Episode 92 – Adventure Time – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 92 Show Notes

Source: Celtic Mythology

This week on MYTH, we’re going to reconnect with a clever warrior from Celtic lore. You’ll learn that the best way to launch a boat is to kick it, that you should always feed the birds, and that video games get boss fights right. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll see why you should never invite late night strangers into your home, no matter how rich you are. 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 92, “Adventure Time”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
We met this week’s hero, Fionn Mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool), way back in Episode 60 at the outset of his adventures, known as the Fenian Cycle. He led a legendary warrior band known as the Fianna who roamed the land, often in the service of various High Kings, doing great deeds that would become the stuff of legends such as this story from Myths and Folk-Lore by Jeremiah Curtin from 1890. On this particular day, Fionn was on an expedition by himself, without his usual entourage of great fighters. It was a fine day, so he headed down to the beach where his currochan was stashed. He gave it a great kick that launched the boat out an astonishing nine leagues (or 27 miles) into the water and then made an even more astonishing leap out into the boat. Whistling to himself, he took up his oar and rowed out to see what could be seen.
He rowed out for some distance, enjoying the sheer exertion of it, when he came across a giant walking towards him. This particular giant was just massive, like staggeringly, mind-bogglingly enormous. As he walked through the fucking ocean, the water barely came up to his knees and his head was utterly lost in the clouds overhead. This giant was one of the largest creatures we’ve ever encountered in this podcast, but Fionn was nonplussed about the situation. One impossible step brought the giant directly in front of the suddenly tiny-seeming warrior. The ocean seethed and boiled around his legs, raising massive waves that threatened to swamp the little boat as it passed between the legs of that terrible monster.
Somehow, the giant’s eyes way up in the clouds above spied the tiny boat rocking around his legs and the even tinier person inside. “Poor little creature, so puny and helpless! What brings you all the way out here and in my path?” It seemed that this was more of a rhetorical question since the giant didn’t bother to wait for an answer. Even as his booming question was still echoing across the waves, he stretched an enormous hand down to seize the boat and toss it carelessly off to one side, out of his way. From far below, Fionn called back his reply. “Hold on a second, biggun! Give me a fair shot here. You’ve got the advantage out here on the open ocean – let me get my feet on dry land and we can see what happens! Attacking me here would be a cheap shot, but I’m not afraid to face you one-on-one if I have terra firma under my feet to stand on.”
The giant pondered slowly and ponderously. “Hmm, I guess that’s fair. If all you want is to make it to shore, I can take you to land right now.” Again, not waiting for an answer, the giant reached his massive hand down, seized the boat as delicately as you might a blade of grass between your fingers, and carried it swiftly over the waves. Fionn soon found his boat set down on a distant shore on the far side of the ocean from where he had started. A towering mountain loomed over him as he stepped out of his boat. After a moment, the proportions resolved and Fionn realized he wasn’t looking at a mountain, but a castle on the same scale as the giant. This was obviously his home. Far overhead, the giant boomed down to his tiny opponent, the smile clear in his voice: “what do you mean to do now, small one?” Fionn stretched. “Now, I’m going to fight you.”
That seemed to suit the giant just fine. He reached into his castle doorway and seized a battle-ax with a blade that covered seven acres. It utterly dwarfed Fionn’s sword as he rushed in to do battle with the giant in a scene straight out of Elden Ring. For all that the human warrior seemed suicidally outmatched, he was a clever warrior who fought with his wits as much as with his weapons. Basically, he used video game boss tactics. The giant was much, much bigger and stronger, meaning that a single hit would be enough to kill Fionn, but it also meant that he was slower and less agile. Fionn would rush in and slash away with his sword, then dart out of reach whenever the giant swung his enormous ax. The massive blade was swung with such incredible force that it would bury itself all the way to the hilt, forcing the giant to strain to rip it back out, giving Fionn another chance to hack and slash away.
