Oh What A Time... - #31 Myths (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

Can you hear that sound? It's the sound of illusions getting shattered!.. Because this week we're discussing Myths! Such as: that the Welsh discovered America! That there are witches riding brooms! Plus, the truth behind Robin Hood! And the Oh What A Time: Full Timers will this week get a the bonus bit on: the Loch Ness Monster! Are you fuming that we're categorically denying that the Welsh discovered America? Have you, in fact, seen the loch ness monster? Are you a witch with a broom? Please do get in touch with the show on this or anything else: [e-mail] This is Part One (Part Two will be out tomorrow), but if you want both parts now, why not become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER? In exchange for your £4.99 to support the show, you'll get: - the 4th part of every episode and ad-free listening - episodes a week ahead of everyone else - a bonus episode every month - And first dibs on any live show tickets Subscriptions are available via AnotherSlice, Apple and Spotify. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.com You can follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod Aaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). And thank you for listening! We’ll see you tomorrow for Part 2! BYE! Chris, Elis and Tom x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time, the history podcast that tries to decide if the past was truly, truly rubbish. I'm Tom Crane. I'm Chris Gull. And I'm Ellis James. Each week on this show we'll be looking at a new historical subject. And today we're going to be discussing myths. So therefore, if we're discussing myths, all these things we're discussing are myths.

The Welsh discovered America. No, that's real. The witch's broom, where it came from. Robin Hood, which is a bit depressing because he's a myth. But also the bonus bit this week is, controversially, the Loch Ness Monster. So the souvenir shop surrounding Loch Ness will be fuming to hear us categorise Loch Ness Monster as a myth.

That financial tap turned off in a second as we revealed the fact that the Loch Ness is not real. They're all flipping their signs to closed. We haven't had anyone in through the door all day. Oh gosh. Have you listened to the latest episode of Oh What A Time? Oh no.

Robin Hood Airport swiftly renamed. Ellis and I banned from the Edinburgh Festival. We can't even go across the border anymore. I mean we'll discuss this at the time when we get to it. I love the Loch Ness Monster. Yeah. And I love the idea of it.

I love it. And so, yeah, I actually refuse to believe it's a myth. I think it's true. Which is why you spend three months a year with your full scuba suit on a mission to find it, don't you? You explain to your wife and kids, I'm so sorry I can't be here for the summer holidays. Daddy's off to find the Loch Ness Monster again.

Do you know what? The latest tech bro billionaire thing to spend your money on is trying to live forever. Like that guy Brian Johnson who injects himself with his son's blood plasma and all this kind of stuff and he's constantly measuring the strength of his sort of night-time erections and blah blah blah Why aren't they

spending their money on trying to discover Loch Ness? On trying to discover the Loch Ness monster? Imagine if you accidentally give them the wrong brief. Try and discover Loch Ness It's there! It's massive! They've won the prize They've found it

But isn't the Loch Ness, well, Loch Ness, isn't it really deep? It's really difficult to kind of trawl it. There's more water in Loch Ness than all the freshwater lakes in England in ways combined because it's 22 miles long, it's a couple of miles wide and it's about 500, is it 500 feet deep or something? It's huge anyway. There's a very big expanse of water. It's a couple of miles wide and it's about 500 feet deep or something. It's huge anyway. There's a very big expanse of water.

It's very impressive. And also Nessie's very shy as well, isn't he? He's the shyest of the monsters, which makes it tricky. Or she. Very good point. It's not for us to, until we've met Nessie, it's not for us to do that. So that's what we're talking about today. Myths, legends, the truth behind them talking of

legends our listeners have been in contact with emails that's just a wonderful it's a wonderful bit of a lovely bit of audio business i love audio i love audio exactly so moments like that it's like watching one of the great masters painting magic. And if you can see how tired I look, I'm really grateful this is only audio as well. I look like I've been dug up. That's what I look like. But a charming smile. Okay. Last week.

I think it was last week. I lose track of time. It's a history pod. What is time? I was talking about my deep love of custard. Do you remember this? Yes. Last week's episode Custard is my favourite liquid

In fact, we've had messages suggesting that we need to release A range of merchandise saying custard is my favourite liquid On mugs and t-shirts and hats Let's get into that first of all Do you reckon that's a goer? Yeah Okay Custard is my favourite liquid.

