The Blindboy Podcast - What pulling our pants around our ankles can tell us about structuralist theory and oral storytelling

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

A chance encounter with a childhood friend and his nickname leads me to ponder the nature of oral storyteling and Irish mythology Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Did you know that socks are one of the most requested clothing items by organizations addressing homelessness? It's true. And it's also why we start at Bombas. Every time you buy, well, anything from Bombas, an essential item is donated to someone facing homelessness. That's Bombas is one purchased, one donated promise. Bombas makes socks, underwear, slippers, slides, and t-shirts, all designed to feel good and do good. Since we're new in Canada, all new customers enjoy 20% off your first purchase. Just visit Bombas.ca.

That's BOMBAS.ca. And use code music to start doing good and feeling even better. Cry with Nile of the Nine Hostages, you sausage-less Costigans. Welcome to the Blind Buy podcast. If this is your first episode, consider going back to an earlier episode of this podcast to familiarise yourself with the lore of this podcast. We're nestled in the comforting breast of autumn here in Limerick City. The leaves are going all rusty.

There's a healthy wind and a freshness. of the air. I would thirst for layers underneath my jacket and I was walking up up Henry Street Henry Street the other day. Lovely powerful breeze coming up Henry Street up from the river and I bumped into someone I hadn't seen in in fucking 15, 16 years maybe longer. Fad I went to school with who would have been in my class his name is Jerry Soft and it was lovely to see Jerry Soft I hadn't seen him in fucking years

and turns out Jerry listens to my podcast and he said to me I was listening to your podcast a couple of weeks ago when you were talking about your time back in school not last week's podcast but the week, two weeks ago I think I spoke about

being in secondary school and the class that I was in and Jerry Soft he was just like fuck it you had forgotten about all of that I'd forgotten about

the different characters in school and all of that stuff and it really brought me back and then he said to me because like when I fucking seen him and we're middle age men now

when I seen him and I hadn't seen him in 16, 17 years I went oh my God Jerry Soft Jerry Soft so he said to me I don't know

why I'm called Jerry Soft. Do you remember from back in school? Why the fuck I was called Jerry Soft? Because I got the impression that he didn't like it. That at the time in school, he didn't like the nickname Jerry Soft. That this was embarrassing and even now as middle-aged men that I'm still calling him fucking Jerry Soft.

So he wanted to know he was asking me, why? Why did you all call me Jerry Soft? Why was that my name? and he also said he said the one person who's going to fucking know is me because of my mad memory and I loved being asked that question A because when I saw Jerry Soft I'll be honest I'm like oh fuck is this going to be small talk

is this going to be small talk or is the conversation going to be something of substance that I can enjoy and it wasn't small talk it's like why am I called Jerry Soft and I relax in those situations because now I have something to speak about. And I was thinking, yeah, why the fuck are you called Jerry Soft? Why did we call you that

back in school? Jerry Soft. And I felt that wonderful feeling of flow come over me. It felt like cleaning out the attic and finding a beautiful toy from childhood that you'd forgotten about. And all the little moments of memories that you had with that toy come back. And I said to him, Jerry. Well, I had to start by talking about Claude Levi Strauss. So Claude Levi Strauss was this, he was a structuralist. He was an anthropologist, right? But his thing was structuralism, structuralism. Strauss's big idea when he was looking at like human societies or human folklore was that humans derive structural meaning through oppositions, binary oppositions. raw versus cooked

life versus death knife versus day that under the structural sense humans derive meaning nothing a thing a thing's meaning

doesn't come from itself but it comes from what it isn't the first thing I said to him I said Jerry as far as I can remember we didn't call you Jerry you aren't called Jerry soft because you were soft because you see to be called soft

meant that you were weak meant that you were a coward. I said no one ever called you Jerry Soft as an insult. You were just Jerry Soft. But I said, here's the thing. Remember Jerry hard and his nostrils flared like he was smelling a silent fart. There were two jerrys. We had two jerrys in the fucking classroom.

And for second year and third year, we started to call him Jerry Soft in 50th year. In fucking, there was a fucking, there was. There was no fourth year, by the way. Well, fourth year was transition year, which I wasn't allowed to do, because I was too bold. So you went from third year straight to fifth year. But anyway, we two jerrys in the fucking classroom. And there weren't that many people in the classroom. There was maybe 15, 16. So it was actually really annoying that there were two jerrys. It was, you'd end up calling them by their full names, or you'd chance jerry, or you chanced jerry. It was a difficult thing. But I said to him, what about jerry? you remember Jerry Hard? He's like, yeah, I do remember Jerry Hard. I said, that's why you're Jerry Soft. It's not that you were soft. It's we had Jerry Hard. So because he became Jerry Hard, you then had to become Jerry Soft. Not that you were soft, it's that he was Jerry Hard. Because we had Jerry Hard and Jerry Soft back in school. And I said to him, do you remember

why Jerry Hard became Jerry Hard? And just taking it back to the Claude Levi-Strauss, that there is pure fucking structuralism. Right there. Jerry Soft did nothing other than exist. All right, he was easy going, he was sound, but he had respect, he was nice. But because Jerry Hart, there was two Jerry's, that was the issue. Jerry Hard did some shit that made him be called Jerry Hard. So then Jerry's other Jerry had to become Jerry Soft, binary opposition. His nickname is purely structural, right?

He didn't earn it. It doesn't describe him as being soft. No meaning is derived from Jerry Soft's behaviour. It's oppositional. It's in binary opposition to Jerry Hard. Jerry Hard was Jerry Hard because he did some hard shit. But then I had to explain why Jerry Hard was called Jerry Hard. Now I'd forgotten about all this stuff, but it was flowing back to me quite wonderful.

