The Blindboy Podcast - The Myth of the Valley of Madness

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

Irish Mythology Podcast. For 2000 years, stories have been told that the Slieve Mish Mountains of Kerry can cure mental illness in those who visit. I explore the stories and tales from this area and the recent scientific studies that might explain why. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Warm greetings you wheezing anthonies. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. It's May. It's starting to get hot. The promise of a summertime bam whistles in the ether. Resting dogs are getting sweaty bellies. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. We're gonna begin this week's podcast with a short poem. A short piece of prose that was sent to me by the actor Daniel Day-Lewis. You heard that I mentioned him on a podcast a few weeks back. So he sent me a short piece of prose which he delivered via a drone attack.

He used a predator drone to shoot the poem into the roof of my house. to shoot the poem into the roof of my house. It completely destroyed my conservatory but I managed to salvage the poem from the ashes. So this poem is called How I Spent My Long Weekend by Daniel Day-Lewis. Tie the devil's shoestrings with your teeth Purple clouds dragging overhead Daniel Day-Lewis has locked himself in his

suitcase again. He's sending himself to Alicante. The baggage handlers will all have heart attacks. They'll bring out the sniffer dogs. Blood on the escalators, barefoot and crumpled, sweaty and compact. It's going to make the papers.

He's going to be a meme. You'll all die from laughter. So that was How I Spent My Long Weekend by Hollywood actor Daniel Day-Lewis. That's actually quite an impenetrable piece of poetry. It's hard to understand what it's about, but Daniel Day-Lewis did attach a note with the poem, and the little note gives a clue as to what the poem is actually about

he said hi blind boy i really enjoy the podcast i've been locking myself into a large suitcase for some time it's taken years of practice i closed the zipper from the inside with my teeth i've started to call this practice tying the devil's shoelace. I really like the look of surprise in people's faces when they open the suitcase and see me inside. So that gives us some clue as to what that poem is about. I don't think it's metaphorical. I think that's literally something he does. I think I think he locks himself into a suitcase and sends himself to Alicante whenever there's a long weekend. That's his thing. It's what he likes to do. Fair play to him.

So if you're a brand new listener, I do recommend going back to some earlier podcasts to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. I know that Acast are running adverts at the moment and advertising this podcast and other people's podcasts. So I might have some new listeners. Yeah, familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast before you get Conker's podcasts. So I might have some new listeners. You familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. Before you get Conker's Deep. But for the long time listeners.

For the drifting Kinsalas. The bulbous Sullivans. You know the crack. You know the crack. You're welcome back. So with this week's podcast. This is going to be a hot take podcast. I'd like to speak about

Irish mythology I love doing podcasts on Irish mythology I'm by no means an expert simply I'm an Irish person who's a writer and an artist and I adore Irish mythology

I adore it because it's our own. The ridiculousness and humour and absurdity and hyperbole of being Irish is heavily present throughout Irish mythology. It's often really silly and really beautiful. It's often really silly and really beautiful. I adore that Irish mythology, which could be 1500 years old, could be 2000 years old. Like we don't know how old some of the stories are or how they've changed over the years.

But I adore how Irish mythology is so connected with the land and place names. And I had on this podcast before a chap called Man Con Magan, who was a bit of a folklorist. And Man Con told us, which is something I found amazing, that because Ireland was an oral culture and we didn't use writing that we had to create mythology and stories about every single facet of the landscape so you don't just have a river you have a river in which lives a salmon that holds all the world's knowledge if you eat it or you don't just have a tree you have a tree that listens to the secrets of anyone who sits underneath it,

and then those secrets are revealed to everybody when you chop the tree down. So by having all of these intertwined stories about every aspect of the landscape, you create a mythological map in the absence of writing. What I'd like to focus on this week is the portrayal of mental illness in Irish mythology because I was doing a good bit of research in this area and I found some beautiful information that I'd love to share with you. I'd like to focus on the area of Dingle. Dingle is one of the most beautiful parts of Ireland. It's in the southwest, in Kerry. It's breathtakingly beautiful.

I think it's the most western part of the continent of Europe. That whole area from like Ventry Beach all the way down to Valencia Island is otherworldly in its beauty. The first time I went there, I just couldn't believe it. It was like having Ireland described to me by an American. Even the name Dingle is fantastic because it's such a musical name.

Dingle, like a bell. And when you hear the people speak down there, they speak in quite a musical fashion. They sound like cork people who've inhaled a piece of popcorn. Of course Dingle is the anglicised name. The actual name of Dingle is Diannean E Cuaish. I'm shit at pronouncing Irish. Diannean E Cuaish. You have to pronounce it like an old man in order for it to be convincing but that means fort of the Hussies

the Hussies were a Norman family that established a fort in the area and I think they just named it after them and they built a folly they built a folly called the Hussie Folly and a folly is I did a podcast on follies before. A folly is like a pointless building.

