Welcome to Stuff 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 it is the week of St Patrick's Day. So I thought it would be fun to turn our attention to Irish mythology once more, And in this case we're going to be considering the mythic hero Finn McCool, noted, warrior, wonder worker. We're going to get into all of that. But I guess what I was especially interested in, what kind of pulled me in initially, was his thumb, the thumb of knowledge, upon which he was said to suck, or to at least to place the thumb inside of his mouth in order to receive great inside or perhaps even see into the future. Yeah, Robert was going to ask, so this topic was your idea, and I was wondering, did you come to it first or hero first? Was it like you're reading about Finn McCool and all the legends and then you come across this thumbs story and you're like, let's talk about that, or were you reading about legends of thumbs? I was reading about I was actually reading about some other mythological figures, and then I was like, oh, what am I doing? It's at St Patrick's day. Irish mythology is so rich. There's got to be something we haven't talked about on the show before. And then I started reading about Finn McCool. And when I read about the Thumb, which I somehow either they had never read about before or forgotten about, I was instantly in Now. Finn itself is a is a common Irish hero name for characters of all genders, um related to Finn or meaning white or fair I've read, but refers to wisdom rather than skin tone, according to the Encyclopedia of of Celtic Mythology and Folklore by A. Patricia Monagan. Yeah, I was reading that Finn is a variant of the Irish name fun, spelled like f i o in or f i o n in, which means white or fair, but usually I think referring to hair color. And there are some legends of Finn McCool that say he had white hair from an early age, possibly due to some kind of magical rapid aging and d aging procedure. Alright, well, I mean it would make sense like the the association between uh like white hair and age, and age and wisdom, and therefore if someone had prematurely white hair, there could perhaps be some air of Oh they are they have the wisdom of of an older man or an older woman, despite the fact that they are otherwise quite young. And speaking of the variant of the name Finn versus Fion, I think it it's worth saying at the beginning that there are two different ways of spelling the name that are essentially the same character, or slight variations on the same character. One is commonly spelled in the anglicized version, just like we're saying at Finn McCool, but the other one is spelled more like fion. And then the last name is mac c u m h a i l or h a i l l, which, from what I understand, I know pronunciation a lot of these of a lot of these uh Irish words is notoriously tricky for English speakers like us. But I think that is also pronounced pretty much just McCool. So Finn McCool. Great name, by the way, it's one of these names that, especially today, with connotations of cool and coolness. It's it's instantly interesting as the hero's name, but if you're not familiar with him, he stands alongside um uh co Colin as one of the two great heroes of Irish mythology. He's a much later hero than Colin uh, and like any hero of myth there are varying tales about him. It is interesting that both characters are known for entering altered states of consciousness. Uh. Finn for his prescient thumb state where he can you know his well discuss can can place his thumb inside of his mouth and uh and with with you know, some other chanting effects uh stare into the future or at least gain some sort of supernatural wisdom and co Colin, as we discussed in our past episode on co Colin, was able to enter the warped spasm in battle where he's in this altered state of of of of barbarian rage, he sort of transforms into a semi monster. Yeah, kind of like a Hulk mode. Yeah. So anyway, Finn McCool uh, you know what's the origin story? Right? Every hero has an origin story. Well, we're told that his father died when he was very young, either due to a crime of his own doing or some conflict with a rival. Clan. There are different variations on that. Either way, he ends up being raised by his mother and um and Monican Uh in the the book that I referenced earlier stresses the importance of female energy in his raising, especially as his mother Erna claimed divine descent from Nauda of the Silver Hand, the first king of the Tufa Dudon and the Tufa Dudan and where the the sort of fairy folk godlike beings of of Irish mythology, and I would say often having a rather ambiguous character and relationship to humanity. They're not like consistently either enemies or helpers. They can kind of be either one. Yeah, you see a lot of their spirit reflected in some of the modern ideas of elves in fantasy settings. You know, they're they're superior to humans, but they are of the previous age there maybe not as invested in this world as they once were, that sort of thing. Yeah, and according to some legends like there, their strength in this world is waning. Like I know, there's uh one story that involves Finn McCool and his his band of warriors, the Defenders of Ireland. Who will we'll talk about more as we get on, but they in one story, they end up going on a journey across the sea to an island where they have been I think, sort of lured by members of the too author to done and to come join them and sort of re energize them or or provide supplemental strength to the waning strength of these beings from a past age. By the way, if you've seen the movie Hellboy Too, I believe the the antagonists in that film are supposed to be the two offended Dan and I believe in fact that we're supposed to see Nowada as the as the primary antagonist there. That's the one that Hellboy has a big fight with. Anyway, So Finn McCool, he's raised by his aunt and his foster mother, the druid uh Bode mall and H. He's trained in combat by the warrior woman Luthus Logan, and he accidentally kills her in combat, and then the incident with the Salmon of Knowledge occurs around this time. We're gonna come back to that because it's it's it's it's quite a tale. And also shortly after this he ends up actually taking the name Finn after he defeats his first enemy in combat, but then he goes on to study his craft further under the warrior woman Buanan as well as the male warrior Sethron mac Fountain. Basically he can completes his Jedi training, he becomes this near perfect warrior who who also has this ability to tap into hidden wisdom or see into the future, and then he assembles this band of warriors to defend his province of Leinster still called that today in the southeast and east of Ireland and from the here on out. The story you know, includes various exploits and adventures, and we'll touch on some of these, but he also engages in a number of romantic conquests. Uh they don't They don't always go so well. His death is told in various stories, and depending on where you're hearing them or reading them, his death is said to have taken place at different points different places spread across Ireland and Scotland, and there's also this idea that he may have been reborn as the hero Mongan Uh. Still, other tales say that he did not die at all, but that he and his fianna uh weight in a cave to one day rise up and defend I or and once more more, you know very much in the in in keeping with the tales of King Arthur, how one day King Arthur will return and rise up and protect England. Yeah. When I was reading these stories of Finn mcool, I kept noticing other parallels to King Arthur, because so not only is there this idea that he's you know, resting somewhere maybe one day to be called up to to defend his his nation again, but there is also a similarity to the Lancelot and Guinevere story in that there's a story where where Finn mccool's wife falls in love with one of his greatest warriors, a man named Diarmid, who obviously it reminds me a lot of Lancelot and Guenevere and uh, and they they ultimately come to I think, not battle each other, but I believe the legend goes that d Armid has to go fight a boar, and then the boar gravely wounds him, and uh that Finn McCool could save him by offering up water from his hands that would be healing because of his magic powers, but he essentially denies that healing power to his rival and he dies. Yeah, that's try. One of the side effects I guess of acquiring the Thumb of Knowledge is that is that we're told that Finn McCool can conform his hands into a cup collect water and that water will have healing properties. Pretty great. Is even just like a second tier superpower if you asked me, well, it feels like one of those pylon powers, you know, where you know, I really like a folk hero who has one power and it's a pretty specific power. But but I don't know, the legendary heroes just tend to accumulate more and more powers over the you know, in the telling, over the years. At least seems