The Blindboy Podcast - Rivers, Lakes and Data Centres in Irish Mythology

Episode Date: October 5, 2022

Hot take on the Mythological history of water as a conduit for wisdom and information in Ireland Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dog speed, you wandering brosnans. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If this is your first episode, maybe consider going back to an earlier episode. Or you could even go back to the start and begin from there. To familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast, there's nearly 300 episodes now, but it's an entire body of work.

It's intertextual I'm going to begin this week's podcast by reading out a poem which we haven't done in a few weeks I'm consistently being sent poetry by very famous people and I never get the opportunity to to read the poems out so I was sent a poem this week by Hollywood actor Mark

Wahlberg again it's it's more of a piece of prose than a poem and it's untitled but I would like to read it out so this poem was submitted by Hollywood actor Mark Wahlberg I'm Mark Wahlberg and I was supposed to be on the plane that did 9-11. If I'd have been on that plane, it would never have happened. I'd have stopped it. Because I'm Mark Wahlberg and my brain is made of swans and my heart pumps leukosate through my burlap veins

that are the width of canals and my thighs pry open the width of canals. And my thighs pry open the gates of Hades. I have ten haircuts all at once. My eyes point inwards so I can see my own thoughts. And the backs of my eyes point outwards with little fake pupils on them. And that's what you see when you think you're looking at my eyes you fucking fool

I'm Mark Wahlberg I have arseholes for armpits and an armpit for an arsehole and my kneecaps are detachable and I can wear them as a hat and the hat makes your wife instantly attracted to me I'm Mark Wahlberg

and 9-11 would never have happened if I was on that plane because I'd have tit wanked Bin Laden's stupid head with the tits that I have instead of fists and then I'd have punched him

with my fists which are where my feet should be. So for this week's podcast, I have a little hot take that I want to explore. It's a hot take that I've mentioned briefly in the past as something that I wanted to investigate with more depth. So that's what I'm going to do this week. So extreme weather is unfortunately becoming more normal as a result of global warming. Just last week we saw Hurricane Ian devastating Florida and Cuba and also this summer we saw

huge flooding in Pakistan and lots of people losing their lives and being displaced from these huge flood waters and global warming is doing this and global warming is the consequences of humanity's excess. The rapid industrialization driven by consumption of a relatively small amount of nations, a small

amount of the human population when you look at the bigger picture. The excesses of industrialized nations are causing global warming, we know this. And it's like a, it's like a very fucked up self-fulfilling prophecy, which makes me think about the nature of time. Because one of the oldest and most ubiquitous myths across all human civilization is that of the flood myth. Multiple cultures in multiple parts of the world, going back thousands of years, all contain an epic mythological story where humanity is punished by a deity with a flood that destroys civilization. The most obvious example is the biblical flood from the Bible, from the Old Testament. Noah's Ark. This story is from the book of Genesis. The book of Genesis was written about 2,500 years ago. It's a pre-Christian biblical story from the Old Testament, so it's before the birth of Christ.

Christ was only a sperm in God's bollock. But the gist of Noah's flood or Noah's ark is... It was like 10 generations after the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve. So humanity had been expelled from the Garden of Eden and was effectively living in sin. And God was like, I don't really like these humans here. The world that they've created is full of sinfulness and violence and anger and aggression. These humans and this world that I've created, they're a show of cunts. So I'm going to start again. I'm going to return the earth to the primordial soup from which I created it. to the primordial soup from which I created it.

And I'm going to do this by flooding the entire place and killing everything. Because these greedy cunts have gone too far. Before he does this, he goes to a fella called Noah and says, here's the crack, Noah. I'm going to destroy everything on earth

and all life would have flood except for you. So what I want you to do build a giant boat get two of every single animal you can find go onto the boat and stay safe there for about 150 days and nights

because the place is going to be wrecked. And then when that's finished you can get off and you can start again. But that's not the first flood myth. Like that Bible story there is two and a half thousand years old. But a near identical story happens in what's called the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is 5,000 years old and comes from the Mesopotamian civilization, which is one of the world's first cities 5,000 years ago

in what would now be Iraq but the epic of Gilgamesh contains a flood that destroys the world and a fellow who builds a boat to survive in it and then you can go back even farther and there's an older story than the epic of Gilgamesh called the Atrahasis, which is an Akkadian epic poem, which also tells the story of a giant flood which comes to punish civilization and destroy it. But even the thing there, like the likes of Babylon or Mesopotamia, which are, we'd call them the cradle of civilization. And when you say civilization there there what we mean is western civilization

that area of the fertile crescent we'll say starting maybe 10-15,000 years ago is where humans first started to live in cities to live in communities and to settle and to discover farming and to live in communities that are more than 150 people. But the flood myth isn't even present to those people. The flood mythology is present in Inca mythology, which is South America, which is technically a civilization that would have had no recent contact with anyone in the continent of Europe or Asia. You also have flood mythology within Aboriginal cultures in Australia. The narrative of a great flood punishing humanity for its excesses and its sins is universally human across cultures as if it's

part of our collective unconscious. When I really think about it it has me wondering mad shit altogether. Really mad shit as if encoded within our DNA is this idea that humans just over consume, fuck everything up and then have to move to a new area if we can while the majority of the population dies. It makes me wonder if we came from another planet, if human life on this earth arrived here via spaceship or whatever the fuck from another planet that we made a bollocks of. And the ubiquity of flood mythology is like our only distant memory of that period. It makes me wonder about the cyclical nature of time. Again this is me talking out of my absolute hole but if we don't accept time as being completely linear which physics will say that it's not linear, time is just something we don't fully understand

it's far beyond our comprehension do we just simply know that this is what's going to happen to us or are we enacting some strange self-fulfilling prophecy because when you look at global warming and what's happening it looks a lot like Noah's fucking flood like we have collectively been so greedy

