The Blindboy Podcast - The Hashish Eater of Booly

Episode Date: March 8, 2023

I contrast Irish mythology with Islamic Folklore from the same era  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pierce the priest's ear, you eavesdropping seer-shes. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If this is your first episode, I suggest listening to an earlier episode. Some people even go right back to the start, to familiarise themselves with the lore of this podcast. The never-ending declines, the perpetual queevas, the infinite Catrionas. When I was a teenager, in the 2000s, before the advent of social media, disposable cameras were incredibly popular because they became mad cheap.

You'd walk into a chemist and they'd be selling three disposable cameras for a tenner. And what a disposable camera was, was this shitty little, this shitty little camera that was half made out of cardboard and within it was a roll of film that had 24 shots. Now the thing is, even though in the 2000s we were teenagers and we had access to these cameras that were really cheap, we didn't have a photography culture.

Not like now. Not like with smartphones now, where the average person is going to take 10 photographs a day. We didn't do that even though disposable cameras were cheap we still kind of reserved them for special occasions you'd get disposable cameras for holidays or you'd get disposable cameras for an event and we were still quite cautious

of the photographs that you'd take on a disposable camera. Because here's the thing, you had to bring them to a chemist to get them developed. So nobody was taking risky photographs. Nobody was taking photographs of anything illegal. Like if you were 16 and your friend had a disposable camera and you were drinking cans and maybe smoking a joint, you didn't take a photograph of that because you then had to take it to the chemist and you were worried that the person in the chemist would tell the guards that you're smoking a joint in a photograph. Nobody was taking nude photographs of themselves.

People weren't taking photographs of themselves having sex. There was no privacy to photographs. When I was a teenager, it was a public act. And whatever you took a photograph of, you had to be there in the chemist to collect it. And you had to interact with a human being. And you know they've looked through your photographs. So people wouldn't even take photographs where they looked in any way vain before social media if you posed for a photograph

you had to be kind of demure and shy and you had to be scared of the lens. Look at any camcorder footage from the 90s. You just find it on YouTube. Or if you have camcorder footage that your family might own. From the 90s or early 2000s. If you look back then. When people had a camera pointed in their face. The first thing they did was put their hand up in front of the camera. Nobody wanted to be on a fucking camera back then because to want that was to be arrogant. It was shunned. Like I was there. I

remember when this all changed. This changed with Myspace and Bebo and digital cameras. When you no longer went to the chemist to develop her photographs. Instead now you took a photograph on a digital camera and you uploaded it and you put it onto your Bebo or your Myspace. But the generation that was taking the first photographs of themselves for social media, this same generation only three or four years previously, had been using disposable cameras. If you took a nice photograph of yourself in 2006 and put it on the internet, it was a shameful thing to do. You were seen as arrogant and cocky and full of yourself.

You didn't do it. When selfies became a thing, when the word selfie. Entered. Parlance. This was a radical act. Pioneered by people like Paris Hilton. And Kim Kardashian. To get a digital camera.

Hold it in your hand. And take a photograph of your own face. In like 2005, 2006. That was a really radical thing to do. So radical that it was spoken about for like a year and people were embarrassed to take selfies and this is where the duck face came in. If you think back to the mid-2000s and early social media and early digital photography, the mid-2000s and early social media and early digital photography, MySpace, Bebo, the duck face. If you were to take a photograph of yourself,

you didn't want to look cocky, but you also kind of wanted to have a nice photograph of yourself, so the compromise was the duck face. People would take a selfie, but make a ridiculous, stupid face where you sucked your cheekbones in and pecked your lips out so you looked like a duck. But the true purpose of the duck face was, I want to take a nice photograph of myself but I don't want to look like I love myself. And that's what the duck face was. Now that seems absurd now. Selfies are completely normalised.

Taking a photograph of yourself now, it's encouraged. No one would ever consider that to be vain or arrogant or self-absorbed. It's just a completely normal, OK thing to do. But that was a battle. People had to really battle and fight for that. Because my generation,

the generation of fucking the first people to take selfies, we remember before selfies. And before selfies, it was the disposable camera. And the disposable camera meant, don't do anything strange with these photographs. Nothing illegal, nothing sexual, nothing too vain or cocky because you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to have the judgment of a chemist. A chemist is gonna judge you and chemists and pharmacies were already a site of judgment. When I was a teenager you had to go into a chemist to buy condoms. You had to walk up to the counter as a 16-year-old and buy condoms. Most of us weren't even using them. You just had to have one in your wallet to look cool.

I was once kicked out of a cinema for chewing flavoured condoms. But pharmacies meant judgement. That walk up to the counter and speaking to someone who's middle-aged and they know that you're a teenager, they weren't going to give you that condom easily. That pharmacist had to fucking judge you in some way. If you asked for that condom, there was a pause. There was a parental tutting. There was a sighing. There was a reluctance to sell you the condom. Theyance to sell you the condom. They had to sell you the condom, that was the fucking law. But the pharmacists made it really difficult for you to buy a condom without extensive judgment. When I was a child,

condoms were mythical fucking artifacts. Few things would make me get out of bed early when I was about eight years of age. And that was when one of my friends would call to the door. With two pieces of information. One of them was. We found a dead rat. Do you want to come and look at it? Yes.

