These lands are old and the elves who lived before us still watch and wait. Cross them, and you may feel the prick of their arrow. You’ll find no wound, though your flesh will swell and ache, and if you happen upon one of their elfstones in the grass then you might have chance at survival. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the superstition, archaeology and science of elfshot.
It was my fault for letting the cattle graze so near the old wood, in the circular stones, where the roots grow elf twisted and rain water filled elf cups, in the rock where strange lights danced some nights, and the moonlight shines brighter than elsewhere. I'd lost cows before, but never like this. I found her bloated and dead by the tree line. As I strolled up to the poor heifer, I saw neither bite nor puncture on her hide. I scanned the surrounding grass for signs of tracks or blood. I saw neither. But that's when something caught my eye, A small stone point like an arrow head, with neither shaft nor fletchings, and carved by some art not practiced by mortal men. I stooped to pick it up, and that's when I felt a white hot pain in my upper left side. I felt for blood underneath my shirt, such was the pain, but found only unpierced flesh, even as the agony of it brought me to my knees. In the tall grass, a scan the tree line. They were invisible to my eyes, but I felt them somehow, The elves watching on from the shadows of the wood, perhaps snickering in their sublime odd tongue as the elf bolt racked my body. But I clutched the stone in my hand. I knew what I had to do. I dragged myself back across the field, sweat pouring down my face and my spleen swelling fit to burst with elf cake. Even then, when I arrived back at the house, I dropped the little of stone in a pan of water. I clutched my bible for good measure. I strained remember words and incantations by either priest or wise woman. But the best I could manage was a vague prayer to be interpreted by whatever heard me. In my moment of need, I drank the stone, touched water down all of it, though it chilled my teeth and stung my tongue. And then I realized, too late that the charm was no good, for it had touched the ground, sunlight had fallen upon it. The power of the elves had all but drained from the thing, and I was afforded only passing relief. And so I write this letter by candlelight, and I will weigh it down on the table with the Queer stone as proof, for I am now Elf marked and Elf taken. I swell, I ache to the moon rises once more in the sound of their music fills the night. Welcome just about to blow your mind the production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that little cold open definitely takes some liberties with the folklore we're going to be discussing here today. When just trying to get a little seasonal Halloween flavor here going in this episode, which I guess is kind of kick starting or how lloween season here on Stuff to blow your mind. But but today we're going to be talking about, as you might guess from the opening, elf shot or elf stones, Pixie arrows, elf arrows, and many other names, the missiles of the others. Yeah, yeah, So the basic idea here, I think is basically embedded in the fiction we just shared here. The idea that and this is just roughly so. Like with with many folk traditions, as we'll discuss, there a number of variations over time and space. But the idea here is that the elves, out of trickery or pure malice, they might shoot cattle or humans in some cases with their invisible arrows, and these invisible arrows leave little or no physical trace in again in many tellings, but cause otherwise unexplainable pain or disease or perhaps even death. The notion was supported via the evidence of discovered Neolithic arrowheads and other curios, and the ideas especially tied to the British Isles, but one sees examples of it from elsewhere in Europe as well as from the America's after colonial arrival. Right. So, the belief in elf shot, I think is best understood not as a single belief but as a sort of uh complex of related explanations for totally different types of natural phenomena that are all sort of unified under under a common theory of of fairy weapons and fairy malice. Yeah. Yeah, and without diving any deeper we can we can see the appeal of these ideas. Right. It's a superstitious, supernatural script that can help explain several different things, help explain and otherwise unexplained illness, otherwise unexplained pain or another malady, otherwise unexplained illness or death, and cattle and otherwise unexplained artifacts found on or in the Earth. Now it makes sense, I think at this point to discuss the elves of it, because I know, for for many of us out there, you you say the word elf, and there are probably a few different key images and ideas that are gonna immediately come come to life in your mind. I mean, especially now with the Rings of Power on TV and so forth, many of and also you know the resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons, people are going to think about the fantasy elves of Tolkien and Tolken derived works like Dungeons and Dragons. Uh. For for others of you out there, you might instantly think about Santa's elves or Keebler elves. Little you know, curious people making novelties and imaginary idealistic workshops. Right, I would say that the influence of Tolkien is so strong that, uh, at least in America. I don't I don't know if this would be as true in the rest of the English speaking world even, but but at least in America, when you say elf, I think what people mostly think is a Tolkien style high elf an l Rond or Galadriel to figure a kind of noble and elegant fantasy aristocrat who has, you know, wisdom and magic arts to offer. Yeah, and generally just super blonde hair, like