From the Vault: Jenny Greenteeth

According to certain English folktales, a vile creature lurks in the slime-caked dark of local ponds. When little ones wander too close to shore, she lashes out to drown them in her slippery embrace. She has many names: Nelly Longarms, Peg Powler, the Grindylow... and Jenny Greenteeth. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick discuss these old tales of aquatic terror, their instructional nature and the real-world predators who swim the shores in search of terrestrial prey. (Originally published Oct. 2, 2018)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
But it's a Saturday in October. So not only are
we going into the dark of the Vault today, it
seems that we're going to be waiting into a pool
full of green scum. This is gonna be our episode
about Jenny Green Teeth. This was one of my favorites, Robert, Yeah,
this one is a lot of fun, Old Jenny Green Teeth,

(00:27):
Old Nelly long Arms, Peg Powler the grind below all
that this originally published on October two. We got a
lot of good listener mail about this one. So if
you enjoyed this Vault episode and you want to hear
more here people doing doing feedback about Jenny green Teeth,
go check out whatever was our listener mail episode following

(00:49):
this when this episode originally aired. With respect to Jenny
Green Teeth, well, do I remember in childhood stays and
isolated Gordon Farmstead with a yeoman's house dating back to
the early part of the seventeenth century, almost overshading. It
was a somber old yew tree, doubtless coeval, but then

(01:10):
beginning to decay. The end was being hastened by the
annual Yule tide custom of lopping off the branches in
order to decorate the tiny leaden casemented windows than existing
in the house, and also in a chapel hard by
the green of a neighboring village. Lying at some depth
beneath the grassy hillock on which the fine old tree

(01:33):
had so long stood sentinel was a deep dismal pool
which had sometimes been excavated as a marl pit. Of course,
little lads and lasses, with no other playmates than themselves,
would now and then, when other pastimes had been run through,
amused themselves by sailing mimic flats and boats in order

(01:53):
to deter them from approaching so dangerous a spot. When
caught upon the steps leading down to the lading hole,
an anxious mother would affirm solemnly, as we then thought
that jinny green teeth was artfully lurking in the waters below.
Proof of the story was afforded to our unsophisticated minds
by the exhibition of a set of human teeth enameled

(02:16):
with green tartar. These were said to bear only a
faint resemblance to those of the demonus below, who, with
her long, sinewy arms, first drew children in and then
devoured them. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from
how Stuffworks dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow

(02:43):
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe
McCormick and Robert. I'm so excited. It's October. Yes, we
are into our our October offerings. Here a full month
of of Halloween flavored content, monster science, a whole month.
It's it's the most wonderful time of the year. And
I think I say that every year it is. Now. Granted,
we do let a few other monsters, uh, you know,

(03:06):
leak out and crawl out during the rest of the year,
but but we do set aside a number of different
topics just for this month's celebration. So that passage that
I read at the beginning of the episode was from
a letter by a folklorist named John Higson, English folklorist
from Lee's who chronicles stories of fairies and Boggart's uh.

(03:27):
And it was published in Notes and Queries, a medium
of intercommunication for literary men, general readers, et cetera, from
Oxford University Press in eighteen seventy, and I'm going to
be quoting a little bit more from Higson's work, but
as you may have detected from that passage, today we're
going to be focusing on a particular malicious water spirit,

(03:48):
a sodden hag, a faery of the depths named Jenny
green Teeth, who will pull you in. Yes, to invoke
one of my favorite ClickHole videos. If you don't follow
the rules, Jenny Green Teeth will kill you with their
sharp things. And I love knowing that. Now there are
a couple of ways that you could classify Jinny Green Teeth,

(04:11):
like what categories she goes in. I guess one would
be to say that she's part of this this class
of bogies, and Boggert's and Higgson's term fair and frightful things,
the sort of English or or UK tradition of frightful spirits, Yes,
and nursery bogies. Uh, that's certainly the term that folkloris

(04:32):
Carol Rose uses in her her encyclopedias of various magical creatures,
including giants, monsters, and dragons. I think the nursery bogie
categorization was applied by the folkloris Catherine Briggs, who does
a lot on English fairies and the nursery bogie. Bogie
specifically were bogies that were invoked to frighten children, often

(04:54):
with an instructive angle, and it seems like they wouldn't
usually have much in the way of real mythic roots
beyond their role, as you know, an educational and instructional entity.
But on the other hand that they very much could
have roots, they could have inspirations because uh, water hags
like Jenny green Teeth, they're not unique to the British isles.

(05:15):
They're not unique to Jenny green Teeth especially, we will
discuss seems to be situated in like northern England, especially
Northwest England around Liverpool in Lancashire. Yeah, and we'll will
reference a few of her ken that live in the area,
as well as some of her more distant relatives that
live elsewhere. But it does make I kept wondering as

(05:37):
I was looking at these different examples, some of which
that were very much just a folklore nursery bogie and
others that had more of a mythic air about them.
You wonder, like, to what extent is a particular nursery
bogie a stripped down version of some older, deeper mythological creature.
Or is it something entirely new or mostly new? I

(05:58):
feel like it's probably a a little bit of both.
There's probably an ebb and flow uh that can be
found there. If the nursery bogie is a horrific schoolhouse
rock video, is it inspired by something horrific from the past,
that is having that is being somewhat tamed or bent
to the will of the warning instructive parent. Indeed, indeed,
so let's let's go back to Carol Rose. What what

(06:20):
does Rose have to say about old Jenny? Alright? So
Rose wrote that Jenny grin teeth is an evil quote
predator of humans and in particular awaits the unwary child
who may go too close to the water. So you
get too close and she'll come at you with her
long green things. Then she'll pull you into the depths,
and she can haunt virtually any pond that's covered in

(06:42):
green slime. And again, she's, of course a nursery bogi um,
a monster used to instruct children and enforce a wide
variety of rules. For example, another bogey that that exists
out there is the red legged scissor man. Uh. And
there's a delightful grotesque rhyme about the red legged says man.
And essentially, if you suck your thumb um, the red

(07:03):
legged scissor man will come and cut off your thumbs,
which is terrifying. But you see, it's very much just
a monster that's made up to scare children out of
doing something they're not supposed to do. But then with
Jenny Green teeth, the steaks are much higher. This isn't
about prevention preventing uh, you know, thumb sucking. This is
about preventing a child from wandering too close to the water,

(07:24):
falling in and drowning. Now, as we go through the episode,
I think we will steadily learn more and more about
exactly what that water threat is. Or sometimes Jenny is
deployed in ways that have nothing to do with water,
though clearly her home is in the water. She she
is a water faery, a water hag. Yeah. I can't
help but think of what is it Meg muckle Bones

(07:45):
from the Riddley Scott a filmed legend Exactly. I think
Meg muchacle Bones is directly inspired by Jenny. She she's
got to be Yeah, just the grotesque hag like monstrosity,
this troll like creature of this loathsome entity that rises
up out of the swampy muck. Now I want to
continue with what Higson wrote which was published in in

(08:07):
that Notes and Queries in eighteen seventy, where he's talking
about the role of Jenny Green Teeth in in English folklore.
Picking up where my first quote left off, he says
that some of the pits in the locality, and this
is generally gonna be talking about Northwest England, in the
locality were likely patronized by a Jenny Green Teeth. And
in my Gorton Historical Recorder, published in eighteen fifty two,

(08:29):
there are briefly noticed a dozen places in the township
once supposed to be haunted with Boggarts and fair and
in addition there were nut NaN's clap cans, Wills with
the whisp, oh yeah and Will of the whisps, Buddy
Jack with the lantern lantern or Lanthorne it seems to
be spelled and peg with the iron teeth. And lastly,

(08:53):
which is more to the point, he says quote, to
restrain their children from venturing too near the numerous pits
and pools which were to be found in every fold
and field. A demonus or guardian was stated to crouch
at the bottom. She was known as Jenny Green Teeth,
and was reported to prey upon children who ventured too
near her domain. Sometimes the water demonus was termed grind Low.