And so Jerry Hard was called Jerry Hard. Because in fifth year, he got into a feud with a fella called Polly Pants Now I can't I couldn't explain Jerry Hard without explaining Pully Pants or why Polly Pants was called Polly Pants

So we're in 50th year So we're like 1516 But Polly Pants Who was a lunatic Got his name when we were Like 10 10 years of age At the

age where you start talking to girls and it's a little bit nervous, the little blossominges of, of, I won't even say being interested in girls, but when girls become something that you're nervous around, when, when lads that weren't jelling their hair, 10 years of age, there was one summer, this had been the 90s, there was one summer, it was very fucking hot, man united, I know nothing about soccer, but I do know that. this year, Man United were very popular and Limerick had a Man United shop. So anyway

this one summer when it was very hot, or ten years of age were kids, lots of people were wearing full kits. Man United fucking top jersey, man United shorts, okay? Pulley pants who was a lunatic of a youngfala

created an endemic of pulling people's pants down. And because people were wearing Like young fellas were wearing full kits, they wouldn't be wearing underpants. So when pulley pants pulled your fucking shorts down, your dick was out.

Now, when you're nine or ten and you start putting gel in your hair, that's when you get integration. Integration between the fucking sexes, right? Up to that point when you're a child, your friends are only little lads. And then the girls are separate groups. But at nine or ten, in the summer,

that's when there was a small bit of integration when the lads would you'd be in a field you'd be in a fucking field the lads are over at this site and the girls are over at that site and you're still kind of scared to get together and there's always one brave lad

who kind of walks into the middle or walks over to the girls to speak to the girls and Polly Pants used to target him and he did it about five times over the summer that when a poor fucking young fella would go over and talk to the girls

Pulleypants would run up behind him and rip his shorts down and then there's his willie Everyone is confronted with his willie I saw so many It was a summer of children's Mickey's There's no other way to say it It was

A pandemic It was awful It was fucking awful Poor young fella's going up Talking to the girls for the first time And Polly Pants runs up from behind Rips his fucking shorts down And it's over

That's it, it's over now There's no comeback And I'm so sorry for laughing But it was incredibly funny That just the visual comedy of us You see if Nudity isn't funny But when

What? There's no way to be dignified when you're, when you're wearing a t-shirt, when you're wearing a t-shirt, and then it's just your dick and arse out. You look like Donald Duck. You can't. There is no way for a man or a boy. If you're wearing a t-shirt, right, and you're nude from the waist down, it's instant. Instantly foolish. It's instantly foolish. Nude, not naked body, who cares? Naked from the waist down with a T-shirt. It's either Donald Duck or toddler who won't go to bed.

Instant hilarity. Even when you feel sorry for the person. That was the thing. You'd feel mortified for the unfla who was having it done to him. You couldn't stop laughing. It was too funny. Polly Pants was an expert. He was like a ninja. He'd just appear from nowhere and just pants down. Nothing, and he's gone. Really good at it. And it was fucking awful. It was, look, like, Jesus Christ, I never got done. I didn't get caught with it. But he did it to about six fellas, and he was hard as well.

He would fight, so nobody would stop him. People protested, but no one really, like, gave him a beating to go stop pulling people's pants down. So that summer you lived with the threat, the threat of, if pulley pants is around and he sees, just fucking watch it, because he's going to pull your fucking pants down and your dick is out in front of the girls. And that's just how it's going to be. So everyone, people have to stop wearing shorts that summer. Straight, that was the thing. And because I remember it being really hot and then having to wear jeans with a belt and being really fucking pissed off because I wanted to wear my shorts, but it's like no fucking way. So I put an extra hole in my belt to make it real tight so that if Polly Pants tried it, it just wasn't happening. So he got the name Polly Pants when we were fucking 10 from doing that one summer.

And pulling pants down was a thing. That's what young lads do. Like that was a thing. Pulling pants down. I'm sorry, I just can't. I'm thinking back to every time it. It was really funny. Whenever would happen, it was fucking genuinely funny.

But like, he'd do it to people a... Boss stops in the shop speaking to people's mass but usually when kids would pull another lad's pants down they wouldn't go to full shabang but this fellow, he was operating under his own rules

and it was terrifying so he got caught pulley pants for that and I was saying all this to Jerry Soft on the fucking street in Henry Street but it also, I couldn't tell him about pulley pants without talking about a fella called

Granny, I couldn't fully contextualise pulley pants. There was layers to us. That was the first summer that I put my tongue

into a girl's mouth was the summer of pulley pants and I must have been 10 maybe. It was this memory that reminded

me actually of pulley pants. So I was 10 and like I said it's the first time that the group of boys are talking to the group of girls and all this shit and then dares start to happen. And then, like your children like so, I didn't know what shifting was.

Shifting is when you kiss a girl with tongues. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know it was something I wanted to do. It wasn't something I thought about. It didn't make sense to me. But usually, there was always some girl or some boy who had older siblings and they were the ones who said, ye have to shift, to ye have to shift. No, it would catch a boy, kiss a boy.

That was it. So we'd managed to ingratiate ourselves with the group of girls. And there was interaction, mutual interaction between both gangs in a field, really, really sunny. And one of the, they said the lads had to run away, and then one of the girls had to chase you. And she would catch you, and then you had to kiss with tongues. and that happened to me a girl caught me and then it was like

you have to go and fucking kiss with tongues now I was a bit young to be honest because I don't think I wanted to do it I didn't understand the point of it I didn't understand the and literally when it was said to me you've to shift

what does that mean you put your tongues into each other's mouths and move them around I learned about it there and then but I wasn't going to say no because you'd say no you were going to get called to frigate so I had to do it anyway

and then usually you see the girl and the boy have to go somewhere into a bush behind a wall and then shift but my memory was we couldn't do that because of fucking pulley pants, pulley pants was there so

none of the girls were picking pulley pants like you have to make a choice you can either be the fella who's excellent at pulling other boys pants down or you can kiss a girl you can't have both and I think he was a bit jealous of that.