Even so, Fionn knew that the giant only needed one lucky shot, while he could make pinpricks at the giant’s legs all day and never bring him down. Once again, the warrior fought smart rather than hard. Each time the giant buried his ax and had to spend time pulling it back out, Fionn used that time to carve bloody stairs into the flesh of the giant’s legs. Twice, the giant swung and twice, Fionn carved his gruesome staircase up the giant’s legs and torso. On the third swing, Fionn again darted nimbly out of the way but his feet slipped on the gore gushing from the giant’s wounds and he fell. The enormous ax whistled out of the clouds and Fionn scrambled desperately away. He almost made it. Almost. The tiniest corner of the 9 acre blade caught him in the stomach, slicing him open and knocking him away, landing between the giant’s feet. The giant slammed his legs together with a crash loud enough to be heard clear across the western world, trying to crush Fionn and finish him off.
Luckily, Fionn was close enough to the gory staircase that he was able to climb inside and make his way up the giant’s body to his neck before the giant could pull his ax from the earth. With a scream of rage and one powerful blow, Fionn sliced the giant’s head, said to be the size of the moon itself, off his thick neck. I’m not sure how the physics of that work, since the tiny blade couldn’t possibly cut through a neck that large in one go, but we’ve already accepted a giant large enough to crush itself under its own weight (the square cube ratio is a harsh mistress), so I’m not going to ask questions.
Fionn rode the headless giant corpse to the earth as it collapsed and then lay there beside it, too wounded to rise. The ax had cut him deeply enough that he could see the gray ropes of his own bowels, which is never a good sign. Looking up at the towering castle of the dead giant, Fionn accepted the inevitability of his own death. At least he had pulled off one hell of an upset on his way out.
Because of his vantage point, he saw the castle door open and twelve women come creeping hesitantly out. They saw the gruesomely decapitated corpse of the giant and began to cheer for his demise, laughing with unbridled joy. That laughter turned to bitter, mournful tears when they saw the partially disemboweled body of Fionn lying next to it, appearing for all the world to be equally dead. Fionn drew in a painful breath. “Are you…really making fun of me…after the fucking awful day I’ve just had?”
The women gathered around, surprised that he was still talking despite his grievous wounds. “Oh no, brave sir, we would never! Each of us is the daughter of a king, stolen from our fathers and homelands by the wicked giant. We heard him fall and came out to see if it was true. We laugh with joy that our captor is dead, but we mourn with sorrow that you who have slain him are dying as well. We wish we could do something to help you, to repay your great deed.”
“Well then, if you really want to pay me back for killing that asshole, could you carry my body to my boat and push it out to sea? With luck, the waves will eventually carry me back home. I’m dying, so the only thing left that I want is to have my bones come to rest on the shores of Erin (a name for Ireland) in the end.” The twelve women agreed to his very reasonable request and, as gently as they could, they bore his body to his currochan and pushed it out with the receding tide. It floated out to the open ocean, Fionn laying in the bottom barely alive. It bobbed and heaved with the huge swells of the vast ocean until one day a blackbird landed on the side of the little boat. It peered quizzically at the bloody man for a moment before hopping down into the boat to nibble on his entrails. Too weak to do much of anything, Fionn watched it happen. So this was how it ended. After all his great adventures, it would be a fucking bird that actually finished him off by pecking at his intestines.
After three bites, the little bird looked up at Fionn and maybe it was the dying delirium talking but he could have sworn that the fucking bird smiled at him. Then, it spoke. “That was a bit of luck, and make no mistake. I’ve been watching and waiting for many a long day for this opportunity, and it feels so good to finally get the chance to make the most of it.” Fionn didn’t understand this any more than you probably do, but he was not as surprised as he could have been when the talking bird suddenly lost all of its feathers in a poof of smoke. When it cleared, a little man not more than three feet high stood in its place. “Sorry about that, bud. I was under a Druidic curse to be trapped in the shape of a blackbird until I could get three bites of fat from the entrails of the great Fionn MMac Cumhail. I’m not gonna lie, I thought it was an impossible condition when I learned about it. I have followed you everywhere. I have watched you in battle and on the hunt, on land and on the sea, but I have never had a chance to get what I needed until today. I’m grateful for your help my dude, even if you didn’t really know you were helping. In return, I’m gonna save your life. I think that’s a pretty fair exchange for a few bites of your insides, no?”
