The Blindboy Podcast - The Folklore of Prohibition

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

A hot take about the folklore of prohibition. Update on napper tandy the cat . Speaking about self esteem Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Worship a gosling, you long-haired brosnans. Welcome to the Blind Bi-Podcast. The weather here in Limerick is absolutely gorgeous. It's the type of weather you'd take for granted in Spain. It's perfectly still. The sun is out. It's warm enough for a t-shirt, but not so warm that you want to escape the heat. And there's a gentle cooling breeze that feels like God coughing in your face. What I like to do on these type of evenings

I always go for a walk on these evenings. Usually a mindful walk where I'm fully present in the moment and I incorporate elements of meditation into my evening walk. But then other times I may or may not enjoy smoking a little bit of Baldy on my evening walk. A little bit of Pope John Paws. And last week, I may or may not

have accidentally had a little bit too much on my evening walk. For legal purposes, the following story is completely fictional. It definitely did not happen to me last week in Limerick and I eagerly await when cannabis becomes legal in this country like it is in parts of America or Canada or like they're now doing in Germany. So I'll now continue with the fictional story that didn't happen. So it was the most beautiful summer evening last week about eight o'clock in the evening where the sunlight is almost pink and it casts long deep shadows and the sky is still blue and it's like how someone would describe Los Angeles to you so I looked out and I said my god that's beautiful I need to enjoy that with the assistance of cannabis but an apprehension came about me I was like fuck it now all right the evening is in a very specific moment okay and the sun moves fast right so you got to get out there right now no dilly-dallying right you've got about a 10 minute window of

extreme beauty out there and if you miss it it's gone so immediately that's the wrong attitude to start off with so i went to my bong and kind of rushed it a bit. I didn't really check how much I put in. I took one gigantic rip, filled up my lungs, coughed it out and left the gaff. I'd say I got about one minute up the road and then I said oh fuck, right okay, I think that might have been too much cannabis. It was the feeling you get when you strap into an amusement park ride you know that you're safe but you're a bit apprehensive of the feelings that are going to follow now I didn't experience any anxiety or anything like that just I was heading for an intense experience and how I knew it was intense was I was listening to

my headphones because that's what I enjoy doing. And the song Barbie Girl by Aqua came on. And I heard it with fresh ears. You know, I was feeling quite an intense rush. Walking down the road. Going, oh my god, this is the best song in the entire world. This is the greatest song that has ever been written. I've heard this song my whole life. But I'm hearing it with new fresh critical ears and Barbie

Girl by Aqua is the greatest song that has ever been written. Then my mouth got unbelievably dry. So dry that I thought my mouth stopped existing. But don't worry because then I took a selfie of myself and studied the photograph intently, zooming in to make sure that I still had lips. And I did, so everything was okay. So I saw a Dunn Stores, which is like a large supermarket. And I walked in there to try and find an effervescent drink that could alleviate the extreme dryness that was happening inside my mouth.

But when I got in the fucking door of Dunn's stores they had those spongy linoleum tiles on the ground. The ones that are designed so that no one will ever slip even if you spilt oil on the floor. Anti-lawsuit lino tiles. And I slowly became convinced that the the floor in duns was made out of a type of wobbly rubber so i had to i'd love to see the security footage because i like i felt like there was a fucking earthquake like my my legs were this was serious business here the ground was made out of real wobbly rubber and I was going to fall at any moment

listening to Barbie Girl on loop in a dilemma whereby I didn't know how I was going to get to the fridge that had the drinks because the only way I could move around Dunn's was if I was holding something at all times. So I slowly kind of clambered around Dunn's because the floors were made entirely out of wobbly rubber and then found myself in the pajamas department which was the opposite end of where the drinks are holding on to a

rack a rack of pajamas trying desperately to stop myself from speaking to a stranger about how good the song Barbie Girl is then I took into the customer toilets and I rubbed a lot of water, cold water on my face, and that got me to my senses a bit, and then I said, right, you've had too much cannabis now, it's all right, you're not going to talk to anyone about Barbie, there's autism thrown into this as well, you're not going to talk to anyone about Barbie girl, it's a great fucking song, you know it's a great song, just listen to it, enjoy it, the ground isn't made out of rubber, and you're going to get yourself some black pepper because you see in black pepper there's terpenes so black pepper has a terpene in it called beta cariophylline i think it's called

and apparently this terpene you can counteract the effects of cannabis a little bit if you chew black pepper. So I was in Dunn's going, okay, so I made a beeline for the black pepper. I knew the ground wasn't made out of rubber. I didn't have to hold anything. Moving to the rhythm of Barbie Girl. And then I bought a tube of black pepper. and then I bought a tube of black pepper so I'm like right gotta go find somewhere now

somewhere private to go and eat this black pepper so I walk out to the car park find a spot and start chewing the black pepper I thought my head was exploding and I thought about taking a selfie to make sure my head wasn't exploding and I said no we're not doing that

just chewed away on the 18th listen of Barbie girl and I was munching the black pepper and I looked up and there's just a man sitting in his car and I'm right beside his car I didn didn't know. And he's just. Staring at a grown man. Eating black pepper out of a tube. Like it's sweet. So this podcast is sponsored by Dunn Stores. And it did work. And the high smoothed off and I got on about my business in a nice mellow gentle way. So that's a fictional story that didn't happen to me last week. I'm not

advocating for the use of cannabis. Cannabis like any substance is to be used by adults responsibly. Of course you can't do that in Ireland. You can't. It's very difficult for anybody to use cannabis responsibly in Ireland because no one knows what they're buying because it's illegal. But in Canada for instance you could literally walk into a shop. I did it a month ago.

