Episode 297: Magical Babies
/Babies of unusual size, vegetable babies, animal babies, and more! This week we’re talking about the most interesting babies of mythology, folklore, and fairy tales, from the Minotaur to Thumbling and everything in between.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of pregnancy, birth, ableism, xenophobia, infertility, forced birth, abortion, misogyny, child abandonment, violence, neglect, child abuse, bestiality, death, natural disaster, and anti-semitism.
Housekeeping
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Transcript
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And this is Episode 297: Magic Babies.
JULIA: Yeah, Amanda. So because we are of a certain age now.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Which I hate saying that. But here we are, I have been spending a lot more time with babies and new parents, which I know you have a pretty large family both close and extended. But as an only child and as someone who is like pretty close in age with all of my cousins, I did not spend a lot of time growing up with babies.
AMANDA: Yeah, I am the oldest of four kids and I am six or seven years older than the youngest two who are twins. So growing up, I did a lot of baby rearing. And there were a lot of baby cousins around me caring for babies has always been a part of my life. Though now as an adult, my friends are starting to have babies for the first time, and it, you know, it feels different to be like, wow, what a person who resembles you as a person versus as a child. I was like, a creature I have to keep not yelling and that was more how I related to them
JULIA: A creature I have to care for. Oh, no.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: A lot of my friends, like you said and at least on my husband's side of the family, his cousins and stuff like that are starting to become parents. While I'm not personally sure if parenthood is in the cards for me, I have been thinking a lot about pregnancy and birth. And as I usually do, I have been thinking about it through the lens of mythology and folklore.
AMANDA: Oh, Julia, has something about the world really like politicized pregnancy recently?
JULIA: Yeah, both of that. And just like because I am almost 30 now and people have been asking when I'm going to have kids for the past, like four years of my life.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Yeah. I've been thinking about it a lot.
AMANDA: Lots of reasons.
JULIA: Yeah. And I'll be honest with you, a lot of stories about babies and pregnancies are about these like fantastic, or monstrous births. Which makes sense, because this is mythology after all, and mythology likes to handle things that are about humanity by telling stories about it.
AMANDA: Of course, and it is both like magical and mundane, just the daily work of making birthing and raising children. So it makes sense that mythology would both seize on something really mundane and ritualize it or make it fantastical, because things that are mundane are important to humanity, but also where changes and aberrations and ways in which that's unexpected is definitely a fertile site, if you will, for mythology and folklore.
JULIA: Absolutely. And a big reason that I want to talk about this through the lens of mythology and folklore is because I know that for myself, and for a lot of people out there, we have questions about pregnancy because there's almost like a taboo about talking about the effect that both pregnancy and parenthood have on a person. And it's something that somewhat comforts me in that these stories kind of address some of that taboo, especially through the lens of mythology. So knowing that this is going to be the topic of our conversation this week, and we're going to be talking a lot about birth and pregnancy and infertility. I know this might not be the episode for everyone, especially given everything that's happening in the world. So if you want to skip this one, I totally understand. I think it's a really interesting topic. But if you're not in a place to listen to it right now, that's okay. So let's get started. So we have talked about these kinds of mythological births before on the show, they are a hallmark of fairy tales. For instance, Tatterhood is a great example in which her conception and birth are both magical and fantastical. What we're not going to be referring to in this episode, are these kind of like ableist ideas that any sort of birth or infant born with complications or congenital disorders or disability at birth, we're not talking about that in a sort of monstrous way, right?
AMANDA: Good.
JULIA: So in the real world, no baby is a monster, right? And as we've discussed in past episodes, especially with our Hephaestus episode, for example, there is a lot of ableism in the real world around disability at birth. But when we're examining these stories, in particular, I want to point out that not all of these births or pregnancies are portrayed as monstrous births that are different from the norm, quote, unquote, the norm are in some stories, just children who look a bit different or have happy endings and are loved by their parents or their caretakers. And many of these stories will like us quote unquote monster as shorthand for different but as we've learned anything from this podcast, monster does not mean bad or evil, it often just means other. So as we visit these stories, just a reminder that there is nothing wrong with other.
AMANDA: I think that's fabulous and brings to mind to our episode on disability in fairy tales with Amanda Leduc, which like really opened my mind to how fairy tales and folklore religion, the stories we tell ourselves as a zsociety, what it paints as expected and what it paints as different or unexpected. And I love that my view of the world is a lot more curious and a lot more acute after having done almost 300 of these dang episodes with you, Julia.
JULIA: I'm glad, Amanda, that makes me happy. And it's not only the stuff that you and I get to talk about, but the fact that we get to talk to incredible experts and people from various fields and life experiences makes me very happy. So to get us started, we're going to specifically be talking about creatures or infants that are born to at least one human parent. So we're basically eliminating creatures that were born to already nonhuman creatures, such as Grendel and Grendel's mother for instance.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: We're also specifically talking about babies that were born as creatures or quote unquote, monsters, rather than like an infant that was transformed later.
AMANDA: That makes sense.
JULIA: So this leaves us with four categories, and the categories are very fun.
AMANDA: I love the methodology this episode Julia.
JULIA: Shout out to our researcher for this episode, Sally, it's great. It's a lot of fun. It was so much fun creating this episode.
AMANDA: I'm so excited. And Sally is a parent, right?