real, real, pristine blonde wig going on in many cases. I guess el Ron Elron didn't have blond hair. Elrond have red hair. I don't know, dark hair. I don't know he's I mean, there's an Elrond, young Elrond, the younger version of Elrond is in the Rings of Power, and I'm I'm suddenly at at a loss to remember what color is hair is mainly remember the ears. I remember thinking around the year two thousand two or so. It's like live Tyler. That's an elf. I guess. The interesting thing is that, of course both of these ideas, obviously Tolkien's ideas of elves have have their roots in actual folklore and mythology, as one would expect. But but even like Santa's ells and Keepler elves, I guess they're not They're not completely removed from the mythologic called roots here, but that but perhaps less connected. Yea, as you're saying, Once you get outside of the very sort of narrowly Tolkien influenced idea, the elf is actually an extremely broad tradition right right, and you get into into many of these traditions and beliefs of old and elves get more mysterious and also more dangerous. They become less human and harder to fathom. So I want Two of the sources I often turn to when when thinking about these things are Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which is is you know, which is a pretty pretty good book even today for for for highlighting some of this stuff. And then of course I always look at the books of Folklore's Carol Rose in particular for this one Spirits, Ferries, Leprikaans and Goblins, which is still very much in print. I always recommend that one to two fans of mythological and folkloric beings. But in Brewers Dictionary Phrase and Fable, the definition of elf is quote a dwarfish being of Teutonic mythology possessed of magical powers which is used for the good or ill of mankind. Carol Rose, in uh in the Spirits Fairies, Lepricuns and Goblins, mentions that in Teutonic mythology, the alpha are subdivided into dark elves and light elves, and Rose refers to them as well as a type of sprite found in British, Icelandic, Scandinavian and Teutonic legend. They are the the alf the alf. There are several different spellings that are kind of like elf or alf or yielf for or in some cases you have like the Ellen or el folk and Danish you have the elvore in Swedish traditions, and then they're the spay Wise and Icelandic traditions and many more. Now there have been attempts to understand elves as both um sort of folkloric and mythological reverberations of our understandings of indigenous people's which certainly ties in with some of the themes will be exploring here, as well as with people born with certain birth defects or people that have certain illnesses. Um. And these are perhaps broader explorations, but but I think we can see the validity of both avenues combined of course, as always with the self sustaining power of myth, folklore and belief. You know, we we often mentioned on the show we can't we can't discount the power of human imagination and creativity, be that uh, you know, imagination acting out of pure whimsy, or imagination seeking to understand things or just even make shape of various realities of life. Yeah, And another way I would put that is that yes, people often did probably see something that they didn't understand and then try to put together a mythical theory of it, a kind of supernatural explanation that would make sense of it. But then other times, clearly people just make things up. I mean, people have imagination and they dream things up. So you get you get both in our mythical traditions, I think. Can it's limiting to assume that you're always looking at one thing or the other right right, But once the once the script is established, the script is generally nourished and maintained. Um so so like other similar beings in folklore, such as say that the Irish tradition of the Tata done and uh, fairies and so forth, there's kind of a ghost species are to the elves, they're the sublime other that occupies places that we cannot occupy. They hold powers that we scarcely comprehend, and they may wish as well, they may wish us ill, or they may just sort of be neutral in all matters. Uh. And there are reasons are hard to fathom they might do the things they do on a whim, or they might have seemingly good reason to act against us or or forests. They're also associated with a host of unexplained phenomena, including visual phenomena, making them a core supernatural script for the unexplained that I think alone and many have pointed this out aligne closely with twenty and twenty one century uses of the UFO script of the the Alien Visitor Script for the unexplained as a way of shaping and processing things that we don't understand, for examples pointed out by both in both Roses book and in Brewers. We have a number of elf related phenomenon in folk traditions, and they include the following. There's elf bore, which is apparently This is the apparently a piece of wood from which the knot has been dropped out. I don't know how how much I really need a supernatural script to explain that, but fair enough. There's elf cake. This is an enlargement of the spleen elf child. This is a change link getting into changeling traditions. This one was new to me. An elf cup elf cup This would be where you have stone that has a hollow form from dripping water and water collects there. Well, that's the elf cup, and I guess the elves drink from it. Elf are getting interditions of the willow the wisp, which we've covered on the show before. Now here's one that people with long longer hair, or with children with longer hair can definitely comment on. Elf locks. These are tangles and knots in the hair caused by elves in the night. If one is elf marked, that may refer to birth defects or birth marks caused by the