Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 279 - Celtic Mythology

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

Get ready for a brain buster. Or at least prepare to witness my brain being busted. Celtic mythology is... tricky to understand. And no one understands perfectly because the source material is scarce.  A LOT has been written about Celtic mythology but so much of it is conjecture presented as fact. The ancient Celts themselves didn't write anything down. Their enemies did. As did the Catholic monks who came to island to conquer a people the Roman army could not. Today we familiarize ourselves with Ireland - land most associated with the Celts and find out why Ireland is most strongly associated with Celtic culture when Celtic tribes lived as far away as Asia Minor. Who were these people? What did they believe? Why don't we know more about them? And what the Hell is a Selkie, Spriggan, or a  Dullahan?  So much mystery and madness explored today. The Bad Magic Charity of the month is Love Thy Neighbor! We'll  be giving $15,500 to this Denver-area based 501(3c) nonprofit dedicated to working with local businesses to hand out free food to the homeless. They also give clothing, shoes, blankets, etc. Go to https://ltnsocks.com/Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OaGfE_5_55cMerch - https://badmagicmerch.com/  Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 10,000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcastSign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits

Celtic mythology. Wow. What a topic. I thought this one was going to break me a few times. From the Greeks to the Egyptians to the Vikings, we have jumped into this pond before. And today we're jumping back in and maybe to the deepest part where the water is the merchist. Mythology plays a fundamental role in any given society and generally rotates around narratives involving gods and goddesses, great heroes, the forces of evil, and sometimes also fairies. Celtic mythology is vast and strange and stretches back for many, many centuries. The Celts have some of the most bizarre myths that we've sucked so far.

Easily some of the hardest to pronounce names, Gaelic seems like it's closer to Klingon than to English. I thought Icelandic was my least favorite language to try and figure out. Now it has a very strong competitor. I'm gonna try my best with it today. And I'll try my best to explain this complicated mythology. It's extra tricky because Kelton mythology was documented and preserved only through word of mouth

by the Celts themselves. All the written accounts come from their enemies, conquerors and Christian missionaries, and they all had agendas other than just recording descriptions of the Celts and their beliefs at face value. We don't know how honest early chroniclers were when it came to describing old Celtic gods, creatures, and origin stories, but we're pretty confident they were definitely not totally honest.

However, at least they did record some of what the ancient Celts were up to. And you know, later, they didn't toss out all the Celtic records into the fire. So, we at least know a little bit about this ancient vast and mysterious culture. So, let's get mystical today, Midsack's, on an ancient deep dive on creatures, gods, goddesses, druids, naked warriors, and so much more addition of time suck.

This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Happy Monday Meet Sucks. Thanks for including me and your weekly plans. Thanks for just swinging by. If you're super interested about Celtic mythology, this is your first suck. I'm Dan Cummins, a suck master, Druid's apprentice, Selky Seeker, Gaelic Mangler, and you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, Praise Bebo Jangles, and Glory Be to Triple M. A couple announcements again this week,

of course, and then show. Symphony of Insanup dates for the spring of 22 start this week. I do not have any Celtic mythology jokes. I'll be weaving into the standup. I do have some stories people have been finding the music. January 20 to 22nd is the La Jolla comedy store. January 23rd at the West Hollywood comedy store and then Orlando Oklahoma City, Atlanta, Charlotte, Tempe, Mizzula, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, Davenport, Chicago, all coming up dates and tickets, all the links up at

Dancomans.tv and then later on, I'll announce a fall dates. Plank, plank, plank. The A-hole Air Banjo Academy is backed by popular demand, brand new colors for your newcomers, the Academy available in Army Green and Black for your appellation air plucking available now at badmagicmerch.com. So yeah, yeah, glad that's back in the store. Always brings up warm memories. You know, so so enjoy enjoy that one.

One more announcement of the script keeper. It's a big one. Zach Flannery has now left the suck. He was getting pretty burned out on the research and man, I get it. Research is not his passion, it is mine. He wanted to work here and he did a great job. He was not only researching, you know,

but trying to do it in a way that worked for me, not for him on top of other responsibilities here. Not an easy job. We love to have him on the team, but you know his heart has long been in making his own music, working on his own projects. And so I'm excited for him to give back out there, return to his own world, build up his own mythologies.

We're still gonna hear from him. He's launching his own scriptkeeper podcast here soon. I'll announce when he gives me more info on it. And he'll be doing more shows as a solo artist with his music and as part of sovereign citizen. And I'm excited to see what he's going to create truly. We thank him for his time here. We left on, I would seem to be great terms. And I wish him the best. So now, let's get right into the research. The may have been the straw that broke the scriptkeeper's back. Woo, he was telling me this was a rough one. He wasn't kidding. Celtic mythology. [♪ INTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

Uh, today no timeline. The dates are way too uncertain. Uh, so here's how I'm gonna lay it all out. First, we're gonna get to know a little bit about the island of Ireland where most of this information comes from. Uh, then we're gonna learn about the Celts themselves and then so much mythology. So many Celtic gods and goddesses, mythical heroes,

villains, weird ass creatures that populate the Celtic imagination, or at least a handful of them. Also gonna connect the dots from the rich tapestry of Irish myths to the rich history of Irish writers. We'll mention leprechauns, which are more folklore than mythology, but fuck it, they're fun to talk about. You'll hear about a salmon of knowledge eaten by a guy named Finn McCool. So, you know, that'll be interesting.

You'll meet banshees and fairies and vampires and so much more. It's gonna be weird, sometimes confusing, but also a lot of fun. So let's just get into it. Since the Celts get associated almost exclusively with the Irish by most people and because so much of this suck will take place in Ireland or at least some fantastical version of it, let's take a few minutes to familiarize or re-familiarize ourselves with the Emerald Isle.

Ireland is a country mostly known outside of Ireland for Lucky Charms cereal. It's most recognizable cultural export, and frankly, the only one of any real value. First mass produced in 1864, Lucky Charms was the first cereal in the world to include marshmallows, which had recently become a staple of Irish diet. During the great potato famine that lasted from 1845 to 1852,

a lot of Irish farmers started growing marshmallows. Technically a berry, marshmallow bushes can grow in almost any kind of soil and are not adversely affected by potato blight. Since they have almost zero nutritional value, around a million Irish people, you know, did still starve eating those marshmallows, but their sacrifices not in vain. While starving, they figured out that marshmallows are pretty goddamn tasty. And after tinkering around with recipe for a dozen years or so,

in 1864, Liam Finneas, Patrick Conner, Limerick McGregor, direct ancestor of the UFC fighter and most important person in Irish history, decided to design marshmallows into shapes that best represented the most important aspects of Irish culture. You may not know this, but Irish people love charms. God, they love a charm.

They won't shut the fuck up about them. Strong believers in magic, nothing will captivate a true Irishman or Irish woman like a fun charm. That's why all the marshmallows are called charms. There's heart charms said to give magical life to objects. There are star charms signifying the power of flight. Do you know that every year over 10,000 Irish people die trying to fly? There are clover charms which represent the power of luck. The Irish have long valued luck over work ethic, skilled or good morals.

Then there's the blue moon charm said to bestow the power of invisibility. This is very coveted because most Irish people are criminals and often need to hide. There's the rainbow charm that is supposed to give you the power to fucking teleport or something. Also included because Irish people, again, either all criminals or future criminals, and they often desire to escape quickly from the scenes of their many crimes. There's the red balloon charm symbolizing the power to float.

Why do Irish people want to float? Well, this is a nod to their history of fleeing Ireland for better places to live in ships. And they can't swim. Show me an Irish person who could swim. I all revealed to you a Scottish person pretending to be an Irish person for a gag. Finally, there's a unicorn charm, which is there simply because the Irish fucking love unicorns. Holy shit to the level. And they think they're real. A recent survey found that 99% of Irish people believe that unicorns were real and 67%

of them claim to either own or have ridden a unicorn at one point because over half of all Irish people are pathological liars. Take a, come on! Just goof around, just doing some goofs. That was not the real history of, you know, Lucky Charms or accurate information about the Irish. I just wanted to be ridiculous. And I feel comfortable going off since 23 and me says I'm 55.8% Irish and British. Don't love that they love those two, that they lump those two together,

but that's what happens with two nations that have historically not really cared for each other overall for centuries, have also spent a good deal of time fucking each other. Some truth admits all that slander. Lucky charm was really was the first serial to include marshmallows, not invented in Ireland. General Mills came up with that shit in Minnesota, 1964.

A man of Irish descent did develop them though, right? Irish American product developer, John Hoolhaan. He wanted to jazz up some Cheerio, Cheerio's type cereal, something reminiscent of circus peanuts, which were one of his favorite guilty pleasure snacks. And the charm descriptions were real, as far as what the things represent without the Irish lander. It's the most delicious cereal ever in the minute. There you go.

Now let's get to know a bit. I just want to lighten things up to kick things up. Let's get to know a bit about Ireland for real. Ireland is a country in Western Europe, occupying roughly five, six of the western most major island of the British Isles. Just over five million Irish men and women lived there today and around 40% of them residing in the greater Dublin area, the only true big city in Ireland. That city's old dockside neighborhoods, you know, gave way to new residential and commercial

developments. Dublin looks awesome. I want to visit someday. Very modern metropolis, Ireland's heart, the center of its education, arts and culture, administration and industry. As of 2018, the city was listed by the globalization and world city's research network as a global city with the ranking of Alpha Minus, which makes it one of the top 30 cities in the world. A lot of good tech, medical jobs, and more there.

Next biggest city in the Republic of Ireland is Cork, with the metro area population of much less, around 300,000, handsome cathedral city in port. After that, we dropped down to Limerick with the metro population of only around 160,000. Limerick is mostly known for dirty, dirty poems. There was once a man from NIN, Tucket, and he was apparently very well in doubt,

and I'm not gonna finish that, you know, because I find it to be a very profane and body verse, and this is the clean family-friendly show. I'm proud of. I'm like, not today, devil, oh my heck. No one knows for certain the connection between short, often dirty, humorous poems in this city, actually. But there is thought to be, of course, some connection. What a small city it is.

Cordelay and Idaho, where I live, where the show has been recorded right now, metro population of around 170,000. And most people I know would not consider Cordillane a city, a town. I love it here, but it doesn't feel like a city to me. Crazy to me, that it's about the same size as Ireland's third largest city. I've heard from a variety of people that Ireland was pretty rural. Did not know it was that rural until this episode. Most Ireland is farm or ranch land, about 62% of Ireland's total land area used for agriculture. Beef and milk production account for around two thirds of Ireland's agricultural output. Lot of cows, lots of sheep's. 2020, there were 7.3 million cattle, 5.5 million sheep, 1.6 million pigs,

almost 16.5 million chickens on Irish farms. Well, poultry. I shouldn't have assumed that's going to be chickens. No disrespect to turkeys. More cows and more sheep than people. A lot more poultry than people, and a pig for every three people. And again, that's not what I expected. For an urban versus rural comparison, as far as composition, England next door, about twice as big as Ireland, geographically 50,301 square miles to 27,133 square miles, but has over 11 times the population with about 56 million people. Another interesting fact about Ireland's population is that unlike almost every other nation on earth, Ireland's population, as far as people, much smaller than it was nearly two centuries ago, pre the Great Famine in 1844, due to

all that potato blight, the nation was estimated to have 8.4 million people. Then population declined pretty steadily. Thanks to starvation and a mass exodus until the turn of the century, then it continued to drop further at a less drastic rate until 1961 when just 2.8 million people lived there. That's a huge drop. 8.4 million to 2.8 million. So many of those people immigrated to America estimated that as many as 4.5 million Irish arrived in America, that's a gigantic percentage, you know, their population between 18, 28, 19, 30, about half of them were just like, fuck it. Let's go to America.

Today more than 31.5 million Americans claim Irish ancestry second only to German at 43 million, 23 out of our 46 presidents claim Irish ancestry or have claimed, you know, they don't claim it currently because you know, most of them are dead. You get it. Started around 1960, Ireland's dwindling population did begin to bounce back and it started steadily climbing back and it's had healthy growth in recent years. They no longer are nation so economically and dieterially reliant on taters. In 1850 over 820,000 acres of Irish farmland dedicated to taters.

Now just over 22,000 acres use, right? They've chilled way the fuck out on tater tots. The world can now rely on Idaho for its shepherd pie production needs. Potatoes do grow well in the Irish climate and soil, just before the famine nearly half of Ireland's population relied, quote, almost exclusively on potatoes for their diets. Quintets won academic source and the other half eight potatoes frequently. Goddamn, that's crazy. I love potatoes. I live in the state of grown up in the state most associated with

taters in America. If not the whole world now. And that is that's too many fucking potatoes. Right? Like most most of your diet, they must have felt so sluggish and tired all the time with all that starch. Modern Ireland has a lot more to offer than livestock and taters. They become a huge global player in the world of information and communications technology. Ireland exports the second most jobs into that industry of any nation in the world. Aviation been booming as well. Numerous large aviation companies build in planes for the rest of the world. Thanks largely to recent growth, the construction industry also has boomed.

In 2021, Ireland had the fifth fastest growing economy in the world. So, times have gotten a lot better in recent years. Let's go over some geographical information now. The island, just over 5 million people a day, separated from Britain, as distances range from only 12 miles to around 120 miles. Ireland like Great Britain lies on the European continental shelf surrounded by seas that are generally less than 650 feet deep. Greatest distance from north to south, 302 miles in the island from east to west, 171 miles. So it's not, I mean it's big, but it's not a gigantic

island. The territory of the Republic consists of a broad and rippling central plane with limestone just under the surface. This plane ringed almost completely by coastal highlands, which very considerably in geologic structure. Beautiful, these highlands. The flatness of the central lowland, which lies for the most part between 204-100 feet above sea level, raises up to 600 and and then a thousand feet in elevation. Sometimes in dramatic and scenic cliff fashion,

in many places covered by low hills. The lowland scenic with numerous lakes, low ridges, large boggy areas, perfect for strange mythological creatures to roam about in. The principal mountain ranges are the blue stack mountains in the north, the Wicklow Mountains in the east. Now, there's a few minor mountain ranges such as the McGillicutdies, McGillicutdies wreaks in the southwest and the 12 pins in the west

McGillicutdies wreaks, that's a fucking great name by the way, rise to the highest point in the Republic to an elevation of 3,414 feet Not as mountainous as I expected. At least not compared to you know Not as mountainous compared to you know places in not compared to, you know, not as mountainous compared to places in the U.S. Like numerous peaks just here in Idaho and not America's most mountainous state by far rise to over 12,000 feet. Islands climate is classified as Western maritime. I would also classify it as fuck.

Is it cloudy and raining again? Seattle or San Francisco-ish weather. Rarely warm enough for my liking. I love a hot summer day. Also rarely cold enough to kill you quickly. Currents and weather systems generated by the North Atlantic Ocean directly dictate how a lot of shit goes down the island weather wise. As it sits no more than 70 miles from any island or inland, excuse me, location. Temperature pretty uniform across the island. or inland, excuse me, location. Temperature pretty uniform across the island. The average temperature lies mainly between four degrees Celsius, slash 39 degrees Fahrenheit, and seven degrees Celsius, slash 45 degrees Fahrenheit

in January and February, coldest months of the year. On July and August, the warmest months, temperatures usually range between 14 degrees Celsius, 57 degrees Fahrenheit, and 16 degrees Celsius, 61 degrees Fahrenheit, although occasionally considerably higher readings are recorded. Highest temperature ever recorded, 33.3 Celsius 92 Fahrenheit, logged at Kilkenny Castle way back in June of 1887. So it doesn't get close to 100 degrees there ever. Not that close. The coldest negative 19 degrees Celsius, negative two degrees Fahrenheit at

Markree Castle back in January of 1881. The weather was wilder over there in the 19th century. Also rains a lot. Along wondered why the emerald isle, so damn green. And the main reason not surprisingly, you know, is shit. Literally fertilizer. Common custom in Ireland to shit outside. Only one in 20 homes have toilets and they're generally only used by the week and or the elderly. It's frowned upon. Looked at as a sign of poor character

to pop a squat on the jacks, aka the toilet. Everyone else is expected to do their part, you know, and feed the yard as they call it over there. Irish people like to feed the yard. Wait, I might be confusing the Ireland with Poland right now, or maybe I'm just making up strange insanity from my own amusement. Yeah, no, that's the last one.

Oh, no, the reason Ireland is so green is either magic or the weather. Probably weather, almost never gets real real hot. The kind of heat wave that would kill grass and shrubs, et cetera, and it rains quite a bit. Good for making grass, you know, the bells of Ireland, clovers, and all that stuff, et cetera. And it rains quite a bit, good for making grass, the bells of Ireland, clovers, and all that stuff, real green.

