Lore - Episode 65: Doing Tricks

Episode Date: July 24, 2017

There are very few bits of folklore that haven’t spread around the globe over the past few centuries. Yet every now and then, something fresh and distinct pops up. But just because it’s relatively new doesn’t mean it’s safe. * * * Official Lore Website: www.lorepodcast.com Extra member episodes: www.patreon.com/lorepodcast Official Lore Merchandise: www.lorepodcast.com/shop Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support

On the northern slope of a hill in southern England, near the village of Woolstone, is an artifact from another era. It's a drawing of an enormous horse, at least 3,000 years old and over 350 feet long. Thanks to the white chalk that fills the artwork in, it's been known for centuries as the White Horse of Uffington. This past April, the National Trust in southern England announced that it had made a new, exciting discovery on the hill.

A second chalk figure, nearly as large, had depicted another regional animal, the duck. Now, I love Uffington. I've been there twice in the last decade, and it's one of my favorite places in all of England, so I felt compelled to read the full article, but when I did, I was surprised by what I found. While the article and accompanying video were published on March 31st, they were promoted on social media the following day, April 1st. The duck, you see, was an April Fool's Day joke.

Now, I'll admit, I was more than a bit relieved. The White Horse is special, after all. But every year on the 1st of April, countless jokes are played out on the local and national level all around the world, taking our expectations and assumptions for a ride. Google might just be the biggest perpetrator of the last few years, spending what some think is millions of dollars to create fake product videos, elaborate prototypes, and full-on websites. It's not a new thing, though.

Tricks have always been both easily fooled by and prone to create trickery. Ancient mythology is full of characters known as tricksters, and modern media has added a plethora of new names to that list. The Joker from Batman, Q from Star Trek, even Bugs Bunny and Bart Simpson, and we love them all for it. But it's not always fun and games. Many trickster legends are far darker than modern cartoons and movies. In fact, some of them are a lot more frightening than you'd think.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. If you've come anywhere within 10 feet of a comic book movie in the past decade, you've probably been exposed to a number of modern spins on a very old idea. In fact, nearly all of the Marvel movies use the character lifted straight out of ancient mythology and brought to life by Tom Hiddleston, the Norse god Loki. Loki does a great job of living up to the true definition of a trickster. Across the globe and the pages of history, nearly all ancient tricksters have stuck to the same small list of characteristics.

They're morally ambiguous, bouncing between acts of good and evil with surprising flexibility. They have the power to create and destroy. They're often a messenger, bringing bad news or tragedy to a community, and they excel at taking any situation and flipping it on its head. Writing about Loki nearly 900 years ago, Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturlson described him like this. Handsome and fair of face, he wrote, but has an evil disposition and is very changeable of mood.

He excelled all men in the art of cunning, and he always cheats. He was continually involving the Aesir in great difficulties, and he often helped them out again by guile. But Loki isn't alone in the trickster space. Greek mythology has Hermes, who was, among other things, the god of thieves. West African folklore has the spider Anansi, although some stories tell of trickster rabbits as well. Many scholars think that those are the roots of the more modern tales of Brer rabbit, which

might very well be true. Folklore, as we've discussed so many times before, has a way of growing and adapting over the years. We can see that evolution in European folklore. Those old ideas of tricksters who break the rules and make life difficult found fresh expression in new tales and legends. Those stories are different, but also the same if you know what I mean. Because underneath all the cultural dress and decoration, every trickster is a shapeshifter,

whether that's in practice or just metaphorically. They adapt and shift and change. Sometimes they're the one doing the transformation, but often times it's the status quo that gets reinvented. If there's a rule, whether it's social or moral or legal, the trickster is there to bend or even break it. In Europe, the concept of one single trickster god transformed into the idea of trickster creatures plural.

Their details vary from place to place, but most of their names are just as familiar to us now as Loki, Leprechauns, Brownies, Hobgoblins, Puka, Elves, Gnomes. Each of those names conjures a unique picture in your mind, I'm sure, but for centuries they've all just been multiple expressions of the same trickster archetype. These creatures are united by some common physical traits too. Sure, they're troublesome and morally fluid, but they're also almost universally described as small, humanoid beings, dwarves, elves, tiny men and women, small enough to be unseen by humans, but large enough to get into trouble.