(09:16):
This incarnation, of course, might be more familiar to fans
of Harry Potter. Oh do they invoke Grendil or the
grindy Low as I've seen it written? Yeah, Rowling mentions
grindy Lows. I don't really remember exactly how I think
they are water dwelling monsters, but that's all I recall.
I like to maybe think that the grind Low is
the species and Jenny as the individual. Oh I like that. Yeah,

(09:38):
Jenny is one particular grindy Low. Though, as many authors
point out, if there's just one Jenny, she really gets around, right,
because she's in every stagnant pool and marl pit filled
in with water, and every dangerous pit of any kind
in Northwest England. Well, I mean, on one hand, it
makes sense that if you've just about any loathsome pool
in in England, if you've go back far enough in time,

(10:01):
you'll probably encounter some sort of horrific tragedy. One thing
I like about Jenny green Teeth is that, for some
reason her name actually sounds scary to me, whereas many
of these Boggers and fair End and stuff, they their
names are funny. Unfortunately something has been lost over time. Uh,
and so you get like Boum Rapid and the Grizzlehurst
Boggert and cleg Hoboggert and stuff. Well, it's it's it's interesting.

(10:26):
You have to wonder were they given fun names intentionally
or was the or was the the fun name terrifying
within contexts? For instance, take Pennywise the clown. It's a
pretty sinister sounding name if you have decades of familiarity
with Stephen King's it. But was the name initially sinister

(10:47):
or was it initially just a ridiculous sounding clown name.
That's a very good point. You know. This will actually
go with something that we're going to talk about in
a minute. There's a paper I read by a folklorist
and sort of like folk song researcher named Annie Gilchrist.
Two chronicles these horrific children's songs of like early twentieth

(11:07):
century England, and they're all about like murder and cannibalism
and infanticide and family members eating each other and all
that stuff. But they're set to these like happy little
nursery rhyme tunes. I guess that makes them more creepy,
more creepy, but also more memorable. I guess maybe it
helps in in relaying the content to young minds. To

(11:30):
explore Jenny a little bit more. Through Higson's letter, I
want to read another passage he writes quote. A clerical
friend whose juvenile years were spent in the vicinity of Stockport, Cheshire,
states that he remembers being threatened more than once with
Jenny Green Teeth, but in that case, probably as there
was no pond near the house, she was said to
perch in the tops of the trees at least after nightfall,

(11:53):
his young imagination having been wrought up to the proper pitch,
he was led into the garden and bade to listen
to the site of the night wind through the branches,
and then told it was the moaning of Jenny Green Teeth.
It may be just then disturbed with the nightmare. Another
clergyman born in Walton Ladale informs me that he remembers
an old pit, since filled up but then existing in

(12:15):
his native village and in which it was affirmed, lived
Jenny green Teeth, ever on the watch, and therefore woe
betided the urchin who ventured too near her domain. Jenny
was also known in Manchester. Some fifty years ago, says
an antiquarian friend, shooters Brook passes in a culvert under
the aqueduct which carries the Manchester and Ashton under Lynn

(12:37):
Canal over Shore Street near the London road Station. At
that period, there existed an opening or break left in
the culvert, forming a dangerous spot for children to play beside,
and yet they often selected it. Their mothers tried to
destroy the fascination by stating that Jenny Green Teeth laid
in wait at the bottom in order to nab children

(12:58):
playing there, and highlights something that I think will come
back to throughout the episode, which is that it's interesting
that children are drawn specifically, it is said, to these
dangerous locations, the break in the culvert, the dangerous pond
or pit. It's like the children specifically want to go
right to where the danger to their lives is the highest,

(13:19):
and they have to be warned with another kind of
danger to keep them away. Oh yeah, I I. I
see this this all the time with with my son
and his various friends, when we take them out for
walks and in the nature trails and whatnot. If there's
some sort of dangerous little area where it's like a
sheer drop off or something like, that's what they're drawn to,
and then you have to you have to urge them

(13:41):
away and say, like, look, there's a zero entry like, uh,
you know, creek area up ahead, Let's go playing that,
not this, uh, this scary little bog that you've picked
out here for yourself. Uh. And indeed, some of the
places that that I've seen them drawn to just in
the past few weeks are are very very much to
the sort of place that a Jenny Green Teeth might

(14:02):
be said to reside in. So, Robert, I have a question.
Have you ever invoked a fictional monster or supernatural threat
in order to scare your child away from a real threat? No?
I haven't um that. That being said, you know some
people are against utilizing, say Santa Claus of the Tooth Fairy.

(14:22):
We have Santa Claus, we have the Tooth Fairy, we
have the Switch which for Halloween. But beyond these beneficial entities,
we have not invoked any other supernatural entities, uh in
our daily practice. I guess we just try and be
honest about what dangers are. But you know, I can
understand the temptation here because with Jenny Green teeth, you

(14:47):
that the parent is invoking or creating an imagine a monster,
a fantastic lethal monster, instead of having like a frank
discussion about the more mundane but equally like traumatic dangers
that are involved. And sometimes you want to protect them
from the truth of of real danger, like setting down

(15:11):
and explaining the dangers of drowning to a child like
that can be intimidating. You want to shield them from drowning,
but you there's also this instinct to shield them from
knowledge of that world. And so I can understand the
temptation to utilize the fantastic to create something horrific but
fictional as a like almost a gentler way of teaching

(15:34):
them the same lesson, uh, which is weird because that
can be they can I guess be even more harmful
in some respects uh, because you're creating this nightmare creature
to live in their heads. But I can see where
you could reach that point, um with only the best intentions.
That's a really interesting point, and we will talk a

(15:55):
little bit more about the real dangers of water and
drowning later in the psychology of of how this works out.
But um, yeah, is it possible that the monster is
actually a defanged version of the threat in a way,
not a more threatening version of the threat, but putting
the threat into a form that feels more comfortable and

(16:18):
less depressing. Yes, I think so. I think there's a
strong case to be made for that. Now, Robert, if
you are right with it, I'd like to look at
a couple of older a couple more older books and
papers that mentioned Jenny Green Teeth. One is a book
by Percy B. Green called A History of Nursey Rhymes.
Oh really, Percy B. Green? Okay, Yeah, that guy didn't

(16:39):
need a pseudonym, or maybe that is the pseudonym anyway,
So I want to quote him later, also because he
mentions another fascinating story about a water monster. But Green
writes in a middle in the middle of a section
about water spirits, he writes, in England, to the North Country,
people speak of a river sprite as Jenny Green Teeth,
and the children dread to the Green slimy covered rocks

(17:02):
on the streams bank or on the brink of a
black pool. Wait, I should I want to throw in
this is key too, right, because we're talking about the
slime covered rocks themselves, like that's a key danger that
kid's gonna slip and fall. Um. Yeah, sorry, I had
I had to jump in on that. No, that's a
very good point. I mean, there's actually specific information about

(17:23):
real dangers being conveyed in the superstition though. So it's
like you see the green covered rocks, that that might
be a sign that the rock is going to be
something you could slip off of, and the child might
not know that naturally, but the child sees it and says, oh,
there's green on the rocks Jenny green Teeth is about huh. So,
you know that's that feels a lot more calibrated, where
the example we heard earlier about Jenny Green Teeth living

(17:45):
in the trees that felt like the tail had become unhinged,
you know. Yeah, Well, that's part of the problem with
creating superstitions and myths about monsters like this is that
if you're trying to do it for a specific purpose,
like to warn children, myths go wild, and it's always
become untamed. They roam loose, and they become their own thing. Yeah,

(18:06):
I mean, as does a logical fear itself. I mean,
even as adults, we can probably think of things in
our lives where they're not really you know, they're not monsters,
but they're at least a little illogical. And if you
don't watch them, if you don't curb them, then yeah,
they can start living in the trees. They go ferrell.
But Green writes that a warning of a Lancashire mother

(18:26):
to her child is quote Jenny Green, teeth will have
the goist onto river banks. Now, I think I already
mentioned the the author An E. G. Gilchrist, who has
done some work chronicling folk songs discovered in the wild,
and she wrote a paper for the Journal of the
Folk Song Society in nineteen nineteen that is called Note

(18:50):
on the Lady Dressed in Green and Other Fragments of
tragic ballads and folk Tales Preserved among Children. So this
is about folk songs sung by children in early twentie
cent England. And these songs are just messed up. They
are I think I mentioned earlier. They're they're all about murder, cannibalism,
hiding dead bodies in your house. It is fascinating that

(19:10):
we often think that children need to be protected from horror,
Like I can understand that impulse, but I don't know.
This just seems to me like an indication that children
naturally gravitate to themes of murder and death and gore. Yeah,
and they can be rather severe in their invocation of
these ideas. Now, the main song talks about in this

(19:31):
paper is uh is one called the Lady Dressed in Green,
which gil Christ heard sung by a girl named Margaret
in a Southport orphanage, and Margaret apparently brought it from
a Lancashire workhouse. And gil Chris goes on to discuss
how versus of the in verses of this song, the
Lady Dressed in Green is holding a baby and then
she murders her baby with a pen knife, and then

(19:53):
three bobbies come and haul her off to prison. And
so gil Christ is talking about the significance of the
song and it's parallel us to other similar children's rhymes, songs,
murder ballads and so forth. And one of the interesting
things is the significance of the color green, and this
leads her to talk about the color green in its
relation to curses and bogies and evil fairies and spirits.

