CZM Book Club: The Abbot of Druimenach

Margaret reads you an Irish fairy tale about gender transformation that she really likes. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media book Club book Club, book Club book Club.
Hello and welcome to the Cool Zone Media book Club,
the only book club where you don't have to do
the reading because I do it for you. My name
is Margaret Kiljoy and I'm the host of the show,
which makes sense because I'm the one talking to you.

(00:25):
And okay, you might remember last week when I read
you a story, a nurse fairy tale, and I was like,
you know, I know, I'm out on a limb here.
This feels a little trans to me. And I really
was out on a limb there, but I'm pretty comfortable
out on limbs. I clamber around a lot. But a

(00:49):
friend of mine sent me another fairy tale, this one
from Ireland, and I don't think I have to go
out on a limb here. When I say that this
story is a trans allegory, it might not even be
an allegory. It's just kind of a trans fairy tale
because this story is the story of the abbot of

(01:13):
Drummech who is changed into a woman. And this story
has been written down a lot in different medieval manuscripts
in Irish, and there's a couple other versions of it.
There's like a whole lot of different written down versions,
including some I believe in Scotland. But Ireland and Scotland

(01:34):
are the only places in the West where this particular
style of fairy tale seems to exist, and I think
that's cool. This particular version was translated by Barbara Hillers.
It's pretty short, so I'll probably end up talking about
it a bunch. It's called the story of the Abbot

(01:57):
of Drummeh who has changed into a woman. A certain
young man who held the abbyssy of Drumh endeavored to
make a great and fine banquet in observation of Easter.
After preparing the banquet, the young man goes out of
the house and sits on a big, pleasant hill that

(02:17):
was above the settlement. And it is thus the young
man was a very comely linen hood around his head,
and a tunic of royal silk closely fitted to his
white skin, and an excellent, very beautiful rope on top
of that, and a cloak of dark brown scarlet flowing
around him, and a gold hilted sword fit for assembly

(02:39):
in his hand. And when he had reached the top,
he put his elbow to the ground and slept. And
after he woke up from his sleep. When he wanted
to take his sword, he found only a woman's weapon
in its place, i e. A distaff. And this is
how he was. The skirt of a woman's tunic on

(03:02):
him down to the ground, and on his head there
was a woman's hairdo long, golden, very beautiful hair falling
in fine curls from the top of his head. And
when he passed his hand over his face, he did
not find any hair of a beard or mustache there.
And he put his hand between his thighs and he

(03:24):
found the sign of womanhood there. Nevertheless, the young man
did not believe those various signs, for he thought it
was shape shifting and magic which had been played on him.
Then a certain big woman comes past him, and she
was very ugly, brown and exceedingly hideous. I want to

(03:45):
point out here that I am under the impression of
brown is around, like coloration of hair and stuff like that,
although I certainly wouldn't put it past medieval Ireland to
just be being blatantly racist here, but I believe it's
instead as this. It's so obviously like he's so beautiful,
he's so white, and he has blonde hair and then
you know it's comparing to this other thing. It's still

(04:07):
not like good. But I am under the impression that
is what that particular part means. A certain big woman
comes past him, and she was very ugly, brown and
exceedingly hideous, an aperation with gray bristles and deep set eyes.
And this is what she said, Why are you here, smooth,

(04:27):
young blonde girl, alone on this hillock at the end
of the day and the very beginning of night. And
he was gloomy and tearful and sad at this news.
And he said after that, I do not know where
I will go or what I will do. Hence, because
if I go to my house, my people would not
recognize me, and if I should leave, I'm in danger

(04:51):
as a single woman going about on her own. Therefore,
then this is best for me to go through the
world until God may pass judge on me, for it
is he who has distorted my shape in my form
and put me in disfigurement and repulsiveness. But still, although
God has given me this change of appearance, I swear

(05:13):
in the presence of the Creator that I have not
hung a person or wronged anyone, that I have not
committed an outrage against bell or relic or staff, nor
persecuted a church, nor spoken evil against anyone, Nor has
a guest ever gone dissatisfied from my dwelling and my house.

(05:34):
He descended then from the gnoll and from the pleasant,
beautifully sloping hill, and he raised a sore lament and
a heavy sorrowful cry. And this is what he said
going down the hill.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Pity.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
He said that the ground of the hill does not
swallow me up at this very moment, because I do
not know whither I will go or what I will do.
She went off after that down across the slope of
the hill until she reached the Green of Crome Glen,
a church that was to the west of Drumaic. After that,

(06:12):
she meets a certain tall soldierly young man on the
village green, and the young man felt eager excessive love
for her and began to entreat her, and did not
leave off until he had union and intercourse with her.
And after they had slept together, the young man asked
the girl from the place she came and who she was,

(06:35):
and the girl told him why I'm here selling goods
and services. That's not what she said, but that's what
I'm gonna say, because here's a bunch of ads, let's
you have cooler zone media, which case you can skip
these ads. Well, actually you can skip them anyway, but
they're automatically skipped for you. You have cooler zone media. Anyway,

(06:55):
here they are, and we're back. And after they had
slept together, the young man asked the girl from what