that way. Yeah, in the same way that sometimes you'll have a mad scientist in a fictional tale where uh, they seem to have too many interests, too many technologies at their disposal, Like, you know, are you a time traveler or you a power armor guy? Are you are you building robots? Or do you have an invisible hility about Like you need to like really focus in on one and exploit that because otherwise we really don't know what we're dealing with. Seemed to see, I just make giant scorpions. That's it. There, You go. It behooves you to specialize in the realm of mad science, or or or being a mythological hero. That's right, you know those giant scorpions or quality. It takes focus to make them. Thank all right, Well, let's get into the exploits of Finn McCool here, and we're gonna start with a with a big one one that if you're if you're familiar with Finn McCool and you're otherwise not that familiar with Irish mythology, you probably know this one. Yes, though it's weird because I think this might be one of the best known Finn McCool stories. But I think it's also sort of an outlier in that it portrays Finn McCool with different properties than he usually has. And I think these legends probably also come later than a lot of the other legends. But anyway, this one we're going to talk about is a piece of geo mythology, a story created to explain geological features of the Earth. Now, a lot of the geo myths we've looked at in previous episodes explain big masses of rock or bodies of water as some part of the body of a god, whether living or dead. But this story is one of the other common types, which is explaining natural formations as architecture that was built by the Demi gods of old and the feature explained in this story is known as the Giants Causeway. So to start with the plain observation of nature, there is a stretch of coast along the north of Northern Ireland in County Antrum that is covered with tens of thousands of hexagonal columns of basalt. Now, this is not the only place in the world that has columns of this type. You might have seen them at Devil's Tower in Wyoming or or other places around the world. I know there are some in UH in the Northwest and the United States, like in Washington State, UM. But but you can find these in various places. They're usually made of basalt, but sometimes other volcanic rocks will will take this form. And if you haven't ever seen these things known as columnar basalt, UH, you should look them up because they're they're absolutely beautiful and they're one of those natural formations that just doesn't look natural at all. I think many people who look at the columnar basalt, they consult their intuitions and they immediately come to think this is artificial. Somebody built this, somebody carved these rocks, and it might be an interesting question to ask why our intuitions work this way while you look at these columns of rock that mostly take the form of hexagon and think that this has got to be made by a person or by a god instead of by nature. I guess it looks so strange because we tend to assume that clean regular lines and angles like the kind we see in polygons like like a hexagon, are just not to be found in nature. Nature should have i don't know more more irregular, fractal kind of edges. Yeah. I think that's a huge part of it, along with the rough uniformity of everything. Like it's not just uh oh, here's an interesting rock that has these these properties. No, look at all of them. It looks like there was some sort of industrial scale, um, you know, alien brickmaking project here, right. They look like they were extruded out of a machine. Yeah, But anyway that there's been this stretch of the coast along northern Ireland that that has had these columns there for for millions of years, and over the centuries there arose some folk tales in order to explain the origins of these columns. Yeah, so the the giants causeway again, this is the the the Irish side in question. It's composed of roughly forty thousand interlocking columns. Uh in a. Again, this is due to a volcanic fissure eruption. No no alien brickmaking involved here. This all went down roughly fifty to sixty million years ago. Um, that's what we know now. But according to UH Irish mythology, however, it was built by Finn McCool. And not just any Finn McCool, not the regular sort of a superhero Finn McCool. This is a giant Finn McCool. Yes, when you when you read accounts of this, generally he's described as a giant, despite the fact that he's not really described as a giant in any other telling. Finn McCool is generally viewed as, uh, you know, a human hero or a hero with human proportions. It's only in this case where he's he's gigantic. Now, one thing I did read was that there there's there's some thinking that this formation may have originally been associated with other mythological uh creators that there may have been different geo mythology and play. It might have been attributed to the monstrous flamori Ins which were this these you know giant race that we're said to be. Um, you know, previous occupiers of the territory who were cast out at one point or another. Uh. So you know, it could have been later on where someone's like, well, Pomorians are all right, but but Finn McCool is awesome. Uh. Let's let's adjust the story somewhat and Finn McCool becomes the creator of the giants. Causeway, the basic idea with Finn McCool and these formations as is that, okay, we have the four these formations in Ireland, and then we also have a very similar formations found at Fingles Cave on the Aisle of of Staffa in Scotland. And the idea here is that, well, on both sides here we we must have the remnants of a mythological bridge between these two lands. And so the idea is that Finn is said to have built the bridge as a means of reaching the other side and battling a rival giant. Yes, and this is the tale of of the Giants Causeway. So there appeared to be a lot of versions of this story, and from what I can tell, this is a folk tale that emerges from from oral tellings without a canonical original text, so I think it's pointless to try to quest after the original here. I'm just going to tell it as a kind of synthesis of the multiple versions I have read. I have no idea which form of this story is oldest or could claim to be closest to the original, but here it goes in my synthesized form. Once upon a time there was a giant named Finn McCool who lived in Ireland with his wife Una, and Finn McCool was brave and strong, but he was also hot tempered and rash, and far across the water in Scotland there was another giant. This was a nasty brute named Ben and Donner or the Red Man, and Ben and Donner used to harass Finn McCool and his neighbors, shouting vicious slander and hair raising taunts across the water at them. You can imagine the kind of the French taunter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail just just brew at old brutal put downs, your mother was a hamster, all that kind of stuff. And Finn became so furious at the other giant that he uprooted an enormous boulder and hurled it at the Scottish ogre. But he missed, and the boulder landed in the sea, and this boulder became the Isle of Man. And so Finn sat around stewing, thinking I must destroy this fool, but I don't want to get my feet wet by swimming over there, So how can I reach him? And then he came up with an idea. He would build a bridge out of stone. So between the Irish shore and the rocky coast of Scotland he put together a stone causeway that would allow him to walk all the way across. And this causeway was the was the origin of the basalt pillars that we can still see today. But of course the pillars don't go all the way across anymore. So what happened there? Well, having completed his causeway, Finn, you know, he gets his blood up and he just has to run across the sea to the other side and give Ben and Donner a good walloping to shut him up. But unfortunately, as brave and strong as Finn McCool was. Once he got a look at the Scottish giant up close, his blood ran cold because Ben and Donner was a monster, a beast even bigger and stronger than Finn himself. And Finn knew that he would not win a fair fight with Ben and Donner, so bravely ran away away uh he uh When when danger reared its ugly head, he turned his yellow tail and fled, and so he ran back home to hide. But unfortunately, now that he had built a causeway, it could be crossed in both directions, so Ben and Donner soon came over the bridge to Ireland looking for Finn. Finn did not know what to do, but fortunately his wife Una was diabolically clever, much cleverer than her husband, and she came up with a plan, and it goes like this. Dressed Finn up as a baby and made him lay down inside a giant cradle. You with me? So far? So soon Ben and Donner came knocking at their door and he said, open the door, Finn McCool, come out and fight me and I'll give you a beating you'll never forget. Instead, Una opened the door and she welcomed Ben and