Episode 64 – The Good Place – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 64 Show Notes

Source: Hungarian Folklore

This week on MYTH, we’ll quest for eternal life! You’ll learn that people will give you gifts for not marrying them, that charm will get you everywhere, and that one man’s curse is another man’s fantasy. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet the three forms of a demon sex chicken that might look like your dead spouse. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 64, “The Good Place”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
This week’s story comes to us from Hungary and is an interesting take on a classic trope – a prince going out in search of adventure to help prepare him to rule one day. We’ve seen variations on this tale a few times already: Episodes 8, 18, 32, 40, and 57 just to name the ones with royalty in them. The version we’ll be using comes from The Crimson Fairy Book, published by Andrew Lang in 1903, although his wife, Leonora Alleyne actually did the bulk of translating and transcribing many of the stories in the collection (and I wanted to make sure to give her the credit she deserves on this).
Once upon a time, in the heart of a large kingdom, lay the capital city. In the city, a palace had been built, and in that palace, as you might expect, dwelt a king and his son, the prince. As is often the case with these stories, almost no mention is made of the boy’s mother, so pick your favorite reason for her total absence and go with that (although it seems that she is alive based on something that happens later in the story). The prince was the king’s only son and therefore his heir, and as parents often do, the king thought that his son was the smartest, handsomest, wisest, and cleverest boy who ever lived. He was a king though, and so he had more than the average means to see to it that his vision became an accurate one. He had hired the best tutors and governors for the boy his whole life, and unlike the princes in some of our stories, the boy was diligent and studious, and made his teachers and his father proud.
When he was nearly old enough to be able to rule on his own (should something happen to the king), the old ruler did the same thing that many monarchs have done – he sent his boy to travel a little, inside the kingdom and, especially, beyond. He wanted the prince to see the different ways people lived in other kingdoms and to learn that these ways were often just as good as his own. In most tales of this type, this would be the call to adventure, and we would follow the prince on his journey around the neighboring kingdom where he would definitely get into some hijinks. Not so this time. Instead, the tale jumps forward to a year after the prince’s return home after an unknown number of years abroad.
The prince had seen much of the world and had learned a great deal, which was good, but the prince’s entire demeanor had changed during his absence, which was bad. Gone was the happy, joyful boy, replaced with a gloomy, introspective man. He hardly said a word to anyone upon his return, instead wandering the palace halls alone, lost in his own thoughts. The king racked his brain trying to think of what could have possibly happened to have brought about such a change and finally hit upon a solution: “ah yes, of course – my son must be in love!”.
Being all mopey and emo, the prince wasn’t exactly given to talking about his feelings (and this was still centuries too early for him to get tattoos and write angsty songs about how no one understands him). The king knew that he was going to have to do something clever and sneaky to get him to open up a little. He schemed a little in secret, and then, one night after dinner, he took his son by the arm and led him into a room that had been recently redecorated.
All of the furniture had been cleared out, and every last square inch of wall space was covered with paintings of beautiful women. The prince stared at this bizarre gallery, unsure what was going on. The king smiled at his son and gestured grandly at the walls. “My boy, you have been so depressed since you came back home; I know that it must be dreadfully dull being confined to the castle with just me and the staff after your year of excitement and adventure. I also know how young men are, so I suspect that part of why you are so mopey is because you met someone on your travels and pine for her, yes? Well, good news, son – I agree that it’s time you were married! I’ve sent for portraits of every beautiful woman of suitable rank in every kingdom worth mentioning. Just tell me which of these ravishing women suits your fancy, and I will send an envoy to her father to arrange the wedding!”
The prince laughed ruefully. “Thanks, dad, but you’ve got it all wrong – my bleakness isn’t because I’m lonely and long for a wife, it’s the memories of what I saw on my journey. The world is beautiful and full of marvels, yes, but it is also full of misery and disease and death. Especially death. I mean, I knew rationally that everyone would die someday, even kings, but it was never more than an abstract idea, you know? Then, out there…” He sighed. “Ever since, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about death, about my death. It haunts me day and night.” The prince is having an existential crisis (but at least he’s confronting it rather than turning into a Jenga tower of sadness, as Chidi so eloquently puts it in the fantastic tv show The Good Place, which you need to go watch right the fuck now if you haven’t…well, not now now, but, you know, after this episode finishes).