You can walk into a shop and it's like a store that sells Apple Macs and you say to them I'd like something that when I go into a supermarket doesn't make me feel that the floors are made out of rubber and they'll go oh I have the strain just for you. I can confidently predict that this won't happen with this particular strain right here. So the reason I'm talking about this week is I'm currently writing a short story about a Pudgine maker in the 1890s in Ireland. Now Pudgine is, it's moonshine, it's distilled alcohol, it's spirits that are made illegally in Ireland.

And Pudgine has been made in Ireland for hundreds and hundreds of years, maybe even longer. So if I'm writing a short story that's set in 1890 and it's about someone who's making Pudgine, then I make sure that the research that I'm doing is really, really fucking solid. I go very deep with research because it's enjoyable. It's time-travelling empathy. If I'm to write a story set in Ireland 130 years ago, I want to know what the air smelled like. I want to know what the grass looked like. What clothes did people wear? What did they eat? What did their food taste like? And one of the

best sources for this is to read folklore. And we have an absolutely beautiful resource here in Ireland. It's a website that fucking anyone can use. And I adore it. It's called duchas.ie. D-U-C-H-A-S dot I-E. And what this is, is that it's a website. I think it's run by UCD. Where they try to collect as much Irish folklore as possible. And it's a beautiful archive of stories and recipes and superstitions from regular Irish people who lived a long time ago.

A lot of it was an attempt to preserve in writing Irish stories that were only passed down in the oral tradition because these people may have not been able to read or write. The bulk of the folklore comes from what's called the schools collection which was an absolutely brilliant thing that was done in Ireland between 1937 and 1939. Basically the Irish Folklore Commission went to 5,000 schools in the Irish Free State, 5,000 schools. Now this is 1937. So these children, they might have been the first generation of their families to receive an education. And they went to these 5,000 schools and you're talking 50,000 children. And they said to the kids speak

to the old people in your village speak to your grandparents speak to that man who lives up in the hill who's gonna die because these people have stories that are gonna die with them and go to these people and just say to him tell me a story tell me something about your youth and what they ended up getting was like oral history information about the landscape folk tales legends riddles games recipes crafts and these kids wrote all this stuff down and submitted it to the Irish folklore collection and like I said this was huge you're talking 50,000 children in the 1930s in Ireland and saying tell me something about who we are and you have to realize too so

this is 1937 so if you're talking to an 80 year old in 1937 they were born in 1857 their parents lived through the famine and also these old people grew up colonized. They grew up in the Irish Free State when it was controlled by Britain and they were fully colonized. They didn't have a national identity. They were told that they were dark. So this school's collection of folklore was an attempt to say we are somebody we have stories and we have traditions and these things are worth recording and now we can do that because we're no longer under British rule unfortunately because of that the school's collection of folklore from the 1930s they didn't collect any folklore from the six counties in the north of Ireland this project only happened in the 26 counties in the north of Ireland. This project only happened in the 26

counties in the Irish Free State at the time. So that's an awful shame that we didn't get to collect the folklore of the north of Ireland. And the best, whatever about folklore, the best mythology, the best Irish mythology comes from up north. The Fenian cycle is all up north. So you can go to this website duckus.ie right now and there's 750,000 pages of this folklore that was collected by Irish school kids in the 1930s and you can see it in their handwriting. And it's one of the most beautiful, wonderful resources that we have in this country. I adore it. And I'm so proud and glad that it exists. And I wish more people knew about it.

And you can search through it. So when I was researching my story about a poutine maker in 1890, this is my primary source. Because this is, that's a legit legit source I just typed put gene into this website and I can see recipes for put gene that are 150 years old but when you type in put gene you get the best stories you get the maddest fucking stories people who met the fairies or people who had supernatural occurrences and there's a reason I started the podcast talking about smoking too much hash and ending up in duns thinking the floor is made out of rubber and eating black pepper in the car park.

When I told that story, I didn't mean to tell it as, oh listen to this weird thing that happened while I was high. The reason I told it is, here's a specific story that happens in Ireland under prohibition. When cannabis is illegal, you don't know what you're consuming, you don't know what the right amount is, and mad shit happens. And the exact stuff occurs in this folklore collection amongst people who are either distilling poutine or who were drinking poutine because it was illegal. The British government from I think the 1600s onwards had started to introduce very high taxes on like whiskey or gin. Spirits became very very expensive in Ireland because of taxes. So in the 1700s, the 1800s, the early 20th century most Irish people were incredibly poor. They couldn't afford whiskey, forget about it, so they drank illegal poutine. But because the poutine was being made illegally they didn't know

how strong it was, they didn't know if it was caught with anything and it would drive people mad and make them have visions and hallucinations. and then they'd tell these stories as if they were things that actually happened so here's one story here and it was written in mayo county mayo in the 1930s by a girl of about 10 called nora nora nee quinnigan and she is getting this story from a man called Mr Cunningham who's in his 60s and all this information is written down here in the folklore collection and he says

one night two or three men went for puccine and they said to one another before they left that they would not take much when they went they kept drinking until they got very drunk they walked home and then the fairies put two of the men astray and one of the men fell by the roadside and could not go home. People went searching for him. They brought their dog with them. The dog ran off and at last got the man.