And the other one was. And it was usually Sunday morning. There's a condom in the car park. There's a used condom in the car park. Do you want to go look at it? And we'd all gather around the used condom in the car park there's a used condom in the car park do you want to go look at it and we'd all gather around the used condom not fully knowing what it is not knowing what it's for staring at the cum inside the condom

not knowing what that fucking is either poking it with sticks picking it up with a stick throwing it at your friend trying to get a dog to eat the condom. When I first found a condom, I didn't know what the fuck it was. I mean out in public,

because that's what people used to do in the 90s. Someone would have sex, on like a Saturday night, somewhere, maybe in public. And then they'd leave, and then they'd throw the condom on the ground. Because it was such a shameful artefact, they'd throw it on the ground in a playground or in a car park. They wouldn't put it in a bin. They'd shamefully discard it on the ground.

Because Catholic Ireland had told them that this thing was wrong. They'd discard it on the ground, and then I'd be four years of age in the playground, and I'd find it on a Sunday morning, and the first time I ever found a condom, I didn't know what it was. I told myself it was a dead ghost, because it looked to me a little bit like your man Casper,

the friendly ghost. And when I saw my first condom against the tarmac of a playground, I just remember looking at it and going, yeah, that's a poor little ghost like Casper, a baby ghost because it's so small, and that's the dead ghost. And the condom reminded me of a dead jellyfish that I saw on a beach. And then I started to think that maybe ghosts are a dead jellyfish that I saw on a beach and then I started to think that maybe ghosts are related to jellyfish and then I'd look at the reservoir of the

condom, which I now realise was human sperm inside the reservoir, but I saw it and thought that's the poor little dead ghost's brain and I kind of kept that a secret I kept it a secret until one of my until we found another condom when I was seven or eight with my friends and one of them said oh that's a condom and I'm like what the fuck's a condom and he told me whatever seven-year-olds tell other seven-year-olds what a condom is and I lost my innocence a little bit because I much preferred thinking that I once found a dead ghost and I think ghosts are related to jellyfish that was a better explanation but yeah condoms were shameful things to buy when I was a teenager and the pharmacist was the gatekeeper of that shame. That's not the

case anymore. You can buy condoms wherever you want now. You can get them in duns. The pharmacist, the pharmacist now only reserves their shame for women who want the morning after pill. If you're a pharmacist and you're shaming women for getting the morning after pill, you're going to have to grow up. You're going to need to grow up. And just complete the transaction and mind your own fucking business. But the pharmacy condom shaming. Definitely leached in to disposable photographs. You just know.

It's the pharmacist. This is the person who shames you for getting a condom. So keep those photographs. Nice and simple. Don't do anything in there that you can be embarrassed or ashamed about in any way keep them boring and that's what we did but it's that culture that led to the selfie being a hard won battle but there were exceptions to the rule so what started to happen when I was about 16 or 17 with disposable cameras was they got so cheap that people would just buy them. You'd get three for a tenner in the pharmacy and

people would just buy them. And what would happen is when it came to a Debs. Now a Debs, if you're not from Ireland, Debs is like a prom. It's that dance, dinner dance bullshit you go to when you're like 16, 17. You either had your own Debs or you were invited to other people's Debs. And a tradition emerged in Debs around the 2000s where people would just bring disposable cameras and leave them on tables. So now there wasn't really any ownership over any of the disposable cameras. You just left them around and took whatever photographs you wanted.

And this led to a culture in Limerick anyway. It led to a culture in Limerick anyway it led to a culture in Limerick where there were two practices that you do at a Debs known as fruit bowling or bullying now what this was really was it was a way to finally do something really mischievous with a disposable camera and take no accountability for it because you're not the one getting them developed. You don't even know who the fuck is going to get this camera developed. It could be anyone.

You found it on a table. So lads out of Debs would get together near the end of the night and they'd go, get a fucking camera off a table. Let's go bullying or fruitballing, let's do one of them, get the fucking camera,

say nothing, and what the bullying and the fruitball were, is the lads would take a disposable camera off a table, then go into the bathroom, where there was a big mirror, there wasn't a big mirror, you had to get up on someone's shoulders. And you'd take a photograph of one of two things.

The first was the bully. Now a bully really, it was just a moaner. It's just, you'd take a photograph of your arse, with a disposable camera that you don't own. A photograph of your arse in a disposable camera that you don't own. A photograph of your arse in the mirror. That's it. Or maybe multiple arses in the mirror.

You didn't take a photograph of someone else's arse because I don't know, that was, someone would have called you gay. So you had to do a primitive early 2000s selfie using a mirror. Now other lads were involved this this was a group effort you didn't do it on your own because then that was strange

it was a group effort where you'd try and get many moons into one photograph and and you'd do this in a mirror and we called this a bully it wasn't a moonaner. It was a boley. The reason it was a boley is because there was this cartoon snowman on TV. If you grew up in Ireland back then, there was a cartoon snowman called Boley. And he was just a little white snowman who spoke Irish. And his name was Boley. But he had a big white arse. So when lads took photographs of their arses at a Debs with a disposable camera this was a Bowley. This was called

Bowleying. Now a more controversial position was the Fruitball. A Fruitball was a Bowley where the lad pushed his balls under his legs so you got arse and balls. So this was fruit-polling and bullying with a disposable camera at a Debs. And then a complete stranger would take that camera away, not knowing what's on it. They'd go to the chemist, they'd get their photographs developed, and then they'd go and collect the photographs

and have to experience the shame of the chemist handing back your photographs you open them up and you go here's a lot of arses and I don't know who owns them and I suppose that people taking photographs of their arses they weren't thinking oh no what if everyone sees my arse because it's before the internet it's one photograph on one disposable camera and there's just going to be one copy somewhere existing physically with the technology to digitally reproduce it and show it to millions of people

that didn't exist yet. And it wasn't like creepy dick pics that people do now where they send someone a dick pic as a way to abuse them or have power over them. It was still non-consensual nudity, but it wasn't sexualised. It was just bare arses done in the spirit of pranking

