December 27, 2024 • 46 mins
Because food is so often featured in fairy tales and fantasy stories, in this classic episode we offer up a dramatic reading of Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market', along with commentary and special guests Robert Lamb & Joe McCormick. Come buy, y'all, come buy.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Save for Predictive. iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm Anniris and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we have
a classic episode for you. That is our very first
reading of a kind of fairy tale and discussion of such,
which was a Goblin Market, a poem by Christina Rossetti.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, it was so fun. We love doing these so much.
Oh yeah, we were really lucky to get to work
with our friends Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick from Stuff
to Blow Your Mind. It was just such a It's
just we're all nerds, so when we get to do
stuff like this, it's so fun.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, and like a nerds about dramatic readings, we're just like,
oh yeah, we're all absolute hams. So just put us
in front of a microphone and let us get weird
with it. But b we're we're all nerds about like
literature and fantasy and all of these kind of tropes.
We have a really good discussion at the end about
(01:09):
this poem and there's some really beautiful music in there
that Dylan Fagan I believe wrote and performed for us.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Oh so talented, but what everyone we work with so talented?
But yeah, it also has really fun horror elements, so
you know, we love hmmm, we love that stuff too.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And I forget every time with this poem exactly how weird.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It gets very very weird.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
So so yes, you know, it's the end of the year,
we wanted to sort of close out with something that
wouldn't be too too much work for everyone here on
the Savor team. And also that yeah, just just you know,
sit back and let us read your story.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yes, yes, m well with that, I guess we'll let
the former crew all of us take it away. Hello,
(02:15):
and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Annie Reeth.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
And I'm Lare and vocal bam.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And this is a very special episode of food Stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Aren't all episodes of food Stuff special?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Oh you're like my mom.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
No, it is though, because because today we're we're gonna
we're gonna tell you a story. We're going to read
you a story dramatically. I mean we always do that,
we do.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Uh, we're off to a bad start, now we're okay.
So we had this idea to do kind of a
mini series or a recurring segment. Sure, but we wanted
to tell some food Stuff fairy tales. We wanted to
read them in a hopefully enjoyable, semi dramatic fashion and
(02:59):
then discuss Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, because one of the really pervasive elements of fairy
tales and fantasy stories is food. You know, from like
the those lavish descriptions of feasts and like George R.
Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, to specific foods that
are used symbolically in fables like aesops hypothetically sour grapes. Yeah,
to the hunger that's often portrayed in fairy tales, like
(03:24):
in Hansel and Gretel. So we wanted to discuss that
a bit, and yeah, also do for you a dramatic
reading of one such tale.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Mm hm. We are going to come back and do
more if you guys dig it, and I think that
you will. I hope that you will, but just today
we're not. There are so many fairy tales that involve people,
usually women, are children getting eaten, shopped up, eaten and cooked. Yeah,
there's a lot of those.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, Yeah, we're gonna save those for like a Halloween situation.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
We think, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
So. Yeah, cannibalism separate issue. And yes, we've heard all
of your requests for an episode about cannibalism.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
We have for people that are like what, we have
a surprising number of requests for an episode about cannibalism,
so noted, And I like, just thinking about this, I
realized how many things I wouldn't even necessarily think of
right away, like snow white as the Poisonous Apple, where
you've got Alice in Wonderland with all kinds of things
(04:22):
happening there.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Oh yeah, and like, holy heck, will I ever get
in on reading some Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and or
through the Looking Glass because like that is a just
terrific and be in the public domain.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yes, that's okay, So that is one thing that we
are limited by has to be in the public domain.
Then translation has to be in the public domain. Yes.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
And actually our first reading selection is by an author
who was later influenced by Lewis Carroll and Alice's Adventures.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
To kick off this new periodic food stuff series, we
wanted to read for you and talk about poem Goblin
Market by Christina Georgina Rosetti m M.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
It's a three thousand Oddward poem composed around eighteen sixty
one and published by Macmillan in eighteen sixty two in
Rosetti's first commercially published book of poetry.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Rosetti is considered one of the premier woman poets of
her time, like right behind Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She said
to have been like a very proprietus, particular and religious woman.
There was a child. She had a reputation for having
a really stormy temper. She was affiliated with an Anglo
Catholic church in England and volunteered extensively for the Saint
(05:36):
Mary Magdalene Penitentiary, a organization that worked with fallen women.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, that might be a recurring theme in what we're
about to read.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Indeed, she later refused to get on board with women's suffrage,
saying that she believed that quote the highest functions are
not in this world open to both sexes. But she
also said that, like, really, if the movement wanted to
get in and change things, that have to go ahead
and get female representatives in parliament. So interesting perspective there, Like,
(06:06):
don't give us the vote, just get us straight into parliament.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
She was critical of slavery and imperialism and petitioned to
raise the age of consent. She never married, but did
remain close to her family, and particularly her artist and
writer brother Dante Gabriel, who supported her financially and professionally.
She dealt with various bouts of severe illness all her life,
and depression that historians can't really agree on whether it
(06:31):
was the result or at times the cause of those illnesses.
She was writing in a time that the pre Raphaelite
artistic movement was really flourishing, but she didn't overly associate
herself with it. But her work does bear a lot
of the same influences and hallmarks of it, like all
of this sort of medieval mythology reimagined through these very
(06:53):
Victorian sensibilities about like good and evil, purity, sin, what
gender is, love, sex, the pursuit of earthly pleasures. And
we picked Goblin Market for our first reading because it's
about food and temptation and indulgence and it's just real,
weird and real pretty.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah. We recruited Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick, our colleagues
over at Stuff to blow your mind, Yes, to help
us read this, And there was definitely moments when we
were reading it we were all looking at each other like.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
WHOA I think I started blushing a few times. I
was like, oh my goodness. The poem was actually rejected
like soundly by the first art critic who read it,
one John Ruskin. He praised its beauty and power, but
said that it was unpublishably full of quaintness and offenses.
(07:46):
He also criticized the irregular meter that is now basically
celebrated for and said she should exercise herself in the
Severest commonplace of meter until she can write as the public.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Like the Severest commonplace. Yeah, that's a burn right there.
It's super is also thanks to listener Caroline for recommending
she sent this to us forever ago. Yeah, ah, it's
it's great. And yeah, Joe, Joe McCormick and Robert Lamb
are great. And I guess we're gonna take a quick
(08:20):
break for a word from our sponsor and then we're
gonna get back. We're going to get into it.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
And we're back. Thank you sponsor, And without further ado,
we present to you Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Morning and evening maids heard the goblins cry.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
Come buy our orchard. Fruits, come by, come by, apples
and quinces, lemons and oranges. Plump, unpecked cherries, melons and
red rasberries, bloom down cheeked peaches, swart headed moulberries, wild
freeborn cranberries, crab apples, dewberries, pineapples, blackberries, apricot strawberries, all
(09:14):
ripe together in summer weather. Morns that pass by, fair
eaves that fly come by. Come by, our grapes fresh
from the vine, pomegranates, full and fine, dates and sharp bullaces,
rare pears and green gages, damsons and billberries. Taste them
(09:36):
in try crants and gooseberries, bright fire like barberries, figs
to fill your mouth. Citrons from the south, sweet to
tongue and sound to aye, come by, come by.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Evening by evening among the brook side rushes, Laura bowed
her head to hear Lizzie veiled her blush, crouching close
together in the cooling weather with clasping arms and cautioning lips,
with tingling cheeks and fingertips. Lie close, Laura said, pricking
up her golden head.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
We must not look at goblin men. We must not
buy their fruits. Who knows upon what soil they fed?
They're hungry, thirsty roots come by, called.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
The goblins hobbling down the glen, Oh, cried Lizzie.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Laura, Laura, you should not peep at the goblin men.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Lizzie covered up her eyes, covered close lest they should look.
Laura reared her glossy head and whispered, like the restless brook.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Look, Lizzie, Look, Lizzie down the glen tramp little men.
One hauls a basket, one bears a plate, one lugs
a golden dish of many pounds weight. How fair the
vine must grow, Whose grapes are so luscious? How warm
the wind must blow through those fruit bushes.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
No, said Lizzie, No, no, no, their offers should not
sharmas their evil gifts would Harmas.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
She thrust a dimple finger in each ear, shut eyes
and ran curious, Laura chose to linger, wondering at each merchantman.
One had a cat's face, one whisked a tail, one
tramped at a rat's pace. One crawled like a snail,
one like a wombat, prowled obtuse and furry, one like
(11:20):
a ratal, tumbled hurry, scurry. She heard a voice like
voice of doves cooing. Altogether, they sounded kind and full
of loves in the pleasant weather. Laura stretched her gleaming
neck like a rush imbedded swan, like a lily, from
the beck, like a moonlit poplar branch, like a vessel
(11:40):
at the launch, when its last restraint is gone. Backwards
up the mossy glen turned and trooped the goblin men
with their shrill repeated cry.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Come by, come by.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
When they reached where Laura was, they stood stock still
upon the moss, leering at each other, brother with queer brother,
signaling each other brother with sly brother. One set his
basket down, one reared his plate. One began to weave
a crown of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts. Brown men
(12:13):
sell not such in any town. One heaved the golden
weight of dish and fruit to offer her.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Come by. Come by was.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Still their cry. Laura stared, but did not stir. Longed,
but had no money. The whisk tailed merchant bade her
taste in tones as smooth as honey. The cat faced purred,
the rat faced spoke a word of welcome, and the
snail paste even was heard. One parrot voiced and jolly cried.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Pretty goblin still for pretty Polly.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
One whistled like a bird, but sweet tooth. Laura spoke in.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Haste, good folk, I have no coin to take or
too purloin. I have no copper in my purse. I
have no silver either, and all my gold is on
the furs that shakes in windy weather of the rusty heather.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
You have much gold upon your head, they answered altogether.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
By fromise with a golden curl.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
She clipped a precious golden lock. She dropped a tear
more rare than pearl, then sucked their fruit, globes fair
or red, sweeter than honey from the rock, stronger than man, rejoicing,
wine clearer than water flowed that juice. She never tasted
such before, How should it kloy? With length of use?
