August 9, 2022 • 45 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss the nature and history of human whistling – including the subject of whistled languages.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Manam and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back with part three of our series on whistling. Now,
if you haven't heard the first two parts, you might
want to go check those out first. In the In
(00:25):
the previous sections, we talked about the physics of what
happens in the mouth when you whistle. We talked about
whistling based languages or variants of languages, and we talked
about the fascinating practice of Chinese transcendental whistling, as well
as some various psychonautical beliefs about the world changing power
(00:46):
of whistling. But today it might be interesting to turn
our eyes to ancient history and say, did people whistle
in the ancient world? And if so, how would we
know about it. This is such a great question that
I've never really thought about because I kind of took
it for granted, like, this is a sound that the
human body can make, Therefore people would have made this sound,
(01:08):
and uh, you know, I think for the most part
this is a a good way of looking at it. Things.
But then the other side of the equation is all right, well,
let's look at the evidence. What evidence do we have
in the literature of the ancient world that people whistled?
And then and then if they did whistle, well, what
are the attitudes concerning whistling? Because one thing that I
think we've already been able to distress in this series
(01:30):
is that that whistling is fascinating as it is, it
is not a a neutral thing. We end up having
these various cultural and uh and as we'll discuss, superstitious
weights attached to the practice of whistling. You know, I'm
just generally fascinated by the idea of ancient music. I
guess in part because for the most part, we don't
(01:50):
know what it sounded like. And so when you find,
for example, people who have tried to render into performances
some of the oldest recorded like a written notation of
music that we have, such as the the famous Hurrian
songs or Hurryan hymns that are from the ancient city
of Yugurit, which are these hymns to the goddess nicoll Uh.
(02:11):
They're they're written on cune of form tablets, and people
have tried to turn that music notation into performances that
you can hear today, and it's very haunting. Uh. The
same is true. I think there's an ancient Greek tombstone
that has some music notation on it that has been
translated into modern music. I think it's known as the
sec Loss or sec Loss epitaph. And when you hear
(02:35):
those sounds, they really do feel very alien. They're like
they're from another world. Uh, And it just it opens
the mind all these possibilities that the the ancient world
was full of music that we will never know because
it wasn't recorded, of course it couldn't be, and it
also wasn't written down or notated in any way that
we can understand today. Yeah. Yeah, all this is definitely
(02:59):
worth thinking about and again and coming down to like
why is whistling important enough to take note of? Uh?
You know, this is a question that that remains on
one's mind as we look at these these different examples.
But what the main paper that I was looking at
that was really getting into this was a two thousand
paper by A. V. Van Stickellenberg titled Whistling in Antiquity,
(03:22):
and the author dives into like the basic question of
what evidence do we have that particularly the ancient Greeks
and the ancient Romans whistled or didn't whistle. And again,
on one hand, it's hard to believe that they didn't
and uh and stick Ellenberg points out that we know
the Romans, for instance, had many songs for different occasions,
and yet whistling was would also probably have been considered
(03:43):
vulgar and not something that a person of status would
do compared to other sounds that one might make. Proper
romans were not even supposed to sing, for example, I
did not know that, not me neither uh and yet
uh Stikellenberg writes, quote whistling a tune with there for
not have been compatible with the characters of many, if
not most, of the persona in ancient literature. Apart from that, however,
(04:07):
it is a remarkable fact that we also never meet
a slave, a fisherman, pimp, or soldier whistling a tune,
not even in comedy. So whatt Callenberry is pointing out
here is that, Okay, if if whistling is not the
proper thing to do, it's not the thing that you're
your heroes and your your your proper romans would would
have done. Well, what about the the improper characters in
(04:29):
your various writings. Surely somebody would come around, come along,
and they would whistle, and by whistling, signify that they
are an improper character and therefore deserving of ridicule or
the villain of the piece, that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah,
I mean not uh. When you look at what kind
of Roman literature survives to us, it's not all uh
(04:50):
lofty uh royal drama. You know, there are some really
body satirical Roman literature that still exists today. And so
you would expect the characters in this to engage in
all manner of vulgarity that the Romans knew about. Yeah,
like I think of our own cinematic history here and
also this in the literature as well. Spitting, uh, spitting
(05:11):
on the ground in front of you generally considered uncouth,
but in most circles, and yet you definitely see it
a lot in cinema because it's a great way to
establish that, well, this character is a little rough around
the edges. Um, and I think the Cowboy movies where
they're spitting, or Corman McCarthy novels where there's a lot
of spitting. So what Stikellenberg is saying, is that even
(05:33):
though we have Roman literature that has lower class characters
and characters who are understood as doing body and vulgar things,
we never in the existing corpus see them whistling, or
almost never seems to be the case, though Stikellenberg does
point out a few areas where we're not entirely sure,
and this is where we get into, uh, the the
(05:55):
imprecise nature of language and translations um. They point to
a part in Petronius satiricn from the first century CE
that describes a person who quote put his hand to
his mouth and whistled out some terrible stuff I couldn't identify.
Afterwards he told us it was Greek air. Now, it's
(06:15):
apparently an open question if the if the proper translation
is whistling, and if it is whistling, what what what
are we really talking about? Is it whistling like or
is it finger whistling where you create, you know, the
loud sound by blowing through your fingers, or is this
just bad singing? The idea that uh, you know, some
sounds are coming out of this person's mouth. They call
(06:36):
it Greek air. It's just bad singing. Oh, I see
so like, Uh, in order to be insulting, you might
describe someone singing as wheezing or something. Yeah, that sort
of thing. They point out that even today, a fictional
character whistling often means that they're they're what like they
think of a whistling character in a film you've seen.
It often means they're care free, or they're happy, or
(06:58):
there perhaps a bit of a doo fit. Uh. Sometimes
the whistling is like, what's going to happen to this
poor dope that's just whistling and a little uh um,
unprepared for the circumstances ahead of them. Does Buster Scruggs whistle?
I feel like he does. I think he does, if
memory serves when you know and and the Cohen Brothers
Buster scrugs the first bit in that anthology film. Yeah,
(07:22):
he's this so this white suited cowboy who at first
we think, yeah, he's just too he's just too much
of a goody two shoes. He's just gonna be eat
up by the world that he's writing into. And of
course we find out that he's more than a match
for the violence of the world. Yeah, I guess that
is the joke that he's like the whistling, singing cowboy.
But he's also a cold blooded killer. Yeah, that fabulous short.
(07:46):
I love that. Um. But at any right, we we
do see some variations on this. For instance, stickle Berg
points out that in Western literature we see whistling associated
with the Squire and the Canterbury Tales in the fourteenth century. Uh.
And this is a quote here singing he was or
fluting all the day. Uh. This is from the prologue.
(08:07):
And I guess the fluting here is what might be whistling,
fluting without a flute. That that's what I've always called
whistling Stackallenburg points out that, okay, this character, though the Squire,
is also a lusty lout, and we don't really see
a precursor to this character type in Roman and Greek writing.
But but here we have an early example of the
(08:29):
lusty lout who is also potentially whistling stick. Gallenburg also
raises the question of uh, perhaps humming was more common
than whistling. But the problem there is we also don't
know much about humming in antiquity either the right quote.
Whatever the case, whistling apparently formed no part of the
paral linguistic stock used by Greek and Roman authors. This
(08:52):
stock was considerable, as recent studies show, and a few
studies are cited from UH from the ninety nineties and
include such emotional indicators as jumping for joy and nail biting.
So saying here that, okay, if you're gonna have characters
do things to indicate, um, you know, what's going on
in their heads are kind of emotions they're supposed to
be emoting on the stage or on the on the page,
(09:15):
whatever the case may be. Uh, you're gonna have things
that are being used like jumping for joy, like nail biting,
and yet there's no whistling. Now, they also get into
this concept of whistling in the dark a bit, which
of course is a well worn turn of phrase for us,
in which one whistles to stave off fear. One of
my favorite examples of this, or at least one that
I think I encountered the earliest and therefore I always
(09:35):
think about this is the Ichabod Crane and Headless Horseman
cartoon from Disney. This was in the Adventures of Ichabod
and Mr Toad, though this would have been This was
also a segment that was often aired on Disney TV
Halloween specials, So there's definitely some whistling in the dark
in that one, and of course it doesn't really work
(09:57):
um Ultimately, the things in the aren't come out to
chase about crane around. Now, Rob, maybe we will get
more into this in a subsequent part when we talk
about some psychology. I'm I'm not sure, but maybe. But anyway,
I wonder what you think of the function of whistling
in this type of scenario where you're afraid. Maybe you're
(10:18):
wandering by yourself past a graveyard or wandering by yourself
in the dark, and there's a breeze blowing through the
trees and you're a little bit apprehensive, so you start
to whistle. Now, I think the phrase like whistling past
the graveyard or whistling in the dark is supposed to
denote like somebody showing bravado. You know, they're saying they're
(10:39):
like trying to show off that they're not afraid, when
in fact they are. But what I noticed, and that
comes up in the example I just mentioned, is that
people often do this when they're alone, when there's nobody
there to see them, nobody to show off too. So
if whistling is to show off that you're not afraid.