(20:15):
We will talk more about the significance of the color
green later, but as for Jenny Green Teeth, Gilchrist writes
quote of still more sinister import is the color In
the case of Jenny Green Teeth, the evil water spirit
appearing is the green scum on stagnant water what claws
you in, as country children say, if you go too
near or in the obscure and horrible English folk tale

(20:37):
of the green Lady, who appears to be a sort
of lamia or vampire, living on or delighting in blood,
and perhaps deriving her name and Hugh from a classic
serpent ancestry. But Jenny Green Teeth and perhaps green Lady
also is allied with the German water nicks and green hats,
the hat appearing to be a tuft of beautiful vegetation

(20:59):
growing in the water, who dragged down the unwary to
the depths. They're horrible fate being visible in a fountain
of blood which spouts up through the surface of the water.
This is interesting the the the mention of of serpents,
because as I was looking through Carol Rose and looking
at various uh aquatic uh you know, fresh water, especially monsters.

(21:21):
There are a lot of serpents in various beliefs, weird
serpents in uh Native American beliefs as well. And this
makes a certain amount of sense, right, because you will
encounter snakes around the water sometimes. Yeah, and this would
be a very old fear and human culture, but also
even predating some of that, you know, just sort of

(21:42):
an ingrained thing to be afraid of. Yeah, we're all
the cat with the cucumber behind us. Yes, Now, I
can't move on without mentioning what Gilchrist writes about this
other story, the green Lady story, that may have its
origins in some kind of serpent ancestry. She writes that
she's never found a version of the green Lady folktale
in print, but there's there's a version she heard from

(22:02):
a person named Ethel Kidson, and this is how it goes.
A little girl took service with the Green Lady. The
next morning, after preparing breakfast for her, she called up
the stair, green Lady, Green Lady, come down to your breakfast.
But the Green Lady did not come down. The formula
was repeated for dinner and supper, but still she did

(22:24):
not appear. At last, the little girl went upstairs to
the chamber door, and, urged by curiosity, looked through the
keyhole and saw the green lady dancing in a basin
of blood. Now, this paper is actually worth a look
if you want to just go look it up to
see the absolutely depraved folk songs that children sing. Oh, yes,

(22:46):
one of these that you highlighted here, My mama did
kill me? Uh, And it has the sheet music with it.
I'm gonna attempt to sing just a little of it,
with fair warning I'm not very good at reading sheet music.
But it goes something like this, my mama did kill
me and put me in a pie. My dad da

(23:07):
did eat me and say it was I. And then
it goes on my brother and sister did pick my
bones and bury them under cold marble stones, and bury
them under cold marble stones. We we were emailing with
our producer Alex about this, and Alex was trying to
make sense of the line my Dada did eat me
and say it was I. Now, one way of reading

(23:30):
that could be like, I don't know the dada knows
what the child's flesh tastes like like, oh, that's that's him,
that's the one I'm eating, or maybe the dad da
is saying, no, you're eating yourself. It's you that's doing
the eating of you. I tend to favor the earlier interpretation,
but either way you slice it, it's pretty unsettling. One

(23:50):
more paper I came across that mentioned Jenny green Teeth
I thought had a really kind of sad but fascinating
story about something that happened in the sixteen century. So
this is a paper by Terence R. Murphy called Woeful
Child of Parents, Rage, Suicide of Children and Adolescence in
Early Modern England fifteen o seven to seventeen ten in

(24:11):
the sixteenth Century Journal. And so the author writes that
there was a case of an adolescent suicide in Cambridgeshire
in fifteen sixty five, where a quote twelve year old
Agnes Adam went horseback riding with her girlfriend and accidentally
got her clothes dirty. She came toward home, but fearing

(24:31):
that her father would punish her, she rushed to a
pond in her father's clothes and drowned herself. And then
there's a footnote saying, quote the coroner's jury swore that
Agnes adams motives were timur parentium correct shetionis and met
us castigatitionis. The jury could or would not recognize her
hostility toward her parents. How when and where she killed

(24:52):
herself suggested that she intended to become in death a
life demanding water spirit. The motive was childish and silly.
This spirit was a nursery bogey, which adults customarily and
cynically used to intimidate children into behaving themselves properly. Little
children like Agnes believed in nursery bogies, but wiser adults

(25:13):
did not. This is one instance where adult duplicity and
terrorization of children backfired when a child believed her elders
lies enough to act on them in order to get revenge. Well,
there we go. We've reached a like pique bleakness for
this episode. That's a sad story, but it does illustrate
something interesting about how, you know, we've been talking about

(25:33):
using the idea of a specter or a water hag
or a monster to warn children away from real danger.
But this tends to show that, if, if this is
really what happened in this case, a child's belief in
the existence of this kind of creature could actually cause
her to call it to kill herself, to cause harm
to herself. Yeah, it's it's it's powerful magic to start

(25:55):
messing with the magic of belief. All right, I think
we should a quick break and when we come back
we will talk about other specters of the water than
all right, we're back, Robert, tell me about Nelly Long Arms.
All right, Yeah, so these are We're gonna run through
a few different versions of of old Jenny Green Teeth

(26:16):
here and these are all from again, that that excellent
book by Carol Rose. Uh. If you look up Carol
Rose and Monsters or Fairies, you'll find her Encyclopedia's um
they're all still in print and I always highly recommend them.
Lots of wonderful illustrations. But yeah, we have Nelly Long Arms,
and she's essentially just Jenny Green Teeth with the fangs

(26:38):
and the green skin, but with added elongated arms and
spidery fingers. And you'll find her in the folklore of Derbyshire, Cheshire, Lancashire,
Shropshire and Yorkshire. And there's also a nearly identical long
armed monster named We've discussed this in already the Grindy
Low and it's tied more spec typically New Yorkshire. And

(27:01):
then there's peg Powler. This is another creature of the
same sword. And this one is just straight up identical
to Jenny green Teeth. But she said to live specifically
in the River Tys and belongs to the folklore of
the border region between Yorkshire and Durham. Now. Carol Rose
also mentions a male incarnation of the same entity named

(27:23):
Cutty Dyer. This is from the folklore of Ashburton in Somerset, England,
and he said to haunt the bridge over the river. Yo,
I believe it is hy Yo, yeah, I guess i'll
e o. And he was in a normal he described
as an enormous man with eyes like saucers, and he'd
emerge behind you and either pull you into the river
or slit your throat and drink your blood. And she

(27:45):
she shares the following little ditty that's attributed to an
old I believe blind Ashburton resident in nineteen seventy two,
remembering this is you know, from from his childhood. It goes,
don't he go down the river's eye? Cut he die?
Or do a bide, cut you die, or ain't no
good cuttie die, or drink your blood. This one didn't

(28:07):
come with sheet music, so I don't know if if
it had a tune to it, or is just like
something you might chant. I kind of like the idea
of it just being a dirge. Now. Water monsters have
just got to be one of the best kind of monsters, right,
because they can play on several different fears at once. Right,
they can be near you without you knowing it because
they're underneath the surface and maybe the water is dark

(28:29):
or murky and you can't see down there. But they
also play on fears of drowning. Once they get you
down into their world, they've got all the power. You're
not going to be able to defend yourself much underwater.
So there's a lot of great water monsters around the world,
far too many for us to talk about today. Right.
For example, we've talked about the Japanese monster, the Kappa before.