(13:31):
She sucked and sucked, and sucked. The more fruits which
the unknown orchard bore. She sucked until her lips were sore,
then flung the emptied rines away, but gathered up one
kernel stone and knew not was it night or day.
As she turned home alone, Lizzie met her at the
(13:54):
gate full of wise upbraidings.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Dear, you should not stay so late. Twilight is not
good for maidens. Should not loiter in the glen in
the haunts of goblin men. Do you not remember Jeanie,
how she met them in the moonlight, took their gifts,
both choice and many, ate their fruits, and wore their flowers,
plucked from bowers where summer ripens at all hours, but
(14:17):
ever in the noonlight she pined and pined away, sought
them by night and day, found them no more, but
dwindled and grew gray, then fell with the first snow,
While to this day no grass will grow where she
lies low. I planted daisies there a year ago, that
never clow. You should not loiter.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
So nay hush, said Laura.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Nay hush, my sister, I ate and ate my filled,
Yet my mouth waters still. Tomorrow night I will buy.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
More and kissed her.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Have done with sorrow. I'll bring you plums tomorrow, fresh
on their mother twigs. Cherry's worth getting. You cannot think
what figs my teeth of medon, What melons icy cold
piled on? A dish of gold too huge for me
to hold, What peaches with a velvet nap pellucid grapes
without one seed? Odorous? Indeed, must be the mead whereon
they grow, and pure the wave they drink with lilies
(15:07):
at the brink, and sugars sweet.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Their sap, golden head by golden head, Like two pigeons
in one nest, folded in each other's wings. They lay
down in their curtained bed, like two blossoms on one stem,
like two flakes of new fallen snow, like two wands
of ivory tipped with gold. For awful kings, moon and
stars gazed in at them. Wind sang to them lullaby
(15:32):
lumbering owls forbore to fly not a bat flapped to
and fro round their rest, cheek to cheek, and breast
to breast, locked together in one nest early in the morning,
when the first cock crowed his warning, neat like bees
as sweet and busy, Laura rose with Lizzie, fetched in honey, milked,
(15:53):
the cows, aired and set to rights. The house kneaded
cakes of white as sweet cakes for dainty mouths to eat. Next,
churned butter, whipped up cream fed their poultry, sat and sewed,
talked as modest maidens should Lizzie with an open heart.
Laura in an absent dream one content one sick in
(16:14):
part one, warbling for the mere bright day's delight, one
longing for the night at length, slow evening came. They
went with pitchers to the reedy brook, Lizzie most placid
in her look, Laura most like a leaping flame. They
drew the gurgling water from its deep. Lizzie plucked purple
(16:34):
and rich golden flags, then, turning homewards, said.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
The sunset flushes those furthest loftiest crags. Come, Laura, not
another maiden lags, No wilful squirrel wags. The beasts and
birds are fast asleep.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
But Laura loitered still among the rushes, and said the
bank was steep, and said the hour was early, still,
the dew not fallen, the wind not chill. Listening ever,
but not catching the customary.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Cry, come by, come by.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
With its iterated jingle of sugar baited words. Not for
all her watching, once discerning even one goblin racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling,
Let alone the herds that used to tramp along the
glen in groups or single of brisk fruit merchant men,
till Lizzie.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Urged, Oh, Laura, come, I hear the fruit call, but
I dare not look. You should not loiter longer at
this brook. Come with me home. The stars rise, the
moon bends her arc. Each glow worm winks her spark.
Let us get home before the night grows dark, for
clouds may gather, though this is summer weather. Put out
the lights and drenches through. Then if we lost our way,
(17:46):
what should we do?
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Laura turned cold as stone to find her sister. Heard
that cry alone, that goblin cry.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
Come by, I have fruits come by?
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit? Must
she no more such suckus pasture? Find gone deaf and blind?
Her tree of life drooped from the root, She said,
not one word in her heart's sore ache, but peering
through the dimness, not discerning, trudged home, her pitcher dripping
all the way. So crept to bed and lay silent
(18:20):
till Lizzie slept. Then sat up in a passionate yearning
and gnashed her teeth for balked desire, and wept as
if her heart would break. Day after day, night after night,
Laura kept watch in vain, in sullen silence of exceeding pain.
She never caught again the goblin.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Cry, come by, come by.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
She never spied the goblin men hawking their fruits along
the glen, but When the noon waxed bright, her hair
grew thin and gray. She dwindled as the fair full
moon doth turn to swift decay and burn her fire away.
One day, remembering her kernel stone, she s set it
by a wall that faced the south, dewed it with tears,
(19:04):
hoped for a root, watched for a waxing shoot, but
there came none. It never saw the sun, It never
felt the trickling moisture run. While with sunk eyes and
faded mouth, she dreamed of melons, as a traveler sees
false waves in desert, drouth with shade of leaf crowned trees,
(19:24):
and burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze. She no
more swept the house, tended the fowls or cows, fetched honey,
kneaded cakes of wheat, brought water from the brook, but
sat down listless in the chimney nook and would not
eat tender Lizzie could not bear to watch her sister's
cankerous care. Yet not to share, she night and morning
(19:49):
caught the goblin's cry.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
Come by our orchard, fruits, come by, come by.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Beside the brook. Along the glen, she heard the tramp
of the goblin men the voice and stir. Poor Laura
could not hear. Longed to buy fruit to comfort her,
but feared to pay too dear. She thought of Genie
in her grave, who should have been a bride, but
who for Joy's brides hoped to have fell sick and
(20:15):
died in her gay prime in earliest winter time, with
the first glazing rhyme, with the first snowfall of crisp wintertime,
till Laura dwindling seemed knocking at death's door. Then Lizzie
weighed no more better and worse, but put a silver
penny in her purse. Kissed, Laura crossed the heath with
(20:35):
clumps of furs at twilight, halted by the brook, and
for the first time in her life, began to listen
and look. Laughed. Every goblin when they spied her, peeping,
came towards her, hobbling, flying, running, leaping, puffing and blowing, chuckling, clapping, crowing,
clucking and gobbling, mopping and mowing, full of airs and graces, pulling,
(20:59):
rye faces, demure grimaces, catlike and ratlike, ratal and wombat
like snail paced in a hurry. Parrot voiced and whistler, helter, skelter, hurry, scurry,
chattering like magpies, fluttering like pigeons, gliding like fishes. Hugged
her and kissed her, squeezed her and caressed her, stretched
(21:22):
up their dishes, penniers and plates.
Speaker 5 (21:24):
Look at our apples, russet and done. Bob at our cherries,
Bite at our peaches, citrons and dates, grapes for the asking.
Pears red with basking out in the sun, Plums on
their twigs, plucked them and suck them, pomegranates, figs.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Good folk, said Lizzie, mindful of Genie, give me much,
and many held out her apron tossed them her penny.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
Nay, take a seat with us, honor, and eat with us.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
They answered, grinning.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
Our feast is but beginning night. Yet is early, warm
and dew pearly, wakeful and starry. Such fruits as these,
no man can carry. Half their bloom would fly, half
their dew would dry, half their flavor would pass by.
Sit down and feast with us, Be welcome, guest with us,
(22:19):
Cheer you, and rest with us.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Thank you, said Lizzie.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
But one waits at home alone for me. So without
further parleying if you will not sell me any of
your fruits, though much and many give me back my
silver penny I tossed you for a fee.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
They began to scratch their pates, no longer wagging, purring,
but visibly demurring, grunting, and snarling. One called her proud
cross grained uncivil. Their tones waxed loud, their looks were evil.
Lashing their tails, they trod and hustled her, elbowed and
jostled her, clawed with their nails, barking, mewing, hissing, tore
(23:01):
her gown and soiled her stocking, twitched her hair out
by the roots stamped upon her tender feet, held her hands,
and squeezed their fruits against her mouth to make her eat.
White and golden. Lizzie stood like a lily in a flood,
like a rock of blue veined stone, lashed by tides, obstreperously,
(23:21):
like a beacon left alone in a hoary, roaring sea,
sending up a golden fire, Like a fruit crowned orange tree,
white with blossoms, honey, sweet sore, beset by wasp and bee,
like a royal virgin town, topped with gilded dome and
spire close beleaguered by a fleet mad to tug her
(23:43):
standard down. One may lead a horse to water, twenty
cannot make him drink. Though the goblins cuffed and caught her,
coaxed and fought her, bullied and besought her, scratched her,
pinched her black as ink, kicked and knocked her, mauled
and mocked her. Lizzie uttered not a word, would not
open lip from lip lest they should cram a mouthful in,
(24:06):
but laughed in heart to feel the drip of juice
that sirruped all her face and lodged in dimples of
her chin, and streaked her neck, which quaked like curd.