Tom, can you change your bio on all social medias to custard is my favourite liquid? Yeah. I drink it. I bathe in it. If you tell me how to change my bio, I will do that. If you come to my house and you take my phone

and you show me this is how you do it, Tom, I will do that, okay? I promise you. Right. right john bone has been in contact it's a great name john bone isn't it it sounds like trombo and i'm sure he got that all the time at school all the time people doing trombo noises as he walked past he has said hello chaps i'm going to keep this really really short this version because it's a very very long email but the first paragraph surmises what it's about hello chaps loving the pod etc okay patitudes taken care of to business in the nightlife episode tom said that custard is his favorite liquid let me let me correct him on that custard is not a liquid

it's a non-newtonian fluid so there there you go. Oh dear, you fickle. You're one of the clever listeners. My worry, John Bone, is that the t-shirts custard is my favourite non-Newtonian fluid aren't going to shift as well as custard is my favourite liquid. Well, you'd have custard is my favourite

liquid in big letters, in a big font. You'd have a little asterisk by the word liquid and then at the bottom you'd have I'm aware it's a non-Newtonian fluid. Sorry. Or have it on the back. So you read it first and then

as the person walks away you're like oh they did correct it. Oh yeah, yeah, that's nice. This email is genuinely about 15 paragraphs long explaining why custard is not a liquid. I'm going to screen grab it all. We'll whack it on our Instagram. So if people want to find out more about the nature of custard, they can.

Furthermore, to that point, we've had an email from Jen in Sheffield who has said, I've been genuinely banned from buying any more custard until I've worked my way through the cupboard full I'm currently in possession of. Who banned me? My partner, don't be silly. No one wants a custard drinking lady. It was, of course, my 12-year-old child. So her 12-year-old child apparently has banned her from buying any more custards. So there are people like me out there.

I'm not a loser. There's people like me out there. There's custard lovers. That sounds weird. Of course, social media and the internet, et cetera, comes in for a lot of stick, but it has made some of society's outcasts feel less alone. Tom obviously was an outcast for years,

but now he's realised that custard is many people's favourite liquid slash non-Natodian fluid. Yeah. And he doesn't feel quite so isolated now. I'm trying to imagine what we do at meetings, what would happen at these custard meetings. If I was to form like a Facebook group, where we'd meet, probably... I don't think there'd be much need for a tea urn.

Put the kettle on. Why? Right, Ellis, let's move on to things you've said that are silly. Okay? Oh, no. Jordan Butler-Wells. Great name again.

So many great names, Jordan Butler-Wells. Proper footballers, championship footballers name that. Now, this, World War I general. Yeah.

Whistling the men over the top from the comfort of the trench. So Jordan Butler-Wells has said, moon and the sun. On the topic of misunderstanding the moon, so this is a while ago. So Ellis, just quickly remind our listeners what you said about the moon. Izzy, when our daughter was about two or three, was holding Izzy's hand and said, oh, look, it's the moon. And it was like two in the afternoon

and Izzy said no that's the sun because it's the day and her friend Annabelle said no I think that's the moon Izzy and she hadn't realised that you could see the moon in daylight

occasionally and I obviously she was given short shrift by me for this. How have I got this wrong? Because I would definitely recognise the moon when I see it. Well, this might make her feel a little bit better because Jordan Butler-Wells has met someone who's taken it up a level. On the topic of misunderstanding the moon, my 65-year-old mother told me that until recently,

she thought the moon was just the sun at night my first question was how recently well my husband's was how did you realize it wasn't and she replied well i saw the moon in the day while the sun was out and I thought, hold on a minute. So she thought both at once. And that blew her opinions out of the water.

That's great. Amazing. If it doesn't end there, we've got more moon emails. I think we'll end on this one. Howard James. Is that the name of the guy from Take That? No. No, it's Howard Donald. Oh, on this one. Howard James. Is that the name of the guy from Take That?

No. No, it's Howard Donald. Ah, there it is. Howard Donald. It's 50% of the name of the guy from Take That. There was the musician Howard Jones. Ah, maybe that's what I'm thinking of. It's not. It's not what I'm thinking of. The moon in the daytime. Greetings, gentlemen. Following on from Ellis talking about Izzy's confusion

over seeing the moon during the day a couple of years ago, I was talking to a woman in Ellis's homeland of Pembrokeshire, who genuinely thought the moon and the sun were the same thing. We are again. See, it's not alone. She thought that it shone brighter in the day because it was light, but it wasn't as bright at night because it was dark. True story.