Donna inside and showed him hospitality. She said, my husband is not home right now, but he'll be glad to fight you when he gets back. In the meantime, please sit down and help yourself to some bread. I baked it just the way my husband likes it. So Ben and Donner broke off a piece of the loaf and bit into it. But immediately he spat it out, and he shouted, this bread cracks my teeth. Because secretly Una had baked bars of iron into the dough. And so she feigned, uh, you know, she feigned ignorance and said, I'm sorry. I didn't think it would trouble such a strong man as yourself. My husband loves that recipe. Even our baby eats it that way. And this directed Ben and Donner's attention to the baby, which was again Finn himself in disguise as a baby in a crib. And so when Ben and Donner went over and got a look at the child, he said to himself, if the baby is already an iron eating giant as he lies in his crib, his father must be the size of a mountain. I cannot beat this guy. So here at this moment Ben and Donner is seized with fear. He's he's he is fully bought into UNA's trickery, and Ben and Donna runs away, and as he flees, he destroys the bridge of stone that Finn had built so that his enemy can never come and find him. And all that's left is the part of the bridge on the Irish shore and the part on the Scottish side again that's near the place called Fingal's Cave. And this is one of my favorite showdown stories of all time. Now, defeating your enemy by dressing as a baby, it is so good. I love it. Yeah, you think you're going to get just this giant battle throw down and instead you get this, uh, this comedic um a game of deception. I love it. Now. There is another version that actually has a fight, though it involves a lot of the same elements. So this other version I was reading about was I was reading about it in a book that I know you're going to reference later, the one by James McKillop called Fian McCool Celtic Myth in English Literature, published by Syracuse University Press in nineteen eighty five, and McKillop draws attention to a version of the story told in William Carlton's The Legend of Knockmny And this is from the mid nineteenth century, and the variations in Carlton's version are that the other giant is not named Ben and Donner, but is named Kuke Cullen. Interesting that you know, that's the name of another Irish folk hero that originally had nothing to do with this story. Uh so, I don't know what's going on there. Maybe it's just sort of blending together of strong man in in folk stories, or just realizing we've got to have these two characters at each other. This is like the Batman the Superman of the day. Well, so many elements of the story are the same as the version I just told, but some things are different. This version includes a detail that when Finn returns home to Una, he says he's afraid that he will be skivered like a rabbit if he has to fight Cullen. But Una knows that Kucullen's power is contained in the middle finger of his right hand. He has a magic middle finger, and she knows if you can compromise the finger, you sap his beastly magic. And he who loses strength, he won't be able to fight. So it's kind of like I don't know Sampson's hair or something, except this is the middle finger of his right hand. So like in the version I told, Kucullen comes over and uh and Una feeds him bread with metal or I think in this case it's stones of granite inside, and he breaks his teeth on the bread. Then when he hears that even their baby eats this bread, Kucullen is incredulous and he has to go feel the baby's teeth again. The bay be is actually Finn McCool in disguise, and when Cullen reaches inside the baby's mouth to feel its teeth, Finn bites off the magic middle finger, and now the giant is as weak as immortal man, so Finn beats him up very easily. All right, So it started out like it was going to be like this big throwdown, but again we have a comic game of deception em play once more. Yes, and McKillop points out that in this story it's interesting that Finn is victorious, but only after both showing cowardice in running away from the initial fight and resorting to trickery trickery. That wasn't even his idea. It's not even like he he's a you know, a cunning fox like Odysseus. Una is the real hero of the story. She comes up with the whole idea of how to like she has the knowledge about the magic middle finger, and she comes up with the whole plan. So uh, And he has to dress as a baby in order to defeat his enemy. So it's a weird kind of simultaneous victory and humiliation. He wins essentially by no virtue of his own. But there are a couple of things I kept thinking about with the story that are going to tie into what you'll bring up in more detail when you talk about the Thumb of Knowledge. Because so, first of all, it has it's a story in which Finn McCool dresses up as a giant baby. And one thing that we know Finn McCool did in other legends is suck on his thumb in order to gain insight or knowledge, which of course is associated with you know, that's what babies do. But the other thing is that Finn McCool has to bite off the magic middle finger of his enemy in order to defeat him, and steal his power. So his enemy has a magic finger in this story, just like Finn McCool does, though the magic thumb is not really mentioned in this telling. Yeah, I mean this all has to be connected. I don't remember tales of Collin's magic middle finger coming up when we researched the hero previously. Uh. And and clearly, the idea of a Finn McCool who has this thumb of knowledge, the idea of him dressing up as a baby feels like, I mean, it feels like a perfect creation, Like you can imagine that just being you know, whatever the exact origins are, and we'll get into that of the of the thumb of knowledge, it just makes sense that somebody later would think of But what if he also acted like a baby? Uh, you can't help it go there, because of course, babies putting fingers and or their thumb in their mouth, sucking on their thumb. It's it's a universal reality and it's been you know, you see it reflected in various myths and traditions around the world. So you couldn't help but go in that direction. Than now, before we move on, I did want to come back to the geological question of what actually causes hexagonal columns to form in volcanic rock, Like, what is the actual scientific origin of the rocks that were believed to be part of the giants causeway? So we settle that giants giants, right. So these columns are are usually but not always, found in a type of rock called basalt, which is a type of igneous rock that's created when lava flows out of a volcano or out of a fissure in the earth and then cools, and under certain conditions the cooling process of that that that liquid lava can give rise to columns like the kind we see at the Giant's Causeway. So when molten lava settles and begins to cool, what happens is its surface begins to set, turning from a glowing orange liquid into this this solid, dark shape. And this cooling happens from the outside in so the part exposed to the atmosphere or especially I think when this occurs in water, that the part that's exposed to either air or water that cools the fastest, and then the parts underneath retain their heat the longest. And as the surface cools, it also contracts, it literally shrinks in volume. So this is something that's common to all kinds of materials, as there as their temperature goes down, a shrink in volume. You can observe this if you like you ever seen videos rob of people freezing balloons and liquid nitrogen? Um, I feel like I have. What happens when you freeze the balloon in liquid nitrogen. It's really interesting. It shrinks. So you can take a balloon that's inflated and kind of plunge it into liquid nitrogen and then it shrinks down. It looks like it's completely deflated. But then if you take it out of the liquid nitrogen, sit it on a table or something, it will gradually as it warms up, reinflate again. So like what's going on. It's almost as if it's magic. But what's happening is the cooling of the gas inside the balloon causes that gas to contract, and it it shrinks down and down and down until the balloon is essentially deflated. Then when it warms back up, it expands again. Okay, maybe I haven't seen videos of this before, It's worth looking up. It looks really cool. I bet you can shrink a balloon by putting it in your freezer as well. Yeah, maybe that's what I've seen before, but probably not as fully shriveled as the liquid nitrogeneral get you, but anyway, um so, so, yeah, things tend to contract, they shrink as they cool. And the same thing is true if this lava. So the surface cools faster than the than the part down below, and as the surface cools, it shrinks. But as this contraction is happening, it's also setting up solid at the same time, So the surface of the lava actually cracks as it shrinks, and so especially if the cooling is happening in a fairly evenly distributed