JULIA: Yes, Sally is a parent.
AMANDA: Right on.
JULIA: So our four categories are babies of unusual size, either tiny or giant.
AMANDA: Yey!
JULIA: Plant or often, specifically vegetable babies.
AMANDA: Tell me more.
JULIA: You'll find out more, quote-unquote, true monster babies, which we'll be talking about, for example, the Minotaur in that section.
AMANDA: Right.
JULIA: And then quote unquote devil babies who are very specifically aligned with Christianity and are usually the literal quote unquote, spawn of Satan.
AMANDA: Sure, sure.
JULIA: So let's start with my favorite section, which is babies of unusual size.
AMANDA: I love this. So sweet. I love my big babies. I love my little babies.
JULIA: So the first story is the story of Thumbling, which is from the Brothers Grimm first collected in 1819. The story begins with a poor peasant who sat with his wife one evening by the hearth of their fire, he's poking at the fire, his wife is weaving and the man turns to his wife and says, "How sad it is that we have no children. With us all is so quiet. And in other houses, it is noisy and lively."
AMANDA: I mean, yes, that does characterize multiple children as noise.
JULIA: Yes, the wife replied inside, "Even if we had only one and it were quite small and only as big as a thumb, I should be quite satisfied. And we would still love it with all our hearts."
AMANDA: Oh, folklore. Gotta love it.
JULIA: So now what happens is the woman falls, ill and then seven months later gave birth to a child that was perfect in all of its limbs, but no longer than a thumb.
AMANDA: Aw!
JULIA: And then they go on to say, "It is as we wished it to be, and it shall be our dear child."
AMANDA: Oh, adorable.
JULIA: So they named the child as one would imagine, Thumbling, really creative in the naming there. And the child is described as a quote-unquote, wise and nimble creature.
AMANDA: That won't lead to any problems at school, I'm sure.
JULIA: It says that he is loved by his parents and raised as they would raise any other child again, there's like that ableist kind of like, of course, you would raise this child as any other child, it is just a child. It's just a small child.
AMANDA: Exactly. And once you tune into these kinds of implications of overcompensation for disability. Being like, look how virtuous these parents are, that they love their child like it really illuminates a lot. And I encourage you to keep noticing that because that really helps you understand when and exactly what society thinks of disabled people. And it's worth noticing.
JULIA: Yeah, so as I read the stories, keep in mind, we are looking through that lens being like, "Man that sucks and is ableist." But continuing on. So eventually, he sets out on a series of adventures when he's old enough leaving his parents behind.
AMANDA: Yeah!
JULIA: And then when he's done with it and has returned back to them after seeing the world, it was like, treasured, that he returned. They're like, Oh, our son, he's back. Incredible.
AMANDA: Good. Yeah.
JULIA: And in this story, it's weird because there's like no real magic other than the mother saying, like, "Oh, I would love a child, even if he was no bigger than a thumb and that's what came to pass." For some context to this story and a couple of other ones that will tell in the section the context as to why these stories tend to be tied to things that the mother does or thinks or says, especially in these European and Western stories that will be telling in particular in fairy tale births. It was the belief at the time that the maternal mindset and imagination could influence the formation of the fetus in the womb.
AMANDA: I both really sympathize with pregnant people who are like man, a lot out of my control, man, I really want to do everything I can to hope and expect that I have some control over this outcome because so much related to pregnancy and birth and also raising kids is not in your control. And also man does society really police the bodies are pregnant people and blame things that have no cause blame or even reason to be upset in all cases, like on the people who are pregnant as if you can just kind of like have the money and time and desire to put your entire life on hold and like, only drink the milk of like a virgin goat or whatever, you know, as a way to secure your pregnancy, which just you know, anytime that there is stuff outside our control, whether it is whether illness, birth, we are like, damn, I will do whatever I can to take control over this thing and blame people who I think could have done something else like it is it is such a human urge and it is so fucked up.
JULIA: Yeah, and we were doing that since at least the medieval period. So that's cool, I guess. An author Marie-Hélène Huet, in her book, which was called Monstrous Imagination sums up this kind of really patriarchal concept that many of these fairy tale stories reflect, and here's the quote, "Instead of reproducing the father's image as nature commands, the monstrous child bore witness to the violent desire that moved the mother at the time of conception or during pregnancy. The resulting offspring carried the marks of her whims and fancies, rather than the recognizable features of the legitimate geniture."
AMANDA: Oh boy.
JULIA: "The monster thus erased paternity and proclaimed the dangerous power of the female imagination."
AMANDA: I mean, that's the rub, right? Like that is the patriarchal nightmare of you know, I have subdued a woman through marriage and financial control. That is the sort of ultimate like cuckolding and threat to masculinity is the idea of like the changeling in the home, you know, or the imposter and it's like proof of how your toxic masculinity wasn't upheld.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And that blows.
JULIA: And this idea that like, oh, well, I can never prove that this baby was my baby. Brr brr brrr. Oh, patriarchy. You're a mess.
AMANDA: Yeah, that's where [11:57] comes from. It's men being afraid of infidelity. And oh, boy.