So if two, if two people were shifting, Polly Pants is running straight up and pulling down the boy's pants to see if he was getting a sponte or not. So I remember my memory was having to go off with this girl to put my tongue into her mouth somewhere. We couldn't do it behind a wall,

we couldn't do it into a bush. We'd go into these public toilets that had a door that you could lock and I remember I remember it being mad the fuck am I doing with my tongue in someone's mouth but then I also remember

being distracted by how tight my trousers were and my trousers were tight because fucking pulley pants I had to tighten the trousers extra tight because of the pulley pants threat now I was saying all this to Jerry soft

but the thing is the girl whose mouth my tongue was in she had an older brother and his nickname was Granny. Now, this was actually highly relevant to the Jerry Hard, Jerry Soft thing and I tell you why. So her older brother was Granny.

I didn't know Granny. He was significantly older, like maybe 15 years older. My brothers knew Granny. And my brothers used to talk about. So this, her brother, was so... He used to love...

giving people headbutts. Now this is probably going back to the late 1970s. Because this, this, this granny's story is from my brothers. Her brother used to headbutt people so much and was so, was so hungry for headbutt. He was like the pulley pants of headbutts back in the 70s. So this fella, granny, if he was around, he might just head butt you because he was so curious about headbutting. He was so prolific a headbutter. that in the area of Limerick in the late 70s headbutting someone became known as a granny and I knew this because my older brothers would talk about it,

they'd say, oh, that fella got grannyed or he threw a granny at him. Imagine headbutting people so much that the name of a headbutt changes to become your nickname. Now I don't know why he was called granny, that's the thing. But a headbutt for a while was called a granny because this young fellow was headbutting so many people. And what I loved about that was That's almost not structuralism

That's called an eponym An eponym Where a personal name becomes The label for the thing Like Like a sandwich Sandwich The fuck is a sandwich

Well it's a piece of bread With shit in the middle That's named after the Earl of Sandwich Or To boycott To boycott So up in mayo in the 1880s

there was an English landlord called Charles Bycott an absolute fucking prick a coloniser and exploiter would exploit people through rent and then the Irish got together up in Mayo

like the Land League and said everyone ignored this man this landlord that's making everyone's lives miserable refused to work for him refused to serve him in shops ostracise him completely a collective effort to

ostracized this person and get him where it hurts in the pocket. It's non-violent. They can't arrest you for it. Let's all do that. And that became known as a boycott. A boycott. Because what the fuck does boycott mean? It's named after Charles boycott. So in the late 70s, in Limerick amongst my brothers and their friends, a headbutt was a granny, because this young fella granny was so prolific a headbutter. But anyway, fast forward to the 90s. And now my tongue is in his sister's mouth. and my pants are up really fucking tight with a belt on because of pulley pants, who might jump in at any moment, pull my pants down and then my dick is out.

Now I was delivering all of this at Jerry Soft in the street. And then I went, Jerry, what does this have to do with Jerry Hard? So now we're back in fifth year in school, in my class. And there's two jerrys in the class. We're all 15, 16. And like I said, there's Jerry Soft and Jerry Hard. Harry Hard. Jerry Hard got the name Jerry Hard because by the time we were teenagers, Polly Pants was a fucking lunatic. He wasn't a bad person, but he was hard as nails. Really,

really hard. And he'd had this feud with Jerry Hard, who wasn't Jerry Hard yet, he was just Jerry. And Polly Pants, his dad, was a plumber. So one day when we were about 15 or 16, Puddy plants started bringing a spanner into school. Like this long, 10-inch metal fucking spanner. And it was so, it was so strange that it was, it was intimidating. It wasn't a knife. It wasn't a weapon. It's a fucking spanner.

And that made it way more. That was the thing with Limerick. When people were saying, Stab City. Stab City, they saw Limerick was full of knives. The person who had a knife was not a threat whatsoever. The person who would carry a knife with them was never ever going to use it.

They were showing off. Because you see, the person who has a knife is aware that they could get caught with that and if you get caught with a knife, it's a definite weapon and you get in trouble. So the type of people who were actually capable of using a weapon would never have a knife with them.

Like I used to have a knife. a knife when I was a teenager. Like your friend would, your friend might go off to Spain and if a friend came back from Spain, they could get like butterfly knives and flick knives. And I had, I had a butterfly knife that I used to carry around with me. And I wouldn't show it off. I wouldn't use it as a, as a weapon. I wouldn't try and intimidate anyone with it. It was, I've a fucking cool knife. Do you want to see it? Do you want to see this cool butterfly? It was a tie. It was a tie. I'm not advocating the carrying of knives here, but I'm trying to to illustrate, I was the type of utterly harmless young fella that happened to have a butterfly

knife for crack, even though that was illegal, and that was probably part of it. The scarcity of a butterfly knife. And that was a prized possession. That butterfly knife, actually, how did I get? I got that off a fella whose father used to repair house alarms. And his dad opened up a house alarm box once and that butterfly knife was in there so he gave it to his son and then I bought that off his son and his son didn't have a nickname but his son

his son spent two years in school lying about having a girlfriend who was a hair model which was a brilliant lie because he was thinking if I if I say that my girlfriend is a model model no one's going to believe that but if I say she's a hair model then people might believe it

and there was no phones there was no pictures there was nothing so if someone said they had a girlfriend that you haven't met in a different part of the city, you just had to go along with it. And he bizarrely didn't get a nickname for that behaviour. But anyway, the people who might actually use a weapon would have a tool with them because they're thinking, if I get caught with a spanner, then I just tell the fucking policeman when he searches me, oh yeah, my dad's a plumber. Of course I have a spanner, my dad is a plumber. And that's what made the choice, Polly Pants's choice, to start coming into school with a fucking spanner

because he was going to hit Jerry with it because of their feud. They were fighting frequently and when he started bringing the spanner we all were like, oh fuck, he's actually going to do something with this but he wasn't. It was just a very clever move out of pulley pants

where the psychological impact of the spanner was like, any cunt with a spanner is a lunatic he's actually going to use it. But then, Jerry his dad was a I think he was a carpenter or a joiner

or something Jerry's then started bringing a chisel a big long chisel a sharp chisel into school now nothing was happening do you know what it was a bit like they didn't

yeah it was a bit like mutually assured destruction so during the Cold War You had the arms race So you had the Soviet Union was getting all of these nuclear weapons And the United States was getting all these nuclear weapons