So they built. It's a little tower. It's a little medieval tower. But it was built in 1845. And it serves no purpose. Other than to be decorative. So it's like a false medieval tower. And I'd like to know more about how it was built

but I couldn't find any information. It was built in the year 1845 which was at the height of the famine and often with follies in Ireland. And a folly is basically, a folly means a foolish thing. A folly is a building that serves no purpose. There's no road that leads to

it. It's just there. And in the 1840s, very rich families used to decide to build a meaningless building just so that they could give work to the people that were starving in the famine. So I would wonder if the Dingle Folly came about because of that. Just because of the year and because I know this about other follies. But I don't know. I did a podcast before on Connolly's Folly which is up in Kildare

and it was shaped like a pineapple and built as a form of famine relief. What got me thinking about Dingle? This weekend I was shooting I was shooting a little thing for television. what got me thinking about Dingle this weekend I was shooting I was shooting a little thing for television I don't know if it will ever see the light of day during the pandemic

I think RTE had some extra funds because they weren't shooting as much TV so they commissioned me to write a short piece so I wrote like a little a 10 minute short film, about a security guard called Fanta, who has a pet larcher.

A larcher is like a small greyhound, but instead of running, they just look at things. And this security guard called Fanta, his larcher runs away, so that he can stare at the statue of Terry Wogan, that's in Limerick Docks. We've got this awful statue of Terry Wogan in Limerick, lads.

Really, really bad statue. He looks like a melted Easter egg and people keep putting lipstick on his mouth. His fingers are bronze sausages. He's holding a microphone that looks like a teenager's penis. So I had to draw attention to it by writing a film about it that will never be seen

yet the Terry Wogan statue in Limerick that's Limerick's folly it's a folly I've nothing against Terry Wogan Terry Wogan was born in Limerick he deserves a statue they built it in the middle of the recession no one asked for it

it doesn't respect his memory tourists stare at it in the middle of the recession. No one asked for it. It doesn't respect his memory. Tourists stare at it in confusion. And he has a look on his face like he just missed a bus. And then worst of all, right? You've got the Terry Wogan statue down by the river. But like 20 metres up the road in Terry Wogan's eyeline is this statue of the actor Richard Harris dressed as

the Burger King, holding a sword wrong on the sharp end which immediately ushers in the joke, I thought you knew how to handle knives correctly in Limerick, so you have Terry Wogan and Richard Harris 20 metres apart

forever locked in this metallic conversation, like this long-distance piece of performance art of a 20th century talk show, just far enough apart that they wouldn't be able to hear each other. And then what's in the middle? A bronze plaque of the African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Which is a plaque that I campaigned for, for years.

It was finally put there by a local historian by the name of Liam Hogan. Liam got the plaque put there by getting the people of Limerick to fund it, fair play to him. If you remember one of my first podcasts where I spoke with the director Spike Lee I spoke to him about Frederick Douglass visiting Limerick and how we wanted to have this plaque. I was going to ask Spike Lee to come to Limerick when it was going to be unveiled but it happened during the pandemic. So you've got this wonderful plaque of Frederick Douglass to honour the fact that he came to Limerick on a speaking tour in the 1840s with Daniel O'Connell. You have this wonderful plaque in the middle of Terry Wogan and Richard Harris.

So when you stare at all three of them together, you kind of start thinking, oh fuck. So Terry Wogan and Richard Harris are locked in eternity in this long distance bronze argument and then poor old Frederick Douglass is in the middle mediating the conversation. It's just all very limerick. It's a very limerick thing that happened.

But yeah, Dingle. Back to Dingle. Wonderful Dingle. But it was a great weekend it was wonderful to be back filming after two years but I was working on that all weekend and I was working with a comedian from near Dingle

from Port Magee a comedian called Bernard Casey who was a very lovely man and a funny chap but I basically I started to think in a West Kerry accent I was working with a man from Kerry

I was working with a man from Kerry all weekend working with a man from Kerry I am in Devalier I am in Devalier so that's been the inside of my head for the past two days and the only way to get it out of my head was to was to stare at the Dingle Peninsula on Google Maps and look at all the place names so this

this is going to be a podcast about Irish mythology I didn't intend to go on an an abrasive statue tangent right there actually that statue tangent was relevant. Because. What I did there is I created a mythology. Around three statues. Instead of them just being three. Objects in the landscape. I created a story around them. An interrelationship.

A conversation. Between these objects in the environment. It's an oral story. Which is a little bit like how Irish mythology works. So what the area I want to speak about specifically is the Slíomis mountain range in the Dingle Peninsula and not only the Slíomis mountain range but an area between them called Gleána Géilt, which means Valley of the Mad or Glen of the Mad. I went researching into this area and found some utterly fucking fascinating things. So this Glen of the Mad, that's between the Slaibh Mish mountain range in the Dingle Peninsula.