At last, the evil people, worn out by her resistance,
flung back her penny, kicked their fruit along whichever road
they took, not leaving root or stone or shoot. Some
(24:28):
writhed into the ground, some dived into the brook with
ring and ripple. Some scudded on the gale without a sound.
Some vanished in the distance in a smart ache tingle.
Lizzie went her way, knew not was it night or day,
sprang up the bank, tore through the furs, threaded copse
(24:49):
and dingle, and heard her penny jingle bouncing in her purse.
Its bounce was music to her ear. She ran and ran,
as if she feared some goblin man dogged her with gibe,
curse or something worse. But not one goblin scurried after,
nor was she pricked by fear. The kind heart made
her windy paste that urged her home, quite out of breath.
(25:11):
With haste and inward laughter, she cried, Laura, up the garden, did.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
You miss me? Come and kiss me. Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices squeezed from goblin
fruits for you, Goblin pulp and goblin do eat me,
drink me, love me, Laura, make much of me. For
your sake, I have braved the glen and had to
do with goblin merchantmen.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Laura started from her chair, flung her arms up in
the air, clutched her hair.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Lizzy, Lizzie, have you tasted for my sake the fruit forbidden?
Must your light like mine be hidden, your young life
like mine be wasted, undone in mine, undoing and ruined
in my ruin. Thirsty, cankered, goblin ridden, she.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Clung about her sister, kissed and kissed and kissed her
tears once again refreshed, her sh shrunken, eyes dropping like
rain after long sultry drouth, Shaking with anguish, fear and pain,
she kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth. Her
lips began to scorch. That juice was wormwood to her tongue.
She loathed the feast, writhing as one possessed. She leaped
(26:19):
and sung, rent all her robe, and wrung her hands
in lamentable haste, and beat her breast. Her locks streamed
like the torch borne by a racer at full speed,
or like the mane of horses in their flight, or
like an eagle when she stems the light straight toward
the sun, or like a caged thing freed, or like
(26:39):
a flying flag when armies run. Swift fire spread through
her veins, knocked at her heart, met the fire smoldering there,
and overbore its lesser flame. She gorged on bitterness without
a name. Ah fool to choose such part of soul,
consuming care since failed in the mortal strife, Like the
water tower of a town which an earthquake shatters down
(27:03):
like a lightning stricken mast, like a wind uprooted tree
spun about like a foam topped water spout, cast down
headlong in the sea. She fell at last, Pleasure passed,
and anguish passed. Is it death or is it life?
Life out of death? That night long Lizzie watched by her,
counted her pulses flagging, stir felt for her breath, held
(27:27):
water to her lips, and cooled her face with tears
and fanning leaves. But when the first birds chirped about
their eaves, and early reapers plodded to the place of
golden sheaves and dew wet grass bowed in the morning,
winds so brisk to pass, and new buds with new
day opened of cup like lilies on the stream, Laura
(27:49):
awoke as from a dream, laughed in the innocent old way,
hugged Lizzie, but not twice or thrice. Her gleaming locks
showed not one thread of gray. Her breath was sweet
as may, and light danced in her eyes. Days, weeks, months,
years afterwards, when both were wives, with children of their own,
(28:09):
their mother hearts beset with fears, their lives bound up
in tender lives, Laura would call the little ones and
tell them of her early prime, those pleasant days long gone,
of not returning time would talk about the haunted glen,
the wicked, quaint fruit merchantmen, their fruits like honey to
the throat, but poison in the blood men sell not
(28:31):
such in any town. Would tell them how her sister
stood in deadly peril to do her good and win
the fiery antidote. Then, joining hands to little hands, would
bid them cling together, for.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
There is no friend like a sister in calm or
stormy weather. To cheer one on the tedious way, to
fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one, if
one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
We hope you enjoyed, yes, that reading listeners as much
as we enjoyed doing it. We do have some discussion.
We kind of sort of got to talking about this
after we I was gonna say, reenacted, but we did
not do that. No, we just read it with voices.
That's what we did. There was no reenacting involved, no goodness. Also,
(29:30):
I guess this was a fantasy, so.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
You can't reenact. It never happened in the first place.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yes, anyway, we had some thoughts, Yes, and we are
going to take a quick break for a word from
our sponsor, and then be right back with those and
(29:58):
we're back. Thank you sponsor. Now back to past Annie, Lauren,
Robert and Joe and our thoughts about the goblin market.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Yeah, I get the feeling that the goblins represent men.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Oh yes, I would agree that, mate.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
That might have something I think.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
Yeah, it's a very It.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Just seems to offer like a like you don't need
to go down to the goblins. What about sisterly love?
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Right?
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yeah, yeah, what about your family love? Come on, what
about saving yourself and getting married? That's clearly the best
thing to do. Don't eat that goblin fruit.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
No matter how tempting it is.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Right mm hmm, Yeah, they'll call to you at night.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yes, yes, it's yes, I think I've seen it reminds
me of a lot of horror movies where women will
fall in love with a monster. I've always found that
an interesting trope.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
Yeah, so I have a question. Yeah, is Lizzie supposed
to be Jesus?
Speaker 2 (31:01):
See, that's a great question because I the author, Christinaozetti,
maintains that there was no Christian allegory in it, but
it is like a physical self sacrifice.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Yeah, she like sacrifices her body and she comes back,
and then she says like eat of me, drink of me,
and love me or.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Something, make much of me.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Yeah, like I even read that. I caught myself like
doing it. How I would a prayer that you would
say in church over and over again, like when I
was a kid. Yeah, like picked up that tone subconsciously.
I didn't even think about it, So it had that
for me. I was picking up on that.
Speaker 6 (31:36):
Yeah, the idea being somebody has to fall to the goblins,
like somebody has to buy the goblin because ultimately somebody
has to support the goblin economy. Oh yeah, this is
the driving force.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
But also Lizzie is presented as a sinless sacrifice, like
she is morally pure. She doesn't have like the parian
interests that Laura does.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Yeah, the first time that she falls down into in
First of all, she remains pure, she doesn't actually eat
on purpose any of the fruit, and second of all,
she only does it in order to save her sister.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Yeah. Yeah, sort of like coming down and into a
sinful world. I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much. Yeah,
So Rosetti says she didn't mean any of that. Yeah, Well,
I mean I can actually believe. I can see it
could be one of those things. So you live in
Victorian culture. Maybe even if this is not, you didn't
mean it as an allegory for the New Testament or anything. Still,
(32:31):
like you're steeped in Christian religious themes and so like,
if you want to write a story, it's just a
story about self sacrifice and love. Your main reference point
is the existing archetype of the Christian story.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Absolutely, and she was a very religious woman. She was
very active in her church. She a couple times turned
down marriages because the Christian human dude in question wasn't
the right type of Christian. Oh okay, like King can't truck.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
With those Catholics.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Oh, I see sort of thing. Yeah, she had she
had opinions.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
She's a lady who had a lot of opinions.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yes, well, this is a poem.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
I can detect opinions in between the lines in it.
But man, it is it's funny. How so, So would
you say that the tone of this poem is moralistic?
Speaker 5 (33:25):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Yeah, yeah, I mean personally, I can't help but find
like a strong more moralistic bent in it.
Speaker 6 (33:32):
See you know that's interesting because I favor a very
literal interpretation of the poem that goblins were literally selling
fruit to ladies Victorian times.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Well you could, well, yeah, I mean of course they
were right.
Speaker 6 (33:45):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Also it's interesting that you bring up the Goblin economy
because there has been some criticism about the poem that
talks about the uh. The way that Laura is made
into herself part of that economy, like the way that
she pays for it is with a literal part of.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Her are yeah, and a tear.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
And oh and teardrop.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
She pays for it with her body and with her suffering.
Speaker 6 (34:09):
Wait, did the goblins even ask for the tears?
Speaker 4 (34:11):
No, they didn't ask her for anything, just.
Speaker 6 (34:13):
For the hair. But that was only the oh okay,
but that was after I don't have any money and
they said, well, your hair's pretty golden.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
So they're like poifect, just what we wanted to hear.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
See, we're in the whig business here here at the
Goblin market.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
Let's see the upper class of Goblin society. They're more
into changelings. That's where the real money is. That somebody's
got to sell the fruit.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah, if you don't have any babies on hand, then
it's absolutely Okay.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Well, I mean what I was going to say was
I think it's funny if you consider this poem moralistic.
I get moralistic vibes from it as well. It seems
like it's kind of like wagging a finger at I
don't know, shameful, sinful curiosity, and I get like indulgence, yeah,
like telling you to be good. But at the same time,
I feel like the poem is just kind of an
orgy of words. It's like, yeah, like she really gets
(35:05):
into the nasty parts.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Like the sensuality. Yeah, it's the way the way that
those fruits are described is.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
Absolutely it's embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
I sort of realized after after y'all agreed to do this,
I was like, oh, man, I just asked my coworkers
to do this. This is potentially inappropriate.