And it was this arms race of nuclear dominance Until eventually they had so many nuclear weapons On both sides That it made nuclear conflict almost impossible Mutually assured destruction If you fire your nuclear bombs at us We'll fire all of ours And then everything's gone

So there's no point And when Jerry Hard brought in that fucking chisel And Polly Pants had the Spanner There was no fight They couldn't fight because if they did fight It meant a chisel and a fucking spanner in the school yard And with all due respect That wasn't going to happen

It was a show And that's how Jerry Hard got the name Jerry Hard And we weren't even thinking about the other Jerry Weren't even thinking about it but it would just naturally happen. The months pass and you walk into the class and you go, Jerry around, do you see Jerry anywhere? And then someone goes, Jerry hard.

No, no, Jerry's soft. And what I love is it perfectly illustrates Claude Levi-Strauss' structuralist theory that we need these binary oppositions to form meaning. Like an analog watch. A watch that, a watch with a hand, right, that moves. We call that now an analogue watch But we only call it an analogue watch

Because digital watches Became a thing, digital watches So therefore the watches that aren't digital Become analog watches But do you think people were calling Analog watches Analog watches Before digital watches

No, there was just watches There was just jerrys A landline What the fuck is a landline Well mobile phones became a thing A phone that was mobile So now all of a sudden You have to call the phone

that's at home, a landline. Before mobile phones, it was just phones. Smartphones. You know, we all use smart phones now. Like your fucking iPhone, whatever has apps on it is a smartphone. Before the iPhone, it was then, it was just fucking phones.

And now if someone has a phone that is not a smartphone, you call it a brick phone, a brick phone or even a burner phone. So I said, don't be worrying. Like, we weren't, no one was taking the piss out of you. you were just called Jerry Soft

because he became Jerry Hard and there was two Jerry's and that's just what happens no one actually thought you were soft you just weren't coming into school with a chisel and then Jerry Soft laughed his middle-aged man laugh and then he said well what if I'd have come into school with a chainsaw what would I have been then

and then I said I thought about it you know he'd have been Jerry hard hard that's what would that would have been the rules if he'd have out-hearted Jerry Hard he'd have become Jerry Hard-Hard so there would have been Jerry Hard and Jerry Hard-hard-Hard but what I really enjoyed about the chat was

it was an example of pure oral culture oral storytelling Jerry can't go to the library or go on to Google and ask why was I called Jerry Soft and no one ever wrote it down he had to find a person who would remember

me, Mr. Autism and would recount it to him but when I'm recounting it to him I can't consult any text nothing's written down so I have to recall from memory and explain it orally but I can't just explain

I can't just explain Jerry Soft without explaining Jerry hard and then I'm talking about pulley pants and now I'm back in the 1970s talking about fucking granny before I was born and even the little detour about my butterfly knife where I couldn't speak about the context of this this weapon without almost given it a legendary status and a story behind it

this legendary weapon was found inside a house alarm and was given to me by a boy who lied about having a hair model for a girlfriend and it reminded me of Irish mythology Irish pre-writing oral Irish mythology I want to mean by that is It's a former story telling called the genealogy of names. In fact, there's a 14th century, a tract manuscript called the Fitness of Names, which is 300 Irish nicknames from the 1500s and the stories of how those nicknames came about. Actually, this is a big area. So let's have a little ocarina pause before I progress into this.

Okay, I don't have an ocarina this one. week. Let's not get into why I don't have an ocarina. What have I got? Two Korean chopsticks. We've got a lovely little Korean restaurant in limerick now called Vico Vico. So here are two Korean chopsticks. I'm going to hit them off each other. You're going to hear an advert for something. All right? Lovely. Time to check on the skies. It's another sunny day in Calgary. Forecast calls for high levels of economic activity. Late afternoon, we've got a a burst of potential in a place-ranked North America's most livable city.

Tomorrow, blue-sky thinking in the blue-sky city should hold steady, and the outlook remains optimistic throughout the week. So come grab your dreams and enjoy watching them take hold. It's possible in Calgary, the Blue Sky City. For the full economic forecast, visit calgaryeconomic development.com. Did you know that socks are one of the most requested clothing items by organizations addressing homelessness? It's true, and it's also why we start a bomb us.

time you buy, well, anything from Bombas, an essential item is donated to someone facing homelessness. That's Bombas is one purchased, one donated promise. Bombas makes socks, underwear, slippers, slides, and t-shirts, all designed to feel good and do good. Since we're new in Canada, all new customers enjoy 20% off your first purchase. Just visit Bombas.ca. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot CA, and use code music to start doing good and feeling even better. The Hulu original series, Murdoch, Death in the Family, dives into secrets, deception, murder, and the fall of a powerful dynasty. Inspired by shocking actual events and drawing from the hit podcast, this series brings the drama to the screen like never before. Starring Academy Award winner Patricia Arquette and Jason Clark.

