October 28, 2023 • 50 mins
These lands are old and the elves who lived before us still watch and wait. Cross them, and you may feel the prick of their arrow. You’ll find no wound, though your flesh will swell and ache, and if you happen upon one of their elfstones in the grass then you might have chance at survival. In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore the superstition, archaeology and science of elfshot. (originally published 10/04/2022)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,
and it's Saturday, so we are bringing you a vault episode.
This one originally aired on October fourth, twenty twenty two.
It's part two of our series on elf Shot.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
we're back with part two of our series on elf Shot. Now,
this is an idea we introduced in part one. If
you haven't listened to that yet, you should go back
check that one out first. But basically, elf Shot is
a what would you say, Rob, Look, it's a complex
of interlocking folk beliefs, not a single belief, but it's
(01:00):
found especially in the British Isles and essentially centering on
the idea of fairies or elves attacking mortal humans and
especially their livestock with supernatural weapons. Would you say that's
fair Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, There's a lot going on in it, as we
discussed in the first episode. I mean, on one hand,
there's the interpretation of artifacts, of artifacts that from various
time periods, both ancient and relatively recent. There's also the
attempt to understand mysterious ailments, mostly in livestock, but sometimes
(01:37):
in human beings as well, and then various folk traditions
getting wrapped up into these scripts. And it's also it
seems to be highly regional too, so there's not just
one elf erroscript. We have multiple scripts and it ends
up tying into folk medicine and so forth as well.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, and that folk medicine aspect is very interesting. I
want to come back to that in just a minute.
So in the last episode we did talk about some
direct accounts of folk beliefs about elf shot, especially in Scotland,
I think is where a lot of these accounts came from,
and they included things like, okay, you'd have a story
where a calf suddenly falls ill and dies with no
(02:17):
apparent explanation, and then the farmer confirms that elf shot
was the cause because he and his neighbor open up
the cow's body and they find a hole in its heart,
even though there was no hole in the hide, So
it must have been some kind of supernatural fairy weapon
that can pierce through the hide without actually breaking it
(02:37):
and strike only the internal organs. And then, of course,
when it was believed that there was an injury of
this kind caused by an elf for a fairy weapon,
there were plenty of magical remedies, and rob, can you
characterize what some of the main themes and these remedies were.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, some of the main themes included, of course, being
able to fetch either the elf arrow or have an
elf arrow that you found, or elf arrows that were
in the possession of the town or local community, and
using those in the treatment. Oftentimes this would take the
form of immersing them in water and then using that
(03:16):
water either as a drink for the afflicted or as
something that is rubbed on the afflicted or poured on
the site of the wounding, that sort of thing. But again,
there are a number of different versions of this, and
so various wrinkles get added depending on which tradition you're
looking at, which account.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, other things were just like, hey, mix up some
gunpowder with some eggs and stuff like that and then
feed that to the cow. Right delicious. But anyway, I
wanted to address a question that came up while we
were talking talking last time. I didn't have the answer
to it at the time, so I decided to look
it up before we recorded this episode. And the question
(03:56):
is is there such a thing as the placebo effect
for non human animals? Of course, the placebo effect in
humans is something that often comes up when we're talking
about well, talking about medicine in any context, but it's
especially important when you're talking about like the history of
pre scientific medicine, Like why did people think that soaking
(04:19):
a stone arrowhead in water and then pressing it to
their skin had actually healed them of a disease? Like
if you have any a tumor or a bacterial infection
or something, we can be relatively confident that this intervention
does not actually shrink the tumor or kill the bacteria.
And yet people often thought interventions like this had healed them.
(04:41):
So what made them think that? I think some of
that can be chalked up to a concept that we
did an episode about, I think last year. It was
a statistical phenomenon called regression toward the mean or regression
to the mean. But you can also think of this
concept as returning to the baseline. So as a quick explainer,
(05:02):
for that. Imagine you suddenly get a pain in your
foot and you've never had that pain before, and you're like, ah,
it really hurts. I don't know what to do, but
your friend says, well, I know what to do. You
have to sing a Gregorian chant and then you have
to lick the morning dew from a spider's web. So
you try that out. You want your foot to stop hurting,
(05:22):
and then what do you know, sometime after that, your
foot does stop hurting. Now, in a situation like this,
we really all have a tendency to think something has
been proved here, like, ah, the spider doo did work,
But actually, how do you know that your foot wouldn't
have stopped hurting on its own just as soon if
(05:42):
you didn't do any of that stuff. In fact, the
whole point is that your foot doesn't usually hurt. The
state of pain is an outlier. That's an anomalous condition,
So things going back to normal on a certain timescale
is a totally expected outcome, all things being equal, and
regression to the mean is especially important in medicine because
(06:05):
it tends to be specifically when we're in an anomalous condition,
a condition that is not normal. For us that we
seek medical interventions. So if you want to know if
a medical intervention actually works or not, you have to
compare its efficacy against a say, placebo control group, instead
of just giving somebody a treatment and saying did you
(06:27):
get better? If you do that, you don't know if
they would have gotten better anyway, Having the comparison between
the two groups gives you confidence in the efficacy. But
on top of just the regression to the mean as
a baseline effect, you've also got psychological effects where if
you actually compare people who receive an intervention like a
medicine or a ritual or a doctor's visit versus people
(06:51):
who don't receive any intervention, sometimes people who receive an
intervention have better outcomes on average, even if there's no
way that intervention is actually doing anything. If it's like
you know, pressing the arrowhead deer skin, this might be
considered the pure placebo effect, improved outcomes associated with an
intervention even though it's not doing anything mechanistically or chemically
(07:13):
to solve the problem. And though the placebo effect shows
up for a range of conditions and treatments, it seems
to be especially powerful for conditions that are modulated by
the brain, such as the perception of pain and other
types of discomfort. So, to bring it back to the
question of elfshot cattle, could it be possible that a
non human animal benefits from the placebo effect of a
(07:37):
magical cure in some way, even though they can't understand
the concept of medicine or develop expectations that the magical
cure would heal them. And you know, the thing I
was wondering about with this is there's evidence that some
placebo effects and humans are created not so much by
the expectation that the treatment is efficacious, but by the
(08:01):
reassurance felt in the presence of a doctor or a
nurse who has a good bedside manner. And I thought, well,
maybe it's possible that animals could be calmed or soothed
by certain kinds of human attention, even if they're not
able to understand that it is for the intended purpose
of healing. So anyway, I went looking this up and
I found an interesting article by Emily Anthis who is
(08:23):
also the author of a book we've talked about on
the show before called The Great Indoors. It's all about
the effects of living and spending time indoors. But this
was an article published in the Atlantic in twenty nineteen
called a Crucial blind Spot in Veterinary Medicine. So the
top line answer here is a clear yes, there is
such a thing as the placebo effect in non human
(08:45):
animals in veterinary medicine, but it probably works by different
means than the human version of the placebo effect. So
here's an example. Anthis begins by talking about a particular
study of treatments for canine epilepsy, epilepsy and dogs. This
research was being carried out in the early two thousands.
I think this was in the year two thousand and three,
(09:08):
and the citation here is the Journal of Veterinary Medicine.
The article was called Placebo Effect in Canine Epilepsy Trials
and the authors were Munyana, Jong and Patterson, eventually published
in twenty ten, and the story is that the researchers
were testing an anti convulsant drug called levetaracetam and it
(09:31):
was intended to curtail epileptic seizures in dogs. So in
the test group, the group that was actually getting the drug,
eighty six percent of dogs of their owners reported a
reduction in seizure frequency, which bodes very well for the drug.
But then the study also happened to have a placebo
control group, which we're receiving a dummy treatment that was
(09:54):
supposed to do nothing, and in that group, seventy nine
percent also saw it reduction in reported.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Seizures seventy nine compared to eighty six.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
That's that's impressive, right, Well, it would tend to make
you doubt that the test group is that it's actually
the drug that is making the difference. So at the
time of this study, anthis notes that the double blind,
placebo controlled trials were not all that common in veterinary medicine,
which makes sense on one hand because again, like non human,
(10:25):
animals are not thought to be able to develop expectations
about a drug treatment or the efficacy of medicine, So
how could you expect a placebo effect to exist in dogs.
But it's a good thing the study did use such
a controlled design, because otherwise the medicine would have looked
really good until you realize that fake medicine leads to
(10:47):
results that look about the same or almost as good.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
I guess it's just the healing power of pill pockets, right.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
My god, you can never doubt though. Man, those things
stink so much and dogs love them. What do they
put in those things? Do do you work in a
pill pocket factory? Tell oh, maybe we don't want to
know what goes in a pill pocket. That would be
that's Halloween content.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I have not had a good run with with feline
pill pockets.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Oh, I'm sorry, And.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Not to say they don't. You know, they work in
some some cats, and some cats are not crazy about them.
My cat will spit it out and then like dissect it.
And some brands of pill pockets you just didn't want
to want a piece off anyway, She's like, no, not
eating that.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
So do you ever use the trick this? This worked
for us in the past. Or if if the animal
is skeptical of the pill pocket with the pill in it,
you first have to give them an empty pill pocket
that has no pill in it, so they get used
to like, oh, yeah, I can just eat this straight up.