This was not at all what the king had expected to hear. He tried to talk his son out of his funk, telling him how much he had missed his boy and how much he had looked forward to abdicating in favor of the prince when he finally returned, but it was no use. The prince was just too damned sad to settle down into being the absolute ruler of a powerful kingdom. Everything he could ever want had been given to him, but he wanted more, he needed more. The following morning, the prince buckled on his sword and set out on a quest to find a country without death, the fabled Land of Immortality.
He traveled for many days, leaving his homeland far behind, and leaving as well the countries he had visited before (knowing that none of them held the secrets he coveted). One day, the road he was following passed close to a truly massive tree. He probably wouldn’t have noticed the tree at all if not for the racket being made by an eagle perched in the uppermost branches. The bird was gripping a branch in its talons and flapping its massive wings in powerful beats, shaking the tree (though not doing very much to it, given the colossal scale of the tree).
This was such a strange sight, and this eagle acted so unlike any bird he had ever seen before in any place he had been that he stopped dead in the middle of the road and watched this unequal struggle between bird and branch. In time, the eagle took notice of the prince, still watching from the road, and it finally let go of the tree and soared down to land in front of the prince. As soon as its talons touched the earth, the bird’s form shivered and melted away, revealing a man who’s bearing and clothes clearly marked him as a king. The crown on his head helped too.
“I noticed you watching me. What was so interesting about a simple eagle?” The prince shook his head. “You were clearly no mere eagle, and I couldn’t help but wonder why you were shaking the boughs of that tree so fiercely.” The king of the eagles smiled. “Fair enough. My family has been cursed – neither I nor any of my kindred can die until the day that I finally uproot this tree with nothing but the strength of an eagle. The sun is going down though, so I don’t need to struggle any more today. I like you, young man. Why don’t you come to my home with me and be my guest for the night?”
The prince happily agreed, eager to sleep in a real bed for the first night in some time and to get a meal he didn’t make out of his knapsack. The two men were received at the eagle king’s palace by his gorgeous daughter, who began preparations to have dinner laid out at once. The three royals supped together, and while they ate, the eagle questioned his guest about his travels. And if you’re wondering if they’re ever going to give the backstory on the crazy immortal eagle curse, I’m sad to say that no, they won’t. It’s one of many, many unexplained things about to happen. This is apparently a very, very magical world with lots of inexplicable curses and powerful artifacts. Just roll with the madness. It’ll be easier that way.
The prince explained that he was seeking the Land of Immortality, and told them that he had vowed not to return home until he had found a way to escape Death. The king of eagles smiled broadly. “My dear boy, look no further – you have found it! My heart rejoices at the thought that you will stay here with us (the prince was apparently one charming bastard). I have just told you that Death has no power over anyone in my family until that great tree has been uprooted! It will take me at least 600 years to accomplish that, so why not marry my daughter and live here long and well? After all, 600 years is practically an eternity!”
The young man smiled sadly and shook his head. “My new friend, your offer is very tempting, but at the end of those 600 years, we will all have to die, which leaves me no better off! No, I fear I must continue my quest until I find a country where there is no death at all.” Now, it seems to me that the prince hasn’t considered that he could easily waste his entire life searching for immortality without finding it, and if that happens, he’s going to sorely regret not taking six centuries when he had the chance. Then again, I’m not as clever, charming or, most importantly, protected by plot armor as a fairy tale prince. The princess spoke up at this point, trying to convince the dashing prince to stay with her and be her husband (like I said, he’s apparently one hell of a charming bastard), but even her gentle wiles were no use.
When it became clear to her that he would not be dissuaded from his quixotic quest, she told him to wait while she fetched him something to remember her by. She went to an elegantly carved cabinet and withdrew an ordinary-looking little box and placed a tiny portrait of herself inside. Her heart heavy, she handed the little box to the prince. “Since I cannot convince you to stay with us, please take this box with you. If you ever feel alone, you can open it and remember the pleasant time you had here. More importantly, if you tire of your travels and decide to come back, all you need do is open the box and gaze at the picture with intent, and you will be borne along by the wind itself, as swiftly as a whirlwind and as gently as a summer breeze.”
This was indeed a fine gift (especially for someone you just met that day, but fairytale people fall in love crazy easy), and he thanked her profusely for her generosity. He placed the box carefully inside his tunic and bade the eagle king and his daughter farewell with more than a touch of sadness in his own heart. This would be a fine place to spend a life, but he just wasn’t ready to accept Death as inevitable yet. The box proved to be insanely useful almost immediately, and many times he blessed the eagle king and princess for giving it to him. It was much faster and easier than walking to simply open the box and look where he wanted to go (which, alas for the princess, was not back to the castle).