(28:50):
That's right, the Japanese spirit. It kind of looks like
a ninja turtle, but with a little pool of water
and its skull, and if you get it to bow
to you and the water or spills out and it
loses its vital essence. Yeah. So so they're all over
the world. But since we're talking about Jenny Green Teeth today,
I think we can specifically focus on like water monsters
of the British Isles. Right, So, another one I know

(29:13):
about that Katherine Briggs wrote about is the idea of
the kelpie. Katherine Briggs wrote that Scotland has a kelpie
in every lonely lock. Yeah, the kelpy is very interesting.
This is this is one um. I don't know if
I read about it before Dungeons and Dragons or if
I was initially introduced to it in Dungeons and Dragons,
but it's I think long been um, an inmate of

(29:33):
the monster manual. But it's a traditional Scottish monster said
to haunt the shores of locks forwards and fairy points.
And it seems to be more robust than a mirror
nursery bogeye, or or at least it evolved beyond that point.
Maybe it ended up influencing some of these other entities
we've been discussing, but it does have a far more

(29:56):
robust air of legend about it. It can appear as
a shaggy old man, a handsome young man, or, most famously,
a beautiful black or gray horse. WHOA, that's a departure. Yeah. Never,
it's a beautiful woman though, which it seems unnecessary for
to take that form, because the horse form was sufficient
to attract women, young men, and children alike. Everybody loves

(30:18):
a gorgeous horse. Do they do you when you just
see a horse? Do you walk up to it? Yeah?
I mean, especially back in the day, like a horse
like this, it was value. I love. Also the mythic
dimension of it. You know, there's this kind of idea
that maybe more tender individuals they want to go and
meet the animal, and maybe harsher individuals they just see

(30:38):
maybe the monetary value or the raw power of the thing,
I guess. So, oh yeah, the monetary value is I
guess like seeing a horse without an owner or a
parent would be what kind of seeing like a free
car somewhere? Yeah? Yeah, I mean horse thieves were everywhere, right,
So there's kind of this idea that an unattended horse
is also you know, it's something that maybe it belongs

(31:01):
to somebody and maybe you're just gonna try and steal it.
But the idea here is that the creature, the kelpie
was it was a portent of drowning, an aquatic doom.
But if you could force a bridle over it, you
could harness the power of the kelpie and ride it.
And there are various tales of like individuals who successfully
rode the kelpie and and what one might do with

(31:21):
the harness power of the kelpie that sort of thing, Well,
what would you do? Um, you would basically just just
run them up for a little bit. There are also
some tales of like the kelpie powering water wheels at mills.
So there's this interesting idea of like the kelpie being this, uh,
the embodiment of just the raw power and danger of water. Yeah,

(31:43):
that's really interesting. It's kind of like a horse, you know,
something that may be tamed and used if done so respectfully,
but that if if if you step out of line
or you don't know what you're doing, you can easily
be killed by it. Yeah. And of course a brook
can gallop the same way a horse can. Uh. Yeah.
So we see some more dualities like that in other

(32:05):
water creatures. Like one that comes to mind I think
is is it would it be the marrow or the
mirrow marrow of Ireland yes, there there's some versions of
this that are more purely monstrous, and other versions that
appear to be less less dangerous, less monstrous. Yeah, like
is described by Carol Rose. He gives a pretty friendly
account of them, that they're peaceful and they generally get

(32:26):
along with humans. They have a little red cap that
allows them to shape shift and walk on land and uh,
and they sometimes breed with humans as well. But from
that Percy B. Green book I mentioned earlier. Now, who
knows this is from the eighteen hundred, so maybe Green's
folklore work is is not super rigorous. But Green has
a much darker vision of the mirrow. He writes, quote

(32:47):
the Irish fisherman's belief in the soul's cages and the
mirror or man of the sea was once held in
general esteem by the men who earned a livelihood on
the shores of the Atlantic. This mirrow or spirit of
the utters, sometimes took upon himself a half human form,
and many a sailor on the rocky coast of Western
Ireland has told the tale of how he saw the

(33:08):
mirrow basking in the sun watching a storm driven ship.
His form is described as that of a half man,
half fish, a thing with green hair, long green teeth,
legs with scales on them, short arms like fins of
fish's tail, and a huge red nose. He wore no
clothes and had a cocked hat like a sugar loaf,

(33:31):
which was carried under the arm. Never did be put
on the head unless for the purpose of diving into
the sea. At such times, he caught all the souls
of those drowned at sea and put them in cages
made like lobster pots. Oh wow, I love how that
this invokes plenty of you know, much older ideas of
aquatic human ollids, and even like they an old man

(33:52):
of the sea, uh, you know, much like like Proteus himself,
but depresent is this weird twist of him essentially taking
a lobster pots to catch souls. Well, it strikes me
as a perhaps intentionally ironic or blasphemous in version of
the Christian idea of ben fisher of men the marrow
as a fisher of men. Interesting. Now, I also have

(34:13):
to mention one of one of my favorite depictions of
of of a fresh water monster, and that's the illustration
What Came of Picking Jessamine by Henry justice Ford, an
illustration in Andrew Lang's The Gray Fairy book. Okay, this
is a great illustration, right and I'm going to make

(34:33):
sure to include this on the landing page for this episode.
It's stuff to Goo your Mind dot com so everybody
can check it out. But it's but the book itself,
The Gray Fairy. This is available as well on the web.
I think Project Gutenberg has it and you can you
can get the PDF and scroll through it and read
these various uh fairy tales from throughout Europe and uh

(34:54):
and and even beyond I believe, but they all have
these wonderful illustrations as well. But um, I'm gonna kind
of just roll through the story really quickly. It's an
illustration though from the Portuguese fairytale what came of picking flowers?
And I'm gonna try and roll through it real quick
for everybody. Basically, a woman three daughters are lost in
the process of picking three different plants, a pink carnation

(35:17):
arose and then some Jessamine or Jasmine. Their brother, the
only survivor in the family, grows up, acquires some magical
items and decides to get his lost sisters back. But
as it turns out, the first sister was not dead,
but locked away in the magic castle, trapped in I
guess you can just say a magical marriage arrangement with

(35:38):
the King of the Birds. So he fixes that, and
then he becomes a friend of the King of the Birds. Wait,
so removes the King of the Bird's wife who is
his sister, but also becomes friends with the King of
the Birds. Well, I'm just gonna just just to simplify things,
I'm just gonna say he fixes their magical scenario because
the first two sisters here are are less important for

(35:58):
our purposes here. But then he goes off and heaches
searches for the second sister. He finds that she too
is trapped in a magical marriage to the King of
the Fish. And here it sounds like there's more of
a Lady Hawk scenario where husband's a fish half the time,
and it's it's a kind of annoying. So he manages
to fix this scenario as well and becomes a friend

(36:19):
of the King of the Fish. Is the brother Rutger
howerd I And when I was reading, I certainly pictured
him like that, like Rudgar Howard, but with more of
a fishy look to him. And then Finally, he sets
out for the third a sister, and find finds that
she was in fact captured by a monster. This monster
that we see in this illustration what came of picking Jessamine.
This troll like entity that grabbed her, came up out

(36:42):
of the water and pulled her in. But this monster
has been keeping her prisoner in his castle because she
refuses to marry him. So the brother sneaks in and
he talks to her about this, and he says, look,
here's what you need to do. Promise to marry the monster,
but only if he tells you how he can die.
Tell make sure that he tells you the secret of

(37:04):
his death, because like a lot of magical creatures, you know,
there's only one way, one specific way you can kill it.
That is a smart pre nup. Yeah, so I mean, yeah,
if you're a horrible monster. But anyway, this uh, the
monster here he just kind of laughs and says, oh, yeah,
I'll tell you because this information will be completely useless,
especially to you. And he tells her that there's an

(37:25):
iron casket at the bottom of the sea and it
contains a magical dove, and that dove's egg if dashed
against the monster's forehead will kill it. Okay, so um,
you know, he laugh has a good laugh at that.
And meanwhile the brother uh sneaks away and he goes
to the King of the fish and convinces the King

(37:45):
of the fish, who you know owes in one to
fetch the casket, which he does. Uh. They bring the
casket up, and then the bird flies out of the casket.
So he asked the King of the birds to grab
the dove and bring it back. So the King of
the Birds goes off, gets the dove, brings it back.
He ends up with that egg, and he rushes back
to where the monster is waiting impatiently for the go
ahead to marry the sister. And he's becoming, you know, impatient.