elves. If you are elf taken, that means you're a bewitched or an enchanted person. Elf twisted may refer to someone who has suffered a stroke, but it also can refer to deformed vegetation elf twisted vegetation. And then this is an interesting one I ran across as well. I don't think this was in neither of these texts, but elf milling the sound of woodworms chewing. And then of course we have our elf pharaohs are elf shot um, which again is a perfect script to turn to in an attempt to explain the unexplainable, and also is alluded to in the cold Open the artifacts associated with elf shot. The little found uh uh stones and arrowheads are also associated with various folk medicine and magical practices, generally thought to heal or alleviate illness in animals or humans. Generally, uh illness is caused or perceived to be caused by the elf shot. Like if you get shot by a fantasy arrow, by a magical arrow from an uh from the elves, well, if you can find that that artifact, well, then maybe we have a chance of curing things. Or if we happen to have any in the collection of the local healer, maybe a little satchel of of elf stone somewhere, well, those can be used uh in the curative arts, drawing on the traditional logic of like cures like or sympathetic magic, the idea that if your if your ailment is caused by a certain type of object or or action, then it can also be maybe cured by a similar or related type of object or action, right right, And sometimes these stones, these elf arrows and so forth, they're thought to be be essentially the ones that were fired. Other times they may have been dropped by the elves. And some other cases you have situations where these things are interpreted as having like fallen from the sky and so forth. Yeah, a lot of the older sources that I read quoted said that they were dropped from the air. Now for a couple of related concepts. Here in Scotland, there are also tales of fairy riding, by which a livestocks paralysis has explained as being due to exhaustion caused by fairies riding the animals around his mounts all through the night. There's also the use of thunder stones, of which I guess elf shot is kind of a subset or at least the very related concepts in which people have reinterpreted stone, axe heads, tools, and also fossils as sacred objects that may have fallen from the sky or experienced some other supernatural entry into our world. And we see examples of this in European, Native American and Asian traditions as well. I found an interesting quote on this. This is from eight in need Fire publishing The Illustrated Archaeologists by archaeologist Jay romilly Allen. Quote. There is hardly a single prehistoric remain in the country whose name does not show that common people associated with fairies, which is hags or the devil. So too, with the implements and objects found on ancient sites. The stone celt is looked upon as a thunderbolt, the flint arrow and elf arrow, the spindle wheel, a fairies millstone, the colored glass bead, an adder bead adder beads by the way where these were thought to have been created by snakes, and they were used in folk medicine as well, and of course in general, the idea of invisible missiles sent by a supernatural enemy that causes illness. This is also comparable to other concepts of magic, spells and curses that can be found in cultures throughout the world from you know their exam puls, like the traditions of the skin walkers among the Navaho, the concept of google poison, and the Han Chinese traditions um, and you know many such traditions around the world that involve the work of outsiders or secret outsiders that bring about sickness in a given people. Thank yeah, now, I thought it would be a good idea for elf shots, specifically to uh look at a paper that collected some direct accounts of folk beliefs about elf shot, especially in Scotland, UM, where a lot of this folklore work was done. Uh. And this paper is by Thomas Davidson. It's called elf Shot Cattle. It was published in the journal Antiquity in nineteen fifty six. Uh. Now, I do want to preface. In the next episode, I think we're going to talk about a couple of papers that um offers some criticism of the subject of elf shot, maybe questioning some things about this alleged folk belief. But I thought it would be good to first look at some of the more prevailing notions from from previous scholarship. Now, this paper by Davidson kicks off offering a number of accounts. The first one is one that was recorded in Scottish Notes and Queries in the first series. And uh this uh, this is rendered with a wonderful bit of transliterated Scottish accent, which I will not attempt to do in my own voice as I read it. But it is quoting a Buccan farmer. Uh. This is a this is a region of Scotland, a Buccan farmer in the late autumn of eighteen eighty four, and his complaint was as follows, quoted in Scottish Notes and Queries. Oh, and there are a couple of terms in here. I'll have to come back and define in a minute, probably, but uh. The quote goes like this, I've gotten an ill job this morning, in the death of a fine stirk by elf shot. And the pity is he wasn't fastened to a hair tether, which is a halter made of hair. Uh. Fan, the weapon would have fallen short of him. And then Davidson writes, when asked whether it might not have been due to quarter ill, he replied that couldn't be. My neighbor and me open up the beast, and there was a hole through his heart, so a couple of things there. He says that this happened to a stirk. A stirk is a yearling bullock or heifer, so I think a calf young cattle. Uh. And then there's this reference to quarter ill as the the opposite explanation. Uh. Quarter Ill is a common disease found in livestock, also known as black leg. It's caused by an infection, often in one of the limbs