that the waters around the world are rising and then you've got pricks like Elon Musk who literally want to go to Mars and take with them animals and seeds and plants and go fuck that earth is flooded we did too much we've been punished let's go to Mars and start anew

if you have enough money but all of this got me thinking about Irish mythology in particular I'm fascinated with Irish mythology I do a lot of podcasts on Irish mythology I'm currently incredibly tempted to do a master's degree in Irish mythology. Very, very tempted. There's one in UCC that's two years long. I just don't think I could do it. I wouldn't be able to, wouldn't be able to do this podcast and write my books and do the work that I'm

doing if I was also doing a master's, but I'd like to do it so that I could speak about Irish mythology with a greater knowledge and authority. It fascinates me because it's so imaginative and irrational and there's so much surreal humour in Irish stories that are 5,000 years old and it's a type of humour that's still present today in our culture and how we see ourselves and speak about ourselves and how we use language but what I want to speak about this week is the role of water in Irish mythology, the relevance of water in Irish mythology and what it means because I have a little hot take

around it. Now I'm aware that 70% of the listenership of this podcast is not from Ireland, is outside of Ireland. So I hope this will be interesting to ye as well. There's a book called the Lower Gabala Éireann, which means the Book of Invasions. The earliest version of it written down is like an 11th century manuscript. But the stories in this book could be thousands of years old that were passed down through oral culture and these stories were only written down in the 11th century. But the Book of Invasions tells the story of how Ireland came to be. It's like a history of Ireland, a history of the waves of different people that came to this little

island that was the most western part of the known world. And what's so fascinating about the book of invasions is the stories are thousands of years old, most of it is far-fetched ridiculous mythology about the land, but then some of it holds true. Like only in the past 20 years, through genetic testing, have we found out that the first people to arrive in Ireland would have come from the Iberian Peninsula in Spain, most likely from North Africa. But this information is present in the Lower Gabala Aaron. In this book that has stories that are thousands of years old, it says a race of people called the Milesians came from Spain and settled in Ireland. And you're talking 10,000 years ago there.

And those stories survive in the Lower Gabala Aaron. They were passed down through 10,000 years of oral culture into this book to say, yeah, a lot of people came from Spain. And it took us till, I think it was 2007, to prove this using DNA. So I love that about Irish mythology. I love that within the ridiculous stories, you get something with historical rigor

that's worth listening to. But because the Lower Gabala era that we have was written in the 11th century, that was written in Ireland when it was Christian. So a lot of it is ancient pagan folklore that could be thousands of years old mixed in with modern Christianity to make sense of Ireland's place in the Christian world. Because the thing is, Ireland was never mentioned in the Bible. So the monks who were writing this Lower Gabala Aaron were going, right, how can we fit Paddy into the Bible?

So the monks went fucking with the Bible narrative and started inventing some shit. So in the Lower Gabala Aaron, they said the first ever people that came to Ireland were led by a fella called Cicere. And Cicere was Noah's son. Now that's dodgy shit. So now they're contradicting the Bible. And the monks who wrote the Lower Gabala Aaron are going, hold on a minute, they left out that Noah had a son. I know the Bible says that it was just Noah and the animals. They left out his son.

Noah had a son called Cesar. And Noah said to him, There's a flood coming, son. So build another boat and go to the most western edge of the world and try and find somewhere to live before the flood comes. So that's what Cesar did. Cesar then told a load of his friends and they all arrived into Bantry Bay in County Cork and settled Ireland

for the first time. Now it's worth noting this was written in the 11th century. So that's before the Brits invaded Ireland and it was shit like this shit like this was one of the reasons that the Brits had an excuse to invade us I covered this before in a podcast about a fella called Geraldus of Wales who was a Norman cartographer I suppose you'd call him who did a huge survey of Ireland and when the Normans in England were looking for their excuse to invade Ireland in the very early 12th century. They went to the Pope, Adrian, who was an English Pope, and said, Have you seen what those mad cunts are doing to the Bible? They're after fucking with Noah's story.

Yeah, they're after saying that Noah has a son, and his son came over with all his friends and founded Ireland. They can't be doing that. So that was the perfect excuse for the Normans, the Brits, to forcefully civilise us and to bring our Christianity more in line with Roman Christianity.

Because we were doing fine. From about the 5th century onwards we were the land of saints and scholars. We had loads of monasteries we were producing illuminated manuscripts we were a place where people would travel

on pilgrimages to learn and to read because the Roman Empire had collapsed and the fabric of that civilization had collapsed so while Europe was in the dark ages Ireland was having its golden era of monastic scholarship.

But our Christianity was becoming quite isolated from the Christianity and the Christian doctrine of Rome. Early Irish Christianity would mix in the pagan tales of Ireland. With Christian stories. To mix the two together. Because we were producing illuminated manuscripts. That's what Ireland was doing. From about AD 500 onwards. We had all these monasteries. Full of monks.

And they were creating these. Beautiful books. With fantastic illustrations and designs and abstract patterns. And these books contained the Gospels, Christian stories, but it's also how our oral indigenous mythology that was thousands of years old was recorded and how we're able to know about these stories today. The most obvious example of an illuminated manuscript is the Book of Kells. We all know what the Book of Kells is.

That's an illuminated manuscript. But for me, what makes Irish mythology so beautiful and so rich is that so much of it comes from an oral culture. So writing the written word only started to appear in Ireland around the 4th century. But our mythology and our stories can go back maybe 4 or 5 thousand years when people couldn't write them down. So they'd be passed along via songs and music or just simple storytelling. And when you have a culture that doesn't have writing, the easiest way to communicate information is through storytelling.