Leprechauns are a great example. Their name literally means small body, and while that's not a quality of the most ancient trickster ideas, it certainly lines up with most modern interpretations. And of course, they're morally sketchy. One scholar describes them as not wholly good, nor wholly evil. Second, trickster creatures were often described as red or black in color. Some stories say it's a skin color, others say it's fur, but the reason behind the colors had to do with superstitions about evil powers.

Black and red, for a very long time, were bad colors, so if you wanted to describe something as evil, of course it was red or black or both. In Celtic folklore, we have the pucca, who are viewed as dangerous bringers of bad luck. In addition to being small, they're usually described as covered in black fur, and they're known to be shapeshifters, frequently transforming themselves into black horses. There are many more cultural variants, but I want to mention just one more. The Luton. These are a distinctly French version.

Like the others, they're said to be small people, typically men who are prone to mischief and prank like fun, and like the pucca, they can shapeshift into animals. But the Luton is unique in that it likes to take the form of a black cat, something most people recognize as having some element of superstitious power, and because of that, they're often seen as companions to witches and sorcerers, capable of cursing anyone who crosses their path, a fact that you'll need to file away for later. The notion of tiny tricksters is clearly embedded in European folklore. They seem to pop up everywhere, from Shakespeare to Harry Potter, and everywhere in between.

All of them are small in size, morally ambiguous, and need to be appeased to avoid negative consequences. What's truly fascinating about folklore, though, is just how portable it is. You can take a person out of their culture, but it's much more difficult to take that culture out of them, so when Europeans began to settle the new world, it's no surprise that they brought their superstitions and beliefs with them. The trouble was, these stories were meant to be entertaining. They were benign and harmless tales of morality. But three centuries ago, one settlement experienced something that shed a whole new light on the

meaning and the power of trickster mythology. And what it revealed was beyond frightening. Antoine Lomé experienced that stereotypical meteoric rise that all of us dream about, when New France covered the full length of the Mississippi River, from modern-day Canada in the north to Louisiana in the south, Antoine was nothing more than a fur trapper and explorer. He walked thousands of miles, spent far too many nights in the cold, and owned nothing more than what he was able to carry on his back. But he was dependable, smart, and had a brilliant grasp of the French territories there in the

new world. And that skill didn't go unnoticed, not by the governor of New France, or even by the king himself, Louis XIV. Which is why, by 1694, at the age of 36, he found himself in command of the French troops at Fort de Baud, in what is now northern Michigan. By then, his full name was Antoine de la Mute Cadillac, but since that takes me about 15 minutes to pronounce correctly, let's just stick with Antoine, shall we? And Antoine, you see, was about to experience a significant boost to his reputation and power,

and it's a journey we need to follow him on. In 1701, Antoine was given permission to establish a new fort about 300 miles south, on a patch of land situated on a narrow channel that connects Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair. The colonial minister had granted him 15 square miles to build the fort there, and the settlement around it, and he was eager to get started. On March 10th of that year, the governor of New France held a celebration for Antoine, to congratulate him on his new mission and his title. It was a room full of people with great power and position.

There was food and drink, crystal and silver, and more ceremony than most of us will ever experience in our modern lives, and at the center of it all was Antoine. Hours into the celebration, a door on the far side of the room swung open, and in stepped an old woman. She wasn't dressed in her finest. She didn't hold a title that matched the others. In fact, she was, in their eyes at least, less than significant, but she walked in with more authority and poise than any of them could have mustered.

As she drew closer, it became clear that she wasn't alone. There, upon her shoulder, sat something dark. It was a cat, a black cat. She told them her name was Mother Monique, and she was there to tell their fortunes. The men, drunk and cheerful and out of their wits, welcomed the offer, and almost immediately all of them held their hands out to her, waiting to have their palms read. She went down the table, hand by hand, describing in great detail the past of each person she touched.

