Hello and welcome. I am Kerry Anne, and you are listening to Seventh
Sanctum. Thank you for joining us, and tonight I am joined and with
my usual co host Natalie. Hi. Good evening, and it's my team
to introduce our guest. It's been two months in the making. We've been
flooded, snowed off, rearranged Christmas, so it's a real pleasure to welcome
him finally and meet him. Finally. I've got Scott Scott richardson read of
Kayak's herbarium. Did I say that right, Scott? The kayak kayak like
the almost like the can't pronounce the Scottish properly. So Kayak Siberian who I've
been following on Instagram for a little while now, so I'm quite interesting and
excited to talk to you finally. So that is yeah. So, and
your website, I pulled off the description off your Facebook if you don't mind.
It's you put your Scottish old world folk tales, folk magic, herbalism
and recipes from traditional Scottish sources. So if you would like to tell us
a what kayak means, because I've a curious about that and a little bit
about your website and how you came to sort of put this online. Yeah,
just first off, thanks for having me. It's really nice to be
here, and thank you for putting up with the flooding and the snowing and
all of the rest of it. It has been to two months. It
has been roughly two months since she kind of got in contact. So yeah,
finally here and caffeinated just enough I think the conversation. So this is
like a long story, but you'll be here for it, like if we
like. And now the podcast is finished. Thanks very much, got for
telling you all about that. So back in the early nineties, I'm aging
myself when I talk about this. I have a picture that I will show
you which is really really funny, but we're on a podcast and you won't
be able to see it. But it's me in nineteen ninety five standing with
a bunch of likely looking folk in a witches covered actually just outside of Wales.
So like back in nineteen ninety five, I kind of got involved in
the page and Wiccan scene a little bit. But as these things turn out
to be, it turns out to be a little bit with a little bit
weird, a little bit strange and not necessarily what it was on the tin,
but at that time they used a lot of gallic words like sooy and
belton ay and all of these things. And if you're familiar with the wick
and Wheel of the Year or the Druidic Wheel of the Year, you'll notice
that it's got gallic words that sit in it that kind of moved through it.
And I was kind of like, why is a bunch of people outside
Wales no offense to the Welsh or the Welsh marshs or anything like that.
Why are they using these gallic words in this kind of which meant to be
like land based celebration stuff. So I've kind of left all of that behind
a little bit, but I'm still really really interested and kind of worked away
on it in my own way in the intervening times. But meanwhile I did
a lot of work with people in communities. That's a whole different story how
these kind of beliefs kind of intertwine with that. But I'm originally from Scotland.
I was born in Scotland and then kind of as a kid raised in
the wire Forest basically I don't know if you know where that is, but
it's kind of on the Welsh border, and then I moved back up to
Scotland when I was eighteen nineteen years old and then started to look for the
kind of folk history and the folklore and the folk belief of Scotland through that
lens that kind of like esoteric if you want, is esoteric a good word
to use. I don't know if it is a good word to use,
but that kind of alternative view on things, and it kind of led me
into politics of Scotland and land use and people and how we try not to
go into the whole like I'm on the Scots chat here, but we have
lots of kind words for land use. And then we had the clearances and
all of this stuff in history, and that kind of the way that different
the imperialism rubbed up against working class culture in Scotland's a whole another podcast and
all differentituy, but it was really interesting to find how belief in the other
world, if you like, was very much intrinsic to the belief of like
people's attachment to land and a way of life that was kind of forcefully removed
a little bit. And so skipping ahead sometime ten years ago actually it will
be April this year that I've been writing on my website for ten years.
Ten years ago this April, I decided to put on or out in the
world stuff that I was finding that I thought other people might find interesting who
had a kind of point of view on that kind of stuff. So it
kind of links belief Scottish belief, Gallic belief in particular, but also Scott's
belief and some Anglo Saxon belief and Roman belief and all of the kind of
melting pot that is Scotland actually, because it's not when people think of Scotland
as a people, we're actually like a whole bunch of people Viking, Anglo
Saxon, Roman, Gallic, all sorts of Scandinavian. Where am I going
with that? But basically, yeah, all of that kind of stuff,
and how it links to a different way of relating to people in place and
politics. One of the things I'm really passionate about is stuff that we've maybe
forgotten or had removed from culture and how it helps us relate to the problems
that we're facing today with like the way that we may be care for our
dead, for instance, which is a huge issue. It's like really sanctified
if you like, and not in a holy way, I guess, but
bodies are kept in a fridge pretty much that you go and don't really touch,
whereas traditionally we would have spent a long time kind of morning and grieving
for people in a different relationship to death all together. And also how we
relate to the land that we're on in an ecology sense, and a kind
of how the belief in the other world also ties in with ecology and politics
and all of the rest of it like that. So that's how it got
started. So it's still going. It's pretty popular, and I've been on
various like TV shows and radio stuff talking about that kind of would rekindling be
a good word to use, or that just kind of resurgence of things,
but also trying to correct some of the kind of new agey kind of woo
stuff that we are inheriting with that as well. Not that there's any harm
in that if that's what you are all about, but it's what can sometimes
happen is it starts to override like a cultural story, and we kind of
that starts to get put in the bin, and then we only start to
think about one version of a history that's not necessarily like the folk history of
the people that were here before. So, my god, that was a
really long answer to your question that so sorry, it was like, to
be fair, it sounds like it's actually a very comp because when I was
reading your articles, I was like thinking, you know, because I first
followed you because of the hoobs and the you know, the folk magic and
traditions with the hibs. But the more I read them, it is actually
a really complicated subject because, like you say, it's not separate to the
culture you're in. So when you start losing that connection to that understanding of
things, like you say, the way it affects like your idea of land
and land ownership, and when you get sort of a different system coming in
on top of it and overriding what was an original understanding of of ownership and
land a little bit like like you know with the Native Americans where they said
they only borrowed from the land, they couldn't own it. Whereas then you
bring in sort of, like you know, different systems where all of a
sudden you can own the land, which then changes your relationship to that the
spirits of the place, the energy of the place, and how you live
in it. So it is, like you say, you've simplified it quite
quite admirably. Actually right, it's because it's like it's a massive subject and
people and culture in place, and like it can feel a bit nationalist as
well when I'm talking about it. But that's why I emphasized that Scotland is
a melting pot of influences and the culture. I have friends in the traveling
community that talk about the UK or Great Britain or whatever, this island,
these isles as just a thumb print on the map of the world, and
it's done so much to so many different cultures. But the fact that we
are a thumbprint of an island means that we have always had transient populations move
in and out all the time. And it's that blending that's really, really,
actually a beautiful thing. And you can see if you're a folklore story,
you study folk magic, or you study hobalism, you can see the
influx of different influences. I'm doing a lot of things in my hands here.