And then the second one or the third one you
give them. I mean, that's a lot of pill pockets
(11:49):
if you're stacking it out. But if you're desperate, you
can try the empty pill pocket first to lower their defenses.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Well, you'd think that would work, but we ended up
using the waters ringe to just blast it into the
back of her throat, and that seems to work well. Again,
and that's a method that's not going to work for
every cat either, So it's it's tough getting the meds
in these animals sometimes.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Oh and I should also note that so the main
study anthis is talking about here in this article is
in dogs, but she also cites studies that have reported
placebo effects in cats and in horses. So, anyway, how
on earth could this be? Like, Again, we're assuming that
dogs themselves are not developing expectations that a drug will
(12:31):
be effective. I think that's a very fair assumption. They
don't understand what's going on. How on earth could such
a strong placebo effect manifest? And a number of ideas
are discussed in this article. One is one we already
talked about, regression to the mean, Right, People are more
likely to enroll in a clinical trial for their dogs
epilepsy if seizures have been especially bad lately, and conditions
(12:55):
like epilepsy tend to sort of wax and weigan on
their own anyway, So you could enroll the dog at
a time when their seizures are bad, and then that
would just tend to, by the law of averages, give
way to a period where they return to the baseline
and have fewer seizures. So again, a good reason to
have a placebo control group to compare your test group to.
(13:18):
Second thing that I thought was interesting and this site's
something called the Hawthorn effect, which is the idea that
people often behave differently when they know they're being studied
or observed. I think the name of this effect comes
from some anecdote about industrial productivity research, which found all
kinds of spurious effects for things like, oh, what would
(13:40):
happen if we change the lighting in this room? Are
workers more productive? Oh, it turns out they are. But
then one ex post facto explanation for all these spurious
results is just that when employees know that they're part
of an experiment, they are more productive because they know
they're being closely scrutinized. This would not apply so much
(14:01):
to the dogs themselves, but probably to the owners. So
in the case of the epilepsy study in dogs, Anti
writes that all of the dogs in the study were
already on at least one other anti seizure medication, and
levetteractam was being studied as a supplemental drug, So one
possibility is that once enrolled in a study, pet owners
(14:25):
may have been more consistent about making sure their dogs
got all doses of their pre existing, pre tested epilepsy
medication on time. Other possible explanations what about more attentive
veterinary care. It's possible that while enrolled in the study,
the animals were getting special attention from vets, and this
(14:47):
would be partially in line with the explanation I was
guessing about beforehand, something roughly parallel to the effect of
a reassuring doctor or nurse. And I think it is
a pre existing finding that some gentle affectionate attention from
humans can help animals like dogs and horses show fewer
symptoms of discomfort or anxiety and things like that. In
(15:10):
some cases you could actually have classical conditioning. Probably it's
hard to see how it would apply to this case,
but anthis writes quote. For example, rats that have regularly
been getting insulin injections will still experience blood sugar changes
if they suddenly start receiving saline injections instead. Again, I
don't think this would apply directly to the epilepsy study,
(15:32):
but you could imagine it applying to other studies. But
then the primary explanation favored by anthis in this article
is something called the caregiver placebo effect or the placebo
effect by proxy. And this one's pretty straightforward when you
think about it. Animals can't report or explain their own symptoms.
Understanding the symptoms experienced by an animal, whether that's something
(15:56):
like a seizure or whether it's something even more elusive
like discomfort or pain, that requires human observation of some kind,
usually reports by the pet owners, and the pet owner
absolutely can form expectations about improvement based on believing that
their pet is getting a treatment of some kind, even
(16:16):
though their pet might actually be in the placebo arm
of the study. They don't know that if it's a
good if it's a well designed study, so they think
their pet might be receiving the actual drug. They form
expectations that the pet will be getting better, and thus
they interpret everything they see in light of those expectations.
(16:37):
Because again, seizure frequency in the study in question was
measured by owner reports, and you might imagine, well, okay,
you know, it's pretty clear whether a dog is having
a seizure or not. Well, you might assume that, but
in fact, pet owners are not always there to see
a seizure take place. Sometimes you have to interpret ambiguous evidence.
(16:58):
So the example given in the article is if there's
a spot of saliva on the floor, is that a
sign that the dog had a seizure unobserved and drooled
on the floor or is that just nothing? Did the
dog just drip rool because they just dripped rule. If
the owners believe their dogs are receiving a drug that
will help reduce the seizures, does that actually make the
(17:20):
owner less likely to interpret that evidence as evidence of
a seizure.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah? OK, see what you're talking about here. Okay, well
he's on the medicine, so I guess that's not a
seizure drool, that's just druel.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah. The article also cites a veterinary surgeon at the
University of Minnesota named Michael Conzimius, who gives a really
interesting example from a different study. This was a study
on anti inflammatory treatments for arthritis in dogs, and they
did a trial that involved both subjective and objective measurements
(17:54):
of how well this anti inflammatory was doing to reduce
our th that's pain in the limbs. And so the
subjective measure was you would ask both pet owners and
veterinarians to observe the dog and rate how much pain
they seemed to be in. And then there were also
objective measures, and this would be having the dog walk
(18:16):
a on a complicated setup of digital scales to determine
how much weight the dogs were putting on each limb
while walking, because if the dog, if one of the
dog's limbs is in pain, they will tend to put
less weight on that limb. And this study found conflicts
between the subjective measures and the objective measures. So in
the placebo group, owners and vets who thought the dog
(18:38):
might be receiving the drug but actually they were just
getting a placebo, reported improvements, but the objective measure, the
scales did not show improvement. So in the placebo group,
they're getting a fake treatment. The owners and the veterinarians
are like, yeah, we think the dog is doing better,
but when you put them on the scales, they're still
not putting weight on that limb. So the dog itself
(19:01):
is not affected by receiving the placebo, but the human
observers are interestingly even the veterinarians.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
This is interesting because when we first raised the question
about bolicebo effected animals, and then when you brought up
dogs here, my first thought was, while dogs are highly
social animals, so perhaps there is some sort of social
dynamic between the way that their human is treating them,
like maybe it has to do and maybe it has
(19:29):
to do with pill pockets, like oh, I'm getting more
snacks or I'm getting more attention or something like that.
And then that of course would be something that would
not seem to readily translate into the livestock world. But
what we're looking at here these are examples that, if
I'm not mistaken, would translate rather readily into the world
of caring for livestock.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, because it's about the human observers, like the cow
whatever is making it into these reports that are in
like anthropological texts or you know, folklore journals or whatever.
The cow doesn't actually get to write that report that's
made by humans, and it's usually going to be like
the farmer saying, yeah, my cow got better or something
like that. And they could well be affected by caregiver
(20:11):
placebo effect. They form expectations of efficacy and they interpret
what they see through that lens. Another thing is that
this article reports how sometimes animal pain is observable to
one human onlooker but not to another. Again, just based
on expectations, Like our emotional biases are very strong in
this area. And one example given would be, you know,
(20:34):
a pet owner brings an animal into the vet and
it was in pain before, and the vet observes that
the animal does still appear to be in pain, but
the owner says, no, no, no, he's not he's he's
much better now. I've been giving him these homeopathic treatments
I found. And you know, that's a mix of things.
Like the pet owner, they love their pet, so they
(20:55):
desire to believe that the beloved animal is doing better.
And then on top of that, you could have like
a choice supportive bias bias to you know, where you
interpret reality in a way that supports the idea that
what you have decided to do was the right decision.
So the choice supportive bias says your selected intervention is working.
(21:16):
And that may be a magical treatment or a non
science based intervention like homeopathy or something, and that can
blind you to signs of distress that other unbiased onlookers
could see.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Yeah, yeah, because at least you feel like you're doing
something in those cases, and or you're a consultant. You
may be consulting experts in the local community that are
also assuring you like, yeah, this is the way to go,
this is what will we'll get results.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah. And I think the important thing to stress here
is that this occurs. You don't have to be like
an uncaring you know, companion to your non human animal
of whatever type. It is like you can care very
much about their well being and have this kind of bias.
It's not like a result of being cold and unfeeling cruel.
So just a couple final notes on this article. One
(22:03):
is just that a big takeaway is you should be
careful when observing the symptoms of a non human animal,
of a pet or whatever, not to let these kinds
of biases prevent you from finding the most effective treatment
or solution. You know, whenever possible, try to look for
objective pieces of behavioral evidence that remove your subjective evaluation
(22:25):
from things. And then the other thing is about these
standards of evidence within veterinary medicine. Unfortunately, the history of
veterinary studies has included fewer double blind placebo controlled trials
than human medicine, because again, for a long time, nobody
really thought placebo effect would come into play in a
major way in veterinary medicine. But it looks like, at
(22:46):
least in some cases, it really does, especially when that
reported outcomes are based on owner's perceptions. And so this
is changing and more evidentiary standards like this are being
introduced into veterinary medicine. But it may mean that the
evaluation of the true efficacy of veterinary medicine has in
some cases, especially when the basis is older, maybe on
(23:09):
a lower standard of evidence than in human drug trials.
But fortunately that that is changing. But anyway, so I'm
bringing all this back to thoughts about how this could
relate to like a Scottish farmer in the seventeenth century
who believes that his cow is sick or his horse
is sick because it has been elf shot, it has
been hit by a fairy arrow and summon someone to
(23:31):
provide a magical cure that maybe involves neolithic flints or
egg mixed with gunpowder and healing their cow. I wonder
how it relates to that. I mean, I would guess
that the specifically that last one, the caregiver placebo effect
would be a major factor here.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Yeah, yeah, I think so. That seems to be. That
would seem to be the key.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Though it also makes me wonder about the idea of
an inverse thing. This is not addressed in the article
at all, but a a caregiver no cebo effect. I mean,
it makes me wonder how you could have anxieties or
beliefs about danger, other kinds of things taking place purely
within the mind of the animal caregiver that give rise
(24:15):
to spurious diagnoses of illness or symptoms in the animal.