rather than the spirit of trying to intimidate someone or make them feel uncomfortable. But the reason I'm thinking about bullying this week is because I actually came across the word while researching this week's podcast. Now I hadn't thought of fucking bullying since the early 2000s. Why would I? It was our word to refer specifically to taking a photograph of your bare arse on a disposable camera at a Debs, why would I be thinking about bullying? But as I was researching this week's podcast,

the word bullying and the practice of bullying is something present in Irish folklore going back hundreds and possibly over a thousand years, except it means something quite different. I've been leaning into Irish mythology and Irish folklore quite heavily this year. I've been reading more and more, learning more and more, and gaining a huge respect for the oral culture of this island mainly from an environmental perspective you see for me Irish mythology and Irish folklore it's not important to me from an identity

perspective from a perspective of Irish identity. I find it important because what Irish mythology is and Irish folklore is at its core is a system of incredibly interesting stories that you tell about the environment in the absence of writing. Stories and tales that could be thousands of years old about mountains

and rivers and trees and lakes and the seasons and the weather of the island of Ireland creating a map of an entire region

made up entirely of stories and when you have a culture like that when a lake isn't just a lake because this lake contains a portal to another dimension at the bottom of it and a tree beside this lake isn't just a tree it's a tree whose roots reach down into the other world

and they take knowledge from the other world, and this knowledge goes up through the roots of the tree, and then it grows on the acorns of that tree, and then that tree's acorns fall into the fucking lake, and they contain all the knowledge of the other world, and then a salmon eats those acorns, and then the salmon becomes imbibed with the knowledge of the other world. And whoever eats that salmon will gain all the knowledge of the world.

And every tale I've mentioned there is present in Irish mythology. Going back a couple of thousand years. Now we're not just dealing with a lake and a tree and a fish. We're dealing with a map of the world that's told through stories and also something that's to be respected, feared, protected and not just exploited for profit. And to give you an example of this, in Ireland today, we still have fairy trees and fairy forts.

You'll find little trees dotted around Ireland and local folklore still says, that's a fairy tree, that's a fairy fort, don't fuck with it. And people don't fuck with it. There are builders in Ireland today who will not knock down a fairy tree just in case it brings bad luck. There's been cases in Ireland in the past 20 years where motorways have been diverted because they won't build over a fucking fairy tree. It might be bullshit but it fucking works. It tugs at something at the core of the human condition. The story is too powerful. This is a fairy tree. Do you really want to find out? Do you want to find out if it brings you a fairy tree do you really want to find out do you want to find out if it brings you bad luck or do you just want to go and build somewhere else

instead not just Ireland but the world lost that to colonization I want to learn more about Irish folklore and Irish mythology so that it'll give me a much greater respect for the land that we have in the face of climate collapse at the core of colonization i did a podcast on this a few weeks back at the core of colonization and whether that be the british empire spanish empire portuguese, the current American Empire, at the core of colonization is taking over an area and then eradicating the culture and language of the indigenous people of that area. And so they lose their stories and their tales and their language and their identity. And then a lake stops being a magical lake and a tree stops being magical and the fish no longer contain knowledge and then it's completely open to exploitation

and extraction for profit. Indigenous cultures tend to have a rich folklore and mythology about their lived environment and nature and this rich mythology tends to lead to a fear and respect of nature, whereby the people don't feel comfortable exploiting nature. Instead they want to work with it, to understand its regenerative properties,

so they can take what they need, instead of completely eradicating it. Colonization got rid of all that shit. Wherever an area was colonised, the culture doing the colonisation destroyed the environment. Colonising countries never respected the landscape

or respected the environment. They saw it as something to be controlled and shaped and conquered and mastered by humans. This ramped up on a huge scale around the time of the Industrial Revolution. And the Industrial Revolution, which is about 450 years old, maybe a bit more, that's the beginning of the climate collapse and global warming. And if you want to see an aesthetic example

of what I mean by a colonising culture believing that nature is something not to be respected but conquered, look at the big houses of the British Empire. Look at garden designers such as Capability Brown. Visit a place like Donnerale House in Cork,

which is like an old English colonial mansion. They would take a plot of land in front of the big house and literally sculpt it like it was a painting. They'd design a lake. They'd plant trees. They'd bring invasive species from other parts of the empire and plant them wherever they pleased to dominate and control nature

for the benefit of human aesthetics. This is where we get lawns from. Lawns look beautiful. Lovely big expansive short cut grass. Lawns are beautiful to the human eye. But nothing fucking lives on a lawn. There's not much insect life going on on a fucking

lawn. It's a monoculture of one type of grass. Terrible for the environment. But also what we're losing now. You know, the trees might be cut down. The forests are gone and now it's just pasture land. The mountains still stand

and the legend of a mountain is still there. But what we can rely upon is folklore and mythology that's about seasons. The predictability of seasons because seasons are very fucking predictable. Weather is cyclical. Weather and seasons tends to happen more or less the same way each year. So in Ireland, we have festivals based around certain seasons and traditions and stories and tales about certain seasons.