(38:09):
So I'm just gonna read the last little bit from
Andrew Lang's version of the story quote. At a sign
from her brother, she sat down and invited the old
monster to lay its head on her lap. He did
so with delight, and her brother, standing behind her back,
passed her the egg unseen. She took it and dashed

(38:29):
it straight at the horrible head, and the monster started
and with a groan that people took for the rumblings
of an earthquake, he turned over and died. That's a
boss fight for the ages. Yeah, I love it. It's
it's one of those fairy tales. It's maybe a little
shaky in the early goings, but it totally delivers the end.
I like how the the alliance with the King of

(38:50):
the Birds and the King of the Fish comes through. Yeah. Yeah,
this is one I would have loved to have seen
Jim Hinson's storyteller bring the life because it's it's it's
a little bit perfect, because it's a little bit weird,
and it has a really hideous monster in it and
a kind of whimsical way of defeating it. That is
a great story. But I want to go back to
Jenny Green Teeth and discuss a little bit more about

(39:12):
what the Jinny Green Teeth lore means, like what it
tells us about culture, about our values, our psychology, and
so one of the things that's explored is the the
importance of the color green in the Jenny Green Teeth lore.
Anny Gilchrist, in her paper on The Lady Dressed in Green,
talks about this a good bit. She says that in
in England at the time, the color green is widely

(39:34):
believed to be a quote ill omened hue for a
garment because it symbolizes the loss of maidenhood or the
loss of a lover. U. And there's this saying apparently
that green is forsaken and yellows forsworn or green can
also symbolize being passed over for a younger bride quote,
as in the case of the green stockings or garters,

(39:55):
in which the elder unmarried sisters had to dance at
a younger sister's wedding. But she also writes that quote
the unluckiness of green clothing must be a very old
belief and perhaps had reference originally to a fear of
incurring the hostility of the spirits of the woods by
borrowing their livery. So the idea there is that the fairies,

(40:16):
the fairies are not nice. I mean, this is a
sort of modern thing that we think fairies are. Oh,
fairies are sweet, they're fun. Traditionally, I think fairies are
much more nasty creatures. Oh yeah, the fairy folk are
are generally best thought of as uh, poorly understood magical
alien folk that kind of lived and live in the
folds of realities. Yeah, and and so if the fairies

(40:39):
dress in green, they can easily be made jealous to
see humans dressing in green. Apparently, uh, and so gil
Christ talks about how there's a book called Folklore of
the Northern Countries by a writer named Henderson, and Henderson writes,
quote green, ever an ominous color in the Lowlands of Scotland,
must on no account be worn there at a wedding.
The fairies whose chosen color it is is would resent

(41:00):
the insult and destroy the wearer. Henderson also claims that
mothers in the south of England sometimes forbid their daughters
from wearing green, and avoid even having green furniture in
their houses. And also there's a general belief in the
folk rhymes of the time that the color green is
a sign of hatred when given as a token from someone,
so like you would give someone a blue ribbon as

(41:22):
a sign of true love, but you'd give someone a
green ribbon as a sign of hatred. Gil Christ also
says that a tailor once told her that his workers
hated to see a green garment come into their come
into their shop for mending, since they believe that there's
this rotten curse of the color and it could fall
on them as well, for for for working on it.

(41:43):
And then she also says, of course that the color
green is associated with poison. So I think this is
interesting because I think of green as a very nice, RESTful,
pleasant color. In fact, I think green is my favorite color. Well,
I'm trying to think of of modern uh individual is
associated with green. Like, what's the greenest superhero? I guess

(42:03):
like green lantern, writer's green. There's another green Well, there's
green Goblin, but he's he's bad. What's the green hornet?
Green hornet? I don't know much about green hornet, and
I'm sure you where's all that much green? Confession, I
don't know that much about superheroes. There's Peter Pan, kind
of a superhero. Well he you know, Pan embodies sort
of the spirits of wildness in the forest. He's sort

(42:25):
of wearing green because he is a fairy in a way.
Peter Pan is like Pan. You know Robin Hood as well. Yeah,
these green garments, I think are associated with the fact
that a person is sort of is of nature, is
of the fairy world, is untamed and uncivilized and not
not necessarily subject to say the Christian authorities. You know,

(42:47):
this would I think this would be a topic for
another day. But then you could you could also explore
the whole realm of the green man the green night
from our Thoritian legend. Well, yeah, I think that that
would be a great thing to explore. Whatever is going
on with the color green in Gilchrist time is is definitely,
as far as I can tell, not reflected in the
color psychology of late twentie and nearly twenty first century

(43:10):
scientific journals, and as far as I can tell, most
of this research appears to be on Americans, And I
can see how color psychology could be hugely influenced by culture,
of course, like it would really depend on like the
culture of the people you're testing. Yeah, I mean one
modern example of this, if I'm remembering the antidote, the

(43:30):
anecdotea correctly. Um. We've touched on before the importance of
red uh in Chinese culture uh, and I believe it
has to do with phone uh smartphone design uh. The
idea of something going from red to green being a
positive movement and say checking off a tab or something.
But I've my understanding is correct. For Chinese markets, you'll

(43:52):
often see an inversion of that, like to go to
the positive movement, cannot be away from red. It must
be towards red, because red is the most auspicious color. Yeah,
that's interesting, and so I think it's pretty clear that
color psychology is going to be heavily influenced by culture.
I doubt that there is just like a you know,
a universal color association thing across human beings that's part

(44:13):
of our biological brains or something. Oh yeah, Like I've
read before about interpretations of the color pink and about
how we we fell into this kind of you know,
grotesque cohole of just assuming that like pink is a
feminine color, whereas you see older traditions where pink was
very much a masculine color, and ultimately like what is

(44:34):
what is the color of fresh wounds on the battlefield?
You know? But pink and red, you know, I think
of the I believe pink is the color and Game
of Thrones attributed to the Bolton's. It's like red and
pink or their colors because they don't like playing human flesh.
Those creeps. Yeah they're no good. Well anyway, just whatever

(44:55):
all the caveats are and how this is influenced by
culture and everything. I was poking around in a few
studies about color psychology, and generally what it seemed to be.
What seemed to be the case to me is that
green is not usually viewed by the subjects of these
studies as something that's cursed or scary or or an
ill omen Blue and green are generally seen as more

(45:16):
psychologically relaxing, whereas red and yellow or more arousing and
more associated with anxiety. States Um and the authors of
one study described how green was described. The word green
was associated with the quality of being good, whereas like
the word yellow was associated with the quality of being bad,

(45:37):
and that blue and blue, green and green were colors
that cause subjects to feel more pleasure than colors like
yellow and yellow. Green. Here's another significant thing in the
Jinny green teeth folklore, and it is the significance of
a particular green plant. So I want to talk about
a paper called Lemna Minor and Jinny Green Teeth by

(45:58):
a botanist in English, hotanist named Roy Vickery, who has
apparently written a good deal about the folklore of plants.
And this was published in the journal Folklore in nine three.
And this was a great paper about Jenny Green Teeth
because he's picking up on the work of people like
Catherine Briggs and Vickery wants to give a fuller account
of Jenny Green Teeth and explore the relationship between Jenny

(46:19):
and this water plant known as lesser duck weed or
Lemna minor. Now LiMnO minor you've probably seen before. I
added a picture to our our outline here, Robert, so
you can take a look at it. But Lemno minor.
The duckweed is a is a green plant that floats
on the top of stagnant water and ponds and pools,

(46:41):
and it has very small leaves and can end up
looking like a flat matte of green on top of
the water. If it collects enough, it can make a
watery surface look just sort of like a flat pudding
green or something. It's like the hard phone cap a
top and old school cappuccino, except green. It totally is

(47:01):
so uh so. Vickory writes the stories of Jinny Green
Teeth are still told around the Liverpool area, and Liverpool
is of course in northwest England, near Lancashire, and he
writes quote usually she's considered to be a bogey who
inhabits quiet pools and drags venturesome children down into the depths.
Sometimes she's considered to be the harmless water plant lesser duckweed,

(47:23):
and occasionally she can be found far away from any pool.
And in his eighteen thirty nine book of book The
Flora of Liverpool, author TV Hall notes that quote marl
pits abound on both sides of the Mercy, which is
a river going through that area, and are caused in
most instances by excavating clay for the purpose of making bricks.