Fionn was too weak to do much of anything, but the little man (who said his name was Ridiri na lan tur or the Knight of the Full Ax) put the wounded warrior’s guts back inside his body. Once everything was more or less where it was supposed to be, he rubbed the huge, gaping wound with a magical ointment that had apparently been part of his bird transformation this whole time. In mere moments, Fionn was as good as new. He sat up next to his strange new companion, floating on the ocean in his small boat. “Now that you’re alive and I’m not a bird, I’ve got some cool shit to show you, strange things such as you have never seen in Erin. See, we’re near a country where the king’s daughter is set to be married off tonight. You and me? We’re going to bust that ceremony up and make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Fionn rubbed his newly unbutchered belly as he listened. “No offense, friend, but I nearly died today. I just want to go home.” Ridiri shrugged. “I understand that, I do, but Erin is a long, long way from here and that country is right over there. Wouldn’t it be nice to spend one night in a comfortable bed before setting out on the long journey home? Don’t worry – no harm will come to you as long as you’re in my company, I promise. The king is a cool dude and his daughter is a real sweetheart. It’s a very strange country and I don’t think you should pass up on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We’ll just tell him that you are Fionn Mac Cumhail, king of Erin, and that we have been shipwrecked and need shelter for the night. Easy peasy.” Fionn realized that Ridiri wasn’t going to let this go and besides, sleeping in a soft bed in a cool palace did sound pretty good right now. Reluctantly, he agreed to his new companion’s plan.
Together, the leader of the Fianna and the Knight of the Full Ax went ashore and walked up to the king’s hall. Ridiri knocked on the door, asking for admission for himself and for his friend the king of Erin, far to the south of this land. The attendant who answered the door shook his head. “Sorry, strangers aren’t allowed in here but don’t worry. See that huge house just a little farther on? Go there and be welcome.” The two men shrugged and went where they were told, about five miles away with a messenger to show them the way. The house they were directed to was indeed a great house: 21 miles long and ten miles wide.
The massive facility was filled with a truly bizarre collection of men, all of them bodyguards to the king. As such, they were fed from the king’s house and that’s where things go from fantasy to horror real quick. See, these bodyguards were cannibals, one and all, devouring only human flesh. Any strangers who wound up at the king’s house were sent here to be ripped to bloody shreds and devoured by the body guards. The guards were always kept very well fed so that they didn’t rampage through the countryside and devour all the good taxpaying citizens. The messenger knew what the fuck was up and naturally refused to go anywhere near that house of 1000 corpses, pointing the way for the two strangers from a nice, safe distance away befor running home.
Shrugging at the messenger’s strange and not at all suspicious behavior, Fionn and the Knight walked up to the door and knocked. The door opened to reveal many, many bodyguards who laughed uproariously at their unexpected guests. They laughed so loud and long that Fionn could almost swear he could see clean down their throats to their hearts and livers deep inside their bodies. It was…unsettling. “What’s so funny?” asked Ridiri as he followed the guards inside. “You are. You’re so very tiny that you’ll hardly make a mouthful for any one of us. It’s really very funny.”
The two men didn’t get the joke. I mean, that wasn’t a super ambiguous remark, but maybe they assumed the guards were making a blowjob joke. I dunno. Before they could really ponder it, the guards barred the door and then placed a wooden prop against it to keep it from being opened. The knight grinned, picked up another prop, and added it to the door to make it extra hard to open.