by Clostridium bacteria. And I've read in other sources that death can be very rapid after symptoms first present, sometimes just a matter of hours. So you could have a calf fall dead of quarter ill without really much warning at all. I love the detail about the hole through the heart. This lines up with some other accounts I was looking at where while you know which, elf shot is not thought to present a traditional wound. In some cases there's no wound at all, but other times there is a wound if you know what to look for, if you look closely enough. And of course this easily falls in with the realities we see mirrored and other supernatural scripts, like if you you know the mark of the witch, well, if you look closely enough and you want to find it enough, you will find the mark of the witch. If you want to find the you know, the the hidden sensor that the aliens put in a person's flesh, well, just keep looking. You'll find something that seems a little odd, and surely that is the mark. Yeah, there are all kinds of methods to detect the mark. I'll talk about that a bit in a minute. One of them I read about is like a the oldest member of the family should wear a blue bonnet, and then the blue bonnet will be rubbed all over the cow, and somehow the rubbing of the flower or the actually I don't know if that refers to a flower or an actual bonnet, it says blue bonnet in the paper. But whichever one it is, you rub that on the cow and that will reveal where the where the animal was struck. But anyway, so to recap this story from from eighteen eighty four, this farmer is saying a healthy young calf drops dead in its first year suddenly, no apparent explanation. Uh. Though again, of course there are diseases that caused sudden death in bovines. And the farmer and his neighbor confirmed the cause of death was elf shot because they did an autopsy and found that even though the animal had no external wounds, there was a hole in the animal's heart. Okay. Second account cited by Davidson. This was originally published in Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland. Uh, And it goes like this, Davidson writes. Quote. Some years before, in eighteen sixty seven, a Mr. Hugh Morrison saw a cow which was said to have been killed by the fairies. When he pointed out to the farmer that her death had been caused by rolling over and her long horns penetrating the ground had kept her in a position from which she could not rise. He was told that that was a common way in which cow's fall when struck by the UH. And then this is something that is spelled like like it looks like sage head sith, but I believe this is sage she or side she, which is Scott's galelic for ferry arrow. So Davidson connects these beliefs to as we already mentioned, the discovery of neolithic flints in the fields and the countryside where uh. He claims that these were not generally associated with prehistoric human technology. Now, there are some associations of that kind going all the way back to the seventeenth century, but they're not generally accepted by the people, Davidson says, and he quotes the story of a reverend John Frasier who was writing a letter dated to the year seventeen o two was recorded in a work called The Darker Superstitions of Scotland by J. G. Dal Yell, and the letter is talking about how Frasier thought it was strange quote that these lf stones, whether little or Michel Michel meaning large little or Michel, has still the same figure, though certainly known to fall from the air. The commonality superstitiously imagines that the fairies hath made and gives them that shape, and that they do hurt by them, which we call elf shot. And then he goes on to quote a wonderful work the seventeenth century minister and proto folklorist Robert Kirk's treatise The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fawns and Fairies, which is a fantastic historical read if you ever get time to check that out. So Kirk is describing the beliefs of the people of Scotland and talking about the weapons made by elves and fairies, and so to quote here from Davidson. Similarly, Kirk describes the weapons as being quote most what solid earthly bodies, nothing of iron, but much of stone, like to a soft flints, shaped like a barbed arrowhead, but flung like a dart with great force. These arms cut by airt and tools. It seems beyond humane. And I think aert as a noun often means like a compass point, but it could mean like art or guidance. But again Kirk is saying that they're beyond human. Said I think I said humane, but I'd probably just be human. Here have have something of the nature of thunderbolt subtlety and mortally wounding the vital parts without breaking the skin. So I love this idea. They have something of the nature of thunderbolt subtlety. Uh. This description from the seventeenth century reminds me of what the farmer and the much later account in the nineteenth century said about opening up the calf and finding that even though the skin had not been broken, the heart had been pierced with the fairy arrow, and they could tell by the whole And Uh. Here Kirk says that these weapons have this this thunderbolt subtlety. If I understand that right, I think he's suggesting almost kind of a semi spectral quality that like lightning, they can kill you without leaving a hole in the skin. Even though they are actual physical missiles. They've got kind of a transparent or or subtle quality that allows them to kind of warp through solid matter. And later in the text, Davidson writes that there was a belief in Ireland where you could have an animal that had been hit by by an elf arrow and you would not find a hole in the skin. But if you feel with your fingers you could find a hole in the flesh beneath even though again the skin is intact. And I love thinking about