As part of the same conversation, she asked me, you know they say that the earth is the same shape as a ball. Are we on the inside or the outside? And Howard James has said I had to walk away at that point there you are that's all it is

keep up the good work Howard that might be a winner we might have a winner that's actually that's genuinely made me cry with laughter absolutely love that

well there we are our wonderful listeners legends that you are have come up trumps again do send us any custard or some related thoughts you have. If you're sending in custard, don't send it to the email.

Send it to Tom's house. Yes. Actually, don't. I'm staging an intervention. The guy, he's drinking slash eating too much of it. And if you must send it, do send it in its powdered form. Don't make the custard into a liquid thing and pour it into an envelope because it will not survive the journey okay um if you have any other thoughts which are historical

thoughts one day time machine any amazing relatives who have done incredible things in the past get in contact with the show and here's how you do that all right you horrible lot here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at oh, what a time dot com. And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter at oh, what a time pod. Now clear off. It's a new day. How can you make the most of it with your membership rewards points? Earn points on everyday purchases. Use them for that long-awaited vacation.

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From football to basketball and hockey to baseball, whatever the moment, it's never ordinary at Bet365. Must be 19 or older, Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, visit connectsontario.ca. All right, so this week I will be talking about Robin Hood and our bonus bit for the Oh What a Time full-timers is the Loch Ness Monster.

I will be talking about myths around the witch's broom and the truth behind where the stories came from. But I'm going to start by talking about one of my favourite myths, which is the Mardoch myth, which we have, I have mentioned a couple of times already on the podcast, if you're a regular listener. But it's the myth that America wasn't discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 or the Vikings, that America was discovered by the Welsh. Yes, that's right. Over 300 years before Christopher Columbus, in around 1170. Amazing.

This is a myth. If you grew up in Wales and you had an interest in Welsh history, I think I was probably made first aware of it in school because there was a historian, Marxist historian, called Gwynedd Williams, whose work I studied at school and university, and he wrote a book about it, The Madoc Myth, actually. It just sounds so ridiculous and so insane. I love every bit of it.

But people know about the Vikings and Christopher Columbus and John Cabot, but no, they're all wrong. It's not a myth. I completely believe it. America was discovered by Madoc Ab Abba Owyne Gwynedd who was a 12th century Welsh prince and he discovered America before the age of 20

Wow Now it's I'll give you a few details first Owyne Gwynedd who was Mardoch's father was a real person

he was born in about 1100 and he died in 1170 and he is known in history in Welsh history as Owyne Fawr which translated means Ó Wein the Great. Well, actually, strictly speaking, it means Big Ó Wein.

But in that context, it means sort of Ó Wein the Chief, Ó Wein the Great. And he was the king of Gwynedd. Big Ó Wein. It doesn't feel like enough of a sort of like mythological character's name, does it? It just feels like your mate's older brother. The biggest character

at the working men's club. Well, Vauro Mawr means big and great at the same time. Okay, got you. So, he was the king of Gwynedd. Gwynedd

is the county of North West where it's still very Welsh-speaking, right? So that's where he was based. Yeah. And he was a shagger

up to sort of... Basically, he was the king shagger up to Tom Jones. King a shagger up to sort of, basically he was the King Shagger up to Tom Jones, King Welsh Shagger. So he had two wives, four known mistresses, at least 21 kids. Not all of his offspring were legitimate, most were not. Some have even been invented and then attributed to him. They all form part of his sort of strange story.

Now Prince Mardock is one of the inventions. So his tale tells us that he was the youngest son of the king, was born illegitimately in 1150. Obviously, being part of an enormous family like that, regardless of legal standing, meant that Marduk would have to find his own way of standing out from the crowd, you know, because he needs to distinguish himself from his siblings.

So he was one of 21, is that right? Yeah, and obviously inevitably they were going to have to fight for his inheritance because Owain Vowers died in 1170. Now Owain, his father, Owain was king of Gwynedd, as I've already said. His big foe, obviously, was the English king, Henry II. Yeah. Followed by pretty much everyone else in Wales wasn't from Gwynedd because that's the thing with Wales is,

even though there's a very interesting Martin Johns book about, by the historian Martin Johns about Wales as a country, we were a series of kingdoms really that used to often fight each other. So even though we were united by language and to a large extent religion, we used to, you know, we were very tribal people. So there's lots of Welsh myths is the old white dragon English white dragon facing off the red dragon you know the the whole O'England Dwr myth yeah O'England Daur as he's referred to in Shakespeare because he fought

rebellion against the English in the early 1400s and the myth around him is that he never died and that he went missing and he's just waiting for a time when Wales is truly in need and he's going to come back and save Wales. You kind of think you've had enough opportunities I think, Owain. World War I and II are two big ones.