That killed the laughter. “Why would you do that?” Ridiri smiled toothily. “So none of you can escape me. You’re right – it was a funny joke.” Grinning even bigger, he grabbed two of the largest guards, one in each hand, and used them as fucking clubs to beat the others to death with. Seriously, that is badass. He ran the length of the 21 mile long house with his screaming guard clubs beating the everloving shit out of everyone in the place. He didn’t stop until every last motherfucker in the guard facility was dead except, miraculously, for the two he had been using as human weapons. “You two are lucky. You get to live as long as you make yourselves useful. Clean up all of the dead bodies and gore and shit until it is a fit dwelling place for the king of Erin to spend the night in. Bring in fresh rushes and make everything ready for the arrival of Fionn Mac Cumhail!”
The two former bodyguards rushed to do as they were told. From somewhere, no one was quite sure where, they produced two baskets of reeds, each as large as a mountain, and spread them two feet thick on the ground throughout the whole house. Once that was done, they brought in a huge pile of dried turf to build a roaring fire for the new occupants.
The day passed uneventfully. Towards evening, the king’s attendants brought food for the guards as per usual. The cannibalistic (and now very dead) guards were typically fed twice a day. You know, like guard dogs. You can imagine their surprise when the attendants went to drop the food and found dead guards piled high outside the house. Something momentous had clearly gone down, and the attendants rushed off to spread the news.
Inside the vast estate, the Knight of the Full Ax relaxed by the roaring fire, quite content with his day’s work. The two guards that had been spared tried to make conversation and be all buddy buddy (now that murdering and eating the guests was definitely off the table). The knight, knowing full well that those assholes were just trying to save their own skins, snapped at them to shut the hell up. “Do you honestly think yourselves fit company for the king of Erin?” As they tried to stammer an answer, Ridiri seized them each by the neck and crushed their throats. So much for ingratiating themselves to the new lords. They got tossed on the corpse pile with all the others.
Ridiri glanced with disdain at the coarse food that had been left for the guards, sniffing at the poor quality. “This food is not fit for a king such as you. I’ll have to nip up to the castle and get you something.” He stretched and then marched up to the king’s castle. He pounded roughly on the door and loudly demanded the very best food for the monarch of Erin. Word of the slaughter had spread throughout the castle, so they trembled at the voice of the three foot tall man and raced to get him the best fucking food they had. They weren’t about to die tonight. Whistling, Ridiri carried the lavish meal down to Fionn.
He looked around at the food and realized that he had forgotten to ask for wine. “Typical, really. They forgot the vino. Well, nothing for it but to go ask for wine, and the best wine at that.” Fionn tried to argue that they really didn’t need wine, this was already too much, but Ridiri would not be dissuaded. He was determined to have wine with dinner. Again he pounded on the castle door and demanded a hogshead of their best wine and again the servants hastened to comply. On his way out, Ridiri knocked the jamb off the door as he swept the hogshead onto his shoulder to bring back to his new friend Fionn.
The two men sat down before the fire, feasting on the marvelous food and wine. It was a delightful meal, but eventually it was all eaten or drunk, which meant it was time for bed. The only problem was that there weren’t actually any beds in the place. The bodyguards had been savage brutes who slept on the rushes piled on the floor like dogs. As you can likely guess, Ridiri declared this unacceptable – the king of Erin required the finest of beds. Fionn tried to remind his overenthusiastic friend that he wasn’t actually a king and the rushes were perfectly fine, really. The Knight of the Full Ax insisted and so it was once again off to the castle. “Give me your best bed! Fionn Mac Cumhail, king of Ireland, requires his beauty sleep!”
No one complained about this demand either, and soon Fionn had himself a nice, comfy bed to sleep in. “Rest here tonight. Me, I’m going to go and stop that wedding I mentioned. You can take the princess back with you, if you like.” To his credit, Fionn realized how utterly fucked that offer was. “No, no I can’t possibly take a princess I’ve never met away from her family based solely on threat of violence. That just wouldn’t be right. Really, I don’t need a princess.” By this point, even Fionn was starting to get nervous about this tiny knight he had accidentally attached himself to. He was like some kind of terrible cross between Chucky from Child’s Play and the Energizer Bunny.