One day, he sailed up to the top of a mountain he spied on the winds summoned by the little box. He saw someone moving around near the peak and was curious. When he arrived, he found a bald man busily digging up shovelfuls of earth from the mountain peak and tossing them into a small basket. When the basket was full (which didn’t take long), he took the basket away and returned to his dig with a new, empty basket and began to fill it in turn. After watching a few identical iterations of this, the bald man looked up to see the prince staring. “What brings you all the way up here to watch me work?” The prince smiled disarmingly (charming bastard). “Oh, I was just wondering why you kept filling up baskets of dirt from the top of a very tall mountain. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone do this before.”
The bald man sighed. “Of course you were wondering. I am condemned to do this, for neither I nor any of my family can die until I have dug up and carried away this entire mountain and made it level with the plain around it.” Again, there is no explanation for this bizarre curse straight of Zeus’ fevered imagination. “But come, the sun is setting, so it’s time for me to head back before it gets dark.” As he spoke, he plucked a leaf from a nearby tree, and the rough, filthy laborer was immediately transformed into a stately, regal (but still bald) king. “Come home with me and be my guest for the night. We are a long way from civilization out here, and you must be tired and hungry. My daughter will have supper waiting.”
This worked out really well for the prince last time (plus a hot meal and a soft bed did sound really nice), so he accepted readily. The bald king’s daughter was waiting for them at the castle door, and she was somehow even more lovely than the eagle king’s daughter had been. She led them into a great hall where a table was set up, covered with steaming silver dishes. The food was exquisite, and while they ate, the bald king asked the young prince about his journey. I really have to wonder if the prince just doesn’t have any interest in the lives of other people, even those who are doing him a huge favor, or if the story just doesn’t want to think of a reason for these curses and just glosses over them. The prince told them the same thing he had told the last random royals he had stumbled across – that he was seeking the Land of Immortality. The king smiled broadly and gestured grandly to the castle around them. “And you have found it, my friend! As I said earlier, neither I nor any of my family can die until I have levelled that towering mountain peak, and that will take at least 800 years to accomplish. Stay with us and marry my daughter. 800 years is surely more than enough time to live.”
“800 years is certainly a long time, but all the same, I would rather continue on my way and seek the land where there is no Death at all.” This princess also begged the charming bastard of a prince (who’s at least being totally up front and honest about his intentions from the get-go), but again he would not be persuaded to set aside his quest. When the princess realized that it was no use, she too gave him a remembrance gift – a gold ring.
The ring was even more useful than the box had been, for it would take you wherever you wished to go as quickly as thought itself, without all the bother of being carried on the rushing winds high above the earth. The prince thanked the princess heartifly for this unbelievable gift, and then he set out once more on his journey. He walked for some distance before it really sunk in that he now owned a magic ring, and there was no need to waste boot leather walking to where he wanted to go. If the princess had told the truth about the ring’s powers (and there was no good reason for her to lie), then all he had to do was close his eyes and wish.
The prince stopped in the middle of the road, closed his eyes, and spoke his desire aloud: “I wish I was at the end of the world.” He felt not the slightest flutter of movement, but the silence of the empty road was suddenly filled with the roar of a bustling city. He opened his eyes to behold wonders. He was standing on a street lined with marble palaces, being passed by people in strange clothes speaking languages he had never heard before in all of his travels. All of the men were tall and strong, with handsome, chiseled features, and all of the women were elegant and beautiful, with features that poets would die to compose verse about. He went around to various random passersby, trying all 27 languages that he knew (he really is incredibly intelligent and clever, even by fairy tale standards). He asked everyone the name of this strange city, but everyone either ignored him or responded in confused tones with words he couldn’t comprehend. The prince’s heart sank. He hadn’t considered the possibility that he would reach a place where he couldn’t communicate. What would he do if nobody could understand him?
His eyes roamed wildly in near-panic, and there, in the crowd, he saw clothes he recognized. That stranger was wearing garments from his homeland, and hope kindled anew in his heart at the thought that here might be someone who he could actually speak to. “My friend, a moment please!” The man turned, clearly surprised to hear that language being spoken. “What city is this? Where are we?” If it were me, I’d be wanting to know how in the hell this guy had gotten all the way to the end of the world without knowing where it was he was headed (or at least picking up a little of the local languages along the very, very long journey here since he has no way of knowing that the prince has a magic ring, but maybe teleportation is blase at the end of the world). “This is the capital city of the Blue Kingdom. The king died not long ago, so his daughter now rules as Queen.”
