. I mean, as I say, these are new to me, so I'm coming away with a lot of new information today. Amy, tell us where we can find you for anybody who may not be familiar with your work or follow you on socials, etc. You can find me on Twitter as Amy underscore Historia as a tribute to Geoffrey of Monmouth. And then I'm on Instagram as Amy Jeffs underscore author. And that's where I

spend most of my social media time. Oh, thank you so much. No, thank you. Wendy's has a new breakfast deal. Mix and match two items of your choice for only $4. Breakfast wrap, biscuit or English muffin sandwiches, small seasoned potatoes or small hot coffee. Choose two for $4 at Wendy's. Available for a limited time at participating Wendy's in Canada. Taxes extra. Well, thank you for listening to this episode of After Dark. Please follow this show wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. Don't forget, you can listen to all these podcasts ad-free and watch hundreds of documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe.

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