Historically, now I mean going back maybe 2,000 years and right up to today, people who suffer from mental illness have traditionally flocked to what's called the Glen of the Mad because it has been claimed that they've been cured of mental illness when they go there and that people with mental illness historically have been drawn to this area into the

Glen of the Mad. So that's very intriguing because a. I want to find out why is this area called the Glen of the Mad? Why does it appear continually in Irish mythology as being an area called Glen of the Mad or Glen of Madness? And why historically have people who've been suffering from mental illness found themselves going there? Not only finding themselves going there but drawn to this area because it provides them with solace. So we're going to begin with the Fenian cycle of Irish mythology. Now the Fenian cycle takes place from the first century BC so it's pre-Christian and that makes it more than 2,000 years old. The Fenian cycle, it generally revolves around the journey of Fionn MacCool, who was an epic hero of Irish mythology. A couple of podcasts back, I spoke about a book called Oisín's Ride, which was a bizarre piece of science fiction written in the 1950s by an English person which drew from the Fenian cycle of Irish mythology and Oisín or Oisín was the son of Fionn MacCool and Oisín's ride or

Oisín's journey where he visits the land of eternal youth Tir na nÓg that takes place around the Dingle Peninsula which is the area I'm speaking about. So these stories that are from the Fenian cycle they could well be 2,000 years old. Now I could be wrong with this but I think these stories were only really written down about a thousand years ago. If they were recorded earlier let me know but from what I can see these tales were first written down in like the book of Leinster from 1160 or the book of Duncow from about 1100 but before that time these were oral tales they weren't written down they'd spent the previous thousand years being passed on from word of mouth and storytelling so So let's look at the story of the

Shleave Mish mountains in Dingle and how the Shleave Mish mountains got their name. Well Shleave means mountain and Mish was the name of a woman who some think was a princess. So this princess called Mish, the mountains are named after her. So near this mountain range in Dingle, a battle took place called the Battle of Ventry, V-E-N-T-R-Y. And this battle took place between Fionn MacCool,

who the Fenian cycle was named after, this battle took place between Fionn MacCool and his army, and then an invading force from somewhere in the European continent and we don't know where. The leader of the invading force was called Dara Dunn which meant Dara, King of the

World. So because this was like 2000 fucking years ago, anyone invading from outside Ireland represented the rest of the world so Fionn MacCool went to battle with Dara Dunn on a beach in Dingle now while this battle was happening Dara Dunn's forces were fucking winning they were beating Fionn MacCool and everyone was like oh no fuck Dara Dunn the king of the world is going to take over Ireland and he's going to beat Fionn

MacCool and the armies of Ireland. But then the Tuatha Dé Danann showed up to fight for Fionn MacCool and the Tuatha Dé Danann were like supernatural gods and goddesses who fought and they beat Dara Dunn. So Fionn MacCool won and then to celebrate his victory he violently decapitated Dara Dunn. But Dara Dunn had a daughter, a princess called Mish and she witnessed Fionn MacCool decapitating her father and it traumatized her very deeply. she went to her decapitated father's body on the beach in ventry and didn't know what to do she didn't know how to grieve the grief overtook her so all that she could do in her grief was drink her decapitated father's blood so she did but when she did it completely transformed her she went utterly mad she went mentally ill from the trauma and she ran away deep into the mountains of Dingle she started

to grow claws on her hands and feathers on her back she was so tormented and traumatised from grief that while in the mountains, she became a horrific creature that would attack anyone, any animal that she encountered. She became what was called a gelt, which was the old Irish word for lunatic. But Mish was so crazed and so terrifying to anyone who dare go near the

mountains or the valley that they started to call these mountains in Dingle the Shleve Mish the mountains of Mish because of this terrifying crazed creature who lives there with a broken heart. Now the local kings in the area were just like, fuck this. Nobody's able to go into the Sleave Mish mountains. You can't go there, you can't go into the valleys. Anyone who approaches there gets immediately attacked and killed by this crazed, frantic monster. We gotta do something about this.