This was clearly not the Land of Immortality then, but it had to be closer than he’d ever been before. He begged his countryman to show him the way to the young queen’s palace. Bemused, the stranger did so, leading the prince through several winding streets to a broad square; one side was entirely taken up by a magnificent edifice raised above the earth on slender pillars of soft green marble, somehow putting a city of splendor to shame. A flight of steps led from the street up to the palace and, lo and behold, the young queen was sitting on these steps, wrapped in a veil of shimmering silver mist, to listen to the petitions of her people and render her judgments and her justice.
The queen saw the prince approaching and apparently realized immediately that quote “he was no ordinary man.” Like I said, he’s quite the Prince Charming. She had her chamberlain dismiss the rest of the petitioners for the day so that she and the prince could speak. She motioned for him to follow her into the palace, and he complied. By an incredible stroke of luck, the queen had learned the prince’s language as a child because reasons. I mean, you would think that the prince would have used up his miraculous good luck by now, but apparently not. He’s not the first person from his kingdom to reach the end of the world, but it still seems an unlikely language for her to know. Oh well.
The prince told her his story about his quest for the Land of Immortality. The queen listened attentively to his incredible tale and, when he had finished, led him to a plain, humble looking door in the hall. Inside was a room with a floor made entirely of needles, packed in so tightly that the prince doubted there was room for a single more needle. It was a strange sight to behold, and the prince looked quizzically at her. As you probably already suspect, she’s not going to give us the backstory that I at least desperately want to get. “Prince, you see all of these needles?” Like he could possibly miss the room from a serial killer’s nightmare. “Neither I nor anyone in my family can die until I have worn out each and every last one of these needles with my sewing. It will take at least 1000 years for me to do that. Stay here with me, prince, and share my throne. A thousand years is long enough to live!”
“A millennium is a very long time to be sure, but still – at the end of that thousand years, I will still have to die. For me, that’s not quite enough, my queen. No, I need to find the land where there is no Death.” The queen did her very best to persuade the prince that he was better off living out his incredibly long days with her, but it was no use. She eventually realized that there was no hope of convincing the prince to stay, and she gave up. “SInce I cannot convince you to stay, will you at least take this little golden rod in remembrance of me? It is magical, with the ability to become whatever you want it to, should you be in need.” That was a pretty vaguely defined power, but the prince could sense potential in it and besides, he’d been taught to always be polite, so he thanked the queen for her gift and set out to continue on his quest.
He left the capital of the Blue Kingdom and almost immediately came to the banks of a broad river, so vast that he couldn’t see the other bank. He had heard tell of this wonder, a river that flowed completely around the world to mark its end, and no man had the power to cross it. This truly was the end of the world, and he could go no further. Then the prince knew despair. He could always go back to the queen and have a thousand years, but that thought depressed him immensely. Not knowing what else to do, he turned and walked up the bank in a random direction. Maybe he would walk the entire length of the river, looking for something that seemed increasingly impossible.
He had gone some distance, lost in thought and watching nothing but the path immediately in front of him. When he looked up again, he saw an impossibly beautiful city floating in the sky above the world-river. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but the city remained stubbornly in the sky. This was no mirage, it was magic! Surely wonders dwelt there, and the prince’s heart soared at the thought of walking those incredible, impossible streets, but he immediately encountered a new problem – there was no way to reach the city. There was no road, no bridge, not even a lousy rope. The city dangled there like a glistening jewel, out of reach and beyond his hope. He was certain beyond all reason that he had finally found the Land of Immortality; found, but in vain. Again, the prince despaired.
It was then that the prince remembered the golden rod the mist-veiled queen had given him. I mean, he has three powerful magical artifacts, any one of which could probably do the trick, but in true Legend of Zelda fashion, whatever new toy you just got is the one you should be using, so he pulled out the golden rod. Heart pounding, he flung the rod at the ground, wishing with all of his might for a way to the floating city. He feared that the city would be protected from access by any earthly means, but his unbelievable luck held. The rod struck the earth and immediately transformed into a golden ladder stretching from the bank near him up to the floating city. He climbed the ladder without worrying about what would happen if he fell, or if the magic he’s never used before gave out or had a time limit or any number of other potential pitfalls, but again his goddamned luck held and he reached the floating city in short order.