JULIA: So, Amanda, a lot of these stories did exist in the West and in Europe. But of course, they're not exclusive to those areas. There is the story of the Issun-bōshi, which is a Japanese folktale that was published between the 14th and 16th century in this story, another childless couple went to a shrine and prayed that they would have a child quote, no matter how small there's a lot of like, oh, it doesn't matter how small this baby is. I want the baby. So they were blessed with their child, Issun-bōshi, which means one son boy, which in this timeframe son was a measurement, which was about three centimeters.
AMANDA: Oh, okay.
JULIA: So in the story, they kind of describe him as being no larger than a fingertip.
AMANDA: It's like a, yeah, an imperial inch or so.
JULIA: Exactly. Much like with Thumbling, he was raised lovingly by his parents and when he grew older he again like Thumbling set out to seek his fortune and see the world.
AMANDA: Oh, charming. I hope they make a little like adventurers league of wee men.
JULIA: Wouldn't that be adorable? I would love that so much.
AMANDA: Right?
JULIA: So eventually he comes to a household like a royal household with a beautiful daughter who he becomes the escort for. However, one day when they are out visiting a temple at different temple the daughter is stolen by an ogre. When Issun-bōshi tries to stop him the ogre swallows him up.
AMANDA: Oh, okay.
JULIA: However, Issun-bōshi, with his little needle sword, did I mention that he has a cool little needle sword? Because he does.
AMANDA: Adorable. Like Arya.
JULIA: Exactly. So he stabs the ogre's belly from within, and the creature spits him back out and flees, and the ogre in fleeing leaves behind a magical hammer, which Issun-bōshi claims and like basically uses it to make himself six feet tall,
AMANDA: Righteous, righteous, love it.
JULIA: So he marries the daughter and lives happily ever after with his wife and his family and brings his family along for the ride as well.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: There's also an additional variation of this tale, which is called, Mamesuke or bean boy, which is basically the same story but his birth is he was born of a swelling in his mother's thumb the size of a bean.
AMANDA: Bean boy!
JULIA: Bean boy. We love Bean boy.
AMANDA: Yes, we do.
JULIA: So as much as we love these small lads and their little adventuring squad that they should form together, there were also some giant babies as well, or at least children that grew at an extremely fast pace.
AMANDA: Hurray!
JULIA: One of my favorites is one that we've actually spoken about before, which are the giant twin sons of Poseidon, who were Otos and Ephialtes, who you might remember they were the ones that trapped Ares in a jar and then tried to kidnap and marry Artemis, who eventually slew them both.
AMANDA: Iconic.
JULIA: So their birth story was that their mother was Iphimedeia who was a mortal woman who is in love with Poseidon. Every day she would go to the ocean, sit on the shore, and pour seawater into her lap. And eventually, she just became pregnant pouring that seawater into her lap every day.
AMANDA: You know what, Julia, I heard similar rumors in middle school. When I got told that if I went to a waterpark, I would surely get a UTI. And I feel like it's like, oh, if you swim in a public pool, you could get pregnant.
JULIA: Woof. Yeah, I mean, I think that was the intention for her at least. And I think for most of those urban legends, that's probably not anyone's intention. But yeah, I see it. I see it.
AMANDA: It makes me laugh.
JULIA: So eventually, she became pregnant. And when she gave birth to the twins, they were said to grow by nine fingers every nine months. Which I don't know.
AMANDA: Every- okay, alright.
JULIA: Yeah, I guess. So that's like two hands basically.
AMANDA: A little faster than normal.
JULIA: Every nine months, which is, that gets pretty big, I feel like that's, that's, that's pretty fast. Okay, by the time they're like full adults that's tall, you know?
AMANDA: I'm here like holding my hands apart. But yeah, I mean, for that, to continue past the age of, you know, 10 would be a lot.
JULIA: So they're also a really interesting addition to this category. And giants in mythology in general are because most giants are born to giants rather than to mortals. But this is another example of kind of a woman taking control of her own pregnancy, much like our first two stories bearing children through for lack of a better phrase of visualization.
AMANDA: Yeah, they manifested their pregnancy, which is a whole fucked up section of Instagram, by the way, but that's not we're dwelling on today.
JULIA: No, we're not doing that. Much like I told Eric Silver recently. Gotta hit the not interested button on those Instagram Stories.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And just get rid of them all?
AMANDA: 100%.
JULIA: So I think that will notice like this kind of visualization, the parent who becomes pregnant, that whole thing influencing the way that the pregnancy shakes out is a pretty common through line of the stories that is not just reserved to children of unusual sizes.
AMANDA: Yeah, no, and I totally empathize with why I have read so many moving accounts of people who so badly want to make things happen and it feels like you know, you do anything in your power and you just can't. And also it's mad fucked up when we put medical outcomes on people's personal responsibility.
JULIA: Yep. 100%. 100% we got to stop doing that. It sucks.
AMANDA: Literally then how would we sell them teas that we claim? You know, help fertility outcomes?
JULIA: I don't know. Sell them tea that does something else. I would love a tea that like when I get all gassy stops me from being gassy. That would be great.
AMANDA: Hey, Julia, mint licorice. That's the tea for you.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah, I know.
AMANDA: I use it all the time. Delicious.
JULIA: I just wish it was a little bit more instant. You know what I mean?
AMANDA: Yes, no, me too.
JULIA: So this leads us to our second category of baby which are plant babies.
AMANDA: Tell me about these plant babies and not just the ones that I raised?