He was lying in a drain with his head. The drain was full of water and the drunken man was stiff with the cold and they brought him home. It was a long time before he got better. And a pattern emerges, and there's hundreds of these stories, and a pattern emerges when the poutine is involved, where it's usually men out walking on their own and then they're led astray by some invisible supernatural force, usually the fairies. Here's another beautiful story that I found.

Because this actually, this is a UFO sighting in Cavan from 1909. And I shared this on Instagram last week. And I ended up getting into the local newspaper in Cavan with this old story. But this is a beautiful little story. And it was collected by a girl called Sissy Leddy. Again she might have been nine or ten. It was collected in October 1937 by one of her parents and the incident happened in 1909. So the story is called Fairy Lights. My mother told me this story about a mysterious light my uncle Patrick Cosgrave of Inishbeg saw. One night about 30 years ago my uncle was coming home from a neighbour's house when suddenly he saw a light in the fort. He stood to watch it and it moved out of the fort across the marshy fields and passed almost at his feet as he stood on the hill. He watched it moving on

until it disappeared into Kilnaglair Fort. He got scared and ran home and was nervous. That's a beautiful story because that's it's like a UFO sighting and there's many stories like that and what I love about that is the the forts. So in Ireland we have ancient forts. Now these could be 800 years old 900 years old somewhere where a wooden castle once stood or a building of some description that was

like I'm talking the 1200s, the 500s could be 2000 years old, longer a building somewhere in the countryside in Ireland that once stood and they were often built on mounds of earth for protection then the building disappears and all you're left with is an

unexplainable mound of earth or different rings and the people of Ireland because we didn't have written history would just assume that these mounds of earth or these rings were fairy forts that they weren't built by human beings long ago these were supernatural sites where the fairies lived but you couldn't see them because they were from the other world so you never fucked with these sites and that's why we still have loads of them that's why Newgrange still exists we have a giant passage tomb called Newgrange up in Meath that's 5,000 years old it's older than the pyramids and nobody fucked with it in 5,000 years because they're just like we don't know who built this and whoever

did build it obviously wasn't human we don't know who built this and whoever did build it obviously wasn't human we don't know just leave it alone leave that thing alone so we still have these sites that are thousands of years old because of years and years of superstition and and even the brits even the brits colonizing going i'm not fucking with that thing let's just leave it be now some of them did and sites were destroyed but other ones were like I'm just not gonna fuck with the very old thing over there but that story I read out there from county cabin in 1909 where a man is walking home on his own and he sees a strange light float gently across the ground from one fort to another. That again is a very common story in the folklore of people who were either making poutine or drinking poutine.

The people who were making poutine had reason to be in very isolated places because they didn't want to get caught. Their poutine stills were high up in the mountains so they were on their own in the wilderness similarly the people who drank poutine would try and drink it in a way that they weren't going to get caught so they did a lot of walking on their own while being off their tits on a substance that they don't know how strong it is and it could be caught with something else or it could be poorly made and then it has methylated spirits in it and they're actually losing oxygen to their brain and they're hallucinating but lights across bogs there's many stories like this where a man is drinking put gene he walks home and then he looks into the bog and what he sees are these little fairy lights these strange lights

in the darkness hovering over the bog and he's drawn towards him he has to go and follow these lights but the closer he gets to him the more the farther they go in the distance until eventually he can't walk and he looks down and he's in the middle of a bog and his feet are stuck and he realized that he's been lured into the bog by the fairies he's been tricked with this unsteady ground around him and he can't get out of the ground and he doesn't know what to do and he can feel the fairies sinking him down into the earth to be buried in the bog and then he'll do something like put his jacket on back to front because that confuses the fairies and then when he puts his jacket on back to front the fairy magic doesn't

work anymore and he finds his way out of the bog that's a real common story and variations of it in the folklore collection around people who are drinking poutine and it's a story that is unique to their environment unique to their culture and I can't help but draw parallels between that and when I went to Dunn's last week that fictional story that didn't happen but I found myself out walking but I don't believe in fairies or believe in anything supernatural I was walking in the city, surrounded by modern technology, going to a supermarket but still under the influence of an illicit substance whose strength and power and effects I couldn't make confident, responsible predictions around

because it's illegal and unregulated in the way that Pudgene was back then. So in a sense, you've handed control over to the substance in the way that poutine was back then so in a sense you've handed control over to the to the substance in a way in the way that those lads back then were handing control over to the poutine because they don't really know what they just drank so i'm walking along in the year 2023 and there's no fairies leading me astray but instead of fairies it's the song Barbie Girl by Aqua. Now I know Barbie Girl by Aqua is very different to mythological fairies but it's doing the same thing to my unconscious mind. It's acting as a siren call. Something powerful and enticing that's beyond me has entered my journey and is calling me to move towards it. And I moved towards, in my head, the song Barbie Girl.