It seems like the showing off must either or be
(11:00):
to yourself somehow, or to like the scary creature that
you imagine is watching you. Yeah, it would have to
be one or the other. But I guess in some
of these cases, and especially when you think about graveyards,
there's definitely an imagined other out there. And it might
not be an imagined other that you give a lot
of weight most of the time, but at least right
(11:21):
now it's on your mind. So we're gonna get into
several different examples of whistling as a potential means of
summoning or accidentally summoning or drawing the attention of things
that that should not be drawn in uh to your vicinity.
So on one level, yeah, it seems a bit a
(11:41):
bit um uh dangerous if you're gonna actually fall in
along with some of these supernatural beliefs, like I don't
want to to summon the devil if I'm afraid of
the devil coming out of the graveyard at me. But
maybe part of it is like proving like not only
am I not afraid of the devil in the graveyard,
I'll go ahead and summon him. If he's here, he
come on out, and we'll go ahead and do this.
(12:02):
But I'm done with just being afraid of the devil
somewhere hiding in the graveyard. Okay, But I guess the
question is whether it's actually whistling or whether it's just
singing or humming some version of this idea singing when
you're afraid or singing through the graveyard. Does this come
up in ancient history as well? Do we have any
evidence of this from thousands of years ago? It seems
(12:23):
like we might. Uh's to Calenberg brings up another example
again from Petronius, and this is again from the satiricn
and it also concerns a werewolf. Did you know that
there were ancient Roman stories about werewolves? There absolutely are, Yeah,
and it's a This one's a pretty good one. Um
this is I'm gonna read part of it at least.
(12:44):
This is from a um Hesseltine translation. Quote. I seized
my opportunity and persuaded a guest in our house to
come with me as far as the fifth Milestone. He
was a soldier and as brave as hell, so we
trotted off about cockrow, the moon shone like high noon.
We got among the tombstones. My man went aside to
(13:06):
look at the epitaphs. I sat down with my heart
full of song, and began to count the graves. M
So sta Kellenberg writes the following on this, how tempting
to interpret this scene as a clever application of psychological
paral language, which has a superstitious and frightened slave indulged
in an ancient equivalent of our whistling in the dark.
(13:29):
Since the kntar represents many forms of musical expressions, we
would even be justified in translating it here with whistling. Unfortunately,
there is no straightforward indication that Petroni has had this
in mind. Okay, so, despite the fact that our expression
is often like whistling past the graveyard or whistling in
the graveyard, Um, this is a word cantare, which, in
(13:53):
whatever its Latin form is, could have meant whistling, but
could also just mean singing. Right. Yeah, So again we
get into the the imprecise nature of language, which continues
to be a theme with trying to figure out whistling
or not whistling, or making other sounds and various old texts.
You know, this is kind of a tangent, But I
feel like, since we're on the werewolf story, it would
be kind of a shame not to tell the werewolf story.
(14:14):
What happens in this story by Paternius here, okay, I can.
I can read the next little bit, which I think
brings it to a nice closure. Then when I looked
round at my friend, he stripped himself and put all
his clothes by the roadside. My heart was in my mouth,
but I stood like a dead man. He made a
ring of water around his clothes and suddenly turned into
a wolf. Please do not think I am joking. I
(14:36):
would not lie about this for any fortune in the world.
But as I was saying, after he had turned into
a wolf, he began to howl and ran off into
the woods. At first I hardly knew where I was.
Then I went up to take his clothes, and they
had all turned to stone. No one could be near
dead with terror than I was. But I drew my
sword and went slaying shadows all the way till I
(14:57):
came to my love's house. I went in like a corpse,
nearly gave up the ghost. The sweat ran down my legs,
my eyes were dull. I could hardly be revived my beer.
Melissa was surprised at my state, at my being out
so late, and said, if you had come earlier, you
might at least have helped us. A wolf got into
the house and worried all our sheep and let their
blood like a butcher. But he did not make fools
(15:19):
of us, even though he got off for our slave
made a hole in his neck with a spear. When
I heard this, I could not keep my eyes shut
any longer. But at break of day I rushed back
to my master giuss house like a defrauded publican. And
when I came to the place where the clothes were
turned into stone, I found nothing but a pool of blood.
But when I reached home, my soldier was lying in
(15:40):
bed like an ox, with a doctor looking after his neck.
I realized that he was a werewolf, and I never
could sit down to a meal with him afterwards, not
if you had killed me first. Other people may think
what they like about this, but may all your guardian
angels punish me if I am lying. Wow, that's pretty
fun and pretty staple werewolf sort of story. There. It's
(16:03):
a great werewolf story. But my biggest question is do
oxes normally lie in human beds? What does he mean
I was lying in my bed like an ox? Oh no, no,
not him. My soldier was lying in bed like an ox.
I don't know. I'm not sure about that. I feel
like we're we're missing some kind of historical context there. Yeah,
I mean maybe it's like he's light, his body is
(16:24):
like that of an ox. I don't know. I don't
nothing comes to mind when I try and picture an
ox laying down. But yeah, it's really funny. Okay, So
this is the satir con by Petronius is first century
uh CE, so it's like two thousand years later, and
werewolf movies are still using the exact same trope where
somebody figures out it's a werewolf because they see the
(16:45):
monster get wounded on a certain part of the body,
and then later they see a human wounded on the
same part of the body. That's in like half the
werewolf movies they make Yeah, if it ain't broke, don't
fix it, right. And I think if I've seen this
in other animal transform and myths and stories before, like
perhaps some were tigers stories from China and so forth,
I agree it still works than alright. So for the
(17:15):
next bit, that's the Kellenberg gets into is is that
they break down a couple of things we've kind of
we've at least touched on, if not already to discuss
and when they break these out further later on. But
we have a semaphoric whistling or whistling as a form
of signaling, and this has been around for a very
long time. This is something that goes back to our
KaiC humans. Citing Peter f Otswald, they share quote, whistles
(17:37):
are easier to hear than words because they concentrate sound
energy into a narrow segment of the frequency spectrum instead
of spreading it. Generally, they occur in the frequency range
of one thousand and four thousand cycles per second, to
which the human era is most sensitive. Oh yeah, so
this is the same fact that was cited in slightly
different terms in that linguistics paper that we looked at
(17:58):
in the previous section. Myer, that was about how whistling
tends to be a good medium for transmitting information because
it's in that frequency range of one to four killerherts,
which is a good place to concentrate energy if you
wanted to travel the forest and be audible, uh and
carry distinct information the longest distance, because that's like, that's
(18:19):
that's sort of the bull's eye for what our ears
can detect and separate out from ambient noise. Now, the
next part here is where things get very biblical, because
Sticklenberg points out that the oldest reference to semaphoric use
of whistling can be found in the Book of Isaiah five,
where the Lord whistles to summon people. He uh quote,
(18:42):
he will raise a signal for a nation afar off
and whistle for it from the ends of the earth,
and low, swiftly, speedily it comes. So I started off
looking into this just by checking it in my Oxford
in RSV to see if the translation was different in
any significant way. And it's not that translations almost exactly
the same as what Stickellenberg has here. But in reading
(19:03):
it this passage, I thought I should explain more about
the context because it makes that quote especially interesting and
even scary. This is one of the most I think
one of the most powerful and chilling passages in the
Hebrew Bible. Uh. So what's going on here? Well, this
is actually a prophecy of doom. In this part of
(19:24):
the Book of Isaiah, the author is pronouncing a verdict
of divine judgment and punishment against the people of Israel
and Judah, because he says they have ignored God's instructions
and chosen to live in wickedness. And so there's a
section before this where he's just talking about the evil
they do, and you might recognize some lines from this
(19:44):
because they're pretty famous. The prophet says, ah, you who
call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for
light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter, You who are wise in your
own eyes and shrewd in your own sight, Ah you,
who are heroes in drinking wine and valiant at mixing drink,
(20:04):
who acquit the guilty for a bribe and deprived the
innocent of their rights. Oh man, God coming out strong
against nixed drinks here, Yeah, against mixed drinks and against bribing,
so that the guilty win in court. But then it
starts getting with the really like scary expressive metaphors. From
here it goes into Therefore, as the tongue of fire
(20:25):
devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in
the flame, so their root will become rotten, and their
blossom go up like the dust. For they have rejected
the instruction of the Lord of Hosts, and have despised
the word of the Holy One of Israel. Therefore the
anger of the Lord was kindled against his people, and
he stretched out his hand against them and struck them.
(20:47):
The mountains quaked, and their corpses were like refuse in
the streets. For all this his anger has not turned away,
and his hand is stretched out still. Then comes the
line about God whistling. From that it goes straight into
He will raise a signal for a nation far away,
and whistle for a people at the ends of the earth.
(21:07):
Here they come swiftly, speedily, And in this line the
people being referenced there, who are they? These are the
armies of the Assyrian Empire, and described in the following
passages in terrifying detail. The prophet says, they march without rest.
Their arrows are sharp, their horses hoofs are like flint,
their wheels like a whirlwind. They roar like lions. They
(21:31):
roar like the sea. And at in saying, the light
grows dark with clouds, And so the prophet is saying
here that the Lord will whistle to summon an invading
army to slaughter his people because they have done evil
and turned away from him. Wow. So first he does
recks and de stabilizes everything uh in this sinful nation,
(21:53):
and then he calls to an invading army to come
on over and finish him off. Yes, and the whistle here,
I think that takes on a totally different context that
makes it a whistle of absolute terror from on high.