that because even if you just you know, you feel around on your own body, you can find all kinds of little like I don't know, textural differences in the flesh underneath the skin you're pressing on, which you could interpret to be like a hole. Yeah, yeah, there's you can you can go wild, you know, reinterpreting your own uh physiology if you think there might be some sort of like a hole there made by by elves or what have you. Um, yeah, yeah, so that it's it's it's fascinating well and it makes me think about like, um, hypochondria, you know, in this era. So now you might have a more realistic catalog of diseases to draw upon when you are a sort of like getting in your head about that and assuming that you might have all kinds of things affecting you. You can like look up real medical conditions on the internet, but like, you know, at a time before that, instead of hypochondriac googling the Mayo Clinic website and stuff people are thinking about like elf arrows and all kinds of curses and things like that, Yeah, did I pull a muscle or do I have elf cake? You know, it's both would seem equally possible in these cases. I also think there's an interesting tension here that if there was some belief that these weapons were how ghostly or or subtle in a more archaic sense, like able to pass through solid objects like a ghost. Um, that's in an interesting tension with the evidence of them often being literally an artifact made of stone. The stone the most perfectly solid and earthly substance people can think of. Yeah, yeah, that is interesting, the idea that this is some sort of at once it is somehow I a magical, invisible weapon that cuts right through flesh and pierces organs and brings about mysterious health illnesses, and at the same time, yeah, here's the stone. You can hold it, you can pick it up. Uh it it outlives us all. One final account I wanted to mention from davidson Um. He quotes a testimony allegedly given during trials for witchcraft in Scotland. And this is in a book by Pitcairn. Uh. And this is citing the alleged testimony of a woman convicted for witchcraft in sixteen sixty two named Isabel Goudie, who reports having seen the elf arrows being made. Quote the devil sharps them with his own hand and delivers them to elf boys. What whittles and dates them? I think dits means to like adorn, equip or ready something and dates them with a sharp thing like a packing needle. And a packing needle was a large, heavy needle used for sewing rough materials like canvas. Now that's an interesting account for a number of ways. Uh. One is that, of course, while we should always be skeptical readers of any historical account, remember that they're like several extra layers of skepticism you should apply to alleged confessions of witches, not just because they involve supernatural elements, but because you have to often suspect coercion in the circumstances of the confession, and also suspect alterations made by the persons allegedly recording the testimony. But interesting, nonetheless, that like somebody at least put together this account of so Satan is making these weapons and then handing them off to elf boys to be refined to the elf boys will whittle them and then adorn them with like a sharp prick on the end, like a packing needle. Yeah, I was reading in one of my sources that I was looking at that you see a lot of uh of picking and choosing from both Christian and pre Christian traditions and working out exactly how elf shot works in this case, but also how one alleviates self shot, Like are you are you calling out to uh, to to the Holy Ghost, or are you sort of calling out maybe with a little more, you know, a little more vaguely to other powers in the world. I would say this is also evidence of a tradition that you see. I think we talked about this a bit in some episodes we did last year called the Holy Undead that involves some stories of stories from the frontiers of Christianity in the medieval period. But the idea would be that sometimes beings that were not necessarily devils or could have multiple moral valences in the original context of a religion, once the area is taken over by a new religion, these beings undergo a kind of formal demonization where now they're just turned into well, those were demons, actually those are devils now. I'm reminded of an example, uh that this was something from one of our episodes last year that came out during Halloween, Ghosts of wind and Rain. I believe with the title, we mentioned her Nay the Hunter as being a kind of kind of wild Hunt related ghost that was said to ride through the woods surrounding Windsor Castle. And there are various stories about him. But I remember one of the one of the details from that, and I won't go through through all of it, but there was one account, uh, and this one was actually shared by by Carol Rose and one of her books. Uh. There's a story told or retold by folkloreist Ruth Tongue about three British youths decked out in the teddy boys style of the nineties sixties, and they're out there in the woods near Windsor Castle. They find they find a horn in the woods, they blow it, and then an unseen spirit pursues them through the woods and shoots one of them with a ghost arrow, slaying them dead without any physical wound. So so that of course is easily playing with the same power of colors that we have in elf shot. I mean, it is essentially elf shot, So there could be like a hole in the brain without mustling of the pompadour. Right, the story is much funnier. By the way, if you know what the Teddy Boys style looks like, so you should look that up if you're not familiar. I had to look it up again to see what the style consisted of. And uh, it's hard to nail down, like it's hard to really like, how do I explain this weird suits, strange hair, kind