(47:44):
Before these pits are a year old, they're filled with
aquatic plants, and specifically, of course, that plant is generally
lesser duckweed. This small green plant that floats on the
top of the water has these little root ten drils
that extend down into the water. It can look like
this matt from above, and Vickery writes quote. In summer,

(48:05):
such pools are frequently covered with a dense mat composed
of thousands of floating duckweed plants, so that their surfaces
appear solid. Lesser duckweed is one of the world's smallest
flowering plants, each plant measuring one point five to four
millimeters in diameter, with tiny and significant flowers and a
thread like root which may reach several centimeters in length. Obviously,

(48:27):
any child who attempted to walk across a pond covered
with duckweed would soon find himself in serious difficulty, and so,
of course this creates an interesting association that for some children. Apparently,
Jenny green Teeth was not a name for a magical monster,
but was literally the name for the duckweed itself, and
Vickery quotes the experience of a woman who recounted her

(48:49):
childhood memories about Jenny green Teeth to him in the
December of nineteen eighty. She starts by talking about the
area where she was brought up, and then she says, quote,
it was and still is largely a farming area, and
many of the fields contained pits, never ponds, which I
believe our old marl pits. Some of them have quite
steep sides. Jenny was well known to me and my contemporaries,

(49:11):
and was simply the green weed duck weed which covered
the surface of stagnant water. Children who strayed too close
to the edge of these pits would be warned to
watch out for Ginny green teeth. But it was the
weed itself which was believed to hold children under the water.
There was never any suggestion that there was a witch
of any kind there. And then another firstthand account of

(49:31):
the Vicary quotes quote, as a child in the countryside
of Cheshire, I heard the name Jinny green Teeth given
to the bright green water plant that lies on the
surface of stagnant ponds. The minute leaves are rather like
tiny teeth, and imagine that if one fell into the pond,
the green scum like plant would close over one's head.
Thus Jinny green Teeth had got you. Now that's an

(49:54):
interesting development there. There's still this predatory aspect being imputed
to Jenny Green Teeth. But she's not a hag, she's
not a witch. It's the plant that kills you. It
lures you into the water by making it look like
a solid surface, and then when you fall in, the
children imagined this plant would close over top of you
like a like a membrane, ceiling you under the water. Interesting,

(50:15):
so we kind of have a their meeting is halfway
between like actual realistic fear and an outlandish monstrous invention, right,
because there's no indication that duck weed will actually close
over you and prevent you from getting out of the water,
but it can be dangerous because it can make a
deep pit of water look like a solid surface that

(50:37):
you could just run straight into. So one question is
did this association between the Jenny green Teeth monster and
duck weed begin earlier late like, was Jenny a pre
existing bogey figure who later came to be identified with
duck weed or was she always a creature of the weed?
And I think the answer is not quite clear. Vicary

(50:58):
cites one scholar who wrote that the association had to
be recent, since he believed Jenny quote had descended from
the water spirits of Gothic mythology, whose great seductive beauty
was somewhat marred by their green teeth. And of course
this makes me think about a principle we've talked about
several times. From that book The Demon Lovers by Walter Stevens,

(51:19):
Yeah and Demon Lovers, Witchcraft, Sex, and Crisis of Belief,
he examines a number of different texts associated with which
with witchcraft, persecution, witchcraft, theory of the day, and one
of the texts that he looks at is The witch
or on the Illusions of Demons by Jeanne Francesco Pica
del Mirandola, who died in fifteen thirty three. Now Pico

(51:43):
was the nephew of the influential philosopher Giovanni Pico, and
Pico the younger here was wasn't was an influential thinker
of the day as well. He was an intellectual who
championed quote, the truths of Christianity against the crescendo of
skepticism that he felt era Statlian science fostered by encouraging
an empirical attitude towards the world. So Stevens wrote that

(52:07):
he quote brilliantly understood the way to fight skepticism was
with skepticism itself. So in other words, Pico was an
enemy of reason who used his intellectual gifts to champion
religious worldview over skepticism. His works enforced quite literally the
idea of a demon haunted world. But Pico in his work,

(52:28):
he describes a conversation between four individuals, including the inquisitor
Dicasti so which means judge who quote healthfully explains that
all the trial records of the inquisition revealed that the
devil can create a nearly perfect facsimile of the human body,
but never can get the feet to come out right.

(52:48):
Never the feet. God makes the feet come out in
verse those at preposteros, so that people will know that
they are in the presence of a devil and not
be fool into thinking that he is human. Thus they
have no excuse for sinning. The corollary, which Decosts does
not state, is equally important. Imperfect feet are an infallible

(53:12):
way of recognizing demons, So we should not fear that
which is mistake ordinary humans for demons. So perhaps you
know Jenny works along some more lines or or plays
upon these trends and storytelling, right, well, I think the
idea here would not necessarily be Jenny herself, but would
be the creatures that this scholar is saying that Jenny
descends from. The idea of the green teeth comes to

(53:34):
us from the fact that there would be the seductive
water spirits who might they might be beautiful to lure
men into the water and drown them. But like like
the witches that Dicostys is talking about, here, would have
one feature that would be a tell that would let
you know that God has not allowed this demon to
be a perfect mimicking of human beauty, and that tell

(53:55):
is that she's got disgusting green teeth well, and from
storytelling standpoint, it's always great to have that that little uh,
that that little detail at the last minute that clears
everyone in, Oh, it's not a woman, it's a demon, etcetera. Uh. Incidentally,
this also reminded me of a line from C. S.
Lewis is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, where
it's written, quote, when you meet anything that is going

(54:17):
to be human and isn't yet or it used to
be human once and isn't now or ought to be human,
and isn't you keep your eyes on it and feel
for your hatchet. Sound advice, sound violent advice, sound advice. Alright,
on that note, we're gonna take one more break and
we'll come back. We're gonna discuss duckweed a little bit more.

(54:37):
We're gonna discuss Jenny Green Teeth a little bit more,
and then we're going to close out. Alright, we're back.
So Vickery also in his paper sites other first hand
accounts that the association with duckweed also also goes the
other way. It's not just that Jinny green Teeth is
a nickname for the lesser duckweed. It's that lesser duckweed
could be a sign that Jinny green Teeth is lurking

(55:00):
underneath uh. In an interview with a thirty four year
old woman in nineteen eighty UH, the interview goes quote,
I remember, as a very small child being told by
my mother to stay away from ponds, as Jenny green
Teeth lived in them. However, I only recall Jenny living
in ponds which were covered in green weed, of a
type which has tiny leaves and covers the entire surface

(55:21):
of the pond. The theory was that Jinny enticed little
children into the ponds by making them look like grass
and safe to walk on. As soon as the child
stepped onto the green it of course parted, and the
child fell through into Jenny's clutches and was drowned. The
green weed then closed over, hiding all traces of the
child ever being there. This last point was the one

(55:43):
which really terrified me and kept me well away from
the ponds, and indeed my own children have also been
told about Jenny, although ponds aren't as numerous these days.
As far as I know, Jenny had no known form
due to the fact that she never appeared above the
surface of the pond. So here the mat on the
surface of the pond is it's like a trick that
Jenny green Teeth uses. She is a hag, she is

(56:06):
a witch, but she uses the duck weed to lure
people to her. But then, also interestingly, Vickery mentions that
Jenny would sometimes get dislocated from her home turf like
children who grew up in Liverpool recount how they believe
Jenny Green Teeth didn't live in ponds or pools, but
in churchyard cemeteries, and that she would reach out and

(56:27):
drag children into the graveyard and then into burial vaults.
And then here's a really interesting one. In the nineteen forties,
parents in South Cheshire told children that Jenny would get
them if they ventured too close to the railroad tracks.
So Jenny, Jenny green Teeth of the the industrial world.
Now that is interesting because it seems like the idea

(56:48):
that the train could run you over that seems far
more overt, Like do you really need to invoke mythology,
uh to make that that that threat reel. Yeah, that's
a good question. I think we we can come back
to that at the very end. But you know, one
of the things that we haven't really talked about yet,
is the idea that, uh, that water's edge attack strategies

(57:10):
are actually a pretty common ambush tactic of some predators. Right.
Oh yeah, Well, let's let's discuss a few of them here,
because some of them are are really impressive. I think
the most obvious one and maybe it's just most obvious
to us because who watch enough nature documentaries uh and
or terrible movies, but croco crocodilian species their attack strategies.