It is something that should chill you to the bone.
But then it gets even stranger because the Callenberg points
(22:13):
out that the Hebrew word for whistle here leaves some
room for interpretation. And apparently there's still some discussion about this,
with some arguing that what we're talking about here is
indeed a whistle, but others say that it is a hiss,
the hiss of God. Wow. So you shared that fact
with me earlier, and I don't know what to do
(22:34):
that that is one of the scariest images I have
ever heard of the hiss of God. I mean, the
whistle is already scarier with the additional context that you
provided here, but but the idea of of God God
hissing and especially in in such a wrathful mode of behavior.
Uh yeah, it's it's kind of chilling, Okay. But so
(22:55):
if there's some ambiguity in the translation here, I guess
that would mean that whatever word is used has something
to do clearly with like a an expressive expelling of breath. Yeah,
and that's the thing we're getting into breath language here,
and and breath related sounds. And apparently in in various
ancient texts, there's a fair amount of leeway and how
(23:15):
we might think of a hiss or a whistle as
it relates to not only human sounds but also non
human sounds like leaves, arrows in the wind. Uh quote.
Hissing and whistling, when produced by humans, results the same
interaction between respiratory and oral agents. The only difference is
that in hissing, the oral obstruction placed in the way
of the airstream is the teeth, while in the case
(23:37):
of whistling, it is the lips. In antiquity, this difference
was apparently felt as too slight for differentiation between the
two sounds and for the establishment of separate terminology. The
lack of differentiation continues in some of the daughter languages.
Wow That's interesting because so we're we're trying to understand
the cultural significance of whistling, which in our context very
(23:59):
often means something like, you know, it's just kind of
like innocent, care free soundmaking, whereas a hiss, I think,
is almost universally acknowledged to be one of the most
hostile sounds a person could make. Yes, um, my son
would would hiss for a while. I forget where he
picked this up, Like there's something animal world, you know,
kids have the central affinity with animals. But I always
(24:22):
always approved of it because I'm like, yes, if if,
if threatened, like hissing sends a certain signal like that,
we're we're past language now. Now we're in a hissing
hissing zone. I am I am so mad at you.
I've become an animal. I am a snake. I am
a cat. It was probably a cat connection for sure. Um. Now,
the Kelenberg points to various examples in Greek writings, including Homer,
(24:44):
in which we also encounter this hiss whisper confusion. Both
are non verbal language substitutes. They point out that there
is still a distinct difference. Uh, you know, at least
you know, to our our modern understanding of all this.
But yeah, it's it just becomes difficult to try and
sort all of this, especially in these ancient texts. Was
this a whistle? Was this a hiss? Is this other thing?
(25:04):
Are we describing the wind as hissing? Or is the
wind whistling? How do we think of these? And that
connection between whistling and the wind uh is important in
other regards as well when we get into superstition and magic.
But Stikellenberg also gets into some other areas that I
hadn't even really thought about in connection to whistling. For instance,
the subject of cat calls uh not to be confused
(25:28):
with the wolf whistle. So this is interesting because I
think I would tend to think when I hear cat calls,
I tend to think of of what sti Kellenberg is
actually describing as the wolf whistle. Um. So Stakellenburg points
out that we do have clear Roman references to to
the cat call, to some kind of whistling used offensively
(25:51):
against actors, speakers, or performers in order to drive them
off the stage. You don't like the performers on the stage,
you don't like the speaker, Well, everybody just just sort
of whistles at them. They just kind of use a
bunch of these these cat calls in order to drive
them away. So whistling as just straightforward harassment or abuse. Yes. Uh,
(26:13):
Cicero even makes reference to the Cisero. Of course, they
have the famous rator who lived one of six to
forty three BC. Basically, it's a it's a letter from
Cicero to Atticus, and he's boasting about how popular he
is and how the last time he gave a particular
of speech he did not hear a single shepherd's whistle. Uh.
(26:36):
So the idea is that he's referring to a complete
absence of cat calls during his appearance because it was
just so captivating. And apparently the language is key here,
because if Cisero had been referring to hissing instead of whistling,
he would have used a different particular bit of terminology. Okay,
So while earlier STI Kellenberg was arguing that we don't
(26:57):
have references to fictional characters in Roman literature whistling, there
are some references to whistling in the in the broader
sort of descriptive literature about society. Yeah, and so, first
of all, this cat call area, which, um, you know,
my mind didn't go to here immediately. And also I
don't know that I've encountered this much. Maybe I just
(27:17):
haven't been to performances uh in a while where uh
that there were that were where there was like a
negative audience experience that is, I don't think that's maybe
where at least like modern Western audiences are going to
go immediately if they want to express their negative feelings,
like they're probably gonna boo or something. Right, Yeah, I'd
(27:38):
say booing is is more common in American culture. Yeah,
I've never heard an audience whistle as a form of disapproval. Well,
apparently it was such a thing that it was and
still is at least at the writing this was again
written in two thousand in the British theater, that whistling
(27:58):
was just such a fear like this would be the
force trying to drive you off the stage. That whistling
was was just not done in a British theater dressing room. Um,
and it's possibly linked to this now Stickkellenberg stresses that
there seems to be a divide between whistling uh on
with the British stage and the American stage again as
(28:19):
of two thousand. Anyway, when this was written, pointing out
that okay, sometimes it seems okay and positive for American
audiences to whistle at the performers on stage, and this
this does click for me. I know, I've been to
performances where there's a certain amount of whistling, clapping, wooing,
you know, all sorts of different sounds that are made
as a positive sound at the end of her performance.
(28:43):
Uh you relations as well, um, you know, various different
um non verbal sounds. But but this could include whistling,
whereas in the British context you still wouldn't whistle. You
might have you know, gotten a dirty look from uh
from from England theater goers if you were there whistling
at the end of a performance of Shakespeare and you
(29:05):
were trying to say, oh, this is great, I'm gonna whistle.
So you're saying that might have been interpreted by some
as like praising a performance by yelling get off the stage.
Yeah yeah. Uh. Now, finally Stakellenberg gets to this, this
topic of wolf whistling, which again is what I thought
what a cat call was. But I guess I had
(29:26):
my terminology mixed up. On that uh, the wolf whistle
is a whistle to indicate sexual interest, not unlike a
cartoon wolf in an old animated short. Now, I was
reading a little bit about people trying to locate the
origin of the wolf whistle, which is a specific intonation.
It's like a rising whistle followed by a falling whistle.
(29:47):
You can probably hear it in your head right now,
woo woo. And for a while there was an explanation
going around that this was traceable back to uh specific
whistles used on naval ships, that there were like a
whistle with that intonation would be used to get sailor's attention.
But I've also seen some undermining of that explanation, so
I'm not sure if it's exactly known where the the
(30:10):
the sexual harassment form of the whistle comes from. Yeah,
and when we go to look for evidence in antiquity,
this is another case where Stickmenberg says, there's just we
just don't know. There's like one account of possible wolf
whistling and Platius's mercater This would have been from the
very early fifth century, and it's unclear if it's a
(30:31):
hiss or a whistle. Once again, it might have been
so it might have been a hiss, could have been
a whistle, some other sound of the mouth even thank Okay,
but Rob, I think we should switch over to talking
about some of the superstitions about whistling, because whistling apparently
(30:52):
is widely believed in many cultures to have some kind
of power, often negative power, beyond just being perceived of
as rude or or a form of harassment or something
like that, that it actually could have dangerous magical power.
That's right, Yeah, they're they're numerous examples of this discuss
and they have some similar trends. There's sort of the
(31:13):
idea of of whistling as wind magic and therefore their
potential elemental uh ramifications for whistling, especially kind of reckless whistling.
I guess that's what a lot of these teams to
get to the idea that when we whistle, we're engaging
in some sort of wind magic and we probably don't
know what we're doing and the effects could just be
(31:34):
completely out of control. Other ideas are that whistling is
some sort of connection to the spirit world, and whistling
can summon or attract the attention of things that we
don't want the attention of and uh and so forth.
Then there are also some other sort of environmental specific
examples that get into the dangers of whistling. You know,
(31:56):
I don't have um proof that this is the the
causal connection here, but I wonder if a lot of
these beliefs about the supernatural power of whistling comes from
the linguistic tradition of associating spirits with breath. You know,
like in Greek you would often use the same word
(32:16):
to indicate both that like a person's breath leaving their
body would be the numa, which is the same word
you use to indicate a certain kind of animating divine spirit,
or like the holy ghost the numa. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I imagine there might be something to that. Now. The
first idea I want to touch on, though, it's just
(32:38):
the idea of and this is a pretty big one,
whistling at sea uh and and this is discussed in
a paper by Christina Whole that is titled Superstitions and
Belief of the State. This came out in the nineteen
sixty seven edition of the journal Folklore, and in it
she writes that at least in Western traditions, the whistle
was just a bad omen as it created a little
(32:59):
wind quote and by imitative magic may produce a greater one.
So you've got to be careful whistling because that whistle
could turn into a fearsome gale that could blow the
ship over, etcetera. And that's if men did it, and
if women did it, it could be even worse because
it's kind of like the ideas it seems very sexist here.
It's kind of like, well, if men are at sea
(33:20):
and they are near a boat and they're whistling, they
might accidentally bring about a catastrophic wind that destroys everything.