Like what if, actually the cow is fine. The farmer
just gets freaked out about the idea that, oh, no,
something bad is happening to my cow for some reason,
and that brings on the illusion of distress, which could
then be treated by some kind of magical intervention, and
(24:38):
then what do you know, the cow's fine afterwards.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah. This is especially possible given some of the linked
or perceived to be linked activities to elfshot. The case
is where humans did something they shouldn't have to attract
the attention of the elves, be it, you know, tramping
on sacred ground cutting down of a sacred tree or
or something of this nature, or even just the finding
(25:05):
of the elf era like this was curious. I was
out with my cattle and I found this artifact on
the ground. It's clearly an artifact of the elves. I
better check on my cattle and see how they're doing. Uh, oh,
this one's not doing too well.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Oh yeah, I didn't make that connection with the picking
up of the flint, but yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
There was a paper we talked about a little bit
in the previous episode that I wanted to come back
to and just mention a couple of more interesting little
stories from it. Was that paper called Elfshot Cattle by
Thomas Davidson that was published in the journal Antiquity in
nineteen fifty six. Remember, this is the one that was
collecting a lot of those reports about elfshot. One of
(25:53):
the things that caught my attention was the claim that
a lot of times these injuries from elfshot are not
inflicted directly by fairies or elves themselves. Davidson cites an
author named Luied writing that there's a belief among some
that fairies have to use humans as intermediaries in order
(26:14):
to inflict these injuries, since the fairies have little power
to cause direct physical injury to animal bodies themselves. So
sometimes these stories say humans are like sucked up into
the air by fairies and then given fairy weapons and
then forced to shoot at men or cattle.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
So yeah, okay, so sort of possession going on here.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah. One example of this is a story called the
Tale of Black Donald of the Fairy Throng, And this
is a story where there's this guy named Donald and
he's out plowing. He's plowing the land, he's working in
the furrows, and this is on the Isle of Tyree,
which is off the coast of Scotland. And Donald he's
(26:59):
plowing and he gets sucked up by a fairy convoy
and then they force him to drop an arrow from
the sky that kills a speckled cow. And this actually
connects with some of the critical stuff I was reading
about the elfshot tradition, which says that actually, in a
lot of these stories, it is being alleged that it's
(27:22):
humans who are doing the inflicting, like witches or something
who are inflicting damage with these weapons rather than elves directly.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Interesting and in yeah, it gets into a common trope
in many cultures of the sort of the like the
outsider within somebody within the community, either somebody from outside
the community or somebody within the community that has been
corrupted somehow. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, one thing I had to mention just because it
was funny. There's a long section of this paper that
talks about alleged cures for elfshot, and one is a
recorded anecdote of a wise woman curing a cow in
the Shetlands by asking the crofter the farmer to bring
her a Bible, and he brings the Bible, and she
(28:07):
rips pages out of the Bible and balls them up
into a pellet, and then crams the Bible page pellet
into a dimple in the cow's skin. Then there's another
one I have to share because it involves crabs and
raises a mystery for me that I cannot solve. So
maybe the listeners have some input on this. So this
is from a source Davidson sites called Shetland Folklore. This
(28:30):
is a book by Spence, and I'm going to read
directly from Davidson's summary here. Oh sorry, this is still
about traditions in the Shetlands. Quote a variant prescription from
the same area directs the wise woman to take tar,
a needle, a bible, a firebrand, and some fairy crabs.
(28:52):
Waving the burning brand, she walked three times wittershens round
the cow. That means counterclockwise, three times around the cow,
jabbing the animal with the needle, waving a leaf of
the Bible over its back, and muttering an incantation. The
firebrand was placed in a pot of tar and set
(29:13):
at the cow's head so the fumes would make her cough.
She was then given the fairy crabs to eat alive.
The ashes of the fire brand were later mixed with
the tar into three pills, which were administered to the
animal on three successive mornings. WHOA, what so involves eating
(29:33):
the fairy crabs alive? It says she, And I'm sorry,
I'm not sure if that means the cow or the
wise woman. I think that means the cow.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah. I remember reading this in the source during the
initial research phase, and I could not figure out what
fairy crabs were. I was like, A, yeah, it was trying.
My mind was struggling to form. I was just imagining
like a glowing blue crab.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
I was confused too, and I tried to look this up.
There is an animal called a faery crab. You can
see it if you google that phrase. But it's clearly
not what this is referring to, because it's a species
of squat lobster called the scientific name is Lauria siagianni,
and it's native to the Pacific. It's found like off
(30:19):
the coast of Australia and Indonesia. I think, so this
is clearly not what they're talking about in the Shetlands,
and I was trying to find more information and I
just could not, So I wonder if this refers to
I don't know, if this is a local Shetland name
for a certain type of animal, like an actual crab
or some type of insect or something. I really have
(30:42):
no idea.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, I can imagine it going in different directions, some
sort of novel crab that's found on the shore or
turned up in nets, or indeed something that is found
in streams, or is not a crab at all, but
some sort of an insect with some sort of folk
edison properties to it. Or I mean, certainly we have
examples in plenty of cultures where if something is named
(31:06):
after an animal but is not itself an animal. It
could be you know, you can imagine a situation where
the fairy crab is actually some sort of a root
something into that effect. So there's so many different directions
that could go in not knowing exactly what this is
referring to.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Well, hey listeners, if you've got insight on this, you
know what the faery crabs are right in. One last
subject that Davidson brings up with respect to elfshot is
the idea of curved plow furrows and ridges in order
to quote Wander the Ferry, which I found so interesting.
(31:42):
It's the idea that if you go throughout Scotland and
you look at some old cultivated fields, you'll find that,
you know, these places that are there, they're dug with
a what's known as like a ridge and furrow system.
So you'll see a series of basically you know, lines
where like you have a plot area and then like
a sort of ridge of moved earth piled up in
(32:04):
between them. And an interesting thing about a lot of
these is they are created with so that the ridges
and the furrows are not straight lines, but are curved
or crooked or s shaped even and it is believed
by some that the purpose of this is to confuse
(32:24):
or quote wander the fairy, to maybe lead the ferry
off course or lead the elf off course. This is
not the only system, by the way, that would use this.
Like Davidson notes that a lot of amulets that are
designed for protection against fairies have a rays of kind
of spiral patterns or can you know, complex whirls within them,
(32:48):
or labyrinths or something, and this is designed to confuse
the evil spirits, to kind of send them on a
maze like journey that will lead them astray and keep
them from harming you.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
These If you haven't seen these ridge and furrow features,
definitely look them up and do an image search, because
you can see lots of wonderful aerial photographs of this
sort of thing, and you know, you can sort of
imagine the trail of the of the elf going astray. Here.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Oh, some of the ones you're looking at are the
curved ones, because some are just straight, but others some
are just straight.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
But I was looking at one in particular here where
you do see you kind of see a mix in
this particular one. You see the different areas of land
and definite curves in some areas where and one kind
of has like almost like a fern look because you
have the line going down the middle and you have
some like like different wavings on each side.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
So the magical understanding here again is that this, well,
it could throw fairies off, just generally because you know,
you make twisting paths in order to confuse evil spirits.
But the other thing would be it doesn't allow them
to get a clear straight line shot at the cattle,
like at the oxen that you're using to plow the field.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yeah, this is strange, Like this idea of the l
is kind of like this. You know, I guess you
look at different folklore systems. It's like you want to
avoid doing things that draw attention to yourself. You know.
We definitely see that with the elf and fairy folk
traditions in this part of the world, with the wearing
of green, which we've discussed before. Don't wear the green
(34:17):
that's the color of the elves or the fairies. They'll
come at you. You also see that with traditions of
the evil eye in the Middle East, where there are
various things like you should not do because this invisible
ne faariaus force is out there in the world, and
you do not want it aware of your presence or
your fortune, so you don't get on its radar, don't
(34:38):
have direct lines leading to you. Be that line something
like you know, you shouting about how beautiful your child is.
You know. In the case of some of the evil
eye traditions, and particularly in Judaism, I remember hearing about
reading about or in this case, like a physical line
through the altered landscape.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
I think this type of belief is still present and
in like modern day Christianity. Like I remember when I
was a kid hearing about the dangers of playing with
a wija board, and the idea was it attracts demonic attention.
I mean that's literally like the it's it's like when
you play with a wija board. It's not so much
something about the board as evil, but it it sort
(35:18):
of like puts up a beacon to demons that says, hey,
I'm available, you know, pay attention to me, and they
will hone in on you because you have done that.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yeah. Oh. In quick note, I mentioned Judaism and the
evil eye and so forth. The evil eye is not
necessarily like a part of Judaism. I don't want to
imply that but it is something that is sort of
in the folkloric traditions of various peoples in the Middle East,
including you'll see that in Judic culture. Yeah, and certainly
we see similar site case with this here because we
have people who are discussing that have taken you know,
(35:49):
head that have converted to Christianity, and but there's still
there's still practicing beliefs. They're still engaging in belief of
the elves, but they're also incorporating in some of these
Christian traditions like well, maybe we're you know, lought up
a Bible page and stick it into that furrow in
the cow. That'll help too.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
This is this next thing is not really addressed in Davidson,
But I was wondering about this because I was reading
about the ridge and furrow system elsewhere after reading this
passage from Davidson, and it seems to me that sometimes
the strips that are plowed in this system are curved
for totally mundane reasons that have nothing to do with
(36:31):
magical beliefs. So I think that they're often curved just
because of it was a sort of necessary consequence of
the types of plow rigging and oxen pulling teams that
they used at the time. They would lead to a
furrow or a ridge being kind of like curved off
at each end every time the team turned around to
make a new line. And that makes me wonder if
(36:54):
something like twisting twisting in these rows could have originally
been a totally mundane thing that somebody saw and then
in trying to explain why it was like that without
understanding it, they came up with this explanation about confusing
the fairies, and then afterwards did it like that on purpose.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
So it's like somebody like the landowner whoever, comes out
to check on the work. It's like, Dale, what's going
on with these ridges and furrows? Look look at it.
It's just like I can tell it's crooked. And Dale's like, well,
do you want the fairies coming straight at you? I
didn't think, so you're welcome. This, of course, also reminds
me of on one hand, and this may well be
connected the idea that vampires might be deterred by hanging
(37:41):
some sort of a nodded item or or carefully woven
item out for them like a complex pattern, then will
draw their attention and they have to deal with and
maybe get they'll either spend all their time doing that
and leave you alone, or perhaps even get caught in
the sunlight the loose track of time. And then of
course I can't help but think of crop circles as well,
which again, as we've discussed I think we've discussed this
(38:02):
in the show before. I mean crop crop circles a
pretty much put to bed as a you know, is
the work of human actors. But thinking about like sort
of the draw to do this to a field, like
the human intention to do this, and there are several
factors that can play into that someone which may actually
(38:22):
come up in our next episode of so to blow
your mind, But the idea of like just seeing that field,
like I wonder if there's some sort of draw that like, no,
the lines are too too perfect, everything is just too
pristine like this this this, this land has been too
finely transformed. We got to get some swirls in there.
We got to get some circles, you know.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yeah, that is a good comparison. I didn't think you
were going to crop circles though.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
I thought you were.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Gonna mention the jung she being being warded off by
spilling glutinous rice on the floor because they'll I think
they'll be counting the grains, right.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Oh yeah, that that also, that's a good point as well.
I forgot about that one, something about yeah, the inhuman
analytical mind of non human beings in folklore, and that
they can be led astray by either randomized patterns or
things of human creation that have some sort of eloquence
(39:17):
to them, which is kind of ironic given that we're
talking about situations where human beings may in some cases
have just like completely flipped their wig over finding an
old flint arrow in the dirt. So I guess it
cuts both ways.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Now, there's one more paper I wanted to briefly mention
that gets way more into the weeds about a particular
text that is believed or has been believed to reference Elfshot.
But I thought this was interesting too. So this was
a paper by a professor of English at the University
of Leeds named Alaric Hall called Calling the Shots the
(39:57):
Old English Remedy Gift Horror off Scott and Sea and
Anglo Saxon elf Shot, published in two thousand and five.
So this paper is mainly an attempt to critically re
examine an Anglo Saxon text called Gift Horse of Scott
and Sea, which is a passage from a medieval Anglo
(40:17):
Saxon medical text that has been widely interpreted as being
about elf shot. The title Gift Horse of Scott and
Sea translates to if a horse be and then the
word is off scotten. And the question is what does
off scotton mean. It's been traditionally translated as elf shot
if a horse be elf shot. Hall argues that it
(40:38):
should not be understood that way, and yet there are
still references to elf attacks within the passage. So this
is Hall's translation of this text, which is interesting in itself.
If a horse be off scotten, take then a dagger
whose halft is of fallow Ox's horn, and in which
there are three brass nails. And then there's a term
(41:00):
that every time is rendered as right slash. Inscribe. I'm
just going to say, inscribe, inscribe on the horse on
the forehead, Christ's mark, so it bleeds. Inscribe then Christ's
mark on the spine, and on each of the limbs
which you can grasp. This, shall you do take a
staff strike on the back. Then the horse will be
(41:24):
well and inscribe on the dagger's handle. These words been
a decetae omnia opera domini dominum, which means bless all
the works of the Lord of Lords. Should it be
alps which is on it, this will do as a
remedy for it. And so Hall makes the argument in
(41:46):
this paper that the primary condition being described in this
text under the word oafscotten should not be translated as
elf shot as it traditionally has been, but it is
something like badly pained. It's more more mundane condition that
is prompting this entire remedy. However, even if that's correct,
the last line of the remedy does mention the idea
(42:10):
of this word alf the ae combined vowel and then
l fe, though this sentence is also kind of difficult
to translate the one that's got the alph in it.
I think the understanding that makes the most sense is
this whole remedy is for regular bad pain in horses,
and then there's an additional remedy, the one that's riding
(42:31):
on the dagger's handle, the words bless all the works
of the Lord of Lords. That additional remedy is like
a special extra dose of holiness that should be applied
if the cause of the horse's pain is injury by
an elf, though it doesn't explain how you tell the
difference between normal bad pain and bad pain caused by
(42:52):
an elf. You know, of course, the elf injury being
even more unholy and requiring more holiness or or more
piet in order to undo.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Either way you shake it. From a modern perspective, it's
a lot of cutting and striking of a pained horse.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yeah, jeez, you feel bad for the horse.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
You know. Now, as we as we go to close
out this look at Elfshot, I did want to come
back to some basic questions, some of which we've already
got into, concerning the archaeology of elf Shot. Who were
the people who made these artifacts, and how did they
get to the regions where the artifacts were found, and
then of course, you know, interpreted and reinterpreted within these
(43:32):
folkloric traditions. This, of course, is a broad question because
as we've mentioned already, we're talking about multiple areas. We're
talking about locations throughout the British Isles and even outside
of the British Isles. But just limiting the question of
the British Isles, we're still looking at close to a
million years of occupation by various human species, including Neanderthals.
(43:52):
And as for the how they got there, the predominant
theories involved land bridges between Europe and Britain that were
president at the time. And regarding Ireland, I've seen hypotheses
that involve boats, land bridges and also ice bridges. But
just to give a few examples that really sort of
drive home the times we're talking about here, there are
(44:14):
stone tool and footprints in Norfolk that date back and
estimated nine hundred thousand years and these would be the
work and or the footprints of Homo antecessor. Notable here
are the Happisburg footprints in Norfolk, and also a black
flint hand axe was also found in this area. So
(44:34):
Homo antecessor they were makers of simple stone tools, and
it looks like many experts think that they might not
have had mastery of fire. By four thousand BCE, Neolithic
culture was firmly established on the British Isles and lasted
till roughly it's just you know, the rough time period
of our histories two thousand, five hundred BCE and of
(44:57):
course between three thousand BCE in two thousand BCE, we
see the construction of Stonehinge, one of course the most famous,
if not the most famous testament to prehistoric Britain. And
of course even Stone Hinge gets wrapped up into various folklore,
traditions and folkloric interpretations and reinterpretations that involve at times
(45:17):
the wizard Merlin, but also the Christian devil, and even
during the Roman period which would have been roughly forty
three CE to four ten CE, the Roman sky god Kalus.
More realistically, or more on the sort of realistic interpretation
and reinterpretation standpoint, it was at one point thought to
(45:38):
be credited to the work of Druidic culture, but this
culture didn't exist till three hundred BCE, which would have
been too late, so the stones were already ancient history
to the Druids. Now, another example that I found really
interesting talking about found arrowheads in the British Isles. In
twenty sixteen, archaeologists from the University of Reading discovered a
(46:01):
four thy five hundred year old flint arrowhead a few
miles from Stonehenge, and according to David Dawson, director of
the Wiltshire Museum, this particular arrowhead is not only finally preserved,
but incredibly fragile, suggesting that it was never actually intended
for use in war or hunting, but it was rather
(46:22):
ceremonial or decorative and or decorative this was. You can
look up images of this. There were some news articles
of the time. The arrowhead was unearthed in two parts,
two different digs, five years apart. And it is quite
eloguant looking. It has like one it has barbs, but
one really long barb and elongated barb on one side.
(46:44):
So I don't know about you, but I find that
really interesting because I think it's easy to think of
folkloric interpretation of found objects to be a luxury of
later civilizations on the British Isles, to think supernaturally about
about these about these items. But certainly, and certainly there
was a lot we don't know about concerning pre Roman
and prehistoric Britain. But even forty five hundred years ago,
(47:06):
this find would suggest that people here were already capable
of sublime interpretations and perhaps mystical meanings for their own
created artifacts. That you could have this sacred arrow that
wasn't found, that was made, but some of the same
energy that goes into the interpretation of these artifacts, you know,
(47:28):
thousands of years later, was already present in the cultures
that made their home here.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Right, And so we don't know what it would have
been used for, but it's clear that it would not
have been useful for actual shooting of an arrow. So
you know, it could be decorative, it could be medicinal,
some kind of amulet. It could be magical or ceremonial.
We don't know, but in any case, it would be
a symbolic arrowhead rather than one used for the literal,
(47:55):
direct mundane purpose.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Yeah, and so you can imagine at some point in
history after this point if someone were to find an
arrow had like this, especially, I mean any arrow had
obviously any kind of novel lump of stone could find
itself interpreted as an elf arrow and incorporated into elf
(48:17):
shot folklore. But imagine if you found this, you know,
clearly an arrow that looks too fine to be shot.
You know, that's almost ephemeral in its construction, Like who
would make this? Why would they make this? Clearly this
is the work of the elves. But also I think
it's just yeah, it's just worth remembering the deep history
(48:39):
of people on the British Isles. You know, it might
not be as deep as some other areas, Like you know,
you're looking at what in France. I think it's what
one point fifty seven million years ago. We have some
of the earliest known evidence of human beings. But still
you have human species on the British Isles as early
as almost a million years ago, different species, different cultures,
(49:02):
different waves of technology and arrivals in the subsequent centuries
and millennium millennia, and of course different waves of interpretation
and reinterpretation of what came before. All right, we're going
to go ahead and close it out there, but obviously
we'd love to hear from everyone out there. We'd especially
love to hear from folks listening to the show on
(49:23):
the British Isles, or folks who have spent time on
the British Isles. Perhaps you have some tidbits some local
lore to share with us. If so, we'd love to
hear from you. A reminder that Stuff to Blow Your
Mind is a primarily a science podcast that publishes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
podcast feed, but on Mondays we do a listener mail
episode where we read various missives from our listeners. On
(49:48):
Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster fact.
On Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time
to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about
a weird film.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,
and it's Saturday, so we are bringing you a vault episode.
This one originally aired on October fourth, twenty twenty two.
It's part two of our series on elf Shot.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
we're back with part two of our series on elf Shot. Now,
this is an idea we introduced in part one. If
you haven't listened to that yet, you should go back
check that one out first. But basically, elf Shot is
a what would you say, Rob, Look, it's a complex
of interlocking folk beliefs, not a single belief, but it's
(01:00):
found especially in the British Isles and essentially centering on
the idea of fairies or elves attacking mortal humans and
especially their livestock with supernatural weapons. Would you say that's
fair Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, There's a lot going on in it, as we
discussed in the first episode. I mean, on one hand,
there's the interpretation of artifacts, of artifacts that from various
time periods, both ancient and relatively recent. There's also the
attempt to understand mysterious ailments, mostly in livestock, but sometimes
(01:37):
in human beings as well, and then various folk traditions
getting wrapped up into these scripts. And it's also it
seems to be highly regional too, so there's not just
one elf erroscript. We have multiple scripts and it ends
up tying into folk medicine and so forth as well.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, and that folk medicine aspect is very interesting. I
want to come back to that in just a minute.
So in the last episode we did talk about some
direct accounts of folk beliefs about elf shot, especially in Scotland,
I think is where a lot of these accounts came from,
and they included things like, okay, you'd have a story
where a calf suddenly falls ill and dies with no
(02:17):
apparent explanation, and then the farmer confirms that elf shot
was the cause because he and his neighbor open up
the cow's body and they find a hole in its heart,
even though there was no hole in the hide, So
it must have been some kind of supernatural fairy weapon
that can pierce through the hide without actually breaking it
(02:37):
and strike only the internal organs. And then, of course,
when it was believed that there was an injury of
this kind caused by an elf for a fairy weapon,
there were plenty of magical remedies, and rob, can you
characterize what some of the main themes and these remedies were.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, some of the main themes included, of course, being
able to fetch either the elf arrow or have an
elf arrow that you found, or elf arrows that were
in the possession of the town or local community, and
using those in the treatment. Oftentimes this would take the
form of immersing them in water and then using that
(03:16):
water either as a drink for the afflicted or as
something that is rubbed on the afflicted or poured on
the site of the wounding, that sort of thing. But again,
there are a number of different versions of this, and
so various wrinkles get added depending on which tradition you're
looking at, which account.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, other things were just like, hey, mix up some
gunpowder with some eggs and stuff like that and then
feed that to the cow. Right delicious. But anyway, I
wanted to address a question that came up while we
were talking talking last time. I didn't have the answer
to it at the time, so I decided to look
it up before we recorded this episode. And the question
(03:56):
is is there such a thing as the placebo effect
for non human animals? Of course, the placebo effect in
humans is something that often comes up when we're talking
about well, talking about medicine in any context, but it's
especially important when you're talking about like the history of
pre scientific medicine, Like why did people think that soaking
(04:19):
a stone arrowhead in water and then pressing it to
their skin had actually healed them of a disease? Like
if you have any a tumor or a bacterial infection
or something, we can be relatively confident that this intervention
does not actually shrink the tumor or kill the bacteria.
And yet people often thought interventions like this had healed them.
(04:41):
So what made them think that? I think some of
that can be chalked up to a concept that we
did an episode about, I think last year. It was
a statistical phenomenon called regression toward the mean or regression
to the mean. But you can also think of this
concept as returning to the baseline. So as a quick explainer,
(05:02):
for that. Imagine you suddenly get a pain in your
foot and you've never had that pain before, and you're like, ah,
it really hurts. I don't know what to do, but
your friend says, well, I know what to do. You
have to sing a Gregorian chant and then you have
to lick the morning dew from a spider's web. So
you try that out. You want your foot to stop hurting,
(05:22):
and then what do you know, sometime after that, your
foot does stop hurting. Now, in a situation like this,
we really all have a tendency to think something has
been proved here, like, ah, the spider doo did work,
But actually, how do you know that your foot wouldn't
have stopped hurting on its own just as soon if
(05:42):
you didn't do any of that stuff. In fact, the
whole point is that your foot doesn't usually hurt. The
state of pain is an outlier. That's an anomalous condition,
So things going back to normal on a certain timescale
is a totally expected outcome, all things being equal, and
regression to the mean is especially important in medicine because
(06:05):
it tends to be specifically when we're in an anomalous condition,
a condition that is not normal. For us that we
seek medical interventions. So if you want to know if
a medical intervention actually works or not, you have to
compare its efficacy against a say, placebo control group, instead
of just giving somebody a treatment and saying did you
(06:27):
get better? If you do that, you don't know if
they would have gotten better anyway, Having the comparison between
the two groups gives you confidence in the efficacy. But
on top of just the regression to the mean as
a baseline effect, you've also got psychological effects where if
you actually compare people who receive an intervention like a
medicine or a ritual or a doctor's visit versus people
(06:51):
who don't receive any intervention, sometimes people who receive an
intervention have better outcomes on average, even if there's no
way that intervention is actually doing anything. If it's like
you know, pressing the arrowhead deer skin, this might be
considered the pure placebo effect, improved outcomes associated with an
intervention even though it's not doing anything mechanistically or chemically
(07:13):
to solve the problem. And though the placebo effect shows
up for a range of conditions and treatments, it seems
to be especially powerful for conditions that are modulated by
the brain, such as the perception of pain and other
types of discomfort. So, to bring it back to the
question of elfshot cattle, could it be possible that a
non human animal benefits from the placebo effect of a
(07:37):
magical cure in some way, even though they can't understand
the concept of medicine or develop expectations that the magical
cure would heal them. And you know, the thing I
was wondering about with this is there's evidence that some
placebo effects and humans are created not so much by
the expectation that the treatment is efficacious, but by the
(08:01):
reassurance felt in the presence of a doctor or a
nurse who has a good bedside manner. And I thought, well,
maybe it's possible that animals could be calmed or soothed
by certain kinds of human attention, even if they're not
able to understand that it is for the intended purpose
of healing. So anyway, I went looking this up and
I found an interesting article by Emily Anthis who is
(08:23):
also the author of a book we've talked about on
the show before called The Great Indoors. It's all about
the effects of living and spending time indoors. But this
was an article published in the Atlantic in twenty nineteen
called a Crucial blind Spot in Veterinary Medicine. So the
top line answer here is a clear yes, there is
such a thing as the placebo effect in non human
(08:45):
animals in veterinary medicine, but it probably works by different
means than the human version of the placebo effect. So
here's an example. Anthis begins by talking about a particular
study of treatments for canine epilepsy, epilepsy and dogs. This
research was being carried out in the early two thousands.
I think this was in the year two thousand and three,
(09:08):
and the citation here is the Journal of Veterinary Medicine.
The article was called Placebo Effect in Canine Epilepsy Trials
and the authors were Munyana, Jong and Patterson, eventually published
in twenty ten, and the story is that the researchers
were testing an anti convulsant drug called levetaracetam and it
(09:31):
was intended to curtail epileptic seizures in dogs. So in
the test group, the group that was actually getting the drug,
eighty six percent of dogs of their owners reported a
reduction in seizure frequency, which bodes very well for the drug.
But then the study also happened to have a placebo
control group, which we're receiving a dummy treatment that was
(09:54):
supposed to do nothing, and in that group, seventy nine
percent also saw it reduction in reported.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Seizures seventy nine compared to eighty six.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
That's that's impressive, right, Well, it would tend to make
you doubt that the test group is that it's actually
the drug that is making the difference. So at the
time of this study, anthis notes that the double blind,
placebo controlled trials were not all that common in veterinary medicine,
which makes sense on one hand because again, like non human,
(10:25):
animals are not thought to be able to develop expectations
about a drug treatment or the efficacy of medicine, So
how could you expect a placebo effect to exist in dogs.
But it's a good thing the study did use such
a controlled design, because otherwise the medicine would have looked
really good until you realize that fake medicine leads to
(10:47):
results that look about the same or almost as good.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
I guess it's just the healing power of pill pockets, right.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
My god, you can never doubt though. Man, those things
stink so much and dogs love them. What do they
put in those things? Do do you work in a
pill pocket factory? Tell oh, maybe we don't want to
know what goes in a pill pocket. That would be
that's Halloween content.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I have not had a good run with with feline
pill pockets.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Oh, I'm sorry, And.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Not to say they don't. You know, they work in
some some cats, and some cats are not crazy about them.
My cat will spit it out and then like dissect it.
And some brands of pill pockets you just didn't want
to want a piece off anyway, She's like, no, not
eating that.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
So do you ever use the trick this? This worked
for us in the past. Or if if the animal
is skeptical of the pill pocket with the pill in it,
you first have to give them an empty pill pocket
that has no pill in it, so they get used
to like, oh, yeah, I can just eat this straight up.
And then the second one or the third one you
give them. I mean, that's a lot of pill pockets
(11:49):
if you're stacking it out. But if you're desperate, you
can try the empty pill pocket first to lower their defenses.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Well, you'd think that would work, but we ended up
using the waters ringe to just blast it into the
back of her throat, and that seems to work well. Again,
and that's a method that's not going to work for
every cat either, So it's it's tough getting the meds
in these animals sometimes.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Oh and I should also note that so the main
study anthis is talking about here in this article is
in dogs, but she also cites studies that have reported
placebo effects in cats and in horses. So, anyway, how
on earth could this be? Like, Again, we're assuming that
dogs themselves are not developing expectations that a drug will
(12:31):
be effective. I think that's a very fair assumption. They
don't understand what's going on. How on earth could such
a strong placebo effect manifest? And a number of ideas
are discussed in this article. One is one we already
talked about, regression to the mean, Right, People are more
likely to enroll in a clinical trial for their dogs
epilepsy if seizures have been especially bad lately, and conditions
(12:55):
like epilepsy tend to sort of wax and weigan on
their own anyway, So you could enroll the dog at
a time when their seizures are bad, and then that
would just tend to, by the law of averages, give
way to a period where they return to the baseline
and have fewer seizures. So again, a good reason to
have a placebo control group to compare your test group to.
(13:18):
Second thing that I thought was interesting and this site's
something called the Hawthorn effect, which is the idea that
people often behave differently when they know they're being studied
or observed. I think the name of this effect comes
from some anecdote about industrial productivity research, which found all
kinds of spurious effects for things like, oh, what would
(13:40):
happen if we change the lighting in this room? Are
workers more productive? Oh, it turns out they are. But
then one ex post facto explanation for all these spurious
results is just that when employees know that they're part
of an experiment, they are more productive because they know
they're being closely scrutinized. This would not apply so much
(14:01):
to the dogs themselves, but probably to the owners. So
in the case of the epilepsy study in dogs, Anti
writes that all of the dogs in the study were
already on at least one other anti seizure medication, and
levetteractam was being studied as a supplemental drug, So one
possibility is that once enrolled in a study, pet owners
(14:25):
may have been more consistent about making sure their dogs
got all doses of their pre existing, pre tested epilepsy
medication on time. Other possible explanations what about more attentive
veterinary care. It's possible that while enrolled in the study,
the animals were getting special attention from vets, and this
(14:47):
would be partially in line with the explanation I was
guessing about beforehand, something roughly parallel to the effect of
a reassuring doctor or nurse. And I think it is
a pre existing finding that some gentle affectionate attention from
humans can help animals like dogs and horses show fewer
symptoms of discomfort or anxiety and things like that. In
(15:10):
some cases you could actually have classical conditioning. Probably it's
hard to see how it would apply to this case,
but anthis writes quote. For example, rats that have regularly
been getting insulin injections will still experience blood sugar changes
if they suddenly start receiving saline injections instead. Again, I
don't think this would apply directly to the epilepsy study,
(15:32):
but you could imagine it applying to other studies. But
then the primary explanation favored by anthis in this article
is something called the caregiver placebo effect or the placebo
effect by proxy. And this one's pretty straightforward when you
think about it. Animals can't report or explain their own symptoms.
Understanding the symptoms experienced by an animal, whether that's something
(15:56):
like a seizure or whether it's something even more elusive
like discomfort or pain, that requires human observation of some kind,
usually reports by the pet owners, and the pet owner
absolutely can form expectations about improvement based on believing that
their pet is getting a treatment of some kind, even
(16:16):
though their pet might actually be in the placebo arm
of the study. They don't know that if it's a
good if it's a well designed study, so they think
their pet might be receiving the actual drug. They form
expectations that the pet will be getting better, and thus
they interpret everything they see in light of those expectations.
(16:37):
Because again, seizure frequency in the study in question was
measured by owner reports, and you might imagine, well, okay,
you know, it's pretty clear whether a dog is having
a seizure or not. Well, you might assume that, but
in fact, pet owners are not always there to see
a seizure take place. Sometimes you have to interpret ambiguous evidence.
(16:58):
So the example given in the article is if there's
a spot of saliva on the floor, is that a
sign that the dog had a seizure unobserved and drooled
on the floor or is that just nothing? Did the
dog just drip rool because they just dripped rule. If
the owners believe their dogs are receiving a drug that
will help reduce the seizures, does that actually make the
(17:20):
owner less likely to interpret that evidence as evidence of
a seizure.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah? OK, see what you're talking about here. Okay, well
he's on the medicine, so I guess that's not a
seizure drool, that's just druel.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah. The article also cites a veterinary surgeon at the
University of Minnesota named Michael Conzimius, who gives a really
interesting example from a different study. This was a study
on anti inflammatory treatments for arthritis in dogs, and they
did a trial that involved both subjective and objective measurements
(17:54):
of how well this anti inflammatory was doing to reduce
our th that's pain in the limbs. And so the
subjective measure was you would ask both pet owners and
veterinarians to observe the dog and rate how much pain
they seemed to be in. And then there were also
objective measures, and this would be having the dog walk
(18:16):
a on a complicated setup of digital scales to determine
how much weight the dogs were putting on each limb
while walking, because if the dog, if one of the
dog's limbs is in pain, they will tend to put
less weight on that limb. And this study found conflicts
between the subjective measures and the objective measures. So in
the placebo group, owners and vets who thought the dog
(18:38):
might be receiving the drug but actually they were just
getting a placebo, reported improvements, but the objective measure, the
scales did not show improvement. So in the placebo group,
they're getting a fake treatment. The owners and the veterinarians
are like, yeah, we think the dog is doing better,
but when you put them on the scales, they're still
not putting weight on that limb. So the dog itself
(19:01):
is not affected by receiving the placebo, but the human
observers are interestingly even the veterinarians.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
This is interesting because when we first raised the question
about bolicebo effected animals, and then when you brought up
dogs here, my first thought was, while dogs are highly
social animals, so perhaps there is some sort of social
dynamic between the way that their human is treating them,
like maybe it has to do and maybe it has
(19:29):
to do with pill pockets, like oh, I'm getting more
snacks or I'm getting more attention or something like that.
And then that of course would be something that would
not seem to readily translate into the livestock world. But
what we're looking at here these are examples that, if
I'm not mistaken, would translate rather readily into the world
of caring for livestock.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, because it's about the human observers, like the cow
whatever is making it into these reports that are in
like anthropological texts or you know, folklore journals or whatever.
The cow doesn't actually get to write that report that's
made by humans, and it's usually going to be like
the farmer saying, yeah, my cow got better or something
like that. And they could well be affected by caregiver
(20:11):
placebo effect. They form expectations of efficacy and they interpret
what they see through that lens. Another thing is that
this article reports how sometimes animal pain is observable to
one human onlooker but not to another. Again, just based
on expectations, Like our emotional biases are very strong in
this area. And one example given would be, you know,
(20:34):
a pet owner brings an animal into the vet and
it was in pain before, and the vet observes that
the animal does still appear to be in pain, but
the owner says, no, no, no, he's not he's he's
much better now. I've been giving him these homeopathic treatments
I found. And you know, that's a mix of things.
Like the pet owner, they love their pet, so they
(20:55):
desire to believe that the beloved animal is doing better.
And then on top of that, you could have like
a choice supportive bias bias to you know, where you
interpret reality in a way that supports the idea that
what you have decided to do was the right decision.
So the choice supportive bias says your selected intervention is working.
(21:16):
And that may be a magical treatment or a non
science based intervention like homeopathy or something, and that can
blind you to signs of distress that other unbiased onlookers
could see.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Yeah, yeah, because at least you feel like you're doing
something in those cases, and or you're a consultant. You
may be consulting experts in the local community that are
also assuring you like, yeah, this is the way to go,
this is what will we'll get results.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah. And I think the important thing to stress here
is that this occurs. You don't have to be like
an uncaring you know, companion to your non human animal
of whatever type. It is like you can care very
much about their well being and have this kind of bias.
It's not like a result of being cold and unfeeling cruel.
So just a couple final notes on this article. One
(22:03):
is just that a big takeaway is you should be
careful when observing the symptoms of a non human animal,
of a pet or whatever, not to let these kinds
of biases prevent you from finding the most effective treatment
or solution. You know, whenever possible, try to look for
objective pieces of behavioral evidence that remove your subjective evaluation
(22:25):
from things. And then the other thing is about these
standards of evidence within veterinary medicine. Unfortunately, the history of
veterinary studies has included fewer double blind placebo controlled trials
than human medicine, because again, for a long time, nobody
really thought placebo effect would come into play in a
major way in veterinary medicine. But it looks like, at
(22:46):
least in some cases, it really does, especially when that
reported outcomes are based on owner's perceptions. And so this
is changing and more evidentiary standards like this are being
introduced into veterinary medicine. But it may mean that the
evaluation of the true efficacy of veterinary medicine has in
some cases, especially when the basis is older, maybe on
(23:09):
a lower standard of evidence than in human drug trials.
But fortunately that that is changing. But anyway, so I'm
bringing all this back to thoughts about how this could
relate to like a Scottish farmer in the seventeenth century
who believes that his cow is sick or his horse
is sick because it has been elf shot, it has
been hit by a fairy arrow and summon someone to
(23:31):
provide a magical cure that maybe involves neolithic flints or
egg mixed with gunpowder and healing their cow. I wonder
how it relates to that. I mean, I would guess
that the specifically that last one, the caregiver placebo effect
would be a major factor here.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Yeah, yeah, I think so. That seems to be. That
would seem to be the key.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
Though it also makes me wonder about the idea of
an inverse thing. This is not addressed in the article
at all, but a a caregiver no cebo effect. I mean,
it makes me wonder how you could have anxieties or
beliefs about danger, other kinds of things taking place purely
within the mind of the animal caregiver that give rise
(24:15):
to spurious diagnoses of illness or symptoms in the animal.