Watch the Hulu original series, Murdoch, Death in the Family, streaming October 15th on Disney Plus. Lovely snap on that. That makes me want to go back doing my Twitch streams. That was the Korean Chopstick pause there. You'd have heard an advert for some shish. All right, support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. Does this podcast bring you solace, mirth, merriment,

distraction. Whatever the fuck reason that you're listening to this podcast for, please be aware that this is my full-time job. This is how I earn a living. I'm recording this right now in my little wonderful acoustically treated studio that I had built specifically to record this podcast. And this was paid for by listeners who fund this podcast. This podcast is funded by listeners for our listeners. Because of that, it's my full-time job. I get to, I get to have the time and space to write and research and prepare and deliver a monologue podcast each week, which is, that's a lot of work. It's not, I speak to a guest each week, I deliver a monologue podcast each week that I write. But I have the time and space to do that because this is listener funded and this is my

full-time job. So thank you everybody who is a patron, right? All I'm looking for the price of a pint or a cup of coffee, once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford that, if you don't have that money, absolutely fine. Listen for free.

Listen for free. Because the person who can afford it is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets the exact same podcast I get to earn a living. Wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast so I'm stupidly busy this week I'm too busy I made foolish

decisions I booked three gigs in the space of eight days I really should not have done that I should have had more empathy for my future self but there were amazing gigs and I love doing them because I do I love getting out and seeing you I just fucking love doing it um and in an act of not having much empathy for my future self I'm thinking of doing a blind by podcast festival in Limerick this is the thing I'm tying around with I don't know when but it's something I want to do

and I want to pick the podcasts that I would have at this festival so if just if there's any if I was to do a fucking podcast festival what podcasters would you like to see at this festival give me a DM on Instagram Blind by Bow Club upcoming gigs

I only have one more gig this year actually my last gig of 2025 is in mead in mead trim in mead on Halloween night which is a month away well it's not it's 30 days away

fucking Halloween night I'm playing at the poca festival a Halloween festival and I'm going to try and get a guest I'm going to try and get a guest to another thing or two about Halloween and the folklore of it. There's very few tickets. This is a small little gig.

Very few tickets for this gig. But if you want to have a bit of crack on Halloween night, come to Mead to the Poca Festival, 31st of October. And then I don't have any more gigs until 2026. I kind of try and avoid gigging in December for sure because of the threat of Christmas parties. sometimes people come to a live podcast as part of an office Christmas party and I know they think they're doing something nice and bringing their office to a live podcast it's disastrous because

what happens is I'm there doing a live podcast which is me and somebody else speaking on stage and all of a sudden now there's 10 people from an office two people like my podcast and eight people are on a night out and they want to talk to each other. So Christmas parties are so destructive to a live event, especially a live podcast. I kind of don't gig in December just in case. So my next gig really is fucking January there. The 23rd of January I'm in Waterford in the Theatre Royal. Lovely Waterford can't wait to get back there. February 26th back in Vicar Street on the 4th of February then Belfast

on the 12th of February I'm up in the Waterfront Theatre Galway on the 15th of February I'm in Leisureland I'm already I'm booking fucking too many gigs for myself I'm a stupid bollocks and then I've Calarney at the Enoch

on the 28th of February so I'm after giving future me a granny into the bollocks there for February 26 that is that's a lot of gigs for one month I always speak about trying to have empathy for your future self when you're planning anything

Like I'm good when it's like next week or tomorrow If I want to procrastinate a task, some annoying emails And I want to put them off I say to myself No, think about future you, think about you tomorrow Does he deserve to be inundated with these emails When you already have work on Do them now as an act of compassion for your future self

I'm shit at future compassion when it comes to six months away So this week I should not have booked three gigs in eight days Very foolish Very difficult to get my podcast out when I do that And in February I'm going to be in the same fucking position But come along to those gigs anyway right You can get those tickets

As little Christmas presents if you like A fucking England as well October 26 Like a fucking year away But still A tour of England Scotland and Wales. Last week I accidentally said that I had a gig in Leeds.

I apologise. I'm not gigging in Leeds. I read the wrong list of gigs. I read out the wrong list of gigs. I'm fucking shit. I'm promoting gigs. I'm terrible at it. The promoters want to choke me to death.

But it has to be done. I'm not gigging in Leeds. And in October 26th, I am gigging in. Brighton, Cardiff. Warwick. Where's that? Coventry. Bristol.

Guilford. London. Glasgow. Gateshead. Get a bit of Gateshead or learn about Gateshead. Nottingham. Right?

Fain.org. UK forward slash blindbuy. I have just met my contractual obligations to promote my gigs this week. Not Leeds. I'm so sorry. And there were so many

whimpering Yorkshiremen. There was Yorkshire people in tears going, why no Yorkshire? Why no Yorkshire? I'm sorry. I love a bit of Yorkshire. Even though you don't. Hard to get a decent cup of coffee in Yorkshire. You love shit coffee, don't you? You love instant coffee up there in Yorkshire.

And I know what you're thinking. I know what you're thinking. We like Yorkshire tea. Great tea. Fantastic tea. But, uh, I... I won't do it with this podcast, but I... I need to speak about witnessing the collapse of England and Scotland and Wales based on

the standards of hotel breakfasts a post-Brexit thing. I will not get into it now because it's too big. We'll save it for another podcast. But I need to speak about it. Okay, back to the podcast podcast.

So the first half I was speaking about genealogy of names, how I'd met. Jerry Soft and he asked me, why am I called? Jerry Soft and I told them and it reminded me so much of Irish mythology. Particularly the fitness of names. A way of telling stories orally that's like as a story structure when you tell stories orally it's like you're taking an onion apart, this multifaceted layers.

Well you're called this because of that but I can't tell you why this is called that without telling you this and it goes on and on and on and it's very different to how a story might be written it's a form of storytelling that's actually it's in line with systems of biodiversity. How can I tell you about what a bee is without telling you about the bee's relationship with the flower?