But if a woman's doing well, she might be a
wind summoning, which she might actually know what she's doing,
and that's even more dangerous. Yes, So either way, though,
whistling at sea was bad luck for anybody. The rare
exception whole rights is that you did have cases where
(33:42):
you'd have sailors stuck at sea in a dead calm,
so they're out there on the ship and there's no wind,
the ship is not moving. It's the it's the opposite
of the threat of the catastrophic wind. It's the threat
of no wind and a slow death out on the waters.
So in some of these cases there are accounts of
(34:02):
of of the sailors daring to make like small whistle
slight whistles, and the hopes that they'll stir up just
enough when to get them out of this predicament. Oh,
this is this is the scene from the horror movie
where a character is in such a jam that they
have no choice but to do do the dangerous ritual
that they have been warned against by a wise old person. Yeah,
(34:23):
so I thought this was an interesting paper in general,
this one by Christina hole Uh and she argues that
the sea is a place where old, otherwise long vanished
tensions between gods and religions tend to rise up again.
And part of the explanation here is that for many Pagans,
the sea not only had a god, but in a
(34:45):
in a sense kind of was a god. It was
like a living entity with thoughts and desires and whims,
and the sea brought both blessings and curses. It's you know,
it's the bringer of riches, but it can also destroy.
And for this reason, proba wably god's embodying the sea
are often depicted as temperamental, unpredictable, alternately generous and murderous.
(35:07):
And one interesting fact I've never heard before, but Whole
talks about how in uh in European seafaring traditions, for
hundreds of years, priests, nuns, and clergy have been considered
bad luck on the sea, like you don't want to
carry monks or nuns on board. And she even tells
the story of a sea voyage taken by a friend
(35:27):
of hers, which, when I think it was crossing the Atlantic,
had some Trappist monks on board, and the sailors were
blaming the monks for the fact that there was bad
weather and the boat kept rolling and everybody was nauseated
and throwing up. So in many cases, you're on a
boat and you not only do you not want to
be carrying monks or nuns or whatever, you don't even
(35:47):
want to say a word like priest. So why would
that be You would think, okay, these are these are
Christian sailors, so they would at least probably think that
the clergy would be a good omen, not bad. But
the author here speculates as follows quote, these beliefs have
nothing to do with anti clerical feeling, and many who
hold them are devout Christians win on land. They probably
(36:11):
run back to that transition period when Paganism was slowly
giving way to Christianity, and many people, especially those who
like sailors, lead a dangerous life, had a foot in
both camps, acknowledging Christ on shore but taking care not
to offend the old gods when at sea. Moreover, whatever
was holy and consecrated was once regarded as a center
(36:34):
of mystical power, which was as likely to be dangerous
as to be beneficent, and was therefore to be guarded against.
And so of course that's just an interpretation. We don't
know that's the reasoning here. It's always hard to get
at the ultimate reasoning for folk beliefs, but that seems
plausible to me, and I really like that there. It's
the idea that there's a power in it, and just
(36:55):
the fact that there's a power in it is dangerous.
Even if the priest is supposedly the good based on
your current religious beliefs, just the fact that the priesthood
is a center of power makes it potentially dangerous when
you're in a dangerous situation like the sea. And I
think you could maybe say the same thing of whistling itself,
that whistling is perceived as having a power, and therefore,
(37:18):
even if the power isn't always evil, it's just the
fact that there is the power in it that makes
it scary. Yeah. Yeah, all this on top of just
sort of the other idea of falling back into older
beliefs when things heat up, when you're in a dangerous place,
and of course again this is the ocean, it is
inherently dangerous, and therefore, yeah, you can imagine this this
(37:40):
not only this idea of like I'm gonna slide back
into over belief systems because I feel like there's heightened danger.
But I wonder too, you have if you have more
specific gods and traditions that you can fall back on. Whereas,
you know, the new Christianity it might not it might
not have any like specific things you can do to
avoid uh a watery death. But the old ways they
(38:03):
might have had particular rights, particular things you could do,
things you were not supposed to do, a path you
might follow through the uncertain which I think, you know,
I think some of us might be able to relate
to that in a modern sense too, Like it's you
can have more of an atheistic mindset. Uh. When you're
on the airplane and there's no turbulence, but when the
(38:23):
turbulence kicks in, well, what can you do? You might
you might let a prayer slip out here there, just
because you know, if if there is nothing practically you
can do in that scenario beyond you know, the obvious
safety parameters. Uh, then then there are these other scripts
you can turn to, these other uh models of of
(38:46):
reality that at least give you, like somewhere to devote
your attention and and just from the to the standpoint
of the ocean. I mean, we could easily come back
and discuss these greater length. You get their whole lists
of various bad had luck omens that include things like,
of course the albatross is tied up in some of these,
but also things like bananas, and then various interesting um
(39:08):
like touch based uh positive good luck, like everyone has
to touch the same part of the ship. Um that
sort of thing, collar touching. I think cats end up
playing a role in some of these. Uh. So yeah,
there there it's a whole interesting world of like the
heightened danger of the sea and some of the superstitious
approaches to survival on the sea. Apparently seeing a drowned
(39:30):
cat was one of the worst omens. She says that
would sometimes make people just turn around and go back.
Oh wow oh. But to come back to whistling. Another
thing that Christina Holt says here is that it whistling
is not just a locusts of superstition on the sea.
There seemed to be all kinds of fears about the
(39:52):
power of whistling even on land, right, and that she
gets into this idea again that whistling may attract the
attention of things that you don't want to attract. Uh
And and some of these relate to the sea, some
or more related to the land. She points that in
the East Anglian Thins sportsman out at night never whistled
(40:13):
to their dog because they might call up the lantern man,
which would have been a type of willow the wisp
creature that you did not want attracted to your whereabouts. Yeah,
fire fiend. And you know what, I wonder if there
is just a general similar line of thinking, or if
it could actually be based in that biblical passage about
you know again, one of the oldest references to whistling
(40:35):
as a signal to like attract attention. Is God whistling
to attract the attention of a ravaging army that will
come and destroy you. Yeah uh now in terms of
this is an interesting one. This one was when I
read and Carol Rose and her Compendium of Monsters. She
points to the merman known as the Denny Mara that
(40:57):
was considered a threat in some case by by the
people of the Isle of Man, the Manx people. Generally
the man of the sea that anymara was generally more
benevolent than other forms of the myth because you have some, um,
you have some truly awful mirror creatures out there in
the world of folklore. But this one in particular, though,
(41:19):
if you were to whistle, you could stir stir him
up and cause excess wind. So on one hand, it's
kind of a supernatural creature whose attention you might get
through whistling. But also we get back into the basic
wind magic of the thing, like, be careful whistling. You're
toying with the wind magic, and you're at sea, and
that's where the wind is particularly dangerous, and the least
little thing can stir it up. Hole mentions another omen
(41:43):
related to whistling and that is the omen of the
seven whistlers. And this from from her description, it sounds
basically like a particular chorus of bird song that would
spell disaster for those who heard it, particularly say, before
a battle. Now, coming back at least briefly to us
to Kellenberg's to Kellenberg points to Roman writer Colomela, who
(42:05):
shares that whistling could be used to encourage oxen to drink,
which which to Kellenberg, links to the possible sound similarities
between whistling and flowing water. So again, instead of the wind,
this time we're talking about water and we're talking about
the similarities of the sound here. Um, this idea seems
to have survived into English traditions concerning horses at least
(42:27):
into the sixteenth century. But wait, so if you're an
ancient Roman, you can whistle to make oxen drink. But
will that make Oxen lie in your bed? I'm not
I'm not certain about that. Now. Uh, somebody who has
Roman history knowledge it, can you explain the ox in
the bed metaphor? To us? I want to know what
that means. It is interesting that to think about this
(42:48):
idea of like the whistle as a sound that is
imitating not birds or other organisms, but but imitating elemental
forces the wind or in this case, the water, and
therefore allowing just the average person to tap in to
those the streams of of terrific and at times, you know,
catastrophic energies. Well, I would also say the same thing
(43:12):
for hissing. Hissing kind of takes away your humanity. You're
you're you don't sound like a person speaking or expressing
an opinion. You sound like a hostile animal or even
a hostile landscape. M I guess sometimes there is hissing
in theater, right, like a negative that's hiss at the villain. Yeah, yeah,
you you know, you boo hiss when the Yago comes
(43:34):
on stage or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, all right, we're looking
at the clock now and we realize that we're out
of time for this episode. But oh we we have.
We still have a lot more. So we're gonna go
to a four parter on whistling, but we've got some
great stuff to come back to. We're going to dive
back in a bit to some Eastern traditions of of
magic and whistling. We're going to discuss some more examples
(43:55):
of whistling superstition, and folklore. Um, and then oh, we're
gonna get into the psychology of whistling a bit as well.