In the south, in the east of the country, it rains about 150 days a year, while the west coast gets about 225 days a year of rain. And that rain is rarely torrential, usually mild, but still has a lot of fucking rain. It's a lot of rainy days. That much rain, plus very little heat, plus not getting too cold, you know,

doesn't average below freezing temperatures during even the coldest months of year, plus good soil equals a green-ass place. And it gets pretty foggy, and a lot of places in Ireland as well, which keeps things looking green as, you know, a bit magical. Some places to get around a hundred days of fog a year,

not all day fog, but still, that's quite a bit fog. I have to wonder if this weather helped lead the country, you know, to having so many great authors per capita. Overall, much more of a, stay inside. Have a hearty stew, maybe read or write a book kind of place. As opposed to a, let's grab a sunscreen, and then run down to the beach kind of place. Not a lot of good, uh, suntan of beaches in Ireland.

I googled best beaches in Ireland, and Google just said we didn't find any criteria matching your search. So then I googled best places to see a lot of Irish women in bikinis, and a lot of photos of Miami came up. Joking, of course, but it is not a nation known for bikini weather, but it is beautiful. If you really wanna do an internet search,

type out most beautiful places in Ireland, and be amazed. A lot of photos are so fucking green they seem photoshopped. They seem like they have filters on them. It's too lush looking. Never been to Ireland sadly but Lindsay has. A lot of my friends have and they said it is that green. It is that gorgeous.

Some of these states and the castles on them are ridiculous. Like the care castle, the rock of castle, the tipperary, or Ross castle in Kerry. Every time I see the word tipperary, I don't know what you guys, but it reminds me my favorite song of all time. I'm sure you've heard it. The British Army song, it's a long way to tipperary. This is a real treat. You have to hear it.

It's so good. It's a long way to tipperary. It's a long way to go. It's a long way to tipperary. To the sweetest girl I know. Little bit more. Good bye, Piccadilly. Yeah. Farewell, Lester Square. I pick a daily Yeah I

It's a long long way to Tipper I'm sure it's my heart's right there God they don't still make songs like that. Yeah anymore do they just don't they just don't make them like they used to Thank fucking God Holy shit. I hate that kind of music that old kind of a marching band style, old timey stuff. I would rather have someone to fucking jam pencils in both my ears, just fucking make me deaf

for the rest of my life. Then I have to hear that song I'm gonna repeat for, I don't know, even a month. Anyway, there are a lot of castles. There are over 30,000 castles in Castle Roans around Ireland. I looked that up in multiple sources because I was like, get the fuck out of here.

That's too many. Man, apparently it's true. When you count all the little ones and you count the ruins, there's so many castles plus morning fog, plus so much green, plus gorgeous surreal looking seaside cliffs and many places,

plus all the folklore and mystical associations with Celtic culture, it gives Ireland a real enchanted vibe. Good place to build some strange creature lore. Can't wait to get to that part of the show. First a bit more on the history of Ireland. Look at who the Keltwerksons will be exploring their mythology. Ireland is mostly associated with Keltwerks and culture. A lot of other people settled there over the years. Ireland has long had its own culture. It's also been ruled by foreign invaders for much of its written history.

The Keltwerks thought to have showed up in Ireland, sometimes during the fourth century BCE, before then, the first evidence of human presence goes back at least as far as 33,000 years. And we don't know for sure who those original wildfuckers were. Maybe Leiparkans, maybe Selkies, maybe Spriggins, probably Fomorians. By as early as the first century CE,

Ireland entered a historical Celtic phase known as Gaelic Ireland. Before the Norman invasion of 1169, all of Ireland was culturally and politically Gaelic, which means of a relating to the Gales, and especially the Celtic Highlanders of Scotland. Culturally Ireland, parts of Scotland are pretty closely related. There's a shared root between the native language of Ireland Irish and the native language of the Scottish Highlands, Scots G Galic, both of which are part of the Goedetic family of languages. It came from Celtic people who settled in both Ireland and

Scotland. Doesn't mean that the Irish and Scottish are genetically super similar though. There's a lot of similarities of course, but the Irish also share a lot of similarities with the English, the Welsh. Other people, because of all the different people mixing into the area over the years. As I went over in an episode on the IRA, suck 74 way back, figure out who's genetically related to who in the UK is a pretty murky affair. The Celtic people, one of several ancient peoples and there was a variety, even amongst the Celts,

never truly had a cohesive kingdom in Ireland. They were a loose, a malgum of tribes, communities, and disparate groups that came together for shared purposes such as defense, worship, trading, and hunting. These tribes almost had their culture disrupted or destroyed by the Romans in the first century CE. And 82 CE, Rome's military governor and Britain

turned his attention to Ireland briefly. He defeated England's Queen, Budica, Celtic Queen and 61CE, and then continued to subdue the entire nation, bringing under Roman rule. But then he had to deal with the mutiny within his own army and a Scottish rebellion once he'd subdue to picked up rising in Scotland. He was recalled to Rome, and the Romans never came back to Ireland, not militarily. But they did disrupt the culture through the new religion of Rome. They did a little bit of a cultural takeover. Christianity showed up in the mid-5th century.

Following the arrival of the British Roman missionary, St. Patrick and some other missionaries, you know, 4th century, then the arrival of the, you know, of other Christian missionaries in the early-demand 5th century CE, Christianity took over, the indigenous religions of the aisle, the Celtic Druids were on their way out. Christianity began replacing and absorbing old pagan and Celtic traditions and beliefs heavily by the year 600 CE said that by some historians that Catholicism was able to take over as the dominant religion on the island following a mass killing of Druids the religious leaders of the Gales and I don't believe it. Get out of here. There's no way that happened

if there's one thing I know about the history of the Catholic Church in Europe, it's that it's very peaceful. I don't think they ever killed anyone. Even with Christianity's newfound prominence, traces of Celtic culture remained. Ireland's national symbol to Shamrock, green, three-pronged leaf represents the Holy Trinity of Catholic tradition. Father the son of the Holy Spirit. The Celtic Cross represents the regions you need take on the Catholic Cross, cross after the Catholics the Viking showed up another very peaceful group those guys you know known mostly for being polite being pacifists at the end of the 8th century during the 9th century Vikings from we know we know we now call now calls Scandinavia began to invade rape and plunder and gradually settle into and mix with Irish society the Viking settled in what became Ireland's capital city started in 841 CE. By the early 11th century, almost all the Vikings in Ireland had either been culturally absorbed or kicked out. After that, there was the Norman evasions

that began in Ireland in 1169. Large swaths of Ireland came under the control of Norman Lords, leading the centuries of conflict with the Galic Irish. The King England claimed sovereignty over the island as a whole, but it would take centuries for England to bring all of Ireland under control. On 1542, Henry VIII of England declared himself King of Ireland and the English doubled down on their efforts to conquer the island. By 1607 Ireland was fully under English control, bringing the old Gaelic political and social order

completely to an end. And then in 1798 Ireland freed itself, briefly, very briefly, just three years later, in 1801, England brought them back in, Ireland formally incorporated into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. And that nation lived under that name until 1922. Ireland wouldn't fully truly, or wouldn't finally truly be fully completely independent

until the Republic Act of April 18, 1949. Not that long ago. Okay. So now let me know some, you know, a little bit about Irish history, lay the land there. Let's go back further to meet the OG Celts. They didn't start out in Ireland. They made it there many, many centuries after their culture and language formed. Ireland likely the last place, they settled actually.

And then because of its distance from Rome and other conquerors from mainland Europe, Celtic culture got to hide out and stick around the longest there. One of the earliest references to the ancient Celts comes from former Suck subject Alexander the Great, who met some Celts from the Alps, region of Europe. Way back in 335 BCE, he was resting after a battle on the banks of the Danube River. He'd never seen such tall fierce-looking warriors with golden neck rings, colorful cloaks. One of many historical, contemporary counts of the Celts being tall, muscular, and just fierce-looking Alexander feasts with them, asked them what they feared the most at one point,

and it was written that they laughed, said they feared nothing at all. He believed them, and he didn't even stick away from after hearing that. That's a scary dude who fears nothing, but I don't think Alexander feared much either. Where did they come from? No one knows, not exactly where the Keltz came from. Perfect for a story about their mythology, right? More mystery.

The oldest possible even probable Keltz settlement uncovered by archaeologists lies in the little 900 person lakeside village of Halstead, Austria. Founded sometime between the 12th or sometime around, excuse me, the 12th century BCE, and they were probably Celtic. Not everyone's convinced that the Halstat culture was Celtic. And the Halstat was, you know, ground zero for Celtic culture. Celtic or not, but probably Celtic.

Halstat was founded because of rich natural resources. And salt mines, also mine copper, then tin nearby, and then we trade, you know, to outline regions, salt huge back then, used to preserve meat, so it would keep over the winter, also one of the oldest known forms of currency on earth. Salt crystals, been harvested in China, as early as 6,000 BCE. And the term salary actually derived

from the Latin term, salarium, which means salt money. I mentioned that before in that episode, not sure which one. Maybe the Alexander the Great, so. Too bad today's money, isn't so tasty. It'd be super cool if you could like grind down a dollar, or a quarter, and just some fucking seasoning, if you wanted to, and enhance some casserole flavor

with some nickel or penny shavings. Copper and tin, also mined by early Celts and Halstot. Oh yeah, both to forge bronze for weapons, tools, et cetera. Whether or not Halstead was truly Celtic by Alexander the Great's time, Celtic people were definitely in Europe and had been for centuries. Spread out from Asia, minor, and the East, present-day Western Turkey, to the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal, and the Atlantic Isles of Britain and Ireland in the West. They were at their height geographically at least the largest group of people to inhabit

ancient Europe. Hard to trace a lot of their migration with any degree of certainty, but they seem to have spread out from the Alps. They didn't have, they didn't leave, they didn't leave me notes behind to give us 100% certainty, you know, exactly what, what they're spread and tailed. Hello future knowledge seeker. My name is Colleen, Colleen, Redpelt. I am Kelt person. My, my people lived here in this dirt mound place in 1034 BCE before I die. I mean, right now, I'm not dead, but someday

I'll be dead. And then maybe you read this. My parents were cave people. We were thus first selves to live here. Hope this helps. Hope whoever reading has medicine and AC and showers. Seems nice. Life for us now sucks. Archaeologists, linguistic historians, other scholars had determined that the cult spoke their own language,

but did not have their own complex writing system. Leave it to any good notes or any books or history, there are people or anything, almost all of what we know about them, written by enemies or conquerors. So, we'll never be able to completely separate facts from propaganda. Kelt's also not a unified group, which makes pinning down exactly what went on with them hard as well. There were hundreds of independent tribes who shared genetics and language, but not a big

unified empire. Never developed to that point or to the point that they built big cities or monuments either, not like so many other cultures like say the Greeks or Romans did. I think a stonehenge when I think of a big Celtic monument, even though it's not that big actually, and though it wasn't actually built by the Celts, long thought to be, but now archaeologists think it was built before the Celts showed up in England by an unknown group of people Maybe those from orians, right? Maybe leprechaun. Well when someone describes something is Celtic today They generally referring to something connected with the people and culture of the six modern Celtic nations Ireland Scotland Wales Cornwall Brittany and the Isle of Man

Historic Celtic groups of Celts, or Celts, included the Gauls, Celtiberians, Galatians, or excuse me, Galatians, Galatians, Britons, Gales, and their offshoots. Today their legacy is most prominent in Ireland, of course, and also great Britain, especially in Wales, Scotland. Cornwall, we're traces of their language and cultures still exist. are there other Celtic parts of the world? Depends on who you ask. Something there could be a seventh, even eighth Celtic nation.

These aren't, of course, real nations like political, separate entities today, but just what are referred to as Celtic nations. The potential seventh is Galicia, in Northwest corner of Spain. Galicia has a strong Celtic identity, including stone circles and forts and use of bagpipes in local music. Oh, the bagpipe. Ha ha!

The devil's accordion. The bagpipe is the rare instrument. The sound's just as good when played by someone with literally no musical training at all, as it does when being played by the world's best bagpipe player. Not really kidding, in my opinion. Here's a clip of Jack Lee, one of the best bagpipe players in the world. This is from 2006. It's a world champion, literally, they have world championships for bagpipe.

He's a world champion in the bagpipe. And here's how he sounds. Okay. So that's really, really, really good backpipe. Now, here's a dude on a street corner in Italy, who I think is drunk. And from a video label just worst bagpipe, bagpipe player ever. I mean, I know the first guy knows a lot more about what he's doing, but I find neither song, uh, please into my ear. Sorry, back by blivers. All six of you.

Unlike the previous six Celtic nations, no Celtic languages have been spoken in Galicia since the Middle Ages. Northern Portugal might be the eighth Celtic nation as it has cultural traits similar to Galicia. In the sense that there is a Celtic identity, but no Celtic language has continued into modern times there either. The Celtic League is in charge of who makes the rules as to who is a Celtic nation and who isn't. And they only recognize the first six nations and who the fuck is a Celtic League.

Unfortunately, they are not something akin to the Justice League, not a group of superheroes. Well, it happened to have Celtic origins, it's not like, you know, Selky Lady and, you know, Fairy Man. The Real Celtic League founded at a music festival of all places, 1961, group of several individuals, very serious about Celtic culture. From their website, the League was founded by Celtic Nationalists

who saw the need for an Inter-Celtic organization with a political dimension in order to make the peoples of all Celtic nations more aware of their commonality in terms of their language history and culture to further the Celtic nations right to independence and to promote the benefits of inter-celtic cooperation and it does not seem like that fight is going very well for this group at least. It doesn't seem like many more people have joined since that initial music festival 1961. The website doesn't look like it's been given a refresh in about 15 years.

They're official YouTube channel, but now for many years has 319 subscribers. So if you're serious about helping Celtic nationalists, further the rights of Celtic independence, you're gonna wanna find these guys, you're gonna help them out. You're gonna wanna like and subscribe. They're gonna have a hell of a time pulling off any kind of revolution with a couple hundred people who based on the subjects of their videos are mostly retired and long retired.

It's an older group. What do we know about the ancient Celts from the Celtic League nations and elsewhere? Each tribe had a warrior king, a religious center, typically lived in and around a hill fort. Clustered around the hill fort were burial mounds starting somewhere between the six and ninth century BCE. The Celtic culture seems to have started to become higher, higher, oh man.

Seem to develop a hierarchy. That word, higher, hierarchical. I admit that's right. And the elites would be buried into these big two mounds with a lot more jewelry, bronze, gold, ivory, and jewels than the comic folk had. We meet sacks of long love, shiny shit. And the Celts made some really nice shiny shit.

A elaborate Celtic designs and artifacts crafted from gold, silver, precious gemstones, a major part of museum collections throughout Europe and North America now. And replicas worn by all kinds of people around the world today. And I would say more of those people believe in stuff like wood nymphs, gnomes, and fairies than people who don't wear kelta jewelry. Many of these items have been excavated from ancient kelta kill forts, burial mounds, cross Europe, remnants of clothing have also been recovered.

Ancient kelts famous for their colorful wool textiles, four runners of the famous Scottish tartan. And while only a few tantalizing scraps of these textiles survived over the centuries, historians believe that the kelts also one of the first Europeans Europeans people, if not the first, to wear pants. One famous example of a burial man where lots of shining, another cool Celtic stuff was found is in the small village of Hothdord, Germany. We'll watch a game of Thrones again and I just want to say Hodor.

Hodor. Hodor. Only Game of Thrones fans will understand what I'm doing right now. But the small village of Hothdord, Germany, and it held the remains of a Celtic Chieftain and a shithon of artifacts pointing to a complex and stratified Celtic society. The Hodor, Hodor, Hodor, Chieftains. The Haftor Chieftains mound dates from approximately 530 BCE, what archaeologists call the late Hallstatt period, when Celtic

culture was concentrated in central Europe. Chieftain laid out on a long bronze couch with wheels, dressed in gold finery, including the traditional Celtic neck band called a torque. He was surrounded by ornate drinking horns, large bronze cauldron, which still held the remains of a high-proof honey meat. That's pretty cool, you know, the meat remnants lasted that long. I have tried honey meatad a few times, even some honeymead based on ancient recipes,

and having a real hard time getting into it. It's very sweet. The drinking equipment points to the critical role of feasting as a sociopolitical tool to the salt, salt, keels, Jesus Christ. I should have just changed, I know it's keels, but my brain has been trained my whole life to CSC and then an E and be like,

SAH, not KAH. What the Greeks and Romans described as excessive drinking was actually a way for Kelt to go leads to strengthen ties with allies and that continued into the great beyond. Hell yeah, getting fucked up with people is a great way to strengthen social ties, right? That's never stopped in human society.