of a youth a youth style that did not quite become iconic, at least not not not to to to modern minds. Maybe it has more staying power in Britain. I see some elaborate upswept hair styles. I guess you would call these pompadours or I don't know, maybe something else. But then I see very long coats, sometimes skinny ties. I don't know what else to group this with. It's it's not exactly maud, it's not exactly greas Er. It's it's something else. Yeah, yeah, British subculture of the mid fifties to the mid sixties. I guess the big thing would be, like, what are the teddy boy movies? I think there was there was just a movie called Teddy Boys from what is this nine, starring Cliff Richard. But again I have to hear from from perhaps our listeners in the UK who have thoughts on the teddy boy style teddy Boy or not. You don't want to go messing around in the woods, uh and picking up strange horns and blowing on him, because it's one way to catch a costero. Right. And one last thing I do want to say about this paper before we move on for now is that even by Davidson's account, not everybody who found an arrowhead and in Great Britain and centuries past thought that they were made by elves, fairies, which is or the devil. Davidson quotes a Welsh naturalist named Louid I think is how you say his name, I spelled l h w y d. But who this guy is early is the seventeenth century, was arguing that these l pharaohs were in fact relics of a previous regime of human manufacture. In fact, he was arguing against multiple theories, one that they had been made by supernatural beings, the other that they had just been made as charms. Uh. And he was like, I don't think they were made as charms. In fact, they look a lot like the arrows that are still used by some people today to hunt food. Uh So, yeah, they were probably used for shooting by people who used to live here. Yeah, but but like we said, they do end up getting used as amulets and charms and uh and also have their their place in folk remedies of the day. One of the sources I was looking at with a with a focus on Irish traditions is Flint and Lithic Lore by Marian Dowd from twenty nineteen published in Archaeology Ireland, and Dowd points out that the artifacts and question in in Ireland in this case and collected by the Irish Folklore Committee in the late nineteen thirties, we're primarily collected and originally interpreted in post medieval and modern Irish rural communities. And the various elf stones or elf shots they consisted of various things including post medieval gun flints, fossils, unusual pebbles, but they also included Neolithic and Bronze age arrow heads. Uh So, I think that's important to keep in mind, Like basically, anything could be an elf stone or an elf arrow if it were if it were found, if it were and if we're found to be novel in some way and then gets uh, you know, reinterpreted with this supernatural script. Reminds me a bit of the I'm all I've brought this up numerous times with the idea of star jelly, the idea that if you see see some sort of it looks like that something fell from the sky in the nearby woods. So you go out into the nearby woods and you keep poking around, and do you find something slimy that you're like, I've never seen that before. This must be the thing that fell from the sky. There's plenty, There are plenty of slimy things in the woods. You just are usually aren't looking for them. But if you look for them with the script in mind, the mucus of the universe. Yeah. So doubt also points out some basically goes over some of the general ideas caught up in the traditions of elf shot. Sometimes the effects were human targeted in order to take the person away to the fairy realm. But and it seems like most cases you're dealing with the targeting of cattle. And in some cases this might be intentional. Other times it's described as being due to an accident, Like basically, there are battles between groups of elves and the night, and well, your cattle just happened to a stray between these two groups, and one of them caught an elf arrow by accident. And then there are other things, of course, one can do to anger the elves and some of these traditions. One of the examples that that she specifically mentioned is the cutting down of a white thorn tree. Uh that especially that could earn you an elf shot right there. And then she gets into a lot of She also expends a lot of time talking about the cures for elf shot, and a lot of these do end up involving the little elf stones and elf arrows that one might find these various stone artifacts that are very often um uh Neolithic or Bronze age arrowheads. But she mentions other cures that don't involve this. For instance, one was to travel silently and wordlessly to a bog and fetch water for the animal to drink, but you had to keep your silence the whole time, where it wouldn't work. She discusses a collection of elf stones known as the Tawny Wady duff Sades and the action She says consisted of fifteen flint and church lithics, including a neolithic hollow scraper, too convext scrapers, several complete and broken blades and flakes, waist flakes, and a post medieval gun flint. And these are apparently also been used in various folk medicine treatments over the years. As she points out later, you would often have in a community, you would have a collection of these like these would be the the elf stones that were kept. And if there's some sort of suspected case of of of an animal having been elf shot or experiencing elf bolt, then you would turn to these artifacts and somebody you know who knew how to use them. I included a picture here of of these particular stones from from this paper, Joe, and you can you can see them here there. Uh, these have not been or at least to my eye, they don't seem to have been