But the past 10 years, seasons aren't behaving the way that seasons are supposed to behave. Like Halloween is warm now. But there's one particular folktale Irish folktale that's about this time of year right now

and this folktale is called Leighante na bó ríomhí which means the days of the brindled cow and it refers to like I know we're in early March now but this is a folktale that refers to, I know we're in early March now, but this is a folk tale that refers to the last two weeks of March and the first week of April. In Ireland, the last two weeks of March and the first week of April, they tend to be quite cold.

quite cold. It's like when winter is leaving us, it gives us one last fucking lash of freezing cold or strong winds. And this has been very predictable for hundreds and hundreds of years. But like 300 years ago, people didn't have calendars. People didn't have watches. Very poor people mightn't have had any access to writing and in Ireland especially before the 1800s cattle were very very important so you needed to have a story about the last two weeks of March

you needed to have a really really fucking interesting story that was so interesting it would survive and be told again and again so that was so interesting it would survive and be told again and again so that people who had cattle would know be careful at the fucking end of march man it's freezing your cattle will die don't start telling yourself that spring is here right the end of march is freezing it's dangerous it kills cows cows. And this is why in Ireland we call the last two weeks of March, Laith an the Ná Bória Fhí, the days of the brindled

cow. Because there's a folk tale. We don't know how old it is. Could be hundreds of years old, could be thousands of years old. But it's an absolutely mad tale. And I've definitely mentioned it on this podcast. I think I bring it up every fucking March. To keep the tradition going. But this tale is. There was a brindled cow. Now a brindled cow is. It's an ancient breed.

Of cattle in Ireland. They're brown. Which kind of stripes like a tiger. Strange looking cows. But this one cow. Was really cocky. And she was hanging around the field. And she was saying to herself.

Fuck it it's March. It's going to be spring soon. I can do whatever I want out in these fields. I don't have to take shelter. And the cow. Started bragging. To the month of March which I think is beautiful

the concept and idea of a talking cow having an argument with a month, a unit of time utterly fucking surreal so the cow starts tempting fate and the cow starts talking to the month of March and saying fuck you

March you're nothing I'm gonna I'm gonna survive well into April right I'm gonna I don't give a shit about you March you're not even cold it's spring all right I'm gonna go out into this field I'm gonna do whatever the fuck I want okay March and then March got pissed off the cow's words affected the self-esteem of March. March was like, who the fuck does this cow think that, who does this cow think that they are? To be slagging me? I'm a fucking month. I've been around for eternity. I've been around forever. I'm the month of March. This cow is taking the piss out of me.

So March got angry. And at the end of March, March was is taking the piss out of me. So March got angry. And at the end of March, March was so pissed off. It started throwing everything at this cow. Freezing winds, freezing cold temperatures, rain. But the cow was still like, fuck you March, I'm going to make it to April. I can put up with this. And just when it got to the 30th of March March was like I can't let this cow win I can't let the cow win there's no way this cow was making

it to April so March was on its last knees because at this time March only had 30 days so March went over to April it's friend April and March asked the month of April you'd never give me a day would you and then April's like hold on a minute March I've got 31 days I'm doing quite well here I'm April I've got 31 days I'm doing very well and then March goes look I've got 30 days okay but there's this cow that's acting there's a cow testing me there's a cow saying that I'm not cold enough come on April give me a day so then April says to March all right fuck it I'm gonna give you one day I'm going to give you a day so this is how April became

30 days long and March became 31 days long so then the cow who was all arrogant and cocky, running around in the field saying I can put up with this wind I can put up with whatever the cow gets into the 1st

of April and then it doesn't realise, no, no, no, no, March is after getting another day off April. So when the cow thinks it's the 1st of April, it's now actually the 31st of March. And on the 31st of March, March gave the cow everything. Freezing cold, terrifying weather and the cow died and that's the story of how March got 31 days and the cow died now that's a beautiful story that's a wonderful tale could be thousands of years old we don't know. It's surreal beyond imagination. Units of time are having arguments with each other and fighting with a cow. It's fucking nuts. And it's hilarious. And the reason it's

nuts and the reason it's hilarious is because you'll remember it in the absence of writing. And this story existed and survived for thousands of years in Ireland to keep people's cattle safe. If you're a culture that depends upon herding cattle, you need to remember, don't get fucking cocky just because you think spring is coming,

because those last days of March and April, they're hardcore and they'll kill all your cows. So chill the fuck out. Don't be moving the cows. Keep them warm and sheltered. And don't fuck with those cows until it's the start of April. Alright?

Don't fuck with those cows until April. Respect March. And if another farmer said, how do you know this? Because it's 1500. And I don't have have a calendar and I don't have a watch. And I don't, I can't read. How do you know this? And then the other farmer would say, well, it's the Leighanth and a Bó Rí Fhí. It's the days of the Brindle Cow.

Have you not heard this story? And then the farmer hears the story and they believe it. And they go, yeah, March is a spiteful fucker i'm gonna look after my cows and that there is the usefulness and purpose of mythology these stories are the fruiting bodies of the human unconscious humans swim in a sea of language and the capacity to use language to communicate ideas to other humans within a system of culture. So folklore and mythology exist to benefit our survival. And that right there is a fucking prime example. And storytelling is important to our survival because the most interesting stories help us to survive.

And what's going to break my heart this year is you know is it going to be shit at the end of march can we can we predict that the end of march is going to be cold and freezing can we predict that or has climate change moved it or fucked with it in some way and when climate change does that this wonderful beautiful story about a fucking cow having an argument with a month isn't relevant anymore and that breaks my heart because something is lost now and those stories were kept alive by the druids and the poets and they were written by the druids and the poets going back again could be a thousand years and just my opinion but I'm convinced

that the druids and the poets were autistic or neurodivergent people because they'd live in solitude concentrating

thinking someone they'd say to people here listen you go off over there and worry about having friends because I'm not

interested in that I'm going to go over here and I about having friends because I'm not interested in that I'm going to go over here and I'm going to stare into this fire for ages and ages I'm going to hyper focus and think about the month of March and cows so much until I come out of it with a story