You see, when you have writing, if you're to speak about an area, when writing is present, that can just become quite bureaucratic. Here's a list of how many sheep and pigs and cows are in the area. Here's a list of how many trees. Here's a list of how many fields with wheat. Here's a list of everyone's names. That's writing. From a bureaucratic perspective that's incredibly efficient but when you don't have, you have to have storytelling. So that's when mythology and folklore comes in within an oral culture. Every single river can't just be a river. The river needs to have a story about that river that's so interesting that it passes on memetically and everyone remembers it.

Or a tree can't just be a tree. memetically and everyone remembers it. Or a tree can't just be a tree. A tree has to have magical qualities and has to have something about that tree and a deity associated with it or a fairy or a demon that will make everyone remember that tree. So within Ireland's oral culture every tiny detail of the country and its people had to be recorded using the most interesting story possible or the most beautiful song possible. And that's why I adore Irish mythology. And I think too it's why as a tiny nation we punch so far above our weight. When it comes to art and literature literature like some of the greatest writers in English literature are fucking Irish most of them are fucking Irish artistically as a culture

we're wildly overrepresented when it comes to our artistic output because it's there in our culture it never went away even when the English language was forced upon us, we found a storytelling inventiveness through Hiberno English. Like I feel it. When I was writing my first book of short stories and if I had any doubt, if I was there with the blank page and I had any doubt within me about what to write I felt something deep within me that was greater than me like an ancestral confidence like whenever I didn't know what to write

or where the story was going this voice just said write the way you talk just write the way you talk or write the way people around you talk. Follow the eccentric inventiveness that is present in the way English is spoken in Ireland. And if you do that, it will resolve itself. And I'd do it and it would work.

And it didn't feel like I was drawn from a self-confidence within me. It was like a collective self-confidence. Thousands of years of storytelling that is inherently present in the way we arrange words and this richness of storytelling is most reflected in our geography. Pick any place in Ireland and look deep enough and you'll find a rich folklore and mythology and a set of stories that are a thousand years old or a couple of thousand years old and this week I want to speak

about water within Irish mythology and the relevance of flowing bodies of water in Irish mythology and how within Irish myths water was seen as a fluid that contained knowledge and wisdom in particular anything to do with naturally occurring wells or springs. Now I did a podcast a few months back which I thoroughly enjoyed doing called The Myth of the Valley of Madness and in this I looked at an area around the Sleave Mish mountains in Kerry called Gleownagelt where going back thousands of years people with mental illness would travel to this area because they claimed that this area in Kerry, in particular this one particular spring or well, would cure their mental illness and people lived there for thousands of years. Now this was something that was present within Irish mythology. Nobody knew why people

with mental illness were living in this area and then recently scientists studied the water in this area and found that the well contained a huge amount of lithium, the mineral lithium, which is used to treat bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression. So right there you have a beautiful example of stories that are thousands of years old about the valley of madness and about a spring that can cure madness and then science turning around and going yeah it's got lithium in the water that shit's real so I want to talk about the the river Shannon the river Shannon flows through my home city of Limerick the river Shannon is the main feature of the city the Shannon I believe is the longest river in Europe. In Limerick we have a

complicated relationship with the river Shannon because on the one hand it defines us, this huge giant river that comes through our city and it's the reason Limerick exists. The reason the Vikings chose

it as an area to settle a thousand years ago or 1500 years ago whatever it was because it was on the mouth of the river Shannon as it entered the ocean. Just a little content warning I'm going to mention suicide for about the next two and a half minutes if you'd rather skip past that bit if your head isn't in the best place minutes if you'd rather skip past that bit if your head isn't in the best place but in limerick city we have a complicated relationship and narrative around the river shannon now we've got quite a high rate of suicide we have the highest suicide rate in the in the country and most people die by suicide in the river shannon so we have a strange relationship with it like we have volunteer groups that patrol the river Shannon

to stop people from jumping in like and I'm not bullshitting here me as a man in his 30s if I was to walk near the River Shannon at night time. Any night. If I'm in town. And like I'm in a good place mentally.

So if I want to go and look at the River Shannon. It's because I want to go and look at this beautiful huge river. That's what I want to do. But I won't do it. Because it's happened to me more than once. If I as an adult. male, walk to that river and look in, within 10 minutes, somebody working for suicide prevention will come over and start talking to me. Not even volunteers for the suicide prevention.

Like, and limerick people will understand what I'm talking about and I don't know if it's just a male thing, maybe this happens to women too, but if you stop by that river after dusk and look into it, like, cars will slow down. You can't just look into that river anymore. So the suicide prevention

people will come over in their high-vis jackets, asking if I'm okay, wanting to see if I need help. Now it's wonderful that that exists and these are volunteer organisations that do that and they save a huge amount of lives. Limerick Suicide Prevention is the name of the organisation. They're unbelievable the work that they do but it's also very sad a lot of people in Limerick will tell you that they have seen someone trying to jump in

like I myself in my lifetime I've probably seen it four or five times and I've seen the rescue operations I've last count how many times I've seen boats in the river trying to find someone. If I'm running by the river on a Sunday or Monday morning, like early 7am, sometimes I'm scared to look in, in case I see somebody.

Because on so many weekend mornings I have been jogging by the river and the rescue boat goes past, looking for somebody. And when we hear the helicopter in Limerick we all get a shiver and in Limerick we call the helicopter the mechanical banshee that's what the helicopter is called in Limerick the mechanical banshee the banshee of course is a creature from Irish mythology that foretells a person's death. That that's the new narrative of this river. That's the new meaning of this river.