I got excited about it. I started to lose a sense of rationality and everything became this song, Barbie Girl, that was amazing. And my mouth got dry and it led me astray. And when it led me astray, it didn't lead me into a bog because I'm living in the city. It didn't lead me into a bog because I'm living in the city it didn't lead me into a bog it led me into Dunn Stores and what happened in Dunn Stores the fucking ground turned into rubber and I felt like I was sinking and I felt confusion and I lost sense of time and

place now I didn't feel that I was being led astray by fairies or some type of magic but I was in Dunn stores looking for a bottle of sparkling water but by this time I'd realized Barbie girl has taken you away from the sparkling water. Barbie girl has led you into the bog of rubbery floors and you're still stuck and you don't know where you're going and instead of taking my jacket off and turning it inside out to protect myself from fairy magic I went for the cure and the cure was the black pepper and the black pepper led me back to the normal world. Now I hadn't been reading these fairy stories I hadn't been reading this folklore so it didn't plant anything in my head but what I'm

getting at is I'm just fascinated by how similar those stories were. I went out for a walk under the influence of an illicit substance. I saw some fairy lights, found myself in ground where I thought I was sinking and then did a little trick to get back to the normal world. It feels like there was something preordained there something in the collective human unconscious something not about the substance or what the substance does but rather the social conditions of prohibition the people who were drinking poutine in the 1800s not only did they not have the capacity to drink responsibly because they don't know what they were drinking? But they were drinking knowing that what they were doing was very illegal, very wrong, risked getting arrested and also had a moral panic about it that this would lead them astray.

And if you smoke cannabis in Ireland today, those same attitudes exist. If you smoke cannabis, it will lead you astray, you will go insane, you will lose all your motivation, this is a gateway drug. So to smoke cannabis in Ireland, and everyone who smokes cannabis will tell you this, you can't do it without feeling as if you are doing something morally wrong. You're always looking over your shoulder shoulder you're always worried when you're trying to enjoy a buzz worried fuck do I stink like weed and that thought can be enough to make you feel anxious I kind of don't even like talking about cannabis because I'm worried

that people will roll their eyes or call me a stoner and I have to let people know no no don't worry about it it's just every so often I work really hard I have a job don't worry about it but yes it's not only socially accepted but expected to the point that it's boring to take a photograph of your pint of Guinness and put it on Instagram imagine someone shares a pint of Guinness a lovely creamy pint of Guinness on Instagram and on Instagram. Imagine someone shares a pint of Guinness, a lovely creamy pint of Guinness on Instagram and then have to say, don't worry, I'm not a roaring alcoholic.

I'm not clambering around the gutters with my Guinness. It's all about social attitudes and social conditioning that exist under prohibition. We all remember being 16, 17 and drinking alcohol when it was illegal and having to do it inside in a bush and having to drink those first sips with an underpinning of anxiety i'm not advocating for teenage drinking i'm not fucking telling adults to do anything all right and the people who were drinking poutine who had all these fabulous stories about being led astray into bogs and seeing lights and losing their way.

They had that fear too. They were worried about, do I smell like poutine? Poutine would have had a very specific odor. They had a bottle of it on them. Fuck, I'm drunk. What if I get caught by the police and they find me with this bottle? What I'm trying to get at is I think, this is my hot take, I think that prohibition itself, the morality around it, the shame around it, is what is steering these visions in the human mind. And the visions are going to be culturally specific. Like the song Barbie Girl is a real thing. In that moment, the Barbie Girl was the fairies. The song led me astray. It was beautiful. It was enticing.

I wanted to get closer to it. And with these lights that people were seeing in the rural countryside in Ireland in the 1800s, those are real things too. It's called Will-o'-the-Wisp. It's a natural phenomenon that can happen over bogs. A bog is an area of decomposing matter and sometimes a particularly wet and swampy bog can release gases like methane and phosphine because this is decomposing matter and under certain conditions the gases that a bog

releases they can light, they can flicker and they can create in the darkness of the countryside when when there's no fucking light pollution or nothing and it's 1890 someone's walking home and they can look over a bog and they can actually see tiny little flickers of light and the drunk lads would walk towards it because they're under the spell of the drink, and then they find themselves stuck in the bog, but they don't have access to science, so they think it was the fairies,

and they think the fairies led them into the bog, but also, they are harbouring the unconscious anxiety of you are leading yourself astray, you are drinking an illegal drink, and you are going to be led astray, so then what happens is they find themselves being yourself astray you are drinking an illegal drink and you are going to be led astray so then what happens is they find themselves being led astray by supernatural lights or the song Barbie Girl

and going into duns into the pyjamas department. Also Puccine was associated with magic and it was associated with magic because the people who made it they didn't know what chemistry was. They, the folklore of poutine, they truly believed.