Was then is now. I never did any more bonding with the group of people in my life than I did with my old college buddies. And we bonded mostly by getting fucked up together all the time. I bet those killed drinking parties were wild. A lot of singing, a lot of hugging, a lot of laughing, quite a bit of fighting, probably a lot of fucking. Warriors were also buried with bridal tackles, slashing swords used for fighting on horseback. Based on this, they clearly had some sort of cavalry, and they had horse-tron wagons. Got to carry that salt around for trade. By 600 BCE, they were trading with a lot of the Greeks and other early people around

the North Mediterranean. The earliest known mention of the Celts is from a Greek writer from 517 BCE, referred to as the Keltoy, an ancient Greek for the Tall On ones. It's from that word that we get the word Kelt and these tall ones maybe could have kicked a lot of Greek ass, maybe could have then taken down the Roman Empire if they would have ever unified. But not only did they not do that, they also fought each other as enthusiastically and fiercely as they fought non-Kelts, legendarily fierce fighters. They believed in reincarnation, that they would be reborn to live and feast and fight again on earth if they died in battle, and it stopped that this for sure contributed to the reputation for fearlessness.

And that is scary, right? I don't want to fight anyone to the death, not at this moment anyway. But if I do have to fight someone to the death, I would prefer not to fight someone who is so confident that they'll just be reborn, right? If they die in battle that they just don't fucking care about dying. Some of them also fought naked. That freaked out a lot of their opponents, I bet. Reminds me of the berserkers.

We learned about back in suck 135 on the Vikings. Extra level of intimidation. Some guy who wants to kill you, some tall, muscled, fierce-looking guy. Some big, long sword, battle axe, is running at you with his dick and balls flopping around. Extra intimidating, if he has a boner, everyone fears the war boner. Bojangles, just whimpered, right? Bojangles fears almost nothing.

War boner makes a nervous hell. The kinds of weapons and the battle techniques used by the Celts varied quite a bit from tribe to tribe. One group of Keltz thought to have invented chain mail. The signature armor of medieval Europe, right? That classic medieval armor rusty masses of metal were found in some Celtic graves dating back to as far as 400 BCE and they were identified as being the remains of old chain mail. Also regarding Celtic fighting, ancient Celtic warriors loved to cut a mother

fucker's head off. God, they loved to head. The greatest trophy in ancient Celtic warrior could possess was the severed head of their enemy. They would sometimes preserve these heads and jars of cedar oil, take them out, show them to fellow warriors, other guests, etc. Right? Make yourself at home. Let me go grab you some meat and now pull some new human heads out of jars for you to gaze upon. You know later, this guy's wife checking with him. How was Brennist year? Did you have fun looking at all those heads

and keeps in jars? God, I love how like what is so normal in one culture, not only normal, but a point of pride can be completely barbaric, be considered evil even in another culture, in another place in time. Right back in some ancient Celtic village, dude, welcome to his house, shows you a bunch of jars he has heads in.

He can be the nicest, coolest dude in town. Everyone loves guys. He's great dad. He's a solid warrior, doding husband, so many jars full of cool heads. Guy today shows you his jar of heads collection. You need to fucking attack him or flee immediately. Whichever option gives you the best chance at survival, because he's a fucking serial killer. Because these Celts were so feared in battle, because

he didn't gather themselves into one big Celtic army, they were often hired as mercenaries by foreign rulers, great reputations as being intimidating mercenaries. In addition to warriors, the orange is all warriors. They also had skilled craftsmen making their jewelry art valued in their society and the people who could make it highly. Weapons, utensils, other tools being made, they had barred storytellers, great myth makers, they were very valued, poets who developed their mythology

before they ever put anything to paper or stone long before and boy did they ever develop some stories. And do their stories wreak of an oral tradition to paper or stone long before, and boy did they ever develop some stories. And do their stories reek of an oral tradition, and you don't ever write shit down for centuries, and you never use an editor. Your stories can get a little hard to follow. The upcoming mythology has so much, what the fuck is happening right now in it? The Celtic Barge was saying of the great deeds of dead heroes and warrior kings share tales of fantastical beast

makes me think of the Oh my gosh. Why am I just bringing this up randomly the the witcher toss a coin to you which a of all you plenty you know talking about That's his bar to make me think of but anyway, yeah, just share all these green of great great deeds Also with crafty no new songs about current warrior kings, et cetera. We sometimes not always nice songs about the current warrior kings.

The barge would mock those alive or dead, who they considered cowardly or incompetent. That's suck. You know, I'm gonna do the chief warrior. Your own barge is just singing songs like, oh, here is the tale of the warrior king Aiden In his jaws our heads full of pagans or are they? Or does he have extra honey to help him wash down his mead?

Does he keep his balls in them and take them out Only when his wife wants to breed. The warrior king fights from the back of his flock. He's never naked for the enemy would laugh at the size of his cock and then you'll find the keys and he's like, ah, that's enough. Okay. Alright, Bart Sweeney, that's quite enough, singing for tonight. How about we go back to the drawing board with that one?

I'd like you to work on the melody a little bit. I'd like you to work on the lyrics a lot, not a fan. Kelt's also had those druids. They're priests to become a druid. One didn't have to be high born or anything. You just had to be really good at memorizing shit. Yet, we willing to train for several years, memorizing who the gods of old were,

what they did, the old heroes, what rituals were required to worship them and so much more, seems like the number one criteria for being a druid really was having a good memory right ancient Celtics assigned to druids healers teachers politicians in a sense judges uh... their equivalent of the excuse me of scientists had remembered everything not writing the shit down

uh... they were immensely respected according to old legends they can walk out into battle into the middle of fighting and not be touched. They could stop fighting between two warring tribes of Celts. No one fucked with the druids, except of course with the Romans and anyone not a Celts. Those other people fucked them a whole bunch and, you know, killed a shit ton of them.

But not the Celts. Celtic warriors would be too worried about incurring the wrath of the gods to risk hurting or disobeying them. Maybe. Maybe in all this, of course, right again. a lot of what we know about the Celts outside of what has been founded archeological digs comes from what other cultures thought, the cultures who fought them. Mainly the Romans, Roman Empire, who would destroy and or absorb most of the

Celtic tribes in mainland Europe, referred to the Celts as Gali, meaning barbarians. They called a lot of people barbarians. They didn't know you, and they didn't like the way you talked. You looked a little rough. Well, you're fucking barbarian. Most of the Celts eventually lost a Rome, but they did give them a lot of trouble for the went down. The following account seems to be believed by most historians. The story of a fearless Celtic warlord named Brennis, and his invasion, is told by a number of Roman historians. But they were writing about it centuries after the fact drawing on earlier original sources no longer in existence. And something, Brennus is the mythological character, propaganda figure used to rally future Romans against the barbaric horde.

We have to kill them before they sack us again like Brennus, you know, like that kind of shit. But he could have been real, real tough motherfucker. If true in 387 BCE, Brennus annihilated a Roman army, then finally sacked Pillage Rome, even put most of the Roman Senate to the sword. You know, after he and his army kicked a shit out of several other cities on their path Rome, he would then hold Rome collectively hostage, you know, captive for several months before collecting a heavy ransom and then bound it. Brennys is famous for his repeated saying, whoa, to the vanquished.

Noice! Brennys the Sack of Rome was the whoa, to the vanquished, noise. Brennist of Saccharon was the only time, it ate 100 years. If it happened that the city was occupied by a non-Roman army before the fall of the city to the Visigoths in 410 CE. Brennist was the warrior king of the Sonones, Godlish for the ancient ones. And prior to Brennist, this tribe of Celts had settled

on the coast of the Adriatic Sea in present-day Italy. Do East Florence, having traveled down from the Alps due to either their love of wine and warmer weather, or because Gal, they felt was just too overcrowded due to various historical accounts. I hope the wine story is true. I hope it tastes of wine for the first time and they're like, this shit is delicious! Oh man, check out that beach too! Oh, hot damn. I love good grape. I love good bikini more of this That's uh, let's let's fucking pillage this shit The Romans of clash with the Celts often beginning with the reign of Julius Caesar in the first century BCE The Romans launched a massive military campaign against Celts killing them by the tens of thousands Destroying their culture in much of mainland Europe fucking Rome

There could have been so many more leprechauns and selkes and a shit of Romans, you know, heading to driven them all much of mainland Europe, fucking Rome. There could have been so many more leprechauns and selkes and a shit of Romans, you know, hadn't driven them all out of mainland Europe. Julius Caesar embarked on the nine-year Gallic wars to defeat the Celts and various other tribal kingdoms in Gaul, modern-day France. Caesar wrote about the conquest of Gaul with a mix of disgust and respect for his Celtic enemies. And his account called commentaries on the Gallic war, a firsthand account slash propaganda piece on nine yearsic war, a first-hand account slash propaganda piece on nine years of fighting there. A lot of what we know about the ancient Celts, you know, in mainland Europe, comes from Caesar. He wrote a lot about the practices of their druids, for example,

more on that in a bit. Caesar's Roman armies would attempt an invasion of Britain, but were unsuccessful and nasty Celtic people, either those who had already settled there or been pushed there by Roman advances, we're able to establish a homeland. Had Rome pushed farther west, Ireland would likely not be so associated with Celtic heritage like it is today or associated with it at all. Other Celts who didn't make it to the British Isles did establish small pockets of Celtic life in mainland Europe like tribes of the Galatians. The Galatians occupied much of the area of what is now northern Spain.

Now, they successfully fought off attempt in invasions by both the Romans and the Moors. The latter ruling much of present day southern Spain. Evidence of Galatian tradition remains in the region today. Descendants of the Galatians still participate in ancient outdoor dances accompanied by backpipes. More of this! Yeah! Ah, so weak! That's an instrument often associated with more well-known Celtic regions, such as Scotland and Ireland. In addition, a Celtic symbol called the Cruz de la Victoria, the victory cross similar to a Celtic cross adorned a regional flag there.

The Galatians, as we've discussed, also settled in nearby Galicia, a region in the northwest coast of Spain. And yes, those familiar with the Bible, the Celtic Galatians, are people the Apostle Paul wrote a letter to in the first century CE, and many were converted to Christianity in the first two century CE. TRIVES OF BRITANS AND GALLS, settled in the northwestern corner of present-day France, the region known today as Brittany. Celtic traditions survived in this region, as it was geographically isolated from the rest of France. Many festivals and events still held today, can trace origins to ancient Celtic times. Many of the French Britons also wear traditional Celtic hats, called Quas. Roughly one quarter of the region's residents can speak

Britain, a Celtic language similar to Welsh. Although Caesar's invasion of Britain was unsuccessful, the Romans did eventually mount a successful attack against the Britons following Caesar's murder in the first century CE. This incursion effectively pushed the Britons on the island west to Wales and Cornwall north to Scotland. In fact, the Romans built Hadrian's wall, remnants of which still stand today near what

is now the border between England and Scotland in 120 CE. The wall designed to protect the conquering Roman settlers from the Celts, who fled north. Neither the Romans nor the Anglo-Saxons who took what is now England from the Romans in the fifth century CE were able to successfully invade Ireland It's enabled the Celtic tribes and it settled there to survive the longest it allowed their culture to flourish the longest And that allowed a bunch of crazy fucking stories to come around as we'll soon see After the Roman conquest of most of the other Celtic lands Celticic culture was further trampled by Germanic tribes, Slavs and Huns during the migration period of roughly 300-600 sea.

As a result, few, if any people live in a mainland Europe and the British Isles south or outside, excuse me, of Ireland, the Isle of Man and a few other smaller islands identified as Celts until the 1700s. When the Welsh-Linguished and scholar Edward Lloyd recognized the similarities between languages like Welsh, Irish, Cornish, the now extinct, Gawlish and labeled them Celtic. Head Ireland and those few other smaller islands not held strong, a lot more of a Celtic culture

in tradition would have been lost to history. All right, now let's talk more about Celtic religion. Right after today's sponsor break. Okay, now we're ready to dive back in, talk about Celtic religion. Celtic religion was closely tied to the natural world and they worshiped their pantheon of gods in what they called sacred places like lakes, rivers,

cliffs and bushes, very much a woodsy, crunchy, outdoorsy religion. The Celts were like ancient Vermont hippies. If those hippies were not chilling out in the woods, loved to head over to New Hampshire or Massachusetts from time to time and just lops and fucking heads off. The moon, the sound of stars, especially important to the druids as they thought that they were supernatural forces

in every aspect of the natural world. Archaeologists, or they saw supernatural aspects in every aspect of the natural world. Archaeologists believed that the Iron Age Kelt had a ton of gods and goddesses, and that the Kelt's worship their gods through sacrifice, giving them valuable objects to keep them happy. But material treasures weren't the only sacrifices. The Iron Age Kelt's sacrifice to be a killing animals, even humans, to their gods. Maybe humans. Is that a a fact or is that just propaganda written by those who fought them,

or those who converted them into Christianity? The Celts also sacrificed weapons to the gods by throwing them into lakes, rivers, and bogs, places they considered again like magical special, one particular site in Wales, Lin Kereg Bach, maybe could not find a pronunciation for that place. Archaeologists have found over 150 objects of bronze and iron, including spears, shields, and swords.

That's pretty sweet. The Druids, as I said earlier, were in charge of Celtic religion, and sadly, we don't know a lot about them for certain. It's all second-hand knowledge. Julius Caesar, who conquered Gaul, is among the principal sources of information about Druids, and he didn't really care for them. He killed a lot of them. He wrote that they were the most educated and powerful members of the tribes, though, more than warrior chiefs in some ways, and were

well respected by other Celts. The druids would travel between distant Celtic regions that would pass on news, worship, camaraderie between tribes, being able to warn other tribes about enemies like Rome, you know, made them frequent targets to be killed by the Romans. Where did the druids come from? frequent targets to be killed by the Romans. Where did the Druids come from? How old are they? The earliest written reference to them dates back about 2,400 years. While Druidism is likely to go back much further in time than this, how far back is unknown. Ancient Druidism continued up until around 1200 years ago, gradually being pushed out by Christianity. The Ancient Greek writer, out by Christianity. The ancient Greek writer, Dio Chrysostom, who lived about 1900 years ago, compared Druids to the biblical Mejai, those wise men, and the Brahmins, the Hindu priests of India. He wrote the Celts appointed those whom they called Druids. These also

being devoted to the prophetic art and to wisdom in general. One passage, the Roman historian and traveler, Plenty the Elder who lived almost 2,000 years ago talks about the importance of mistletoe and the fifth day of the moon to the druids. He said that mistletoe was gathered with rights replete with religious awe. This is done more particularly on the fifth day of the moon, the day which is the beginning of their months

and years as also of their ages. Yes, the Christmas Association of Mistletoe is Celtic and Origin. The Celts would place a sprig of mistletoe above their, you know, the Christmas Association of Mistletoe is Celtic and origin. The Celts would place a sprig of Mistletoe above their, you know, the door of their homes and its sacred nature prohibited fighting beneath it and that evolved over the centuries into the custom of kissing underneath Mistletoe at Christmas. Mistletoe a very sacred plant to the Druids, thought to ward off evil, restore health, bestow fertility, not sure about all that,

Western medicine, currently not sold on all these claims. The Celtic Druids believed the mistletoe was the essence of the sun god, called Tyrannus by the Gaul tribes of Celts, and any tree hosting mistletoe on his branches was marked sacred. Pliny also talks about the importance of animal sacrifice and fertility to the Druids. They bring Thither to white bulls, the hounds of which are bound then for the druids. They bring feather to white bulls, the horns of which are bound, then for the first time, clad in a white robe,

the priestess ends the tree and cuts the mistletoe with a golden sickle, which is received by others in a white cloak. Then they emulate the victims, while offering prayers, that's for planning the elder route. It is the belief with them that the mistletoe,

taking a drink will impart fertility to all the animals that are bearing, and that it is an antidote for our poisons, so we can allow that information. Immolate means to sacrifice typically via fire, by the way. Hopefully not in that case, but probably. Man, burning bolts seems cooler than slitting their throats. Some historians believe the druidism was founded in Britain, but again, no one's totally

sure. I know insure how widespread it was either. Flourished in the British Isles and Galdow, based on archaeological digs, Julia Caesar claimed that druidism originally came from Britain and that those who wished to study in depth, you know, did travel there. As Christianity spread throughout Europe, druidism gradually faded away, druids still present Ireland as recently as the 8th century CE, but in a much more reduced form, and then, you know, then they were all gone.