The prince stood for a moment, gazing in wonder at what he was sure was the end of his journey, before heading to the golden city gates. As he approached however, a hideous, massive monster the likes of which he had never seen appeared. The monster roared (and the sound was deafening as the creature apparently has more than one head) and moved towards him. Screaming ‘out sword from sheath’ (I’m not sure if that’s a battle cry or if the sword is magic and acts on its own, although the story never thought to mention a magic sword before this), the prince leapt back away from the snapping jaws of the beast. The sword leapt from the scabbard (possibly of its own magical accord) and cut off some of the thing’s heads, but each time the sword went snicker-snack and took off a head, another grew back in its place (which makes me think this might be a variation on the hydra from Greek mythology). The prince realized quickly that this was getting him nowhere, and so, pale with terror, the prince sheathed his sword and called for help.
The sound of the battle had drawn attention, including that of the queen of the floating kingdom, who looked out her window to see what all the fuss was about. She saw the handsome prince about to become monster food and sent one of her servants to go rescue the man (I presume that this creature was a guard beast and the servant could control it, otherwise that’s one hell of a mission for Random Servant Guy). It also makes me wonder what the point of a guardian monster is if not to keep out the mortal riff raff. The servant hastened to do as he was asked and brought a much relieved prince in to speak with the queen.
She welcomed him graciously and asked what had brought him to her city (a fair question, especially given how remote this city apparently is). As he had done several times before, the prince told her his whole tale of questing for the Land of Immortality, and all of the other places he had been that, while nice, hadn’t quite been what he needed them to be. The queen smiled at the prince (who really was a charming bastard). “Your quest is at an end prince, for I am the queen of life and death. Here, in this city, you walk amongst the immortals.”
The prince had finally done it! He had achieved immortality and cheated death! He made his home there in the immortal city, and a millenium passed by so quickly that it hardly seemed to have been six months since the prince had first entered the city. During that entire time, the prince had been thrilled with his new home, and not a single moment of unhappiness had spoiled his joy. Then one night, the prince dreamed of his home, and of his mother and father (see, I told you she’d appear at some point), and his heart was seized with homesickness. He longed to see his family again, and the ache grew steadily deeper and stronger throughout the rest of the night.
In the morning, the prince went to speak to the Queen of the Immortals and told her that he must go back home and see his mother and father once more. The queen stared at him like he had spouted gibberish (and to be fair, he basically is). “Are you mad, prince? Your parents have been dead for more than 800 years (I’m not sure if the queen just has a bad sense of how long mortals live, or if the people in these magical kingdoms just live longer than regular folk). By now, not even the dust from their bones remains. They are as gone as it is possible to be, prince.”
The prince’s face set into that stubborn expression it had adopted every time someone had told him to give up on seeking immortality, and since it had worked out so perfectly last time, he saw no reason not to indulge his stubborn streak again. “Nevertheless, I must go all the same.” The queen had learned much of her strange princely lover over the last thousand years, and she knew that he would not be talked out of this. “If you must go, at least wait until I can make some proper preparations for your journey.”
She went to the castle treasury and brought him to a massive chest, bound and locked. She opened this chest, taking from it a pair of flasks – one of pure silver and the other of pure gold – which she hung around the prince’s neck. Then she led him to a trap door in a corner of the room. “Fill up the silver flask with the water in the well beneath this trap door. It is enchanted with the power of Death, and anyone you sprinkle with the water will drop dead in an instant, even if he has lived for a thousand years. The golden flask, fill with water from the well beneath that trap door over there.” She gestured to the opposite corner of the room. “It springs from the rock of eternity; sprinkle even a few drops on a body and it will spring immediately back to life and health, even if it has been dead a thousand years.”
The prince thanked the queen for these fuckin’ sweet gifts and then set out back into the land of the mortals for the first time in an age. He headed first for the capital city of the Blue Kingdom, wanting to tell its mist-veiled queen that he had succeeded in his quest and achieved immortality. The city was more or less where he remembered it being, but the city itself had changed completely. He struggled to find his way through streets that were utterly different than they had been the last time he was here, but eventually found his way to the palace. There was no one standing guard at the gates, so he entered. The place was silent and empty, and he shivered – this palace felt more like a mausoleum.