(57:36):
So crocodilians, you know, everything from alligators and crocodiles to
more you know, to lesser known creatures such as the cayman. Uh.
Crocodilians are specialized in hunting both in the water and
at the water's edge, so they're they're ambush predators. They
wait for prey to come close, such as near the
water to drink, and then they lash out with amazing speed. Uh.

(57:59):
And there's a some fabulous nature documentary documentary footage out
there of, for instance, nile crocodiles attacking wild the beast
that are either drinking or preparing to cross bodies of
water during migration. And much like the stories of Jenny
Green Teeth, one of the things about a lot of
crocodilian attack strategies is that they get you into their world,

(58:19):
into the water world that they control. So like, if
you're just out on land, you might easily be able
to get away from a crocodile, But if the crocodile
can get up close to you and can snatch you
and get you into the water and do this thing
that's often referred to as the death roll, this twisting
ocean in the water that breaks your bones, that disorients you,

(58:40):
and then you can allow it to drown you in
the water before it feasts on you. Um. Yeah, this
is a way that it gets you into its domain.
It's like Jenny Green teeth pulling you down underneath the
mat of the duck weed. I have to admit I
was nearly pulled in and overtaken by just research related
to crocodilians because I ran across um a paper titled

(59:01):
on terrestrial Hunting by Crocodilians by Vladimir Dennets uh and
and he points, uh, you know, out that purely terrestrial
attacks even on humans are documented. So we're talking about
attacks that take place not in the water, not at
the water's edge, but outside of the water. Now, I
don't mean like you know, you know, downtown New York

(59:22):
City or anything. I'm talking about area near the water.
Wouldn't rule anything out. But but but but they do occur. Uh.
For and this is a particularly interesting You have the
Cuban crocodile, which apparently is is the most terrestrial of
of today's crocodilian species, in that it is more adapt

(59:43):
at at moving about and uh and even hunting out
of the water. And uh it's thought that the Cuban
crocodiles ancestors may have used pack hunting behavior to take
down giant ground sloths in a past giant ground sloths. Yeah.
So it's just again just a tantalizing tidbit that maybe

(01:00:06):
we can come back to in a later episode, the
idea of pack hunting Cuban crocodile ancestors. So that would
be the what the megatherium? Yeah, those things look like
I wouldn't imagine anything would mess with them. Yeah, but
if you have enough enough land crocs then who knows. Now.
Another really impressive organism to talk about here is the
archer fish. And this one also is kind of superstar

(01:00:28):
of certain nature documentaries. So it's a family of fish
that's evolved an amazing means of hunting prey. Uh. They
shoot a highly specialized stream of water at insects on
branches that are overhanging the water, and they spit this
stream in such a way that high the higher velocity

(01:00:49):
rear portion of the stream catches up to the lower
velocity front portion of the stream right before it hits
the target, jamming everything into a glob, just one solid
glob of so it just really pops. It's like a
it's a water bomb. Yeah, it's just a water bomb
that hits them and then knocks the insect off into
the water where it can get them. It uses exceptional

(01:01:09):
eyesight to aim, as well as an ability to compensate
for the refraction of light as it passes through the
air water interface, which is impressive in and of itself right.
And then it's also interesting to know that they're they're
not born dead eyes. They actually have to practice and
learn by observing other fish in their school. Interesting, so

(01:01:31):
usually think of fish is learning very much. I know
that these are from several different angles. These are fascinating creatures.
They also use their water jet attack underwater and they've
been observed jumping out of the water to catch prey
as well. Now their their jet of water. It has
a functional range of something like one to two meters

(01:01:52):
or three ft three inches to six ft seven inches,
but they can shoot it further than that, but it
just doesn't have particularly good aim beyond that point. You know.
Another example I would like to mention is the fact
that we all know seals and sea lions can be
fearsome predators themselves, right, but sometimes, of course they have
to flee a more powerful flesh gobbler, which is the orca,

(01:02:14):
the killer whale. Goodness, and this is another superstar of
nature documaries. Yes, Now, normally, if you're a seal sea lion,
the best way to escape a killer whale is going
to be what swim full speed for sure, get onto
the beach or the rocks of the orca can't reach you.
Right then you can just lay around all day and
for the most part, nothing's gonna miss with you. Right,
I'm thinking of the you know, the swim Charlie swim

(01:02:34):
scene in Jaws. Right, the shark won't follow you onto
the beach. There are no land sharks, but one of
the strangest attack strategies I've ever seen in nature is
the way that the orca has learned to defy this logic.
Sometimes orcas will deliberately beach themselves to catch prey that
has escaped onto land. For example, the orcas of the

(01:02:57):
Valdes Peninsula on the Atlantic coast of Argentina are known
for doing this. They will chase a seal or sea
lion that's on the ground or in the in the
shallow water like the surf or just up on the rocks,
and the orca will rock it towards the water line,
crash over it onto land at snag a seal, and
then flop around and slide back into the water, dragging

(01:03:18):
the seal with them. It's an impressive and just awesome
sight and and it's like the ultimate nightmare. Right. There
are so many just unbelievably powerful predators in the water
that you always think like, well, at least I'm safe
on land, and to be clear of the target here
is the seal. So yes, humans are safe from beach

(01:03:38):
based oorca attacks, right at least generally, I wouldn't rule
out that it could never happen. Well, but I would
not lose any sleepover, right not Yeah, nothing to go
about your life worthy and about. But hey, let's go
to another similar example, Robert, I want you to put
yourself in a in a city in France. Imagine yourself
wandering along the river Tarn in southern France, in the

(01:04:01):
commune of Albi. Like a lot of urban areas, Albi
has its resident population of pigeons. We all know about
city pigeons, and they're probably out there getting fat off
the bread that falls off the edges of cafe tables
and stuff like that. The winged rats of civilization. Now
in the river dwells a mighty leviathan, the European catfish.