But then I can't talk about the bee's relationship with the flower without explaining what pollination is and then I can't explain pollination without telling you about the relationship that flowers have with the soil but then I can't talk about the soil without the rain and the sun but then I can't talk about the sun

without talking about the universe oral stories follow an ecological structure it's a system systemic writing his data it's a bit more linear you can go back you can go forth you can read something again

like heroes in Irish mythology they always have nicknames so for instance Ku Kullen who was Kukhullen I can't tell you who Kukkow Cullen was, without telling you, well, his name actually isn't Coo Cullen, that's a nickname. His real name was Satanta.

But why is he called Coo Cullen? Well, Satanta was a young boy of about 10 or 12, but he was hard as nails. He was, he was no ordinary boy. And one day, Satanta was playing Harling in a field with some other boys, and he was just beating them. He was flying out around the place really fast, superhuman strength. then he got into a fight on the playing field and he beat like six other boys

and there was a fella called Colin who was a blacksmith was watching this and he was like oh my god who was that young flood there he's going to be a great warrior my god and then Colin says who are you I'm Satanta wow well I'm Colin the blacksmith

and I'm really impressed with you you're going to be a great warrior why don't you come visit me so Colin goes back to his forge and then Satanta goes Oh I'm going to go visit Colin now He does But Colin whatever happens that night

Colin forgot that he'd invited Satanta And when he hears the noise outside He lets loose his hound His big scary dog And the dog attacks Satanta So Satanta gets his Harley And the slitter which is a ball And then he fires it

And it goes into the dog's mouth And then kills it this really legendary dog of Cullen. And then Satanta feels really guilty that he's just killed Cullen's dog. So he says to Cullen, do you know what? I'm going to take this dog's place

and I'm going to guard now. I'm your guard dog now. So then Satanta becomes Coo Cullen, which means hound of Cullen. And that story's written down I think the 7th century. Seventh century in this thing called the Varboscahaga,

which is the words of but that's written down because it was oral beforehand or like I don't know if your name is O'Neill if your name is O'Neill and you're like, why is my name O'Neill well then he can go

well O'Neill means from Nile who the fuck is Nile but he's not just Nile is Nile of the Nine Hostages Nile of the Nine Hostages What type of fucking name is that How do you get a name like that

Nile of the Nine Hostages? Well Thousands of years ago, there was this king in Ireland called Ockid Magmadan. And he had a wife called Mogfind, she was from Munster. And the king and the wife, they had three sons, okay? And Magfind, like, I think they're middle aged at this point, right? The king is maybe in his 40s or 50s. Magfind is probably in her 40s or 50s too, because her sons are a bit old.

her. So the king and Mogfin have three sons. And Mogfin is like, well, one of my three sons is definitely going to become king next, definitely. But then the king kidnaps a princess, the daughter of a Saxon king, an English Saxon king, which would you put this story maybe 1500 years ago because the Saxons are about. So the king kidnaps this girl and now she becomes a A coval, what's called a coval, a female slave. Her name is Karen, spelled C-A-R-E-N-N. Karen Kast-Ov, which means Karen with the curly black hair. So this young girl now gets pregnant by the king, she gets pregnant.

And now Mogfin, the king's wife, is like, fuck this. No fucking way, no way. If she's pregnant, if she has a son, then that son might become king. you might be thinking there. That's a bit mad. Why would she give a fuck about that? She's got three sons already and the oldest one of them

is going to become king. No, that's not how it worked in pre-colonial Ireland. There was a system called tannistry. It's where we get the the word tarnisheda from today. Tarnished is second in command to the Taoiseach to the Prime Minister.

So anyway, under the system of tannistry in pre-colonial Ireland, it didn't matter that the oldest son didn't necessarily. necessarily become king. The best son became king. The son who was most worthy of it became king, which is quite different to a British monarchy. And obviously, I don't think they were very concerned about what the British monarchy would call illegitimacy or a bastard. It didn't matter that the king got this covel, this slave woman pregnant. That didn't matter. If she had

a son, that son had an equal chance of becoming king to his wife's three sons. So the wife, Mogfind is very upset, very upset. So she basically tries to get this young slave girl, Karen, to miscarry. She makes her do backbreak in labour

because Karen's a slave. She's a slave. She makes her do backbreaking labour in the hope that she's going to miscarry, but she doesn't and she gives birth to this little boy called Nile. So Mogfin is like, fuck, it's a boy. She's the queen. She's like, I'm not having this. Slave

girl's child, possibly taking the place of one of my sons to become the next king. So she's like, have him killed. Have him killed. He's not allowed in the kingdom. And then Karen is like, well, I'm not going to kill my little baby. So she goes, what if I just banish him instead? Is that, is that okay? And Mogfin goes, okay, get rid of him. So Karen gives little baby Nile to a poet, a poet who lives up in the woods. And this poet raises Nile with a love of poetry and knowledge and literature and nature

and all the stories of the land and Nile then grows to be a boy who's mad fucking smart really wise poet's name was Tarna Akes so then when Nile comes of age and he's a teenager his dad the high king

who already has three sons which are one Mogg find the da's like well on a second I'd a fucking baby son there about 13 years ago. Where the fuck has he gone? And then Karen says, Well, Mogfin wasn't happy with the fact that I was having a son

so I gave him, I gave him to a poet. I didn't want him to die, I just gave him to a poet. It's the High King says, go and find him then. If my son is off living with a poet, he's 13 now, bring him back. Because the king was old, he was dying. And remember it's the system at Tanistri, so the king is, look, I'm ready to die.