way, what tends to happen is that these cracks occur around evenly spaced centers of surface contraction that occur at at pretty fixed intervals. Sort of. You can map them, map them as a bunch of dots around the surface of the lava formation and uh, and they'll be pretty evenly spaced out. And then the cracks form around those centers of cooling and they one of the easiest ways for those cracks to form is roughly into hexagons around those centers. And as the cracks form on the surface, the lava mass continues cooling and the cracks propagate vertically down into the center of the mass, forming these columns, and so eventually the mass cools and solidifies entirely and we're left with columnar basalt like we find at the Giant's Causeway. It all started with cracks on the surface from the cooling, and those cracks penetrated deeper and deeper as the mass of lava cooled, and again the result is just quite impressive. I've not been to one of these sites and seen it in person, but researching this a little bit and looking at some of these photographs, so it makes me want to go. I know I've seen some in person at a at a volcanic site in Oregon, and I can't recall if I've seen any anywhere else. I know there is UH it's either an elaborate set or a location that's used in the TV series Raised by Wolves that looks a lot like this, But it's my understanding that that show is filmed in South Africa, so I don't know if there's a South African UH location that has has similar geography going on, or if that's all just you know, a set or something it At any rate, it looks impressive in that show as well. If we were only in the office, I could just yell at Holly and ask her since she does the podcast for Raised by Wolves. Oh yes, she's got the hook up for all your your basault information. All right. So that's the giants causeway, that's a little geomethology, but we all know that it takes a little more than geo mythology to to make a mythic hero. We also need some sort of a monster battle. There has to be a slaying of some sort. If not a monster battle, then it'll at least some sort of epic battled against another you know, humanoid adversary. Uh. And in this case, well we've we've got a we've got a pretty good one. Uh. We have the sling of Aileen mcmidna, a k a. The Burner. So I apologize, but that makes me think of him as a phone. Well my mind and instantly went to the possibility that he's really into going a burning man in various regional burns and in a way I mean he is a musician. So we're told that Aileen mcmidna was the fairy musician of the Tapa to Dine and again the powerful rulers of the other world. Um. Now, Allen is often described in this case as a dark figure with fiery breath, armed with both a supernatural harp that could lull mortals to sleep, as well as a poisoned spear. Now the spear in this in this case, it doesn't seem again all of these things that kind of depends on the telling and who's writing it down. But the spear doesn't seem to be poisoned in the traditional sense, though I it also does sound like it will still poison you if you're stabbed with it, but more to the point, it admits poisonous fume. So it's like, it's pretty fat, fabulous vision to have in your mind, this idea. Here's this uh, this is a dark, fiery monster being and has a harp in one hand and the other this this spear that is just smokeing with poison. I'll also point out that if you start looking at illustrations of of Allen, you'll find it's kind of all over the place, Like there's there's a pretty famous one where Allen looks like this kind of monolithic dark giant that kind of looks almost like a robot, uh firing a blast of energy at Finn McCool and I really love that image and it and it kind of keeps with this idea of sort of the the elder superpowers of the two of Dadon. And but then I also found one where uh, Alan mc minnot just looks like a big grotesque demonoid goblin creature shooting fire out of his like his his pig like nostrils out of the nose, like he's blowing his nose and fires coming out, and he's got one big horn in the middle of his head. Yeah. So I was reading a little bit more about Aileen in Carol Rose's Fairy Spirits, Lepricns and Goblins, of course, has a section where she discusses, uh, this particular Ailen and discusses how Alan comes to play for the Palace of Tara uh on the Festival of Solon and uh, he becomes irate because he's playing this music on this magical harp and what does it do. It puts everyone to sleep. That is kind of his or this harp's magical power. Uh So, I mean, really shame on him. He should be expecting this, but he gets mad instead. So he's like, what are you doing falling to sleep during my beautiful music? He takes up his spear and he blasts three blasts of fire from his nostrils, and he destroys the entire palace. The entire castle just completely destroyed. So what do you do? Well? They rebuilt the castle, uh, and then the same thing happened again the following year. I don't know why they booked Allen again, the same gig that destroyed the castle. I actually I don't think they booked him. I think the ideas he keeps coming back, uh, such as his rage at this place, such as his lust for vengeance. Uh. And then every time he destroys the place, they have to build it back up, and this cycle repeats itself for more than two decades. After twenty three years of this, Finn McCool steps up and defeats the beast. He comes in very much like um, it's it's very much like a Baywoof and Grendel situation. Uh. You know, here is a here's the monster that keeps attacking the center of culture and civilization. And then eventually you need an outsider, a hero to step in and really put the boots to the monster. Now I'm thinking a big challenge with fighting this monster is going to be if he's got it like a like a lute or or a dulcimer or whatever, that when he plays it, everybody goes to sleep. Can't he lull any conquering hero to sleep? Yeah? But luckily Finn McCool, he's a sneaky one. Uh he Uh. I read that one of the tactics he employs here to make himself immune to the magic. Uh he he huffs the fumes from the spear, which are so one of like the poisonous effects of it is that it keeps you from falling asleep. Um. I'm not exactly sure how that that would work, but in in the story that's that is what is said to have occurred. So he's immune to the music, and then he's able to get in close battle uh the Allen and then stab the Alen with his own poisonous spear uh, thus killing him. In some versions, he he doesn't stab him with it, He just like holds it close enough to where he has to breathe in all of those poisonous fumes and then dies of the poison. Now, he referenced that book by James McCullough earlier, and uh McKellop points out that, yeah, this is basically the same model found in Beowulf as well. Uh. The oldest Allen tales date back in writing to the twelfth century. But there are also other accounts, and McCullough goes into these a fin doing battle with other fire based creatures. Now, according to Monaghan, this ailen Alan mcmigna is the most famous Aillen, but there was another Ailen of note as well, Allen Tretchen, the triple headed Aileen, and it would attack the Irish cities Tara and Domain Macha. And sometimes it's described as male, sometimes it's described as female, and it's said to live in a cave, and it may be associated with the Morrigan. Uh. The difference between the two aliens is quote difficult to discern. You know, this is not unique to Irish legend and myth, but it does seem like there's a lot of sort of mythime contagion, little elements of one mythic figure or story just bleeding over into the other. Yeah, yeah, okay, Now I know we've been building up the thumb the whole time. You at home are thinking like when are they going to get to the thumb. We got to know about the thumb, so we are going to talk about that, but I think we need to save it for the next part in the series, which is going to be all thumb. Yeah, all thumb right in the mouth it's or in this case, in the ears because we'll be listening. Uh yeah. So next next episode we will get into the story of Finn McCool and the Thumb of Knowledge, the different versions of it, how and to what extent it bleeds over into other hero stories and uh, you know, well it maybe get into it a little a little bit of the potential science of of the Thumb of Knowledge as well. And hey, that episode is going to come out on St. Patrick's Day itself, so I think that's perfect brilliant all right. In the meantime, if you would like to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, it publishes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. On Monday's, we do listener mail, on Wednesdays we do an artifact or monster Fact, and then on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a strange film. 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 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, this is the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows

Welcome to Stuff 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 it is the week of St Patrick's Day. So I thought it would be fun to turn our attention to Irish mythology once more, And in this case we're going to be considering the mythic hero Finn McCool, noted, warrior, wonder worker. We're going to get into all of that. But I guess what I was especially interested in, what kind of pulled me in initially, was his thumb, the thumb of knowledge, upon which he was said to suck, or to at least to place the thumb inside of his mouth in order to receive great inside or perhaps even see into the future. Yeah, Robert was going to ask, so this topic was your idea, and I was wondering, did you come to it first or hero first? Was it like you're reading about Finn McCool and all the legends and then you come across this thumbs story and you're like, let's talk about that, or were you reading about legends of thumbs? I was reading about I was actually reading about some other mythological figures, and then I was like, oh, what am I doing? It's at St Patrick's day. Irish mythology is so rich. There's got to be something we haven't talked about on the show before. And then I started reading about Finn McCool. And when I read about the Thumb, which I somehow either they had never read about before or forgotten about, I was instantly in Now. Finn itself is a is a common Irish hero name for characters of all genders, um related to Finn or meaning white or fair I've read, but refers to wisdom rather than skin tone, according to the Encyclopedia of of Celtic Mythology and Folklore by A. Patricia Monagan. Yeah, I was reading that Finn is a variant of the Irish name fun, spelled like f i o in or f i o n in, which means white or fair, but usually I think referring to hair color. And there are some legends of Finn McCool that say he had white hair from an early age, possibly due to some kind of magical rapid aging and d aging procedure. Alright, well, I mean it would make sense like the the association between uh like white hair and age, and age and wisdom, and therefore if someone had prematurely white hair, there could perhaps be some air of Oh they are they have the wisdom of of an older man or an older woman, despite the fact that they are otherwise quite young. And speaking of the variant of the name Finn versus Fion, I think it it's worth saying at the beginning that there are two different ways of spelling the name that are essentially the same character, or slight variations on the same character. One is commonly spelled in the anglicized version, just like we're saying at Finn McCool, but the other one is spelled more like fion. And then the last name is mac c u m h a i l or h a i l l, which, from what I understand, I know pronunciation a lot of these of a lot of these uh Irish words is notoriously tricky for English speakers like us. But I think that is also pronounced pretty much just McCool. So Finn McCool. Great name, by the way, it's one of these names that, especially today, with connotations of cool and coolness. It's it's instantly interesting as the hero's name, but if you're not familiar with him, he stands alongside um uh co Colin as one of the two great heroes of Irish mythology. He's a much later hero than Colin uh, and like any hero of myth there are varying tales about him. It is interesting that both characters are known for entering altered states of consciousness. Uh. Finn for his prescient thumb state where he can you know his well discuss can can place his thumb inside of his mouth and uh and with with you know, some other chanting effects uh stare into the future or at least gain some sort of supernatural wisdom and co Colin, as we discussed in our past episode on co Colin, was able to enter the warped spasm in battle where he's in this altered state of of of of barbarian rage, he sort of transforms into a semi monster. Yeah, kind of like a Hulk mode. Yeah. So anyway, Finn McCool uh, you know what's the origin story? Right? Every hero has an origin story. Well, we're told that his father died when he was very young, either due to a crime of his own doing or some conflict with a rival. Clan. There are different variations on that. Either way, he ends up being raised by his mother and um and Monican Uh in the the book that I referenced earlier stresses the importance of female energy in his raising, especially as his mother Erna claimed divine descent from Nauda of the Silver Hand, the first king of the Tufa Dudon and the Tufa Dudan and where the the sort of fairy folk godlike beings of of Irish mythology, and I would say often having a rather ambiguous character and relationship to humanity. They're not like consistently either enemies or helpers. They can kind of be either one. Yeah, you see a lot of their spirit reflected in some of the modern ideas of elves in fantasy settings. You know, they're they're superior to humans, but they are of the previous age there maybe not as invested in this world as they once were, that sort of thing. Yeah, and according to some legends like there, their strength in this world is waning. Like I know, there's uh one story that involves Finn McCool and his his band of warriors, the Defenders of Ireland. Who will we'll talk about more as we get on, but they in one story, they end up going on a journey across the sea to an island where they have been I think, sort of lured by members of the too author to done and to come join them and sort of re energize them or or provide supplemental strength to the waning strength of these beings from a past age. By the way, if you've seen the movie Hellboy Too, I believe the the antagonists in that film are supposed to be the two offended Dan and I believe in fact that we're supposed to see Nowada as the as the primary antagonist there. That's the one that Hellboy has a big fight with. Anyway, So Finn McCool, he's raised by his aunt and his foster mother, the druid uh Bode mall and H. He's trained in combat by the warrior woman Luthus Logan, and he accidentally kills her in combat, and then the incident with the Salmon of Knowledge occurs around this time. We're gonna come back to that because it's it's it's it's quite a tale. And also shortly after this he ends up actually taking the name Finn after he defeats his first enemy in combat, but then he goes on to study his craft further under the warrior woman Buanan as well as the male warrior Sethron mac Fountain. Basically he can completes his Jedi training, he becomes this near perfect warrior who who also has this ability to tap into hidden wisdom or see into the future, and then he assembles this band of warriors to defend his province of Leinster still called that today in the southeast and east of Ireland and from the here on out. The story you know, includes various exploits and adventures, and we'll touch on some of these, but he also engages in a number of romantic conquests. Uh they don't They don't always go so well. His death is told in various stories, and depending on where you're hearing them or reading them, his death is said to have taken place at different points different places spread across Ireland and Scotland, and there's also this idea that he may have been reborn as the hero Mongan Uh. Still, other tales say that he did not die at all, but that he and his fianna uh weight in a cave to one day rise up and defend I or and once more more, you know very much in the in in keeping with the tales of King Arthur, how one day King Arthur will return and rise up and protect England. Yeah. When I was reading these stories of Finn mcool, I kept noticing other parallels to King Arthur, because so not only is there this idea that he's you know, resting somewhere maybe one day to be called up to to defend his his nation again, but there is also a similarity to the Lancelot and Guinevere story in that there's a story where where Finn mccool's wife falls in love with one of his greatest warriors, a man named Diarmid, who obviously it reminds me a lot of Lancelot and Guenevere and uh, and they they ultimately come to I think, not battle each other, but I believe the legend goes that d Armid has to go fight a boar, and then the boar gravely wounds him, and uh that Finn McCool could save him by offering up water from his hands that would be healing because of his magic powers, but he essentially denies that healing power to his rival and he dies. Yeah, that's try. One of the side effects I guess of acquiring the Thumb of Knowledge is that is that we're told that Finn McCool can conform his hands into a cup collect water and that water will have healing properties. Pretty great. Is even just like a second tier superpower if you asked me, well, it feels like one of those pylon powers, you know, where you know, I really like a folk hero who has one power and it's a pretty specific power. But but I don't know, the legendary heroes just tend to accumulate more and more powers over the you know, in the telling, over the years. At least seems that way. Yeah, in