JULIA: Yeah, so there are two that stand out to me in this category. There are a lot of plant babies. But these are my two favorites. So the Pumpkin Cinderella, which is Persian folktale, and the Italian fairy tale The Apple Girl.
AMANDA: Oh, tell me more.
JULIA: The Pumpkin Cinderella begins in a very similar way to what we've seen before, which is a woman who is desperate for a child and proclaims, "I want a little girl. I don't care if she looks like a pumpkin." Incredible.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: And then nine months later, that same woman either gives birth to a little girl and then one day looks in the baby's bed and sees a pumpkin or just straight up gives birth to a pumpkin.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah.
AMANDA: It's a twist.
JULIA: In either event. Her husband abandons her. Bad, shitty parent. And she just continues to raise the pumpkin as a child despite the duration of her community. So she takes the pumpkin out with her. She rolls it beside her when she goes about her day. She even like sends the pumpkin to school to learn, which is very sweet. I love that.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: And then one day a merchant's son who's also attending the school decides to follow the pumpkin and secret because he's like, what's up with this pumpkin. And as he does so he sees that a little door opens in the pumpkin side and a beautiful girl steps out of the pumpkin.
AMANDA: Oh my God.
JULIA: So he falls in love instantly as his classic kind of folktale fairy tale.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: And he sees that a ring that the girl was wearing in her human form falls off her finger. He takes the ring very similar to both fairy tales like Cinderella and Donkey Skin. And he says that he will only marry the girl whose finger fits the ring, match.
AMANDA: Classic.
JULIA: All in the land try on the ring, but of course, it fits no one. And so he goes to the home of the pumpkin girl when he says why he's there. A hand emerges from the pumpkin. He's flipped the ring on the finger and the ring fits perfectly
AMANDA: Charming.
JULIA: The merchant's son then insists that he will marry the pumpkin again to the ridicule of the entire town. They are married he takes his pumpkin bride far away quote, where he cared for her and never allowed anyone to laugh at her. One night the door of the pumpkin opened and a beautiful girl stepped out he goes how could this be like what's happening? Where are you finally a lady again? And she smiled and told him quote, "Your love has sent me free. Only because you loved me as a pumpkin could the spell be broken."
AMANDA: Adorable.
JULIA: Very sweet, right? Again, like a classic kind of fairy tale story in that all of the beats we have seen before in various other forms but I just liked it as a pumpkin.
AMANDA: I really liked it as a pumpkin as well.
JULIA: Our next fruit slash vegetable child slash plant child is The Apple Girl, which is a story from Italy, where a childless king and queen wished for a baby. There's a lot of that one day the Queen wondered aloud, quote, "Why can I not bear children the way a apple tree produces apples?"
AMANDA: Yeah, I bet that's really resonant for a lot of people looking around being like, how the fuck is it so easy for other people? And it's hard not to personalize that.
JULIA: Yeah. And again, this is what I was talking about, too, about kind of pregnancy and taboo. We don't talk about infertility very often among quote-unquote, polite company, you know what I mean? We don't talk about the struggles that people go through in order to get pregnant. And if they're looking to keep a baby, like have a viable pregnancy that ends in a birth, you know what I mean? So a lot of these stories again, I was talking about looking at these through the lens of fairytales and folklore and mythology, a lot of these stories deal with that, where it's like, it's not always easy to have a child when you want to have a child.
AMANDA: Yeah, and complete sort of different emotional journey. But similar realization, the more like Victorian and Regency, like historical novels and romances that I read, the more I realize how very much having legitimate issue in quotes, getting married to somebody, you know, acceptable, and having children that you can proclaim as blood relatives to the Father in the scenario, how much it's an economic requirement and how a woman's worth is directly tied to her fertility and anything that complicates that any kind of whisper of illegitimacy of affairs, things like that directly threatens kind of a man's economic place, and not to mention his masculinity. So it's so high stakes, impossibly high stakes, like the highest stakes thing possible.
JULIA: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. At least for this queen, she wonders aloud why she can't give birth to a child like an apple tree. And then of course, as the stories go, as we've seen them go, soon enough, she becomes pregnant and gave birth, but she gave birth to an apple, the most exceptionally beautiful apple anyone had ever seen.
AMANDA: Aw!
JULIA: It was the perfect apple, Amanda.
AMANDA: Oh, alright.
JULIA: So it was so beautiful, that the king displayed this lovely apple on a tray of gold on his balcony.
AMANDA: I really didn't see this twist coming, Julia, I gotta tell you.
JULIA: Yeah [22:41], just an apple. Alright. So one day another king is passing through the kingdom and saw on the king's balcony, a lovely woman combing her hair.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: But when she saw that this other king had spotted her, she flees, dives into the apple, and disappears.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: However, that visiting King, having seen her once, already in love with her. Naturally
AMANDA: For sure. And when a king is in love with the person, God forbid you try to stand in their way.
JULIA: Yes. So he begs the king and queen to give him the apple. And eventually, they relent and like, okay, yes, you can have this beautiful apple of ours, fine. He brings the apple back to his own kingdom, where he lived with his stepmother in his palace. He places the apple in his chambers, lays it out like in a golden fruit bowl, he lays out a comb a glass of water for her. And then every morning she would emerge from the fruit to comb her hair. But she never spoke. She never ate nothing like that. The stepmother because naturally, the stepmother is always the villain in these kinds of stories.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: She begins to grow suspicious of how much time the king was spending in his chambers, which, okay, sure. And so when the king is out and had left the apple with his like, most trustworthy servant, the stepmother sneaks into the King's room. She sees the apple and out of spite and kind of just being like you're spending all your time in the room because of this gorgeous apple? She stabs it with a small dagger.