Speaker 6 (35:23):
I have to say. I really so, I really loved
reading the Goblin lines because there's kind of ah, I
read a lot of Doctor Seuss these days, and so
there's kind of like a Sussian element to it. But
then so much of the narration I feel like you
could have dropped a beat behind it, like it it
has some really tight rhymes.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
It really did squeeze from Goblin fruits for you, Goblin juice,
and Goblin dew.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (35:48):
I think that was one of the parts where I
was like, I was thinking, you know, you need to
drop something in there. Maybe they can do that in
post I don't know.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah, oh man, yeah, Lan Dylan feel free to free
to play around.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
With it, turn it into a club hit. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, and then I don't know, like like right up
until because they both sisters get married at the end,
but right up until then. It's the type of close
physical relationship that I think is is rebranded these days
as being sexual, but at the time, among women and
also among some men, especially younger men, it was allowable
(36:20):
to have those kind of close physical relationships with another
person at the same sex, and even considered preferable to
having a close physical relationship or sexual relationship with someone
of the.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Opposite sex or gender.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Right, But that being said, like in today's parlance, like
that reads is just heck a lesbian.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yes it does.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
But I mean, knowing a little bit about literature at
the time, I could see this, this is like straight
up that that kind of sisterly love kind of totally yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah, they're they're literally pure and innocent and it's just
affectionate and that's fine, although yeah, like I don't know,
like it's it's so interesting to me that the bad
thing that Laura does is engage in this sensuality, in
this like hedonistic indulgence, but the way that she's saved
(37:13):
is by literally physically kissing her sister's face. Her sin
is with fruit and her savior is with literal physical
contact of another human person. Victorians, y'all like like, I
don't know what that means, but I'm just like, who,
that's some kind of repression.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, well, yeah, I was saying earlier, there's this trope
where I feel like a lot of a lot of
female characters that we see even today, when they fall
in love, it's with some kind of monstrous creature, Like
I always think of Twilight, and I think it, Hey,
I think it represents like female fear of sexuality having
(37:55):
like a being able to explore that. So it becomes
this vampire are this werewolf that you're in love but
it's very dangerous and.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
It's almost not your fault because you're kind of seduced
by it. Like eat in the Garden, Oh, which is
another good religious allegory. It's totally in there.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
Oh yeah, eating the fruit. Yeah, the fruit is literally
a sinful temptation.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (38:16):
But then again, we have we have versions of both
the succubists and incubus and various cultures, you know, essentially
the same idea. There's the monstrous masculine or the monstrous
feminine that you have very little power to overcome. Yeah,
that being said, I guess the goblins themselves don't sound
(38:37):
very sexy, you know, but their fruit is very sexy.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
Well, then again, it's also very quite literally fruity. It's
like it reads like like maybe Rossetti was really hungry
when she's writing this. She just gets into the fruit.
I mean, there's that sexual implication, but there's also just
totally like fruit. It's like, my god, that would taste good.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
And it's a little bit pastoral. She was writing.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
She didn't herself associate with the pre Raphaelite movement, but
she was definitely associated with it and like her brother
was into it, and you can see a lot of
the same influences I think in her work. That's sort
of like worship of the pastoral and even like a
kind of halicon version of what nature is and what
(39:26):
nature has to present you and those kind of medieval
concepts of what it is to be a good person.
A good person isn't living in the city. A good
person is out in the country and doing these things,
and milking the cows and taking care of the poultry.
But somehow not being tempted by somehow not being tempted
by the best wellether.
Speaker 6 (39:45):
The goblins are peddling like natural pleasures here, or at
least I mean maybe they're not represented as such in
the poem, but I mean, if we're to actually say,
what our fruit, you know, fruit are the splendors of
the natural world, right, no matter what other kind of
you know, symbolic power they end up taking on them.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
But actually they're not, aren't they? Are they because they're
products of agriculture.
Speaker 6 (40:08):
Well, yeah, that's true, especially the oranges.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
I mean, you go pick wild fruit most of the time,
it's not very good there you go.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah, yeah, this is this is a warning against contemporary agribusiness.
Speaker 6 (40:23):
Well okay, but some of the fruit that the gods
are peddling here I think are more natural than the others.
Speaker 4 (40:28):
I mean those what are those green gauges? Yeah, those
are named after a dude, I just looked it up
on Wikipedia. There's some guy named Gage.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Some guy named Gauge out there. It's got a whole
fruit named after him.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
He engage.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
I wanted to say also that I just, on a
purely technical level, I thought, this is a really good poem.
This is like, really pleasurable to read line to line.
It's got that. I really like the the irregular rhyme
scheme and the varying line length that kind of reminds
me of stuff like you would see in the love
song of Jailford Proof Rock Later, you know, where like
(41:02):
Elliott uses the irregular rhyme scheme and varying line length,
but then sometimes it gets very regular all of a sudden.
And then when it does that sort of like it
like yanks you into the poem even deeper. It's uh, yeah,
it's good.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
It's really beautiful.
Speaker 6 (41:17):
Now here's a question. Do you think the goblins have
a version of this poem that is warning impressionable young
goblins not to sell fruit to Lizzi's no, no.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
I think it would say like, yeah, look, they did
a good job with Laura, but they really screwed up
with Lizzie. So here's the kind of Lizzy you need
to watch out for.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, what about Genie, the tragedy of Genie.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
No, they did good with Genie.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah, ge Genie and died alone Onwed. I mean that's
the worst, but this time for a lady.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
Yes, it's like dead women cautionary tales. It's just like,
don't be like old dead Genie.
Speaker 6 (41:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
No, one wants to be like old dead Genie.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Yeah, but no, No, I like this idea of the
goblins being like, oh man, watch out for those tight
lipped ones.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (42:06):
No, I guess you could say it's probably just goblin
propaganda and goblins myselves up. I mean, that's ultimately one
of the things that I think speaks well to you know,
twenty eighteen readers of this poem or listeners to this poem,
is that there are, without a doubt, there are some
goblin men in the world pedaling their fruit.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Mm hm. I do think it's interesting how often food
is used to represent indulgence or like temptation. I just especially,
I guess because of things like the story of Eve
and the Garden of Eden, like the apple is always
(42:45):
popping up, and things I'm reading is like it's forbidden
to partaken. Yeah, the role of food and fairy tales
is pretty fascinating.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
No fun fact, you know that the Bible never says
it's an apple.
Speaker 6 (42:58):
No, that's right.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
It never says why kind of fruit it is? And
so there are all these arguments of religious scholars throughout
the ages about what the fruit was. I think my
favorite I've ever heard was that somebody said it was
a lemon.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Don't eat that incredibly tempting lemon. I know, you just
want to eat it.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Wrong, the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Another fun fact, you know, the Bible never says it
was the devil. It just says it's a snake, yeah,
or just a snake. Just a snake says here's a fruit.
It doesn't say what the fruit is. Doesn't say the
snake's a devil.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Huh. Yeah. We've talked a lot on the show about
like people thought it was a banana. They think it's
a big they thought it was. It's come up several
most of.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
The fruits, a pomegranate, most of the fruits that we've
talked about. At some point someone was like, probably that's
what the Bible was talking about the story.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
It was a green gauge.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
It was definitely even though Gauge wasn't around yet. He's
just like a before his time, some kind of time
traveling going on there.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Well, no, no, it's Adam and even Gauge in the garden.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Oh yeah, forget about case now.
Speaker 6 (44:01):
What I would love to see is to have some
sort of like a fruit gummy tie into this poem
with their shaped like goblins, and each one you have
one for flavor for each of the fruits that are
mentioned here.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
I think we need to call jelly Belly.
Speaker 6 (44:15):
Jelly Belly would would be great at this.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Get them on the line, yeah, jelly Belly, if you're.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Listening, we're here and we've got ideas.
Speaker 6 (44:24):
Or have a Goblin Market fruit juice establishment. I did
notice when I initially looked up Goblin Market on my browser,
the number one hit was up a restaurant.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
In Florida so called Goblin Market.
Speaker 6 (44:39):
Yeah, Goblin Market.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
They forced food in your face.
Speaker 6 (44:45):
I think it's just sexy goblins selling hair, stomp.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
On you and cram fruit in your mouth.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Yeah, pinchy black, yeah, I want.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
That's yeah, fakes to fill your mouth, Goblin pulp and
Goblin juice.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
And you can always fine or offer it and so on,
stuff to blow your mind. Another house Stuff Works podcast,
uh huh.
Speaker 6 (45:08):
Yeah, and occasionally we talk about foods and goblins goblins
as well.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
So yeah, yes, I'm getting that. I think everyone is giving.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Well, thanks so much for inviting us on. We've had
a great time.
Speaker 6 (45:20):
Yeah, this is tremendous.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
And that brings us to the end of this classic episode.
We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we
enjoyed doing it and bringing it back. We hope that
it did something you could relax too, even though it
is pretty pretty strange, kind of intense, uh huh, kind
of intense, but also yeah, we do love doing these.
We didn't We wanted to do one this year at
(45:46):
the end of the year, but we didn't have time. Yeah,
but hopefully next year we will and we if you
have any suggestions for the story you'd like us to do.
Hopefully we like to keep it food related. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (46:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
It also needs to be in the public domain public domaino.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Or the author has to give us explicit permission.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yes, we do not want to be sued in the
new year. That's a goal that I have no no,
but if you have something that meets those criteria, Please
send it our way. You can email us at Hello
at savorpod dot com. We're also on social media.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
You can find us on Twitter, Slash Blue Sky, Instagram,
and Facebook at saber pod and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
(46:46):
we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Save for Predictive. iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm Anniris and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we have
a classic episode for you. That is our very first
reading of a kind of fairy tale and discussion of such,
which was a Goblin Market, a poem by Christina Rossetti.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Yeah, it was so fun. We love doing these so much.