the same way that sometimes you'll have a mad scientist in a fictional tale where uh, they seem to have too many interests, too many technologies at their disposal, Like, you know, are you a time traveler or you a power armor guy? Are you are you building robots? Or do you have an invisible hility about Like you need to like really focus in on one and exploit that because otherwise we really don't know what we're dealing with. Seemed to see, I just make giant scorpions. That's it. There, You go. It behooves you to specialize in the realm of mad science, or or or being a mythological hero. That's right, you know those giant scorpions or quality. It takes focus to make them. Thank all right, Well, let's get into the exploits of Finn McCool here, and we're gonna start with a with a big one one that if you're if you're familiar with Finn McCool and you're otherwise not that familiar with Irish mythology, you probably know this one. Yes, though it's weird because I think this might be one of the best known Finn McCool stories. But I think it's also sort of an outlier in that it portrays Finn McCool with different properties than he usually has. And I think these legends probably also come later than a lot of the other legends. But anyway, this one we're going to talk about is a piece of geo mythology, a story created to explain geological features of the Earth. Now, a lot of the geo myths we've looked at in previous episodes explain big masses of rock or bodies of water as some part of the body of a god, whether living or dead. But this story is one of the other common types, which is explaining natural formations as architecture that was built by the Demi gods of old and the feature explained in this story is known as the Giants Causeway. So to start with the plain observation of nature, there is a stretch of coast along the north of Northern Ireland in County Antrum that is covered with tens of thousands of hexagonal columns of basalt. Now, this is not the only place in the world that has columns of this type. You might have seen them at Devil's Tower in Wyoming or or other places around the world. I know there are some in UH in the Northwest and the United States, like in Washington State, UM. But but you can find these in various places. They're usually made of basalt, but sometimes other volcanic rocks will will take this form. And if you haven't ever seen these things known as columnar basalt, UH, you should look them up because they're they're absolutely beautiful and they're one of those natural formations that just doesn't look natural at all. I think many people who look at the columnar basalt, they consult their intuitions and they immediately come to think this is artificial. Somebody built this, somebody carved these rocks, and it might be an interesting question to ask why our intuitions work this way while you look at these columns of rock that mostly take the form of hexagon and think that this has got to be made by a person or by a god instead of by nature. I guess it looks so strange because we tend to assume that clean regular lines and angles like the kind we see in polygons like like a hexagon, are just not to be found in nature. Nature should have i don't know more more irregular, fractal kind of edges. Yeah. I think that's a huge part of it, along with the rough uniformity of everything. Like it's not just uh oh, here's an interesting rock that has these these properties. No, look at all of them. It looks like there was some sort of industrial scale, um, you know, alien brickmaking project here, right. They look like they were extruded out of a machine. Yeah, But anyway that there's been this stretch of the coast along northern Ireland that that has had these columns there for for millions of years, and over the centuries there arose some folk tales in order to explain the origins of these columns. Yeah, so the the giants causeway again, this is the the the Irish side in question. It's composed of roughly forty thousand interlocking columns. Uh in a. Again, this is due to a volcanic fissure eruption. No no alien brickmaking involved here. This all went down roughly fifty to sixty million years ago. Um, that's what we know now. But according to UH Irish mythology, however, it was built by Finn McCool. And not just any Finn McCool, not the regular sort of a superhero Finn McCool. This is a giant Finn McCool. Yes, when you when you read accounts of this, generally he's described as a giant, despite the fact that he's not really described as a giant in any other telling. Finn McCool is generally viewed as, uh, you know, a human hero or a hero with human proportions. It's only in this case where he's he's gigantic. Now, one thing I did read was that there there's there's some thinking that this formation may have originally been associated with other mythological uh creators that there may have been different geo mythology and play. It might have been attributed to the monstrous flamori Ins which were this these you know giant race that we're said to be. Um, you know, previous occupiers of the territory who were cast out at one point or another. Uh. So you know, it could have been later on where someone's like, well, Pomorians are all right, but but Finn McCool is awesome. Uh. Let's let's adjust the story somewhat and Finn McCool becomes the creator of the giants. Causeway, the basic idea with Finn McCool and these formations as is that, okay, we have the four these formations in Ireland, and then we also have a very similar formations found at Fingles Cave on the Aisle of of Staffa in Scotland. And the idea here is that, well, on both sides here we we must have the remnants of a mythological bridge between these two lands. And so the idea is that Finn is said to have built the bridge as a means of reaching the other side and battling a rival giant. Yes, and this is the tale of of the Giants Causeway. So there appeared to be a lot of versions of this story, and from what I can tell, this is a folk tale that emerges from from oral tellings without a canonical original text, so I think it's pointless to try to quest after the original here. I'm just going to tell it as a kind of synthesis of the multiple versions I have read. I have no idea which form of this story is oldest or could claim to be closest to the original, but here it goes in my synthesized form. Once upon a time there was a giant named Finn McCool who lived in Ireland with his wife Una, and Finn McCool was brave and strong, but he was also hot tempered and rash, and far across the water in Scotland there was another giant. This was a nasty brute named Ben and Donner or the Red Man, and Ben and Donner used to harass Finn McCool and his neighbors, shouting vicious slander and hair raising taunts across the water at them. You can imagine the kind of the French taunter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail just just brew at old brutal put downs, your mother was a hamster, all that kind of stuff. And Finn became so furious at the other giant that he uprooted an enormous boulder and hurled it at the Scottish ogre. But he missed, and the boulder landed in the sea, and this boulder became the Isle of Man. And so Finn sat around stewing, thinking I must destroy this fool, but I don't want to get my feet wet by swimming over there, So how can I reach him? And then he came up with an idea. He would build a bridge out of stone. So between the Irish shore and the rocky coast of Scotland he put together a stone causeway that would allow him to walk all the way across. And this causeway was the was the origin of the basalt pillars that we can still see today. But of course the pillars don't go all the way across anymore. So what happened there? Well, having completed his causeway, Finn, you know, he gets his blood up and he just has to run across the sea to the other side and give Ben and Donner a good walloping to shut him up. But unfortunately, as brave and strong as Finn McCool was. Once he got a look at the Scottish giant up close, his blood ran cold because Ben and Donner was a monster, a beast even bigger and stronger than Finn himself. And Finn knew that he would not win a fair fight with Ben and Donner, so bravely ran away away uh he uh When when danger reared its ugly head, he turned his yellow tail and fled, and so he ran back home to hide. But unfortunately, now that he had built a causeway, it could be crossed in both directions, so Ben and Donner soon came over the bridge to Ireland looking for Finn. Finn did not know what to do, but fortunately his wife Una was diabolically clever, much cleverer than her husband, and she came up with a plan, and it goes like this. Dressed Finn up as a baby and made him lay down inside a giant cradle. You with me? So far? So soon Ben and Donner came knocking at their door and he said, open the door, Finn McCool, come out and fight me and I'll give you a beating you'll never forget. Instead, Una opened the door and she welcomed Ben and Donna inside