changed in any way, shape or form. I know. I saw some other images where it looks like in the sort of reinterpretation of the item, there might be something added to them, but these seem very much as they would have been found. Yeah, I've seen some mounted in um. I don't know what the term is a little sort of like frame for a for a stone charm. Yeah, so how would these be used? Well, you mentions we we mentioned the water already, and indeed the use of water seems to to to be a common theme and treatments where you'll have the the elf shot will be placed in the water. Other times they'll be wrapped in a rag, and then that bundle of of rag and stones will be placed in the water, and then you give the water to the animal to drink. Uh. Sometimes the water is heated up, other times it's not. Sometimes iron is added to the mixture. Sometimes coins. In one case that she cites the mix, the mixer added quote a floorin a penny and a halfpenny, so very very specific amount of money added to the mix. Who keeps the money afterwards? Um, I don't know, Like, I don't guess the money is considered especial as the stone. So I guess the money might go back in your pocket, but it could be wrong on that. She also mentions a treatment method by which quote, a plow culture was heated in the fire and passed around the cow several times, repeating incantations until the elf dart quote melted into the animal's body. And I really love that one, in part because it doesn't seem to involve water or the use of one of these stones. It uses like another sort of magical modern artifact, like magical power is attributed to the plow culture. And then you're you're using incantations and making this like the supernatural dart that is inside the animal melt away and become part of the animal. And I don't know, this particularly reminded me of a bit of of both, like psychic surgery and U follow the ufology concept of alien implants, like you know, there's a there's something inside it's not supposed to be be there. Let's use a uh, you know, psychic surge to read to remove it. Uh. And of course you know that'll be a situation where you know it is a it's a con act where one is is is pretending, putting on a show of removing something from the body without actually making uh an indention in the body. Now, what's interesting to think about there, though, is that on one hand, dealing with like modern concepts of of psychic surgery and uphology U phoology UM versus these older ideas when you're dealing with the human context, some sort of ritual like this could have a placebo effect on the human individual, and you would, so you can never discount the placebo effect completely. But with the cow, I mean, the cow doesn't know what's going on. They don't know. The cow doesn't know why you're heating up a plow culture and going in circles around it, etcetera. The wait, though, that's actually a fantastic question that I have never thought to look into before. Would there be a placebo effect on animals, It would probably need to work by a different mechanism, because, like in humans, it does seem to make a difference if the human thinks there's a mechanism of repair or something, even if there's not. UH. In the case of an animal, though, I could still imagine there could be placebo like effects, maybe like that an animal UH feels better by receiving attention from its human, like the same human that feeds it is paying attention to it now, or by I don't know, other sort of calming effects of certain types of attention or intervention. I don't know, like that the licking of a like a dog licking its wound, that sort of thing. I guess that's a more complicated topic, like to what extent is the licking actually helping? And then what to what extent is it just a calming action on the part of the dog. Oh I I imagine that dogs looking wounds is to some extent adaptive. I again, I haven't checked this. I would. I would assume that it would be to remove contaminants from wounds, now downshairs other healing measures here. Um, This one I think was was from the modern period quote the fairy shot cow was cured by feeding her gunpowder mixed with an egg my favorite breakfast. Wait a minute, Hold, don't know how gunpowder has has ingredients that that are used in cooking sometimes, right, like like nitrates? Am I wrong about that? Hold on, okay, I was right about That's a gunpowder is like the main constituent of it is potassium nitrate also known as salt peter, and that is also a major ingredient in like cured meats. So I don't know, maybe you're having like a cured egg. Gilk, I guess I'm reaching here. I'm I'm gonna put on a strong warning against trying this at home, though, Please do not try cooking do not cook with gunpowder. UH. Do share somebout some other fascinating tidbits from these various accounts of elf shot. One is that disrupting a ring fort could earn you potential elf shot. These were these are This also gets into the reinterpretation of of remains of of old civilizations and cultures, because ring forts, UH, certainly in Ireland and outside of Ireland as well, we're talking about the remains of Bronze Age circular fortified settlements. UH. In particulars. She mentions one account that was shared of a woman driving cattle past her ring fort and then suddenly the herd is attacked by a by a ferry shooting one of these arrows through the air, and a cow was struck and collapses. But then she's able to search around find various bits of flint fragments, boil these quote in the cow's drink and thereby cured her. And there's some other fun accounts that there's some sort of like near misses that I also thought were very very fun. There's one account in which a UH, you have a woman returning home and she has a wooden pail of milk with her, and when she gets home, she realizes