Oh yeah, we were really lucky to get to work
with our friends Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick from Stuff
to Blow Your Mind. It was just such a It's
just we're all nerds, so when we get to do
stuff like this, it's so fun.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Yeah, and like a nerds about dramatic readings, we're just like,
oh yeah, we're all absolute hams. So just put us
in front of a microphone and let us get weird
with it. But b we're we're all nerds about like
literature and fantasy and all of these kind of tropes.
We have a really good discussion at the end about
(01:09):
this poem and there's some really beautiful music in there
that Dylan Fagan I believe wrote and performed for us.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Oh so talented, but what everyone we work with so talented?
But yeah, it also has really fun horror elements, so
you know, we love hmmm, we love that stuff too.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
And I forget every time with this poem exactly how weird.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It gets very very weird.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
So so yes, you know, it's the end of the year,
we wanted to sort of close out with something that
wouldn't be too too much work for everyone here on
the Savor team. And also that yeah, just just you know,
sit back and let us read your story.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yes, yes, m well with that, I guess we'll let
the former crew all of us take it away. Hello,
(02:15):
and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Annie Reeth.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
And I'm Lare and vocal bam.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
And this is a very special episode of food Stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Aren't all episodes of food Stuff special?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Oh you're like my mom.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
No, it is though, because because today we're we're gonna
we're gonna tell you a story. We're going to read
you a story dramatically. I mean we always do that,
we do.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Uh, we're off to a bad start, now we're okay.
So we had this idea to do kind of a
mini series or a recurring segment. Sure, but we wanted
to tell some food Stuff fairy tales. We wanted to
read them in a hopefully enjoyable, semi dramatic fashion and
(02:59):
then discuss Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, because one of the really pervasive elements of fairy
tales and fantasy stories is food. You know, from like
the those lavish descriptions of feasts and like George R.
Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, to specific foods that
are used symbolically in fables like aesops hypothetically sour grapes. Yeah,
to the hunger that's often portrayed in fairy tales, like
(03:24):
in Hansel and Gretel. So we wanted to discuss that
a bit, and yeah, also do for you a dramatic
reading of one such tale.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Mm hm. We are going to come back and do
more if you guys dig it, and I think that
you will. I hope that you will, but just today
we're not. There are so many fairy tales that involve people,
usually women, are children getting eaten, shopped up, eaten and cooked. Yeah,
there's a lot of those.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah, Yeah, we're gonna save those for like a Halloween situation.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
We think, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
So. Yeah, cannibalism separate issue. And yes, we've heard all
of your requests for an episode about cannibalism.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
We have for people that are like what, we have
a surprising number of requests for an episode about cannibalism,
so noted, And I like, just thinking about this, I
realized how many things I wouldn't even necessarily think of
right away, like snow white as the Poisonous Apple, where
you've got Alice in Wonderland with all kinds of things
(04:22):
happening there.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Oh yeah, and like, holy heck, will I ever get
in on reading some Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and or
through the Looking Glass because like that is a just
terrific and be in the public domain.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Yes, that's okay, So that is one thing that we
are limited by has to be in the public domain.
Then translation has to be in the public domain. Yes.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
And actually our first reading selection is by an author
who was later influenced by Lewis Carroll and Alice's Adventures.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
To kick off this new periodic food stuff series, we
wanted to read for you and talk about poem Goblin
Market by Christina Georgina Rosetti m M.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
It's a three thousand Oddward poem composed around eighteen sixty
one and published by Macmillan in eighteen sixty two in
Rosetti's first commercially published book of poetry.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Rosetti is considered one of the premier woman poets of
her time, like right behind Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She said
to have been like a very proprietus, particular and religious woman.
There was a child. She had a reputation for having
a really stormy temper. She was affiliated with an Anglo
Catholic church in England and volunteered extensively for the Saint
(05:36):
Mary Magdalene Penitentiary, a organization that worked with fallen women.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah, that might be a recurring theme in what we're
about to read.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Indeed, she later refused to get on board with women's suffrage,
saying that she believed that quote the highest functions are
not in this world open to both sexes. But she
also said that, like, really, if the movement wanted to
get in and change things, that have to go ahead
and get female representatives in parliament. So interesting perspective there, Like,
(06:06):
don't give us the vote, just get us straight into parliament.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
She was critical of slavery and imperialism and petitioned to
raise the age of consent. She never married, but did
remain close to her family, and particularly her artist and
writer brother Dante Gabriel, who supported her financially and professionally.
She dealt with various bouts of severe illness all her life,
and depression that historians can't really agree on whether it
(06:31):
was the result or at times the cause of those illnesses.
She was writing in a time that the pre Raphaelite
artistic movement was really flourishing, but she didn't overly associate
herself with it. But her work does bear a lot
of the same influences and hallmarks of it, like all
of this sort of medieval mythology reimagined through these very
(06:53):
Victorian sensibilities about like good and evil, purity, sin, what
gender is, love, sex, the pursuit of earthly pleasures. And
we picked Goblin Market for our first reading because it's
about food and temptation and indulgence and it's just real,
weird and real pretty.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah. We recruited Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick, our colleagues
over at Stuff to blow your mind, Yes, to help
us read this, And there was definitely moments when we
were reading it we were all looking at each other like.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
WHOA I think I started blushing a few times. I
was like, oh my goodness. The poem was actually rejected
like soundly by the first art critic who read it,
one John Ruskin. He praised its beauty and power, but
said that it was unpublishably full of quaintness and offenses.
(07:46):
He also criticized the irregular meter that is now basically
celebrated for and said she should exercise herself in the
Severest commonplace of meter until she can write as the public.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Like the Severest commonplace. Yeah, that's a burn right there.
It's super is also thanks to listener Caroline for recommending
she sent this to us forever ago. Yeah, ah, it's
it's great. And yeah, Joe, Joe McCormick and Robert Lamb
are great. And I guess we're gonna take a quick
(08:20):
break for a word from our sponsor and then we're
gonna get back. We're going to get into it.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
And we're back. Thank you sponsor, And without further ado,
we present to you Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Morning and evening maids heard the goblins cry.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
Come buy our orchard. Fruits, come by, come by, apples
and quinces, lemons and oranges. Plump, unpecked cherries, melons and
red rasberries, bloom down cheeked peaches, swart headed moulberries, wild
freeborn cranberries, crab apples, dewberries, pineapples, blackberries, apricot strawberries, all
(09:14):
ripe together in summer weather. Morns that pass by, fair
eaves that fly come by. Come by, our grapes fresh
from the vine, pomegranates, full and fine, dates and sharp bullaces,
rare pears and green gages, damsons and billberries. Taste them
(09:36):
in try crants and gooseberries, bright fire like barberries, figs
to fill your mouth. Citrons from the south, sweet to
tongue and sound to aye, come by, come by.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Evening by evening among the brook side rushes, Laura bowed
her head to hear Lizzie veiled her blush, crouching close
together in the cooling weather with clasping arms and cautioning lips,
with tingling cheeks and fingertips. Lie close, Laura said, pricking
up her golden head.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
We must not look at goblin men. We must not
buy their fruits. Who knows upon what soil they fed?
They're hungry, thirsty roots come by, called.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
The goblins hobbling down the glen, Oh, cried Lizzie.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Laura, Laura, you should not peep at the goblin men.
Speaker 4 (10:28):
Lizzie covered up her eyes, covered close lest they should look.
Laura reared her glossy head and whispered, like the restless brook.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Look, Lizzie, Look, Lizzie down the glen tramp little men.
One hauls a basket, one bears a plate, one lugs
a golden dish of many pounds weight. How fair the
vine must grow, Whose grapes are so luscious? How warm
the wind must blow through those fruit bushes.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
No, said Lizzie, No, no, no, their offers should not
sharmas their evil gifts would Harmas.
Speaker 4 (10:58):
She thrust a dimple finger in each ear, shut eyes
and ran curious, Laura chose to linger, wondering at each merchantman.
One had a cat's face, one whisked a tail, one
tramped at a rat's pace. One crawled like a snail,
one like a wombat, prowled obtuse and furry, one like
(11:20):
a ratal, tumbled hurry, scurry. She heard a voice like
voice of doves cooing. Altogether, they sounded kind and full
of loves in the pleasant weather. Laura stretched her gleaming
neck like a rush imbedded swan, like a lily, from
the beck, like a moonlit poplar branch, like a vessel
(11:40):
at the launch, when its last restraint is gone. Backwards
up the mossy glen turned and trooped the goblin men
with their shrill repeated cry.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Come by, come by.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
When they reached where Laura was, they stood stock still
upon the moss, leering at each other, brother with queer brother,
signaling each other brother with sly brother. One set his
basket down, one reared his plate. One began to weave
a crown of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts. Brown men
(12:13):
sell not such in any town. One heaved the golden
weight of dish and fruit to offer her.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Come by. Come by was.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Still their cry. Laura stared, but did not stir. Longed,
but had no money. The whisk tailed merchant bade her
taste in tones as smooth as honey. The cat faced purred,
the rat faced spoke a word of welcome, and the
snail paste even was heard. One parrot voiced and jolly cried.
Speaker 5 (12:42):
Pretty goblin still for pretty Polly.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
One whistled like a bird, but sweet tooth. Laura spoke in.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Haste, good folk, I have no coin to take or
too purloin. I have no copper in my purse. I
have no silver either, and all my gold is on
the furs that shakes in windy weather of the rusty heather.
Speaker 4 (13:01):
You have much gold upon your head, they answered altogether.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
By fromise with a golden curl.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
She clipped a precious golden lock. She dropped a tear
more rare than pearl, then sucked their fruit, globes fair
or red, sweeter than honey from the rock, stronger than man, rejoicing,
wine clearer than water flowed that juice. She never tasted
such before, How should it kloy? With length of use?
(13:31):
She sucked and sucked, and sucked. The more fruits which
the unknown orchard bore. She sucked until her lips were sore,
then flung the emptied rines away, but gathered up one
kernel stone and knew not was it night or day.
As she turned home alone, Lizzie met her at the
(13:54):
gate full of wise upbraidings.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Dear, you should not stay so late. Twilight is not
good for maidens. Should not loiter in the glen in
the haunts of goblin men. Do you not remember Jeanie,
how she met them in the moonlight, took their gifts,
both choice and many, ate their fruits, and wore their flowers,
plucked from bowers where summer ripens at all hours, but
(14:17):
ever in the noonlight she pined and pined away, sought
them by night and day, found them no more, but
dwindled and grew gray, then fell with the first snow,
While to this day no grass will grow where she
lies low. I planted daisies there a year ago, that
never clow. You should not loiter.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
So nay hush, said Laura.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Nay hush, my sister, I ate and ate my filled,
Yet my mouth waters still. Tomorrow night I will buy.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
More and kissed her.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Have done with sorrow. I'll bring you plums tomorrow, fresh
on their mother twigs. Cherry's worth getting. You cannot think
what figs my teeth of medon, What melons icy cold
piled on? A dish of gold too huge for me
to hold, What peaches with a velvet nap pellucid grapes
without one seed? Odorous? Indeed, must be the mead whereon
they grow, and pure the wave they drink with lilies
(15:07):
at the brink, and sugars sweet.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Their sap, golden head by golden head, Like two pigeons
in one nest, folded in each other's wings. They lay
down in their curtained bed, like two blossoms on one stem,
like two flakes of new fallen snow, like two wands
of ivory tipped with gold. For awful kings, moon and
stars gazed in at them. Wind sang to them lullaby
(15:32):
lumbering owls forbore to fly not a bat flapped to
and fro round their rest, cheek to cheek, and breast
to breast, locked together in one nest early in the morning,
when the first cock crowed his warning, neat like bees
as sweet and busy, Laura rose with Lizzie, fetched in honey, milked,
(15:53):
the cows, aired and set to rights. The house kneaded
cakes of white as sweet cakes for dainty mouths to eat. Next,
churned butter, whipped up cream fed their poultry, sat and sewed,
talked as modest maidens should Lizzie with an open heart.
Laura in an absent dream one content one sick in
(16:14):
part one, warbling for the mere bright day's delight, one
longing for the night at length, slow evening came. They
went with pitchers to the reedy brook, Lizzie most placid
in her look, Laura most like a leaping flame. They
drew the gurgling water from its deep. Lizzie plucked purple
(16:34):
and rich golden flags, then, turning homewards, said.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
The sunset flushes those furthest loftiest crags. Come, Laura, not
another maiden lags, No wilful squirrel wags. The beasts and
birds are fast asleep.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
But Laura loitered still among the rushes, and said the
bank was steep, and said the hour was early, still,
the dew not fallen, the wind not chill. Listening ever,
but not catching the customary.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Cry, come by, come by.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
With its iterated jingle of sugar baited words. Not for
all her watching, once discerning even one goblin racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling,
Let alone the herds that used to tramp along the
glen in groups or single of brisk fruit merchant men,
till Lizzie.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Urged, Oh, Laura, come, I hear the fruit call, but
I dare not look. You should not loiter longer at
this brook. Come with me home. The stars rise, the
moon bends her arc. Each glow worm winks her spark.
Let us get home before the night grows dark, for
clouds may gather, though this is summer weather. Put out
the lights and drenches through. Then if we lost our way,
(17:46):
what should we do?
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Laura turned cold as stone to find her sister. Heard
that cry alone, that goblin cry.
Speaker 5 (17:53):
Come by, I have fruits come by?
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit? Must
she no more such suckus pasture? Find gone deaf and blind?
Her tree of life drooped from the root, She said,
not one word in her heart's sore ache, but peering
through the dimness, not discerning, trudged home, her pitcher dripping
all the way. So crept to bed and lay silent
(18:20):
till Lizzie slept. Then sat up in a passionate yearning
and gnashed her teeth for balked desire, and wept as
if her heart would break. Day after day, night after night,
Laura kept watch in vain, in sullen silence of exceeding pain.
She never caught again the goblin.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Cry, come by, come by.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
She never spied the goblin men hawking their fruits along
the glen, but When the noon waxed bright, her hair
grew thin and gray. She dwindled as the fair full
moon doth turn to swift decay and burn her fire away.
One day, remembering her kernel stone, she s set it
by a wall that faced the south, dewed it with tears,
(19:04):
hoped for a root, watched for a waxing shoot, but
there came none. It never saw the sun, It never
felt the trickling moisture run. While with sunk eyes and
faded mouth, she dreamed of melons, as a traveler sees
false waves in desert, drouth with shade of leaf crowned trees,
(19:24):
and burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze. She no
more swept the house, tended the fowls or cows, fetched honey,
kneaded cakes of wheat, brought water from the brook, but
sat down listless in the chimney nook and would not
eat tender Lizzie could not bear to watch her sister's
cankerous care. Yet not to share, she night and morning
(19:49):
caught the goblin's cry.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
Come by our orchard, fruits, come by, come by.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Beside the brook. Along the glen, she heard the tramp
of the goblin men the voice and stir. Poor Laura
could not hear. Longed to buy fruit to comfort her,
but feared to pay too dear. She thought of Genie
in her grave, who should have been a bride, but
who for Joy's brides hoped to have fell sick and
(20:15):
died in her gay prime in earliest winter time, with
the first glazing rhyme, with the first snowfall of crisp wintertime,
till Laura dwindling seemed knocking at death's door. Then Lizzie
weighed no more better and worse, but put a silver
penny in her purse. Kissed, Laura crossed the heath with
(20:35):
clumps of furs at twilight, halted by the brook, and
for the first time in her life, began to listen
and look. Laughed. Every goblin when they spied her, peeping,
came towards her, hobbling, flying, running, leaping, puffing and blowing, chuckling, clapping, crowing,
clucking and gobbling, mopping and mowing, full of airs and graces, pulling,
(20:59):
rye faces, demure grimaces, catlike and ratlike, ratal and wombat
like snail paced in a hurry. Parrot voiced and whistler, helter, skelter, hurry, scurry,
chattering like magpies, fluttering like pigeons, gliding like fishes. Hugged
her and kissed her, squeezed her and caressed her, stretched
(21:22):
up their dishes, penniers and plates.
Speaker 5 (21:24):
Look at our apples, russet and done. Bob at our cherries,
Bite at our peaches, citrons and dates, grapes for the asking.
Pears red with basking out in the sun, Plums on
their twigs, plucked them and suck them, pomegranates, figs.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Good folk, said Lizzie, mindful of Genie, give me much,
and many held out her apron tossed them her penny.
Speaker 5 (21:52):
Nay, take a seat with us, honor, and eat with us.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
They answered, grinning.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
Our feast is but beginning night. Yet is early, warm
and dew pearly, wakeful and starry. Such fruits as these,
no man can carry. Half their bloom would fly, half
their dew would dry, half their flavor would pass by.
Sit down and feast with us, Be welcome, guest with us,
(22:19):
Cheer you, and rest with us.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Thank you, said Lizzie.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
But one waits at home alone for me. So without
further parleying if you will not sell me any of
your fruits, though much and many give me back my
silver penny I tossed you for a fee.
Speaker 4 (22:35):
They began to scratch their pates, no longer wagging, purring,
but visibly demurring, grunting, and snarling. One called her proud
cross grained uncivil. Their tones waxed loud, their looks were evil.
Lashing their tails, they trod and hustled her, elbowed and
jostled her, clawed with their nails, barking, mewing, hissing, tore
(23:01):
her gown and soiled her stocking, twitched her hair out
by the roots stamped upon her tender feet, held her hands,
and squeezed their fruits against her mouth to make her eat.
White and golden. Lizzie stood like a lily in a flood,
like a rock of blue veined stone, lashed by tides, obstreperously,
(23:21):
like a beacon left alone in a hoary, roaring sea,
sending up a golden fire, Like a fruit crowned orange tree,
white with blossoms, honey, sweet sore, beset by wasp and bee,
like a royal virgin town, topped with gilded dome and
spire close beleaguered by a fleet mad to tug her
(23:43):
standard down. One may lead a horse to water, twenty
cannot make him drink. Though the goblins cuffed and caught her,
coaxed and fought her, bullied and besought her, scratched her,
pinched her black as ink, kicked and knocked her, mauled
and mocked her. Lizzie uttered not a word, would not
open lip from lip lest they should cram a mouthful in,
(24:06):
but laughed in heart to feel the drip of juice
that sirruped all her face and lodged in dimples of
her chin, and streaked her neck, which quaked like curd.
At last, the evil people, worn out by her resistance,
flung back her penny, kicked their fruit along whichever road
they took, not leaving root or stone or shoot. Some
(24:28):
writhed into the ground, some dived into the brook with
ring and ripple. Some scudded on the gale without a sound.
Some vanished in the distance in a smart ache tingle.