As you can probably guess, Ridiri refused to take no for an answer and promptly headed up to the castle yet again. He’d already broken the door, so he just waltzed on in unstopped and unstoppable. Everyone panicked, unsure what to do. The knight had already murdered the people who were supposed to stop this sort of thing, so it wasn’t like there was anyone left to do, well, anything. Ignoring all of them, Ridiri marched up to the princess and seized her. “Hey there, princess. The king of Erin is here, and he’s a much better dude than your shitty groom here. Off we go!” He picked her up and tucked her under one arm before heading out. Everyone just kind of…watched it happen. What else could they do? No one had the courage, let alone the ability, to try and save her.
There was a lot of muttering and general hubbub as everyone bemoaned the terrible fate that undoubtedly awaited the poor princess. No one wanted to go check. At last, an old hag, one of the queen’s waiting-women, offered to go. Someone had to, and maybe they would be less likely to kill an old woman. She wasn’t taking any chances so she planned to sneak down and look out the chimney to see what could be seen. No one tried to stop her and so the hag hurried down to the estate.
She made it up to the roof fairly easily. The chimney was a huge affair, big enough for the bodyguards to have cooked all their food on the fire below. She shimmied down and stuck her head out. Alas for her, the Knight of the Full Ax happened to be looking up at that particular moment and saw two eyes looking at him from the chimney. “Get the fuck out of here!” He hurled his ax at the figure in the chimney, striking her right between the eyes. Miraculously, the ax stuck fast in her head without killing her and she fled back to the castle. She hadn’t seen any sign of the princess before the little man by the fire had put a damned ax in her head.
No one else dared to bother the duo for the rest of the night, so they were able to get a good night’s sleep. Once it was daylight again, Ridiri woke up Fionn. Both because he was an experienced warrior and because this was a bizarre, dangerous situation, Fionn was wide awake immediately. Ridiri was looking a bit haggard. “Hey buddy, I’m not feeling so hot. See, pretty much all of my strength is kept in my ax. I kind of got upset and threw it at somebody, and they managed to survive and run away with it, leaving me weak as a day-old kitten. We’re kind of in a shit ton of danger now since I can’t do any of the shit I did yesterday, but I think we have them running scared. We can probably use that. Here’s the plan: you dress up like one of those leech-slinging doctors, gather up some herbs and vials, and pretend you’re a great healer. Head up to the castle and say that you can take the ax out of the hag’s head safely. I buried it pretty deep, and taking it out of her head is going to kill her, so no one else there will be able to offer that. I mean, you’ll be lying, but if you’re any good at it, they won’t know that. Draw the ax yourself and you will have all the power you need to fight your way out if you have to. Sound good?”
Fionn did as he was told. It really did seem the best option, given the circumstances. He got all dressed up in his best approximation of a doctor’s outfit and went up to the castle. They still hadn’t fixed the door, so Fionn was able to stroll on in and announce “I am a great doctor! I have heard about the ax stuck in the old woman’s head, and I can help!” The castle staff had almost immediately realized that removing the deadly ax from the hag’s skull without killing her seemed impossible (although I have to imagine it was just killing her slowly in its current state), so they were ready to try anything.
Fionn was quickly hustled down to the hag, who was sitting upright in her bed with, pun very much intended, a splitting headache. It’s more than a little hard to sleep with a fucking ax in your skull. The fake doctor felt around the woman’s wound, probing with faux expert fingers. After making a great show of it, Fionn ordered everyone away. This was a delicate procedure, and he needed peace and quiet to perform it safely. Which was utter bullshit of course, but no one argued. When he and the hag were alone, Fionn took hold of the ax handle in both hands. With one powerful wrench, he split her head into two halves, killing her instantly.
The ax now free, Fionn turned and got the fuck out of that awful castle. He didn’t stop running until he came back to the bodyguard estate where Ridiri was waiting for him. The small man was now incredibly weak, especially in comparison to the magically empowered Fionn Mac Cumhail, and he could see the writing on the wall. “You may keep the ax, I suppose. It’s not like there’s anything I can do to force the issue anyway. I’ll make the best of the situation and accompany you on your travels, if you’ll agree to let me come and protect me with my old ax.”
Fionn looked at the weapon in his hands. It fairly thrummed with power, with strength that he could feel coursing through his veins. If he’d had this in his hands when he first met the giant at the beginning of this tale, it would have been over in moments. He could do anything he wanted. Be anything he wanted. No one could stop him. “No. This ax is yours by right, Knight of the Full Ax, and I will not have it said that I took what was not mine. I can feel its power and know its value, but I am not a thief.”
Ridiri was thoroughly shocked by this surprising humility, but he was equally grateful. Once more in possession of his weapon and his strength, he was more than happy to accompany Fionn back to the boat stashed on the coast. Fionn kicked the boat three leagues from the land and then leapt inside, followed shortly after by Ridiri. The rowed and floated by turns until they came once more in sight of Ireland’s emerald shores. Ridiri nodded to his companion. “I must leave you now. I may be of your kin, but I cannot set foot in Erin ever again. I am grateful for your companionship and for your honesty. If you ever have need of me again at any time, just look over your right shoulder and call my name. You will immediately see me striding up before you.” Fionn thanked his friend, clasped his hand, and leapt ashore. This whole adventure had taken him away from the island for over a year, and he hadn’t thought to tell anyone that he was going since he hadn’t expected to tangle with a giant in a foreign land. The Fenians were overjoyed to see their leader, who they had feared dead, returned to them and listened in rapt attention as he regaled them with this tale that you have just heard.
This is a fun, bizarre little tale. More than anything, it puts me in mind of Puss in Boots from back in Episode 29. A different storytelling tradition but many of the same tropes: a worthy young man in dire need of assistance, a magical animal with far more power than is initially apparent, monsters murdered to steal a mansion, and even a royal wedding (although Fionn does seem to have left the briefly kidnapped princess behind to reunite with her actual bridegroom after Ridiri forgot about her). And so, with Fionn having gone there and back again, 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 monsters are the horned women.
The story of the horned women comes to us from a collection by Joseph Jacobs in 1892. One night, a rich woman was sitting up late into the night, busy with the time-consuming business of carding and preparing wool for spinning. Everyone else in the house, her family and all of her servants, were fast asleep, leaving the house quiet and peaceful – which was shattered by the unexpected sound of knocking at her door. “Open up! Open, I say!” The rich woman put aside her work. “Who’s there? I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
“I am the Witch of One Horn” was the cryptic answer. For reasons that the story does not adequately explain, this rich woman took that very direct answer to actually mean that this was one of her neighbors in need of her help. I don’t know how you get from ‘I’m a strange witch’ to ‘I’m a familiar neighbor’ but somehow she managed the leap and opened the door. In what should have been no surprise at all, a woman swept into the room with a large horn growing out of her forehead. She held a pair of wool-carders in her hands, which was strange, though not as strange as the actual horn that definitely appeared to be growing out of her head as promised. The witch sat down at the fire like she belonged there and began to card the wool with rough, violent haste. After a few minutes of this, the witch looked up. “Where are the women? They should have been here by now.”
As if in response (and maybe it was), a second knock sounded at the door. The mistress of the house thought it would be rude not to answer and went to open the door. She’d already let one witch in, so why not two? Sure enough, in walked a second witch, this one with two horns growing from her forehead and holding a spinning wheel in her hand. “I am the Witch of Two Horns. Make room for me!” No sooner had she sat down at the fire than she began to spin the wool, quick as lightning.