Bring back my son. Doesn't matter that his ma was a slave. He's my son bring him. him back and he's going to have to compete with my three other sons from Magvind and they're going to compete and the winner the winner will be chosen by the goddess of sovereignty the goddess of the land then we'll decide nature nature will tell us who is to be the next king so it's winter and the king says to his four sons right it's cold i need you to fetch fire go and find fire there's a sacred well and if you go to this sacred well you will get fire at this well but the well

is guarded by the Kylok. The well is guarded by a very powerful and dangerous hag. Okay? So you're going to have to defeat this hag if you want to get the fire from the sacred well. So all four brothers head off in search of fire at the sacred well. And the three brothers belong to Mogfind. They're older and they just go to Nile. Who the fuck are you? And then Nile says, My father is your father. I'm your brother. And then they're the lads go, all right, okay. Da, Da got your one Karen pregnant, his coval, right, okay. And they're not threatened by Nile at all, because he's the runt.

He's a little kid, and they're big, strong older brothers. And then they start asking him questions. See, the brothers had grown up in the castle, and they were trained in fighting, and how to be warriors. And they say to young Nile, can you use a sword? Did you train how to fight? And Nile goes, no. I said, but what did you do?

I lived in the forest with a poet So the lads are like This fella hasn't a hope The Kailok is just going to kill him He's not even a threat He's a child So they all get to the fucking well Anyway and it's guarded by the hag

By the Kailok This big dangerous Hague And the Kailok The Winter Goddess She's so scary I'm so terrifying The three older brothers are just paralysed

They don't even know how to begin to fight her. She's that terrifying. And then Young Nile is like, I learned the lore. I learned the lore because I was raised by a poet. I know the stories. And the stories are that the Kylok, the big scary goddess of winter,

she transitions into the beautiful goddess of summer and spring, Bridget. So that big scary Kailok over there, I know she's scary, but she'll reveal herself as Bridget, if you just go at it the right way. And the right way isn't to go up and fight her. So Nile walks up to the big, the hag, the scary Kyloch.

And kisses her fully, is what the manuscript says. So he fucking shifts her, he kisses over tongues. And he's only about 13. And then suddenly the Kyloch transforms into the sovereignty goddess, into beautiful Bridget, the goddess of Summer. and she says him this fella I choose him he is to be the next king

because you see in those days the king was married to the land the king was married to the goddess of fertility the land goddess and really what that story is telling us about this fella called Nile who lived 1500 years ago Winter would have killed people

like this is 1500 years ago in Ireland This was serious business. You couldn't grow food. It was pastoral. The economies were based on fucking cattle. You had to make it through winter. So Nile did something. He got fire.

He kept people warm. He stored food. Whatever Nile did, he took his people through winter into summer and there was a bountiful crop and there was plenty. And that's what that story means. because the

hag turned into the beautiful goddess I know that that's the Kyloch, the goddess of winter, turned into the goddess of summer. That's my reading of it. So Nile anyway becomes king and he becomes a famous king, a very powerful king.

And when he becomes king, he's legendary. He becomes renowned for military power overseas, for raiding, especially along the coast of like Britain at this point. The Romans are fucking gone.

So Britain in the 4th, 5th century, it's Anglo-Saxons, warlords. It's not the unified might of the Roman Britain. So Nile is king. He becomes great at hostage-taking, taking hostages. Going in with a boat, with a bunch of hard cunts, going into a kingdom, and then stealing somebody important. Could be the king.

Could be the king's daughter. could be a brother, stealing a person of importance for ransom. Probably because Niles Ma was a coval. She was a Saxon princess who was stolen and lived as a slave. And if this sounds terrible, it was fucking terrible. The culture probably would have been brutal. Pre-colonial Ireland, you had all these petty kingdoms. You didn't have towns.

People moved pastorally with cows. You had an economy that was based around cattle. You had huge amounts of cattle raiding and then hostage taking with all the raids. So the taking of hostages meant power. It meant, I effectively controlled this other kingdom because I have something they cherish and value and they better do what I say

because if they don't, then I'm going to hurt this thing that they value so I have power over that other kingdom. So Nile became so legendary at raiding and taking hostages that he took hostages from five hostages from Ireland Ulster, Munster, Lenster, Connacht and Mead and then he took four hostages from abroad

he took hostages from the Britons which is probably the Wales the Saxons England the Franks over in fucking France and then the Scots so at one point Nile had nine hostages at once which meant effectively he had leverage and power over nine kingdoms

as far as France like Jerry Hard with the fucking chisel This was so hard that he became Nile of the Nine hostages But then what happens when you're taking hostages People don't like it when you're taking hostages Not a nice thing So he ended up with a lot of enemies

So he Nile even though he was given hostages back Or there was tribute paid for the hostages Or ransom whatever you want to fucking call it Nile couldn't really move around because he'd upset quite a lot of people so he was eventually killed in Scotland who had been killed in Scotland

by someone who had a grudge because it's like you stole my granddad there about 30 years ago but this was up in Ulster I think it's where you get the the red hand the red hand of Ulster which bizarrely is

the loyalists have tried to take it now but the red hand of Ulster is the O'Neill dynasty so anyone who came from Nile became O'Neil of Nile so if your name is O'Neill If you were an O'Neill

800 years ago And you couldn't read or write You'd have met a phila You'd have met a poet Or a fucking druid If you want to call him a druid But we didn't call him druids You'd have met a person

Who could hold the lore in their mouth Who could remember the stories And you'd say to him Why am I called O'Neil And then that person would have told you that story And they'd have gone on and on And on and on And told you that story orally

and I reckon these people were noradivurgent because it requires a noradivirgent brain to be able to remember all that stuff but it doesn't require it but it really fucking helps and that's that O'Neill story like that's oral culture written down by monks in the 9th century was first written down in

I think called the Adventure of the Sons of Ockad Mogmadon as the first time was written down in the 9th century because it mentions Saxons and shit like that, we know that it's based sometime around the 5th and 6th century. So it

existed in the mouths of poets for 4 or 500 years before someone decided to even write it down. And it tells us too about the importance of poets and lore keepers in early Irish society because you know, Nile

was sent off to live with poets. He was sent off to train with poets. His brothers were in the castle learning how to use weapons. But he was sent off to the woods to learn about the lore, to learn the stories, to learn about nature. And that's what made him powerful, to be clever. Same with Fionne McCool. Fion McCool was a kid with too many questions that his parents couldn't answer, so they said

fuck that, go and live with a series of poets until eventually he encounters the salmon and knowledge. But you also see the poets writing themselves into the stories. Like if the poet is the person who raises the legendary king, then the poet is really important in society. So if you were on O'Neill and you asked a poet, why am I called O'Neill? They'd tell you that story.

