The Blindboy Podcast - Witches Piss and Horses Skulls

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

How the discovery of a horses skull under a floorboard led to an insight into Irish music Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bend the hedge, you never-ending Brendons. Take a bite from the Protestant's Toblerone. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. Sometimes I like to begin the podcast by hourly synopsising what the weather is like outside. I do this quite often. And this morning as I was thinking to myself, how am I going to synopsise today's weather

for the glorious cunts who listen to this podcast? Because here's what struck me. I'm very familiar with January. I've been dealing with January now for three decades and this morning at about 10am it looked like January. Visually the information that I was receiving was pure January. It was 10am. That's not that early. That's almost midday. But it was 10am. It was overcast. And it was so dark

that all the cars had their lights on. You know? And those cars probably won't turn their lights off. It's that twilight period. The two months around the solstice. Where we get a little bit Nordic. And it's dark all day long. And I reflected on this visual information.

But it didn't feel that way. It felt more like mid-April. It was sweaty and clammy and warm and humid. So much so that I asked my phone what temperature it was and my phone told me it was 13 degrees. How things looked and how things felt were at odds with each other. The feeling was contradicting my memories of previous Januaries. And then I realise,

ah, I'm describing fucking global warming in real time. That's what's happening. And every year it's getting, oh there's a little siren. Let's let the siren of Limerick City do its thing. Until it disappears off into the distance with the Doppler effect. But I'm experiencing an uneasiness

as an artist when describing the weather now, when reflecting on it, when taking it on board, when using it to set a scene. I mean artists use the weather frequently to set scenes. Painters do it, poets do it, writers do it because it's a little common trough of sensations that we can all dip into. Like when I say to you, it was one of those January mornings where at 10am all the cars had their lights on. And the beauty of using the weather as a descriptive device is that you can get a huge amount of information across

with the smallest amount of words. It was one of those January mornings where all the cars had their lights on. And now you have a smell in your nose. You know what those mornings smell like. And you can feel the cold on your fingertips. And you're thinking, I should have worn my gloves. And you can imagine how all the other people around you are walking with their heads down.

No one's stopping admiring anything when it's one of those January mornings where all the cars have their lights on no one's hanging around the streets people are moving from place to place trying to get somewhere warm and dry that's inside and the Christmas lights are still on to introduce a bit of artificial beauty into the stark bleakness. And we think about drinking a hot chocolate a little bit more than we usually do. But now that's not working anymore. It was one of those January mornings where all the cars had their lights on but it felt clammy and warm. The temperature had the promise of spring that I'd expect in April, but with none of the freshness in the air.

The beauty of that particular warmth that I felt this morning is that I associate that with the smell of new life, the chlorophyll bursting from the young bud of a tree, or the little chirp of a bird looking for food in its nest. Those are the sounds and smells that I associate with the 13 degree temperature that I felt this morning but instead I got the silence and death of January which is fine that's what I expect from January. January is silent and dead. The leaves from autumn are rotted and blown away.

The birds haven't hatched any eggs yet. Animals aren't thinking about fucking. But as I was straining to describe the weather and no longer being able to rely upon the familiar descriptions of January, it reminded me, it reminded me of something I once did a full fucking podcast on a couple of years ago but it reminded me of there's a painter called Turner

Joseph Mallard William Turner Turner would have been a painter in the mid 1800s a very important painter because the paintings that he was painting weren't like anything else at the time. He was a romantic painter, but really he was an expressionist painter about 70 years ahead of his time. Expressionist painting being you paint what you feel rather than what you see. But Turner, Turner used to paint a lot of seascapes.

He was a nature painter. Turner would paint the weather. He would paint sunsets. He would try and paint what wind feels like, what clouds are like. He wasn't just painting what he saw. He was trying to paint what clouds are like. He wasn't just painting what he saw, he was trying to paint what it felt like to be present in the environments that he was painting. And what's fantastic about Turner as well is if someone doesn't know a lot about painting and you're trying to get them into painting or into the

appreciation of art, if you show them one Turner painting, they will then be able to identify all of Turner's paintings because his style is so unique and so easy to describe. If you go and look at a Turner painting now and I say to you, he's painting not just the weather, but trying to paint what it feels like to be present in it. You'd go, yeah, I get that. I understand that. And that's expressionism, even though Turner wasn't an expressionist.