that there are two elf stones bedded in the pail uh and uh, and these were thrown by by the fairies, by the elves. There's another story of a woman carrying a baby and when she gets home, she finds that the baby has one of the elf stones in its hand and it's chewing on it. Which I like that one as well, Like did the baby catch it out of the air or did the elves like give it to the baby? Like I kind of like that later interpretation because it's like, you know, the the elves sea like, oh, this is a baby. This is really you know this, this this isn't like the other humans. Let's give let's give the baby an el pharaoh. And also let's kind of just mess with the mom by doing this catching it in the web. That's a nimble baby. That baby's got a future in professional sports anyway. Conventional wisdom is that if if there is elf shot thrown at you and you having to find some an elf stone on the ground, you better take it as a protective amulet and or to use as it for its curative effects if you were hit or or the you know more particularly of a cow in your keeping was hit. And there are sort of common interchangeable features of the cure that doubt shares. So Uh. We've touched on on several stories that mentioned this already. It's placing the stones in water and perhaps adding something like a piece of metal or particular coins to the water as well. Um. Then the water may be consumed by the sick or in some cases rubbed on like the cow's body. Uh. There may be prayers, they may be incantations, and I saw some examples of these that some of them like blean more into Christian traditions and mentioned the Holy ghost. Others seem a little more pre Christian. Uh. Water it the water itself that's used may come from a particular place, such as a stream at a crossroads or a particular bog. Uh. And then at least in one case, I saw a situation where once you have the water prepared, instead of giving it to the cow, you pour it on the ground near where the elf shot occurred, so so treat the place where the wounding occurred, to treat the wound. Also, silence during journeys factors into some of these already mentioned. One account of that again a mixing of pagan and Christian traditions and uh. Yeah, so so these are just some of the basic properties you see in the treatment, though there there again a lot of variations here. There's a lot of drift into exactly how one might cure elf shot and exactly how or to what extent or if you might incorporate elf stones in the cure. Now I didn't look, but I can only imagine that various conspiracy thinkers have a lot of fun with us in uh, in terms of like ancient aliens and uh, and perhaps ancient time travelers. Like clearly they might argue this is this is referring to a time when a time traveler went back in time and fired a revolver at somebody fired a handgun and there's a shell casing left on the ground. Um or or you know, an alien used a phaser or something to that effect. Yeah, I was thinking phasers, because there you could have some kind of you know, sort of science fantasy explanation of how it's apps the inside, uh, the inside without burning skin. Yeah. And of course I love the argument of well, the elves were actually aliens, because yes, that is absolutely correct, but not in the way that you're trying not not in the way that you're you're saying it, like the l the idea of the elf, the idea of the alien visitor, like these, these are the highly related concepts. These are linked concepts that do the same thing that birth fulfill the same purpose in our attempt to understand, uh, the the unknown. Uh So, Yeah, that's that's always amusing. Yeah, I think it's quite clear that at the very least in most cases what you're looking at is extremely similar mental and social phenomena getting a new code of paint or getting a real skin basically, And I certainly don't want to speak ill of the elves. I will read everybody a quote from the Wikipedia entry on elves. This is what I shared with you, uh, just the other day, Joe quote. This is from the Wikipedia entry. From a scientific viewpoint, elves are not considered objectively real. Citation needed. Where have you? Where has anyone ever proven that elves are not objectively real? Well? They There's a citation on this line, and it is from an article titled Elves and Anglo Saxon, England Matters of belief, Health, gender and identity by um Alaric Hall from from two thousand and seven. Oh, I've got a couple of papers by Alaric Hall that I think I'm going to talk about in the next episode. Okay, well, I I it sounds like you'll be a good source because he does seem to the Wikipedia citing citation here's correct, does seem to side with the argument that elves are not objectively real. Okay, we got to redo our whole approach to this. Consult only journals that are dedicated to the premise that elves are objectively real. All right, well, yeah, well we'll be back in the next episode. We have more to say about elf shot and uh elf disease and so forth. Um. In the meantime, Yeah, welcome to Halloween season. We hope to have multiple episodes here for you that align with the Halloween season as usual here and stuff to blow your mind. We like to really like to lean into this holiday particularly, so uh yes, stick with us. We have core episodes on on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have listener mail on Mondays. On Wednesday you'll find a monster fact or artifact episode and again during this season will definitely be be monstrous and horror themed. And then on Friday's we do weird how cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film and of course daring. In the month of October, those weird films are are are are definitely going to be uh more of the horror variety I imagine huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows.