The Monstrefact: The Alp-Luachra of Irish Folklore

In this episode of STBYM’s The Monstrefact, Robert discusses the strangely parasitic monster of Ireland known as the Alp-Luachra.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hi, my name is Robert Lamman. This is the Monster Fact,
a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
focusing on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time. Yesterday
was Saint Patrick's Day, so I figured it would be
appropriate and not too late to feature another monster of

(00:31):
Irish origin on the show. So I'd like to discuss
not a leprechaun or a banshee, but rather the out
Blue Ucra, an invisible creature that crawls down your throat
while you're asleep and then proceeds to eat the contents
of your belley. Now. I initially read about this creature
in the pages of Carol Rose's Spirits Fairies, Leprechauns and

(00:51):
Goblins and Encyclopedia, and then looked up one of her
primary sources on the subject, Irish author Douglas Hydes. Beside
the Fire from A ninety The entity is also discussed
in James mccullop's Dictionary of Celtic Mythology nineteen ninety eight.
But here's the basics. One allegedly can inquire the out

(01:12):
Blueucra by sleeping near a stream. The invisible creature, sometimes
described as being a kind of fairy, other times a
sort of invisible newt, will crawl down the sleeper's throat
and eat the food in his stomach. Once it has
set up shop down there, the creature will just continue
to eat any food or most of the food that
the human swallows. As a result, the poor victim of

(01:35):
the alp lucra grows weaker and frailer despite always eating,
because an evil spirit in his belly is actually eating
all of the food. The solution, as described by Hyde,
is to just eat a whole lot of salt beef
and then lie with your mouth open over a stream.
The thirsty out leucra will then eject itself desperately in

(01:57):
need of a refreshing drink. Kellop also adds that in
some stories, the invisible creature, also known as the joint eater,
will sit beside the victim. There also seems to be
related tails out there, one in which serpent eggs in
the water of running Brook that eve ingested will cause
snakes to hatch in your stomach, and these apparently can

(02:21):
only be removed by fasting and then positioning oneself mouth
open in front of a bowl of milk. This according
to one wwn in an eighteen ninety one review of
Hyde's book in the Journal of American Folklore. So there's
a twist of magic and folklore humor to these tales, obviously,
the eating of the salt beef and so forth. But

(02:44):
at heart we can't help but be reminded of real
world intestinal parasites such as tapeworms here, with McKellop also
mentioning this in his analysis, humans have known about tapeworms
for a very long time, the descriptions of them sprinkling
and popping not throughout the writings of the ancient world.
And so in the story of the alp Lucra we

(03:06):
seem to combine this knowledge with the universal concept of
a spiritual or invisible force that brings illness while also
warning us about the more subtle dangers associated with bodies
of water. And obviously we have any number of folklooric
creature that is warning us about the more overt perils

(03:28):
of the water, creatures that will drag you down into
the waters and drown you, and so forth. But here
you know, various internal parasites do occur in water, and
a tale like this could be warning us about those
sorts of dangers as well. But hey, hopefully, today, the
day after Saint Patrick's Day, you did not wake up

(03:49):
next to a running stream and there is not a
demon inside your belly eager to consume all or most
of your next meal. Tune in for additional episodes of
The Monster, the Artifact or Animalia Stupendium each week, and
you can find episodes of all of these in audio
form in our audio archive. Wherever it is you get
your audio podcasts. As always, you can email us at

(04:12):
contact at Stuffdblow your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
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