AMANDA: Ah!
JULIA: And then immediately the apple begins to bleed red blood out of the stab wound that just happened there, which frightens the stepmother who runs away.
AMANDA: Yeah, I mean, all this is predictable based on the actions.
JULIA: So the servant returns he panics because he, you know, this is the king's apple and also now it's bleeding. And luckily, he has an aunt who knows magic. So he goes to her and she provides a magical powder that he sprinkles on the apple's wounds, and the apple then splits open. The Apple girl emerges covered in bandages, which I think is a great touch to the story that like the magic powder, just kind of bandaged her up. Incredible. When the King returns, he finds her there and she tells him that she had been under to spell and that his stepmother had tried to kill her, which is not great.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And the apple girl marries the king. The stepmother flees the kingdom, the newlyweds move closer to the Apple girl's former home to spend more time with her parents happily ever after.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: Yeah. Yeah.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: There's a lot going on in that one.
AMANDA: There is a lot going on. I also like, Man, I have on my mind, Julia, a thing you brought up earlier of like, it shouldn't be kind of a reward. That loving a child that is unusual, means that you get a usual child at the end of it, you know?
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Like, I think there's a real kind of like, part of the allure of fairy tales is transformation. And so often, any situation where you know, you love someone, and they turn out to be rich, or you love them ugly, and they turn out beautiful. Like, it's as if you know, you get rewarded for being a virtuous person, where you don't have to, like fulfill the promise that you made to love the person as they are. And I don't think that invalidates these fairy tales are still important to people. They're still worth studying. But it's a theme that I'm really noticing right now.
JULIA: I think that's really interesting. And it was something that I was going to talk about a little bit later. But now's a great time to talk about it as well. Oh.
AMANDA: I did it again.
JULIA: No, no, it's great. A lot of these stories, I feel are told from the perspective of caretakers of disabled people.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Rather than the perspective of disabled people themselves. And so they want to think, well, as long as I do the thing that I'm supposed to do, I'll be rewarded for it at the end, rather than like being a caretaker for any sort of person should be rewarded enough, because that person should be an important aspect of your life and is a full-fledged person in themselves. You know what I mean?
AMANDA: Yeah, and burnout among caregivers is such a real thing. Because at least here in the US, we don't live in a state that supports child rearing, caregiving, aging, any of the stuff that require like we don't support and valorize anybody except somebody who's completely self-sufficient, completely normative, and all the things that our society holds important and generates wealth for themselves and nobody else. Like that's, that's who we think is worthy of care. And oops, it's someone who doesn't require any care. And so I both again, totally empathize with why you might be so kind of unsupported and burned out that you develop a fantasy of, you know, what if this actually wasn't a thing that was on my plate. And also, we need to step in and support people before burnout, before abuse, before any of those things, you know, like that. We see where that leads and consistent, untreated burnout, you know, go somewhere that we don't want to be, and again, why it's so important to have paid caregiving, paid universal basic income, you know, paid childcare, all these kinds of things. It's, it's not an academic issue.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And it's not a policy issue. It's not a thing where it's like, my dad votes for this candidate because of taxes like it's all related, and it is so deeply baked into our culture and our folklore. I know this is a podcast where we talk about ghosts and also capitalism, but like that it is it really, it really relates, and I think these are all kind of like blowing my mind small over and over again, as we talk about it.
JULIA: I get you, I get you. The last thing I want to point out for our plant babies is that in these stories, in particular, the idea of quote-bearing fruit feels very literal in terms of pregnancy and childbearing. And in these stories, we see the plant child has the ability to leave her fruit casing behind typically when it's time for her to marry and become a bearer of children herself.
AMANDA: There you go, Julia.
JULIA: Which I think is really interesting and also a little on the nose. Come on fairytales.
AMANDA: Little on the nose. Come on. Come on, guys.
JULIA: Alright, so we're going to explore some of the more monstrous I guess and again, monsters is not me bad side of these fantastic babies. But first, we're going to grab a refill.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
[theme]
JULIA: Hey, it's Julia. Welcome to the refill. I have those pops. You know the ones you had when you were little kids and the plastic sleeve that you just would eat only in summertime because they really only taste good during the summertime. I've got a bunch of those. We also have a bunch of new patrons, Josh, Jessica, and Evil Eve L. I hope that's how you pronounce that they joined the ranks of our incredible supporting producer-level patrons like Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Brittany, Daisy, Froody Chick, Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Jessica Kinser, Jessica Stewart, Kneazlekins, Lily, Little Vomit Spiders Running Around, Megan Moon, Phil Fresh, Rikoelike, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Sarah, Scott, and Zazi and of course, our legend level patrons, Arianna, Audra, Bex, Chibi Yokai, Clara, Iron Havoc, Morgan, Mother of Vikings, Sarah, Schmitty, & Bea Me Up Scotty. Whenever they get the variety packs of those ice pops that you have only in the summer and they only taste good in the summer. They always get one extra of the flavor. That's their favorite. That's how you know, it's magic baby. And you could also get that same magic by going to patreon.com/spiritspodcast and not only can you get some cool magic where you get extra of the thing that you like, but you also get extra of the thing you like if that thing is Hometown Urban Legends episodes, you can sign up and get one extra urban legends episode every month. Check it out. It's at patreon.com/spiritspodcast. I know it's August and therefore it's not quite spooky season yet, but I was outside and I did see the first spirit Halloween start going into a local mall near me. And so I'm on my horror movie kick and I'm going to recommend for you today Prey on Hulu. It is the newest movie in the Predator franchise, which is one that I like don't hold near and dear to my heart. But I do enjoy those movies. And I have to say this is the best Predator movie I've seen since the original. Absolutely check it out. Watch it, watch it in the Kamancheh dub which is incredible in and of itself. You're gonna love it. It is so so much fun. It's also a beautiful horror movie, which there's not a lot of those in the world.