Like what if, actually the cow is fine. The farmer
just gets freaked out about the idea that, oh, no,
something bad is happening to my cow for some reason,
and that brings on the illusion of distress, which could
then be treated by some kind of magical intervention, and
(24:38):
then what do you know, the cow's fine afterwards.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah. This is especially possible given some of the linked
or perceived to be linked activities to elfshot. The case
is where humans did something they shouldn't have to attract
the attention of the elves, be it, you know, tramping
on sacred ground cutting down of a sacred tree or
or something of this nature, or even just the finding
(25:05):
of the elf era like this was curious. I was
out with my cattle and I found this artifact on
the ground. It's clearly an artifact of the elves. I
better check on my cattle and see how they're doing. Uh, oh,
this one's not doing too well.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Oh yeah, I didn't make that connection with the picking
up of the flint, but yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Now.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
There was a paper we talked about a little bit
in the previous episode that I wanted to come back
to and just mention a couple of more interesting little
stories from it. Was that paper called Elfshot Cattle by
Thomas Davidson that was published in the journal Antiquity in
nineteen fifty six. Remember, this is the one that was
collecting a lot of those reports about elfshot. One of
(25:53):
the things that caught my attention was the claim that
a lot of times these injuries from elfshot are not
inflicted directly by fairies or elves themselves. Davidson cites an
author named Luied writing that there's a belief among some
that fairies have to use humans as intermediaries in order
(26:14):
to inflict these injuries, since the fairies have little power
to cause direct physical injury to animal bodies themselves. So
sometimes these stories say humans are like sucked up into
the air by fairies and then given fairy weapons and
then forced to shoot at men or cattle.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
So yeah, okay, so sort of possession going on here.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah. One example of this is a story called the
Tale of Black Donald of the Fairy Throng, And this
is a story where there's this guy named Donald and
he's out plowing. He's plowing the land, he's working in
the furrows, and this is on the Isle of Tyree,
which is off the coast of Scotland. And Donald he's
(26:59):
plowing and he gets sucked up by a fairy convoy
and then they force him to drop an arrow from
the sky that kills a speckled cow. And this actually
connects with some of the critical stuff I was reading
about the elfshot tradition, which says that actually, in a
lot of these stories, it is being alleged that it's
(27:22):
humans who are doing the inflicting, like witches or something
who are inflicting damage with these weapons rather than elves directly.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Interesting and in yeah, it gets into a common trope
in many cultures of the sort of the like the
outsider within somebody within the community, either somebody from outside
the community or somebody within the community that has been
corrupted somehow. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
Yeah, one thing I had to mention just because it
was funny. There's a long section of this paper that
talks about alleged cures for elfshot, and one is a
recorded anecdote of a wise woman curing a cow in
the Shetlands by asking the crofter the farmer to bring
her a Bible, and he brings the Bible, and she
(28:07):
rips pages out of the Bible and balls them up
into a pellet, and then crams the Bible page pellet
into a dimple in the cow's skin. Then there's another
one I have to share because it involves crabs and
raises a mystery for me that I cannot solve. So
maybe the listeners have some input on this. So this
is from a source Davidson sites called Shetland Folklore. This
(28:30):
is a book by Spence, and I'm going to read
directly from Davidson's summary here. Oh sorry, this is still
about traditions in the Shetlands. Quote a variant prescription from
the same area directs the wise woman to take tar,
a needle, a bible, a firebrand, and some fairy crabs.
(28:52):
Waving the burning brand, she walked three times wittershens round
the cow. That means counterclockwise, three times around the cow,
jabbing the animal with the needle, waving a leaf of
the Bible over its back, and muttering an incantation. The
firebrand was placed in a pot of tar and set
(29:13):
at the cow's head so the fumes would make her cough.
She was then given the fairy crabs to eat alive.
The ashes of the fire brand were later mixed with
the tar into three pills, which were administered to the
animal on three successive mornings. WHOA, what so involves eating
(29:33):
the fairy crabs alive? It says she, And I'm sorry,
I'm not sure if that means the cow or the
wise woman. I think that means the cow.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah. I remember reading this in the source during the
initial research phase, and I could not figure out what
fairy crabs were. I was like, A, yeah, it was trying.
My mind was struggling to form. I was just imagining
like a glowing blue crab.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
I was confused too, and I tried to look this up.
There is an animal called a faery crab. You can
see it if you google that phrase. But it's clearly
not what this is referring to, because it's a species
of squat lobster called the scientific name is Lauria siagianni,
and it's native to the Pacific. It's found like off
(30:19):
the coast of Australia and Indonesia. I think, so this
is clearly not what they're talking about in the Shetlands,
and I was trying to find more information and I
just could not, So I wonder if this refers to
I don't know, if this is a local Shetland name
for a certain type of animal, like an actual crab
or some type of insect or something. I really have
(30:42):
no idea.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, I can imagine it going in different directions, some
sort of novel crab that's found on the shore or
turned up in nets, or indeed something that is found
in streams, or is not a crab at all, but
some sort of an insect with some sort of folk
edison properties to it. Or I mean, certainly we have
examples in plenty of cultures where if something is named
(31:06):
after an animal but is not itself an animal. It
could be you know, you can imagine a situation where
the fairy crab is actually some sort of a root
something into that effect. So there's so many different directions
that could go in not knowing exactly what this is
referring to.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Well, hey listeners, if you've got insight on this, you
know what the faery crabs are right in. One last
subject that Davidson brings up with respect to elfshot is
the idea of curved plow furrows and ridges in order
to quote Wander the Ferry, which I found so interesting.
(31:42):
It's the idea that if you go throughout Scotland and
you look at some old cultivated fields, you'll find that,
you know, these places that are there, they're dug with
a what's known as like a ridge and furrow system.
So you'll see a series of basically you know, lines
where like you have a plot area and then like
a sort of ridge of moved earth piled up in
(32:04):
between them. And an interesting thing about a lot of
these is they are created with so that the ridges
and the furrows are not straight lines, but are curved
or crooked or s shaped even and it is believed
by some that the purpose of this is to confuse
(32:24):
or quote wander the fairy, to maybe lead the ferry
off course or lead the elf off course. This is
not the only system, by the way, that would use this.
Like Davidson notes that a lot of amulets that are
designed for protection against fairies have a rays of kind
of spiral patterns or can you know, complex whirls within them,
(32:48):
or labyrinths or something, and this is designed to confuse
the evil spirits, to kind of send them on a
maze like journey that will lead them astray and keep
them from harming you.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
These If you haven't seen these ridge and furrow features,
definitely look them up and do an image search, because
you can see lots of wonderful aerial photographs of this
sort of thing, and you know, you can sort of
imagine the trail of the of the elf going astray. Here.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Oh, some of the ones you're looking at are the
curved ones, because some are just straight, but others some
are just straight.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
But I was looking at one in particular here where
you do see you kind of see a mix in
this particular one. You see the different areas of land
and definite curves in some areas where and one kind
of has like almost like a fern look because you
have the line going down the middle and you have
some like like different wavings on each side.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
So the magical understanding here again is that this, well,
it could throw fairies off, just generally because you know,
you make twisting paths in order to confuse evil spirits.
But the other thing would be it doesn't allow them
to get a clear straight line shot at the cattle,
like at the oxen that you're using to plow the field.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Yeah, this is strange, Like this idea of the l
is kind of like this. You know, I guess you
look at different folklore systems. It's like you want to
avoid doing things that draw attention to yourself. You know.
We definitely see that with the elf and fairy folk
traditions in this part of the world, with the wearing
of green, which we've discussed before. Don't wear the green
(34:17):
that's the color of the elves or the fairies. They'll
come at you. You also see that with traditions of
the evil eye in the Middle East, where there are
various things like you should not do because this invisible
ne faariaus force is out there in the world, and
you do not want it aware of your presence or
your fortune, so you don't get on its radar, don't
(34:38):
have direct lines leading to you. Be that line something
like you know, you shouting about how beautiful your child is.
You know. In the case of some of the evil
eye traditions, and particularly in Judaism, I remember hearing about
reading about or in this case, like a physical line
through the altered landscape.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
I think this type of belief is still present and
in like modern day Christianity. Like I remember when I
was a kid hearing about the dangers of playing with
a wija board, and the idea was it attracts demonic attention.
I mean that's literally like the it's it's like when
you play with a wija board. It's not so much
something about the board as evil, but it it sort
(35:18):
of like puts up a beacon to demons that says, hey,
I'm available, you know, pay attention to me, and they
will hone in on you because you have done that.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Yeah. Oh. In quick note, I mentioned Judaism and the
evil eye and so forth. The evil eye is not
necessarily like a part of Judaism. I don't want to
imply that but it is something that is sort of
in the folkloric traditions of various peoples in the Middle East,
including you'll see that in Judic culture. Yeah, and certainly
we see similar site case with this here because we
have people who are discussing that have taken you know,
(35:49):
head that have converted to Christianity, and but there's still
there's still practicing beliefs. They're still engaging in belief of
the elves, but they're also incorporating in some of these
Christian traditions like well, maybe we're you know, lought up
a Bible page and stick it into that furrow in
the cow. That'll help too.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
This is this next thing is not really addressed in Davidson,
But I was wondering about this because I was reading
about the ridge and furrow system elsewhere after reading this
passage from Davidson, and it seems to me that sometimes
the strips that are plowed in this system are curved
for totally mundane reasons that have nothing to do with
(36:31):
magical beliefs. So I think that they're often curved just
because of it was a sort of necessary consequence of
the types of plow rigging and oxen pulling teams that
they used at the time. They would lead to a
furrow or a ridge being kind of like curved off
at each end every time the team turned around to
make a new line. And that makes me wonder if
(36:54):
something like twisting twisting in these rows could have originally
been a totally mundane thing that somebody saw and then
in trying to explain why it was like that without
understanding it, they came up with this explanation about confusing
the fairies, and then afterwards did it like that on purpose.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
So it's like somebody like the landowner whoever, comes out
to check on the work. It's like, Dale, what's going
on with these ridges and furrows? Look look at it.