Every time she paused to examine a new one, a cat on her shoulder would lean in toward her head. Some thought it was licking her ear, but others swore it was whispering things to her. Finally she came to Antoine, but before she could speak, he shook his head. See what you can tell me about my future, he told her. I care not for the past. The woman nodded and then took out a small metal bowl and a vial of thick, silvery liquid, almost like mercury.

Then she poured the liquid into the bowl, took Antoine's hand again, and began to speak. Your future is strange, she told him. You will soon go on a dangerous journey and found a great city. Someday that city will be home to more people than all of New France right now. Antoine nodded with pride and approval and asked her to go on, which she did, reluctantly. Your future is also dark, she continued. It's cloudy and your star is difficult to see.

Your policies will cause trouble and bring about your ruin. The city you found will become home to war and bloodshed. The English will try to take it away, and then one day, many years from now, it will finally prosper under a flag we've never seen before. And then she uttered one final warning. Your name will be forgotten, even in the very city you founded. But know this, you can change it all. Your future is still yours to decide.

Just remember not to offend the one thing with the power to bring it all crashing down. The woman paused, and everyone in the room seemed to pause with her, holding their breath to hear just what being had the ability to destroy the life of such a powerful man. But she spoke again. It was barely a whisper. Whatever you do, she said, do not offend the Nain Rouge. Even though the words themselves are French, there is no record in Europe of a creature by the name of Nain Rouge, the Red Dwarf.

It seems to be a purely North American tale, although we could make the argument that the core elements of the legend borrow heavily from European folklore, dwarf-like, red in coloring, easily upset. But hold on, I think I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's just say this, Antoine had lived in the territory of New France for a very long time, as had the others in that room that night. When none of them questioned the witch over that name, they were clearly very familiar with it, although how or why is still a mystery.

While the others might have felt the weight of significance at the mention of the Nain Rouge, Antoine seemed unfazed. He was confident in his future and continued his preparations for the journey south. He had a great city to found, after all. It's hard to fight the pull of destiny when it's so sweet and bright like a siren song. His expedition left in early June of 1701 and arrived at their destination about six weeks later on July 24th. They called it Fort Pontitrain, in honor of the Secretary of State for the French Navy.

The things immediately took off. They built a friendly partnership with the local Native American tribes and set to work building all the things an 18th century military outpost would need, the tall fence of the stockade, the storehouse, a church, and of course, the fort itself. And after that, life settled into a wonderful period of prosperity. The community was growing, and so was Antoine's reputation. He was gifted with a large plot of land by the crown and soon had a home built there. Years went by, and then in May of 1707, the community held their annual celebration around

the May Pole, and it was that night that Antoine had a bizarre and frightening encounter. He and his wife were walking back from the celebration to their new home, talking about their good fortune and bright future, when two other locals passed them from behind. When they did, Antoine and his wife overheard their conversation. They were essentially complaining about the wealth and position of Antoine and others like him with their fine silver and nice clothing, and then they mentioned something else. The stranger told his companion that his wife had recently seen the little red man, and just as he was about to say more, they moved farther away and the words were swept up into

the wind. But Antoine's wife had heard enough and pointed it out to her husband. The name Rouge is what that witch warned you about, she told him, but he shrugged it off. It was nonsense, superstition, nothing to be concerned about, or even waste time discussing. So they walked on, and that's when a small figure stepped out of the darkness and into the middle of their path. As it was later described, this figure was a dwarf with a red face and shimmering eyes. When it saw them, the creature pulled its face into a wide, vicious grin, revealing

sharp, animal-like teeth. Antoine's wife stepped back and shouted out in fear. Her husband, though, moved forward. He swung his cane at the creature, striking it right in the head. As he shouted, Get out of the way, you imp! As the cane connected with the dwarf's skull, the creature vanished into thin air. Even as it did, though, the shrill echo of its laughter could still be heard in the darkness. Antoine's wife, still shaking from the surprise of it all, turned and reminded her husband

of the witch's warning. You offended him, she said. You were supposed to appease him, but now you've made him angry. Your future, our future, is now at risk. Again, Antoine shrugged it off. A few days later, though, after visiting Montreal, he was arrested in a secret scheme by his political enemies and then quickly put on trial. As a result, he was forced to sell his claim to the new settlement.