JULIA: I'm also here to tell you that you know Spirits isn't the only podcast on the Multitude network and I think that you would really like listening to Games and Feelings. Games and Feelings is an advice podcast about games you can join question keeper, Eric Silver and revolving cast of guests, myself and Amanda included as they answer your questions at the intersection of fun and humanity since you know you got to play games with other people. We're talking all types of games, video games, tabletop games, party games, laser tag, escape rooms, game streams, D&D, podcasts, all of that stuff that you could possibly think of. Like have you ever tried to convince people who have only played Monopoly to play a new board game that you grabbed from the game store? Is an escape room a good third date? What makes a video game cozy and do they have recommendations? They answer any and all questions as long as their games related. And if you would like to hear more and want to level up your emotional intelligence stat, which I know I'm always looking to level that up. You can subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every other Friday.
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JULIA: Moving on to some more interesting babies. Amanda now that we have our refills in hand, Hans My Hedgehog is another folktale collected by the Grimm Brothers, this time from Germany. And once again, there is a couple without children. This time it's the husband that wishes for a child even if they look like a hedgehog.
AMANDA: Oh my.
JULIA: And as we've seen with all of these stories, naturally, this wife gives birth to a child that is a hedgehog, but only from the waist up.
AMANDA: Oh, that's not the combination I thought would be.
JULIA: Yeah, so from the waist down, lower half boy.
AMANDA: Huh.
JULIA: Upper half, hedgehog.
AMANDA: Feels like the worst possible combo.
JULIA: Hmm. I'm just trying to think I feel like the worst possible combo would be like hedgehog back and hedgehog face. And then boy body.
AMANDA: That's just an animorph. Julia, we know what that is.
JULIA: Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. So unlike Thumbling, and those other versions that we've seen thus far, there is disappointment and neglect on the part of the parents. There's no actual abuse, but they sort of just allow him to stay in their home and try not to interact with him.
AMANDA: Yeah, that also sets that's not what you owe your kids.
JULIA: Yes, exactly. So eventually, the hedgehog Boyd whose name is Hans goes out into the world and goes on his series of fairytale adventures, which leads to him getting betrothed to a princess and becoming a steadfast servant to her father.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: After he has kind of proven himself as a loyal member of the household, he then is like, able to shed his hedgehog's skin and appears as a quote-unquote, normal man, Hans, now a prince inherits the kingdom. And eventually, he returns to the home of his old family and tells them that he is their son. However, they're like, "We don't have a son. I mean, we did once but he was born with quills like a hedgehog. And then he left." And Hans is like, "Hey, that's me." And the father rejoices and they returned back to his new kingdom with their son, which again, I don't think they deserve that ending.
AMANDA: Very magnanimous of Hans. Yes.
JULIA: It's very kind of him. He didn't have to do that.
AMANDA: Yes, Hans, if you flourished on your own with your father-in-law, who loved you as you are and never thought of your parents again, no one will blame you.
JULIA: Now naturally, Amanda. If we are going to talk about some quote-unquote monstrous babies, we have to talk about Asterion or Asterius, aka the Minotaur. So you'll probably recognize the imagery of the Minotaur even if you don't know the origins of the Greek figure, he's half man, half bull. He is born of the wife of King Minos of Crete Pasiphaë. Despite the fact that the Minotaur is named after Minos, Minos was not the father rather, Poseidon, as an act of revenge against Minos after he refused to sacrifice a pure white bull to the sea god. Poseidon struck Pasiphaë with an overwhelming sexual desire for that bull.
AMANDA: A real I'm making women's desires into punishments or jokes.
JULIA: Yep, that's a Greek mythology for you, huh?
AMANDA: Yep.
JULIA: So she goes to the famous master craftsman in service of her husband Daedelus, who you might remember from the story of Icarus, or even as later on the creator of the labyrinth Daedelus crafts her a wooden frame of a cow, which Pasiphaë climbs into and it's wheeled out near the bowl, and then dot dot dot nine months later the Minotaur was born.
AMANDA: Sure, sure.
JULIA: The Minotaur is immediately hungry for flesh and as Virgil puts it, quote, "A memorial of unspeakable love." Oh, which I don't think that's a compliment from Virgil unfortunately.
AMANDA: No, it's not.