So many kings tried to have her captured tried to have her killed nothing worked her grief and trauma was too much she would just turn into a giant bird and just kill them immediately so finally the king of monster

Philem Mac Craven he decided fuck it we might have to take a different approach if we're to stop Mish. She's too powerful. She's too supernatural. She's too violent. We're going to have to think of a different approach. So instead of sending a soldier, Philem Macriavon went to his harper. So Philem Macriavon would have had a musician the king's musician who played the harp

and he said to this musician whose name was dove rush which means dark knowledge he said to this musician go to the valley right and i want you to capture mish and then Roach was like I'm not a fucking soldier I can't swing weapons how the fuck am I supposed to capture her I'm just a musician but it was an order so he had to do it so off he went deep into the mountains until he finally found a valley between the mountains and he notices when he's there, he's like, he knows that this is the area where Mish stalks. And this is the first time in Irish mythology

that we get mentioned, and this is important, about watercress. So the thing is with this area, this valley, Gleann na Gelt, which we now know as the Valley of the Mad. So the thing is with this valley is it's between the two Shleve Mish mountains and there's quite a lot of water there

there's a lot of natural springs and amongst these natural springs and natural wells there's lots and lots of watercress growing on the flat ground so it's like a marshy area so Doverish is terrified and he just goes fuck it look I'm here

I know that Mish is somewhere she's probably looking at me I'm probably gonna die so he sits down and he sets up camp and then he takes out his harp and he starts playing the sweetest song he can think of on his harp. And the music fills the entire valley. This beautiful harp music fills the entire valley until Dove Rish feels that he's being fucking watched. And he just goes, she's here. Mish is here. She's going to kill me. She's going to arrive with her feathers and her claws.

She's going to rip my head off. All I can do is I just have to keep playing. I have to keep playing this music. And then he sees in the corner of his eye. He sees Mish. And she's looking at him. And she looks angry. And she looks like she wants blood.

But as she hears the music. It starts to calm her. And she starts to walk. towards Duvrish so that she can hear the wonderful beautiful music that he's playing from his harp she gets right close to him his heart is beaten he's convinced that he's going to be killed in this moment and instead Mish starts to talk and she starts to ask him about the songs and the music that he's playing. And as Mish listens to this music, she starts to calm down a little bit.

And her huge claws retract a little bit. And the feathers on her back start to disappear into her skin. She sits down, listening to the music, and she slowly starts to become human again. Now, she's not fully human yet. She still has some of the appearance of a gelt, a lunatic, a demon-type figure. And Dovrish works up a bit of courage, and he says to her, Look, the sun is setting

and I'm getting hungry you're a big powerful gelt can you go out and kill a deer or something and bring us a bit of food so she says yeah okay so Mish flies off into the air and goes and kills a deer and brings it back

with her claws now she's been living wild in the mountains for the past while. Eating food raw, killing things, living like an animal. So what Dovrish does is he decides to cut up the deer. And he puts it over the fire and he cooks it. And he feeds Mish a piece of cooked meat, and as Mish begins to eat the cooked meat, it begins to heal her trauma,

it begins to heal her mental illness, her madness, and the taste of the cooked meat takes her back to her childhood as a princess, to the food halls, to the banquets, to the feasts that she partook in with her father the king who she saw decapitated. But the meat allowed her, almost like a therapy session, to go through her childhood and her trauma and her pain and to confront the grief and loss of her father so that she's not purely controlled by that grief and trauma her violence her anger disappears her claws disappear her feathers

disappear and now Mish is a human again she's a woman and Duvrish decides to make her a hot bath in a rock pool. He finds a little pond pool and puts bide and hot rocks inside there and heats up the water. And he bathes Mish. And he washes her limbs. And he combs her hair. And the tenderness and love and compassion and human connection brings Mish closer and closer to the person that she used to be and they stay together in the mountains for two months

and she heals and she processes and then they both return to the King of Munster and Mish is now the bride of Duvrish she's no longer a gelt she's a human being again. She's an entire person. Now that story is more than a thousand years old, possibly two thousand years old. It's why the mountains are called Shleave Mish in Dingle.

And it's why that valley, that glen, is called Gleona Gelt, the Valley of the Mad. And it's a beautiful story and I know as well like right it's 2000 years old even though to be perfectly honest that story is still around today that's a Zach Braff film it's the tired trope

of the damaged magic pixie dream girl healing herself by hooking up with a fuckboy who can play guitar but that's not the point that i'm making the point that i'm making is that this valley is now still known as glown the guilt the valley of the mad and throughout mythology and folklore you consistently like that's like i said it's more than a thousand years ago. Multiple times after that, up until today, there's a history of people with mental illnesses in Ireland flocking to this area.

In medieval times, people would, people with mental illnesses, with depression, with whatever, would go out there and live wild and drink the water and eat the watercress because they felt that it gave them solace and this is something that's consistently present throughout Irish history. Another great story within Irish mythology probably the most famous story within Irish mythology around mental illness is the story of King Sweeney. Now the story of King Sweeney is an early medieval story, so the King Sweeney story happens nearly a thousand years after the story of Mish.