Does the spirit dwell within you if it does, come
back and expel that breath one more time? Yeah? Is
it okay to whistle while you work? Should we be
listening to dwarves on this matter? To begin with? Will
the bit'll all be discussed in the next episode in
(44:17):
the meantime, If you would like to check out other
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(44:39):
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(45:01):
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen me to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Manam and I'm Joe McCormick, and
we're back with part three of our series on whistling. Now,
if you haven't heard the first two parts, you might
want to go check those out first. In the In
(00:25):
the previous sections, we talked about the physics of what
happens in the mouth when you whistle. We talked about
whistling based languages or variants of languages, and we talked
about the fascinating practice of Chinese transcendental whistling, as well
as some various psychonautical beliefs about the world changing power
(00:46):
of whistling. But today it might be interesting to turn
our eyes to ancient history and say, did people whistle
in the ancient world? And if so, how would we
know about it. This is such a great question that
I've never really thought about because I kind of took
it for granted, like, this is a sound that the
human body can make, Therefore people would have made this sound,
(01:08):
and uh, you know, I think for the most part
this is a a good way of looking at it. Things.
But then the other side of the equation is all right, well,
let's look at the evidence. What evidence do we have
in the literature of the ancient world that people whistled?
And then and then if they did whistle, well, what
are the attitudes concerning whistling? Because one thing that I
think we've already been able to distress in this series
(01:30):
is that that whistling is fascinating as it is, it
is not a a neutral thing. We end up having
these various cultural and uh and as we'll discuss, superstitious
weights attached to the practice of whistling. You know, I'm
just generally fascinated by the idea of ancient music. I
guess in part because for the most part, we don't
(01:50):
know what it sounded like. And so when you find,
for example, people who have tried to render into performances
some of the oldest recorded like a written notation of
music that we have, such as the the famous Hurrian
songs or Hurryan hymns that are from the ancient city
of Yugurit, which are these hymns to the goddess nicoll Uh.
(02:11):
They're they're written on cune of form tablets, and people
have tried to turn that music notation into performances that
you can hear today, and it's very haunting. Uh. The
same is true. I think there's an ancient Greek tombstone
that has some music notation on it that has been
translated into modern music. I think it's known as the
sec Loss or sec Loss epitaph. And when you hear
(02:35):
those sounds, they really do feel very alien. They're like
they're from another world. Uh, And it just it opens
the mind all these possibilities that the the ancient world
was full of music that we will never know because
it wasn't recorded, of course it couldn't be, and it
also wasn't written down or notated in any way that
we can understand today. Yeah. Yeah, all this is definitely
(02:59):
worth thinking about and again and coming down to like
why is whistling important enough to take note of? Uh?
You know, this is a question that that remains on
one's mind as we look at these these different examples.
But what the main paper that I was looking at
that was really getting into this was a two thousand
paper by A. V. Van Stickellenberg titled Whistling in Antiquity,
(03:22):
and the author dives into like the basic question of
what evidence do we have that particularly the ancient Greeks
and the ancient Romans whistled or didn't whistle. And again,
on one hand, it's hard to believe that they didn't
and uh and stick Ellenberg points out that we know
the Romans, for instance, had many songs for different occasions,
and yet whistling was would also probably have been considered
(03:43):
vulgar and not something that a person of status would
do compared to other sounds that one might make. Proper
romans were not even supposed to sing, for example, I
did not know that, not me neither uh and yet
uh Stikellenberg writes, quote whistling a tune with there for
not have been compatible with the characters of many, if
not most, of the persona in ancient literature. Apart from that, however,
(04:07):
it is a remarkable fact that we also never meet
a slave, a fisherman, pimp, or soldier whistling a tune,
not even in comedy. So whatt Callenberry is pointing out
here is that, Okay, if if whistling is not the
proper thing to do, it's not the thing that you're
your heroes and your your your proper romans would would
have done. Well, what about the the improper characters in
(04:29):
your various writings. Surely somebody would come around, come along,
and they would whistle, and by whistling, signify that they
are an improper character and therefore deserving of ridicule or
the villain of the piece, that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah,
I mean not uh. When you look at what kind
of Roman literature survives to us, it's not all uh
(04:50):
lofty uh royal drama. You know, there are some really
body satirical Roman literature that still exists today. And so
you would expect the characters in this to engage in
all manner of vulgarity that the Romans knew about. Yeah,
like I think of our own cinematic history here and
also this in the literature as well. Spitting, uh, spitting
(05:11):
on the ground in front of you generally considered uncouth,
but in most circles, and yet you definitely see it
a lot in cinema because it's a great way to
establish that, well, this character is a little rough around
the edges. Um, and I think the Cowboy movies where
they're spitting, or Corman McCarthy novels where there's a lot
of spitting. So what Stikellenberg is saying, is that even
(05:33):
though we have Roman literature that has lower class characters
and characters who are understood as doing body and vulgar things,
we never in the existing corpus see them whistling, or
almost never seems to be the case, though Stikellenberg does
point out a few areas where we're not entirely sure,
and this is where we get into, uh, the the
(05:55):
imprecise nature of language and translations um. They point to
a part in Petronius satiricn from the first century CE
that describes a person who quote put his hand to
his mouth and whistled out some terrible stuff I couldn't identify.
Afterwards he told us it was Greek air. Now, it's
(06:15):
apparently an open question if the if the proper translation
is whistling, and if it is whistling, what what what
are we really talking about? Is it whistling like or
is it finger whistling where you create, you know, the
loud sound by blowing through your fingers, or is this
just bad singing? The idea that uh, you know, some
sounds are coming out of this person's mouth. They call
(06:36):
it Greek air. It's just bad singing. Oh, I see
so like, Uh, in order to be insulting, you might
describe someone singing as wheezing or something. Yeah, that sort
of thing. They point out that even today, a fictional
character whistling often means that they're they're what like they
think of a whistling character in a film you've seen.
It often means they're care free, or they're happy, or
(06:58):
there perhaps a bit of a doo fit. Uh. Sometimes
the whistling is like, what's going to happen to this
poor dope that's just whistling and a little uh um,
unprepared for the circumstances ahead of them. Does Buster Scruggs whistle?
I feel like he does. I think he does, if
memory serves when you know and and the Cohen Brothers
Buster scrugs the first bit in that anthology film. Yeah,
(07:22):
he's this so this white suited cowboy who at first
we think, yeah, he's just too he's just too much
of a goody two shoes. He's just gonna be eat
up by the world that he's writing into. And of
course we find out that he's more than a match
for the violence of the world. Yeah, I guess that
is the joke that he's like the whistling, singing cowboy.
But he's also a cold blooded killer. Yeah, that fabulous short.
(07:46):
I love that. Um. But at any right, we we
do see some variations on this. For instance, stickle Berg
points out that in Western literature we see whistling associated
with the Squire and the Canterbury Tales in the fourteenth century. Uh.
And this is a quote here singing he was or
fluting all the day. Uh. This is from the prologue.
(08:07):
And I guess the fluting here is what might be whistling,
fluting without a flute. That that's what I've always called
whistling Stackallenburg points out that, okay, this character, though the Squire,
is also a lusty lout, and we don't really see
a precursor to this character type in Roman and Greek writing.
But but here we have an early example of the
(08:29):
lusty lout who is also potentially whistling stick. Gallenburg also
raises the question of uh, perhaps humming was more common
than whistling. But the problem there is we also don't
know much about humming in antiquity either the right quote.
Whatever the case, whistling apparently formed no part of the
paral linguistic stock used by Greek and Roman authors. This
(08:52):
stock was considerable, as recent studies show, and a few
studies are cited from UH from the ninety nineties and
include such emotional indicators as jumping for joy and nail biting.
So saying here that, okay, if you're gonna have characters
do things to indicate, um, you know, what's going on
in their heads are kind of emotions they're supposed to
be emoting on the stage or on the on the page,
(09:15):
whatever the case may be. Uh, you're gonna have things
that are being used like jumping for joy, like nail biting,
and yet there's no whistling. Now, they also get into
this concept of whistling in the dark a bit, which
of course is a well worn turn of phrase for us,
in which one whistles to stave off fear. One of
my favorite examples of this, or at least one that
I think I encountered the earliest and therefore I always
(09:35):
think about this is the Ichabod Crane and Headless Horseman
cartoon from Disney. This was in the Adventures of Ichabod
and Mr Toad, though this would have been This was
also a segment that was often aired on Disney TV
Halloween specials, So there's definitely some whistling in the dark
in that one, and of course it doesn't really work
(09:57):
um Ultimately, the things in the aren't come out to
chase about crane around. Now, Rob, maybe we will get
more into this in a subsequent part when we talk
about some psychology. I'm I'm not sure, but maybe. But anyway,
I wonder what you think of the function of whistling
in this type of scenario where you're afraid. Maybe you're
(10:18):
wandering by yourself past a graveyard or wandering by yourself
in the dark, and there's a breeze blowing through the
trees and you're a little bit apprehensive, so you start
to whistle. Now, I think the phrase like whistling past
the graveyard or whistling in the dark is supposed to
denote like somebody showing bravado. You know, they're saying they're
(10:39):
like trying to show off that they're not afraid, when
in fact they are. But what I noticed, and that
comes up in the example I just mentioned, is that
people often do this when they're alone, when there's nobody
there to see them, nobody to show off too. So
if whistling is to show off that you're not afraid.
It seems like the showing off must either or be
(11:00):
to yourself somehow, or to like the scary creature that
you imagine is watching you. Yeah, it would have to
be one or the other. But I guess in some
of these cases, and especially when you think about graveyards,
there's definitely an imagined other out there. And it might
not be an imagined other that you give a lot
of weight most of the time, but at least right
(11:21):
now it's on your mind. So we're gonna get into
several different examples of whistling as a potential means of
summoning or accidentally summoning or drawing the attention of things
that that should not be drawn in uh to your vicinity.