He wandered through the halls, and not a single soul crossed his path to ask just who the fuck he thought he was to be in the palace. He found the queen’s chamber and, inside, he saw her sitting in a chair by the fireplace, a piece of embroidery on her lap, unfinished. She was fast asleep, but the prince was impatient to speak to her, so he shook her gently. No response. He shook harder. No response. A dark thought entered his mind and he rushed over to the room that had been absolutely filled with needles. It was empty. He looked back at the queen, and saw the sparkle of a broken needle at her feet. She must have finally used up the last needle, and with it the curse that had kept her alive was broken as well. The mist-veiled queen was dead.
The prince rushed over to her still corpse and unscrewed the golden flask, sprinkling a few drops on her chilly flesh. In but a moment, she shivered and drew in a deep, harsh breath, then raised her head to look at the prince. She was clearly confused, as though waking from a long sleep, but she recognized the prince (who I presume looked exactly as he had the last time he was here). “Oh, my old friend! It’s good to see you again. Thanks for waking me up.” She stretched. “I feel so stiff! I must have slept a long time.”
The prince smiled gently. “And you would have slept on until eternity if I had not come by to rouse you.” His words perplexed her for a moment, but then she remembered the sight of the last needle breaking in her hands and realized that she had died and that the prince had somehow brought her back to life. Now, the queen had originally spoken of her thousand years as a curse which makes me think that maybe she had finally been ready to die, but the story says that she was grateful for his help, thanking him from the bottom of her once-more beating heart and vowing to repay him if she ever got the chance.
The prince left the mist-veiled queen to her empty, dead city and journeyed on (and the story never bothered to explain how the water of life works, so I don’t know if she’s immortal now or has some number of years left to live or what). He went next to the kingdom of the bald king using the power of the golden ring they had given him to travel there at a thought. He found a flat, featureless plain where the mountain had been and at its heart, the bones of a man stretched out on the ground next to a rotted bucket and a rusted spade. Again, he used the golden flask and brought the dead king back to life (though not, I noticed, the princess who had actually gifted him the ring because fuck her I guess). The king stretched and yawned, then stood slowly on wobbly legs. “My old friend! It’s good to see you again! I must have slept for a long while to be so stiff!” “And you would have slept on until eternity if I had not come along to rouse you.” The king remembered then the mountain and the curse, and he too realized that he had died (though again, the story doesn’t mention him shedding a single tear for the daughter who had died at the same moment since she had been bound by the same curse). He thanked the prince profusely for his help and vowed to repay his kindness if he ever had the chance, and the prince left him to rule over an empty plain.
The prince headed next for the home of the king of the eagles, where he found the gnarled, rotten remains of a huge tree that had been torn out of the earth at the roots. Next to it lay the rotted bones of a massive eagle, wings outspread as though in flight. A shudder ran through the feathers that once more clothed the bones as the water of life did its work. The eagle king sat up, yawned, and stretched hugely before getting slowly to his feet (and again, there’s no mention of the princess, so I assume she stays dead because fuck her too I guess). “Oh how long I must have slept. Thank you for waking me up, my good friend!” “You would have slept until eternity if I had not been here to rouse you.” The king remembered then the sound of the great tree finally crashing to the earth and realized that he had died. He too thanked the prince for bringing him back and vowed to repay the favor if he ever had the chance. The prince left the eagle king behind to fly above a dead forest and headed for home.
At last, he reached the capital city of his father’s kingdom, of the land he would have ruled if he hadn’t left it behind. He went to where the palace had been, where his home had been, but in place of the towering stone and delicate marble, he found a great lake of sulphur burning endlessly with reeking blue flames. The place was a scene straight out of hell. How was he supposed to find the bodies of his mother and father in this? If they were lying at the bottom of that awful lake, how was he supposed to sprinkle them with the water of life and bring them back?
He turned sadly away from the fiery lake and wandered aimlessly down deserted streets that wound through abandoned ruins. Behind him, the prince heard a voice. “I have caught you at last, prince! I have sought you for a thousand years, and now you are mine.” The prince, who had been certain he was alone in the ruins, whirled around, heart racing in panic. There stood Death, old, withered, white-bearded, and robed in black. While the terrible figure loomed and leered, the prince snatched the golden ring off of his finger. For reasons that are never explained, this somehow sent a signal to the king of the eagles, the bald king, and the mist-veiled queen, who all appeared immediately beside the figure of Death (through magical travel that is also never explained, but given how easily they all gave away powerful artifacts, I’m willing to believe that each had many such potent items stored away). Somehow grasping the situation immediately, the three leapt to protect the prince and repay their debt, seizing Death’s robes and holding him down as the prince fled.
