Episode 78 – A Grave Situation

Episode 78 Show Notes

Source: Celtic Legend

• This week on MYTH, it’s time to meet an undead king in our annual Halloween special.  You’ll see why you should never bully people for being short, why you should never climb a castle to spy on your wife, and why you don’t want to move some tombstones even today.  Then, in Gods and Monsters, a headless horseman stalks the night.  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 78, “A Grave Situation”.  As always, this episode is not safe for work.
• Samhain is almost here, and that means it’s once again time for our Halloween special. This year, it’s time to meet the inspiration for one of the most famous monsters of all time – Count Dracula. Most people know that the famous vampire was based on the historical figure Vlad Tepes, also known as Vlad the Impaler and Vlad Dracula, but the Transylvanian bloodsucker also has a spiritual ancestor closer to home for Irish writer Bram Stoker – King Abhartach (ah-war-tok).
• According to Celtic legend, the story begins in the fifth century in the lands east of the River Foyle where, in a place known as Glenullin (the glen of the eagle) in what is now County Derry lay the town of Slaghtaverty, Ireland. As we’ve seen with some of our previous Celtic legends (Episodes 17 and 60), size and stature were highly valued in the ancient world – especially amongst warriors. Into this was born Abhartach, most likely a dwarf given that’s what his name means. It’s also possible that he had been injured in battle or some malevolent sorcery, but most of the legends say he was born a dwarf. Much like the Imp from Game of Thrones, people were cruel and twisted and treated the young man with scorn, insulting him and giving him all of the worst work that was deemed unfit for anyone else. He grew from a bitter and angry young man into an adult bent on power and revenge. 
• Abhartach was no stranger to hard work and so he put himself into the service of a powerful Druid. This nameless mystic was a master of forgotten lore, strange incantations, and ancient sorceries – magics that had been old when dragons had still roamed the earth. The Druid treated his servant poorly, as everyone did, but Abhartach had a plan. One day, when a massive storm swept the countryside, Abhartach and the Druid went out on some errand, but only Abhartach returned, though twisted and changed by whatever had happened. His eyes were now a vile green that glowed in the night and a horrifying stench that could be smelled for miles now clung to him.
• With the dark powers he had wrested from the vanished (and probably dead) Druid, Abhartach began his climb to power and vengeance. Before long, he had risen to chieftain of the local clan, a petty king of a tiny land surrounded by countless other petty kings. He enjoyed his newfound power, and he used it to get whatever he wanted from whoever had it. Anyone who tried to defy the wizard warlord was suddenly struck with blight and illness or mysteriously crushed under a falling boulder or else found dead in their beds in the morning with a look of abject terror burned into their cold, dead faces. He led the clan in raids on their neighbors to steal cattle and women for their own use. Before long, he was hated and feared by both his own subjects and the neighboring clans.
• The cruel king was a jealous man as you might expect from an evil magical murderer, and he became convinced that his wife was cheating on him. He made sure she knew that he was going to be out and occupied one night; he gave her a little time to meet her lover and then he crept back to try and catch her in the act. Abhartach scaled the walls of his castle towards the high window outside his wife’s bedroom. The way was dark and treacherous and he slipped, tumbling down the shear wall to crash into the jagged rocks below. Abhartach was dead.
• His body was discovered in the morning, much to the delight and rejoicing of his clan. Basically, ding dong the warlord witch is dead. They celebrated a good end to bad rubbish and buried him quickly. Hated though he was, the twisted man had still been a clan chief and so he was buried upright as befitted his status and they poured out mead over his grave. Once he was safely entombed in the earth, the clan moved on to enjoying the rest of their lives without their cruel king (and likely began to discuss who would take over as the next king).
• The next morning, the village stirred and began to get on with an otherwise normal morning until the villagers discovered, much to their shock and horror, that Abhartach was standing in the village square looking very much alive for a buried corpse, though definitely the worse for wear. Whatever bargains he had struck with the dark powers stolen from the dead Druid were not done with Abhartach. He considered himself still very much the king, and he now demanded a new tribute from his terrified subjects – blood. Specifically, the wicked undead king demanded fresh blood from the wrists of his clansmen, demanding that they slash themselves open and bleed into bowls for Abhartach to drink while it was still hot.
• The people were understandably terrified and so complied with his grisly demand – what else could they do? Not satisfied with the blood of his own people, Abhartach went out alone after dark to raid the nearby clans. They woke to the sound of their gates being battered down by iron claws to find the twisted wizard with his glowing eyes standing there, demanding not women or cattle but blood, lots and lots of fresh blood.
• Very quickly, the people decided that this situation was intolerable. Their newly demonic king needed to be dealt with as violently as possible, but no one in the clan was brave enough to attempt the regicide. The strange dwarf was a figure of terror with his dark magics and his return from beyond the grave. In desperation, the people sent an envoy to a neighboring kingdom led by a powerful warrior-king named Cathrain (though various versions of the tale offer similar but slightly different names for the outside hero and some even name him the legendary Fionn Mac Cumhail from Episode 60). They begged the warrior to come to their aid and slay their terrible king.
• Abhartach had caused enough chaos around the countryside that Cathrain decided to take the job. He rode to the small village and, with the help of the locals, laid an ambush along the path to Abhartach’s castle. The wizard, mouth still red with the blood he had drained from his clan, headed up the path unaware of the lurking menace. Cathrain leapt out and, in one mighty blow, drove his sword through the evil creature, which twitched once in surprise and then dropped to the earth stone dead. The menace was finally ended. The villagers grabbed the once-more dead king and dragged him back to his grave, again burying him standing up.
• It was late by then, so Cathrain stayed in the village, intending to ride back home in the morning. Once more, the sun rose over the village to find Abhartach standing in the square with his empty bowl, demanding that his people fill it for him to drink. Cathrain had been sure that he’d killed the bastard the day before (and hadn’t really believed the villagers’ stories about his return from beyond the veil), but he must have misjudged. Somehow. Screaming his rage and frustration, Cathrain again slew the wicked king. This time, he dragged the corpse out to a remote place in the countryside and buried Abhartach’s body himself to be sure that the asshole was well and truly dead. There was no way he was coming back this time.
• You can guess who was standing in the village square with his empty bowl the next morning. Well, fuck. Cathrain finally believed the impossible tales he had been told and realized that this was beyond his abilities. He was game to fight any man to the death, but he had no idea how to make this damned monster stay the fuck dead! Humbled and frustrated by his failure, Cathrain sought out someone who might know a way to make this evil asshole stay dead – a local druid (or a saint in some versions) named Eoghan, who was wise in the ways of magic.
• Cathrain sought him out and told him the whole twisted story then asked how he could kill this persistent revenant. Eoghan listened carefully and thought it over before shaking his head. Abhartach was one of the neamh-mairbh, the restless dead who made their homes between the worlds. Being already dead, he could not be slain. Whatever he had done to gain his powers had put him forever beyond the land of death. The only thing Cathrain could do was to bind him, and Eoghan could tell the warrior how. It would have to be good enough.
• Cathrain went out immediately to find a stout yew tree, which he cut down and fashioned into a sharp wooden sword. Weapon in hand, he again lay in wait for the vile warlock and leapt on him from hiding, piercing his heart with the yew wood sword. As before, Abhartach dropped to the earth apparently dead, but Cathrain wasn’t fooled. Leaving the sword piercing the undead creature, he dragged it to the hole that it had climbed out of several times before and buried it again but upside down this time. To make sure the bastard stayed in his hole, Cathrain covered the grave with a heavy stone and then laid thorn bushes all around it to make sure that no one ever lifted up the accursed stone. 
• Thus was Abhartach trapped beneath the earth, still very much undead and thirsting more than ever for fresh human blood. To this day, the grave lies in the village under a heavy stone known as Slaghtaverty Dolmen, a large rock flanked by two smaller rocks standing under a great hawthorn tree. So the legend goes, an attempt was made in 1997 to clear the land, but the chainsaws of the workers who tried to cut down the hawthorn tree malfunctioned three times. When they tried to lift the great stone out of the way, one of the steel chains snapped unexpectedly, cutting the hand of one of the laborers and ominously soaking the ground with fresh blood. The locals know enough to avoid the stone, especially after dark. Many dark stories of ill deeds have grown up around Slaghtaverty Dolmen. The evil wizard king is trapped though still very much wanting to rampage once more, which means 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 Dullahan.
• Also known as gan ceann (gon keyonn) (which means ‘headless’), the Dullahan or ‘dark man’ is one of the deadlier creatures of the fae and one you definitely don’t want to meet on a dark Halloween night. He is the headless horsemen of Celtic lore, considered to be the avatar of the ancient god Crom Dubh or Crom Cruach (crewech), the bloody crooked man, a Celtic fertility god who was said to demand human sacrifice (although this comes from later Christian writers who claim that his worship was ended by Saint Patrick himself, so you have to take that with a big ol’ grain of salt). The story goes that when the bloody sacrifices to the god of the harvest were ended, Crom was reborn as the Dullahan in order to reap the countryside for the harvest of souls he still demanded.
• The Dullahan rides a black horse through the moonlit nights holding his own head under his arm or held high before him to better see his intended victims. Some tales say that the head is swollen and colored a sickly green, while others claim that it has a huge, hideous grin that spreads clear across its distorted face the color and texture of rotten cheese that glows with the sickly luminescence of decaying flesh. In either, its eyes writhe constantly in its severed head, able to see clearly in even the darkest night. In his other hand, he holds a whip made from a human spine. Most of the time, he rides his black steed, but at times he instead drives a death carriage known as the coach-a-bower (from the Irish coiste bodhar meaning silent coach) drawn by six black horses and adorned with funerary artifacts. The wagon’s way through the night is lit with candles set in human skulls like macabre jack-o-lanterns, the spokes of the wheels are made from human thigh bones, and the bed is covered with a worm-chewed funeral shroud or perhaps dried human skin. At times, the movement of the silent carriage burns the land around it, leaving dead ash to mark its passing. No door can stop it, and no lock can bar its way – none is safe from the omen of death.
• The Dullahan rides through the nights, especially in the remoter parts of counties Sligo and Downs. Around midnight, most often after feast days near the end of August and beginning of September when Crom Dubh was supposedly worshipped, the black-robed horseman rides the countryside, horse snorting fire and striking sparks from its hooves, until it stops at last outside the home of some unfortunate mortal. Where the Dullahan stops, someone is about to die. His horse snorting somewhere in the blackness, the severed head is lifted, grinning viciously, and it calls out the only word it can say on its grim journey: the name of the doomed. In some versions, the place where the Dullahan stops to name the dead is the place where the victim will soon meet its end. Unlike the banshee, who haunts specific families as a warning of death coming, the Dullahan is an omen of fate. There is no denying his terrible call.
• On these nights, it is best to lock yourself safely in your house with the curtains drawn tight. This won’t help you if the Dullahan is looking for you to call your name, but it will protect you from seeing it pass by. Those who try to catch a glimpse of the Dullahan suffer for their hubris, either by having a bucket of fresh blood thrown in their faces or by being stricken blind in one eye by the terrible sight of the awful fae. If you had to be out and about on a night that he was likely to be riding through the darkness, you made sure that you had some kind of gold on you, which the Dullahan is said to have a terrible fear of for unknown reasons. Throwing the precious metal on the ground is the only thing that can turn the awful creature aside as his horse will refuse to cross it.
• So why is he headless? Different stories have different explanations. In traditional Celtic lore, the soul was believed to reside in the head, making it important to a creature of death. Warriors were known to take the heads of worthy foes as trophies to increase their own prowess and prestige. It was also said that such a worthy head, if placed on a pole outside of a home, would scream in warning if an enemy approached. The severed head was a source of spiritual power, one embodied in the Dullahan and his macabre ride. Of course, the most famous incarnation of the Dullahan is probably the Headless Horseman from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. Although this later story is set in the American Catskill Mountains, his father immigrated from Scotland and would have been familiar both with the legend of the Dullahan and the Irish and Scottish tradition of the jack-o-lantern, which had been carved from turnips and gourds for centuries. Legends of ghostly headless horsemen appeared in the folklore of a lot of Northern Europe, most notably a German legend from the town of Szprotawa of a headless rider haunting the local streets. Irving’s Horseman is a German Hessian soldier from the American Revolutionary War who lost his head to an American cannonball in some nameless battle on Halloween (possibly the Battle of White Plains, fought on October 28, 1776). Still, if you find yourself out after dark this Halloween, keep a bit of gold on you just in case you come across the path of the Dullahan.
• 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, on Vurbl, 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. 
• Next time, we’re going to leave Spooky Season behind for the Festival of Lights where we’ll delve into one of the most popular stories behind Diwali. You’ll discover that monkeys have magic powers, that the best musical instruments are built from your own body parts, and that you should never lock your brother in a cave, no matter how good of an idea it seems at the time. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll learn how to use a snake as a rope to become immortal. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.