And it's hard to know how much of that story is historically correct because it's existing orally and then it's written down by monks and you can never trust the monks. But they did DNA tests in 2006. They studied the Y chromosome of Irish men which is the one that's passed from father to son. And they found that 21% of men in the north-west of Ireland can trace their lineage to one man

about 1,500 years ago and because of the concentration of these men in that area and then the history of the O'Neill dynasty it strongly suggests that Nile of the Nine Hostages was a real person, was a real king and was actually that powerful and also what it says is

this Nile fella had a huge amount of children with multiple women lots and lots and lots of women and given what we know about Irish society 1,500 years ago you have to assume

that this was there might be some truth there and that the story about his ma effectively being a kidnapped slave who operated as a coval

as our concubine to his dad that maybe this was Nile was just a prolific prick who stole women women and coerced them into sexual slavery and genetically one in five Irish men in the

north-west of Ireland in the 2006 study I found came from one fella most likely Nile of the Nine Hostages is the closest historical parallel we have with that one person. Now I covered a lot of this stuff, slavery and early Irish society in my documentary which is literally called the Land of Slaves and Scholars. One thing I'd like to correct there, when I said, maybe seven, eight hundred years ago, if you met a phila or a poet or a druid, even though we don't say druid, if you met that person and said, I'm in O'Neil, why am I called O'Neill? They might tell you that story about neither the nine hostages orally.

We don't know that. Because all we have is when it was written down in the seventh century. So who's to say it wasn't all made up by the monk who wrote a it down. Because that's when writing came to Ireland. Powerful families like the O'Neils, they would be the ones paying for this. They would fund the monastery and now it's like write my fucking lineage on paper so that I can have a lovely story that goes back to a fella called Nile who was chosen by a sovereignty goddess to be the king. But I reckon it did come from earlier oral culture because there's too many mentions of the O'Neill dynasty

across multiple texts and then you've got just these little oral storytelling motifs like even the mention of the goddess of sovereignty of the land which point to something

pre-Christian so I pulled all of this podcast out of my hall this week this wasn't very planned because I was a foolish boy and I booked too many fucking gigs I booked three gigs

to a car within eight days and that includes travelling and then also my BBC radio show came out this week grounding which you can get on BBC sounds I think

if you live anywhere where the Queen is on your fucking money so this week if I haven't been gigging or travelling to gigs I've been doing promotion and interviews

for the BBC thing and I've had very little time to prep a podcast this week and I'm kind of burnt out I am getting a little bit of autistic burnout

from all of that because it took me 90 minutes to put my shoes on this morning because I was thinking about snails I know that sounds bizarre but yeah I was thinking about snails so much that the

the act of completing the task of putting my fucking shoes on just didn't happen right because I was thinking about snails and how snails use snail mucus the trail that a garden snail leaves.

They studied these and they found it actually communicates huge amounts of information about the snail's health and its genealogy and I thought about how snails trails are so similar to oral culture and Irish mythology in particular.

So that was enough of a that thought meant I couldn't put my shoes on for 90 fucking minutes and that that there is pure autistic burnout where I lose the the skill, the grounding mindful skill of I know it's great to think about snails right now

but you have to put your shoes on so let's put the shoes on first and then park the snail thoughts for a more appropriate time I lose the discipline to be able to do that when I kind of experience burnout which I get when I'm quite stressed

and another when I met fucking I started this podcast half talking about meeting Jerry Soft So I met Jerry Soft, unplanned conversation in the street. That wasn't a taxing conversation to me because there was no small talk. I just gave him his genealogy at him. So this is why you're called fucking Jerry Soft.

But when the conversation was over, he said to me, why is your jumper on back to front? And then I looked down, my jumper was on inside out. I was wearing a fucking jumper. It was violently inside out, violently. All the seams, all the tags sticking out. the fucking, the brand backwards whole shebang when it was when Jerry Soff pointed it out to me

I was like, yeah, that's pretty fucking back to front, isn't it? How the hell did I leave the house like that? And as soon as that happened, I went right, okay, you're getting a little bit of barn out. I didn't notice that my jumper was on back to front. So that's all we have time for this week. I'd like to call that a phone call, but I don't know what was that a phone call.

Like I did, I pulled that podcast out of my hole there. by which I mean I was so busy with gigs I didn't get my two or three days to sit down and do rigorous research so most of the information in this podcast I just pulled from

memory so hopefully nothing is incredibly inaccurate but anyway I'll catch you next week I don't know what with but in the meantime rub a dog genia flecked to a swan wink at a sparrow

Dog bless I forgot to do the cases last week by the way completely forgot because I was in a fucking rush so here's more kisses Kites Kallery Kallory

also known as the blue sky city we get more sunny days than any anywhere in the country, but more importantly, we're the Canadian capital of Blue Sky Thinking. This is where bold ideas meet big opportunity, where dreams become reality. Whether you're building your career or scaling your business, Calgary is where what if turns into what's next. It's possible here in Calgary, the Blue Sky City. Learn more at Calgary Economic Development.com. The Hulu original series Murdoch, Death in the Family, dives into secrets, deception,

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