The story of King Sweeney in mythology is known as Bwilas Swibhne, meaning the madness of Sweeney. King Sweeney was possibly a real king sometime from around the 6th century. king sometime from around the 6th century. A real king who probably had severe mental illness. So he is both a real person and also a mythological figure. My personal opinion with Sweeney, judging from the story, he sounds to me like someone who may have been neurodivergent because he had quite a lot of sensory sensitivities. So the story of King Sweeney goes is that there was a saint called Saint Ronan and this is like the 6th century so Saint Ronan wanted to build a church. So while Saint Ronan was building this church

he was practising to see what bell would be the best bell for this church. So as he starts ringing this bell the bell started driving King Sweeney insane. He couldn't deal with the pain that this bell was causing his ear and he went into a frenzy. Now to me that sounds a bit like neurodivergence. Someone who is hypersensitive to sounds or textures and then experiences a meltdown. So Sweeney hears the bell and he goes that fucking cunt Ronan fuck him I'm gonna go up and kick the shit out of him for banging this bell it's driving me mad so as Sweeney goes

up to try and stop Ronan from ringing his bell Sweeney's wife says Sweeney what the fuck are you doing man you can't go up attacking a saint these are holy people stay the fuck away from him so she tries to grab his cloak. And as she grabs his cloak. Sweeney runs off anyway. So now he's bollocks naked. King Sweeney running towards Saint Ronan. And he grabs Ronan's psalter.

Which is like Ronan's bible. And he goes you fucking cunt with your bell. He grabs the bible and he throws it into the river. Which is a mortal sin. And Sweeney now decides as well. He's to execute Ronan but as he does this a messenger comes up to Sweeney and says Sweeney there's a fucking battle going on and you are needed the king needs to be at this battle so Sweeney fucks off in the nip to go to battle the next day the salter that Sweeney threw into the river is returned to Ronan by an otter that

probably didn't happen so anyway the battle has started right and King Sweeney is there getting ready to lead his troops and Bishop Ronan turns up again and Ronan is like fuck it he threw it into the he threw my bible into the lake it's grand the otter brought it back I forgive him so as Ronan goes to bless all the troops and to bless Sweeney before they go into battle with Holy Water, Ronan, the big fucking eejit, has a bell on his cloak. And the bell starts ringing and this drives Sweeney insane again. So Sweeney says, fuck this.

And he throws a spear at Ronan. But the spear hits the bell and Ronan is saved. So Ronan says fuck this lad, fuck him I'm putting a curse on him. So Ronan puts a curse on King Sweeney that basically says King Sweeney has to wander the earth for the rest of his life living like a bird. Now this is a theme you see throughout Irish mythology

when it comes to mental illness. People who are mentally ill tend to grow feathers or become bird-like creatures. We saw this a thousand years earlier when Míche, she became, she grew feathers and grew claws. So anyway, a thousand years later, or fucking 1600 years later, King Sweeney now has to wander all of Ireland like a bird with feathers, jumping up and down. wander all of Ireland like a bird with feathers jumping up and down because mentally ill people in ancient Ireland were seen as they were seen as having the ability to teleport or the ability to fly like birds I don't know why so Sweeney then enters a life of utter torment he wanders Ireland naked, terrified of the sound of bells, climbing trees like a bird, knowing no peace whatsoever. A person with severe, severe mental illness.

Like I said, this is the 6th century, so this is both mythological and probably has some basis in a real king who, to me, sounded like possibly autistic. The bells ringing, the fact that bells and the sound of them made him go into what's described as a frenzy, to me, sounds like somebody who's living with autism, maybe. But anyway, Sweeney spends years and years and years wandering Ireland in torment until he finally finds something close to peace down in Dingle,

whereabouts in Glaun na Gaelte. 1600 years later, Sweeney finds himself in Míche's Valley. And if you read the translation of, because Flann O'Brienrien translated and shami shamus heaney also translated the medieval texts of the story of king sweeney if you read these translations it mentions that king sweeney is in dingle eating the watercress and drinking from the wells and what this does is it allows king sweeney to achieve peace from his madness.

So King Sweeney stays in the Valley of the Mad in Kerry for the rest of his life experiencing something close to comfort. So there genuinely does appear to be something quite special in this valley, the Valley of the mad in Kerry. Where throughout mythology. Over 2000 years. People go there. When the story gets. Far more fucking interesting. It gets very interesting indeed.

And I'm going to take a little ocarina pause. Before I get into this. Because. It's a fascinating piece of research I came across. So it's night time now and I'm in my office and I'd like to do the ocarina pause. I don't have my ocarina but this week I have a very interesting musical instrument

to play during the ocarina pause. Recently at a podcast there was a listener in the audience from America and they gave me a gift. They handed me a strange little instrument with a note and the note said that this is a genuine Puerto Rican guiro from the Bronx so what I have here is a guiro which is a it's an instrument I have a I think what it was was some type of like a squash or a gourd which is like a long pumpkin

and it's dried out and varnished with designs on it and it's handmade and it has little serrations on the side and then I was also given a little wooden instrument with metal tongs on it to play this guiro but this is a genuine Puerto Rican guairo from the Bronx, handmade, and it sounds incredible. So let's have the Puerto Rican guairo from the Bronx pause. Will you rise with the sun to help change mental health care forever? Join the Sunrise Challenge to raise funds for CAMH, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to support life-saving progress in mental health care.