It's just like I can tell it's crooked. And Dale's like, well,
do you want the fairies coming straight at you? I
didn't think, so you're welcome. This, of course, also reminds
me of on one hand, and this may well be
connected the idea that vampires might be deterred by hanging
(37:41):
some sort of a nodded item or or carefully woven
item out for them like a complex pattern, then will
draw their attention and they have to deal with and
maybe get they'll either spend all their time doing that
and leave you alone, or perhaps even get caught in
the sunlight the loose track of time. And then of
course I can't help but think of crop circles as well,
which again, as we've discussed I think we've discussed this
(38:02):
in the show before. I mean crop crop circles a
pretty much put to bed as a you know, is
the work of human actors. But thinking about like sort
of the draw to do this to a field, like
the human intention to do this, and there are several
factors that can play into that someone which may actually
(38:22):
come up in our next episode of so to blow
your mind, But the idea of like just seeing that field,
like I wonder if there's some sort of draw that like, no,
the lines are too too perfect, everything is just too
pristine like this this this, this land has been too
finely transformed. We got to get some swirls in there.
We got to get some circles, you know.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yeah, that is a good comparison. I didn't think you
were going to crop circles though.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
I thought you were.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Gonna mention the jung she being being warded off by
spilling glutinous rice on the floor because they'll I think
they'll be counting the grains, right.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Oh yeah, that that also, that's a good point as well.
I forgot about that one, something about yeah, the inhuman
analytical mind of non human beings in folklore, and that
they can be led astray by either randomized patterns or
things of human creation that have some sort of eloquence
(39:17):
to them, which is kind of ironic given that we're
talking about situations where human beings may in some cases
have just like completely flipped their wig over finding an
old flint arrow in the dirt. So I guess it
cuts both ways.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Now, there's one more paper I wanted to briefly mention
that gets way more into the weeds about a particular
text that is believed or has been believed to reference Elfshot.
But I thought this was interesting too. So this was
a paper by a professor of English at the University
of Leeds named Alaric Hall called Calling the Shots the
(39:57):
Old English Remedy Gift Horror off Scott and Sea and
Anglo Saxon elf Shot, published in two thousand and five.
So this paper is mainly an attempt to critically re
examine an Anglo Saxon text called Gift Horse of Scott
and Sea, which is a passage from a medieval Anglo
(40:17):
Saxon medical text that has been widely interpreted as being
about elf shot. The title Gift Horse of Scott and
Sea translates to if a horse be and then the
word is off scotten. And the question is what does
off scotton mean. It's been traditionally translated as elf shot
if a horse be elf shot. Hall argues that it
(40:38):
should not be understood that way, and yet there are
still references to elf attacks within the passage. So this
is Hall's translation of this text, which is interesting in itself.
If a horse be off scotten, take then a dagger
whose halft is of fallow Ox's horn, and in which
there are three brass nails. And then there's a term
(41:00):
that every time is rendered as right slash. Inscribe. I'm
just going to say, inscribe, inscribe on the horse on
the forehead, Christ's mark, so it bleeds. Inscribe then Christ's
mark on the spine, and on each of the limbs
which you can grasp. This, shall you do take a
staff strike on the back. Then the horse will be
(41:24):
well and inscribe on the dagger's handle. These words been
a decetae omnia opera domini dominum, which means bless all
the works of the Lord of Lords. Should it be
alps which is on it, this will do as a
remedy for it. And so Hall makes the argument in
(41:46):
this paper that the primary condition being described in this
text under the word oafscotten should not be translated as
elf shot as it traditionally has been, but it is
something like badly pained. It's more more mundane condition that
is prompting this entire remedy. However, even if that's correct,
the last line of the remedy does mention the idea
(42:10):
of this word alf the ae combined vowel and then
l fe, though this sentence is also kind of difficult
to translate the one that's got the alph in it.
I think the understanding that makes the most sense is
this whole remedy is for regular bad pain in horses,
and then there's an additional remedy, the one that's riding
(42:31):
on the dagger's handle, the words bless all the works
of the Lord of Lords. That additional remedy is like
a special extra dose of holiness that should be applied
if the cause of the horse's pain is injury by
an elf, though it doesn't explain how you tell the
difference between normal bad pain and bad pain caused by
(42:52):
an elf. You know, of course, the elf injury being
even more unholy and requiring more holiness or or more
piet in order to undo.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Either way you shake it. From a modern perspective, it's
a lot of cutting and striking of a pained horse.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
Yeah, jeez, you feel bad for the horse.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
You know. Now, as we as we go to close
out this look at Elfshot, I did want to come
back to some basic questions, some of which we've already
got into, concerning the archaeology of elf Shot. Who were
the people who made these artifacts, and how did they
get to the regions where the artifacts were found, and
then of course, you know, interpreted and reinterpreted within these
(43:32):
folkloric traditions. This, of course, is a broad question because
as we've mentioned already, we're talking about multiple areas. We're
talking about locations throughout the British Isles and even outside
of the British Isles. But just limiting the question of
the British Isles, we're still looking at close to a
million years of occupation by various human species, including Neanderthals.
(43:52):
And as for the how they got there, the predominant
theories involved land bridges between Europe and Britain that were
president at the time. And regarding Ireland, I've seen hypotheses
that involve boats, land bridges and also ice bridges. But
just to give a few examples that really sort of
drive home the times we're talking about here, there are
(44:14):
stone tool and footprints in Norfolk that date back and
estimated nine hundred thousand years and these would be the
work and or the footprints of Homo antecessor. Notable here
are the Happisburg footprints in Norfolk, and also a black
flint hand axe was also found in this area. So
(44:34):
Homo antecessor they were makers of simple stone tools, and
it looks like many experts think that they might not
have had mastery of fire. By four thousand BCE, Neolithic
culture was firmly established on the British Isles and lasted
till roughly it's just you know, the rough time period
of our histories two thousand, five hundred BCE and of
(44:57):
course between three thousand BCE in two thousand BCE, we
see the construction of Stonehinge, one of course the most famous,
if not the most famous testament to prehistoric Britain. And
of course even Stone Hinge gets wrapped up into various folklore,
traditions and folkloric interpretations and reinterpretations that involve at times
(45:17):
the wizard Merlin, but also the Christian devil, and even
during the Roman period which would have been roughly forty
three CE to four ten CE, the Roman sky god Kalus.
More realistically, or more on the sort of realistic interpretation
and reinterpretation standpoint, it was at one point thought to
(45:38):
be credited to the work of Druidic culture, but this
culture didn't exist till three hundred BCE, which would have
been too late, so the stones were already ancient history
to the Druids. Now, another example that I found really
interesting talking about found arrowheads in the British Isles. In
twenty sixteen, archaeologists from the University of Reading discovered a
(46:01):
four thy five hundred year old flint arrowhead a few
miles from Stonehenge, and according to David Dawson, director of
the Wiltshire Museum, this particular arrowhead is not only finally preserved,
but incredibly fragile, suggesting that it was never actually intended
for use in war or hunting, but it was rather
(46:22):
ceremonial or decorative and or decorative this was. You can
look up images of this. There were some news articles
of the time. The arrowhead was unearthed in two parts,
two different digs, five years apart. And it is quite
eloguant looking. It has like one it has barbs, but
one really long barb and elongated barb on one side.
(46:44):
So I don't know about you, but I find that
really interesting because I think it's easy to think of
folkloric interpretation of found objects to be a luxury of
later civilizations on the British Isles, to think supernaturally about
about these about these items. But certainly, and certainly there
was a lot we don't know about concerning pre Roman
and prehistoric Britain. But even forty five hundred years ago,
(47:06):
this find would suggest that people here were already capable
of sublime interpretations and perhaps mystical meanings for their own
created artifacts. That you could have this sacred arrow that
wasn't found, that was made, but some of the same
energy that goes into the interpretation of these artifacts, you know,
(47:28):
thousands of years later, was already present in the cultures
that made their home here.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Right, And so we don't know what it would have
been used for, but it's clear that it would not
have been useful for actual shooting of an arrow. So
you know, it could be decorative, it could be medicinal,
some kind of amulet. It could be magical or ceremonial.
We don't know, but in any case, it would be
a symbolic arrowhead rather than one used for the literal,
(47:55):
direct mundane purpose.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
Yeah, and so you can imagine at some point in
history after this point if someone were to find an
arrow had like this, especially, I mean any arrow had
obviously any kind of novel lump of stone could find
itself interpreted as an elf arrow and incorporated into elf
(48:17):
shot folklore. But imagine if you found this, you know,
clearly an arrow that looks too fine to be shot.
You know, that's almost ephemeral in its construction, Like who
would make this? Why would they make this? Clearly this
is the work of the elves. But also I think
it's just yeah, it's just worth remembering the deep history
(48:39):
of people on the British Isles. You know, it might
not be as deep as some other areas, Like you know,
you're looking at what in France. I think it's what
one point fifty seven million years ago. We have some
of the earliest known evidence of human beings. But still
you have human species on the British Isles as early
as almost a million years ago, different species, different cultures,
(49:02):
different waves of technology and arrivals in the subsequent centuries
and millennium millennia, and of course different waves of interpretation
and reinterpretation of what came before. All right, we're going
to go ahead and close it out there, but obviously
we'd love to hear from everyone out there. We'd especially
love to hear from folks listening to the show on
(49:23):
the British Isles, or folks who have spent time on
the British Isles. Perhaps you have some tidbits some local
lore to share with us. If so, we'd love to
hear from you. A reminder that Stuff to Blow Your
Mind is a primarily a science podcast that publishes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
podcast feed, but on Mondays we do a listener mail
episode where we read various missives from our listeners. On
(49:48):
Wednesdays we do a short form artifact or monster fact.
On Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time
to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about
a weird film.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
say hello, you can email us at contact stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.