So on one level, yeah, it seems a bit a
(11:41):
bit um uh dangerous if you're gonna actually fall in
along with some of these supernatural beliefs, like I don't
want to to summon the devil if I'm afraid of
the devil coming out of the graveyard at me. But
maybe part of it is like proving like not only
am I not afraid of the devil in the graveyard,
I'll go ahead and summon him. If he's here, he
come on out, and we'll go ahead and do this.
(12:02):
But I'm done with just being afraid of the devil
somewhere hiding in the graveyard. Okay, But I guess the
question is whether it's actually whistling or whether it's just
singing or humming some version of this idea singing when
you're afraid or singing through the graveyard. Does this come
up in ancient history as well? Do we have any
evidence of this from thousands of years ago? It seems
(12:23):
like we might. Uh's to Calenberg brings up another example
again from Petronius, and this is again from the satiricn
and it also concerns a werewolf. Did you know that
there were ancient Roman stories about werewolves? There absolutely are, Yeah,
and it's a This one's a pretty good one. Um
this is I'm gonna read part of it at least.
(12:44):
This is from a um Hesseltine translation. Quote. I seized
my opportunity and persuaded a guest in our house to
come with me as far as the fifth Milestone. He
was a soldier and as brave as hell, so we
trotted off about cockrow, the moon shone like high noon.
We got among the tombstones. My man went aside to
(13:06):
look at the epitaphs. I sat down with my heart
full of song, and began to count the graves. M
So sta Kellenberg writes the following on this, how tempting
to interpret this scene as a clever application of psychological
paral language, which has a superstitious and frightened slave indulged
in an ancient equivalent of our whistling in the dark.
(13:29):
Since the kntar represents many forms of musical expressions, we
would even be justified in translating it here with whistling. Unfortunately,
there is no straightforward indication that Petroni has had this
in mind. Okay, so, despite the fact that our expression
is often like whistling past the graveyard or whistling in
the graveyard, Um, this is a word cantare, which, in
(13:53):
whatever its Latin form is, could have meant whistling, but
could also just mean singing. Right. Yeah, So again we
get into the the imprecise nature of language, which continues
to be a theme with trying to figure out whistling
or not whistling, or making other sounds and various old texts.
You know, this is kind of a tangent, But I
feel like, since we're on the werewolf story, it would
be kind of a shame not to tell the werewolf story.
(14:14):
What happens in this story by Paternius here, okay, I can.
I can read the next little bit, which I think
brings it to a nice closure. Then when I looked
round at my friend, he stripped himself and put all
his clothes by the roadside. My heart was in my mouth,
but I stood like a dead man. He made a
ring of water around his clothes and suddenly turned into
a wolf. Please do not think I am joking. I
(14:36):
would not lie about this for any fortune in the world.
But as I was saying, after he had turned into
a wolf, he began to howl and ran off into
the woods. At first I hardly knew where I was.
Then I went up to take his clothes, and they
had all turned to stone. No one could be near
dead with terror than I was. But I drew my
sword and went slaying shadows all the way till I
(14:57):
came to my love's house. I went in like a corpse,
nearly gave up the ghost. The sweat ran down my legs,
my eyes were dull. I could hardly be revived my beer.
Melissa was surprised at my state, at my being out
so late, and said, if you had come earlier, you
might at least have helped us. A wolf got into
the house and worried all our sheep and let their
blood like a butcher. But he did not make fools
(15:19):
of us, even though he got off for our slave
made a hole in his neck with a spear. When
I heard this, I could not keep my eyes shut
any longer. But at break of day I rushed back
to my master giuss house like a defrauded publican. And
when I came to the place where the clothes were
turned into stone, I found nothing but a pool of blood.
But when I reached home, my soldier was lying in
(15:40):
bed like an ox, with a doctor looking after his neck.
I realized that he was a werewolf, and I never
could sit down to a meal with him afterwards, not
if you had killed me first. Other people may think
what they like about this, but may all your guardian
angels punish me if I am lying. Wow, that's pretty
fun and pretty staple werewolf sort of story. There. It's
(16:03):
a great werewolf story. But my biggest question is do
oxes normally lie in human beds? What does he mean
I was lying in my bed like an ox? Oh no, no,
not him. My soldier was lying in bed like an ox.
I don't know. I'm not sure about that. I feel
like we're we're missing some kind of historical context there. Yeah,
I mean maybe it's like he's light, his body is
(16:24):
like that of an ox. I don't know. I don't
nothing comes to mind when I try and picture an
ox laying down. But yeah, it's really funny. Okay, So
this is the satir con by Petronius is first century
uh CE, so it's like two thousand years later, and
werewolf movies are still using the exact same trope where
somebody figures out it's a werewolf because they see the
(16:45):
monster get wounded on a certain part of the body,
and then later they see a human wounded on the
same part of the body. That's in like half the
werewolf movies they make Yeah, if it ain't broke, don't
fix it, right. And I think if I've seen this
in other animal transform and myths and stories before, like
perhaps some were tigers stories from China and so forth,
I agree it still works than alright. So for the
(17:15):
next bit, that's the Kellenberg gets into is is that
they break down a couple of things we've kind of
we've at least touched on, if not already to discuss
and when they break these out further later on. But
we have a semaphoric whistling or whistling as a form
of signaling, and this has been around for a very
long time. This is something that goes back to our
KaiC humans. Citing Peter f Otswald, they share quote, whistles
(17:37):
are easier to hear than words because they concentrate sound
energy into a narrow segment of the frequency spectrum instead
of spreading it. Generally, they occur in the frequency range
of one thousand and four thousand cycles per second, to
which the human era is most sensitive. Oh yeah, so
this is the same fact that was cited in slightly
different terms in that linguistics paper that we looked at
(17:58):
in the previous section. Myer, that was about how whistling
tends to be a good medium for transmitting information because
it's in that frequency range of one to four killerherts,
which is a good place to concentrate energy if you
wanted to travel the forest and be audible, uh and
carry distinct information the longest distance, because that's like, that's
(18:19):
that's sort of the bull's eye for what our ears
can detect and separate out from ambient noise. Now, the
next part here is where things get very biblical, because
Sticklenberg points out that the oldest reference to semaphoric use
of whistling can be found in the Book of Isaiah five,
where the Lord whistles to summon people. He uh quote,
(18:42):
he will raise a signal for a nation afar off
and whistle for it from the ends of the earth,
and low, swiftly, speedily it comes. So I started off
looking into this just by checking it in my Oxford
in RSV to see if the translation was different in
any significant way. And it's not that translations almost exactly
the same as what Stickellenberg has here. But in reading
(19:03):
it this passage, I thought I should explain more about
the context because it makes that quote especially interesting and
even scary. This is one of the most I think
one of the most powerful and chilling passages in the
Hebrew Bible. Uh. So what's going on here? Well, this
is actually a prophecy of doom. In this part of
(19:24):
the Book of Isaiah, the author is pronouncing a verdict
of divine judgment and punishment against the people of Israel
and Judah, because he says they have ignored God's instructions
and chosen to live in wickedness. And so there's a
section before this where he's just talking about the evil
they do, and you might recognize some lines from this
(19:44):
because they're pretty famous. The prophet says, ah, you who
call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for
light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter, You who are wise in your
own eyes and shrewd in your own sight, Ah you,
who are heroes in drinking wine and valiant at mixing drink,
(20:04):
who acquit the guilty for a bribe and deprived the
innocent of their rights. Oh man, God coming out strong
against nixed drinks here, Yeah, against mixed drinks and against bribing,
so that the guilty win in court. But then it
starts getting with the really like scary expressive metaphors. From
here it goes into Therefore, as the tongue of fire
(20:25):
devours the stubble, and as dry grass sinks down in
the flame, so their root will become rotten, and their
blossom go up like the dust. For they have rejected
the instruction of the Lord of Hosts, and have despised
the word of the Holy One of Israel. Therefore the
anger of the Lord was kindled against his people, and
he stretched out his hand against them and struck them.
(20:47):
The mountains quaked, and their corpses were like refuse in
the streets. For all this his anger has not turned away,
and his hand is stretched out still. Then comes the
line about God whistling. From that it goes straight into
He will raise a signal for a nation far away,
and whistle for a people at the ends of the earth.
(21:07):
Here they come swiftly, speedily, And in this line the
people being referenced there, who are they? These are the
armies of the Assyrian Empire, and described in the following
passages in terrifying detail. The prophet says, they march without rest.
Their arrows are sharp, their horses hoofs are like flint,
their wheels like a whirlwind. They roar like lions. They
(21:31):
roar like the sea. And at in saying, the light
grows dark with clouds, And so the prophet is saying
here that the Lord will whistle to summon an invading
army to slaughter his people because they have done evil
and turned away from him. Wow. So first he does
recks and de stabilizes everything uh in this sinful nation,
(21:53):
and then he calls to an invading army to come
on over and finish him off. Yes, and the whistle here,
I think that takes on a totally different context that
makes it a whistle of absolute terror from on high.
It is something that should chill you to the bone.