He's a proto-expressionist. But what makes Turner's paintings unique is that his portrayal of the weather is actually studied by climate scientists. portrayal of the weather is actually studied by climate scientists. You see Turner's paintings of sunsets and clouds, they're so very unique because his colour palette is kind of strange. Turner's skies are exceptionally red or strangely yellow, almost like you'd think that he was exaggerating it like Turner would see a sky that's a little bit red and then go fuck it I'm gonna turn that red up

a hundred percent which is what painters in a movement called Fauvism did about 60 years after Turner the Fauvists I'm talking like 1890 1901 the Fauvists turned all their colors up to 10 because they were fighting the new invention of the camera so the Fauvists were going well

painting can do what a camera can't cameras can capture reality in black and white but they can't capture color and we're gonna paint not what we see, but what we feel. And Fauvism then led to Expressionism, which would have been early 20th century. But Turner, Turner was painting in the late 1820s, the 1830s, the 1840s and so on. Why was Turner painting skies so brightly, so unrealistically? Why were his skies so red, so yellow, sometimes green? Was he painting what he felt, like an expressionist 100 years later? Or was he actually painting what he fucking saw?

And this is why climate scientists are interested in the paintings of Turner. Because in 1815 there was a huge volcano eruption in Mount Tambora in Indonesia absolutely fucking massive this volcano eruption was so extreme that 1815 is called the year without a summer it threw all this volcanic ash into the air and the blocked out the Sun and there was winter all over the world instead of a summer. There were famines. And the strange thing about William Turner's painting career is that while he was painting the fucking weather throughout his career,

there were actually three massive volcanoes that erupted in the 1800s. There was Tambora in 1850, one in the Philippines in 1831, and one in Nicaragua in 1835. And the scientists are now looking at William Turner's paintings and noticing that his portrayal of sunsets and the colours that he's using aren't an emotional representation. It's not expressionism. He was actually painting what he saw. not expressionism, he was actually painting what he saw. That the sky may have been green for a while because of whatever particles were in the air from this volcano or the sky might have been blood red because the sun couldn't get through and that's what Turner was painting. There was no colour photography, there was no videos. So the paintings of painters and the prose of writers is all that we have

to see what the weather was like then after those volcanoes now i've done a full podcast on that but that's what i thought of today when i was struggling to describe the weather because of global warming it looked like january but it felt like April. And then there's the little things that that does to my brain. I don't know, could I call it cognitive dissonance? But I wore, I wore too many clothes today. I wore my double pants. I wore a hoodie and my thermal jacket. I dressed for January.

I dressed for the cold bite and wind of January. Because my eyes told me to. I didn't listen to my body. I didn't step outside my house, notice that it was 13 degrees, and go, oh, it's 13 degrees. I think I don't need this big jacket.

I didn't do that. Because my brain was telling me, it's January, it's January. Wear the big jacket. It didn't do that. Because my brain was telling me, it's January, it's January, wear the big jacket. It's fucking January, man. And by the time I got into my office, I was sweating. I cycled in. I'd worn too much clothes. And the lights on the cars are telling me to get a hot chocolate. To get myself a lovely warm hot chocolate and warm my hands. But I won't enjoy it. Because it'd be like drinking hot chocolate in April and I have to use my critical faculties. I'm a human being and as a human being I can look at

my environment, critique it, have a little conversation with myself and make decisions. I can use creativity. I can understand the concept and idea of the weather, because I'm a human being, that's the uniqueness of human beings, even though we originated in Africa, which was really, really hot, 15,000, 20 years ago, when human beings made it to Europe, and it was the ice age, we said to ourselves, it's fucking cold, I know we come from the heat of Africa, where we didn't need much clothes. But now we're in Europe and there's an ice age and we'd better use this creativity that we have

to invent some clothes for hot weather. That's what we do. But the poor little animals don't. On a day like today, where it's January and it's sweaty and clammy and warm, my heart breaks for poor little frogs and the animals that are in

hibernation because I guarantee you a frog woke up today. Frogs go to sleep when it's cold and then they feel the warmth of spring around late February or early March and that warmth thaws the earth and the little frog wakes up in perfect harmony with the ecosystem. When the frogs wake up when they're supposed to wake up from hibernation, everything is there for them. The water is the right temperature for them to spawn, the insects that they rely upon for food which are seasonal, they exist. So when a frog wakes up naturally from hibernation in spring everything's perfect and that frog can go on and live his little froggy life. My heart breaks for the frogs that woke up

today and I know they do because my buddy Collie Ennis who I've had on this podcast before that's his job. He looks for frogs that have woken up too early because it's too warm. Because frogs are an indicator species. They warn us of a wider biodiversity collapse. And has to watch the poor old frog climb out of the mud, rub his hands together and go, fucking great, it's April lads, is it? No it's not. It's January. Everything is death. There's no flies to eat, there's nothing. But the frog doesn't have the critical faculties to analyse this information. So it just dies. It just dies because he thinks it's fucking February or April.

And not just frogs. Loads of insects, loads of flies. I hear birds singing at the wrong time. I've gotten up over winter and heard the dawn chorus. I shouldn't be hearing a dawn chorus in fucking November. But the bards don't know any different. They think it's March. But all of this reminded me of something that happened this November. An interesting incident which I parked to one side and only really gave it proper thought this week. I know a fella called Benlin. Now the reason we call him Benlin is when we were like 11

we used to be shifting girls. Shifting means kissing. Kissing girls with tongues. When you're 11 and children kiss and you don't even know if you like the girls that you're kissing. You don't even know if you want to kiss the girls. Someone else just organises it. You have to shift her. You and her have to go. Have to go somewhere private, behind a wall. And the two of you have to kiss each other with tongues. I even knew one lad who had the special ability of shifting girls in the church. He used to bring

girls into the church and shift them because he was Baha'i so he could kiss as many other children as he wanted in the Catholic church and it wasn't a sin because he was Baha'i. But back to Benlin and how Benlin got his name was one day the group decided that he had to kiss this girl. You have to shift and if you don't do it you're frigids. kiss this girl you have to shift and if you don't do it you're frigids you're frigids so you have to kiss now benlin was all right with it and the girl was all right with it but she had a sore throat she had a cough and she was like if i if i shift him i'm gonna give him my cough i'll give him my sore throat benlin didn't give a fuck he's's like, no, actually I want to shift. So him and the girl went and had a kiss and then the next day her sore

throat was gone. She didn't have a sore throat anymore. She wasn't sick like the next day. And from then on people called him Benlyn. And if you don't know, Benlyn is the name of a cough syrup. That's on sale in Ireland and England. But Benlyn is now an adult man and he lives in a

cottage out in County Limerick on a farm that belonged to his grandparents. Now it's kind of a modern cottage he lives in there he's had it renovated a bit but it's still an old cottage it might be about 120 years old and it has wooden floorboards and Benlin texted me in November and I hadn't heard from him in ages and he goes wait till you hear what I fucking found in my cottage and you're gonna love this you'll fucking, I couldn't think of anyone

who would love this information more than you I have to tell you this so I said go on so Benlin started to notice that there was a lot of woodlice crawling around his fucking house in November. Now, woodlice shouldn't crawl around your house in November because woodlice hibernate.

But the woodlice were obviously crawling up from underneath the floorboards and walking around because November was warm and they assumed that it was spring and it was time for little woodlice to wake up. Now I realize this now. I realize now that's what was happening but Benlin didn't realize this at the time. He was just like I never have fucking woodlice in November. Never. So if the cunts are crawling up from the floorboards I have some

strange weird infestation. I have an excess of wood lice and there's so many of them they're getting busy in November. I have to do something about this. So Pendling goes to the floorboards of his cottage and he pulls up the wood to try and see is there a giant woodlice nest in there or something and there's not there's no woodlice infestation there's no excessive amount of woodlice there was a normal amount of woodlice that you would expect to have in an old cottage with wooden floorboards and they were just waking up from their hibernation because it was too warm this November and the poor little woodlice died. But that's not why Benlin texted me.

While he'd lifted up the floorboards of the cottage, looking for the woodlice nest or whatever he thought he'd find, he found a skull. The skull of an animal. He initially thought it was like a cow. It was a large white skull with a hole in the top of its head. And then inside the skull were loads of old pennies and bottle caps. So Benlin takes it out and puts it on the mantelpiece. And he's like, what the fuck is a cow's skull with bottle caps and coins doing underneath my

floorboards this is weird as fuck so he puts it up on the mantelpiece it's there for a week or two he's getting curious so he decides i'm gonna fucking bring it to the vet i'm gonna bring this skull to the vet to find out what it is so he goes to the vet with the skull and the vet says, that's actually a horse. That's a horse's skull. And he asked the vet, how old is it? And the vet is like,

well, I can tell it's been cleaned. So someone did this deliberately. Someone cleaned the skull of this horse. It's probably less than 100 years old. It could be 70, 80 years old. It's not ancient. It's recent enough. But someone deliberately put this horse's skull there underneath the floorboards and then Benlin asks him why was it

full of coins and bottle caps and the vet didn't have an answer he didn't know so Benlin took it and it's on his mantelpiece now it's like an ornament but he texted me because he listens to the podcast he listens to the podcast. He listens to the podcast and he said, this is the type of mad shit that you like. Will you try and find out why there's a horse under my floorboards with bottle caps in its head? So that's what I want to speak about this week. I don't know what you're wondering. Did I get an answer? Yes, I did. I trawled through fucking journals of archaeology, folklore. I went deep in search of the hot takes.

And I found out the reason why there's a horse's skull under Benlin's floorboards. And it's fucking fascinating. And I can't wait to tell you. So I'm going to have an ocarina pause now so that I don't interrupt my flow. I don't have my ocarina because I'm in my office, but I do have an empty can of Coke Zero. So I'm going to tap this can of Coke Zero and you're going to hear an advertisement for something. 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.

You're invited to an immersive listening party led by Rishi Keshe-Hirwe, the visionary behind the groundbreaking Song Exploder podcast and Netflix series. This unmissable evening features Hirwe 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. Sounds like Mars cut. Trying to contact the ghost of Mark E. Smith from the fall. That's the first ocarina pause where I inadvertently accidentally advertised Coca-Cola. I don't think it matters if I advertise Coca-Cola. They don't need me talking about them on a podcast. I don't think it's going to affect

their sales in any way. So that was the Coke Zero pause. The Ocarina pause is now sponsored by Coke. Accidental corporate takeover by one of the biggest brands in the world there. The effervescent ubiquitous pricks.

Have I done any coke lore? I did. I did a podcast about Fanta, which is made by Coca-Cola. Coke. Coke invented Fanta just for the Nazis because they couldn't send them coke, so they invented Fanta for the Nazis. I did a podcast on that.

All right, this podcast is supported by you, the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash TheBlindBuyPodcast If you receive solace, entertainment, mirth, merriment, distraction, whatever the fuck has you listening to this podcast, please reflect on the fact that this is my full-time job. This podcast is how I earn a living. It's how I pay my bills.

It's my work. I adore this podcast. I love making it so much and I love delivering it to you each week. But it's my work. And if you enjoy consuming that work, then please consider paying me for that work. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee

once a month, that's it. And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it. Because you can listen for free. Listen for free. Because the person who can afford it is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets a podcast

and I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model that's based on kindness and soundness. patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast. Now as I mentioned last week I'm on a hiatus from my Twitch stream. I'm not doing my Thursday night Twitch stream for the foreseeable future while I write my current book of short stories because I think this is the reason why. When I do my Twitch stream, I make music. I make music live. I play loads of instruments. I produce it. I mix it. I write songs and I use the musical part of my brain for creativity and I expend quite

a lot of creative flow there. But while I I'm writing a book I need that creative energy to be on the other side of my brain in the writing part of my brain when I started my twitch stream during the pandemic it's because I'd spent two years writing my last collection of short stories boulevard wren and once I was finished writing that collection of short stories I was like fuck it I'd love to get back to making music I've spent two years with my brain thinking of prose and imagery and writing I'd like to get back to that more physical side of my brain where music comes from so that's why I started my twitch stream and it was a lovely break from the writing side of my brain now I

want a break from the music side of my brain to Now I want to break from the music side of my brain to go back to the writing side. And since I stopped doing my Thursday night Twitch stream, the short stories have been flowing. My writer's block is gone and I've been doing a lot of writing that I'm really, really happy with. And I'm mad excited about this next collection of short stories. And I can't wait to show you because I've used my last book came out in 2019 I've used the two years in between or whatever it was

to focus on music but also I've done a shit load of reading reading other people's work reading more writers reflecting critically on the craft of writing it has been somewhat helpful but

at the end of the day my inspiration doesn't really come from other writers. My inspiration to write comes from music and painting really. But that's why I'm not on Twitch. Because I'm writing a book. Do I have any gigs to promote?

I never have the fucking gigs in front of me when I'm promoting the content things. I'm the worst person in the world to promote gigs. I've never been good at promoting gigs what have I got Saturday the 21st of January Waterford Theatre Royal right

I think I think I'm interviewing a fella called Michael Harding I think that's the gig Michael Harding is a very very interesting person he's an ex-priest and he's a bit of a philosopher and I think Waterford of course I should know before I go advertising it I should probably know that that's who my guest is I think that's who my guest is I'm nearly sure that my guest in Waterford in the Theatre Royal on the 21st of January is Michael Harding and the reason I think that is I have to I can I can do a process of

so he's definitely not my guest in Killarney on the 3rd of February he's definitely not my guest in Killarney on the 3rd of February. He's definitely not my guest in Cork in the Opera House on the 15th of February. He's definitely not my guest in Belfast on the 4th of March in the Waterfront. And he's definitely not my guest in Vicar Street on the 22nd and the 24th of march and he is most certainly not my guest in on april 1st and and absolutely not my guest in canada where i'm doing shows live podcasts in toronto and vancouver in april right so by that process of elimination. I think my guest in Waterford on the 21st of January is. Michael Harding. And let's hope that didn't come to me in a dream. That's like a week away or something is it?

24. That's 11 days away. I like Waterford. Waterford people sound like Dublin people whose cars are burning down it's like there's a slight Dublin twang to the Waterford accent with an undertone of panic I think that's because

Waterford and Wexford were like the first places to be invaded by the Brits in the 1100s so Waterford and Wexford they have a bit of a ha ha like a little shock in how they speak

intergenerational memory of the Normans coming over the waves with their horses and crossbows I think the famine started there as well Waterford and Wexford the potato first came there from Portuguese sailors who stopped

there for a bit and I think a few hundred years later, they brought blight on the soles of their little Portuguese shoes. So they've had a few shocks at that part of Ireland. What gig do I most want you to come to? One of them Vicar Streets, man. The one on Friday the 24th of March. That's nearly sold out. But there's tickets left for the 22th of March that's nearly sold out but there's tickets left

for the 22nd of March because it's is that a Tuesday? It's a Wednesday Wednesday the 22nd of March in Vicar Street I want you to come to that one because there's not a lot of tickets left for Friday the 24th and 22nd is a Wednesday night

it's going to be nice and relaxed Wednesday night Vicar Street gigs tremendous fun, it's like for Friday the 24th and 22nd is a Wednesday night it's gonna be nice and relaxed Wednesday night Vicar Street gigs tremendous fun it's like going to the theater you get to go home to bed at a reasonable hour and get up the next day for work or college right so why did Benalyn find a horse's skull full of bottle caps and coins underneath his floorboards. The first thing I did is I texted Dr. Billy McFlynn, who's a folklorist and a guest I've had in this podcast, with this question and he pointed me in the right direction. So historically, when items, when strange items are found under the floorboards of a house or in the thatching of the roof or between the walls, it's known as a spiritual midden, which is a type of apotropaic magic. They're like little magical charms to ward off evil spirits. magical charms to ward off evil spirits. And even though this is found in Ireland and it's kind of widespread, it's not an Irish tradition. It's an English tradition that was brought

by Protestant colonisers from England who were terrified of witches. Irish people were never too concerned with witches. In Ireland Ireland we were afraid of the fairies we were terrified as fuck of the fairies but witches they weren't a huge part of our culture but English colonisers British colonisers they were very afraid of witches

and witches the fear of witches wasn't a protestant thing it goes back deeper than that it's an anglo-saxon thing which survived in english people even though they were protestants this terrible fear of witches entering your home now the term midden that's a term that's used in archaeology and a midden generally is like household objects that get dug up by archaeologists so when an archaeologist does a dig and they find things that are related to a household pots and pans cutlery whatever that's a midden kind of evidence of a person's lifestyle a spiritual midden is an act of magic, a charm, some object

that was placed under the floorboards in the house to ward off evil. Now why were the Protestants terrified of fucking witches? I mean the same reason the Irish were terrified of fairies. We're talking a few hundred years ago. You know, bad things happened. We didn't have science. We didn't have medicine. If everyone in the house suddenly died from the flu, if somebody got sick, if a baby was born and they were afraid the baby was going to die at a young age. Fear of a woman dying in childbirth. Mental illness. People thought the bad things, the painful and unfortunate things that can happen to humans were because of evil spirits.

Because a witch might have put a curse on you. So the Protestants in Ireland were fucking terrified of witches. Now witches witches are present in the writings of the Anglo-Saxons. Now I don't know a huge amount about the Anglo-Saxons but here's what I do

know. So Britain was ruled by Rome for a very long time and then Rome collapsed. And around the year 500, when Rome was collapsing in Britain and leaving Britain, these tribes from around Germany, called the Saxons, just started arriving into England as the Roman Empire was collapsing. And then they became the Anglo-Saxons.

Some of them had been Christianized, others weren't, some of them were pagan but the Anglo-Saxons were most definitely scared of witches and this carried on into English culture right into the 1600s where the English at this point are now Protestant and they're colonizing and they were very afraid of witches and witches became associated with heresy and the English were burning women at the stake because they thought they might be witches and that's like the short version of how the English became obsessed with witches. It's like an old Anglo-Saxon superstition that gradually started to meld with their Christian culture as heresy. And these same English would have gone over to America and established the colonies

and these are the people whose descendants would have started the Salem witch trials. Some of the most famous witch trials in the world where loads of fucking women were drowned and burned at the stake because they thought they were witches but English settlers primarily from the traditionally Anglo-Saxon strongholds were mad paranoid about witches and then what they were really afraid of were witches finding a way into their houses through any possible opening They were terrified of chimneys. They believed that the witch could somehow fly down the chimney and get into their house and then put a curse on everyone and bring badness into the house.

So what these English colonisers would do in Ireland from the 1600s onwards, they would plant these spiritual middens, these objects to protect their house, these pagan objects really. I don't know how this practice melded with their strict Protestant beliefs because really they're engaging in paganism. They're not planting crucifixes, they're not planting anything to do with Christ or Christianity. Like here's an example of a spiritual midden that's found in some places in Ireland and all over England. They used to kill cats and then dry out the cat's body. They used to smoke the cat's body and they'd hide dried cats in their walls or under their floorboards.

And they'd pose the cat's body in a pouncing position. And they'd also get rats and they'd dry out the rats. And they'd hide the rats in the walls. Because they were also scared of the ghosts of rats. They'd make like a cat beef jerky, essentially. They'd jerk a cat and pose it and plant it somewhere in the house under the floorboards or in the walls because cats were associated with witches and this is apotropaic magic. It's not Christianity, it's magic. It's like when it came to witches, the Protestant colonizers of Ireland, they didn't, it's as if they didn't believe Christianity could

protect them. It's like the only way to protect yourself from a witch coming down your chimney is to use a similar magic in an opposite way and they didn't also just protect from the witch coming into your house through an opening it protected from the casting of spells so if the witch was like outside your house wiggling her fingers and pointing magic at your house if you had the cat in your walls the cat would fend off her spells and some of the most interesting objects that they used to plant in their houses and they'd make it part of the house they might attach it into the roof they They used to get the shoes of children, like tiny children's shoes

and they would attach them into the roofs of the cottage. And I don't know what that was for, but I'm assuming if it's anything to do with kids it was a protection against infant mortality. Like I've got a buddy over in England,

his name is Mickey Pastrami that's not his real name it's his nickname but he worked for a while as a thatcher he used to thatch roofs all around the south of England and he used to tell me that when he was thatching cottages so he'd go to an old cottage and he'd have to fix the roof and the thatching on the roof could be 200 years old and he told me that when thatchers thatch cottages in certain parts of rural England they might find the the skeleton of a tiny baby in the thatched roof that if that baby died at a young age they would thatch its bones into the roof to try and ward off witches who were causing infant mortality but in Ireland under the floorboards they've found

these things called witch bottles which are very interesting so it used to be these type of ceramic ceramic jugs called Bellarmine jars or Bellarmine jugs, right? They're found mostly now on the beds of rivers, anywhere where there's like soft mud, because sailors used to carry these ceramic jugs around with them to store rum or whatever they were drinking. But a Bellarmine jug was like a mass-produced 16th century ceramic jug from Germany I believe and on the front of them was always a design of a man with a big beard. So whenever anyone got their hands on a Bellarmine jug because there was a man on front

they would turn this into like a trap for witches, known as a witch bottle. So the Protestants in Ireland, the colonisers. Now I also, I don't detach this from a sense of paranoia. These people in the 1600s and 1700s, they were colonisers in Ireland. They were people who had come from a different land to colonise Ireland. And the Irish didn't always fucking like this. So I'd imagine these were quite paranoid people who were terrified of their houses getting burnt down in the night. But what some of them used to do is they'd get one of these better mind jugs. And the man of the house would get his wife to piss into this jug. So it would become a jug full of piss.

wife to piss into this jug so it would become a jug full of piss and then he'd throw a lot of nails and sharp objects into this jug full of piss and bury it underneath the floorboards in front of the fireplace and the purpose of this was is that the witch would be attracted to anything that was human so they were trying to confuse the witch. So the jug already had the design of a man on it. So they're thinking, right, okay, maybe the witch will think that this jug is a man. Then you put the piss inside there so that it smells like a human. It's urine. And then the nails are in there to catch the spirit of the witch.