Like it's nuts. Imagine no one had explained science to you. And you get barley and potatoes and you make a weak beer. And then you boil this mixture in a still and what comes out of it is this unbelievably hot strong spirit liquor that makes you drunk they truly believed that they were fucking with magic here like alcohol exists naturally people would have discovered that you know you get a bunch of fruit and you leave it in a barrel after a couple of weeks it tastes a certain way and it makes you feel nice. But spirits don't exist naturally.

Like whiskey, vodka, poutine, these things don't exist naturally. They had to be discovered by humans through distillation. The poutine makers of rural Ireland, who may not have had an education and lived in quite a superstitious world, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, they thought that they were stealing Pudgine from the fairies. They thought that they were messing with magic and stealing this substance from the other world. And they were terrified. And the other thing too, in that Ireland of absolute poverty, infant mortality was very, very high. of Ireland of absolute poverty infant mortality was very very high a lot of babies died or some babies might have been born with physical deformities all of the things that can occur

in humans which we now have names for back then people in Ireland believed that it was the fairies so if a Pudgene maker who would have been a poor person in a hut had a family and one of the babies died they believed that it was a changeling it was a fairy baby the baby didn't die the fairies came in the night and replaced it with a fairy child similarly if the child had been born

with a deformity and the people who distilled poutine thought that this was the fairies taking revenge on him you've been stealing this magical water of life from the other world and we're coming for revenge we're taking your kids so poutine makers would first off when when they made poutine, and this is interesting, when they would distill the first alcohol that came out, the first bit of poutine that came out of the still, that was all with methylated spirits. That was the dangerous stuff.

That was the stuff that could kill you. And the poutine maker always took this first, as it was known, and they'd throw it over their left shoulder for the fairies. They'd throw the first. but also what it was doing was by throwing the first bit of Pudgene that comes out of the still over your shoulder for the fairies, you're also making the Pudgene safe because humans can't drink that bit anyway

because it's methylated spirits, it'll kill you. But they also used to try and trick the fairies. So if they had a child a little baby and if it was a boy or if it was a girl if it was a little boy they would dress that child in dresses and grow its hair long and raise the little boy as a girl to confuse the fairies so the fairies wouldn't come and take revenge so you get these wonderful magical stories about Pudjean. Here's a fantastic one. This is from 1938 and it's from a girl called Florey Gibbons but she's a little school girl and she's collecting these stories for the

National Folklore Collection in the 30s. So she goes to her grandmother who's 76 and the grandmother tells her this story. That's a brilliant story. A man who was cold was coming home from a fair on winter's day and he went into his friend's house for tea. He tied his horse outside and went in. The horse was thirsty and he reached his head over and drank a tub of poutine which he thought was water. So the horse outside the door is after accidentally drinking poutine right? After a while the horse fell down drunk. When the man came out to go home he saw his fine horse dead. Immediately he got out his knife and skinned the horse and the man put

the horse skin in a bag and brought it home. But the next morning when he was eating his breakfast he heard noise outside and when he went out there was his horse alive but it didn't have any skin. He went out to the barn and he got a sheepskin and he put the sheepskin on the horse that he'd just skinned. And after a week, the skin had grown to the horse. One day he was going to town and when he was on the horse's back, he noticed that the wool was growing. So that's a fucking mad story.

The horse drank poutine, the owner thought the horse died, so he was like, fuck this, my horse is dead, but at least I can can make some money on the skin so he skins the horse that he thinks is dead. Then the horse wasn't dead he was just drunk. So he's got a horse with no skin, covers it with a sheep's hide and then he has this magic horse that forever gives him sheep's wool. Here's another story from County Wexford from 1936 and this was collected by a young fella called Billy O'Donoghue again talking to his grandfather who was 76 years of age. The story's called The Fairy and the Child. Years ago it was believed that fairies took away small

children and left fairies in their places. This is how the story goes. There was a woman who had a baby boy who never stopped crying. It was the custom in those days for tailors to go from house to house to make cloths. The woman went to the well for water and she left the tailor to mind the child in the cradle. But as soon as she had closed the door, the child in the cradle jumped up and landed on the rafter. He asked the tailor if he would like a tune on the bagpipes and then he started to play. When the child heard the woman coming back he jumped back into the cradle again and started to cry. The tailor called the woman outside and told her it was a fairy she

had in the cradle and not her own child. He advised her to go to the fairy doctor. The doctor told her to get the fairy in her shirt and cross a bridge and drop him into the river. She did this. The fairy sailed down the river playing the bagpipes. Now that's an interesting funny story but there's a great tragedy to it because people did kill babies if they believed that they were fairies. Like in the 1800s, the River Liffey in Dublin. If a baby had a deformity or was different in any way or if the child grew up a bit older and wouldn't stop crying or behave differently, infanticide was something that happened because the parents believed this isn't my child it's a

fairy child and this is a test and if I drown this fairy child maybe I'll get my child back and it would happen with adults too. I mean the phrase away with the fairies. If an adult had schizophrenia or mental health difficulties people would believe that it's a changeling it's not a real adult it's not a human it's a fairy there was a notorious case in 1857 of a woman called Bridget Cleary who had mental health difficulties and her husband went to a priest and the priest said that's not your wife that's a fairy a changeling so what you need to do is murder your wife and stick a crucifix into her heart and set her on fire. And it happened. So the website I'm talking about is called duchas.ie, D-U-C-H-A-S dot I-E. And I'm not sponsored by it or anything. It's just,

this is our national archive of folklore and it's all there digitally for absolutely anybody to read for free and it's an incredible resource and I'm so glad that it exists. Let's have a little ocarina pause. So I'm gonna play my Puerto Rican guero and you're gonna hear an advert for something. I don't know what it is. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret. It's the girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen.