(01:04:23):
The European catfish Silarus glanis is not not native to
this river, but it is this invasive species that has
taken over rivers in in all throughout Europe, and it
is Europe's largest freshwater fish. I believe it's the third
largest freshwater fish in the world. And these things get big.
I've read like a meter to even a meter and
a half long, and they are thick. Now, I want

(01:04:45):
to remind everybody that the catfish is generally regarded as
a bottom feeder. Um I imagine you you haven't grown
up in Tennessee like I like I have. There were
a lot of stories of the catfish that grow gigantic
the like the depths near dams, for instance. Yeah, exactly.
And there weren't a lot of stories about them being

(01:05:06):
I mean, I guess they were occasionally stories about them,
you know, biting or whatnot. But for the most part, yeah,
they're down there in the deep. They're not really concerned
with the surface until you catch one on your reel
and you bring it up. Right. So you're in Albe,
You're going along the river and the river tarn, and
you notice the pigeons are hanging out on a little
gravel island to clean themselves by the water, and you,

(01:05:28):
of course also see these invasive catfish, the monstrous catfish,
floating around at the water's edge. And then suddenly what
you see is that one of these leviathans lashes out
of the shallows, partially beaches itself, clamps its jaws down
on a pigeon's head or leg or wing, and then
drags the bird down into the deeper part of the
water to feast. There was a study in two thousand

(01:05:51):
twelve and pl os one that that characterized this behavior
by Julian coukro Set, Stephanie Bullatrouw, fred drick as, Amar,
Arthur Compeen, Matthew Guillaume, and Frederick Santool, and the authors
characterized the catfish in this case as freshwater killer whales.
Now they noticed something interesting. Only moving pigeons were attacked,

(01:06:15):
and the catfish that hunted pigeons would tend to hold
their you know those whiskers catfish have on their faces,
the barbels, they would tend to hold those erect while
they were hunting. And this led the authors to conclude
that the catfish were probably hunting by sensing vibrations in
the water. But fascinating question, how did this hunting strategy
come about? How did the how did the catfish start

(01:06:38):
going from just you know, normal aquatic feeding behaviors to saying, yeah,
I'll jump out of the water into the air onto
the land that would probably kill me, grab a pigeon
and drag it in. How did it decide to become
Jenny Green teeth. I'm guessing it probably started off as
a like a crime of opportunity, right, yeah, But it's
always I mean, it's just hard to imagine, Like how

(01:07:00):
all behaviors like that originate? What how did it start happening? Well,
it makes me think of our old friends, the squirrels,
the scugs, and uh, their their their predatory side. And
what point does a creature that is not that is
clearly not evolved for such behavior begin, you know, dipping
its little toes into that, right. Yeah, but then again

(01:07:22):
when you think about it, I mean, it is a
great opportunity, right because the water's edge is sort of
a perfect ambush. Point is the crocodilians have caught onto
the attacker can get so close to the prey while
remaining hidden, just like Jenny lurking under the duck weed.
And and this emphasizes that there are actually multiple reasons
that water's edge fears are not just you know, psychologically salient,

(01:07:45):
but they're entirely justified in many ways, especially when you're
talking about children. Yeah, this this really brings us back
to what we talked about at the very beginning, the
the idea that there is this, this real and perhaps
you know, very honest reason for for crafting these men
so or at least embracing these these folkloric beliefs and
then passing them onto children. Uh, you know, and I

(01:08:06):
definitely want to be sensitive about this because accidental drowning
deaths are are a very serious matter and a traumatic matter,
especially when it concerns children. I've known people personally affected
by tragedies like this, and and it is it's difficult
to find words to even even talk about them. You know,
there's just such a such a you know, a bleak

(01:08:26):
traumatic experience to even contemplate. Uh. And I know that
some of you out there listening to this episode you
may have lost people in this matter. And I do
want to drive home that you do have our our
sympathies even as we discuss the you know, the human
myth making that builds up around the truth. But but
let's let's stop just to consider some of the modern
stats about accidental drowning. According to the CDC, from two

(01:08:49):
thousand five to two thousand and fourteen, there were an
average of three thousand, five hundred and thirty six fatal
unintentional drownings non voting related annually in the United States,
about ten deaths per day. An additional three d and
thirty two people died each year from drowning in boat
related incidents. About one in five people who die from

(01:09:11):
drowning our children fourteen and younger, and for every child
who dies from drowning, another five receive emergency department care
for non fatal submersion injuries. This is worth noting here
as well, because if you haven't if you don't have
any firsthand account with drowning, or you're not trained as
a lifeguard, you might not realize that it's it's not

(01:09:31):
just this definite line between drowning and almost drowning, between
you know, dying in the water and surviving. Um. The
CDC page points out that uh more than fifty percent
of drowning victims treated in emergency departments require hospital treatment,
and non fatal drowning injuries can still cause severe brain damage,

(01:09:52):
the result in long term disabilities. Yeah. I mean, this
kind of thing emphasizes and we should be clear that
these are modern statistics. These are based on a time
where I think it is more common for people to
know how to swim, like to have been taught how
to swim. Um that this is probably not referring as
often to people living in places where it's common for

(01:10:14):
there to be stagnant pools that are covered in a
map that make them look like grass. Um. I mean, so,
so yeah, this is different circumstances even but it highlights
how dangerous water can be. If you're an adult who
knows how to swim and you don't think about dangers
to children, you just really might not realize how real
of a threat a standing body of water is. So

(01:10:37):
the myth making of Jenny Green Teeth as a as
a warning to keep children away from the duckweed ponds
and the moral pits filled in it seems like a
very very reasonable thing to do in a way. I mean,
I'm not necessarily advocating making up fictional monsters to scare children,
but you can see why people did it, And so
Jenny is often used educationally as a safety warning. The

(01:10:59):
monster is invoked to keep children from playing near dangerous
bodies of water or in other contexts that are dangerous,
like around railroad tracks, like Vickery talked about. But here's
this interesting part we were talking about earlier that I
feel like we still haven't necessarily solved. The thing you're
warning children to stay away from is real, life threatening danger,

(01:11:19):
and in order to get the message across, you have
to create a fictional supernatural life threatening danger. Children are
obviously motivated by self preservation or the fictional supernatural life
threatening danger wouldn't work. But for some reason, some risks
to their body safety and their survival don't seem to
be as salient or as as effective as others. And

(01:11:42):
apparently mothers and fathers are wagering that children are just
not likely to obey warnings about the risks of deep
water that says you could fall in and drown. They
think children are more likely to obey a warning that
says the green Lady will get you. So why is
the fictional threat more compelling and more useful than the
actual threat? Now I come back again to what I

(01:12:04):
said earlier about how I feel like the monster is
actually still a sanitized version of the threat um And
and isn't it interesting too that we see these examples
where you're personifying the threat, you're turning the threat into
the human identity. But then you're making it an old woman,
which also feels like a sanity, like you're sanitizing it

(01:12:26):
because you're not making it into a man, which if
you look at the if you look at the chances
of a of an individual posing a significant bodily and
certainly a lethal threat to a child. That individual is
far more likely to be male. Um, you know, without

(01:12:47):
certainly getting into into stranger danger and the more, you know,
inflated aspects of this sphere. But but you've you've, You've chosen.
There seems to be there's an active choice here in
making Jenny been teeth, making it an older female entity
instead of a male entity, which would, again, I think,
bring it too close to horrific real life situations that

(01:13:11):
you're trying to avoid and crafting the myth. I think
I agree with that, though, then again, I wonder if
this is this is a sort of modern American cultural
bias on our part that makes us feel this way.
I mean, we might not feel like old women are
necessarily less dangerous. If we say we're in a context
in which we believed witchcraft was real, that's true, that's true.

(01:13:33):
If we have we're taking this and we're we're steeping
it in, uh, the age of witchcraft persecution and then
the an age in which which tales of hags and
witches are are are found everywhere. Then again a lot
of this is taking place, and say the early twentieth
century in which case, I don't know how many people
in north Northwest England in the early twentieth century thought

(01:13:54):
witchcraft was real. But then again, it wasn't that far
removed from from witchcraft persecution. Again, we have to remember
that witchcraft persecution was was what was not a medieval
um uh practice, it was post medieval so early modern. Yeah. Um.
Before we we closed out here, I do want to

(01:14:14):
quickly reference another green in today that I forgot to
mention that I should have mentioned, that I can only
imagine is based in part on some of these ideas,
and that is the Hitcher from the Mighty Bush, the
green skinned hag like male Cockney character. I'm not familiar.
Oh you haven't he sings the song about eels. No,

(01:14:34):
I don't know. Well, those of you out there who
have watched The Mighty Bush you know what I'm talking about.
If not, um, do a do a search for for
Bush and Hitcher, and I think you'll be delighted with
what you find. I thought you were going to say,
Cheddar Goblin, ch cheddar Goblin. It is a more recent phenomenon,
but but I think probably unrelated to this particular fairy tale. Well, Robert,

(01:14:56):
I have had massive fun with this epic exploration of
water hags Jenny Green teeth. Yeah, this has been a
good one. Uh, there was, there was. There's a lot
more beneath the depths than one might think. You know,
you don't know how deep that pond really is. All right.
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(01:16:59):
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