That's the mythology now under neoliberal capitalism. With so little access to housing or basic adult autonomy or mental health services. To even stop and try and admire the river after dark on your own triggers a trauma response in everybody around you. But that wasn't always the mythology of that river. It is founded upon a tragedy. But in Irish mythology, the Shannon River meant that all the wisdom and knowledge and information of the world was carried through its waters. There's a huge volume of texts, ancient texts called the Dinshankis, which means the lore of places. The Lore of Places. The earliest examples of this text is, I think from the 5th century.

The most extensive version of it is in the Book of Leinster, which is an illuminated manuscript from the 12th century. But the Dinshankis, The Lore of Places, it's like this huge volume of text that contains the Irish mythological meaning for loads of different places in Ireland. And within this is contained the origin story of the River Shannon. It's centred around a place called Conlas Well. well, right? Conla's well, which was also known as like the well of wisdom or the well of knowledge,

is the mythical source of the River Shannon. Now, where they think Conla's well actually is, is up around County Cavan. There's a little pool called the Shannon Pot and it's water that comes from deep underground. And this is the source. This is the actual geographical source of the River Shannon. But in Irish mythology, there's this place called Conla's Well. The Well of Wisdom. Now the reason that natural wells and natural springs in Irish mythology are considered to be places where the water holds knowledge and wisdom is because in Irish mythology wells are seen as gateways to the other world. So the other world within Irish mythology and this is an interesting thing about ancient Irish concepts of time.

And this is an interesting thing about ancient Irish concepts of time. The other world, which is sometimes called Tir na nÓg, it's not like heaven or hell or purgatory. The other world is a parallel universe. It exists with us here and now, but in a different frequency that we can't see or hear or smell. A different dimension of reality that coexists with us. And this other world is supernatural.

The fairies live there. Ghosts. Goddesses. Gods. And the other world isn't necessarily a good or a bad place. There's wonderful goodness there. You know, people can live eternally. There's no shortage of food.

There's a magical heavenly element to it. But you also have like fairies and demons who can trick people into the other world but springs and wells were considered to be portals to this other world that water would come up from the ground from seemingly nowhere and people in ancient ireland would look at this and go well this is water from the other world and on the opposite side of this is a parallel well and within this water what you get is the wisdom and knowledge and infinite information of the gods and the fairies that's what's coming up through this water so people used to start living around these wells and drinking from these wells and the mythology would state that people who lived near these wells that contained all the knowledge of the world, that these people would be smarter, healthier people.

And this is present all throughout Irish mythology about wells and knowledge. Now, the logical explanation for that is what we're speaking about here is natural springs. And if you think of Ireland 2,000 fucking years ago, people aren't going to have the rich, nutritious diets that we have today that we just take for granted. Some people might have been malnourished. They might have access to food,

but they might just be eating one type of food. But the thing with a natural spring is that it's a source of water from deep underground. And when this water comes up to the surface, it brings with it all these minerals like magnesium, potassium, calcium, sodium, zinc, iron. And when you drink this water or when you grow crops that are near this water, you're now ingesting these essential minerals that are hugely important for the health of the human brain and the health of the human body. So people who live near these wells would have actually have been healthier people, happier people and as a result smarter, more alert, brighter people because they have less chance of nutrient deficiencies. Just like those people around the well in the Shleve Mish mountains in Kerry with

mental health issues, they were getting lithium from the water. They didn't know they were getting lithium from the water. All they knew was, when I drink this water or eat the water, or crest near this well, my mental health issues are gone. So Conla's Well was considered one of these wells. We don't know where it was, probably up around Navan. It was a well, and if you drank from this water, you became a very intelligent, wise, happy, healthy person

with all the vitality of life in you. So in this manuscript that I mentioned there, the John Shonkas, there's a story in there, and it's the story of a woman called Shonin. Now this story again could be thousands of years old. So this woman called Shonin, she was an artist and she was very skilled in what she did. But she felt like she was lacking true inspiration.

She wanted creative flow. She wanted the creative inspiration in particular to write and create poetry because in ancient Ireland the poets were some of the most powerful people in society because this is an oral culture. So the people who can come up with the stories and the poems and the songs that describe the environment and explain people's lives to them, these people were very powerful within the community. So Shonan wanted to become a better poet. She wanted divine inspiration. She wanted inspiration from the other world.

So she goes to Conlan's well. Now it's said that the well was surrounded by nine hazel trees. And these trees would drop hazelnuts into the water. And there used to be fish inside the water and they'd eat these hazelnuts. But specifically what Shonan was looking for was at the bottom of Conlon's well were bubbles and the bubbles would rise from the bottom and come up to the top

now we know now that means that this well wherever the fuck it was this was a natural spring this is a natural spring bringing natural mineral water up to the surface but back then they believed a natural spring bringing natural mineral water up to the surface. But back then they believed that if a well had these bubbles coming up, that these bubbles were like,

these were units of knowledge and wisdom and inspiration coming straight from the other world. That's what these bubbles were. So Shonan wanted to get to the source of these bubbles. these bubbles were. So Shonan wanted to get to the source of these bubbles. Now all of the poets and writers would go to Conla's well. They'd all go to the edges of the well and drink the water for the artistic inspiration. But Shonan wanted more. She wanted the fucking bubbles. She wanted to go right down to where the bubbles come from. And everyone warned her. They said, this shit comes from the other world. We're only allowed to take the inspiration on our terms.

Sip the water at the edges. Don't go in there. Don't go down to the bubbles. You're going to piss off the other world. Don't do it. But Shonan was having bad creative block or whatever. And she says says fuck that. So she jumps in and swims right down to the bottom of this well.

Of Cunla's well. And follows the bubbles as they come up from the ground. And she gets right right down to the bottom to the source of the bubbles. And she grabs them. And for a split second she receives all the source of the bubbles and she grabs him and for a split second she receives all the knowledge of the other world she receives all the artistic inspiration more than any human has ever had but she took too much and the other world wasn't having it the gods and the goddesses of the other world said who the fuck is this? Who the fuck does she think she is?