But then it gets even stranger because the Callenberg points
(22:13):
out that the Hebrew word for whistle here leaves some
room for interpretation. And apparently there's still some discussion about this,
with some arguing that what we're talking about here is
indeed a whistle, but others say that it is a hiss,
the hiss of God. Wow. So you shared that fact
with me earlier, and I don't know what to do
(22:34):
that that is one of the scariest images I have
ever heard of the hiss of God. I mean, the
whistle is already scarier with the additional context that you
provided here, but but the idea of of God God
hissing and especially in in such a wrathful mode of behavior.
Uh yeah, it's it's kind of chilling, Okay. But so
(22:55):
if there's some ambiguity in the translation here, I guess
that would mean that whatever word is used has something
to do clearly with like a an expressive expelling of breath. Yeah,
and that's the thing we're getting into breath language here,
and and breath related sounds. And apparently in in various
ancient texts, there's a fair amount of leeway and how
(23:15):
we might think of a hiss or a whistle as
it relates to not only human sounds but also non
human sounds like leaves, arrows in the wind. Uh quote.
Hissing and whistling, when produced by humans, results the same
interaction between respiratory and oral agents. The only difference is
that in hissing, the oral obstruction placed in the way
of the airstream is the teeth, while in the case
(23:37):
of whistling, it is the lips. In antiquity, this difference
was apparently felt as too slight for differentiation between the
two sounds and for the establishment of separate terminology. The
lack of differentiation continues in some of the daughter languages.
Wow That's interesting because so we're we're trying to understand
the cultural significance of whistling, which in our context very
(23:59):
often means something like, you know, it's just kind of
like innocent, care free soundmaking, whereas a hiss, I think,
is almost universally acknowledged to be one of the most
hostile sounds a person could make. Yes, um, my son
would would hiss for a while. I forget where he
picked this up, Like there's something animal world, you know,
kids have the central affinity with animals. But I always
(24:22):
always approved of it because I'm like, yes, if if,
if threatened, like hissing sends a certain signal like that,
we're we're past language now. Now we're in a hissing
hissing zone. I am I am so mad at you.
I've become an animal. I am a snake. I am
a cat. It was probably a cat connection for sure. Um. Now,
the Kelenberg points to various examples in Greek writings, including Homer,
(24:44):
in which we also encounter this hiss whisper confusion. Both
are non verbal language substitutes. They point out that there
is still a distinct difference. Uh, you know, at least
you know, to our our modern understanding of all this.
But yeah, it's it just becomes difficult to try and
sort all of this, especially in these ancient texts. Was
this a whistle? Was this a hiss? Is this other thing?
(25:04):
Are we describing the wind as hissing? Or is the
wind whistling? How do we think of these? And that
connection between whistling and the wind uh is important in
other regards as well when we get into superstition and magic.
But Stikellenberg also gets into some other areas that I
hadn't even really thought about in connection to whistling. For instance,
the subject of cat calls uh not to be confused
(25:28):
with the wolf whistle. So this is interesting because I
think I would tend to think when I hear cat calls,
I tend to think of of what sti Kellenberg is
actually describing as the wolf whistle. Um. So Stakellenburg points
out that we do have clear Roman references to to
the cat call, to some kind of whistling used offensively
(25:51):
against actors, speakers, or performers in order to drive them
off the stage. You don't like the performers on the stage,
you don't like the speaker, Well, everybody just just sort
of whistles at them. They just kind of use a
bunch of these these cat calls in order to drive
them away. So whistling as just straightforward harassment or abuse. Yes. Uh,
(26:13):
Cicero even makes reference to the Cisero. Of course, they
have the famous rator who lived one of six to
forty three BC. Basically, it's a it's a letter from
Cicero to Atticus, and he's boasting about how popular he
is and how the last time he gave a particular
of speech he did not hear a single shepherd's whistle. Uh.
(26:36):
So the idea is that he's referring to a complete
absence of cat calls during his appearance because it was
just so captivating. And apparently the language is key here,
because if Cisero had been referring to hissing instead of whistling,
he would have used a different particular bit of terminology. Okay,
So while earlier STI Kellenberg was arguing that we don't
(26:57):
have references to fictional characters in Roman literature whistling, there
are some references to whistling in the in the broader
sort of descriptive literature about society. Yeah, and so, first
of all, this cat call area, which, um, you know,
my mind didn't go to here immediately. And also I
don't know that I've encountered this much. Maybe I just
(27:17):
haven't been to performances uh in a while where uh
that there were that were where there was like a
negative audience experience that is, I don't think that's maybe
where at least like modern Western audiences are going to
go immediately if they want to express their negative feelings,
like they're probably gonna boo or something. Right, Yeah, I'd
(27:38):
say booing is is more common in American culture. Yeah,
I've never heard an audience whistle as a form of disapproval. Well,
apparently it was such a thing that it was and
still is at least at the writing this was again
written in two thousand in the British theater, that whistling
(27:58):
was just such a fear like this would be the
force trying to drive you off the stage. That whistling
was was just not done in a British theater dressing room. Um,
and it's possibly linked to this now Stickkellenberg stresses that
there seems to be a divide between whistling uh on
with the British stage and the American stage again as
(28:19):
of two thousand. Anyway, when this was written, pointing out
that okay, sometimes it seems okay and positive for American
audiences to whistle at the performers on stage, and this
this does click for me. I know, I've been to
performances where there's a certain amount of whistling, clapping, wooing,
you know, all sorts of different sounds that are made
as a positive sound at the end of her performance.
(28:43):
Uh you relations as well, um, you know, various different
um non verbal sounds. But but this could include whistling,
whereas in the British context you still wouldn't whistle. You
might have you know, gotten a dirty look from uh
from from England theater goers if you were there whistling
at the end of a performance of Shakespeare and you
(29:05):
were trying to say, oh, this is great, I'm gonna whistle.
So you're saying that might have been interpreted by some
as like praising a performance by yelling get off the stage.
Yeah yeah. Uh. Now, finally Stakellenberg gets to this, this
topic of wolf whistling, which again is what I thought
what a cat call was. But I guess I had
(29:26):
my terminology mixed up. On that uh, the wolf whistle
is a whistle to indicate sexual interest, not unlike a
cartoon wolf in an old animated short. Now, I was
reading a little bit about people trying to locate the
origin of the wolf whistle, which is a specific intonation.
It's like a rising whistle followed by a falling whistle.
(29:47):
You can probably hear it in your head right now,
woo woo. And for a while there was an explanation
going around that this was traceable back to uh specific
whistles used on naval ships, that there were like a
whistle with that intonation would be used to get sailor's attention.
But I've also seen some undermining of that explanation, so
I'm not sure if it's exactly known where the the
(30:10):
the sexual harassment form of the whistle comes from. Yeah,
and when we go to look for evidence in antiquity,
this is another case where Stickmenberg says, there's just we
just don't know. There's like one account of possible wolf
whistling and Platius's mercater This would have been from the
very early fifth century, and it's unclear if it's a
(30:31):
hiss or a whistle. Once again, it might have been
so it might have been a hiss, could have been
a whistle, some other sound of the mouth even thank Okay,
but Rob, I think we should switch over to talking
about some of the superstitions about whistling, because whistling apparently
(30:52):
is widely believed in many cultures to have some kind
of power, often negative power, beyond just being perceived of
as rude or or a form of harassment or something
like that, that it actually could have dangerous magical power.
That's right, Yeah, they're they're numerous examples of this discuss
and they have some similar trends. There's sort of the
(31:13):
idea of of whistling as wind magic and therefore their
potential elemental uh ramifications for whistling, especially kind of reckless whistling.
I guess that's what a lot of these teams to
get to the idea that when we whistle, we're engaging
in some sort of wind magic and we probably don't
know what we're doing and the effects could just be
(31:34):
completely out of control. Other ideas are that whistling is
some sort of connection to the spirit world, and whistling
can summon or attract the attention of things that we
don't want the attention of and uh and so forth.
Then there are also some other sort of environmental specific
examples that get into the dangers of whistling. You know,
(31:56):
I don't have um proof that this is the the
causal connection here, but I wonder if a lot of
these beliefs about the supernatural power of whistling comes from
the linguistic tradition of associating spirits with breath. You know,
like in Greek you would often use the same word
(32:16):
to indicate both that like a person's breath leaving their
body would be the numa, which is the same word
you use to indicate a certain kind of animating divine spirit,
or like the holy ghost the numa. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I imagine there might be something to that. Now. The
first idea I want to touch on, though, it's just
(32:38):
the idea of and this is a pretty big one,
whistling at sea uh and and this is discussed in
a paper by Christina Whole that is titled Superstitions and
Belief of the State. This came out in the nineteen
sixty seven edition of the journal Folklore, and in it
she writes that at least in Western traditions, the whistle
was just a bad omen as it created a little
(32:59):
wind quote and by imitative magic may produce a greater one.
So you've got to be careful whistling because that whistle
could turn into a fearsome gale that could blow the
ship over, etcetera. And that's if men did it, and
if women did it, it could be even worse because
it's kind of like the ideas it seems very sexist here.
It's kind of like, well, if men are at sea
(33:20):
and they are near a boat and they're whistling, they
might accidentally bring about a catastrophic wind that destroys everything.