(07:16):
place she came and who she was. The girl told
him that he would not get that knowledge from her,
whether they would be together for long or short. I, however,
he said, will tell you my name for I'm Ernech
of this church. And then Erneck is. I had to
look this up so I couldn't find a lot of
the pronunciations for a lot of the Irish. And I'm

(07:37):
very sorry, but medieval Irish is hard for me to
find pronunciations of. And Erneck is the person who kind
of like handles a lot of the day to day
stuff at a medieval Irish monastery. It's a role that
went away I think in like the fifteen hundreds or something.
Because this story is old as shit, which is cool
as hell. Anyway, I will tell you my name for

(07:59):
I Aernach of this church which is called Cromglen, and
my wife died two years ago, and you will be
my harmonious and well matched wife. And they went together
then to the Aernach's house, and the people of the
house bade her a friendly and courteous welcome. And she
was with him for seven years as his wife, and

(08:20):
his spouse and seven children she bore him during that time.
After that, a messenger comes to the Airnech from the congregation,
an assembly of Drummech, to invite him for Easter. And
she goes together with the Aernak to the hill on
which her shape was first transformed, and she falls immediately
asleep on the hill, and the Airnch goes with his

(08:43):
people to the church. And after the girl woke up
from her sleep, it was thus she was a man
with the same appearance she had in the first place.
And she found her gold hilted ornamented sword on her knee.
And this is that's what she said, Oh powerful God,
the lamenting in which I am is great. And after

(09:08):
a great lamentation, he went to his original home and
his wife says to him, then it's long that you
are absent from home. Then the drinking hall had been arranged,
and that strange story was told to the people of
the house. However, that story was not believed by them,
for his wife said that he had not been absent
for more than an hour of that day. Finally, after

(09:32):
giving them many various proofs, his case is presented and
a judgment made between him and the Airneck of Crome Glen.
And this is the judgment that was made between them
to divide the children in half, giving the extra son
to the Airneck for fosterage. And this is how they
parted from each other. Etc. You know, a story is

(09:53):
good when it ends with etc. Okay. I always say
I like that story so much.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
That story so much, And one of the reasons is
that it doesn't sound like a fairy tale. Like there's
some stuff right, There's like, oh, I'm on a hillock
and you know this thing happened and time passed differently.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Right. There is this whole thing, you know with Faery,
where if you go to Faery, time passes very differently
and you'll spend years there and when you leave it's
only been a day, or vice versa. You spend a
day there and you come out it's been years. And
I've always liked that because I think time dilation is
a really interesting part of life, and it's especially a

(10:35):
part of drug use, but it's also a part of
just like general living in very different ways. Like when
I traveled full time, you know, only a summer had
passed the first summer I was traveling, only a summer
had passed, and it felt like an entire lifetime. I
felt like half of my life had been led before that,

(10:56):
and the other half had been lived during those like
three or four months. And so I was like that
thing about fairy But overall, this isn't a very fairy
tale feeling story. It doesn't have a lot of the
sort of repetition and kind of a lot of the
things you expect out of certain types of oral tradition.

(11:18):
But this story is absolutely part of the oral tradition
as well. There's actually a lot of like This particular
translation was written as part of an academic piece by
Barbara Hillers called The Abbot of Dromaic Gender Bending and
the Gaelic Tradition, and it's specifically around whether or not
medieval Irish literature is rooted in the oral tradition or not.

(11:41):
Because people were like, nah, there's no way that all
of the stuff in the medieval manuscripts is actually what
people were saying around that time. But there actually seems
to be a lot of evidence that this particular story
does come close to what people were saying around the time,
and that fascinating. But you know what I find even
more fascinating the fact that goods and services are available

(12:07):
for purchase by you through our advertisers. I find that
endlessly fascinating. You can tell by the tone of my
voice how enthused I am about all of this. And

(12:31):
we're back, Okay, more things that are interesting about this.
When I did episodes about medieval Ireland on my podcast,
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, and if you're listening
to this on it could happen here, why aren't you
also listening to cool People who did cool stuff? Where
I talk about history. When I did episodes around medieval
Irish history, especially around Grace O'Malley, the Pirate Queen of Ireland,

(12:53):
one of the things that came up is that we
have these assumptions about medieval Ireland that it was this
very Catholic place right after the Irish Revolution of nineteen
twenty one. Unfortunately, despite that being a pretty cool and
lefty revolution. The Catholic Church kind of stepped in in
a sort of theocratic mode and pushed Ireland towards a

(13:15):
certain cultural conservatism. But that's not actually Ireland's heritage even
as a Catholic country. For example, in medieval Ireland, women
were getting divorced and like initiating divorce and that's not
supposed to be the case if you're like super Catholic,

(13:37):
but it was just normal. And it's worth pointing out
here that the abbot here is fucking married. Like in
this case, that bitch gets married twice. She's married as
a man and then she's married as a woman, you know,
and it's like kind of chill. They just gotta split

(14:00):
the kids in the end. And okay, but another thing,
isn't that weird that you know, it doesn't work out
for it doesn't work out like time wise, right, like oh,
you were only gone an hour, but like the airneck
is like, what are you talking about? I was married
as lady. Here are my seven children with her? You know.