JULIA: Yeah. Also, a kind of like, like you pointed out a classic Greek mythology example of a woman being punished for the misdeeds of her husband. However, it should be noted that Pasiphaë was the one that named the Minotaur Asterion or Asterius which means Starry One, and in some art, she is shown as being a very loving mother to Asterion before Minos banishes the creature to the labyrinth.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: I was also reading something very interesting, separate kind of from the research that was done for this episode, where much like Medusa is used as a modern symbol for people who have suffered sexual assault, Asterius, or Asterion is used as a symbol for disabled people who have suffered abuse by their caretakers or their parents.
AMANDA: I see a lot of throughlines there. That makes a lot of sense.
JULIA: Yeah. And I really like that. Again, we've talked about this a lot in mythology, but the idea of being able to take these figures and apply them to the modern sense and feel like we're being seen in mythology, I think is really, really important. And I'm glad that Asterios is used as a figure in that sense.
AMANDA: That's amazing and I hope if that's something that resonates with you, you're able to find community among people who claim Asterios for themselves.
JULIA: Yeah, absolutely. Next, we're going to move over to China and the story of Pylon the White Dragon. The story begins with a young woman who is living with her parents during a violent storm, she answers the door to their home and invites an old man that she finds they’re inside for shelter from that storm.
AMANDA: Oh, no better not be punished for your hospitality here.
JULIA: Oh, of course, she is because when he leaves the next morning she discovers that she is pregnant and the family furious kicks her out of their home.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is just hitting my bingo card, Julia of folklore here.
JULIA: It always does. it always does. So when she eventually delivers the child, it is nothing more than a kind of ball of white flesh, which appears to her to be lifeless at the time. And so she in sorrow throws it into the water nearby.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: The moment it hits the water, it transforms into a beautiful white dragon. But the transformation terrifies the girl so much that she dies a fright.
AMANDA: Oh no, not dying afraid.
JULIA: The classic dying of fright naturally, going through pregnancy and then having all that happened to you, and then dying a fright because a giant dragon appears to you.
AMANDA: Damn.
JULIA: In that moment where she dies a fright. A great storm gathered around the dragon and his grief for his mother's death unleashes a violent storm. The dragon then flies away, the young girl is buried and her grave becomes a shrine where she is worshipped as the mother of the white dragon.
AMANDA: Okay, there's something I'd still rather women live, you know, full lives without pregnancies foisted on them and then dying of fright when a pregnancy does not result how they think. But this is a good second.
JULIA: Yeah, I mean, it's nice that she ends up being worshipped but I'm sure she probably would have liked to have, like you said, lived a full life and not died.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Speaking of other dragon children, we can talk about a story from Oceania, which is the story of Walutahanga. So Walutahanga whose name means eight fathoms or depths, is said to be a giant serpent who was born of a human mother and father. The mother fearing what her husband would do if she saw their serpent child tried to hide her away, but eventually, he found out and he cut [44:11] into eight pieces.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: After he did that, it rained for eight days straight. And on the eighth day, the body of [44:21] reformed, and she began to eat the people of the village.
AMANDA: Okay, that's, that's a predictable consequence.
JULIA: So she is caught again, the men of the village come together to capture again, they chop her up again. And this time she is cooked into a stew that was eaten by everyone in the village except for two people. In some stories. This is to women in others it is a mother and a child.
AMANDA: Julia, does she kill them all by bursting forth from their stomachs and reassembling?
JULIA: Not quite but that's a great idea, I love that. So what remains of the stew and the bones are dumped into the ocean where Walutahanga reforms again at the bottom of the sea.
AMANDA: There you go.
JULIA: In her revenge, she sends eight waves to the island where the village was destroyed, destroying everything except the two people that did not eat the soup.
AMANDA: Right on.
JULIA: She returns to the island and then looks at these two people, either the mother and the child or these two women. And she's like, "Thank you for not participating in this." and becomes the protector of these two survivors by giving them the gift of clean drinking water and the coconut tree.
AMANDA: Ah, yeah.
JULIA: Which, I really, really like that one.
AMANDA: Yeah, rock on!
JULIA: Revenge, baby. We love a revenge story.
AMANDA: Of course, we do.
JULIA: So interestingly, with these monster babies, quote, unquote, monster babies, these births are usually some sort of punishment, either from a divinity like in the case of the Minotaur, or from a societal expectation that was broken, such as with the white dragon.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: And just as the conceptions and the births vary, so does the treatment of the children that are a result. So some are cared for by one parent, but not the other. Some are the cause of their parents' death, and some are simply tolerated.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Which it's definitely a different angle and approach then the stories that we told earlier.
AMANDA: And hey, a reason that shouldn't be political for allowing abortion, birth control, and fertility treatments to be a person's free choice, because it sure isn't the fault of any child born, what the circumstances of their conception and birth were.
JULIA: Absolutely.
AMANDA: And it's fucked up to put kids in that situation and to make kids come to the world whose parents couldn't control the circumstances of their birth. And that doesn't lead to treating kids better or making society stronger.
JULIA: Absolutely. 100%. So we're going to finish our round-up here with the last category of kids, which I feel like, has become very popular in movies and television in the modern day, which are devil babies, I am only going to hit one in particular because it is my personal favorite, but I'll mention a few others, which are Robert the Devil from Normandy, France, the film Rosemary's Baby, and basically just any modern retelling of the Antichrist. The Omen, for example, is one that comes to mind.