As quick as thought, the prince wished himself back to the golden gates of the Land of Immortality. Only a few short feet stood between himself and safety from the icy clutches of Death and the prince ran like he had never run before. A smile crept across his face as his foot crossed the border, but it turned to a scream as his other leg was jerked out from underneath him. The prince tottered, but managed to regain his balance, one foot inside the Queen of Life and Death’s realm, and one foot in the mortal world of Death. “No you don’t, you little shit! You’re mine!”
The prince looked behind him and was unsurprised to see the grim, gruesome grin of Death leering back at him, bony hands clutching his leg in a death-grip (pun absolutely intended). He never would have imagined that old Death could fly so fast, but of course Death waits for no one. The Queen of the Immortals had been watching for his return from her window, and she raced out of the palace. “You have no power here, you old ghost! You are forbidden to enter this place! Seek your grisly game somewhere else, asshole!”
Death grinned at the queen, and even she shivered at the sight. “True enough, but only one of his feet is in your kingdom. The other is in mine, and that belongs to me!” “But the other half belongs to me, and you can’t have it! What good is half a man to you?” Personally, I’d argue that, since losing half would probably kill him and at the very least would leave him in excruciating and unending torment to serve as a warning to any other mortals who wanted to flee Death, half of the prince is absolutely worth Death’s time, but the story version is swayed by her argument. The queen offered to allow Death to enter her kingdom this one time only so that they could decide by a wager which of them would win the prince’s life. Death accepted, afraid to lose his long-sought quarry forever.
After some bickering, the two agreed to the wager that would decide the prince’s fate. Everyone trekked over to a great square in the heart of the city. The prince stood at the very center and the queen approached, rolling her shoulders as she walked to loosen up. Placing one foot directly under the prince, she grabbed him by the torso and hurled him up into the air. As you might guess given her power over life and death, the queen was inhumanly strong, and the prince sailed up, up, up into the air until he was so tiny that he was lost among the stars. He was too far away for any there to see where he was going to come back down.
The wager was this: if the prince landed inside the city walls, he could stay there, safe from Death’s clutches. If any part of him landed outside however, he was doomed to death (probably from reentering the fucking atmosphere at terminal velocity since there’s no way he’s surviving this without powerful magic). The queen peered anxiously up into the sky. Had she thrown him straight? At the distance she had hurled him, even a small mistake would be magnified hugely and could spell the prince’s doom.
The moment stretched out as Death and the queen stared up into the sky, searching for the returning prince. At the same moment, they both caught sight of a tiny speck no bigger than a wasp hanging in the infinity of the sky. Was he coming down straight? No, no wait…yes! He was going to land in the city! His trajectory was clearly headed for close to the walls, but definitely inside. As he neared the earth, a wind sprang up in exactly the wrong direction, nudging him towards the walls.
He was almost to the ground again, falling impossibly fast, and he was headed straight for the wall. The prince was going to land on the wall, half in and half out of the city, which would mean his doom. As he approached, the queen leapt towards the falling prince and snatched him out of the air with no more than another second until impact and hurled him at the castle. Death raged that he had been cheated, but the queen ignored him. She commanded her servants, immortals all, to cast that unwanted creature from her city. A group of them seized Death and threw him bodily out of the city gates, but not before beating the shit out of him for good measure, leaving him scarred and traumatized enough to never show his face in the Land of Immortality again.
As far as I can tell, the moral of this story is never be satisfied with what you have – as long as you’re rich, handsome, and a charming bastard, you can have anything you want from anyone all the time (except bringing your parents back from the dead after you abandon and forget about them for generations, because that’s just too much apparently). And so, with the prince and the queen still living in eternal bliss in the floating city, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster is the liderc (lid-erts).
The liderc is a Hungarian demon, although the term is more of an umbrella term that describes a number of related but distinct creatures. There are three that are the most common and best known, and it’s these we’ll be discussing this week. They all share some things in common, but the differences are wild and very, very important.