and these people wouldn't have been considered strange or weird or eccentric they had a purpose in their community and that purpose was I'm able to think about shit for a very long time very intensely and I won't get distracted by socializing or needing to have friends that's not going to distract me just leave me be and the druids and the poets were expected to remember all of this stuff to remember the fact about the facts about every mountain every tree every lake to hold all this information in their heads and to speak

about it all the time so that other people could learn it which to me are quite neurodivergent traits that shit comes naturally to an autistic person now it's considered a disability within the structure of society that we have now but maybe back then it wasn't maybe to be that way was a valuable thing like to come up with a story about a cow arguing with the fucking month of March that's extremely lateral thinking that's very lateral thinking that's quite neurodivergent thinking but while I was looking into the story of this brindled cow and the month of March

that's when I came across the word bullying that's when I saw the word bullying and I hadn't thought about the word bullying since fucking the early 2000s and lads taking photographs of their arses and a disposable camera at a Debs bullying is an ancient Irish practice of herding your cattle

cattle were a huge part of culture on the island of Ireland I mean you think of one of the biggest epics of Irish mythology the island of Ireland. I mean you think of one of the biggest epics of Irish mythology the Tyne, the Tyne Bó Chúilne which means the cattle raid of Cooley. This is an entire epic about the importance of cattle

and a famed brown bull. And the Tyne I think it was written around the 600s written down but the story and the mythology of the Tyne, I think it was written around the 600s, written down. But the story and the mythology of the Tyne, again, could be thousands of years old in Irish oral culture. But the hardening and moving of cattle was very important. And one practice of moving cattle was known as bullying. And this is where the tale of the Brindle Cow becomes really important.

And this is where the tale of the brindled cow becomes really important. Why is it so important that people in Ireland who owned cattle understood, don't fucking move your cattle at the end of March. Don't do it. The end of March is dangerous. Why was that important? Because come April, this is when people who herded cattle would engage in bullying. Around the middle of April, the start of May, there's a seasonal explosion of grass growth. Grass would grow very thick and very strong from mid-April onwards up on the mountains on higher land.

So people who had cattle around April would now drive their cattle and it could take a while to do it. They'd take their herd of cattle away from the shelter of the lowlands and go up to a mountain where the grass is growing thick and strong in the middle of April. And the people would move with their cattle to the mountains. And this was called bullying. Now, if you were getting clever, if you were thinking, Fuck it, man. I'm going to leave with my cattle early, right? So that I can get up to the mountain and get the best patch of grass. I'm going to leave

early. The people who left early did so at the end of March and their cattle died. So they needed to hear the story of the brindled cow. Don't move your fucking cattle in March. Wait, wait, wait until April because March has got a problem with you. then you can move. So everybody would move with their cattle once April had started and it was safe. And then everyone would situate themselves up onto a mountain. And then the cows would have a fuckload more of grass. And because they had more grass, they'd produce more milk. And people would stay there all summer. more milk and people would stay there all summer. Now what would also happen is some people, usually the men, they would stay back in the lowlands and the pastures that the cows had been using

over the winter, now they would use the lowland pastures to grow crops. They'd grow crops in these pastures because the cows had fucked off up the mountain to the grass to go bullying. And it was mostly women who went bullying and looking after the cows and milking them and making butter and making cream. And the cows were thrilled because the grass was fantastic. In the mountains of Kerry and parts of Connemara, you can still find bullying spots. People used to live in stone huts with thatched roofs there's a valley in County Kerry called the Bridia Valley and there's still some really really old bullying huts up there now the other purpose of bullying and this is why I

find it fascinating this is I opened this podcast by speaking about we used to go to a debs and we were teenagers and we'd have these disposable cameras and we'd come up with this word fucking bullying right bullying at the debs we'd come up with the word bullying because of bully the snowman's arse but bullying bullying itself, the ancient Irish practice, which we hadn't a fucking clue about, obviously, total coincidence, but the ancient Irish practice of bullying was often a teenage pursuit. It was mostly the younger women and teenage boys, they would all go off up into the hills with the cows to milk them and spend their summers

doing that but it became a very important cultural practice it was like summer school for young people they were up having crack you'd have one group from that part of connemara or another group from kerry and then everyone would be up the mountain meeting other people and these summers up the mountains with the cows is where people would exchange new songs. You'd have no reason to meet a person from another village miles away

but now you're all together up the mountain. So teenagers who were milking these cows were sharing new songs with each other, sharing new stories, sharing new stories, sharing new dances, playing musical instruments. Culture was being disseminated and spread up the mountain in the summer amongst the cows

and then brought back down in the winter. And by the time Halloween comes around then, in October, there's new songs and dances back in your little community there's new songs new dances new stories that you heard up the mountain over the summer and there were cautious dangerous tales too because there were so many young girls up there there was folklore stories about men appearing from nowhere like fairy men or the devil and trying to abduct girls or the kalyuk would appear which was like a hag like an ancient form of Irish witch I suppose and these they would take the form of a hare like a rabbit like a hare and the hare would steal milk from

the cows in the night time and I find that one really interesting because in that book that I did a podcast on, Topographia Hibernica, which was a propaganda book written by the British to justify the invasion of Ireland, the story of women turning into hares and stealing milk from other women, which obviously came from Irish folklore, was written in this Topograph Ibernica manuscript as fact and given back to the Normans as justification to colonise a savage culture. The practice of bullying, it kind of disappeared by the 1800s.