The rest of his life was a series of failure after failure, and his wife never forgot why. Antoine had dared to cross the Nain Rouge. I'd like to say that the curse ended there, but it didn't. In fact, it seems to have grown worse as the years passed by. In 1763, long after Antoine and his contemporaries had passed away, a battle was fought near the fort, at that point under British control. A group of Native American tribes, united under a leader named Pontiac, had gathered to lay siege to the fort, pinning the British down for months.

On July 31st, 250 British soldiers tried to strike at Pontiac's camp, but failed horribly. Today, it's known as the Battle of Bloody Run, and it comes with an interesting bit of legend attached to it. Several eyewitnesses claim that after the battle was over, a small red man was seen dancing on the sandy banks of the river. He was laughing as he lightly stepped in and around the piles of corpses. 40 years later, in 1805, more tragedy struck the community. Fire broke out on June 11th at the building of a local baker, John Harvey.

Within hours, the entire town was engulfed in flames, leveling it to the ground. They say all you could see afterward was a forest of chimneys where the buildings once stood. Now, community-wide fires were common in those days, especially in cities built almost entirely of wood, but what set this fire apart was the multiple sightings of something incredibly odd in the days before it happened. Something that, without context, might not make sense at all. They were sightings, they claim, of a red dwarf.

We all have plans. We have expectations and hopes and a picture in our minds of the way something is supposed to play out. Tricksters exist to shatter those plans. They're a tool of folklore to explain why things don't always go our way, why plans fail or tragedy falls on a community. If things had gone according to Antoine's plan, the city he founded would bear his name to this day, Cadillac.

Instead, he fell from grace and the settlement took on a different name, the French word for a narrow passage of water between two points of land. Detroit. Of course, he's not completely forgotten, though. When William Murphy and Henry Leland created an automotive company in 1902, they looked for a local name to lend the brand some class. So they called it Cadillac, and for a very long time even used Antoine's coat of arms as their company emblem.

Of course, it's easy to chalk all of this up to the power of folklore, that this legend was simply part of the superstitions of the French settlers who found themselves far from home in unfamiliar territory. Every immigrant brings stories with them on their journey, so why should this be any different? But as I said before, there is no mention in European folklore of a creature called the Nain Rouge. But the story is highly detailed and clearly rooted in something. So it should come as no surprise that the Native American tribes of the area around

modern-day Michigan and southern Ontario have their own tales of a trickster god named Nainabouche. It was described as red, small, and able to shift into other shapes. And I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't point out how similar Nainabouche sounds to Nain Rouge. Detroit hasn't forgotten that little red trickster, though. In fact, he's more popular than ever before. If you travel around the city, you can find local beer named after him.

There's also a wine that came out a couple of years ago. It is, of course, a red wine. And then there's the parade that started in 2010. Each year, thousands of people dress up in costumes and march through the city. At the end of the route, they destroy a large effigy of the Nain Rouge as a way of vanishing the evil from the city for another year. But maybe attacking him isn't the best of ideas. Time will tell.

The one last note. Back in March of 1976, a major snow and ice storm hit Detroit, bringing down power lines and trees all over the city. Five inches of ice fell on the streets, and a tornado was even spotted north of town. It was one of those storms that was so devastating and powerful that even 40 years later, people still speak about it with a bit of awe in their voices. The day before the storm arrived, though, two utility workers were out inspecting a power line when they saw something odd.

Someone was climbing one of the nearby poles, and it looked an awful lot like a child, which wasn't good. So they shouted and ran toward the pole to help the child down. As they did, the small shape reached the top and actually stood up on top of the pole. A moment later, it jumped off into the air and vanished from sight, but not before they got a better look. It wasn't a child, after all, but a tiny, bearded man. This episode of lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research help from

Marseille Crockett. Lore is much more than a podcast. There's a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life. I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long

dives into a single topic. You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central place. The World of Lore.com slash now. And you can also follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.

And as always, thanks for listening.