Today the term druid conjures up like a magician or wizard or something, some Dungeons and Dragons shit, but really that they were, there are cultures, intellectuals, you know, leadership, spiritual glue that held their tribes together. In recent years, there has been a spiritualist resurgence of modern day druidism, but there's not much of a connection between modern druidism and ancient druidism because we don't know what the fuck they did. According to a guy with a PhD in social anthropology, from the University of Aberdeen who has studied druidism for most of his adult life, you know, like the druids, the Celts, written books

on them, Thorsten Geyser, Druidic, Druidic, there we go. Richels are best seen not as a set of formalized actions, but as a stance and attitude, a particular mode of experience and perception, which gives rise to a feeling of being in the world of being part of nature. So it's, you know, we don't know what they did. It's just more of like, ah, they were just, they like Mother Earth.

And we know that they wore some stuff that look kind of like this and they probably worshiped, you know, some of these guys, but who knows, which band of Celts did and whatever. I read all that as like modern day druids or I'm not trying to sound overly kind of standing here, but there's people who love nature and Celtic culture and when they're turning that into druidism,

they're kind of engaging in something like a kind of cosplay. All right, let's put on some robes, Celtic jewelry, head out to a Celtic archaeological site, Chant and Galic, think about nature, mother earth, reference some Celtic gods, feel in touch with the universe, and tell ourselves that we're druids. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing to do.

I know that's inflammatory. Have fun, that's what you want. It makes you feel good, fuck yeah, fuck and do it. But just say that, you know, just know that what you're doing is not repeating ancient druid incantations, right? Imprares, because we don't know what those are. They've been lost to history.

If I put on a robe and went out to some Celtic ruins in Ireland, had enough psilocybin or something in my system, I bet out, if I can feel like a druid, it would probably be a lot of fun. Maybe Nimrod would appear before me. Maybe I'd see a selky lady or a banshee or something. We do know from the writings of their enemies that at the center of the beliefs of the druids

and the Celts as a whole, there are several gods and goddesses and other crazy characters who we'll meet soon. Before we meet all the weird creatures of the Grasslands in the Box, let's take a second to look at another key aspect of the Celtic religion that they were, largely born out of these creatures, other holidays or associated with their gods and stuff. It was a huge part of a Celtic person's life and a couple of these you might have heard of. In Ireland there are eight important sacred Celtic holidays of the year. Each one still celebrated today with many traditional rituals and activities carried out, not only in Ireland but in other Celtic regions around the world. And a lot of cross over here with paganism not associated with Celtic traditions.

Cross over with Wicken celebrations and, because these traditions coming from a collection of tribes who did not write, shit down, holy fuck, and telephone game, the definition of these holidays is gonna vary a little bit from one source to the next. I'm just trying to save myself some angry emails with that disclaimer, trying to keep them getting hexed by a Wicken witch or something.

First is Beltane. Beltane is a fire festival. Celebrates the first day of summer according to Celtic tradition. It's the Gaelic Mayday festival. Bel Tain's a Celtic word, which means fires of bell. Bell, aka Bellinos, a Celtic deity, called the Fair Shining One or the Shining God,

the Lord of Light. We must follow the Lord of Light. I'm still thinking about Game of Thrones. He was one of the most ancient and most widely worshiped Celtic deities. He was associated with the horse and wheel. Perhaps like Apollo, Bellinos was, you know, thought to ride the sun across the sky

and a horse drawn chariot. Most burial tomb inscriptions referencing Bell come from Gaul. Some Celts there would inscribe words here and there with his name in Latin. I from meet in the Romans. Mayday fairs were once popular, were farmers would trade products and host festivals

where people partied, welcome the long days of summer In the pagan traditions bell tains of fertility celebration with the phallic symbol of the May pole being danced around by a maidens Okay, now I get it. Traditionally those that the tribe felt were you know ready for procreation It said that many tribes many women would go off into the woods and fuck this part of the celebration So yeah, that sounds fun Sounds like a lot of fun sounds almost like an ancient version of some kind of woodstock or Coachella like music festival Many tribes, many women would go off into the woods and fuck this part of the celebration. So yeah, that sounds fun. Sounds like a lot of fun. Sounds like an ancient version of some kind of woodstock

or Coachella-like music festival, but with, you know, even more sex. Hold these some drugs. Hey, Lucifina. In Ireland, Belting mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature going back to the eight century CE associated with the important events in Irish mythology. Also known as First of Summer.

At Martha beginning of summer, and it was when cattle were driven out to the summer pastures, rituals performed to protect cattle crops and people and to encourage growth, where you know, taking part in special bonfires were kindled and their flames, smoking ashes were deemed to have protective power. The people in their cattle would walk around between bonfires, sometimes leap over the flames or embers. I mean, I doubt the fucking cows did that. Probably just the people are doing the fire leaping, but who knows, maybe they had some bovine whispers

who are so talented they could get cows to jump over fire, which is a cool trick. All household fire, all household fires would be doused and then relit from the bell-tained bonfire in the community. These gatherings would be accompanied by a feast. Some of the food and drink would be offered to Irish fairies also known as as the Good Folk, with a little people or by a bunch of other galaic terms my brain has no clue how to pronounce. We'll get into fairies later. I love that they would make offerings to fairies and not in a symbolic way in a these creatures are real and we don't

want to fucking piss them off. Lord of the Rings kind of way. Doors, windows, buyers and livestock would be a decorate with yellow May flair, May flowers, perhaps because they evoked fire. In parts of Ireland, people would make a May bush, typically a thorn bush or branch decorate with flowers, ribbons, bright shells and rush lights. Springs thought to be sacred. We're also visited. The water and bell-tain do, thought to be magical, to bring beauty and maintain youthfulness.

A lot of nature worship, a lot of magic. Keltorch religion mythology, what we do know about it, very nature-centric, very mother-earth-focused. June 21st, the summer solstice, solstice, is the next Celtic holiday. It has a ton of names from mid-Summer to Lita to so many other, how the fuck do you say that in Galic terms, which means the light of the shore, light of summer, and Galic solstice means sun stop. This refers to the fact that in the few days before and after the solstice, the sun appears to stop in the sky, rising, setting to the same point on the horizon. This day is the longest of the year, celebrating light and sun.

So it's shared with flowers, herbs, candles. The Celts dedicated this day to a Celtic goddess who went by so many different names. It is ridiculous. Usually a dean or a tain in Ireland, known in Wales, primarily as Rianan. Sometimes she gets mixed up, a match together with some other Celtic gods in goddesses for extra fun. Tain often called the Shining One. She was originally a sun goddess before becoming a moon goddess, and then she was a white lady. And I don't't know she might have also worked at Burger King for a while Maybe been a fry cook perhaps a masseuse and if I can I don't know Place in Dublin. Maybe maybe maybe shepherds pie a pub for a little while a lot of variations on her legend

She was goddess of love transformation rebirth Element sacred to attain are the sun, dawn, the sea, rain, water, butterflies. Seems like it's drop down. You have powerful powers of the sun. We must pray to you to make the sun rise and to have the sea not flood us and for the rain to come down. And also for butterflies are cool. Also associated with apple blossoms and swans,

associated with healing, the transmigration of souls. The summer solstice believed to be the ideal time of year given the abundance of light that was present for the druids to banish evil spirits. Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go you, Kelpie. Get out, get out.

Marking the beginning of the harvest season, August 1st is the next holiday. Lunasa. The holiday is halfway between the autumn equinox, the summer solstice, one of the four galex seasonal festivals along with Saoan, Inbuk, and Belten. Celebrations still exist to this day, include festivals, traditional music, hopefully not this.

I mean, is that the best guy? Is that the worst guy? It's hard to tell. Arts and crafts, dancing and parades, and it's another excuse to party. Loonasa is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature and has pagan origins. The festival itself, named after the Celtic God Lu, Lu the primary God in Celtic culture. Or what, excuse me, was A primary god.

I'm going to spoke there. Sometimes known as the sun god, a trickster god, the Celtic mercury, god of war, etc. Lu generally portrayed an art as a warrior, a king, a master craftsman, sometimes a savior, associated with skill and mastery and multiple disciplines, including the arts, powerful god. The next holiday is called Maibon, which is the second harvest festival, which also revolves around the stars and falls on September 21st.

We call it the Autumn Equinox. Traditionally known as the stepping stone between light and dark meaning at this time of the year, there's an equal amount of both. It's a time for harvest. When people would gather stores, start to preserve all their food, to keep them going during the winter.

During Mabon, the druids and Celtic practitioners of their religion, remember the abundance they had received during the harvest season by giving offerings back to the land. Next comes Saoen, right, what turned into Halloween. Between October 31st and November 1st, spelled Sam Hain pronounced Saoen. So that's cool, thanks for making it easy, Celts. Marking the end of the harvest seasons and the beginning of the winter, this day celebrated with bond fires and rituals. Not to have clending and protective powers. The druids believed someone was a time

when the veil between the darkness and the light was the thinnest between the realms of the living and the dead. All sorts of various spirits could ramble into our world, right? I guess, Amble, more, this is probably where we were better for that context, and cause all sorts of trouble. Halloween is steeped in this Celtic tradition as both are celebrated on the same day,

focused on the dead. During saw-wind, the Celts would dress up to play a trick on neighbors called Geising, which would consist of them reciting a poem, singing a song, telling a joke, with the hopes of a reward in the form of a treat. Carving faces into pumpkins, or the jackaliner also started with the keels, but they would carve scary faces into turnips instead of pumpkins. Some sources say they would place candles within them.

There's been some big turnips. Leave them out away from their front door because they believe spirits would be attracted to the light coming from them and not come into their homes. All right, some sources don't believe they let fires in them, but you know, would still be attracted to the carved turnip. Because spirits were super dumb, I guess, and can mistake a carved turnip for, I don't know, an angry human face or another spirit or something. I love shit like that. We must be careful. These evil spirits are very powerful, and they possess incredible magic that can easily kill us. If we do not want these sentient malevolent, powerfully magical creatures to find us, we must carve faces into turn-ups with candles in them. And that will trick them.

And they'll be like, oh, this guy, I guess. Or no, I'm so scared of. That guy's faces mean. But later we can joke about it. No, that was a turn up. And they're like, I don't know the fuck there, everything. After Saul when comes to winter solstice,

on December 21st, sometimes called mid-winter or Celtic mid-winter, and Galic, it's called, get the fuck out of there, are those even real letters? This is the shortest day and longest night of the year. And from this day forward, the days become longer. And Keltler tradition is the time of rebirth, which people celebrate by performing rituals, attending gatherings and festivals,

drinking and partying, kind of the theme of all eight of these, at a fundamental level. New Grange, a 52 year, 5200 year old, monument in Ireland, an extremely popular place to visit. From December 19th to December 23rd. That's when the sun will shine through a gap into an ancient burial chamber. This cool event takes place at dawn, last rep, 17 minutes, like something out of some kind of Indiana Jones movie.

Then on February 1st comes St. Bridget's Day. Marking the first day of spring, represented by St. Bridget, Ireland's first native saint who died in 625 CE. Obviously Catholic here, not Celtic, but the holiday has Celtic origins. It's a feast day, generally associated with a symbol of straw or a red cross, like a straw cross or a red cross. To drew it, St. Bridget's day was known as Imbulk. Mark the beginning of spring.

Imbulk mentioned in several early Irish manuscripts, but they say very little about its original rights and customs. We do know Embolke was believed to be when Kyloch, Mother of Wolves, Queen of Winter, the failed one, the divine hag of Galic tradition, deadly Celtic goddess, gathers her firewood for the rest of the winter. We must follow the load of light. Legend has it that if she wishes to make the winter last a good while longer, she'll make sure that the weather on Embolke is bright and sunny so she can gather plenty of firewood.

Therefore, people would be relieved if Imboke was a day of foul weather as that meant that Kylock was asleep and the winter was almost over. She wasn't worried about it. Then once Ireland was solidly into its Catholic days, the holiday remained associated with weather divination. It's going to be good year a bad year for the crops. Our serpents and badgers, are they leaving their winter dens yet or not?

And it's a precursor to Groundhogs Day in North America. Much cooler, darker, hot evil goddess version of Groundhogs Day. I'm based on pictures I saw. Many people celebrate today now by visiting St. Bridget's Holy Well in Clare, Ireland. How's it an open stone house or grotto that serves as a gateway to the ancient cemetery on the hill above it? Spooky-looking little place.

The graveyard is the final resting place of several mythical kings and clan leaders in Ireland. Looks like an awesome place to visit, and people who don't or can't visit this well, they can celebrate by doing some spring cleaning, some feasting, making some traditional crosses. The final Celtic holiday is the spring Equinox, March 20th. Modern Celts tend to call it Ostarra, and it seems to be the obvious pagan forerunner for today's Christian Easter celebration. The official name that the Celts call the holiday is not known, but because it is believed to be related to the Northern Goddess Ostarra, the Goddess of Spring and Dawn amongst other

things, the name Ostarara associated with the holiday today. Spring Equinox was a solar festival celebrating the time when the day and night are of equal length. And during Celtic times, eggs were used as a symbol of rebirth in the beginning of new life. And a hare or rabbit was a symbol of the goddess and fertility. And that is why rabbits and eggs are associated

with Easter today. Start with the Stara before there was Jesus. All these holidays help mark the passage of time for the Keltz. Determine the seasons, give structure to ancient Celtic life. Many of course associate with food and you know, revelry, but also like when to grow food, when to harvest it. You know, there were reasons for the tribe to gather together, party, strength, and social ties. What culture has not had a lot of holidays and celebrations. It just gives us meat sacks, something to look forward to and it reinforces our tribalism.

Same Patrick's Day, not one of the Celtic holidays. No association with Celtic tradition actually helps mark the end of Celtic traditions with the beginning of Catholicism. It's celebrating the arrival of Christianity. Now in many countries it's supposed to be a celebration of Irish life and heritage, but I really just become an excuse to get fucking hammered. So not including that one in this particular narrative. Now, I now it's really digging to the mythology,

but before I do, big note. The pronunciation of these characters, ho ho, very tricky, and not just for me this time. Not just making an excuse, I promise. These gods are all Celtic, but come from old, ancient Celtic mythology, generally from Ireland, not always though, sometimes from Wales, England, you know, present day France, you know, et cetera.

Most of the names are Gaelic, Old Gaelic. I watch a stupid amount of pronunciation videos. And for a lot of the characters, even when the videos are being presented by people who present themselves as native speakers, you listen to three different supposed Celtic experts named the same God or God as her hero or monster, and the pronunciations very wildly.

People in the comment sections arguing their ideas of how the words are, you know, supposed to be said very wildly like the most variance of any topic I've ever covered. More disagreement than even with the Norse mythology. If you have a doctorate in both Gaelic and Celtic mythology, you could probably say all these correctly. And thanks a lot for not making any good videos for me to find you fucking dick. If you don't, save your emails in this regard, or at least watch five different videos with five different people saying the word, you're positive on butchering before you waste your time.

Fun subject today, but we're dealing with old words, old gods, creatures who show up in many different versions and forms, and many different Celtic regions, so much telephone game, may Nimrod guide my mush mouth as best he can. And I'm sure I'm going to mess up some words that are agreed upon as well. Okay. Ha! Conscience clear. Now here we go. Celtic mythology is a collection of histories and legends measured in four distinct chronological cycles. They are the mythological, ulster, fenian, and historical cycles. Each have distinct properties and time periods. And many of the cycles feature the same characters, but the characters, you know, change. Maybe they start off as warriors, turn into gods.

Maybe their powers vary, you know, considerably from cycle to cycle, from one tribe of Celts to another, you know, not confusing at all. Of course, it's confusing. You know, again, oral tradition, Celtic culture, not cohesive, and Christianity. This is an important note. When the Catholics came to the British Isles and other Celtic areas, they fucked up all the lore. That's what all the historians think. That they bent the stories around, you know, God's got turned into warriors, kings, queens,

witches, monsters, etc. A lot of creatures got demonized, more than they, much more than they probably were. Missionaries couldn't get rid of all this mythology without enraging Celtic locals who outnumbered them and risking an uprising, but they also, following their religion, could not let other gods exist as gods, because that was, you know, antithetical to Christian belief. So they twisted the characters to suit their own ends, massaged a lot of these stories. Okay, let's give these cycles.