Lizzie went her way, knew not was it night or day,
sprang up the bank, tore through the furs, threaded copse
(24:49):
and dingle, and heard her penny jingle bouncing in her purse.
Its bounce was music to her ear. She ran and ran,
as if she feared some goblin man dogged her with gibe,
curse or something worse. But not one goblin scurried after,
nor was she pricked by fear. The kind heart made
her windy paste that urged her home, quite out of breath.
(25:11):
With haste and inward laughter, she cried, Laura, up the garden, did.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
You miss me? Come and kiss me. Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices squeezed from goblin
fruits for you, Goblin pulp and goblin do eat me,
drink me, love me, Laura, make much of me. For
your sake, I have braved the glen and had to
do with goblin merchantmen.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
Laura started from her chair, flung her arms up in
the air, clutched her hair.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
Lizzy, Lizzie, have you tasted for my sake the fruit forbidden?
Must your light like mine be hidden, your young life
like mine be wasted, undone in mine, undoing and ruined
in my ruin. Thirsty, cankered, goblin ridden, she.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Clung about her sister, kissed and kissed and kissed her
tears once again refreshed, her sh shrunken, eyes dropping like
rain after long sultry drouth, Shaking with anguish, fear and pain,
she kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth. Her
lips began to scorch. That juice was wormwood to her tongue.
She loathed the feast, writhing as one possessed. She leaped
(26:19):
and sung, rent all her robe, and wrung her hands
in lamentable haste, and beat her breast. Her locks streamed
like the torch borne by a racer at full speed,
or like the mane of horses in their flight, or
like an eagle when she stems the light straight toward
the sun, or like a caged thing freed, or like
(26:39):
a flying flag when armies run. Swift fire spread through
her veins, knocked at her heart, met the fire smoldering there,
and overbore its lesser flame. She gorged on bitterness without
a name. Ah fool to choose such part of soul,
consuming care since failed in the mortal strife, Like the
water tower of a town which an earthquake shatters down
(27:03):
like a lightning stricken mast, like a wind uprooted tree
spun about like a foam topped water spout, cast down
headlong in the sea. She fell at last, Pleasure passed,
and anguish passed. Is it death or is it life?
Life out of death? That night long Lizzie watched by her,
counted her pulses flagging, stir felt for her breath, held
(27:27):
water to her lips, and cooled her face with tears
and fanning leaves. But when the first birds chirped about
their eaves, and early reapers plodded to the place of
golden sheaves and dew wet grass bowed in the morning,
winds so brisk to pass, and new buds with new
day opened of cup like lilies on the stream, Laura
(27:49):
awoke as from a dream, laughed in the innocent old way,
hugged Lizzie, but not twice or thrice. Her gleaming locks
showed not one thread of gray. Her breath was sweet
as may, and light danced in her eyes. Days, weeks, months,
years afterwards, when both were wives, with children of their own,
(28:09):
their mother hearts beset with fears, their lives bound up
in tender lives, Laura would call the little ones and
tell them of her early prime, those pleasant days long gone,
of not returning time would talk about the haunted glen,
the wicked, quaint fruit merchantmen, their fruits like honey to
the throat, but poison in the blood men sell not
(28:31):
such in any town. Would tell them how her sister
stood in deadly peril to do her good and win
the fiery antidote. Then, joining hands to little hands, would
bid them cling together, for.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
There is no friend like a sister in calm or
stormy weather. To cheer one on the tedious way, to
fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one, if
one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
We hope you enjoyed, yes, that reading listeners as much
as we enjoyed doing it. We do have some discussion.
We kind of sort of got to talking about this
after we I was gonna say, reenacted, but we did
not do that. No, we just read it with voices.
That's what we did. There was no reenacting involved, no goodness. Also,
(29:30):
I guess this was a fantasy, so.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
You can't reenact. It never happened in the first place.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Yes, anyway, we had some thoughts, Yes, and we are
going to take a quick break for a word from
our sponsor, and then be right back with those and
(29:58):
we're back. Thank you sponsor. Now back to past Annie, Lauren,
Robert and Joe and our thoughts about the goblin market.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
Yeah, I get the feeling that the goblins represent men.
Speaker 3 (30:12):
Oh yes, I would agree that, mate.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
That might have something I think.
Speaker 6 (30:18):
Yeah, it's a very It.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
Just seems to offer like a like you don't need
to go down to the goblins. What about sisterly love?
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Right?
Speaker 2 (30:26):
Yeah, yeah, what about your family love? Come on, what
about saving yourself and getting married? That's clearly the best
thing to do. Don't eat that goblin fruit.
Speaker 1 (30:34):
No matter how tempting it is.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Right mm hmm, Yeah, they'll call to you at night.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yes, yes, it's yes, I think I've seen it reminds
me of a lot of horror movies where women will
fall in love with a monster. I've always found that
an interesting trope.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
Yeah, so I have a question. Yeah, is Lizzie supposed
to be Jesus?
Speaker 2 (31:01):
See, that's a great question because I the author, Christinaozetti,
maintains that there was no Christian allegory in it, but
it is like a physical self sacrifice.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Yeah, she like sacrifices her body and she comes back,
and then she says like eat of me, drink of me,
and love me or.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Something, make much of me.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
Yeah, like I even read that. I caught myself like
doing it. How I would a prayer that you would
say in church over and over again, like when I
was a kid. Yeah, like picked up that tone subconsciously.
I didn't even think about it, So it had that
for me. I was picking up on that.
Speaker 6 (31:36):
Yeah, the idea being somebody has to fall to the goblins,
like somebody has to buy the goblin because ultimately somebody
has to support the goblin economy. Oh yeah, this is
the driving force.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
But also Lizzie is presented as a sinless sacrifice, like
she is morally pure. She doesn't have like the parian
interests that Laura does.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Yeah, the first time that she falls down into in
First of all, she remains pure, she doesn't actually eat
on purpose any of the fruit, and second of all,
she only does it in order to save her sister.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Yeah. Yeah, sort of like coming down and into a
sinful world. I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much. Yeah,
So Rosetti says she didn't mean any of that. Yeah, Well,
I mean I can actually believe. I can see it
could be one of those things. So you live in
Victorian culture. Maybe even if this is not, you didn't
mean it as an allegory for the New Testament or anything. Still,
(32:31):
like you're steeped in Christian religious themes and so like,
if you want to write a story, it's just a
story about self sacrifice and love. Your main reference point
is the existing archetype of the Christian story.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Absolutely, and she was a very religious woman. She was
very active in her church. She a couple times turned
down marriages because the Christian human dude in question wasn't
the right type of Christian. Oh okay, like King can't truck.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
With those Catholics.
Speaker 4 (33:01):
Oh, I see sort of thing. Yeah, she had she
had opinions.
Speaker 2 (33:07):
She's a lady who had a lot of opinions.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yes, well, this is a poem.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
I can detect opinions in between the lines in it.
But man, it is it's funny. How so, So would
you say that the tone of this poem is moralistic?
Speaker 5 (33:25):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Yeah, yeah, I mean personally, I can't help but find
like a strong more moralistic bent in it.
Speaker 6 (33:32):
See you know that's interesting because I favor a very
literal interpretation of the poem that goblins were literally selling
fruit to ladies Victorian times.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Well you could, well, yeah, I mean of course they
were right.
Speaker 6 (33:45):
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Also it's interesting that you bring up the Goblin economy
because there has been some criticism about the poem that
talks about the uh. The way that Laura is made
into herself part of that economy, like the way that
she pays for it is with a literal part of.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
Her are yeah, and a tear.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
And oh and teardrop.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
She pays for it with her body and with her suffering.
Speaker 6 (34:09):
Wait, did the goblins even ask for the tears?
Speaker 4 (34:11):
No, they didn't ask her for anything, just.
Speaker 6 (34:13):
For the hair. But that was only the oh okay,
but that was after I don't have any money and
they said, well, your hair's pretty golden.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
So they're like poifect, just what we wanted to hear.
Speaker 4 (34:28):
See, we're in the whig business here here at the
Goblin market.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
Let's see the upper class of Goblin society. They're more
into changelings. That's where the real money is. That somebody's
got to sell the fruit.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah, if you don't have any babies on hand, then
it's absolutely Okay.
Speaker 4 (34:43):
Well, I mean what I was going to say was
I think it's funny if you consider this poem moralistic.
I get moralistic vibes from it as well. It seems
like it's kind of like wagging a finger at I
don't know, shameful, sinful curiosity, and I get like indulgence, yeah,
like telling you to be good. But at the same time,
I feel like the poem is just kind of an
orgy of words. It's like, yeah, like she really gets
(35:05):
into the nasty parts.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Like the sensuality. Yeah, it's the way the way that
those fruits are described is.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
Absolutely it's embarrassing.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
I sort of realized after after y'all agreed to do this,
I was like, oh, man, I just asked my coworkers
to do this. This is potentially inappropriate.
Speaker 6 (35:23):
I have to say. I really so, I really loved
reading the Goblin lines because there's kind of ah, I
read a lot of Doctor Seuss these days, and so
there's kind of like a Sussian element to it. But
then so much of the narration I feel like you
could have dropped a beat behind it, like it it
has some really tight rhymes.