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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 Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. 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. That was the Puerto Rican Guero Pause.

Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash TheBlindBoyPodcast. This podcast is my full-time job and it's how I earn a living. It's how I pay my bills. It's how I pay my rent. www.theblindboypodcast.com time it takes to write the podcast. So if you listen to this podcast and you enjoy it and it brings you mirth or merriment or distraction or whatever the fuck it is, whatever reason you listen to this podcast, please consider paying me for the work that I'm doing. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month. That's it. But if you can't afford it, don't worry about it. You can listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free so everybody gets a podcast and i get to earn a living it's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast i don't put

exclusive content on the patreon because i like i just like to keep the podcast free for everybody rather than create an exclusive content that people pay for. I like the fairness of some people paying and then everyone gets the same access to the same podcast. I think that's nice. Also, give me a follow on Instagram, blindbybookclub. I'm trying to build up my Instagram. Also, if you go to the pinned story on my Instagram you will see a link to pre-order my brand new collection of short stories Topographia

Hibernicat that's coming out this November. You can pre-order all around the world and if you pre-order there's a limited edition of copies that I will sign that you can get your hands on in November but you can buy now and also if it'd be good to pre-order the book because if there's a bunch of pre-orders then that means I entered the charts the book charts when it comes out in November and it would be class in particular to get into the UK book charts if I could I released an audiobook last week called small Bones in a Fist. You can get that wherever you get your audiobooks. It's a mix of some of the stories from my first two collections of short stories that I read out and also I composed a score for each story. So it's like a separate piece of work. Now I'm going

to promote some gigs to fulfil my contractual obligations. August the 8th. I am in the Cork Opera House for the Cork Podcast Festival. August. Again, shitty man with maths. It's not August the 8th. The 8th is the month August. I'm trying to... It should just say August 26th. Instead it says 26th of the 8th, 23. I am gigging in the Car Carp House on the 26th of August. I'm gigging in Vicar Street on the 28th of August. That's up in Dublin.

I'm gigging in Birmingham at the Mosley Folk Festival on the 1st of September. I'm gigging in Dun Laoghaire in the Pavilion on the 9th of September and then on the 18th of November I'm up in Belfast in the Waterfront. I hope all that made sense. Those are the gigs that I have coming in the next six months, live podcasts. They're always great, crack. Come along. So for the second half of this podcast, I'm going to answer some of your questions because last week I did a question answering podcast and I was asked around 500 fucking questions on Instagram

and I only answered one. I answered one question last week about the history of carrot cake. So I'm going to try and take more questions this week. Siobhan wants an update on my cat Nappertandy so as you know if you've been listening to this podcast I had two cats Silken Thomas and Nappertandy brother and sister and Silken Thomas sadly passed away about two months ago and now his sister Nappertandy is by herself on her own living out my back garden

as a semi-wild cat. The memory of Silken Thomas has lived on fantastically. When I was in Canada a cannabis breeder had actually bred a strain of cannabis called Silken Thomas named after him and then in Limerick there's a giant piece of graffiti that someone painted on a wall in the city centre that says, rest in peace Silk and Thomas. And I love that. Thank you to whoever did that. So Napartendi, his sister,

she's been going through a transition. She's been returning to normal. When Silk and Thomas first died, it created chaos. In the fucking garden. All these other tomcats started showing up. And disrespecting the territory of Napertandi.

They started eating from her bowl. Lounging around the garden. And creating a lot of upset for her. And the integrity of where she calls home. And I was really fucking worried about this because I came to the assumption that her brother Silken Thomas even though he was neutered

his male urine, his male piss was keeping away the other tomcats and I was afraid that because he wasn't marking territory anymore that the other tomcats were coming in and going, we'll do whatever the fuck we want here. And then poor old Nappertandy is having her dinner stolen, having some tomcat sleeping in her bed.

I even entertained the idea of buying lion's piss on the internet. You can buy lion's piss on the internet. I was going to buy lion's piss, male lion's piss, and spray it all over my garden I was going to piss all over my garden to try and mark it to keep out the toms well what's happened is the balance has kind of restored

I did read that in circumstances a female cat can mark territory even though generally female cats don't do this in certain circumstances they will so obviously this is what she's been doing and now there's no more toms in the garden the territory is hers i don't see other cats wandering in and out the only there's a black bird who comes down and steals nuts out of her dish, but that's grand.