and showed him hospitality. She said, my husband is not home right now, but he'll be glad to fight you when he gets back. In the meantime, please sit down and help yourself to some bread. I baked it just the way my husband likes it. So Ben and Donner broke off a piece of the loaf and bit into it. But immediately he spat it out, and he shouted, this bread cracks my teeth. Because secretly Una had baked bars of iron into the dough. And so she feigned, uh, you know, she feigned ignorance and said, I'm sorry. I didn't think it would trouble such a strong man as yourself. My husband loves that recipe. Even our baby eats it that way. And this directed Ben and Donner's attention to the baby, which was again Finn himself in disguise as a baby in a crib. And so when Ben and Donner went over and got a look at the child, he said to himself, if the baby is already an iron eating giant as he lies in his crib, his father must be the size of a mountain. I cannot beat this guy. So here at this moment Ben and Donner is seized with fear. He's he's he is fully bought into UNA's trickery, and Ben and Donna runs away, and as he flees, he destroys the bridge of stone that Finn had built so that his enemy can never come and find him. And all that's left is the part of the bridge on the Irish shore and the part on the Scottish side again that's near the place called Fingal's Cave. And this is one of my favorite showdown stories of all time. Now, defeating your enemy by dressing as a baby, it is so good. I love it. Yeah, you think you're going to get just this giant battle throw down and instead you get this, uh, this comedic um a game of deception. I love it. Now. There is another version that actually has a fight, though it involves a lot of the same elements. So this other version I was reading about was I was reading about it in a book that I know you're going to reference later, the one by James McKillop called Fian McCool Celtic Myth in English Literature, published by Syracuse University Press in nineteen eighty five, and McKillop draws attention to a version of the story told in William Carlton's The Legend of Knockmny And this is from the mid nineteenth century, and the variations in Carlton's version are that the other giant is not named Ben and Donner, but is named Kuke Cullen. Interesting that you know, that's the name of another Irish folk hero that originally had nothing to do with this story. Uh so, I don't know what's going on there. Maybe it's just sort of blending together of strong man in in folk stories, or just realizing we've got to have these two characters at each other. This is like the Batman the Superman of the day. Well, so many elements of the story are the same as the version I just told, but some things are different. This version includes a detail that when Finn returns home to Una, he says he's afraid that he will be skivered like a rabbit if he has to fight Cullen. But Una knows that Kucullen's power is contained in the middle finger of his right hand. He has a magic middle finger, and she knows if you can compromise the finger, you sap his beastly magic. And he who loses strength, he won't be able to fight. So it's kind of like I don't know Sampson's hair or something, except this is the middle finger of his right hand. So like in the version I told, Kucullen comes over and uh and Una feeds him bread with metal or I think in this case it's stones of granite inside, and he breaks his teeth on the bread. Then when he hears that even their baby eats this bread, Kucullen is incredulous and he has to go feel the baby's teeth again. The bay be is actually Finn McCool in disguise, and when Cullen reaches inside the baby's mouth to feel its teeth, Finn bites off the magic middle finger, and now the giant is as weak as immortal man, so Finn beats him up very easily. All right, So it started out like it was going to be like this big throwdown, but again we have a comic game of deception em play once more. Yes, and McKillop points out that in this story it's interesting that Finn is victorious, but only after both showing cowardice in running away from the initial fight and resorting to trickery trickery. That wasn't even his idea. It's not even like he he's a you know, a cunning fox like Odysseus. Una is the real hero of the story. She comes up with the whole idea of how to like she has the knowledge about the magic middle finger, and she comes up with the whole plan. So uh, And he has to dress as a baby in order to defeat his enemy. So it's a weird kind of simultaneous victory and humiliation. He wins essentially by no virtue of his own. But there are a couple of things I kept thinking about with the story that are going to tie into what you'll bring up in more detail when you talk about the Thumb of Knowledge. Because so, first of all, it has it's a story in which Finn McCool dresses up as a giant baby. And one thing that we know Finn McCool did in other legends is suck on his thumb in order to gain insight or knowledge, which of course is associated with you know, that's what babies do. But the other thing is that Finn McCool has to bite off the magic middle finger of his enemy in order to defeat him, and steal his power. So his enemy has a magic finger in this story, just like Finn McCool does, though the magic thumb is not really mentioned in this telling. Yeah, I mean this all has to be connected. I don't remember tales of Collin's magic middle finger coming up when we researched the hero previously. Uh. And and clearly, the idea of a Finn McCool who has this thumb of knowledge, the idea of him dressing up as a baby feels like, I mean, it feels like a perfect creation, Like you can imagine that just being you know, whatever the exact origins are, and we'll get into that of the of the thumb of knowledge, it just makes sense that somebody later would think of But what if he also acted like a baby? Uh, you can't help it go there, because of course, babies putting fingers and or their thumb in their mouth, sucking on their thumb. It's it's a universal reality and it's been you know, you see it reflected in various myths and traditions around the world. So you couldn't help but go in that direction. Than now, before we move on, I did want to come back to the geological question of what actually causes hexagonal columns to form in volcanic rock, Like, what is the actual scientific origin of the rocks that were believed to be part of the giants causeway? So we settle that giants giants, right. So these columns are are usually but not always, found in a type of rock called basalt, which is a type of igneous rock that's created when lava flows out of a volcano or out of a fissure in the earth and then cools, and under certain conditions the cooling process of that that that liquid lava can give rise to columns like the kind we see at the Giant's Causeway. So when molten lava settles and begins to cool, what happens is its surface begins to set, turning from a glowing orange liquid into this this solid, dark shape. And this cooling happens from the outside in so the part exposed to the atmosphere or especially I think when this occurs in water, that the part that's exposed to either air or water that cools the fastest, and then the parts underneath retain their heat the longest. And as the surface cools, it also contracts, it literally shrinks in volume. So this is something that's common to all kinds of materials, as there as their temperature goes down, a shrink in volume. You can observe this if you like you ever seen videos rob of people freezing balloons and liquid nitrogen? Um, I feel like I have. What happens when you freeze the balloon in liquid nitrogen. It's really interesting. It shrinks. So you can take a balloon that's inflated and kind of plunge it into liquid nitrogen and then it shrinks down. It looks like it's completely deflated. But then if you take it out of the liquid nitrogen, sit it on a table or something, it will gradually as it warms up, reinflate again. So like what's going on. It's almost as if it's magic. But what's happening is the cooling of the gas inside the balloon causes that gas to contract, and it it shrinks down and down and down until the balloon is essentially deflated. Then when it warms back up, it expands again. Okay, maybe I haven't seen videos of this before, It's worth looking up. It looks really cool. I bet you can shrink a balloon by putting it in your freezer as well. Yeah, maybe that's what I've seen before, but probably not as fully shriveled as the liquid nitrogeneral get you, but anyway, um so, so, yeah, things tend to contract, they shrink as they cool. And the same thing is true if this lava. So the surface cools faster than the than the part down below, and as the surface cools, it shrinks. But as this contraction is happening, it's also setting up solid at the same time, So the surface of the lava actually cracks as it shrinks, and so especially if the cooling is happening in a fairly evenly distributed way, what tends to