The mythological cycle was the first era of ancient Irish folklore and as a result, the least documented. Also contains some of the most important Celtic figures. Stories from the mythological cycle, center on gods and the first settlers on the island of Ireland. Seven main groups, two of which we'll cover in some, you know, detail today. There isn't really a true origin story, but if there was, it would be in this cycle. The Ulster cycle was the second cycle of Irish mythology.

Most of these tales originate from or before the first century CE, which tells you how old the first cycle is. The first cycle is the most prominent hero of this cycle is the demigod Kuh Kalein. For the Ulster cycle many of its myths take place in the provinces of Ulster and Connacht and center around births and death training and battle in the Irish countryside There are many tales from the cycle featuring kings heroes gods friends foes tons of magic The phoenix cycle the third wave of Irish mythological text Like its predecessor the Ulster cycle. It's focusing on heroes heroines Stories generally based in the regions of Lenscher and Munster for For whatever reason, that story from this cycle, just where the people were writing them,

stories from this cycle center on the Fiena, a band of independent warriors, and their leader, Finn McCool. We'll meet Mr. McCool. An historical cycle is the last cycle of mythology, and stories from this time blend, you know, factual history and people with legends and tall tales. You know, hence the name historical cycle. Folklore from this cycle includes real figures and Irish history doing not real shit, as well as purely mythological creatures all woven together. There's one main story here worth noting.

It's the story of Walei Sweeney, written in the 12th century in both verse and prose. Tells the story of curses and supernatural powers often called the Friendsy of Sweeney, the madness of Sweeney, where often called the friendsy of Sweeney, the madness of Sweeney, where the mad Sweeney or, you know, comes from, about a pretty, uh, or petty king, Sweeney who loses his mind on a battlefield. Stories have been walking across Ireland from treetop to treetop, uh, eventually converting to Christianity and we'll explore that. Okay. Now all of the myths from all four cycles are collections of second hand fanciful

tales at best. Let's go through each of the different cycles, you know, and share a little bit from each one. Mostly from this first one, we'll start with the, you know, the mythological cycle. Buckle in. This is the wildest one, and this section will be by far the longest. Seven distinct groups make it the majority of the tales in the mythological cycle. They are the Tua, Tua de Donan, the Femoreans, Cis, Cesar, possibly, Parthelonians, the Fierboligs, the Namedians, and the Millegians.

We're gonna focus on two of these seven. Here's what the other five are about. Cesar, that's how I, that's closest my mouth will make it. I know it's not like an instrument for cutting paper. It's C-E-S-S-S-A-I-I-R, but that's the best way I can say it. Cesar is a mythological, now figuring Irish folklore, featured in an ancient medieval text. It's C-E-S-S-S-A-I-I-R, but that's the best way I can say it. Ascender's a mythological figure in Irish folklore, featured in an ancient medieval text, the Book of Invasions, the most important source in the world when it comes to Celtic mythology.

This book is a collection of poems, and it's a figure and a people. The book is a collection of poems, prose narratives, and Irish language intended to be a history of Ireland and the Irish from the creation of the world to the middle ages. It was compiled in the 11th century by an anonymous writer, very likely a Catholic monk, or several monks, almost with certainty, and they compiled the compiled text that go all the way back to the 5th century, you know, writings written by earlier Christians in Ireland and Scotland, and scholars believed that the writers sought to create an epic written history comparable to that of the Israelites of the Old Testament in the Bible. This history intended to fit the Irish into Christian world chronology and connect them to Adam.

So, you know, they took confusing stories and made them way more confusing by trying to mesh everything with Christian mythology. So it's a big Christian Celtic mashup. And again, once again, the history of the Celts being written by the conquerors. The Femoreans were the first group to settle the island in this history, their mythology. A bunch of evil freaks and monsters, more about them later.

The Parthelonians, second group of settlers on the Emerald Isle said to have introduced traditional activities such as farming, cooking, building. Namedians told to be the third who settled Ireland. They arrived thirty years after the Parthelonians died out and then became extinct not long after according to the mythological cycle, then came the fear-ballaggs who were the fourth to settle on the island of Ireland, said that the fear-ballaggs were descendants of the nemids, the left island went to Greece, then came back.

The Malaysians are considered the last group to settle on the island of Ireland, Celts from present-day Spain, who now represent the ancestor of modern Irish people. Said that on arrival they contended with the Tuadadanon, some godfolk who descended from the Nominians. Way too much to cover to get into all these, so we're going to look at, you know, two in depth, the two of the Donnan and the Femoreans. And then later I'll go over the other three cycles and cover a few, you know, gods, some Irish mythological and-o folklore creatures that it was interesting and fun. And then I didn't mention earlier, but also itted to the internet. I don't think I mentioned. The two-aididonan are the most widely remembered supernatural race who lived in the other world

of Irish folklore in the mythological cycle. The other world is the Celtic realm of deities and possibly also the debt. Usually described as a supernatural realm of everlasting youth, beauty, health, abundance, and joy, similar to a parallel universe. Various mythological heroes visit it either through chance or being invited by one of its residents. They often reach it by entering ancient burial mounds or caves or by going underwater or across the West from sea. Sometimes the other world is said to exist alongside our own located beyond the edge of the earth

and truths into our world. Signaled by phenomena such as magic mist that the Tua Donan or Tua De Donan could enshroud themselves with, that enchanted-looking Irish fog is how they're interpreting this. It could also be signaled by sudden changes in weather, by the appearance of divine beings or unusual animals. And otherworldly woman might invite the hero of a story into the other world. Fuck yeah, she would. I interpret that as ancient horny, Celts, probably, you know, using that maybe as an excuse to to blame,

you know, cheating on the gods or something like what what? She was a real woman from the next from the next village. Are you serious? I swear, baby. I thought she was a goddess. I thought I thought for sure she was an other world goddess and you know, we can't upset the gods and I just thought I was I was doing my, you know, religious duty. She she was magic.

She was magic trick me. The Twiti Donum show up in a lot of old stories based on Irish mythology, often called the tribe of the gods. Most pagan gods in pre-Christian Ireland are in this group. According to that book of invasions, the Twitted Onom came to Ireland on flying ships surrounded by dark clouds, traveling by magic. Gotta be the best way to travel.

The Twitted Onom regularly associated with archaeological sites, like New Grange, other ancient sites in Ireland, key part of Irish folklore. The Twiddedon and mean also, it can mean the folk of the goddess Donu, and in the mythology they invaded in rural Ireland over 4,000 years ago. Donu, one of the oldest mythical beings in Ireland. The mother of the gods, the earth mother goddess, often portrayed as a beautiful woman, Hail Lucifina, those sculptors who carved her, you know, old idols, man, they must have boners while they were doing that because they knocked it out of the park with her image. This Celtic goddess commonly associated with nature, mother earth, I might have met her when I did some DMT, also represented aspects of regeneration, wind, wisdom, death, and prosperity.

And according to ancient document known as the annals of the four masters compiled by a Franciscan monks between 1632 and 1636, from some earlier text, the two of the Don and rule from their parallel universe, they ruled in this universe from 1897 B.C. until 1700 B.C. Not very long for how important they are are and how powerful, you know, those monks trying to diminish their godliness. These gods were said to have originated from four mythical northern cities possibly located in Norway. Although the Tuidadonans lived in the other world, they interacted and engaged with those living in the real human world.

The Tuidadonans were frequently featured in the writings of Christian monks. And again, a lot of liberties, you know, taken to shape their stories. Some of these writings that Tuita Adonin referred to as queens and heroes who possess magical powers. Other times, mainly more recently, you know, the referred to as Celtic gods and goddesses. The Tuita Adonin hailed from a land that granted all those that lived their everlasting youth called Tier Nanog. Maybe this is not really actually confirmed anywhere in older texts, in Irish mythology. The Tiernanog comes from a later mythological cycle, but it seems to be the consensus today that the Tiernanog is the home of the Tuidadonan because later people said so.

This is all set in today's idiots of the internet very well by the way. A lot of people in the comment sections under this stuff. Oh man, speak with so much certainty. I'm jealous. They read one top 10 lists or you know, one book. Now they know everything about some aspect of Celtic lore. I've learned this week that arguing over a lot of Celtic mythology makes about as much sense as arguing over what your dreams mean.

Resetting a bit here now in the majority of Celtic mythology tales when the Tuode Donan made their way into Irish soil, the mighty, fear-belugged. We're already the leaders of Ireland, right? The fourth group of Siddler Islands. The first three, the people of Sizzar, the people of Parthalan, and the people of Nemid, they were wiped out or forced to abandon the island. The fear blog said to be the descendants of the people of Nemid, and the two of it on, two of it on it also

said to be the descendants of Nemid. This is weird. All but 30 of the nemmet were at one point killed in wars and disasters. And in some of them, apparently the stronger ones went on to Britain and they became over time the two-aidodon and they became gods. And then the other weaker ones went to Greece and then they came back as the fear-bolic but then they got stronger.

They came back first, they controlled the island and then the stronger ones from Britain, the god-dubed and god-ladies, they came back to fuck up their cousins. They control the island and then the stronger ones from Britain the God do and God ladies They came back to fuck up their cousins. This plays out like a fucking fever dream The two at the dawn and made their way over to the west coast of Ireland demanded that the fear blog surrender half their land Right, which is a interesting stance for God people be like, hey, we don't need it all let's take half and then the fearbolic refused They didn't want to give them one acre and You know they'd come to regret that.

This refusal to the first battle of MIG Turing, the Celtic version of ancient Greek tales of the gods fighting the gods before them, like the Titans. And in this great full of monsters of magic and giants battle, the fear of Bologna will be defeated, but not easily. The Tuidadonan, led by King Nuwada, first king of the gods. You may remember him from Hellboy, too, not kidding.

Prince Nuwada in that movie, loosely based on this old Celtic legend. Nuwada was their first king, was married to Boyan, a river goddess, or boy, yeah, Boyan river goddess, and during the battle, one of the fear biologue managed to cut off the arm of King Nuwada, which resulted in the kingship being turned over to a tyrant named Brez. Because everybody knows you can't have a one-arm king apparently Diane Kett God of healing and son of another God dog duh powerful God possessing the power over both life and death associated with fertility agriculture magic and Druidry

Magically replaces new waters lost arm fucking press don't change. Yo fuck yeah bro new arm and the new ones made of silver and He'ss king again huh seems like a heavy arm seems like a heavy ass arm to try and care around in a battle but you know better than no arm maybe uh the silver arms it would not last very long right uh mjatch i don't know how to say his name son of uh dianne kett also a member of the toad adonan not happy that the new wada was given the crown. And he was some kind of goddess wizard motherfucker, and he used a spell that made flesh now grow over new wadas shiny replacement arm. And then Diane Ket furious about what his son did to new wada and then he killed him.

He didn't like being upstage and I get it. We've all been here with parents, right? You make a warrior king god dude wizard fucker, a silver arm, and then your son, without even talking to you, makes the guy a new arm. It's fucking better. He just to be a dick and you have to kill him. Uh, this time, the breasts, who was temporarily the king while New Wada lost his arm, complained to his father, Ilah.

Ilah was the king of the formorians, supernatural race and Celtic mythology. Next group we're gonna cover. And Ilah was maybe a minor son, God dude, possibly God of storytellin, maybe good to scrabble, who knows. Ilah sent breasts to help, to get help from Baylor, another king who will become a monster later, the Formorians.

He will mutate into a race of giants. And Baylor, the king, will turn into a big one-eyed mother fucker. Now, in his Bailor, the smiter, Bailor of the evil eye, Bailor of the piercing eye reminds me a lot of the eye of Saren from Lord of Rings. The two-aididonon then hold a council. They decide it's going to be best to make their peace with the famorians because fucking Bailor is a scary shit. They don't want to be annihilated, even though they're God people. Then later the two of you don't do fight another great battle. The second battle of my turn against the famorians.

They're like, they do want to fight you actually. And the new one is killed by the famorian king, bail or his poisonous eye. But then bail or gets killed by Lou champion of the two of you don't who slings a fucking rock into his big evil poison eye and takes over his king. And then later these God warriors fight a third great battle against the Malaysians, a Galic people from the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, last group from ancient days, and ancestors of modern Galic peoples in the British Isles. And the Malaysians will not be defeated.

One of their bards and drew it somehow somehow negotiated truth with the God people, the two-aidid Donan, and then those people decide, okay, we'll get to live in the other world of Ireland, Celtic Remmeled Deities, and possibly the dead again, and then in the Malaysians, we get to live in the mortal world of Ireland. And that is how it's been ever since,

without fucking question. Okay? That's why Ireland now has both regular people and magic people and leprechauns. And that is how you fucking, that's how you get enchanted, mead sex. With an ancient, barred, truce, one-eyed monster fall out, situate, mic drop. Okay? I hope that was all very concise and easily to understand, because it is for me. It all makes perfect sense. It all makes perfect sense. A few makes perfect sense.

Few other details about the 2AD Donna before we move on. Some stories have them coming to Ireland, not on ships, but just like the fluke of the clouds, but just regular ships. The 2AD Donna often described as tall gods, goddesses that have blonde or red hair, blue or green eyes, pale skin, right, kind of like that classic D&D imagery

for the, you know, Celtic warriors and gods and goddesses. The Tweeted on I have so many members. I didn't mention who are Celtic gods. Some more prominent in others in Irish mythology. You know, Dogda, another Tweeted on in God. Maybe I mentioned it. Dogda, it's all getting so blurry now. Played a super important part in Celtic mythology. In a number of stories, Dogda or the Dogda, described as a large mannered giant with a beard that owns a club with magical powers. It's also said that the Dogda was a druid in the king, held the power to control everything from the weather to time. That's sweet. The home of the Dogda reported to be that ancient site in a new range. And also said to be the husband of the terrifying morgan shape shifting goddess of one death.

The two-odd adonan also had magic items. I didn't mention when they arrived in Ireland they brought with them four treasures right from their four magic cities of findias, glorias, murias, and folias. Each of the treasures of the two-odd adonan possessed incredible power that made them some of the most feared items in Celtic mythology. First, there was Dogdas Coulterne. Dogdas mighty called her not the power to feed an army of men. Said it had the ability to leave no company unsatisfied. It can make super tasty food in as much as you want. I bet that Coulterne made some sweet-ass biscuits and gravy and really good shepherd's

pie and probably amazing lemon meringue. Whatever you want, low calorie options would taste like regular options right cherry coke as just a right amount of cherry syrup in it and not too much and it's carbonated not stale it said that it have you know this came from the other world yes city of morious and then there was the spear of Lou the spear of Lou one of the most feared weapons and all of Celtic mythology once Once the spear was drawn, no army could defeat the man who held the spear. Nor that man's army. That's a dope ass spear. You don't even have to throw it. And you get to win. More powerful than the spear of Destiny. Right? If you had that spear and that cauldron, you just fucking use the spear to guard the cauldron.

You get to eat whatever you want, whenever you want, and no one can take that magic away from you. Glorious was the other world city that the spear was said to come from. Glorious. Another treasure, right? The gem called the Stone of Fall said to have come from the other world city of Follyus. The Stone of Fall believed to have been used

to pronounce the high king of Ireland. According to legend, when a man worthy of kingship stood upon it, the stone would roar with happiness. That's weird. Roar with happiness. I'm so happy! And then you're like, ah, this guy gets to be king. Stone roared with happiness. Pretty cool, but not as cool as the first two. I mean, super fun to be king of Ireland, but cooler than perfect food every day and never having to be defeated in battle. I don't know. Speaking of swords according to legend, when this sword of light, we must follow the law of light. Is removed from its holder, no opposing army can escape from it.

In some stories from Celtic mythology, the sword resembles a bright glowing torch. That one, I mean, obviously, you know, the dude who, I'm just pulling this out of my ass right now, but wrote the books that the show, the Game of Thrones is based on, pulled from this mythology as well as point from other mythologies, token. A lot of people that are writing these modern Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, Game of Thrones, building these worlds, they pulled from all this stuff. You can just see the influences. Like, oh yeah, that is from the Lord of Light.

This sword, still not as cool as the spear. That spear would fuck the sword up, right? If I get one thing, I get the spear, then I use the spear to take the other three things. Let's really meet those famorians now. No recounting of ancient Irish myth could be complete without mentioning the famorians. Dreaded foes of the two of D'Adonin

and all who came to conquer Ireland. These ones in the Game of Thrones were, they would remind me of the two of D'Adonin and all who came to conquer Ireland. These ones in the Game of Thrones were, they would remind me of the white walkers. The meaning of their name, debated even today, though most agree that the first part, you know, Fuh, means from below, Nether. The latter part means probably C, demons or giants. Nether giants, C, demons, something. And when you read of their deeds and doings, you know, that stuff is pretty on on brand. They're fucking monsters.

Some scholars believe their destructive nature mirrors that of natural phenomena. Descriptions of the femores of femorians, their behavior, strange and conflicting and the old legend, of course. Some tales tell that they were phenomenally ugly and that they even celebrated this ugliness, driving out their children who were normal in appearance,

taking to formities as a mark of favor from the dark gods and I that's weird, but I get it Did you know that I once had two beautiful kids? Mm-hmm, but I got rid of them Too pretty two handsome. It was distracting then later I had Kyler Monroe and I was like yeah, they'll do I can keep these freaks come on take care I had Kiderman row and I was like yeah, they'll do I can keep these freaks come on take it But not kidding about these monsters one for more might have a large arm and a small arm while another might have two heads The other has three eyes Tails big on deformity other tails claim they were born whole enough

What's strange in mind and Appearance after exposure to the recalled practices would make them deformed some believe that they had the heads of goats out for exposure to the recalled practices would make them deformed. Some believe that they had the heads of goats. Others thought they were related to the fallen angels of Christian lore, right? The monks tried to connect them to the Nephilim. Maybe it's chance. In the Labore, Gabala era, and that book of invasions said they had some, they're describing it having like one leg, one eye, one arm, some corners of the internet say this is a misunderstanding of the crane stance, right? Maybe they would stand that way when they're doing their fucking wizard spells.

They were giant wizard warriors. Legends tell that they can control the weather, mists, waves of the ocean. They can bring light upon the crops, sickness upon cattle. They can plague from their, excuse me, festering pits upon the people. The icy blasts of winter were theirs to command, and deadly spirits from the underworld halls. They could summon to question, you know, up the past and the future. They could see, they could do a kind, they could do fucking all bad wizard magic. And Baylor, oh, Evil Eye was one of their great kings and a popular Celtic folklore figure.

And it was said his gaze could turn men to charred stone, right? Especially when he became, because he was like a like a regular king dude in some of the stories, and there was a big one-eyed giant in other stories. And when he was his big one-eyed giant form, that's when he was the most terrifying. It would take four men to lift his fucking wizard eye lid. And he kept it closed while he's amongst his own folks. I guess he's blind when he's hanging around his own people. And then he would also have it covered with seven cloaks to keep it from doing some damage.

And I guess to keep it cool, we get overheated for some reason. And when it was needed, he would take these cloaks off one by one and he would fuck up so much shit. You know, he takes off with the first cloak, now ferns begin to wither. Takes off his second eye cloak,

grass starts to get red. Third, wooden trees, little too hot, little too hot for people's liking. Fourth, okay, now the woods are smoking. Fifth, boo! Everything's right on the edge of fire. Everything's getting red hot. They can take off the sixth, and the seventh,

fucking everything's on fire. That is some eyeball. With this eye, he was said to have blasted the island's west of Scotland, which according to legend remain bleak and haunted to this day because of that But then you know someone slung a rock into his eye and that took him down That feels plagiarized to me by the monks taking from the story of David and Glyth The formorians were the first in Ireland arriving with 200 men 600 women. That's a solid ratio

surviving on on wild birds and, and according to the legends, may have been responsible for the building of many of the earliest, megalithic monuments, because they're giants. It was either for them to build stuff like Stonehenge. Their king, sickle, Grecienchos, made war upon the people of a place called Parthalon, who arrived after the waters receded from a great flood, monks, plagiarized it more of the Bible here. And then they defeated the Parelonians with the deadly plague concocted in magic demon cauldrons. And that's as deep as we're going with these guys here.

We can spend a whole second their world, going over so many gaelic names of old from Ordin kings and characters that will be as interesting and entertaining as me reading the book of Genesis from start to finish. Let's move on to the next three cycles. We're gonna spend less time on these. The Ulster Cycle, second cycle of Irish mythology, comes from the first century CE,

but since none of this shit was written until the fifth century, who knows, said to come from the first century CE. More important than exactly when this stuff happened, is the subject matter. It's a body of heroic medieval legends in hero sagas. Perhaps the most famous is an early medieval epic called Tonbulkuli, which is commonly known as the cattle raid of kooli or the taun. It's an epic from early Irish literature, earliest complete copy comes from the 14th century,

but referenced as existing way back in the 7th century, often called the Irish Iliad, and is seen as the ground breaking piece of early Irish storytelling. It's huge, so we're not gonna, you know, just go start plowing through it all. Essentially tells a tale of a war between two Irish territories, Ulster and Connott, led by Queen Maeve and her husband, Alil, who are intent on stealing this super fucking cool bull, Don Quail, the brown bull of Cooley, very fertile, big penis, big old clean-wing, important cow. Due to a curse upon the king and the warriors of Ulster, the brown bowl of coole, very fertile, big penis, big old clean wean, important cow. Due to a curse upon the king and the warriors of Ulster, the invaders are opposed only by

a teenage demigod named Kukulin. And Kukulin is believed to be an incarnation of the Irish god Lu, who also happens to be his dad. Okay, Kukulin both helped and hindered by supernatural figures from the children of Dan, who are the, you know, those people we were talking about earlier, the race of the gods, Dan who are the you know those people we were talking about earlier the the race of the gods they came on the island they they show up my different names in the end the bull lives longer than everyone trying to kill him so that's nice but then eventually does die of exhaustion so okay next cycle the third wave of the Celtic mythological cycles the

Finian cycle the story is generally based in the regions of Lester, Munster, that revolve around the Fiena, a band of independent warriors, and their leader, Ol Finn McCool. Finn is connected to many legends of the Phoenian cycle. He's the star. He first came to prominence in his origin story of the Sammon of Knowledge. That's a story I'll tell. One of the most popular in all the tales from this cycle. And the title makes it sound like one of my lies.

I love this actually called the Samet of Knowledge. Like all the rest of the Celtic myths, several versions. This version I think the most popular tells a tale of a young Finn McCool many years before he became the leader of the Fiena, back when he was just a boy. And I'll begin when he's taken as an apprentice by widely celebrated Druid poets named Finnegus. One day this poet tells Fin maybe

not a druid. Well, again, some story says, and it says not. One day this poet fin or the poet tells fan the story of the Samin of knowledge and that if caught, it could make any man or woman the most intelligent person in Ireland. On one super sonny spring morning, McCool and the old poet are sitting by the edge of the river Boin. And it was while they sit there with their feet dangling over the water, that Finnegus recounts the story of the salmon of Knowledge to Finn, the story of Finnigus by an old druid. The druid had explained that there was a magic as fuck salmon that lived in the murky waters

of the river. The druid believed that the salmon had devoured several nuts from a magical hazel tree, that had grown near the river. Once the nuts began to digest in the fish's belly, the wisdom of the world was given to it. And that would suck. I mean, to be so smart, but still be a salmon, right? I mean, how much is there to do to enrich your mind

in the river to entertain your brain? There's no books, scenery doesn't change that much. You know, always have to fight the current, never get to eat chocolate, mostly just fucking larva, smaller fish or something. If I have to be a salmon, I want to be so dumb. So I don't know what I'm missing. And actually the salmon holds the key to all the wisdom, but maybe isn't that smart itself. If it were, I guess it would have never gotten caught in the first place.

Finne gets tells Finne that the person who eats the salmon is going to gain all this knowledge. Boom, old fin dog wants that salmon now. The elderly poet has spent many years gauged into the river and had attempt to spot and catch the salmon knowledge, but never went ham and just fucking doby after that fucker. Uh, then one day while he and Finn are sitting by the river boin, he sees a glint of an eye, peering up from the water below, he knows that that special magic salmon. He dives into the water, he manages to grab it. He's a quick poet, fuck you, Finnigas.

Then he gives the fish to Finn, like an idiot, and asks him to cook it for him. The poet has waited for years for this moment, and is now worried though that Finn will betray him. He tells Finn under no circumstance, do you eat even the tiniest sliver of that fish? Finn Augustine leaves as he needs to fetch something that can't be even close to this important from his house. And Finn Augustine, he sounds like a fucking idiot, just eat it raw. Little Salmonella is gonna be worth it.

It's a magic fish. He should've eaten it like a grizzly bear, just before getting out of the water, but he didn't, he gave it to McCool. Finne did what was asked for pairs of fish. And for a couple of minutes, the salmon is baking away on top of a serene hot stone, set above a small fire.

Sam has been cooking for a number of minutes when McCool decides to turn it over, right? And sure, he's properly cooking it for his poet buddy. And poet, you know, leader, and, and, or, what's God dang it? Blanking on all the words today, because I'm too much gale to come out, mentor, there we go. So then he does, he turns it over, but, out she, it's so hot, and he burns his thumb a little bit

when he touches the knowledge meat. And he, without even thinking, he's like, oh, Uchi, and he like puts the thumb in his mouth to ease the pain. And that's when he fucked up, right? Because now he got the little bit of that salmon, just a tiny, his trace of meat in his mouth. And when Finne gets returned, he knows something's different. And he asked him, cool, what happened? You know, all this revealed after taking a moment to mold the situation over, he's not mad for some reason. He tells Fin, all right, you're now you just have to eat the rest, I guess.

To see if it's gonna grant you the wisdom, now that you've tasted it, because now I can't have it, because you've changed it. Finn hurriedly devoured the fish, nothing happens. Now they're like, what's going on? So now Finn decides to take a stomatist's mouth again, and for some reason that's when everything changes. Which is thumb back as mouth,

builds a surge of energy, and he has all the wisdom from the magic hazel tree, salmon belly. And the wisdom makes him the wisest man in all of Ireland and he grows up to be a great ancient warrior and that's why he's still famous today. So that's the best story from that era. All right, the last cycle of Celtic mythology is the historical cycle.

And it features some real Irish figures doing some totally unreal shit. Most notable story here, the one of Will Swimney. I think I said Will Swimney earlier, Will Swimney also known as Mad Swini. 12th century narrative known in English as the Friendsie of Swini or the Madness of Swini. And English pronunciations for the Gayleic words in this story, particularly difficult to find. So I'm probably going to butcher some of these. The third and best known of a trilogy about a seventh century Ulster King, Sweeney, who would lose his mind in battle. Sweeney, son of Coleman, a king in eastern Northern Ireland, thought to be a real dude, or at least based on a real dude, seeks to expel the

evangelizing Saint Ronan Finn from his kingdom, but his wife, Orrin, dissuades him. Angry at the sound of Ronan's bell,'s bell swinging rushes from his castle one day but then orin grabs his cloak so that he goes to the door naked great now he's running out there naked and then the pagan king is like well fuck it i'm not gonna go back inside i'm already outside a mad so i'm just gonna run over to Ronin's church

and take his book of Psalms and toss into a lake and then he does that he's about to fucking beat his ass maybe kill the guy and then all of a sudden someone's like hey we got a battle that has to does that and he's about to fucking beat his ass, maybe kill the guy. When then all of a sudden someone's like, hey, we got a battle that has to start right now. And he's like, oh, you are lucky. And then he runs off. And then the St. Ronan, the pre-sky, he's like, thanks God for causing that battle and sparing me. But he also curses the king. He's like, no, I hope you're always naked. Okay, that's a weird thing to curse. You know, just like there's like a homo erotic situation there. He's like, oh, I hope you're always naked. Okay, that's a weird thing to curse, you know? It's like there's like a homo erotic situation there. He's like, oh, I'll teach you.

You hot ass guy. Now you're gonna be always naked. So you know that'll embarrass you. And I'll have to see you be naked all the time. And anyway, Ronan tries to make peace between the contending armies at Magrath, but he has no success. When he tries to bless the warriors,

including Sweeney, the King throws his spear at the St. now, a second spear, then breaks against Ronin's bell, sends its shaft, flying into the air, and some versions, another spear he throws, kills one of Ronin's buddies, and he's like, oh, that makes me so mad. And he curses them a second time, wishing that he may wander to the air now,

like the shaft of his spear, and that he may die of a cast spear. So he throws a little double curse there. And then when Sweeney then tries to rejoin the battle, he sees with Trembling, flees into a frenzy, like a wild bird, flies up in the air, lands on top of a tree. And then after he's not, he can't fight because he's stuck on a tree, and then the other team wins, other army wins.

And then when a kid's been after the losing the battle, is unable to bring Sweeney back down from the tree to his own people, now the mad king starts flying from tree top to tree top. He's like a weird monkey, just jumping from tree to tree. And he just does that all around Ireland. So he's really good at jumping. And he goes fucking crazy.

And he meets other weird people like the man of the wood. And his one faithful friend during this time is a dude named something fucking impossible to say in English unless you study Gaelic your whole life. And that person may have been born in the same uterus as him, or maybe a foster brother. It's not clear. Unprouncible for me, maybe brother, to Sweeney, rescue Sweeney three times, keeps him informed about his family. His wife, Orin, remains faithful to Sweeney, even though he visited her and was like,

get out of here. You're better off without me. And throughout his tale, haunted by things like headless cadavers and floating heads. On several occasions, he regains his sanity for a moment once asked to return to his own people, but Ronan prays that the king should not be allowed to come back, right? Because he's going to resume his persecution of the church. And then this narrative is interspersed with a number of poems, some of them about, you know, Sweeney, you know, doing a variety of things, some of them in his voice, two of the most memorable come late in the narrative, are in praise of nature and of trees, the story's big on

trees. So what the fuck is the story about? It ends with Sweeney's conversion to Christianity. I kind of, his tale actually ends with him being stabbed by a spear after taking a drink of milk from a little cup made out of dry cow shit. It's not even kidding in the main tale. The history of Scott's Irish people being so fucking crazy in this country, many of them, my ancestors makes more and more sense. That'll longer be going to this. My ancestors told some crazy ass stories that

often did not make much sense. And I guess this apple didn't far from the tree. Enough of these cycles. Let's meet some creatures. This is the part I'm waiting for. I start off with leprechauns, which very well might come from later folklore and not from earlier mythology, but something oral tales about this creature do come from mythology, so let's include them because they're leprechauns. The leprechauns, one of the few names I did not have to look up a YouTube pronunciation guide for. One of the world's most recognized mythical creatures.

In today's popular culture, I think we typically think leprechauns as small mischievous elf-like creatures usually clad in all green The horde treasure at the you know ends of rainbows We also might think of a cheesy horror films. No that whole franchise and Irish folklore leprechauns are first off shorter than I imagined They're supposed to be about a foot to a foot and a half tall, a real little. They're related to elves and gnomes, living the bushes like little creepers, or in burrows carved into tree trunks, and they spend their days always dudes

working on just one shoe, just a little tiny dude, with a little hat working on one shoe at a time. And he makes these shoes for other similar magical creatures. He only make one pair of shoes a year, and he also has gold for some reason. I think the other creatures give him gold for their shoes. And then he hides from humans because he's so tiny and he knows that we'll take a ship from him

if we catch him. And in some stories, leprechauns are pranksters. They might grant you three wishes if you catch him. Oh, there's many kinds of leprechauns. One such type is a potential cousin species known as a farderic. Describe it as having long snouts and skinny tails. These small fairies,

the Percon said to be fairies, and most Irish mythology texts sources. These ones were red coats and capes. I'm sorry, caps, not capes. And an Irish Farderic appropriately translates to red man, and they're thought to be associated with nightmares. They can get into your head, kind of like Freddy Krueger.

And these little motherfuckers delight and gruesome practical jokes. Like, they'll do terrible things like steal your baby and replace your baby with a changeling. And what's a changeling? It's a physically-deformed and-or-intellectually impaired offspring of a fairy or an elf. And what do they do with the human babies that they take? Well, they give them to the devil. So Satan will help them and other little fairy people retain magical powers. Why are fairy so evil? Well, who knows? I mean, this is an origin obviously influenced by the Catholics, many of these legends, right?

Demonized by early monks. Another form of leprechaun is a spriggan. Supposedly contains a soul of a giant and their tiny little bodies and they're fucking pissed about it. They're a member of being a giant and they don't like being small now. And some tellings are the ghosts of giants.

Or some tellings are little monsters with distorted deformed bodies made out of wood and tree leaves who used to be giants. And even when they have tiny bodies, they have giant size strength. And in some stories when they're really pissed they can Hulk out and briefly return to giant size. And they're also walking curses. Bad luck on two legs, responsible for crumbling castles and de ruins to giant size. And they're also walking curses. Bad luck on two legs, responsible for crumbling castles and the ruins, collapsing buildings, so stay away from the

sprig ins. They are in all the stories they're assholes. The pupa is one of several Irish mythological creatures, doesn't get as much attention as maybe deserves. This mischievous little fella said to bring either good or bad fortune can appear in various forms and sizes. Various animal forms. Puka has the power of human speech, loves to confuse and terrify people. Puka can take the shape of an old man if it believes that that appearance will benefit them. It could be the form of a dog, cat, whatever.

Some stories you'll hear that this creature takes the appearance of a black horse with a wild mane, with golden eyes shining brightly. Sounds like Nimrod's horse Maybe other stories you'll hear a people that claim to have encountered a pukka that had taken on the form of a human with jet black hair And if they like you they might help you and again if they don't they might ruin your life so random They are commonly said to entice humans to take a ride on their back Right, especially when they're like a horse, but not necessarily do it with just a horse And then they give the rider a wild and terrifying journey

before dropping the unlucky person back off of the place they were taken from. So if a super creepy creature starts speaking like a human's like, come on, hop on. Come on, go ride. Like if a deer's like, get on, get on. It's gonna be so fun, don't do it, unless you're a thrill seeker.

Then maybe it's gonna give you the adrenaline rush you want because that's not really a deer, that's a pooh-ca. If you're an island now for fairies. Fairies among the best known of the many Irish folklore creatures, their presence seen in everything from Disney movies to video games. And the fairies are a huge part, you know, again, a Irish folklore. And they're split into two categories, unceely fairies and silly fairies on silly bad naughty silly useful good. The ruler of all the fairies, the fairy queen, an important Celtic creature, often named Titania, she's often described as being both

seductive and beautiful, Luciferina. And there are tons of different fairy species, some sexy, some terrifying, some creatures I would have never thought of as fairies. For some, it's a very broad category. The label of fairy has a times applied only to specific magical creatures with human appearance, magical powers, penchant for trickery, and other times been used to describe any magical creature. Goblins, gnomes, whatever. Puka, the dula hen, sometimes classified as a fairy. And it takes the form of a headless rider on a black horse And according to legend the Doolahan

This Irish folklore fairy creature uses a human spine as a fucking whip Which is awesome imagery, careful to see you know in person but Pretty cool for like a story the Doolahan can also foreshadow death if it calls out your name You're gonna immediately drop dead. So hope that doesn't happen Many people see this creature as the inspiration for the headless horseman myths of sleepy hollow that will come much later to America. Then there are banshees, also sometimes called fairy, sometimes called women of the

fairies. Banshee, one of the better known, scariest of the many Irish mythological creatures, slash Irish monsters. Also a source of contentious disagreement, as you'll soon see in today's Itty to the Internet. Banshee can appear in many forms. are or whaling, screaming, or lamentation at night believed to foretell the death of either the person who hears it or a close relative. In Ireland, banshees were believed to warn families, only warn families of pure Irish descent. Often described as being evil, demonic, typically living the darkest part of the forest, according to many tales, or in a graveyard where they wander amongst the dead. Thought this legend comes from an old Irish custom of hiring mourners for the few knows of important nobles.

You know, women would come, they would be paid to wail and grieve excessively for someone to show how important that person was, how mist they are, you know, known as keening. I hope I can do that when I die. Hope when I die, my family hires so many keening wailers, like really over the top, like 100, so many of them, way more than the family members present,

and maybe some break dancers and a Mary Achiband just make it a weird confusing spectacle Possibly the scariest of all the Irish monsters is the Obartock According to the 1875 volume the origin and history of Irish names in places by historian Patrick Weston Joyce the Obartock our solitary source were dwarfs with the power to rise from the grave and wreak havoc as undead creatures. You heard me, they're fucking lone dwarf sorcerers. And the only way to subdue their power

is to kill them with a you wood sword and bury them upside down. That sucks, I hope I don't see one because I don't have a you wood sword or know what the fuck that is or where to get it. I highly doubt there are any around here. There cannot be a big, you would sword market in the court lane. On some iterations of the Abartock myth

is creature drinks the blood of its subjects. Some academics believe that this monster others like it inspired Irish author, Bram Stoker to create Dracula, which in turn influenced the modern day concept of vampires. And there are so many of these culture creatures, the Irish have their own brand of popular demons called the Bananak, some kind of supernatural race

who haunt battlefields. There's kill piece found mostly in Scott Gaelic folklore. They've been swamps, marshes, bogs, mosey, but can appear in like anybody of water. These things in early myths looked a lot like horses with dark fur, but they didn't eat apples and hay and grasses and stuff. They ate people. They would lure people to the edge of the water. These things in early Miss looked a lot like horses with dark fur, but they didn't eat apples and hay and grasses and stuff. They ate people. They would lure people to the edge of the water. And then maybe you think like, oh, look at that. It's pretty swamp horse.

Hanging out the edge of that dirty ass pond, staring at me. I bet it wants me to pet it. And then eat your fucking face off. You just got kelpied. Over time, they became mixed up with Satan. Took on demonic features. They became half human, half demon horses. Two more. Selkie's might be my favorite type of mermaid. Selkie can look like a regular ass seal, but no, sir, sexiest lady in a magic seal costume.

Not kidding. It's just like, oh, that's a seal. And then the seal's like, whoop, it rips off seal skin. Fucking sexiest lady. First seal skin, fucking sexy ass lady. First seal skin, then titties. And when it comes to the short, it can take off at seal skin, right? And try and entice you, try and seduce you.

If you're really lucky, it'll fuck you. So many hot ladies in Celtic mythology, they're very attractive, not all of them ladies though, summer handsome dudes, handsome home record dudes, male counterparts to the female shrub slut, water sluts, seal sluts. These guys specifically seek out ladies who are unhappy in their marriages and seduce them, horny ass selkes. One more, the Latin Shee, another fairy, a demon fairy.

And guess what it looks like? Yes, another hot ass lady. An exceptional, exceptionally beautiful woman. And she hangs out at Semit cemetery trolling for dick not kidding She hangs out at tombs looking for male lovers She especially tries to seduce widowers visiting the graves of their dead wives That's fucked up, but also you can interpret as being pretty nice. They're grieving. They're lonely. Yeah, she fucks them and And she appears to be great and bed. She fills her lover with pleasure

at the expense though of shortening his life. She can also literally fuck you silly. She can make you lose your mind through her seductive dark magic. These are just a few of the many, you know, I don't know, cryptid-ish creatures running, swimming, flying, crawling, digging, fucking around on Ireland.

How many other Celtic creatures were lost to history, especially on mainland Europe? Before moving on to the last little bit of the suck where we wrap things up, let's return to a second. We have not done in a long, long time. I was watching so many YouTube videos this week, and the comments were killing me.

Like with so much of Celtic mythology, the origins of the stories of these creatures, you know, it's unknown. Their descriptions shift a bit from telling to telling. So to think you know exactly what these things are is absurd, you do not. But that does not stop a lot of people from claiming to telling. So to think you know exactly what these things are is absurd, you do not. But that does not stop a lot of people from claiming to have all the answers.

Let's meet some of these people in today's idiots of the internet. I took parts of some of the descriptions of the creatures I just went over, from a YouTube video titled The Incredible Creatures of Celestial Mythology and Folklore. Mythology, B.C.E.R.E.C. C.U.N. History, posted last April 21st by C.U.N. History has almost 500,000 views over 600 comments.

And here are some of my favorite, the top rated comment. From Mythic Doien, voted up 558 times is the modern depiction on banshee's portray them as evil beans but in truth they aren't evil at all. All they are are omens and reminders that death was coming and that one should be prepared for it. They are not evil. They are just doing their jobs. And again, I mean, not that this description is wrong from a lot of like, you know, sources, but I just love it when people speak with this much certainty about things that literally no one should be certain about. And doing their jobs, like what?

That's a weird way to phrase it too. Like, you know, like you want, like, they just clock an end, wow, and I go, do my way, Lane. And also cocky YouTube handle. Banshee, mythic, or sorry, not Banshee. Mythic doien. Supremistic.

Someone who has the most mythic answers. Must be so fun to be an expert about things that no one can actually prove you wrong in. But then we are to do that to other people be like, you know, you're wrong about something that no one can prove. Anyway, Maya Kusaki, another Banshee expert, and she comments, no. It depend. A Banshee expert, and she comments, uh, no.

It depend a banshee that had a good relationship with their family is a banshee that looked after her family after death. But dark banshee, who in life hated their family, they become monstrous, banshee, and hunt their family cursing them after death. It depend about how their relationship was with their family in life.

Okay, cool. Maybe you and Mythic Doyen can go interview some banshees for an upcoming book or something. This personality is driving crazy. User Apateth Lord of Light is taking this video. Wait, wait, I gotta say his name right. Apateth, I think it's pretty sure it's made up. I tried to find a real basis

and I kept finding more of his content. Apateth Lord of Light, very serious, they post, don't forget what is called evil to one or many could have been a victim to them or their allegiances and their reviews to allow them to rest by sending their images as spirits to those they want to control. It could be to hide the disgusting things they had done to them and they did others to attack them or curse them or act like they were afraid of them. Go after the conscious energy of the individual sending the images and you will find who the real culprit is.

How do you do this? Twitches and stabs through the spirit. Others will try to escape by any means. Fuckin' what? Are you talking about? You just go after the conscious energy of the individual. You just gotta stab through their spirit. I feel like the FBI might need to monitor this motherfucker.

I feel like there's a decent chance that there's either a body in affidavitate Lord of Light's apartment, or they have written out plans to someday hopefully have a body in their apartment. And I feel like there's a good chance there in in cell. Hey, do you know Ron speaking of in cells? Do you know Ron of Queens Grove?

If you do, tell him to stop being such a smug cocky weirdo, he posts There is some truth here. I like that We could work on our pronunciation though not pronunciation. That's not a word that no one said it was in this comment thread i.e Lennon sheep that's how my Irish friends say it. Make it so. He actually writes that as I said, make it so. Secondly, these artworks are beautiful and all, but way too much clothing on these Fave folk. Remember, they do not conform to Christian convention. I can fix that too. That's what Photoshop is for. I don't know. This is a weird like insult job offer.

Please let me help you make your content so much better. It's not what it needs to be. I just can't stand this personality be. Just to make it so. Because I checked out his channel. He has a content creator. Ron is 59 subscribers. One of his videos has a thumbnail that says,

best friend that you never had. And it's a picture of him. And then it says says that is me. Another says is this a sexiest man alive and it's just a different picture of Ron. I don't think anybody needs Ron's help. I think Ron needs a lot of other people's help. Roderick Elliott also is a dick writing sloppy research if you're calling the banshee evil at worst, they're neutral and our corny pop art images really the best you can do.

The images are awesome. He's the only person in the thread who complained. And I actually did look through every single comment. Really cool creature illustrations. Broderick also makes quite a few videos, and he has eight subscribers, and no images to go along with any of them. Broderick, take it out a notch.

Focus more on your content, not on other people's content. And again, no one knows everything for sure about the legend of the banshee. User Central Point cracks me up in this comment thread posting, you forgot the internet troll who lives in his mother's dark basement, leaving nasty online comments and forever be rejected and will be forever rejected by women.

I know it's not like a new joke, but in the thread, in the context of thread I liked it. And then one more just because it's so insane, has nothing to do with Celtic mythology. User out of service, right? Can you do a video on the Antichrist and the Mark of the Beast economic collapse as foretold? This is not a time to turn to fables.

Okay, weird, to feel the need to write that. I mean, I guess there should be no videos on anything on YouTube, other than videos about the, you know, antichrist and the Mark of the Beast economic collapse. Okay, user out of service, please get help. Go to the closest hospital and just keep repeating what you just wrote and repeat it to everyone you see getting louder and louder until someone restrains you and gives you the meds that I feel you clearly need to get your life hopefully back on track. Let's get out here.

Okay, wrapping things up here, Celtic mythology is fucking confusing, also fascinating, and as popularity is making it come back. After facing their extinction at the hands of the British on account of 17th and 18th century century laws that saw many of the myths preserving manuscripts and books describe my medieval Irish monks destroyed and even more confusion to all this. I didn't even mention that before. The monks write all the stuff down and then centuries later the British like now we got to bring these books. Celtic mythology has recently rebounded in a big way. Indeed in recent years Irish mythology the most well preserved form of Celtic mythology has recently rebounded in a big way. Indeed in recent years Irish mythology, the most well preserved form of Celtic mythology, has been experiencing some of a renaissance.

Irish mythology has been undergone a new wave of popularity in modern fantasy writing, with numerous retellings and fantasy novels based loosely on Irish sagas, because the Celtic mythological records are incomplete and likely lost forever. There is so much room for fiction writers to use their creativity to fill in the gaps of the myths and make their own fantasy tales. So just like an imagination springboard. On speaking of imagination and writers, the Irish have been pretty fucking good at writing for a long time.

They produce some big names in the literary world, especially for a small nation. The imagination is strong in the Celtic DNA. Let's meet a few of these. James Joyce, usually the first name that pops into people's heads when they think of Irish writing. One of the most significant writers in the English-speaking world thanks to his unique modernist style that revolutionized fiction in the early 20th century. He was interested in all sorts of mythology. His best known work was Ulysses, an enormous tomb that parallels the episodes of Homer's Odyssey based on Greek mythology in various different literary styles, including the stream of consciousness technique he became famous for.

First published in book form in 1922, it's been called stylistically dense and exhilarating. Generally regarded as a masterpiece, it's been the subject of numerous volumes of commentary and analysis. Joyce Born in Dublin in 1882, spent his youth there, spent his later years largely in Italy, Switzerland, and France, Dineand Zurich, after complications from a perforated ulcer at the age of 58. And for many years, now on June 16th, each year, the author is famous work, commemorated, most famous work, commemorated all around the world with a series of literary events known as Bloomsday, chosen because of the day of the events of Ulysses, which also happened to be the day, Joyce and his wife Nora went on their first date.

While Ulysses hands down, Joyce is most well-known, talked about book, notoriously difficult to make sense of, even for those already familiar with his style and way of writing, even for literary scholars. Another of his books, Dubliners, however much less complex, it's a book of short stories about all sorts of Dublin characters from the early 20th century, perfect view of what life was like in the city at that time from various perspectives.

From the aristocracy all the way down to the poorer classes, everything in between. Another of the major Irish names in the annals of the English-speaking literary world, Oscar Wilde, born in Dublin, 1854. During his time Oscar, one of the most recognizable personalities in the British Isles thanks to his charisma, Unrived wit, fancy dress style, but his life would end tragically. His life also probably worth sucking in the future. He was very well read coming from an aristocratic family. He gave him an excellent education. So writing and journalism, natural career path for him. He enjoyed immediate and wide success during his 20s and 30s with his plays, which at the time provided biting, satirical, social commentary. Unfortunately, it all went wrong for

Oscar when evidence emerged of homosexual activities, which was then a criminal offense. He was imprisoned for two years, then fled to France immediately after his release, where he would die penniless and unknown at the age of 46. What a shame. Wild plays in novels, much more accessible to normal humans, like me than Joyce's. The importance of being earnest, one of his best love plays Stillgithlossalafs by contemporary or modern audiences. The picture of Dory and Gray, another excellent story, but also still has relevance, even though it was first published in 1890, been adapted into two films.

I've seen one of them, it was excellent. Explores the perils of vanity and selfishness with a dark and supernatural twist that I won't spoil for you Wild used the picture of Dorian Gray as his autobiography claiming basal hallward is who is what I think I am Lord Henry what the world thinks me Dorian what I would like to be in other ages perhaps and That book would be banned for its sexual homosexual undertones and would help send wild to prison. Well, I'd also wrote a book of children's stories like the Happy Prince and other tales in 1888.

And there are so many other great Irish writers. There's Bram Stoker, famous author of Dracula, WB Yates, Talented Poets, one of the most prominent figures that spearheaded the Irish literary revival in the late 1800s. C.S. Lewis, author of the Seven Book Series, and I'm second guessing myself on Yates, I want to say maybe Yates, sorry if I said that wrong. CS Lewis, the author of the Seven Book Series, the Chronicles of Narnia, started with the highly successful line, the Witch in the Wardrobe, often thought of as a British author and Christian apologists, but was born and spent his early life in Belfast Northern

Ireland before moving to England to attend boarding school at the age of 10 So not from the Republic of Ireland, but from the island itself, you know, drank some of the water there Also the famous potato eater Jonathan Swift from Dublin prolific writer brought the world as most famous work Golliver's travels way back in 1726 And then there's perhaps the most influential Irish writer Dublin's Samuel Beckett. Playwright, poet, novelist, his work fits into the modernist genre, usually based on various elements of human nature, often with dark black comedy undertones.