Speaker 4 (35:43):
It really did squeeze from Goblin fruits for you, Goblin juice,
and Goblin dew.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (35:48):
I think that was one of the parts where I
was like, I was thinking, you know, you need to
drop something in there. Maybe they can do that in
post I don't know.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah, oh man, yeah, Lan Dylan feel free to free
to play around.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
With it, turn it into a club hit. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, and then I don't know, like like right up
until because they both sisters get married at the end,
but right up until then. It's the type of close
physical relationship that I think is is rebranded these days
as being sexual, but at the time, among women and
also among some men, especially younger men, it was allowable
(36:20):
to have those kind of close physical relationships with another
person at the same sex, and even considered preferable to
having a close physical relationship or sexual relationship with someone
of the.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
Opposite sex or gender.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Right, But that being said, like in today's parlance, like
that reads is just heck a lesbian.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yes it does.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
But I mean, knowing a little bit about literature at
the time, I could see this, this is like straight
up that that kind of sisterly love kind of totally yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah, they're they're literally pure and innocent and it's just
affectionate and that's fine, although yeah, like I don't know,
like it's it's so interesting to me that the bad
thing that Laura does is engage in this sensuality, in
this like hedonistic indulgence, but the way that she's saved
(37:13):
is by literally physically kissing her sister's face. Her sin
is with fruit and her savior is with literal physical
contact of another human person. Victorians, y'all like like, I
don't know what that means, but I'm just like, who,
that's some kind of repression.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, well, yeah, I was saying earlier, there's this trope
where I feel like a lot of a lot of
female characters that we see even today, when they fall
in love, it's with some kind of monstrous creature, Like
I always think of Twilight, and I think it, Hey,
I think it represents like female fear of sexuality having
(37:55):
like a being able to explore that. So it becomes
this vampire are this werewolf that you're in love but
it's very dangerous and.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
It's almost not your fault because you're kind of seduced
by it. Like eat in the Garden, Oh, which is
another good religious allegory. It's totally in there.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
Oh yeah, eating the fruit. Yeah, the fruit is literally
a sinful temptation.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (38:16):
But then again, we have we have versions of both
the succubists and incubus and various cultures, you know, essentially
the same idea. There's the monstrous masculine or the monstrous
feminine that you have very little power to overcome. Yeah,
that being said, I guess the goblins themselves don't sound
(38:37):
very sexy, you know, but their fruit is very sexy.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
Well, then again, it's also very quite literally fruity. It's
like it reads like like maybe Rossetti was really hungry
when she's writing this. She just gets into the fruit.
I mean, there's that sexual implication, but there's also just
totally like fruit. It's like, my god, that would taste good.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
And it's a little bit pastoral. She was writing.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
She didn't herself associate with the pre Raphaelite movement, but
she was definitely associated with it and like her brother
was into it, and you can see a lot of
the same influences I think in her work. That's sort
of like worship of the pastoral and even like a
kind of halicon version of what nature is and what
(39:26):
nature has to present you and those kind of medieval
concepts of what it is to be a good person.
A good person isn't living in the city. A good
person is out in the country and doing these things,
and milking the cows and taking care of the poultry.
But somehow not being tempted by somehow not being tempted
by the best wellether.
Speaker 6 (39:45):
The goblins are peddling like natural pleasures here, or at
least I mean maybe they're not represented as such in
the poem, but I mean, if we're to actually say,
what our fruit, you know, fruit are the splendors of
the natural world, right, no matter what other kind of
you know, symbolic power they end up taking on them.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
But actually they're not, aren't they? Are they because they're
products of agriculture.
Speaker 6 (40:08):
Well, yeah, that's true, especially the oranges.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
I mean, you go pick wild fruit most of the time,
it's not very good there you go.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah, yeah, this is this is a warning against contemporary agribusiness.
Speaker 6 (40:23):
Well okay, but some of the fruit that the gods
are peddling here I think are more natural than the others.
Speaker 4 (40:28):
I mean those what are those green gauges? Yeah, those
are named after a dude, I just looked it up
on Wikipedia. There's some guy named Gage.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Some guy named Gauge out there. It's got a whole
fruit named after him.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
He engage.
Speaker 4 (40:42):
I wanted to say also that I just, on a
purely technical level, I thought, this is a really good poem.
This is like, really pleasurable to read line to line.
It's got that. I really like the the irregular rhyme
scheme and the varying line length that kind of reminds
me of stuff like you would see in the love
song of Jailford Proof Rock Later, you know, where like
(41:02):
Elliott uses the irregular rhyme scheme and varying line length,
but then sometimes it gets very regular all of a sudden.
And then when it does that sort of like it
like yanks you into the poem even deeper. It's uh, yeah,
it's good.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
It's really beautiful.
Speaker 6 (41:17):
Now here's a question. Do you think the goblins have
a version of this poem that is warning impressionable young
goblins not to sell fruit to Lizzi's no, no.
Speaker 4 (41:27):
I think it would say like, yeah, look, they did
a good job with Laura, but they really screwed up
with Lizzie. So here's the kind of Lizzy you need
to watch out for.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, what about Genie, the tragedy of Genie.
Speaker 4 (41:39):
No, they did good with Genie.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yeah, ge Genie and died alone Onwed. I mean that's
the worst, but this time for a lady.
Speaker 4 (41:51):
Yes, it's like dead women cautionary tales. It's just like,
don't be like old dead Genie.
Speaker 6 (41:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:56):
No, one wants to be like old dead Genie.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Yeah, but no, No, I like this idea of the
goblins being like, oh man, watch out for those tight
lipped ones.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (42:06):
No, I guess you could say it's probably just goblin
propaganda and goblins myselves up. I mean, that's ultimately one
of the things that I think speaks well to you know,
twenty eighteen readers of this poem or listeners to this poem,
is that there are, without a doubt, there are some
goblin men in the world pedaling their fruit.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Mm hm. I do think it's interesting how often food
is used to represent indulgence or like temptation. I just especially,
I guess because of things like the story of Eve
and the Garden of Eden, like the apple is always
(42:45):
popping up, and things I'm reading is like it's forbidden
to partaken. Yeah, the role of food and fairy tales
is pretty fascinating.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
No fun fact, you know that the Bible never says
it's an apple.
Speaker 6 (42:58):
No, that's right.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
It never says why kind of fruit it is? And
so there are all these arguments of religious scholars throughout
the ages about what the fruit was. I think my
favorite I've ever heard was that somebody said it was
a lemon.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Don't eat that incredibly tempting lemon. I know, you just
want to eat it.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Wrong, the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
Another fun fact, you know, the Bible never says it
was the devil. It just says it's a snake, yeah,
or just a snake. Just a snake says here's a fruit.
It doesn't say what the fruit is. Doesn't say the
snake's a devil.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Huh. Yeah. We've talked a lot on the show about
like people thought it was a banana. They think it's
a big they thought it was. It's come up several
most of.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
The fruits, a pomegranate, most of the fruits that we've
talked about. At some point someone was like, probably that's
what the Bible was talking about the story.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
It was a green gauge.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
It was definitely even though Gauge wasn't around yet. He's
just like a before his time, some kind of time
traveling going on there.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Well, no, no, it's Adam and even Gauge in the garden.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
Oh yeah, forget about case now.
Speaker 6 (44:01):
What I would love to see is to have some
sort of like a fruit gummy tie into this poem
with their shaped like goblins, and each one you have
one for flavor for each of the fruits that are
mentioned here.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
I think we need to call jelly Belly.
Speaker 6 (44:15):
Jelly Belly would would be great at this.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Get them on the line, yeah, jelly Belly, if you're.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Listening, we're here and we've got ideas.
Speaker 6 (44:24):
Or have a Goblin Market fruit juice establishment. I did
notice when I initially looked up Goblin Market on my browser,
the number one hit was up a restaurant.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
In Florida so called Goblin Market.
Speaker 6 (44:39):
Yeah, Goblin Market.
Speaker 4 (44:44):
They forced food in your face.
Speaker 6 (44:45):
I think it's just sexy goblins selling hair, stomp.
Speaker 4 (44:49):
On you and cram fruit in your mouth.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Yeah, pinchy black, yeah, I want.
Speaker 4 (44:53):
That's yeah, fakes to fill your mouth, Goblin pulp and
Goblin juice.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
And you can always fine or offer it and so on,
stuff to blow your mind. Another house Stuff Works podcast,
uh huh.
Speaker 6 (45:08):
Yeah, and occasionally we talk about foods and goblins goblins
as well.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
So yeah, yes, I'm getting that. I think everyone is giving.
Speaker 4 (45:17):
Well, thanks so much for inviting us on. We've had
a great time.
Speaker 6 (45:20):
Yeah, this is tremendous.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
And that brings us to the end of this classic episode.
We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we
enjoyed doing it and bringing it back. We hope that
it did something you could relax too, even though it
is pretty pretty strange, kind of intense, uh huh, kind
of intense, but also yeah, we do love doing these.
We didn't We wanted to do one this year at
(45:46):
the end of the year, but we didn't have time. Yeah,
but hopefully next year we will and we if you
have any suggestions for the story you'd like us to do.
Hopefully we like to keep it food related. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (46:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
It also needs to be in the public domain public domaino.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Or the author has to give us explicit permission.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
Yes, we do not want to be sued in the
new year. That's a goal that I have no no,
but if you have something that meets those criteria, Please
send it our way. You can email us at Hello
at savorpod dot com. We're also on social media.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
You can find us on Twitter, Slash Blue Sky, Instagram,
and Facebook at saber pod and we do hope to
hear from you. Savor is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan
Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
(46:46):
we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
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