Coming all the way down here to get our inspiration. She can't be doing that. She's a human. So suddenly the bottom of this natural spring starts, starts to roar and rumble like a fucking volcano. And it starts to overflow and spouts water. Fucking gallons, tons of water Shonan is thrown miles

into the air and comes back down and she drowns in this hugely overflowing spring and the water from this well it just doesn't stop overflowing and it fills all the land all around

and it carries Shonan's body all the way down through Ireland until the well waters finally meet the sea and her body gets carried the whole way down until she's out into the sea and the water that was left becomes the River Shannon and that's why the River Shannon left becomes the River Shannon.

And that's why the River Shannon is called the River Shannon. It's after this lady called Shonan, thousands of years ago, fucked with a well up in Navan. Trying to get the bubbles, she fucked with a portal to the other world and it got angry. And created the River Shannon and carried her body all the way down. So really it's the River Shonan, but over years it has become the River Shannon. And that's what the River Shannon is. A body of water that was born as it carried a woman's dead body down it.

It was searching too much for artistic inspiration. And you know, why do I want to look into the Shannon today for fucking artistic inspiration I want to go over to that river and stare into it because I like how the river hypnotises me if I stare into that huge body of flowing water especially considering I'm in a good headspace I want that water

to put me into a little daze to put me into a daydream state where I can explore my creativity but now I'm afraid to do it in case someone stops me because staring into the Shannon now triggers a trauma response and also I'm afraid of seeing someone's body floating down it and that's very sad but there's also great meaning

within it how the oral culture of a river still exists even though it's changed drastically like when I was a teenager. During the Celtic Tiger. When we didn't have a huge issue with suicide. Not the way it is now. I'd go down to that river the whole time. What I used to do. Is.

I was only about 14. I used to rob tubes of Baraka. fucking boats or duns and I'd go down to the river when I should have been in school and I'd sit by a place called Poor Man's Kill Key where the Terry Wogan statue is now and I'd just sit there on the edge throwing Baraka tablets into the Shannon River when it was kind of still and watching them fizz up and bubble and that's what I thought of when I was reading that fucking ancient story of Shonan

with the bubbles me throwing fucking Baraka tablets that I'd robbed from Boots into the Shannon because I didn't want to be in school but that's what the river Shannon is according to Irish mythology a river that overflowed but what it overflows with is all the wisdom and knowledge of the other world. It's like she pulled the plug. She pulled the plug on this well and

they punished her. But the Shannon contains information and knowledge and wisdom and it flows all the way out into the ocean from the other world. I'm gonna have the ocarina pause now and I'm gonna come back with another river story from Irish mythology. It's time now for a little ocarina pause I think. I'm recording this in my studio rather than my office. The sound quality is slightly better in my studio and I have my ocarina with me. So I'm going to play my ocarina and you're going to hear an advert for something, a digitally inserted advert, which is different for everybody depending on your algorithm. On April 5th You must be very careful, Margaret It's a girl

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Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. It's not real. Who said that?

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If I met him in real life, I'd buy him a pint. Well, if you can't afford that, please do, because you're paying for the person who can't afford it to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast. I get to earn a living and get to be able to pay my bills. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. Also, it keeps this podcast fully independent. No advertiser can tell me what to talk about. No advertiser can interfere with my content in any way. All advertisers have to play by my rules or they can fuck off. And the Patreon is what keeps that possible. So Patreon is what keeps that possible. Is what makes that possible. So patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast.

Just some quick gigs. Some live podcasts if you'd like to come along. Next live podcast is at the Puka Festival in Mead. That's on the 30th of October. Then I'm up in Vicar Street on the 1st of November I believe that's sold out but then on the 2nd of November I've added another Vicar Street date so the 1st and 2nd of November I'm on Vicar Street in Dublin those are lovely midweek gigs they're always wonderful fun I've got great guests lined up come along to those live podcasts

then on the 5th of November I'm in the Wexford Spiegel tent and on Friday the 18th of November I'm in Brussels I'm doing a gig in Brussels which is a rescheduled gig if you're living in Brussels come along

then what have I got after that 3rd of December I'm in Trada, the TLT theatre and then I think I'm in the Eyeneck in Kilkenny in January sometime January 23 not doing as many gigs as I used

to do mainly because of the fucking I don't know, the pandemic the pandemic kind of taught me a very harsh lesson about don't rely upon gigs. Gigs are very unreliable. I prefer to stick to Patreon as a way to earn a living because it's predictable and reliable. So back to the theme of rivers within Irish mythology as conduits for knowledge and wisdom. So I was speaking previously about Conla's well, the well of wisdom, which we now know exploded one day and became the River Shannon when Shonan went and fucked with the bottom of it. Well Shonan's story became like a

cautionary tale and it confirmed to everybody. When you're going near this well that exploded and became the river Shannon when you're going near this well you definitely can't fuck with it. Don't go near the bubbles

just drink from the water, be respectful you'll get a little bit of knowledge but don't ever go near those bubbles because you saw what happened when Shannon did it. It overflowed and created the River Shannon. Well I mentioned that Conla's well had nine hazelnut trees around it and these trees used to drop hazelnuts into the water and the fish in the well used to eat the hazelnuts. Well, one day there was one particular salmon, and this salmon, who was living in Cunla's well, ate one hazelnut from each of the nine trees, and attained all the knowledge and wisdom of the underworld.