From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca. That's sunrisechallenge.ca. 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 of what is the most terrifying six six six it's the mark of the devil hey movie of the year it's not real it's not real it's not real who said that the first omen only theaters april 5th Beautiful percussion instrument. Handmade.

Wonderful. What I love about Aguero in particular is that this instrument used to be a fruit and it was dried out. And these are the earliest instruments that humans ever used. Like the first instruments alongside the human voice that humans would have used in Africa years and years and years ago. The first instruments were like pumpkins that had dried out and you shake them and the seeds make noise. So that's why I adore this instrument, it's primordial almost,

so that was the Puerto Rican, from Guayra Pras, from the Bronx, sounds like a fucking, Jennifer Lopez song, so you would have heard an advert there, for some bullshit, I don't know,

alright, 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 I adore making this podcast this podcast is a lot of work

as you can tell a huge amount of research goes into this podcast I make monologue essays that i adore making with all of my heart but the only the only way i'm able to make them is if this is my fucking full-time job so if you enjoy the work that i'm doing if this is bringing you any entertainment solace whatever the fuck just 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 patreon.com forward slash the blind boy podcast if you can't afford that don't worry about it but if you can't afford

it you're paying for the person who can't afford it to listen. Everybody gets a podcast. I earn a living. It's a beautiful model based on soundness and kindness. And it also keeps this podcast independent. I'm not beholden to advertisers. I can tell advertisers to go fuck themselves. Advertisers can't tell me what to talk about, what to say. They can't alter my content in any way. If they want to advertise on this podcast, they do it on my terms. This is what allows me to put out a piece of work each week that I'm genuinely passionate about, that I genuinely love, that I adore making.

It allows me to go on statue tangents. What if I was sponsored by a guitar company? They probably wouldn't let me play my Puerto Rican Guero from the Bronx. So support independent podcasters, whatever independent podcast you enjoy. Give it support. Either monetarily.

Or just by speaking about it or sharing it. Because the podcast space is changing. It's full of corporate cunts. Um. Gigs. Oh I'm not on Twitch this Thursday. Because. I'm gigging in Spain.

I'm doing my first ever live podcast in Spain. I'm going to be in. I'm doing my first ever live podcast in Spain. I'm going to be in Barcelona and Madrid. I'm going to plug my gigs as your drunk limerick aunt. We haven't heard the drunk limerick aunt in a long time. Not since Donald Trump stopped being president. I'm gigging in Barcelona at the weekend. I've got a gig in Barcelona. It's sold out.

All the tickets are gone. Every one of them, I swear to God, they're all gone. But there's tickets left for Madrid. I can't wait to go to Madrid. It's going to be so hot. Be boiling. It's going to be roasting in Madrid. I'm going to get sunburnt on the back of my legs.

I'm going to go down to La Rambla. Over in Barcelona. Down to La Rambla. Dr in Barcelona. Down La Rambla. Drinking pineapple daiquiris in San Miguel. And I'm gigging over in England, Scotland and Wales as well. It's less glamorous. I'm in Cardiff. I can't remember

my fucking tour. London. Glasgow. Cardiff. Manchester. So there's tickets left for those gigs. And I'm over in Brussels. London, Glasgow Cardiff, Manchester so there's tickets left for those gigs and I'm over to Brussels I'm going to go to Brussels and go onto a beach

pretend I'm stranded like Tom Hanks and fuck a basketball I don't think Brussels has any beaches fuck it I'll pretend I'm Tom Hanks anyway and fuck a basketball get kicked out of Brussels he definitely fucked that basketball in Castaway I've no doubt they just edited it out right that was the ocarina pause anyway and fuck a basketball get kicked out of brussels he definitely fucked that basketball in uh castaway i've no doubt they just edited it out right that was the ocarina pause or not

the ocarina pause the homemade puerto rican guayra from the bronx pause so back to the irish mythology we spoke about the area in dingle known as glownéalt the Valley of the Mad between the Slíomis mountains we spoke about the story of Mish who was traumatised and who found herself healed from her pain

in the valley in the Valley of the Mad and that was 2000 years ago and then we've got King Sweeney who also found solace in the Valley of the Mad. And that was 2,000 years ago. And then we've got King Sweeney, who also found solace in the Valley of the Mad by eating watercress and drinking the water. And what you see throughout Irish history, throughout Irish mythology,

consistently are stories of people being healed from their mental illness when they visit this valley in Kerry. We have the story of a medieval king from France called King Balkan, healed from their mental illness when they visit this valley in Kerry. We have the story of a medieval king from France called King Balkan who was suffering from mental illness and he found himself going to Glyon-Nagelt in Kerry and drinking the water and eating the watercress and being cured of his madness. The people who live in this area of Dingle grew up with stories about people with mental illness, mental health issues, coming to this valley, drinking the water and finding themselves cured. Even if you go there today, there's a stone there that's known as the Mad Stone. You can see it there now. It's beautiful.