Her behaviour is starting to become a bit more normal again. She spent a long time after her brother died just screaming at my window. Screaming as if she wanted food, even though her dish was full. So she was screaming at me, going, where's my brother, where's he gone, what have you done, can you bring him back? She's stopped doing that bring him back she's stopped doing that now and she's settling down to a new routine but it's still unbelievably sad it's so fucking sad when I look out my kitchen window and I see that little cat on her own and I can't cuddle her I can't touch her because she's feral I can't go near her

so I can't even comfort her. But to be honest, she wouldn't even understand the language of that comfort. She doesn't understand touch. She hasn't been raised domesticated like a kitten. So she's just out the back on her own. And I have to make sure that I'm not projecting human loneliness on her. But at the end of the day, her and her brother were born together and lived their whole lives together. And they used to, they

had a narrative to their existence. They would fight with each other. I'd be in the kitchen and I'd hear all hell break loose inside their fucking bed. They lived in a little, a little cat house that I built. They'd be kicking the heads off each other inside. And fire would be flying in the air. And then I'd look out. And there'd be silence. And then they'd rub noses and they'd kiss. And they'd fight and kiss and make up.

They'd have a little ritual when it came to dinner times. Even though she was physically dominant. Because he was half blind and deaf. He would always eat first. So he would eat then she'd stand back and then she'd go and eat. And they'd share their food with each other and dole it out equally. Their lives had a lot of narrative and purpose because there was two of them and the conflict was a huge part of that narrative and purpose. They were like an old couple,

fighting, making up. They had routine to their days. In the evening times, one of my favourite things to see, especially around summer, there's a little wooden fence and in the summers we'll say from now onwards when that evening sun is hot and it's the last hour of sun the two of them used to sit up together on this wooden fence and they would just stand still like statues for an hour and let the sun warm their white fur and this was this was a ritual this was just a given i would look out the window at eight o'clock and there's two cats and they're basking in the sun and getting the last hour of it she doesn't do that anymore now she's found a new spot and she sits down by herself in a different corner and lets the sun hit her. But the ritual where the two of them would stand up high on that fence, that ritual

is gone. So the entire pattern of her day has changed completely and she's not as enthusiastic about her food anymore. I've considered changing brands. I feed her a brand called Go Cat. And I'm thinking of fucking mixing it up now and switching over to whiskas or something. Or maybe go all out. Get that Royal Cannon shit. The stuff you get in the pet shop. The real good stuff.

And just change her food maybe. I don't want to go projecting humanity onto a cat. But the toms aren't arriving things are settling down but if I'm being honest I'm just seeing a very lonely cat by herself who can't speak to me can't talk to me won't let me touch her and she's just by herself and her entire routine has been fucked up and she's trying to figure things out. And the thing that breaks my heart most. Is she doesn't have.

She doesn't have conflict in her day anymore. Because I saw a lot of meaning. That came from that conflict. When they would fight. They would also make up. And they'd rub noses. And there was affection. And the affection came from the fighting.

And now she doesn't have any of that anymore. She just has walls. And I don't see her interacting with other cats either. So I hope she's going to be alright. And I hope the fucking winter man. Whatever about the summer with the lovely heat coming in. And she gets to bask. When it starts getting windy.

And cold. And freezing. And raining. And she used to go into that bed she's on her own now I used to look into the bed at night time and there could be a fucking storm or frost and it was freezing and I'd look into that bed

and I'd see two little white cats unified as one ball of heat heating each other sleeping with each other clearly deliberately serving a purpose to keep each other warm, dry and safe and that's gone now

and now she's just by herself as a weird little feral cat who doesn't have relationships with humans or other cats but what the fuck do I know I could be projecting a bunch of human shit on that cat she's got food she's got shelter she has territory those are three staples of her existence that she has and they're not going away and she seems cool with it Owen asks what one piece of advice would you give

a person when they're battling with low self-esteem? So self-esteem is our personal opinion of ourselves, how we feel about who we are as an individual. And if you struggle with feelings of anger, rage, envy, jealousy, guilt, shame, if these are kind of repeating patterns in your life and what I mean is you're always jealous of someone or always envious of someone or there's always somebody who when you think about them they make you incredibly angry and this person just changes throughout your life it becomes a different person each time. But what's ever present is the feeling of envy or jealousy or rage. That can actually be an indicator of low self-esteem. You can have a low opinion of yourself. And when we have low opinions of

ourselves, it tends to be because we've placed our self-worth, our sense of worth, in external things or aspects of our behaviour. So we can have this assumption bubbling underneath that we're only as worthwhile as our achievements, our social status, how physically attractive we are, how much money we have, what our job is, whether we're single or in a relationship. If our sense of worth, if how good we feel that we are, how worthy we feel that we are, is based in external things, then we can experience low self-esteem and feelings like anger or resentment towards other people these things pop up because something that they they have something that we want and if another person is more financially successful than you or has a better