And this salmon was now floating around in the pool, swimming, minding its own business, but now it had all the knowledge of the other world, and all the wisdom, but it was a salmon, it couldn't do fuck all with it. The salmon's name was Fintan, by the way, which I find absolutely hilarious. So Fintan the salmon,

is just minding his own business as a salmon in Connell's well, and now has all the wisdom in the world and can't do anything with it so one day this poet called Phinegas Phinegas was becoming an elderly man and he was a famous poet in Ireland he was a legendary poet and all his life he would drink from the well of wisdom

Conla's well in order to get inspiration for his poetry and his writing but he would drink from the well of wisdom, Cunlagh's well, in order to get inspiration for his poetry and his writing. But he was getting older and he wasn't as artistically inspired as he was when he was younger. The words weren't coming to him as easily as they used to and he starts thinking to himself, fuck it. If only I could get to the supreme wisdom of this well. If only I could get to those bubbles. But I can't. Because I saw what happened to Shonan.

I saw what happened to her. All I can do is take the normal human amount of wisdom from the edge of this well and drink it respectfully. If I go after those bubbles. I'm dead. I saw it happen with Shunan. But then he sees this salmon. This fish.

And he's like that fucking salmon there. Is after eating. Nine hazelnuts from the nine trees. That salmon. Has all the wisdom of the other world. That Shunan tried to get. And he's just swimming around. as a fucking dumb fuck salmon with nothing to do with the wisdom i bet you if i caught that salmon and ate it i could find a way to get all the wisdom of the world in a way that wouldn't piss off the

other world i wouldn't be fucking with world. I wouldn't be fucking with the bubbles. I wouldn't be fucking with the well. I'd be eating a salmon that came out of the well. I reckon I could do that. So this salmon becomes known as Fintan the Salmon, the Salmon of Knowledge. And Phinegas dedicates the rest of his life to sitting at the well of wisdom with a fishing rod to try and catch the salmon of knowledge so that he can eat it and attain all the knowledge of the world. Now if you're familiar with

my rubber bandits work from years ago or even if you look at my fucking Instagram when I've had a few cans on a Saturday night you'll often see me posting videos with a very rude talking fish. Well this fish is called the trout of no crack.

And this fish came about it's a kind of a play on the salmon of knowledge. It did a sketch in like 2010 for RTE called the rubber bandit's guide to fishing you'll see it on youtube and it's a sketch and in it we're trying to catch the salmon of knowledge so it's like a parody so

it's me and mr chrome by a river and i'm trying to catch the salmon of knowledge so that i can gain all the wisdom in the world but as i as I cast my rod in I pull in a fish but it's not the salmon of knowledge it's the trout of no crack which is the opposite of the salmon of knowledge it's a very annoying ignorant fish and now that I've caught this fish, I can never put it back. I'm stuck for all eternity with this incredibly annoying prick of a fish who's loud and embarrassing and rude to people. The trout of no crack. That's just a little bit of trivia there, if anyone is wondering why I post videos with a rude fish.

It's based on this this story from Irish mythology which is a few thousand years old so back to the Irish mythology story Phinegas is at the well of wisdom and he's fishing for the salmon knowledge every day hoping that the salmon will bite and along comes this young fella he's about 12 years of age and his name is Fionn McCool and Fionn McCool sees the old poet Phinegas fishing and says I'll help you out I'll help you so Phinegas says yeah and now Fionn McCool is helping Phinegas to catch the salmon of knowledge so he does it for a while and then eventually one day Phinegas gets a bite on the line and he catches the fucking salmon of knowledge. And Phinegas is thrilled because he's like I'm an elderly poet, my best work is behind me but

once I eat this fucking fish I'm going to gain all the knowledge and inspiration of the other world that's contained in this water and in this fish. And young Fionn MacCool says, Excellent, I'll help you cook the fish so you can eat it. But then Phinegas goes, Not a fucking hope. You're not getting near this salmon. Have you any idea how important this salmon is?

I don't want you anywhere near it. So Fionn MacCool says, Grand, okay. Phinegas sets up the cooking gear and he puts the salmon on a spit over a fire and he starts turning it. Now this old poet can't wait to eat this salmon and gain all the knowledge in the world.

But as he's turning the salmon, he's getting a bit tired and maybe he needs to go for a piss and he says to fionn macoul look i'm gonna go for a piss or whatever i'll be gone for one minute but while i'm gone you turn this salmon and do not go near it don't fucking touch this salmon don't go near it just keep it a safe distance spin it over the fire so it doesn't burn. And I'll be back in a minute after my piss. I'm going to eat it. Okay?

And Fionn MacCool says, Grand, don't worry about it. I have it. So as Phinegas is off having his piss, Fionn MacCool is turning the salmon. But he realises he's turning it too slow. And a blister appears on the salmon's skin over the fire. Now Fionn MacCool says to himself, fuck, I can't burn the old man's fish.

He's been trying to catch it for years. What am I going to do? I can't burn his fish. So Fionn MacCool looks at the blister that's appearing on the fish's skin and puts his thumb against it to try and put it out. But as Fionn MacCool puts his thumb on the salmon's blister, he burns his thumb

and then without even thinking he puts his thumb into his mouth to suck it. He doesn't think much of it and then Phinegas comes back and he looks at young Fionn MacCool and his eyes are different. There's a knowledge and a passion and a wisdom in his eyes that wasn't there before and Phinegas goes oh for fuck's sake man did you eat

some of the salmon and Fionn MacCool goes I didn't I swear I just I burnt my thumb on him and then I sucked it and Phinegas is like that's it that's it you've eaten the salmon of knowledge now now you have all the knowledge and inspiration in the world and all the knowledge of the other world and I don't now you fucking have it and I can't get it back fuck am I going to do now

but then Phinegas says to himself I'm an old poet I'm an elderly man maybe it's good that this young 12 year old boy has achieved all the knowledge in the entire world. Maybe it's good that this young 12 year old boy has achieved all the knowledge in the entire world now. Maybe it's good that this kid is after getting it not me an old man. So Fionn MacCool leaves with all the knowledge of the underworld. He was able to get it through the salmon and he didn't break any of the rules of the well not like like Shunan before him. And Fionn MacCool goes on to become one of the great epic heroes of Irish mythology. He leads armies. He's unstoppable because he has

the cunning and knowledge and wisdom of all the world. And that starts the Fenian cycle of Irish mythology. It's where we get the name Fenian from. And I like to remind myself of that every time I see the River Shannon. The River Shannon is the overflowed well where the salmon of knowledge comes from. And I remind myself of that every time I smoke too much hash and play with the trout or no crack.