It's this old stone in the ground that has a deep depression in the middle and ancient folklore from the area says that there was a woman there who used to milk her cow on this stone and she milked her cow on the stone so much that the milk ate into the stone and caused a little depression where the milk would stay and people with mental illnesses would come to this valley and drink the milk from the depression in the madstone and be cured of their mental illness. Quite close to this stone there's a little stream and over the stream is a small little bridge and this bridge is known as Athna Gauton which means the fool's crossing. Also what you get in local folklore around that area are stories of the

fairies because there's also quite a lot of fairy forts around the area. Now within Irish folklore, more folklore than mythology, you find fairies being quite present when it comes to stories around mental illness. This is why we say away with the fairies so Irish folklore would say that when a person experiences mental illness now some of this was quite harmful when a person experiences mental illness something quite severe such as schizophrenia traditionally Irish folklore as a way to rationalize this. Let's just say your brother or sister in 1740 or 1860 was to develop what we'd call schizophrenia. Irish folklore would say that that's not actually your brother or sister. What's happened is that the fairies came at the night time and they took your brother and sister away into the woods.

And what they did is they left a changeling in the person's place. Now that's quite dehumanising. But this is what Irish folklore would say traditionally. It was a way for people to cope with having a family member who was mentally ill, who wasn't fully present, who might have been behaving violently, who might experience dementia. Folklore said that's not your brother, that's not your father, that's not your mother. This is a changeling, a kind of false human that the fairies leave behind and your real sibling is away with the fairies in the woods and you can never get them back. Unfortunately this led to some stories of human sacrifice. Where if a person was to experience severe mental illness in the 1700s or 1800s.

This even happened with a woman called Bridget Cleary I believe in the late 19th century but sometimes people would be killed people would believe that if your relative is experiencing severe mental illness that that's not your relative that's a changeling and you must kill it with a crucifix or with some holy instrument so some murders occurred because of a belief that the mentally ill were actually fairy changelings but there is a folklore story from the area of glion na gelt which tells the tale of a young man from caer saibhín which is in Kerry that area of Kerry and this young man walked home one night and found himself drawn into a football match with the fairies

because this is again a story you see throughout Irish folklore I had the Shanachí Eddie Lenehan on this podcast speaking about this type of tale that you would walk home at night you'd lose your way and suddenly you might hear a football match that's been played by the fairies and if you were to go towards the sound of this football match or go near a fairy fort you'd be dragged in by the fairies and you'd be away with the fairies so there's a story around Glownagelt that this man found himself drawn into a football match with the fairies and there's a story around glown the guilt that this man found himself drawn into a football match with the fairies and he went mad he went insane but then he went to glown the guilt and he drank the water and he ate the watercress and he was cured of his madness so there is clear

demonstrable evidence which you can trace back 2,000 years into our mythology, all the way through the medieval period, right up to recent history. Clear evidence that people experiencing mental illness would find themselves drawn to this area and they would report that they have found themselves to be cured when they ate watercress or when they drank from certain holy wells in Glownagilt so what the fuck is going on here? What's going on? What's that

about? What's so special about this area? Why does this story pervade through millennia? Like even to this day I know people who live near that area and when I was doing a bit of research

for this podcast I spoke to somebody who lives around there and he told me straight up he knows a person who suffers from pretty bad mental illness and they drink water from the well there, and they feel that it helps them, and they do this, to this day.

What's going on? Well, in 2012, a team of scientists, I think from the University of Trilly, I think, in 2012, a team of scientists were curious about this. So they went to some of the wells in Gionna Gelt and they tested the water and what they found was very very high concentrations of lithium. Lithium is a psychiatric medication. Lithium is used today. Lithium is used for treatment with bipolar disorder. Lithium is used to treat schizophrenia.