But if a woman's doing well, she might be a
wind summoning, which she might actually know what she's doing,
and that's even more dangerous. Yes, So either way, though,
whistling at sea was bad luck for anybody. The rare
exception whole rights is that you did have cases where
(33:42):
you'd have sailors stuck at sea in a dead calm,
so they're out there on the ship and there's no wind,
the ship is not moving. It's the it's the opposite
of the threat of the catastrophic wind. It's the threat
of no wind and a slow death out on the waters.
So in some of these cases there are accounts of
(34:02):
of of the sailors daring to make like small whistle
slight whistles, and the hopes that they'll stir up just
enough when to get them out of this predicament. Oh,
this is this is the scene from the horror movie
where a character is in such a jam that they
have no choice but to do do the dangerous ritual
that they have been warned against by a wise old person. Yeah,
(34:23):
so I thought this was an interesting paper in general,
this one by Christina hole Uh and she argues that
the sea is a place where old, otherwise long vanished
tensions between gods and religions tend to rise up again.
And part of the explanation here is that for many Pagans,
the sea not only had a god, but in a
(34:45):
in a sense kind of was a god. It was
like a living entity with thoughts and desires and whims,
and the sea brought both blessings and curses. It's you know,
it's the bringer of riches, but it can also destroy.
And for this reason, proba wably god's embodying the sea
are often depicted as temperamental, unpredictable, alternately generous and murderous.
(35:07):
And one interesting fact I've never heard before, but Whole
talks about how in uh in European seafaring traditions, for
hundreds of years, priests, nuns, and clergy have been considered
bad luck on the sea, like you don't want to
carry monks or nuns on board. And she even tells
the story of a sea voyage taken by a friend
(35:27):
of hers, which, when I think it was crossing the Atlantic,
had some Trappist monks on board, and the sailors were
blaming the monks for the fact that there was bad
weather and the boat kept rolling and everybody was nauseated
and throwing up. So in many cases, you're on a
boat and you not only do you not want to
be carrying monks or nuns or whatever, you don't even
(35:47):
want to say a word like priest. So why would
that be You would think, okay, these are these are
Christian sailors, so they would at least probably think that
the clergy would be a good omen, not bad. But
the author here speculates as follows quote, these beliefs have
nothing to do with anti clerical feeling, and many who
hold them are devout Christians win on land. They probably
(36:11):
run back to that transition period when Paganism was slowly
giving way to Christianity, and many people, especially those who
like sailors, lead a dangerous life, had a foot in
both camps, acknowledging Christ on shore but taking care not
to offend the old gods when at sea. Moreover, whatever
was holy and consecrated was once regarded as a center
(36:34):
of mystical power, which was as likely to be dangerous
as to be beneficent, and was therefore to be guarded against.
And so of course that's just an interpretation. We don't
know that's the reasoning here. It's always hard to get
at the ultimate reasoning for folk beliefs, but that seems
plausible to me, and I really like that there. It's
the idea that there's a power in it, and just
(36:55):
the fact that there's a power in it is dangerous.
Even if the priest is supposedly the good based on
your current religious beliefs, just the fact that the priesthood
is a center of power makes it potentially dangerous when
you're in a dangerous situation like the sea. And I
think you could maybe say the same thing of whistling itself,
that whistling is perceived as having a power, and therefore,
(37:18):
even if the power isn't always evil, it's just the
fact that there is the power in it that makes
it scary. Yeah. Yeah, all this on top of just
sort of the other idea of falling back into older
beliefs when things heat up, when you're in a dangerous place,
and of course again this is the ocean, it is
inherently dangerous, and therefore, yeah, you can imagine this this
(37:40):
not only this idea of like I'm gonna slide back
into over belief systems because I feel like there's heightened danger.
But I wonder too, you have if you have more
specific gods and traditions that you can fall back on. Whereas,
you know, the new Christianity it might not it might
not have any like specific things you can do to
avoid uh a watery death. But the old ways they
(38:03):
might have had particular rights, particular things you could do,
things you were not supposed to do, a path you
might follow through the uncertain which I think, you know,
I think some of us might be able to relate
to that in a modern sense too, Like it's you
can have more of an atheistic mindset. Uh. When you're
on the airplane and there's no turbulence, but when the
(38:23):
turbulence kicks in, well, what can you do? You might
you might let a prayer slip out here there, just
because you know, if if there is nothing practically you
can do in that scenario beyond you know, the obvious
safety parameters. Uh, then then there are these other scripts
you can turn to, these other uh models of of
(38:46):
reality that at least give you, like somewhere to devote
your attention and and just from the to the standpoint
of the ocean. I mean, we could easily come back
and discuss these greater length. You get their whole lists
of various bad had luck omens that include things like,
of course the albatross is tied up in some of these,
but also things like bananas, and then various interesting um
(39:08):
like touch based uh positive good luck, like everyone has
to touch the same part of the ship. Um that
sort of thing, collar touching. I think cats end up
playing a role in some of these. Uh. So yeah,
there there it's a whole interesting world of like the
heightened danger of the sea and some of the superstitious
approaches to survival on the sea. Apparently seeing a drowned
(39:30):
cat was one of the worst omens. She says that
would sometimes make people just turn around and go back.
Oh wow oh. But to come back to whistling. Another
thing that Christina Holt says here is that it whistling
is not just a locusts of superstition on the sea.
There seemed to be all kinds of fears about the
(39:52):
power of whistling even on land, right, and that she
gets into this idea again that whistling may attract the
attention of things that you don't want to attract. Uh
And and some of these relate to the sea, some
or more related to the land. She points that in
the East Anglian Thins sportsman out at night never whistled
(40:13):
to their dog because they might call up the lantern man,
which would have been a type of willow the wisp
creature that you did not want attracted to your whereabouts. Yeah,
fire fiend. And you know what, I wonder if there
is just a general similar line of thinking, or if
it could actually be based in that biblical passage about
you know again, one of the oldest references to whistling
(40:35):
as a signal to like attract attention. Is God whistling
to attract the attention of a ravaging army that will
come and destroy you. Yeah uh now in terms of
this is an interesting one. This one was when I
read and Carol Rose and her Compendium of Monsters. She
points to the merman known as the Denny Mara that
(40:57):
was considered a threat in some case by by the
people of the Isle of Man, the Manx people. Generally
the man of the sea that anymara was generally more
benevolent than other forms of the myth because you have some, um,
you have some truly awful mirror creatures out there in
the world of folklore. But this one in particular, though,
(41:19):
if you were to whistle, you could stir stir him
up and cause excess wind. So on one hand, it's
kind of a supernatural creature whose attention you might get
through whistling. But also we get back into the basic
wind magic of the thing, like, be careful whistling. You're
toying with the wind magic, and you're at sea, and
that's where the wind is particularly dangerous, and the least
little thing can stir it up. Hole mentions another omen
(41:43):
related to whistling and that is the omen of the
seven whistlers. And this from from her description, it sounds
basically like a particular chorus of bird song that would
spell disaster for those who heard it, particularly say, before
a battle. Now, coming back at least briefly to us
to Kellenberg's to Kellenberg points to Roman writer Colomela, who
(42:05):
shares that whistling could be used to encourage oxen to drink,
which which to Kellenberg, links to the possible sound similarities
between whistling and flowing water. So again, instead of the wind,
this time we're talking about water and we're talking about
the similarities of the sound here. Um, this idea seems
to have survived into English traditions concerning horses at least
(42:27):
into the sixteenth century. But wait, so if you're an
ancient Roman, you can whistle to make oxen drink. But
will that make Oxen lie in your bed? I'm not
I'm not certain about that. Now. Uh, somebody who has
Roman history knowledge it, can you explain the ox in
the bed metaphor? To us? I want to know what
that means. It is interesting that to think about this
(42:48):
idea of like the whistle as a sound that is
imitating not birds or other organisms, but but imitating elemental
forces the wind or in this case, the water, and
therefore allowing just the average person to tap in to
those the streams of of terrific and at times, you know,
catastrophic energies. Well, I would also say the same thing
(43:12):
for hissing. Hissing kind of takes away your humanity. You're
you're you don't sound like a person speaking or expressing
an opinion. You sound like a hostile animal or even
a hostile landscape. M I guess sometimes there is hissing
in theater, right, like a negative that's hiss at the villain. Yeah, yeah,
you you know, you boo hiss when the Yago comes
(43:34):
on stage or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, all right, we're looking
at the clock now and we realize that we're out
of time for this episode. But oh we we have.
We still have a lot more. So we're gonna go
to a four parter on whistling, but we've got some
great stuff to come back to. We're going to dive
back in a bit to some Eastern traditions of of
magic and whistling. We're going to discuss some more examples
(43:55):
of whistling superstition, and folklore. Um, and then oh, we're
gonna get into the psychology of whistling a bit as well.
Does the spirit dwell within you if it does, come
back and expel that breath one more time? Yeah? Is
it okay to whistle while you work? Should we be
listening to dwarves on this matter? To begin with? Will
the bit'll all be discussed in the next episode in
(44:17):
the meantime, If you would like to check out other
episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, our core episodes
publish on two season Thursdays, and the Stuff to Blow
Your Mind podcast feed on Wednesday's. We do a short
form artifact or monster fact on Monday's we do listener mail.
On Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns and just
focus on a weird film in a weird house cinema.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
(44:39):
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 at Stuff
to Blow Your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your
Mind It's production of I Radio. For more podcasts. For
(45:01):
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen me to your favorite shows.
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Joe McCormick
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