Now another river in Ireland that was created because of the well of wisdom, because of Conla's well, is the river Boyne up in Meath. Now the river Boyne is very important because it's situated in the Boyne Valley, which is where the ancient site of Newgrange is. Newgrange is a gigantic passage tomb, which is older than the Egyptian pyramids. It's like 4,000 years old, possibly 5,000 years old. Whoever built Newgrange most definitely had knowledge of the stars and astronomy, most definitely had knowledge of the stars and astronomy because the passage tomb within this ancient building illuminates on the summer solstice and the winter solstice.

So they built this building 5,000 years ago knowing exactly when the shortest day of the year was and the longest day of the year was and sun passes through this tiny little passageway and illuminates a tomb in summer and winter. Another fascinating fact about this area is that the name Boyne, the river Boyne, B O Y N E and the Boyne Valley where the river is and where Newgrange is, comes from the Irish word Beófionn which means white cow and the name the Boyne Valley

means in Irish Bealach na Beófionn which means the way of the white cow which means the Milky Way so the Milky Way as you know is a huge galaxy up in the sky and when you don't have any light pollution and there's a clear night you can see the Milky Way up in the sky it's called the Milky Way because it's this white streak in the sky but some Irish historians believe that 5,000 years ago like so you've got this place Newgrange and whoever the fuck built Newgrange had knowledge of astronomy right they did because they had that passage to them but some people think that they called the Boyne Valley the way of the white cow because

remember I spoke earlier about the other world that the other world was like a parallel universe well some people think that the ancient Irish would look at the river Boyne which was this river and on a clear night

when you look up at the sky you would see the milky way the stars in the sky and this whiteness would then be reflected in the river so they thought that like the bine river had an otherworldly parallel up in the sky and that's the milky way galaxy which i just i find that fucking fascinating because we're talking 5,000 years ago, 4,000 years ago. It's hints at an advanced knowledge of astronomy and the stars. Also, that a culture in Ireland are calling something the Milky Way are calling something the way of the white cow and other cultures also referred to that particular galaxy

as a river of milk but within Irish mythology the origin story of the river Bowen is that a woman by the name of Bowen ended up having an affair with one of the gods, one of the Dagda. And what I like about this is that

it's a bit like, it's a bit like the birth of Christ, but in a really hilarious Irish way. So with the birth of Christ, you've got this woman called Mary and all of a sudden she's pregnant and her husband clearly isn't the father. Joseph isn't the father and she just says God did it and Joseph never questions it. He never says wait a minute. He just goes, really? God did it? Wow, can't wait. And that's that.

Well, in the story of Bowen, the Irish mythology story, it's quite different. So Bowen actually cheats on her husband with a god. And then she's pregnant. But she starts freaking out. She's like, fuck.

She goes to the gods and goes, I'm after getting fucking pregnant by one of ye. And my husband's going to find out. I can't just tell him that one of ye did it. What are we going to do? And then the gods are like, Oh, fuck. I'm after getting her pregnant.

Shit. What are we going to do? So instead of Bon pulling a Mary and going to her husband and saying, it's an immaculate conception. He's going to be the son of God. Instead of that, the Irish gods go,

right, this is what we're going to do. So her husband knows the last time that he had sex with her. So if this baby comes out in nine months time, he's going to know it wasn't him. It won't add up. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to cast a spell on her husband so that time stops for like a month. And then when the baby comes out, he'll think it's his.

And then we're all grand. So the gods in Irish mythology are hiding immaculate conceptions from the husbands by abusing their fucking powers as gods, which is the most cute whore Irish shit I've ever heard of. So this woman, Bowen anyway, she has a son. The son's name is Angus. And she raises Angus with her husband. And the husband thinks Angus is him.

But she still carries on her affair with this god the whole time. And the god's name was Necton, right? And they're carrying on the affair. And then one day Necton just says to her, Don't ever fuck with that well. That well over there, the well of knowledge, don't ever fuck with that well. That well over there. The well of knowledge. Don't ever fuck with that. And then Bones like.

Who the fuck are you to tell me not to fuck with the well? I'll do it if I want to. Who are you to tell me? And then Necton is like. I'm a fucking god. Didn't I stop time. So your husband couldn't find out that. That child is ours.

Listen to me. When I tell you not to fuck with that well. The well of knowledge. And this is the same well now that Shonan drowned in. So Bone is like, you're not my husband. You're just some god I'm having an affair with. Who the fuck are you to be telling me what not to do? Who are you to tell me to stay away from that well?

So she gets kind of pissed off that the Necton fella was like trying to tell her what to do. So she goes to the well one day and starts walking around it really quickly. And as she walks around it, it starts to piss off the waters in the well, the waters of knowledge. And then the same thing happens to her as happened to Shunnan. the well the waters of knowledge and then the same thing happens to her as happened to shunan the well starts to explode covers her in water drags her down and then the river bine is created and that's where we get the river bine so the river bine also contains all the wisdom and knowledge in the world that comes from this this well of. So here's the last thing I want to speak about. And I want to bring it to more contemporary terms. And this is where my hot take is, I suppose.