AMANDA: No, it's a whole like sub-genre.
JULIA: It super is. But the one that I chose probably could fall under our last category as well because of its monstrous appearance, but because of its origins, we're going to categorize it as a devil baby. And that's the Jersey Devil.
AMANDA: Really?
JULIA: Yeah, so now we've mentioned The Jersey Devil on the show before but in case you haven't heard of it, it is a kangaroo-like creature with the face of a horse, the head of a dog, bat like wings, horns and a tail. And it decides to occupy the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey. But I really kind of am interested in the origins of the Jersey Devil and how it supposedly came to be. And that is why it's going to be categorized in this category. So the story goes that on a dark and stormy night, of course, in 1735, a woman named Jane Leeds often referred to simply as Mother Leeds, was in labor giving birth to her 13th child,. There are various versions as to what happens during the birth, some say she called out that she wanted the baby to be the devil. And so it was born with a tail and wings and hooves and flew right up the chimney when it was born. Others say that it was born as a human child and then changed into the Jersey Devil. Another version, this story, which is dated later says that a town put a curse on a girl after she fell in love with a British soldier during the Revolutionary War. And when she gave birth, it was the Jersey Devil.
JULIA: Notice how children who don't look exactly as you expect, are the perfect blank receptacles for any worry society has.
AMANDA: Exactly.
JULIA: A lot of the versions of the story basically suggest that the mother lets in the devil into her home to corrupt the child, which places the blame firmly on the mother in all the versions of the story.
AMANDA: Of course.
JULIA: Again, naturally, so that's the story of the Jersey Devil. He's just kind of hanging out in the Pine Barrens, causing trouble and mischief and whatnot and people cite him every once in a while. But basically, the origins of him are like, hey, when ladies let the devil in their child also becomes a devil. And we're like, yeah, I guess, I guess.
AMANDA: Do you know what all of this is also a smokescreen for, Julia? Antisemitism.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: I cannot tell you the number of times that devil children or double baby is just a insider speak for looks or is Jewish and [49:34]. A [49:35] we don't have to go into right now because it's a it's a treatise of its own.
JULIA: Sure is think about it. So Amanda, I know. There was a lot of variety in the stories that we told today. But there is a throughline that I wanted to discuss before we finish up and it's that most of these stories speak to a desire to control the outcome of a pregnancy like you were talking about earlier. And that is unfortunately very timely right now. In the stories where it is clear that a parent will do the pregnancy into existence or where the resulting child was a direct result of their actions or choices. The stories are basically trying to tell us as listeners or as readers that we won't and shouldn't make the same mistakes that these characters did.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Like, we will be the ones that follow directions, we're not going to eat both flowers like in tattered hood, we won't make deals with the devil, we won't step outside of what society expects us to do. But the world is a different one than when these stories were originally told like no one should be punished with a pregnancy that they do not want. And people who do want children should never be uplifted for doing the bare minimum and caring for those children. So these stories might have been told for a certain reason when they were first being told. But I think it's our responsibility as people discussing mythology and folklore, to take away a different lesson from them and revisit them today.
AMANDA: 100% And there are a lot of people who would really love to live in a world where they're not responsible for caring for anyone where people who need different things and need more than the bare minimum society puts out there find lots of blame for reasons why them or their parents, you know, are responsible for their circumstances.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And that's something that, you know, I think, again, like the more we tease out all the ways in which these messages are encoded and reproduced to us, the better chance we have of calling it out and saying, hey, that's you know, it's kind of messed up not just because it's fun to point out when things are messed up.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: But because it allows us to start identifying and pushing back against those narratives in our own life.
JULIA: Exactly. And that's kind of why I did want to talk about this topic today is because we should be pushing back against the quote, unquote, morals, I guess that these stories are trying to teach us and be able to look at them and be like, no, that's wrong, and we know better now. And we should learn from those stories. Even if those stories aren't telling the lesson that we're actually learning from them. 100%
AMANDA: For everybody who you know, found saw themselves or their thoughts or their worries or way people have treated you in the past, you know, in the stories, man, do I empathize, you know, and do you have a sympathetic ear in us? It's a complex thing that society is really invested in teaching us to uphold the norms and it sucks and can feel really lonely to start teasing that out. But it is so worthwhile and you've company as you do, and that company is, is us.
JULIA: Yes, and listeners. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks for coming on this ride with us and remember, as always–
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
[outro]
AMANDA: Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.
JULIA: Keep up with all things creepy and cool by following us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. We also have all of our episode transcripts, guest appearances, and merch on our website. As well as a form to send us in your urban legends and your advice from folklore questions at spiritspodcast.com.
AMANDA: Join our member community on Patreon, patreon.com/spiritspodcast, for all kinds of behind-the-scenes goodies. Just $1 gets you access to audio extras with so much more. Like recipe cards with alcoholic and nonalcoholic for every single episode, directors' commentaries, real physical gifts, and more.
JULIA: We are a founding member of Multitude, an independent podcast collective, and production studio. If you like Spirits you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude.productions.
AMANDA: Above all else, if you liked what you heard today, please text one friend about us. That's the very best way to help keep us growing.
JULIA: Thanks for listening to Spirits. We'll see you next week.
AMANDA: Bye!
Transcriptionist: KM