It disappeared by the 1800s because of colonisation. So by the 1800s, we were fully under control of the British. There wouldn't have been enough common or free land for people to just take their cows and go up the mountain. The mountain now belonged to some fucking absentee British landlord and if you took your cattle on his land you'd be killed. Also by the 1800s indigenous Irish people didn't really own

fucking crowds of cows. We were completely disenfranchised. Everything had been taken from us. Irish people were desperately poor on their own land and the potato came in. So by the 1800s you wouldn't have had this wonderful practice of all the young people going up the hill and bullying in the mountains and sharing songs and sharing knowledge because they didn't own those mountains anymore no one owned them before, it was common land which didn't do that

so people stayed in poverty in their own tiny little spaces growing potatoes and living exclusively and solely on the potato and that there is a that's the direct result of colonization Ireland was colonized

the land was colonized by settlers a potato was introduced which is a fucking a tuber from Peru that doesn't belong here the potato was introduced people are living off this one crop. You have a complete monoculture. Poor people didn't own cows anymore. They'd be lucky if they

had one pig. And people just stayed in their own little place growing spuds. And what gets lost is songs and stories and shared mythology because the movement of people was changed. And then what do you get? By 1840, you have an entire population, don't have cattle, don't have nothing, don't have education, they have a tiny plot of land, living exclusively on a monoculture

of one crop of the potato because wheat, carrots, vegetables, whatever the fuck you have they're being grown by the absentee fucking landlords on their farms, that food is being exported and you just have these poor people living on one crop

and because the potato is a monoculture once a disease comes in that affects the potato it kills all the potatoes and that's all anyone has eaten and all anyone has. Four million people die and another four million people leave. And the word bullying is lost. Until the early 2000s.

When lads start taking photographs of their arses at devs with disposable cameras. Alright, I think it's time for an ocarina pause now. That was 45 minutes without an ocarina pause now that was 45 minutes without an ocarina pause but i didn't want to interrupt the flow of that i want to give a shout out to a fella called eugene costello who's an academic in ucc because it was eugene costello's writing where i found out all that shit about bullying okay let, let's have the ocarina, boss. I don't have the ocarina. I'm in my office.

I've got a mouse mat and a scrapey thing. On April 5th. You must be very careful, Margaret. It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, no, don't.

The first omen. I believe the girl is to be the mother. Mother of what? It's 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 it's not real it's not real who said that the first omen only in theaters April 5th 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 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. I don't know what the fuck that pause was, but you would have heard an advert for something. This podcast is supported by you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast.

If you enjoy this podcast, if it's bringing you solace, entertainment, enjoyment, whatever the fuck it's doing, distraction, emotional sustenance, please consider becoming a patron of this podcast. This podcast is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. This is how I pay all my bills. I adore doing this work.

I love it. But it's only possible, and I can only put in the amount of time it takes to write these podcasts, if it's my full-time job, if I can spend days doing it. it so if you'd like to support that go to patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast all i'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee once a month that's it if you can't afford that 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. I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model. And it also keeps this podcast fully independent. No advertiser can come in and tell me what to talk about. And that's very important. Upcoming gigs. Vicar Street on the 22nd of March there are tickets left for that

not a lot of tickets let's say we're down to the last 20 Vicar Street on the 24th of March is sold out and then on the 1st of April the 1st of April we have got Trada in the TLT Theatre

come along to that on April Fool's Day and also if you have any interesting guest suggestions for Drada please let me know

historians interesting people who you think would be a good person for me to interview in Drada someone who's local to the area

who's a good talker. Give me a DM on Instagram if you have any recommendations for someone who'd like to hear me interview Indrada, because the sales for that one have gone up since last week, so that's going to be a really good fucking gig now. I was worried that the sales were quite low, because it's a large theatre theatre but it's doing okay now then I've got Toronto and Vancouver in April but they're sold out not doing a lot of gigs because I'm writing my new book of short stories I'm writing my new book of short stories and I'm

very very happy with what I've written so far very very happy I have to get 40,000 words done by the end of June but I'm going to do it and the words that I've written so far I'm really happy with them I'm incorporating quite a lot of Irish mythology into my short story writing now ways of thinking

ways of seeing ways of relating to the world that have one foot in that tradition in a tradition that comes easily to me because I speak High Barno English. I want to write contemporary short stories that do have a literary genetic lineage to stories on this island that could be thousands of years old. I'm looking at the hyperbole of books like The Taun and the way that The Taun would describe the likes of fucking Cú Chulainn and applying that to characters that are living and existing now and I'm also incorporating

artificial intelligence into my writing process and it's really enjoyable so what I'd like to do with the second half of this podcast is I've been looking into the folk tales and mythology of other cultures I got my hands on a book called One Thousand and One Nights which is quite a famous book but it's a collection of folk tales from the Middle East from the medieval Middle East, around the time of the Islamic Golden Age, which I think is like the 5th century up to like the 12th century.

And these tales kind of run concurrently with the Irish Golden Age, the period of the 5th century up until the Norman invasion of the 11th century. Now, 1001 Nights is a really famous collection of folktales. Like some of the stories told within this book. You've got the story of Aladdin. You know fucking Aladdin. Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves. You've got the voyage of Sinbad the Sailor, which is bizarrely similar

to the Irish tale, the voyage of Saint Brendan, which would have been written around the same time, and I need to investigate why those stories are so similar, and why Sinbad sounds like Saint Brendan, and if there's a connection at all. So what you have with 1001 Nights, it's a massive collection of stories. It's hard to find a book

that has every single story but the general gist of the collection is these are all folk tales these are all folk tales from Persia, Babylon, Morocco the area of the Middle East but in this book they're framed as so there was this king, right? he was either from India or China and his name was Shariar and he finds out

that his brother's wife has been cheating on his brother loads. And he starts to freak out and starts to distrust women. And then he finds out that his own wife has been cheating on him loads. So it's pure incel shit. It starts off pure incel. You've got this king that just goes, Women, the second you turn your back on women they'll cheat on you

so this king decides well if my brother's wife is riding all around him and my wife is doing all the riding then I can't trust women at all I better come up with a plan so this king decides I'm just gonna I'm gonna pick a virgin then I'm gonna marry her

then I'm gonna have sex with her that night because I've married her and it's okay in the eyes of God but before she has a chance to cheat on me I'm gonna kill her the next morning and he keeps doing it and he keeps doing it and he keeps doing it

and each night he's finding a virgin. Marrying her. Having sex with her. And killing her. Until there's no more virgins left in his kingdom. So he goes to the dude. Who's finding the virgins for him. And says what's the story?