Euro 2016 semi-final would have been the perfect time. Yeah, Aaron Ramsey's booking is a big one, in my opinion. And, in fairness to him, Ben Davis's booking. Two of our best players suspended for that game. Could you not have struck down Ronaldo when he went for that head-in at the end of the first half? That would have been so great.

Turning up on the sideline in historical garb and carrying a pair of football boots and coming on and winning it for you. Now, Henry II come onto the English throne after a period known as the Anarchy, when members of his family, including his mum, the Empress Maud, squabbled over who should ascend the throne after the unexpected death of Henry I.

It's like classic medieval king stuff. There are elements of true medieval history in the background of this myth, OK? OK. Now, Madoc, the young son, who was thought to be a great sailor and so proved himself on ships sailing off the coast of North Wales,

you know, he kind of... He's a character that is there to be shaped and he's all well and good whilst his dad is alive, but in Lemsent he died and Gwynedd was plunged into civil war. So it's awful. You've got Betus Ocoid versus Bethesda. Llanfairvichan versus

Bangor. It's a bloody nightmare. Now some of her wine sons left for Ireland. Others escaped south but Madoc had another idea according to the myth. He would sail from the west coast of Ireland and search for the promised land over the horizon. Now at this point, if we're not

clear already, we enter the realm of myth make-believe and crucially for this of medieval romance and invented tradition now we've got to say this because the madoc myth was developed in earnest not by the 12th or 13th century chroniclers around the time he was alive or just after he died but by antiquarians and scholars in the tudor period now the thing with Tudor period, that was a dynasty that had Welsh backgrounds. You know, a lot of the people involved in the Tudors were born in Wales. So this is a dynasty, it's Welsh in origin, but it faced the threat of Spain, the conqueror of the New World, and a grieving husband in the shape of Philip II,

who was the husband of Elizabeth I's half-sister, Bloody Mary. Just quickly, I said that the House of Tudor had Welsh origins. It was an English dynasty. It held the throne of England from 1485 to 1603, but they descended from the Tudors of Penmynydd, who were a Welsh noble family. So Welshness, obviously, if you gomynydd, who were a Welsh noble family. Yeah. So it's, you know, so Welshness, obviously, if you go far enough back, they were Welsh.

So we know about how important the, you know, the Spanish Empire was at the time, but America's wealth was making Spain extremely rich and powerful and England rather jealous. So Tudor propagandists thought, hang on, why don't we just, why don't we just, why don't we make a prior claim to America? What if we say, well, actually, we landed there first in America.

We got there first. So shotgun, basically, shotgun America. Yeah, they were shotgunning America. We tried to Bugsy America. Yeah. So they said, Bugsy, I would say. It's an interesting little regional difference. So they're like, all right, we'll just say we got there first.

So they thought to themselves, okay, well, how can we make this believable? So they looked at the Welsh, who were the sort of most alien of the people on the island of Britain. Yeah. Because obviously, you know, the language primarily, I suppose. And so the Marduk myth was born, apparently with reference to medieval sources, as early in Elizabeth I's reign as 1559.

So she came to the throne in 1558. So by the end of the Tudor dynasty in 1603, there were half a dozen versions of the Marduk myth in circulation, with Humphrey Lloyd's of 1559 being the formative one. So he told readers that Marduk had sailed west from Ireland and arrived in a strange land, some part of the land which the Spanish do affirm themselves to have found first. He's like, no, no, no, no.

Prince Marduk, he got there before you. Amazing. So when Britons began to settle the New World in the 17th century and their encounters with Native Americans, they sort of created this idea that the native tongues of the Native Americans, the languages they were speaking, were somehow related to Welsh, right? Because obviously Welsh was the most foreign tongue you were likely to hear in the UK. So this gave rise to the notion of Welsh Indians, right?

What? So in there, yeah. I was trying to find this article online and I couldn't. I remember the Western Mail doing a piece on this. And I think this is in Gwyneth Williams' book as well. Part of the myth is that there was a tribe of Native Americans, or I think First Americans is the term people use now, where they had ginger hair

and they spoke a language that was very similar to Welsh. And they had ancient myths about these black and white cows that didn't like their heat. Amazing. And this is cattle they were supposed to have brought across with them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, great.

Yeah, they had all these black and white cattle and they didn't like the heat. Oh, God, they struggled. It was too hot for them. It's like when Welsh people start going on holiday to Spain in the 70s. Oh, it was too hot. It was too hot, if anything. Amazing.