The first is the csodacsirke or ‘miracle chicken’, which hatches from the first egg of a black hen, but only if it is kept warm under the arm of a human. Some variations claim that it only works with the egg of an unusually tiny black hen, any egg at all, or that the egg must be kept warm in a pile of manure (which is gross, but a lot less weird than carrying an egg under your arm everywhere you go and hoping you don’t wake up with smashed egg in your armpit in the morning). The miracle chicken hatches without feathers and will bond to the person who put in the work to hatch it in the first place.
You have to be really, really, really lonely to go through all of this effort, because the miracle chicken will shift into a human form and become the lover of it’s surrogate step-parent, though it does ask a price in return. Traditionally, it becomes male for a female owner and female for a male one, but there’s really no reason it couldn’t be whatever it’s owner prefers. In exchange for sexual gratification, the owner must hold the miracle chicken to their chest and feed them on their blood every day until the day they die. Some versions of the story say that this price is only exacted if the owner is a woman, and that the liderc will sit on her chest at night and suck her blood, leaving her sick and weak. The Hungarian word for nightmare is lidercnyomas, which translates to ‘liderc pressure’ and is another expression of the common monster type born of sleep paralysis (much like the Popo Bawa from all the way back in Episode 2). Some versions say that, instead of blood, a person need only give the miracle chicken the first bite of every dish. In others, the miracle chicken isn’t a chicken at all but a wraith-snake.
If you go through the extreme effort to hatch one of these little blood-suckers and then decide that fucking a shape-shifting chicken that drinks your blood is just a little too weird, you can keep it forever busy by convincing it to perform an impossible task, such as hauling sand with a rope or carrying water in a seive (though the stories say you can never actually get rid of it). You can also ward it off with garlic or, in some versions, you can straight up murder the creature you created by locking it inside a hollow tree and leaving it to starve. You heartless monster, you.
The second variety of liderc is ordogszereto or ‘demon lover’, and it has a lot in common with the miracle chicken variety. It’s often compared to an incubus or succubus, though the liderc has some peculiar quirks all its own. In western Hungary, it is said that the demon lover has one human leg and one goose leg, which it tries to keep hidden in clothes and boots. Other versions say that it will leave the footprints of a horse though it appears to have human feet. Most stories say that it travels as a floating ball of light, like a will o’ the wisp, as a fiery bird, as a whip of flame, or as St. Elmo’s fire, especially in swamps. When it finds a victim, it lands and changes form, taking the shape of its victim’s dead lover or spouse. This form of the liderc will enter a home through chimneys or keyholes, bringing its victim bad luck and infecting them with a wasting sickness that eventually kills them, and may also cause vivid, horrifying nightmares and sleep paralysis. Other versions say that the demon lover will actually bring good luck and prosperity to its target, and might even help out with household chores, though it will also enter the victim’s dreams, turning them wild and decidedly erotic, and feeding off their life force during the dream, eventually weakening and killing them. For this version, your only hope is to ward it off by burning incense and birch.
The third form is foldi ordog, or the tiny man (sometimes translated as dwarf or homunculus). This form is most common in northern Hungary, and has a lot in common with the miracle chicken. It can also be obtained from the egg of a black hen, but is more commonly found in discarded rags, old boxes, empty bottles, or in the pockets of discarded clothes. It will attach itself to whomever finds it, bringing that person good luck and riches, and give them the ability to perform extraordinary feats, but this all comes at a price, and a steep one: your soul. Some versions say that the person trades their soul to the liderc itself, and others that the bargain is with the Devil himself (likely a corrupted version from later Christian influences). The phrase ‘ordoge van’ or ‘he has a devil’ is used to mean that a person is lucky, and refers to this version of the liderc. One bizarrely specific power of the homunculus version is that they are the best teamsters in the world, able to drive horses without bits or bridles. Instead, they are said to guide the horses with glances, touches, and whistles, and they are able to make the horses run in perfect unison, dance, and even fly. It is even said that, if a horse drops dead during a run, it will continue on its way even in death until it arrives at its destination before promptly dropping to the earth, long dead. If you don’t want to sell your soul to this creature in exchange for power, you can always lock it in a box and throw it away. If you take the bargain though, there’s no escape. Ever.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll head out on the high seas for some legends of a famous English pirate. You’ll see that it’s not piracy if the ship is Spanish, that Sir Francis Drake was one hell of a shot with a cannon, and that the high seas are safer with magic on your side. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll creep into an English graveyard to meet Bunnicula’s great granddaddy. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.