I'm after running out of wives. I've killed them all. Where are the. There's no more virgins left. And the fellow who's finding him the virgins says. Well there's one. My daughter. Her name is Sherizad.

Now your man is going. I don't want to give the king my daughter. Because I know he's going to kill her. Tomorrow if he marries her. But Sherizad steps up and says. I've got an idea. He's going to. The king is going to force you to do it so I'm going to volunteer

because I have an idea so Sherazade marries the king and she knows the next morning that the king is going to kill her because he doesn't trust women he's like they're going to cheat on me

so what Sherazade does is on their wedding night, she tells him a fucking really interesting story and leaves it on a cliffhanger. And then the king won't kill her because he needs to hear the end of the story. And then the next morning she gives him the end of the story. Before he can kill her, he tells her and she tells him another story. And that's the One Thousand and One Nights. For One Thousand and One Nights, Sherazade tells the king a story so interesting that he can't kill her because he needs to find out the rest.

And that's what this collection of folk tales is. It's One Thousand and One Nights. killer because he needs to find out the rest and that's what this collection of folk tales is it's 1001 nights told by a virgin who's such a good storyteller the king won't behead her and i recommend you get a copy of this book because loads of the stories in it they're just they're like two or three pages long and And they're fucking so fascinating and interesting. You can fly through it in one day. And even though this collection of folktales. Was written. Or collected. Around the fucking same time that Irish mythology was being written.

I'm talking about 6th, 7th, 8th century. Even though these stories are written around the same time as Irish mythology was being written, I'm talking about 6th, 7th, 8th century. Even though these stories are written around the same time as Irish mythology, it's so different. It's so completely different because the cultures are so different. In the Islamic world, especially the golden age of Islam, you had these fucking huge cities, places like Baghdad. So even though these tales are 1500 years old, people are living lives that sound kind of similar to how we're living now. They're living in cities, they're going to markets, they're going to baths, they bathe themselves, they're going to gyms.

This was an incredibly advanced culture. The Islamic Golden Age was all about science and knowledge and scholarship. And you get stories in this collection of folktales that they're science fiction. Like within Irish mythology, things are very magical and otherworldly and time doesn't exist in 1001 Nights you've got stories that are nearly a thousand years old and it's straight up fucking science fiction like because in the medieval Islamic world

in the golden age their science was so advanced and their knowledge of mathematics was so advanced they would build automatons, robots basically. In the Islamic world they had these really elaborate and complex clockwork robots that would take the form of an elephant or a horse or a man. A thousand years ago, incredibly advanced engineering. There's a story in this book called the enchanted horse and this story could be a thousand years old and it's it's about a fella from india

arriving to the king of persia and he has with him a robot horse and the king is like that's not a real horse i'm not impressed with this horse but then the ind the king is like that's not a real horse I'm not impressed with this horse but then the Indian fella is like this is a very special horse and he sits on the horse's back and turns a key and suddenly the horse

can take off like a fucking aeroplane and fly all over the world at the speed of an airplane but there's no magic involved there's nothing supernatural this is a fucking science fiction story that's over a thousand years old about a very advanced scientific culture who understand engineering and mathematics really trying to figure out how can we make something fly there's no force from the other world there's no gods involved that use their breath nothing magical or supernatural happens it's a literal story about somebody who has a robot horse.

With a key that you can turn. And this thing can fly into the air. And it can go from. Baghdad to India. In two and a half hours. And that's what the story is about. And that there is science fiction. That's science fiction.

That's an advanced scientific culture. Trying to imagine the limits of their own science that they're laying the fucking historical groundwork for. Then you go from that to another story called the Historic Fart. And this is just ridiculous.

So there's a fellow called Abu Hassan and he's a Bedouin, which means he lives a tribal, a tribal life up in the mountains moving around. And he decides, fuck that, I don't want to be a Bedouin anymore. I'm going to go to the local town. I'm going to become a merchant. I'm going to settle down. And I'm going to find myself a wife.

So Abu Hassan finds a girl. He's like, I'm going to marry her. So he decides he's going to plan his wedding. So Abu Hassan finds a girl. He's like, I'm going to marry her. So he decides he's going to plan his wedding. So Abu Hussein plans his wedding, invites everybody, and he puts out an entire spread. The best meat, the best fruit, the best nuts. The most beautiful wedding spread you've ever seen. And all the guests are thrilled.

Everybody's eaten. Everybody's happy at this wedding he gets married and then it comes to the end of his wedding and the way that the wedding worked back then in Persia or it was in Yemen the way the weddings worked back then is at the end of the night the groom would say goodbye to everybody at the party and then he would go to the bed chambers to his wife to consummate the marriage. So Abu Hassan is thrilled with himself. He's like, I've just had a great wedding day.

Everybody's happy. Everybody's been fed. I've had a lot of food. But he ate so much lamb and so much meat that as he gets up to go towards the bedroom to have sex with his wife everybody's watching him get up and he lets out this fucking giant fart

the longest fart he's ever done in his life and the whole place breaks out in laughter and he is mortified absolutely fucking mortified and he can't handle it. So Abu Hussein says, fuck this. And he runs out of his own wedding.