So it was like a pissy mousetrap for witches that the Protestants were burying under their fireplaces. The witch would crawl into the jar because she's attracted to the smell of piss, thinking that she's getting a human and then she'd be killed by the nails and the spikes inside. So strategically placed bottles or jars are also dug up in old cottages under fireplaces in Ireland. Now they didn't believe that the witch was like a physical woman. They had a belief in in an other world quite similar to the Irish other world belief. So the belief was that the witch the witches could travel not physically but they could travel in an extra dimension in the otherworldly dimension so when you catch a witch in a bottle of your own piss you're catching

her spirit as she travels in the other world and you get to keep her there forever also another thing that they found as these spiritual middens hidden in houses under floorboards and particularly near chimneys is just like a bunch of smashed shit. Broken plates, old bones, bits of knives. This is where the archaeologists are kind of confused around, like I said, the midden. A midden is when you find shit that belongs to a household from ages ago and the house might be gone when they would find broken crockery and broken bits of glass underneath fireplaces and underneath floorboards what they think is it what it was is that was a witch trap so the witch would travel via the underworld, she'd come down through the chimney,

her spirit, and then she'd get caught. As she comes in the chimney she gets caught on all this broken cutlery and blades and glass and then the witch's spirit is trapped in the other world. But this is where we get to the horse skulls. Out of all the spiritual middens that are found, out of all the spiritual middens that are found horse skulls in Ireland are the ones that confuse the archaeologists and the folklorists like when you find a dried cat or baby shoes or a witch trap

a fucking witch bottle with piss and nails in it you know that that's a witch trap but when it came to the horse's skulls which are also quite commonly found underneath floorboards in Ireland the folklorists are unsure. One theory is that they believed that horses could see ghosts and witches because horses were nervous animals so if you place a horse's skull underneath your floorboards maybe the horse can tell if there's a witch

outside but the Irish Folklore Commission in thirties they did a survey trying to find out about horses skulls buried in people's floorboards because there was actually quite a lot and a fella called Seán Ó Súla-Bháin who was a folklorist he went around asking people in their houses do you have a horse's skull buried, you know, underneath your floorboards? And the person would go, yeah, I do. And my neighbor has one as well. And he asked, well, why, why do you have it? And Osulawan was expecting some type of magical answer. Oh, the horse's skull is to ward off spirits. It's to ward off the fairies. And the

answer he got was very practical. No we put a horse's skull under our floorboards because it improves the acoustics of the room when we're playing music or dancing. So apparently horse's skulls are great reverberators of noise. So Irish people would put horses skulls under the floorboards in their house. Then they'd make music, they'd have a ceilidh, they'd play instruments. People would get up and do Irish dancing and if you're dancing on the floorboards and there's horses skulls underneath it would make the sound of the dancing better and also they used to find multiple horses skulls like loads of them all underneath floorboards and it was like a sound system before amps were invented that the hollow spaces in a horse's skull works a bit like a microphone like have you ever seen those microphones

that aren't plugged in and don't have batteries? They're like children's microphones. You could buy them in a toy shop. There's no batteries. You don't plug them in and you speak into it and it just makes your voice a little bit louder. It resonates. Horses' skulls do that. So in the 1800s, the 1900s, the 20th century, if Irish people were dancing in a house or making music

they'd cover, they'd stuff the fucking ground with horses skulls and build floorboards over it and then your house would have the best sound and everyone would come over and make music. Now O'Sullivan didn't believe this. What O'Sullivan the folklorist in the

1930s, his conclusion was that no that's bullshit that's too nuts. There's no way that all these Irish people are putting horses skulls under their floorboards to improve the sound in the room. There has to be like a magical reason or a spiritual reason or these are middens these are spiritual middens like the Protestants were doing these are to ward off spirits. middens these are spiritual middens like the Protestants were doing these are to ward off spirits what's happened is the Irish have simply forgotten what that reason was and now they're telling themselves that it's to improve the sound and one theory is that if a Protestant plant or a colonizer lived in a cottage they put the horse's skull under the floorboard to ward off witches because horses could see ghosts. Then the Protestants would move out or they were burnt out.