(14:21):
But also like no one's like mad. He's not like
what you were a man all along. He's just kind
of like sad. He doesn't get to be married to
her anymore. And so gender bending in this context is
presented as a curse at first, right, and it uses
he pronouns for the protagonist until she starts accepting what's happened,

(14:41):
you know, he wakes up and curses God, and then
and it uses the trope of like an ugly woman
as like a sign that magic has happened, which I'm
totally down with. I know, there's a lot of shit
that's like rooted and misogyny that sometimes I'm like, whatever,
we can own that shit, Like, you know, we can

(15:01):
be like spooky signs of magic. That's fine. But you know,
as soon as she is used to the idea of
being a woman, suddenly she's she in the story and
she's used to it, and then she feels just as
much cursed when she is transformed back into a man.

(15:22):
And I mean, I think what happened. I'm willing to
bet what happened is this story is about like an abbot.
Like the real thing that happened. I bet an abbot
like was like, oh, I'm wearing my prettiest clothes. I'm
gonna go take a nap in the sun. And then
like had like a day dream or a normal nap
dream where she woke up a woman and was like,

(15:45):
this fucking rules, I'm gonna go around to sleep with
people as a girl. I'm gonna have babies and shit.
And then like woke up and was like it was
all a dream and was kind of bummed, and then
told everyone the story, and then it slowly became that's
that's what I bet happened, because trans women have been

(16:05):
part of society forever. But what's interesting is that so
much folklore across Western Europe, and I think actually extending
into Eastern Europe, but I'm not as certain about that.
There's just certain tropes that are repeated over and over
and over again. But there's only a couple stories, and

(16:26):
I believe they are only found, according at least to
some of the stuff that I read, they're only found
in Ireland and Scotland about a man being turned into
a woman and the other place that you find this
apparently and I haven't read these stories yet, but I
want to go find them soon. The other place where
you find this style of folk tale is India. And okay,

(16:50):
this is now I'm back on a limb. I'm completely
on a limb here. I am probably wrong about this,
but one of the things that this reminds me of
is something that came up. I did episodes about hunger
strikes a long time ago, and how the tradition of
hunger strikes as a sort of legal idea, as a

(17:11):
way to get recourse from someone who is like a
rich person who owes you money, for example, is that
you go to their door and you starve yourself. And
this is found in two cultures. It is found in
Irish traditional law and it is found in parts of
northern India. And the argument that I ran across for

(17:34):
that is the same reason that you have some language
similarity between Irish and I don't remember what language. I
don't have notes in front of me. I'm totally doing
this for a memory and some language in India is
that the culture that both of those come from the
language group of Indo European comes from this like proto

(17:54):
Indo European language and culture, which started in the kind
of middle of Asia, and then it made its way
west and east. And stuff often lasts the longest at
the fringes of culture, you know. So if you have
like a culture and empire and it extends out super wide. Well,
then the next thing that comes along is also going

(18:16):
to extend out and extend out or whatever. But the
very fringes sometimes hold on to the stuff from the
earlier culture. And so this is theoretically why there's hunger
strikes in both of those places. A sort of a
legal idea is that they come from this same source.
And it's cool because it means that these places that
are thousands and thousands of miles apart and are like

(18:38):
on different continents, are coming from the same place. And
as a side note about multiple continents, whenever people are
like I just don't understand the idea of social constructs.
How can gender be a social construct? They probably believe
that Europe and Asia are two different continents. And the
reason that Europe and Asia are two different continents is
the social construction they are, and they are different continents.

(19:02):
You know, geographically they are not separate continents, but culturally
they are. So I could not actually tell you I
am completely on a limb is a conjecture that I'm
probably wrong about that. The fact that you're going to
find this like folklore around men becoming women in Ireland

(19:24):
and India is from the same idea of it coming
from a proto culture. That's probably not the case, but
it's like neat to think about, and I like thinking
about neat stuff. And it's also a curse, right, This
is a very important part that this is like a curse.
Whereas you do find folklore and cultural stuff happening a

(19:47):
little bit more the other way around, where people are
talking about girls becoming boys in folklore, and that almost
always is actually very specifically as babies, and it's because like, oh,
we kind of like need a man, We need to
have a man show up, and so we're gonna, you know,
decide that this girl is going to have the social

(20:08):
roles of masculinity. Thousands of years and thousands of miles
of culture is too large of a place to make
generalizations about the mutability of gender. But gender has been
mutable in different ways, in different directions, across the world,
in different ways, and I don't know, so hopefully I'll
slowly learn more about gender bending in history and specifically folklore,

(20:37):
but for now, this is what I've got. If you
knew how to pronounce those words properly, I am sorry,
but I could not find pronunciations online because they are
medio Irish And I'll talk to you next week when
I'll have more stories, because that's what this is, a
storytelling podcast. It's cool Zone Media book Club. Talk to

(20:59):
you soon. It could happen here as a production of
cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
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Speaker 1 (21:09):
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Speaker 2 (21:14):
You can find sources where it could happen here, updated
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Speaker 1 (21:19):
Thanks for listening.