job or is more physically attractive whatever the fuck instead of having the capacity and ability to be like that's another person that's none of my business or even better to be happy for them the things that they have simply become a reminder to you of what you are not and this can feel deeply threatening but even to experience that feeling of threat is threatening in itself so it feels more proactive it's easier to hate that person or to be envious of them or to have begrudgery to look at somebody who has something that you want or has achieved something that you'd like to achieve or looks how you'd like to look, whatever, if you find yourself minimizing them, reducing them in your head in some way, they're only successful because their parents are this. They're not really good looking, they're just tall. That's all makeup. That's not really their car, it's a company car. Basically needing to put

another person down in your mind to make yourself feel good in some way. If you find yourself doing that, it may feel as if the other person is actually what's making you angry or jealous or envious. But really, it's how we feel about ourselves. It's a beautiful opportunity. These things are beautiful opportunities to see that maybe you've placed your own self-worth in external things you got to be real honest with yourself about the way you speak to yourself

when you think about where you are right now in life if you think about the job that you have now and something comes up like I thought I'd be so much better right now I'm in my 30s I thought I would be somewhere better right now I thought I'd be married by now I thought I'd have a house I used to be attractive and now I'm not anymore and then you start looking at the other language you'd use about yourself I'm disgusting I'm inferior I'm a failure I'm useless I'm disgusting, I'm inferior, I'm a failure, I'm useless, I'm stupid, I'm defective, I'm a loser, I'm pathetic, I'm weak. If this is the language you use to appraise yourself when you think about where you are right now or who you are right now then that's an indicator of low self-esteem and

it's an indicator that your self-worth is placed in aspects of your behavior or achievements or external things and you got to be self-compassionate around that because that's the society we live in we receive messages from society whether it be from teachers advertising we receive messages that basically tell us your worth is in how attractive you are how wealthy you are how good your job is these are the messages that we receive in this society and it's a fucking myth it's bullshit we're all born as equal gorgeous little babies and we never lose that and when we die the soil doesn't give a fuck we all decompose and turn into chemicals the grave doesn't give a shit about your job. All of us have equal intrinsic worth and that's truth. That's the truth of being human. We all have equal intrinsic worth. People look differently, people have different skills, people have different

abilities, some people have more luck but our society tells us to confuse these things with personal worth and that's simply not true. So the question was what one piece of advice would I give a person who's struggling with no self-esteem? Actively try to be your own best friend. Think of someone in your life who you love. It could be your best friend, it could be your partner, it could be a sibling. There is someone in your life who you love and adore because of who they are. Sometimes they might disappoint you. You're not always happy with their behaviour. Sometimes they do amazing things and you feel great about them. But ultimately, you just fucking love this person

because that's who the fuck they are. That's who they are and you love them. And if they lose their job, they get made redundant. And then they feel worthless. They feel like a piece of shit they feel embarrassed to be unemployed you don't feel that way about them because you love them for who they are

and it's your friend who you love and they happen to be unemployed right now and I bet you don't give a flying fuck what they look like either they might think their ears are huge or they have a weird nose and this makes them feel real uncomfortable you don't give a fuck because you love them for who they are and if they come to you and say I feel so worthless because I have a job that I think is shitty and I went to college and I'm not

doing anything with my degree and I feel worthless when they say this to you you want to climb into their head and say to them i wish you could see how wonderful you are and i wish you could see how wrong you are to think that you're worthless because you don't have a good fucking job now imagine you could be that way with yourself imagine you could be that understanding that compassionate that forgiving with yourself the way that you are with your best friend who you just love for who they are that there is is the goal of achieving high self-esteem and it's fucking difficult it's really difficult to do it with ourselves but a stepping stone is to write shit down so when you find yourself being too hard on yourself when you find yourself talk being quite

negative and you're labeling yourself as defective or unworthy or unlovable or a failure or weak take out a piece of paper write down as honestly as possible these horrible things that you feel about yourself or you think about yourself your negative self-appraisal and when it's down on paper try and speak to yourself like you're your own best friend and the reason I say to use a piece of paper is it's really very effective as an exercise when you externalize your own self-talk. Like, it's one thing walking around all day inside in your head saying, I'm a worthless, useless, pathetic loser

and looking at someone else and going, what a fucking prick. Look at the car that they have. What a bastard. I bet they think they're better than me. We can walk around all day long with these horrible, toxic thoughts in our head but once you write it down on a sheet of paper and you read it and you're being as honest as possible and you can

throw it in the bin afterwards you're being as honest as possible with the shit that goes on in your head on a piece of paper when you fucking read it in front of your eyes it's external and you can actually apply quite a bit of criticality to it and you can look at it and you go fuck me is this what i really say to myself all day long i'm a worthless pathetic loser you're reading it and then you write down alternatives and you go i'm gonna be as forgiving and compassionate to myself on this piece of paper as I would be if my best friend came up and said this shit about themselves to me. So that's what I'd say to someone. One piece of advice if low self-esteem is an issue. Practice being your own best friend on a piece of paper. And it's private and you can throw it

away if you don't want to read it afterwards. You can burn it. Right, there was a strange podcast this week about the folklore of prohibition. Rub a swan, kiss a dog, wave to a goose. 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 toronto rock hosts the rochester nighthawks at first

ontario center 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 Thank you.