happen is that these cracks occur around evenly spaced centers of surface contraction that occur at at pretty fixed intervals. Sort of. You can map them, map them as a bunch of dots around the surface of the lava formation and uh, and they'll be pretty evenly spaced out. And then the cracks form around those centers of cooling and they one of the easiest ways for those cracks to form is roughly into hexagons around those centers. And as the cracks form on the surface, the lava mass continues cooling and the cracks propagate vertically down into the center of the mass, forming these columns, and so eventually the mass cools and solidifies entirely and we're left with columnar basalt like we find at the Giant's Causeway. It all started with cracks on the surface from the cooling, and those cracks penetrated deeper and deeper as the mass of lava cooled, and again the result is just quite impressive. I've not been to one of these sites and seen it in person, but researching this a little bit and looking at some of these photographs, so it makes me want to go. I know I've seen some in person at a at a volcanic site in Oregon, and I can't recall if I've seen any anywhere else. I know there is UH it's either an elaborate set or a location that's used in the TV series Raised by Wolves that looks a lot like this, But it's my understanding that that show is filmed in South Africa, so I don't know if there's a South African UH location that has has similar geography going on, or if that's all just you know, a set or something it At any rate, it looks impressive in that show as well. If we were only in the office, I could just yell at Holly and ask her since she does the podcast for Raised by Wolves. Oh yes, she's got the hook up for all your your basault information. All right. So that's the giants causeway, that's a little geomethology, but we all know that it takes a little more than geo mythology to to make a mythic hero. We also need some sort of a monster battle. There has to be a slaying of some sort. If not a monster battle, then it'll at least some sort of epic battled against another you know, humanoid adversary. Uh. And in this case, well we've we've got a we've got a pretty good one. Uh. We have the sling of Aileen mcmidna, a k a. The Burner. So I apologize, but that makes me think of him as a phone. Well my mind and instantly went to the possibility that he's really into going a burning man in various regional burns and in a way I mean he is a musician. So we're told that Aileen mcmidna was the fairy musician of the Tapa to Dine and again the powerful rulers of the other world. Um. Now, Allen is often described in this case as a dark figure with fiery breath, armed with both a supernatural harp that could lull mortals to sleep, as well as a poisoned spear. Now the spear in this in this case, it doesn't seem again all of these things that kind of depends on the telling and who's writing it down. But the spear doesn't seem to be poisoned in the traditional sense, though I it also does sound like it will still poison you if you're stabbed with it, but more to the point, it admits poisonous fume. So it's like, it's pretty fat, fabulous vision to have in your mind, this idea. Here's this uh, this is a dark, fiery monster being and has a harp in one hand and the other this this spear that is just smokeing with poison. I'll also point out that if you start looking at illustrations of of Allen, you'll find it's kind of all over the place, Like there's there's a pretty famous one where Allen looks like this kind of monolithic dark giant that kind of looks almost like a robot, uh firing a blast of energy at Finn McCool and I really love that image and it and it kind of keeps with this idea of sort of the the elder superpowers of the two of Dadon. And but then I also found one where uh, Alan mc minnot just looks like a big grotesque demonoid goblin creature shooting fire out of his like his his pig like nostrils out of the nose, like he's blowing his nose and fires coming out, and he's got one big horn in the middle of his head. Yeah. So I was reading a little bit more about Aileen in Carol Rose's Fairy Spirits, Lepricns and Goblins, of course, has a section where she discusses, uh, this particular Ailen and discusses how Alan comes to play for the Palace of Tara uh on the Festival of Solon and uh, he becomes irate because he's playing this music on this magical harp and what does it do. It puts everyone to sleep. That is kind of his or this harp's magical power. Uh So, I mean, really shame on him. He should be expecting this, but he gets mad instead. So he's like, what are you doing falling to sleep during my beautiful music? He takes up his spear and he blasts three blasts of fire from his nostrils, and he destroys the entire palace. The entire castle just completely destroyed. So what do you do? Well? They rebuilt the castle, uh, and then the same thing happened again the following year. I don't know why they booked Allen again, the same gig that destroyed the castle. I actually I don't think they booked him. I think the ideas he keeps coming back, uh, such as his rage at this place, such as his lust for vengeance. Uh. And then every time he destroys the place, they have to build it back up, and this cycle repeats itself for more than two decades. After twenty three years of this, Finn McCool steps up and defeats the beast. He comes in very much like um, it's it's very much like a Baywoof and Grendel situation. Uh. You know, here is a here's the monster that keeps attacking the center of culture and civilization. And then eventually you need an outsider, a hero to step in and really put the boots to the monster. Now I'm thinking a big challenge with fighting this monster is going to be if he's got it like a like a lute or or a dulcimer or whatever, that when he plays it, everybody goes to sleep. Can't he lull any conquering hero to sleep? Yeah? But luckily Finn McCool, he's a sneaky one. Uh he Uh. I read that one of the tactics he employs here to make himself immune to the magic. Uh he he huffs the fumes from the spear, which are so one of like the poisonous effects of it is that it keeps you from falling asleep. Um. I'm not exactly sure how that that would work, but in in the story that's that is what is said to have occurred. So he's immune to the music, and then he's able to get in close battle uh the Allen and then stab the Alen with his own poisonous spear uh, thus killing him. In some versions, he he doesn't stab him with it, He just like holds it close enough to where he has to breathe in all of those poisonous fumes and then dies of the poison. Now, he referenced that book by James McCullough earlier, and uh McKellop points out that, yeah, this is basically the same model found in Beowulf as well. Uh. The oldest Allen tales date back in writing to the twelfth century. But there are also other accounts, and McCullough goes into these a fin doing battle with other fire based creatures. Now, according to Monaghan, this ailen Alan mcmigna is the most famous Aillen, but there was another Ailen of note as well, Allen Tretchen, the triple headed Aileen, and it would attack the Irish cities Tara and Domain Macha. And sometimes it's described as male, sometimes it's described as female, and it's said to live in a cave, and it may be associated with the Morrigan. Uh. The difference between the two aliens is quote difficult to discern. You know, this is not unique to Irish legend and myth, but it does seem like there's a lot of sort of mythime contagion, little elements of one mythic figure or story just bleeding over into the other. Yeah, yeah, okay, Now I know we've been building up the thumb the whole time. You at home are thinking like when are they going to get to the thumb. We got to know about the thumb, so we are going to talk about that, but I think we need to save it for the next part in the series, which is going to be all thumb. Yeah, all thumb right in the mouth it's or in this case, in the ears because we'll be listening. Uh yeah. So next next episode we will get into the story of Finn McCool and the Thumb of Knowledge, the different versions of it, how and to what extent it bleeds over into other hero stories and uh, you know, well it maybe get into it a little a little bit of the potential science of of the Thumb of Knowledge as well. And hey, that episode is going to come out on St. Patrick's Day itself, so I think that's perfect brilliant all right. In the meantime, if you would like to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, it publishes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. On Monday's, we do listener mail, on Wednesdays we do an artifact or monster Fact, and then on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a strange film. 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 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, this is the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listening to your favorite shows