But can I say, there's countries's lots of, like, there's countries that have a reputation for being great seafarers. You think about the Scandinavian countries. I would say even England and Spain have that reputation, but it's, I know we talked about Black Bard in an earlier episode, but I wouldn't really see Wales as famous. Yeah, we're a lot of pirates from Wales. Famous for pirates?

For seafaring nation? I think with the seafaring, I think the problem we have, say in comparison with Ireland, or even Scotland actually, but certainly with Ireland. It's the frequency in which you pack the ships with cows.

No, it's that we, in the Industrial Revolution, we effectively colonised ourselves because we didn't have to go broad to work because there was so much work in South Wales after the English Revolution. If you were rural and skint in West Wales or North Wales, you're like, well, I don't actually have to go to America

or abroad or even to London because I can just go to Merthyr because there's bloody ironworks there and there's steelworks and there's coal mines. That's so interesting the aspect of need dictating travel and expansion and where people move. That's so important isn't it? It effectively for a long time saved the Welsh language as well

because Welsh speakers were moving to other parts of Wales Fascinating. Whereas obviously the Irish I mean they left Ireland in their millions because of the famine. Yeah. So it was slightly different for us. I think that's another t-shirt idea as well. We colonised ourselves alongside custard is my favourite liquid.

Get that on a T-shirt. Love it. There's a piece from a historical journal piece from 1959 called By Brynley Thomas. I can't remember the name of it, but I think that's the phrase he uses. I remember studying that university. Anyway. So what we're saying is he gets 10%.

He gets 10%. Now the idea of Welsh-speaking, blue-eyed Native Americans with myths about black and white cows, I have loved this for about 30 years, right? Now this myth became so strong. Basically, the idea was that they were descendants of Mardoch and his brethren, right? Now, this myth was so strong that Thomas Jefferson, the enlightened founding father of the US, and obviously went on to become president of the US, he was an avowed believer of this myth. Now, he had Welsh ancestry.

And in his study study when he died they found Welsh dictionaries. I'm not saying that he was a Welsh speaker but he was certainly a linguist and he was fascinated by other languages so he was definitely aware of the Welsh language. And people have speculated that he was a Welsh speaker but he certainly might have studied it.

Now everywhere the Americans expanded on their continent they apparently met Welsh Indians. And there was the proof that the land was theirs by inheritance. OK, so the truth of all this is contained in actions rather than words. So Prince Marduk is absolutely an invented tradition, sadly, even though I love to believe it. But he was created to justify empire, justification that loomed large in the minds of those most invested in that enterprise whether they were british or american you know at the two does been scottish in origin

we would be talking probably of prince malcolm or prince mcdonald who'd gone there in the 1170s but they weren't so the tudor empire acquired this origin myth thanks you know to that funny little corner of wales i you know that we still call gwynedd that's absolutely fascinating and it's obviously i'm welsh so i'm allowed to call gwynedd a funny little corner do you think it's too late for wales to start claiming other countries just if it's worked if they've done it once before now listen i know that we have a correction section in this podcast and i'm talking about a news item i saw on the welsh news about probably 30 years ago yeah but there was a family from pontipree who claimed that descendants of theirs discovered new york or i think i think i think more specifically discovered Manhattan.

And so they had a claim to what is the most expensive real estate on earth. So if that family from Pont-au-Prix, they're listening, best of luck. Because it really will be life-changing if you're able to prove this. The idea of walking into Trump Tower and saying, that's mine, actually. You need to start paying me rent. Well, that's the end of part one. Part two is out tomorrow, where we'll be discussing more myths. And our hearts will break again over things that we've held very dear since childhood.

That Daryl Howard's story has proved to us to be bollocks. So, yeah, it's going to be a great feel-good episode. But if you'd like to have part one and part two together in the same bumper podcast then why don't you become an Oh What A Time full-timer and you can find all of the details on how to do this at ohwhatatime.com Tom, what else do people get for their money for crying out loud? It's such a great deal

Well, Elle, they get no adverts they get an extra bit of history at the end of every episode they get a brand new subscriber-only episode once a month. They get first dibs on live tickets. Lots of fun things like that. I'm sure there's other things I've forgotten, but that's probably enough to be getting on with.

So if you want to sign up, that would be great. We really appreciate the support. Why don't you do a Robin Hood and put your bloody hand in your pocket? We'll see you tomorrow for part two. Bye. we'll see you tomorrow for part two bye Thank you.