Then a Catholic family would move in and simply notice that when you danced on a Protestant's floor, it sounded better. Then someone dug it up and said, there's a lot of horses' skulls down here that the Protestants left. Wonder what that's for. I don't know mad protestant cunts who cares but i tell you what when i play my accordion and bang my feet on this floor and when you dance it sounds unreal let's fill the place with horses skulls let's get as many horses skulls as we can and put them in the floorboards so we don't really know why but what we do know is that Irish people at some point maybe 200 years ago definitely started

stuffing their floorboards with horses skulls to make music to amplify the fucking room to turn your house into an instrument what it reminds me of is in like Mississippi in the deep south of America the blues players like people like Muddy Waters. Muddy Waters grew up he was a famous blues musician in America he grew up in a shack a wooden shack and his first guitar wasn't a guitar it was his house. He nailed a giant metal fucking wire to the outside of his house and played the wire like an instrument and his entire wooden house became like the body of this huge guitar and that's what this reminds me of and I looked into it more and there's a church in Wexford like 200 years ago and all underneath the altar was full of horses skullss. When the priest in Wexford

would give his sermons on this altar the skulls underneath would reverberate his words and act like a fucking amplifier. I found one instance in Kerry where horse's skulls were used really cleverly as a defensive mechanism. So there was a bridge and this little bridge was the only bridge in the town. So they stuffed the bridge with horses skulls underneath it. So if anyone walked over the bridge or especially the invading English came to this bridge the horses skulls amplified the sound of their footsteps so you'd hear if someone was coming over this bridge. This is why I think it's not supernatural, and it's actually literally horses' skulls being used as a sound amplifier.

Because it's also found in Scandinavia. It would appear that this is something we got from the Vikings. In Scandinavia, they found horse's skulls alongside acoustic pots so that would suggest that in Scandinavia horse's skulls weren't being used magically but were being used to improve the sound of music. So we probably got it from the Vikings. So back to my friend Benlin. As soon as I found this shit out I texted Benlin and I said I think I know why that horse's skull is underneath your floorboards and your gaff and I said to him was anyone in your family a musician and he's like yeah but my grandparents played the fiddle so that's what happened that's why there

was a horse's skull underneath Ben's floorboards that was probably put there in the 1930s and 1940s. His grandparents were Irish musicians who played the fiddle and they had friends over and they'd play the music and the friends would come over and people would dance on the floorboards and the horse's skull underneath made everything sound better. Why were there coins inside and bottle caps? why were there coins inside and bottle caps? Because that made it like a tambourine. Irish people used to put objects inside the horse's skull to make it rattle and shake. So if you can imagine doing Irish dancing,

because Irish dancing is all about tapping the feet and banging on the boards. So you're banging on the floorboards of this gaff in time with the music and the fiddle is playing and you've got multiple horses' skulls on the floorboards of this gaff in time with the music and the fiddle is playing and you've got multiple horses skulls underneath the floorboards with bottle caps and coins in there you're going to get a beautiful sound

it's going to sound like people banging a tambourine in time with the music and not only that it makes everything louder and sweeter so that's the mystery of the horses skull solved that we wouldn't know about if it wasn't for climate change. Because like I said, the only reason Benlin dug up the floorboards in his gaff is because the woodlice were coming out in November.

Because the woodlice, they thought it was April. And climate change is having this weird impact on archaeological discoveries. Like in America, riverbeds and reservoirs are drying up and they're finding loads of cars like people who were murdered by the mafia in the 50s and stuff. And in Ireland what's happening is

global warming and the hot summers are causing droughts and the lack of moisture in the soil is causing the soil to get tight. So ancient ring forts and patterns of buildings that were once there are now revealing themselves because of global warming. It's telling us about our history. I'm not saying it's a good thing.

I'm just saying it's a strange little consequence of what's happening. And if it wasn't for those wood lice coming out in November that horse's skull would still be there underneath the floorboards and no one would know about it but I just think that's so cool how fucking metal is that

how dark and badass is that in Ireland like a hundred years ago no one has fucking ago no one has fucking no one has speakers no one has CD players or vinyl or anything, if you want to hear music you have to call around

to the house that has the fucking the best musicians but the house that the musicians wanted to be in was the one that had the most horse skulls buried underneath the floorboards that was the house with the best sound system

with the natural reverberation of a horse's skull it's cool as fuck and I guarantee you some absolute hipster is going to hear this podcast and try and do a DJ set in a room full of horse skulls

I say go for it alright dog bless I'll catch you next week bury a frog rescue a woodlouse dance in a horse's head catch a witch in a bottle of piss I love you. 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. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.