Lithium is used today all the world over as a medication to help people with mental illness. And there's large concentrations of it in the water of Gleón na Gélt. So for 2000 fucking years

people who were suffering from depression, schizophrenia, whatever were finding themselves drawn to this area yes they were drinking the water yes they were eating the water Chris and yes it was actually helping them it was medication from the land how incredible is that

how beautiful is that and what you have there that's the power of fucking Irish mythology I started off this podcast speaking about how in an oral culture you have to have stories about the land you have to have stories about the land. You have to have mythology and engaging stories about the land, about mountains, about valleys. So that these stories are so fucking interesting and so engaging that the stories never get lost. Because what they do is they serve a very important purpose for society. a very important purpose for society and the purpose that the consistent mythology

and stories of Glown to Get Serve is that it allowed the people across fucking generations of millennia to know there is something in this valley there is something in the water there is something in the water Cress

that if your relative is mentally ill if they go here they may experience some of their symptoms being alleviated I just think that that is absolutely fucking magnificent that is the beautiful power of mythology there

like this is present in the Fenian cycle stories that are nearly 2000 years old. Before the time of Christ. They're speaking about Mish. And Mish Mish was someone who was traumatised.

Whether Mish was real whether she wasn't, it doesn't matter. But there probably was a woman who grew up in a deeply violent time and witnessed her da getting decapitated. And the pain and trauma of this was too much. And they didn't understand it. And their way of rationalizing was by saying that, you know,

her grief and her pain and the anger and the sadness caused her to become an animal, to become a bird someone who couldn't socialise but that the cure was in the water in the fucking lithium, in the water of Gleownigelt the valley of the mad

same with King Sweeney 1600 years later maybe there was a king who had bipolar or schizophrenia or some type of mental illness that was torturing him and maybe this king did find his way through stories and mythology down to the Dingle Peninsula to find medication in the water and in the watercress. And same with the people who were labeled as changelings

as being away with the fairies as being not human that to go to these holy wells these holy places between mish's mountains that right there is where you find your solution here's the lithium we don't know what it is we can't describe it we don't understand chemistry but what we do have is mythology and stories that consistently speak about people suffering from mental illness and they find the cure in these mountains in Kerry in this valley so I adore that I haven't visited that area of Kerry I've been to the Dingle Peninsula I've been to Valencia I haven't spent enough time down there I am definitely going to make my way

down to Gleownagelt to Sleev Mish without question I need to go there just to fucking touch all that history I also know a person who makes

puccín from that water. Puccín is a... Puccín is an Irish spirit. It's moonshine, but it's Irish. And the interesting thing with making puccín from the water of this well in Glownigelt is historically in Ireland

like Pucine has been made in Ireland again for fucking 1500 years Pucine is a distilled drink a very powerful spirit but Pucine makers in Ireland historically they were distilling and they were making this drink but they didn't understand chemistry so they would have lots of folklore and mythology around how to make poutine and where to

get the water and all of this and the thing is with poutine makers poutine makers genuinely believed that when they made this spirit it was so strong and it was so unlike anything else that they were stealing it from the other world that they were stealing it from the fairies that's why it's called spirits traditionally when someone makes poutine the first drop that comes out of the still they pour it out for the fairies because they genuinely believed what I'm doing here is magical this powerful drink that can knock me on my back there's no way this is natural I'm stealing this somehow from the fairy world and they're gonna come and get me so people who made Poochene were excessively terrified excessively terrified that they would be targeted by the fairies and that either their children or their

siblings would be taken away by the fairies and turned into changelings to the point that in rural Ireland people who made poaching they would dress their children up in the opposite gender so if they had a boy they'd dress the boy as a girl, if they had a girl they'd dress the girl as a boy to confuse the fairies so they wouldn't turn them into changelings. But of course what this was is that that was a rationality for very high infant mortality rates. When infants would die in rural Ireland the grieving parents would rationalise this by saying my infant didn't die what happened was the fairies came and took him and they're away with the fairies but what they left was a changeling and poutine makers were very very much afraid of this happening because they thought that they were fucking with the fairy world by making these spirits this drink so I know a person who makes poutine

from the holy wells of Glearnagelt poutine that has lithium in it so I'm gonna go down there I'm definitely gonna go down there and try and spend time there and just fucking touch the land just touch the land what's more fucking beautiful

than walking around an area that has 2000 years Just touch the land. The walk's more fucking beautiful. Than walking around an area that has 2,000 years of wonderful rich stories there. Why would I be arsing around Limerick staring at fucking Terry Wogan's bronze mouth. When I could be down in Dingle. Sipping lithium poutine from a holly well. Alright that was this week's podcast. I really really enjoyed making this week's podcast I really enjoyed the research

that I did for this podcast and I it was so fascinating to find that out to find that out about the lithium was so fucking fascinating I adored making this and thank you for listening I'll be back next week and I won't be doing Twitch this

weekend because I'm over in Barcelona alright dog bless go fuck yourself I love you. Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Herway and Toronto Symphony Orchestra music director Gustavo Gimeno in conversation. Together, they dissect the mesmerizing layers of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, followed by a complete soul-stirring rendition of the famously unnerving piece, Symphony Exploder, April 5th at Roy Thompson Hall. For tickets, visit tso.ca.