As the night wore on, more knocks came and were answered. By the time all was said and done, twelve witches sat around the fire, each with one more horn growing from her head than the last. Together, they carded the thread and spun the wheels and wound and wove and sang an old work song, but none of them said so much as a word to the woman who actually lived here. It was weird and frightening, these twelve horned women singing their strange, ancient song. Death loomed in that room, and the unfortunately polite rich woman felt it. Now that it was far, far too late, she wondered if maybe she should call for help, but found herself unable to utter a single sound or to rise from where she sat. She was bound by the strange sorcery of the witches.
One of them called out in Irish (rather than the strange tongue they sang in), demanding that the rich woman bake them a cake. The mistress found that she could rise now and went to search for a bucket to bring in water from the well outside so that she could mix the batter. She looked high and low but she couldn’t find anything that would serve as a bucket. Not a single thing. In terror and frustration, she sat down beside the well and wept. From the emptiness, she heard a voice. “Go grab a sieve and use that to fetch the water.”
With no better options, she did as she was told. She found a sieve easily and took it to the well. As you would expect, it didn’t fucking work. The water poured right through all of the holes. You know, like it’s designed to do. She had been hoping for a miracle, but it appeared to have just been a cruel trick. Until the voice came again. “Take some yellow clay and moss and mix them together. It will form a plaster that will seal the sieve well enough to carry water.”
The woman did this and sure enough, it worked like a charm. The voice spoke again. “Return, and when you come to the north corner of the house, scream three times and say ‘The mountain of the Fenian women and the sky over it is all on fire.’” It was a strange request, but the mysterious voice had actually proved helpful so far so she decided to trust it. She did as she was told and called out. When the witches inside heard these words, they rose and rushed from the house, wailing and lamenting and shrieking in horror. They fled through the door and raced to Slievenamon, where they lived. The Spirit of the Well (the source of the mysterious voice) warned the mistress of the house that this wasn’t over yet. She needed to return to her home and prepare it against the enchantments of the witches if and when they should return.
She took the water she had washed her children’s feet in and sprinkled it along the threshold outside the door. Then she took the cake that the witches had made in her absence, mixed with blood they drew from her sleeping family, and broke it into pieces placing a bit in the mouth of each sleeping person, which woke them up. That done, she took the cloth that the witches had been weaving and placed it half in/half out of a padlocked chest. Lastly, she secured the door with a great crossbeam, sealed at the jambs with braces to keep it from opening so the witches could not enter in any mundane fashion. Once it was all done, she waited.
It didn’t take long. The witches soon discovered that they had been tricked and came raging back to wreak bloody vengeance on the fucker who would dare test them. They pounded on the door, but it was sealed shut. They screamed at the dirty washing water to open, but the water replied that it could not; it was scattered on the ground and bound for the Lugh river. The witches screeched and demanded that the wood and tree and cross beam open for them, but the wood replied that it could not; it was bound at the jambs and could not move. They shrieked even louder and called to the cake mixed with the family’s blood to open the house for them, but the cake replied that it could not; it was broken and battered and its blood was on the lips of the sleeping children.
The witches flew around the house, screaming in frustration and looking for a way in, but the house was sealed. Oddly, the cloth in the chest didn’t seem to do anything at all. They eventually gave up and fled back to their homes on Slievenamon, calling out a terrible curse on the Spirit of the Well as they did so for aiding the mortal against them. They were unable to do anything though, and they left, restoring the peace that had surrounded the house earlier in the night. When she finally went out, she found a mantle that one of the watches had dropped in their flight. She hung it up in memory of that night, and it was kept there for the next 500 years.
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 catch up with our old buddies the Brothers Grimm for a very strange story about a hedgehog way cooler than Sonic. You’ll discover that fairy tale parents are terrible, that kings frequently get lost in the woods, and that roosters make great horses. Then, in Gods and Monsters, it’s more fowl fun with plenty of sexual innuendos. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.