Just in terms of for thousands and thousands of years within Irish mythology, all our rivers are considered to contain all the wisdom and knowledge and information of the world and i suppose to contextualize it within the ironic cyclical nature of time like i i started this podcast by speaking about how i find it just strange that within all world mythology we have flood myths and how global warming appears to be a fucking flood myth unfolding before our eyes

as if we foretold it. Government policy in Ireland right now is repeating the story of Shonan and her quest for knowledge and information within the waters of the Shannon. Water security will become an issue in the future with global warming. The Irish government recently unveiled a plan to create a pipeline from the River Shannon up to Dublin

to pump millions of gallons of water from the River Shannon up to Dublin to pump millions of gallons of water from the River Shannon up to Dublin. Now they say this is so that Dublin can have better access to fresh water, but what a lot of people think is that it's for data centres. In Ireland we have a very low corporate tax rate, 12.5%. Huge corporations come to Ireland to pretty much pay no tax. Google, Facebook, Apple, whoever the fuck, all the major tech companies are in Ireland so they don't have to pay tax. A new thing that tech companies have started doing in the past five years is placing shitloads of data centres in Ireland.

Now what is a data centre? A data centre is, it's like the brain of the internet. It's a giant building with no windows. Doesn't employ a huge amount of people. It's just a huge building with loads and loads of computers. And on these computers is the internet, pretty much. Like this podcast,

when I uploaded, the data for this podcast is in a data centre somewhere. Because in Ireland, you don't have to pay any tax, and also, because our water is free, like our water isn't private in Ireland, because we had the fucking water protests in 2015,

and we said no. So our water in Ireland, thank fuck, is relatively free. It's not privatised. But huge companies are coming to Ireland to take advantage of our cheap water and pay no tax so they can run their data centres. Data centres generate a lot of heat. They need loads of water in order to cool down.

That's why they're here in Ireland. The average data centre, which is just a building full of computers, uses the same amount of water as a small town in Ireland. So our rivers, like the River Boyne or the River Shannon, which mythologically, going back thousands of years, are said to contain all the knowledge and wisdom and information of the world, are now literally being used to contain all the knowledge and wisdom and information of the world. That's what a data center is.

wisdom and information of the world. That's what a data centre is. It's all the videos, it's all the audio files, it's all the emails, it's all the webpages, it's the fucking internet. All the knowledge of the world contained in a building. So Irish mythology has become this fucking sick self-fulfilling prophecy. But this isn't a good thing. Fresh water is in decline.

Fresh water is needed for households, for people to use, to have access to fresh water. The greatest threat to this in Ireland is fucking data centres. Anyone in Ireland right now who's remotely clued into environmental issues

is furious about how the Irish government is allowing all these multinational corporations to come in plant data centers everywhere and to use all of our fucking water and diverting it away from towns and cities that need it. Right now data centers account for 14% of all the electricity used in Ireland. By 2028, they reckon data centres are going to use 29% of the electricity in Ireland. In the middle of an energy crisis. The companies who own these data centres don't even pay tax here. I know it's 12.5% tax.

They don't pay that. They pay less than 1%. Oh, but what about all the jobs they create? Data centres don't create a lot of jobs. It's a huge building full of computers. Our mythological rivers full of information and wisdom are now literally the information and wisdom of the world but the Irish government is behaving like shunning and the bubbles that they are chasing are these large multinational corporations who have them by the bollocks.

They can't turn around to Amazon and say sorry lads, no data centres because Amazon will just go guess we'll have to take our business somewhere else then. Same with Google, same with Facebook. They have the government by the balls. If you think I'm over exaggerating, I'm not because you can look this shit up.

Also in 2018 I believe, Uber literally wrote part of Fine Gael's manifesto. Alright? That's how entrenched the corporate lobbying is with our political parties. The flood mythology is repeating itself. And the Irish wisdom water mythology is repeating itself. And there's going to be disastrous effects. And one last thing on the value of oral culture.

I'm not arguing for a fucking, to become a culture that doesn't have literacy. But with. Irish oral mythological culture. Where you have. Where every. Element of the land is accounted for. With a meaningful story.

What that does. Is it gives the people. A respect and fear. For the land. I'm not cutting down that tree. Why not? Because that tree is guarded by a fairy and if I cut that tree down then bad things will happen. I'm not going to fuck with the bubbles in that lake.

Why not? It's just a lake. Because those bubbles come from the other world and if I do something bad will happen. That oral mythological culture created a respect and harmony and a rightful sense of fear of nature. A sense that nature is to be lived with in harmony, it's not to be exploited. Arguments are often made about the negative impacts of cultures when they started to adopt

writing and become more and more bureaucratic in how they behaved. Like a classic example is when the Normans took over England, they did this huge survey of the land called the Domesday Book. This had no interest. They had no interest in learning the stories of the landscape or the mythology. It was simply a cold ledger that contained how many people lived there, how much money is in the area, how much livestock, how much acreage. based assessment of an area dehumanised the population and turned the landscape

into something that could be exploited for profit. Same argument was made around the time of the Irish Famine. The British used that as a means to conduct a census to see how many people had died,

how many people are at risk of dying, how many people are emigrating. But by turning everything into facts and figures and entire population, it dehumanises the population and turns people into expendable numbers. Something to be disposed of easily. Something to be wiped away from the sheet of a ledger.

And oral culture won't do that because it's too entrenched in storytelling and narrative. Alright, that was this week's podcast. A little bit longer than I'd expected. But I'll catch you next week. Dog bless. rock city you're the best fans in the league bar none tickets are on sale now for fan appreciation night on saturday april 13th when the the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30 p.m.

You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. you