Waiting for Godot, considered to be Beckett's masterpiece. Two act playing, which two characters wait for the arrival of a figure known as Godot, who never shows up, so naturally not much happens, but I've seen it it in the lack of action not miss because the dialogue is still fucking good. The play opened up to much debate in 1953 still regularly performed today. Various interpretations on what the play actually means have been put forward no general consensus. And I restored that it is both captivated and confusing that it's on brand. 1969 Beckett awarded the Nobel Prize for literature and And let's truly wrap up now is your brain tired my brain is my brain has been stretched The Celtic people have a long mysterious history

Spans much further into the world than just Ireland or even the British Isles You're not by language stories and their druid led religion the Celt survive countless wars and attempts to squash their culture in the end Ireland Partiskyland and Wales, you know, little pockets of England, really the last place the Kelt would be safe from the ever expanding reach of the Romans. And that is where their rich tradition of sci-fi, fantasy storytelling revolves around. But the Catholic church made it where Rome could not and, you know, made it where the Romans, the soldiers could not. And while they didn't stamp the Kelt's out, they did stamp out a lot of their history.

All of the old written sources we have on Irish mythology come from Christian writers. And they changed the original stories. And now the Celts have heroes that were probably really gods and gods and creatures that probably weren't as evil as they've been made out to be by Satan obsessed authors twisting their stories. Pretty sad how much their history has been whitewashed, but in a way makes it all a bit more magical. We can put our own interpretation on it. Because if you don't know for sure

what the stories really were, we can play the, I don't know, maybe, or, oh, I wonder if, you know, games. It reminds me randomly of songs, or this all reminds me randomly, the songs I wrote and played in the band, when I was in college. We were supposed to record all of our stuff when we graduated, but we never did, and I'm so glad.

I was sad about it then, but so glad now. Now all I have, you know, of these songs are memories, you know, and I remember them being so good. I remember playing at a party, people dancing, you know, my memory is, you know, filled with loose alcohol, people smiling, singing along with a few of our originals. It was such a fun time.

I remember the emotions. If I actually heard those songs today, I have a feeling I would be massively disappointed that they would not live up to my memory. They might mind their wrapped up in so many good times, right? We're all so young. No responsibilities. Lots of alcohol, lots of sexual energy, frivolous fun.

I don't want to shine the harsh light of reality onto any of that. And there is that chance that the original Celtic origin stories might not be as great as we can just kind of think they might be. The adaptations might be better. We don't know. And now since we don't have them, we can just tell ourselves that the original stories were so much better and we never get to be proven wrong.

We can tell ourselves that the gods were so much more powerful and magical and amazing and that's fun to do. I hope you learned a lot about the Celts. I hope you didn't get too hung up on me not being great at Gaelic. And you had a good time with all this today. I did have a good time as hard as it was. Man, it was a motherfucker to research,

but I did learn a lot and for that I'm glad. So thank you, Nimmron, thank you, Spacezards, for the challenge. Time now for today's top five takeaways. Time suck, top five takeaways. Number one, Celtic mythology is both a huge subject, and a huge subject with huge gaps in understanding about it. All of it comes from an oral tradition that was written down, you know,

second hand by Christian priest after Ireland was converted to Christianity's hundreds and perhaps thousands of years after the mess began. Number two, the Celtic people, not just Irish folk. They come from all over Europe and as far east as modern day Turkey. An ancient time, they were bonded by a similar language system, rooted in Galic, shared similar spiritual beliefs and cultural ideas. There are six areas now recognized as modern Celtic nations that include Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, the Isle of Man, and Cornwall.

Number three, the Druids. While there is not a ton of knowledge about the Druids, they were kelp experts on all sorts of fields from healing to preaching the faith to political planning to philosophy, you know, maybe they did some shit with lightsabers, who knows. The druids along with the Bards also able to unite the distant Celtic tribes together, make them a more formidable enemy to the Romans and Greeks and other foes, the Huns, etc. The Slavs. By circulating news amongst the regions and keeping the language uniform. Number four, Finn McCool and the Samin of Knowledge. Whoever came up with that story had to be on drugs. And it is not the only

salmon-based myth in the Celtic canon either. Number five, new info, identifying as Celtic in modern times, pretty new, has its origins and opposition to British rule. The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed a full-blown Celtic revival in the British Isles, where Celtic culture had largely been dead for a long time. Driven by political anger over British rule in places like Ireland, Scotland Scotland and Wales, musicians, artists, authors proudly began to openly embrace a pre-Christian Celtic identity. Prior to this, all the Celtic jewelry and Celtic talk

and music and its association with Ireland and more that we use today just really didn't happen for centuries. The church and British rule just did not allow it. Time, suck, tough, right, take away. All right, Celtic mythology has been suck. Let's celebrate with some music. Ha ha ha, yay! All right.

Ah, hit it. Is that the best guy? Is that the worst guy? That was the best guy. Thanks to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help I'm making times like every week. Thanks to Zach Flannery for pointing me in some good directions this week.

And for his two plus years of service here at Bad Magic, we're gonna miss you, Script Keeper. Now, go be the bard. You're supposed to be. And actually, he has a lot of Celtic heritage, I believe. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindy Cummins, again, for giving me the time to do this, especially this week, a lot of late nights. Thanks to Joe Paisy for production, the Reverend Doctor, making it sound so good. Thanks to Bitelixer for keeping

the time suck app run and smooth, Logan the Art Warlock Keith, creating the merch at badmagicmerch.com, running socials with Liz, the Enchantress, Hernandez, who also runs our Colt the Curious Facebook to private Facebook page. There's so many time suck related private Facebook pages out there now. She does that one with her wonderful all-seeing eyes moderators. Thanks to beef steak and his mod squad, keeping all the meat steaks, meat sacks happy over on Discord. Next week on time suck we dive back into the world of true crime with one of the most controversial cases in true crime history. The disappearance of Lacey Peterson and the subsequent trial and conviction

of her husband Scott Peterson. Scott's recent appeal trial reminded me and us of this crazy crime and trial. Sometime original trial, sometime between the evening of December 23rd and the morning of December 24th, 2002, 27 year old Lacey Peterson, seven months pregnant, disappears from the home she shares with her husband Scott Modesto, California.

Scott and Lacey seem to have the classic American Dream Life. They met as undergrad, Scott married, briefly owned a business. We're ready to set themselves up in a house that they could fill with children. And then after a little trouble with getting pregnant, Lacey is excited to be carrying her firstborn boy. They decided to name Connor, but you know, this idealized image comes crashing down in the weeks after her disappearance when news Alice discovered that Scott was having an ongoing affair with massage therapist named Amber Frey, who believed the Scott was unmarried and that he didn't want children. That couple of Scott so-called weird behavior in the course of investigation and his lack of an alibi for the time when Lacey went missing led him to becoming the primary suspect and Lacey's

disappearance. Later, when her body is discovered, months later, on a Marchie shore, becomes the number one suspect for her murder. And in suing trial, Scott will be sentenced to death as news outlets were uncovered of his trial, people like Nancy Grace seek to make him public enemy number one, but did Scott deserve it?

Did it just be an asshole or not, behaving how people expect you to behave mean that you're guilty of murder? How do the media make this tragic story into a marketable spectacle? So all of this and more and next week's time suck it'll be a suck akin to Jody Aries and the Menendez brothers. And now let's head on over to this week's updates.

It was something light and funny. Scared sucker Austin Kurtz. Fell for one of my tricks last week. My trick-a-moniasis. Fake symptom bullshit. Let's hear his fear as he writes, fuck you in your tricks and he spells it TR ICHS. I've been with the same woman for six years. I love you Melissa.

And you still have me believing I may one day lose my dick. I've had my share of close calls. As you read the symptoms, I was in the bathroom naked, just building myself up until you got to the rotting balls and I was like, no, do I have it? I can't tell. Then he said you were joking and my common sense came back. Thanks for the hard laugh, man.

Hail them run. Well, I'm glad that your brief you were joking, and my common sense came back. Thanks for the hard laugh, man. Hail them, Rod. Well, I'm glad that your brief tear ended in relief and laughter. Austin, he'll remember, thanks for sharing that to make us laugh. And, you know, keep your wing clean, so you don't have your dick broth. Spooning sucker, Katie,

full of her lie that was Lindsay's last week, and then it felt better about herself, and now she's gonna feel worse. She writes, I want it Lindsay to know that I totally fell for the Spooning story. I actually thought, huh, who to thunk? I almost felt dumb until you said

Lindsay also fell for it. No, Katie, Lindsay did not fall for it. She made it up. She's a liar! She tricked you. It was her lie. She's not to be trusted either, right? This narrative of like, I'm not even one,

she's a good one. Well, it's time to second guess it. Right? And she's Polish. How could you be trusted? You were not alone though. On the secret suck this week, we had several messages sending for people falling for that line and it makes Lindsey very happy. She's very proud of herself. So maybe she'll share more lies in the future. Now for a correction from last week, I fucked up on some philosophy.

Christine won a several suckers who called me out on it and I'm glad. She writes, Dan, I love your podcast and listen to it often, but I have one small beef that I'm gonna lay out what I think is a concise But it's probably not concise as you might guess from the first sentence this email, which is an atrocious and unforgettable run-on I like I like your writing style Truly sometimes when you get fired up about stuff, which is great and fun to listen to you can occasionally take things out of context and don't really give them a fair shake a great no Disagreement here Christine and your most recent episode on Listen to, you can occasionally take things out of context and don't really give them a fair shake. A great. No disagreement here, Christie. In your most recent episode on Onida, you briefly mentioned Sir Thomas Moore.

You took one sentence out of one passage from a man who wrote literally dozens of works, treatise during his lifetime, acted as if you would dismantle this man's entire philosophy by reading one's sentence and giving counter examples to a straw man argument that you had built up in front of you. Let me play some backpipes to distract from being guilty as charged. I would like to offer just one possible alternative interpretation, citing just a few more moments from the same work Utopia, free to consider. When more states, every man has a right to everything,

he is not remarking that everybody in Utopia can take whatever they like from whatever they like. He is not saying that every man has a right to every house or piece of food or person in proper context. He is instead referring to necessities. In fact, he follows immediately with they all know that if they can, that if care is taken to keep the public stores full, no private man can want anything. For among them, there is no unequal distribution so that no man is poor, none in necessity, and no no man has anything yet, they are all rich. Essentially, every man has a right to every essential thing. Food, shelter, community, justice.

Yeah. I'm seeing this now. Every man has a right to not starve to death, to not be homeless, to not be so on the margins that he's poor, while another man is inconceivably rich. Every man also has a responsibility to contribute to the community's public stores, these essentials as they're able. More description of utopia also includes that men in power should not be as idle as drones that subsist on other men's labor, and where instead of men in power has more regard to the riches of his country than to his wealth. I.e., men have a right to not be exploited in an obligation to not exploit others.

Success for one man should also translate to proportionate success for those whose labor provided that man his success. I personally do not find these ideas to be radical, or at all dissimilar to ideas you have expressed in previous episodes where you've mentioned labor, wealth, disparities, etc. I would love to hear your thoughts with this interpretation in mind. Regardless of what you ultimately come to believe about Moore's writings, they should at least be approached with an appreciation for their nuance and aside. If you've ever heard the strategy of the Commons and asked say from the 1800s, Utopia is essentially an opposing take on the same ethical quandary. Centuries apart, these men separately approach the same question come to very different conclusions.

Lloyd argues that open access resource systems will eventually collapse. Moore argues that communities can cooperate to contribute and distribute resources prudently and fairly. Suffice to say, these are questions what humans have wrestled with for ages and will continue to wrestle with. Thanks for taking the time to read this email. Hope wasn't too harsh or long-winded. Again, love the podcast. Look forward to hopefully seeing your stand-up again soon in Chicago. Best Christine. Christine, thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. Yes, you clearly know a lot more about more than I do. Yeah, I know. I swung a mist on that one. I'm not going to fight back with anything you said.

I will only say this podcast is a challenge due to time constraints every week. You know, there's limited time to interpret a huge amount of data, make it entertaining, add my mythology, keep it accurate, distill it into an understandable narrative, etc. Some topics I've been finding out the last couple of years way easier to do that with than others. And I have the same amount of time each week. This wasn't something I guess I really truly anticipated. And I just wanna have the time to properly research

certain things I like. So I'm trying to pair things down, not broaden my scope too big. And I try to avoid mistakes like this by just not diving into too many tangents that I don't understand. No excuse for my misinterpretation of more, just an explanation. I did not research that quote further because I did think at the time I understood it,

but I was wrong. I was so focused on John Humphrey noise, I rushed through some of the philosophy he built his community on and I should have not done that. So I thank you for the reminder. Good to be humbled from time to time. Thanks for clearing out my mistake. No, not just for me, but for the audience. Noise though, can we all agree? He was a fucking maniac. See you in Chicago and hail them right. And now I end on, you know, a little bit of anger from a fan, but also some love and some righteous anger. Polyamor's sack Sam did not care for some of my comments last week and his anger is fair.

And I'm glad he wrote it as well. And here's what he said. Time suck never thought I would have to write into this podcast. My name is Sam and I say all of this with love. I love all the bad magic podcasts and of course we'll continue to listen, but Dan sincerely fuck you for bagging on polyamorous relationships. You sound like every homophob out there when you said, I can't imagine being raised by multiple parents, I would take my parents' divorce and all over that.

Sounds so familiar to all the people who say, I would take my parents' divorce over having two moms or two dads. I am myself in a very happy, very healthy polyamorous relationship. I live with both my boyfriends and a house I bought for us. We may not have children or ourselves yet, but I have seen people in long-term polyamorous relationship. I live with both my boyfriends and a house I bought for us. We may not have children or ourselves yet, but I have seen people in long-term polyamorous relationships raise wonderful children. My best friend would be one of them. Her stepfather, her mom, and her mom's boyfriend have been together for over 20 years and raised three amazing children. Just because some polyamorous relationship are toxic and see them outside the box doesn't mean they all are. There are many happy polyamorous people around the world. Don't judge us because a cult gives us

a bad name. I would say the same thing for straight people myself. If I looked at every straight relationship and assumed they were the exact same way my parents were, I would avoid straight people entirely. Please fix any typos as I had said before. I am literally dumb. I still love the podcast, but I'm a little mad at you right now. You're fellow dummy. Creeper and spaces are the same. Well Sam, first of all, first off, you're not dumb. There was literally no typos to fix. Also, yeah, maybe not the best context last week for me to bring up that argument and make those comments.

In my mind, I was not comparing monogamy to the kind of polyamory you're engaged in. I was comparing it to the kind of polyamory noise was engaged in. And I do wonder what you would think or what you do think of that. You know, like what if you were not in a relationship with two of the people, but with literally 300, would that be better or worse for kids to grow up in then monogamy? I honestly have no idea really at the end of the day because we don't have the data to compare the two. My concern was and still is with polyamory in general, emotional fulfillment of each person involved.

Can you be as close to several people as you can be to one? Can you keep things equal? Can everyone love each other equally so that no one feels left out? For me, personal relationships are more of a struggle and require more work, where I have a hell of a time trying to figure out one person and I work at it and if I had two people with different emotional needs, for me would be overwhelming. So I definitely could be doing some projecting there.

You apparently handle it just fine. I would just always be worried or jealous or insecure. Is the other person me left out? Am I being left out? Does this person have you with me? Am I happy with this person than that person? So what I can handle though, yeah, not necessarily what you can handle.

And for the record, I hope you did hear how I phrased that entirely where I said personally, I'm glad I was raised in Monogamitz Household, Dvorosnol, as opposed to the Polly Emmer's shit show that was the Onida community. So I think some of what you felt was pulled a little out of context. That's according to my notes, I thought I stayed on script there.

Maybe when I was a recordant, I didn't phrase it how I had a written. So yeah, so I was not trying to compare them to all forms of polyamory. Sorry, I did not make that more clear. I will have Luciferina speak me for later. Love you Sam and let's get out of here Thanks time suckers. I need a net. We all did Thanks again for listening to another bad magic productions podcast meet sacks. Keep an eye out for fairies this week Not all of them seem friendly

But if you do see one in the cemetery, well, you probably try and fuck it It sounds like it might be worth the risk of insanity and death, and also keep on sucking. A magic production. Hey Joe, you should come in. I want to play a game with you. The logic productions. Hey, Joey, you should come in. I want to play a game with you. Let's play a game. It's called Best or Worst Backpipe. Okay, so don't look. Don't look. Can we get my ears off my beanie? Okay, don't look. Don't peek.

Don't peek. Okay. Best or worst? Best. That was worst. God dammit. Okay, again, faster worst. It's the worst. That's the best. It's so hard. Why? Who invented these? The devil.