And then he banishes himself to India. And he stays in India for 20 years. Absolutely mortified. Every single day in India he wakes up and he thinks about, Oh God, my wife back home in that town. Everyone saw me fart. this is so embarrassing this is awful and he's like this for 20 fucking years in India until one day he decides you know what maybe I overreacted maybe I overreacted it's just a fart everyone fucking farts I know it was at my wedding I know everyone heard it but that was 20 years ago maybe I should go back to Yemen go back to that town find my wife

and everything will be okay it was it was a fart it was 20 years ago who cares so he makes his way back to Yemen he goes back to the town he's gonna try and find his wife even though 20 years have passed. And he's kind of wrecked from the journey, so he sits down against the wall. And as he's back in this town and he sits down, this young girl walks past about the age of 20 with her mother. And the young girl says to her mother, Ma, I can't remember, what day was I born on?

And the mother says to the young girl You were born on the very night of Abu Hassan's fart And then Abu Hassan's face is red And he's like, oh my fucking god I didn't overreact I should never have come back My fart has become legendary I was right to be this anxious

And I just love that story I love the irony of it My fart has become legendary. I was right to be this anxious. And I just love that story. I love the irony of it. It's like an episode of Carbier Enthusiasm. It's completely devoid of Christian morality. There's no happy ending. It's like, yeah, you fucking stupid prick. You did a big giant fart at your wedding.

It's hilarious. What do you want us to do? Forget about it. Nothing happens around here us to do? Forget about it. Nothing happens around here. We're never forgetting about that. We're just going to laugh at you forever. It's so misanthropic. And then the other story I read, it's called The Hashish Eater. And like, again, this is

7th century, 8th century. So the story is called The Hashish Eater. And it's about this lad and he loves hash he just fucking loves hash so this is, I think it's set in Persia this is Islam so people aren't drinking alcohol

but they are fucking smoking hash but this one lad he was a wealthy merchant but he just started to love hash so much. He was smoking it all day until it took over his life. And then he started to become lazy. And all he wanted to do all day was smoke hash. He stopped turning up to work.

He became a bit of a waster. And then he was smoking hash so much that the hash wasn't even working anymore when he smoked it. So he started to start eating hash now if you've ever ate hash that's a very intense trip so this fella back then in the 800s in Persia he was now eating hash and getting bombed off his tits so one day he decides to eat a big lump of hash and then he goes to the local bats which would have been like in Persia at that time just absolutely wonderful gorgeous bats I visited these bats very similar to this from the 8th century in Cordoba in Spain they're gorgeous tiles everywhere you've got a cold bath and a hot bath and a steam room

and the technology hasn't really changed since the 800s wonderful places and to be honest this story like when I go to Cordoba cannabis is legal there so I've never thought of smoking a joint and going to these baths I'm doing it the next time. This is probably what everybody did back then. They smoked a giant and they went to these bats and chilled out. It's perfect for it. So that's what I'm doing the next time I go to Cordoba. In particular, they have a salt bat and you just lie in it and your body floats.

But anyway, back to the 8th century. This fella decides to go to the bats in Persia and he's just eaten a giant lump of hash. And he goes in there, takes his clothes off and he's got a towel around his waist and he settles down into the lovely warm pool. Now the baths are packed, there's full of people there so it's not just him in there, there's loads of people. So he's sitting back and now the hash is kicking in and he's just eating a big lump and he starts to hallucinate quite intensely but he's not having

a bad time he's really enjoying it and he's feeling the hash relaxing all the muscles in his body and he's starting to kind of leave the room a little bit and forget where he is. And then inside in the baths, they have the wonderful smell of rose oils and orange oils, and it's getting really kind of sensual for him. And as he's drifting in and out of consciousness and being completely stoned, he starts to imagine across the bats first of all he imagines that there's no one around but he just sees this wonderful gorgeous woman coming towards him

and she's in the nip and he's never seen a more beautiful woman in his life just walking towards him and he can't believe it he's like fuck me in the bats this one's going to come over and ride me so he gets a massive horn and then he starts wanking himself and then

the woman she goes in front to him and he starts riding her from behind and then all of a sudden he's woken up and he's back in the bats and every single person in the bats is laughing and pointing at him because what he's actually doing is he's by himself sticking his dick into a hole in the swimming pool. And trying to ride the side of the swimming pool. And everyone roars and laughs at him. And that's a story called the Hashish Eater. In a collection of Islamic folktales. That was written more than a thousand years ago.

And what I found so beautiful about the story is that could happen tomorrow like that could happen in Limerick tomorrow with some fella who goes to the swimming pool and smokes a load of fucking weed

like in fact something similar nearly happened to me not because of weed but one time I was in the gym and I was listening to a podcast and the podcast was so interesting

that I went into the changing rooms of the gym and I forgot to put my swimming shorts on to go into the swimming pool and I almost walked into the swimming pool completely naked with headphones on with a bunch of people there looking at me because the podcast was so interesting

it distracted me. I wasn't riding the wall but I could empathise with his position. Alright that's enough for this week. That collection is called 1001 Nights. That same book, that same book that has the fella eating hash

and riding the swimming pool that same book that has the fella eating hash and riding a swimming pool. That same book has got like the story of Aladdin that the Disney film is from. Incredible fucking book. And of course, one thing to be conscious of is the translations are all from the 17th century by British and French people. So you do have to be cautious. You have to wonder what did they change and how did Orientalism play into that or the fact that Britain and France

were colonising the Middle East. That's one thing to consider. All right, I'll catch you next week. Hug a swan. 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.