If you're you can see the influx with a lot of different influences on
those traditions that you can trace back some of the traditions that we have in
Scotland to troll them, and then the Sami and then Finland. Actually it's
like quite a kind of cultural in route into a folk magic traditions up north,
especially in the northeast. But in terms of kind of land and place
is that we have like a phrase in Gallic called ducas I can't say,
probably ucas, and like a phrase like toba and ducas which means the well
of knowledge or the well of tradition. But ducas comes from a word meaning
almost like indigenity but not quite but like it means knowing, but it also
means place, and it also means culture, and it also means the land
that you live on and where you live, and there's words for I'm not
going to attempt it in Galic because it starts to sound like I don't know,
I'm having a bit of a seizure, and no offense to Gallic at
all, but it's like it's hard for me to pronounce, but it means
red to reindigenize yourself to place, and the idea of ducas and the knowledge
that you get in place is kind of like ownership responsibility, but it's reciprocal.
This idea of reciprocal relationship is like really huge. And when the when
the clearances happened there Duke has this like right to crofting and right to work
the land that we did. There was no legal basis for it, so
it was removed and kind of overridden by sheep. Ask people in Scotland about
sheep, and everyone's like either loves them or hates them. It's it's just
because they represent this kind of coming in of and I'm going to use imperialism
as the shortcut word for that, but like the kind of interested economic forces
that wanted the land. And it's not necessarily like it as some people say
it's a solely English invasion. It was just the elite that we have a
problem with today doing what they've always done with everyone that they've always done it
with and still can to do that. They kind of didn't recognize this right.
So through the clearances and where people went and the kind of famine and
the genocide in Ireland and all of that kind of stuff, slowly there was
what's called the highland Land Movement, which was based on the Irish Land Movement,
which led and this is a whole other story, but it eventually led
to the formation of the Scottish National Party and what we have now today in
Scotland is the SMP, which is the Scottish National Party, and way back
when they were actually based on this kind of like highland Land Movement, which
was based on this concept of ducas and belonging and reciprocal nature with the land.
So it's kind of even t like, as you said, Natalie,
you can't really if you pull one thread, it's like you suddenly touched on
everything else an entire room. Yeah, because it's like the thing that I
was quite curee about is because you're such a melting part of traditions and different
cultures in their how do you go about separating out, like you say,
what's the New Age interpretation and the modern sort of wick and slash druidic interpretation
from the Old law? It's like, how do they are there certain themes
that are repeating in the old law that help you to recognize what it is
or is it just because you base it on historical sources that are older or
word of mouth tradition obviously if you're speaking to the right people, how do
you go about sort of like figuring out which is which you kind of throw
the store up in the air and see where it lands. No, there
are like ar traditions. We can't put a pin in it and say that
FO one hundred old, and we can't. There are certain things that we
can look at. I primarily look at the kind of early modern Scottish sources,
so that's kind of the Witchcraft trial type stuff, and that has its
own issues because it's men most of the time, who are elite men looking
at the narrative of working class people and they really really wanted to prove that
the devil was real. So when there was like a folk belief, particularly
a working class belief that kind of verged on the diabolic or malefic aram like
that act of like cursing, then they would be like, ah, the
demons, and then you get all of the demon rhetoric. It's kind of
like a white man's masturbation fantasy, a lot of it to you. And
I don't mind saying that on your podcast because it's a bit like really,
then they did what with what? And it was like fascinated by the details
of carnality rather than like actual other things, because it was I don't know
what was going on in their minds at the time. But a lot of
people think it was kind of only women that were charged. It's not.
It's kind of like twenty percent men in Scotland who were also child as witches.
But men had means in the time and they still do so they were
able to, Like this sounds weird, but higher the equivalency of lawyers or
protection or pay money to not get into the stained sticky wicket, as women
would have no recourse to funds and those kinds of things, or that that
kind of patriarchal play that was happening. So there was probably a lot more
women, sorry, men accused of malif the karam and witchcraft who probably we
don't have records of them because they escaped it. And the ones that we
do have records of near where I live, of men committed suicide in jail
because if they were charged and found guilty, they would have had their lands
taken off them and it would have gone to the courts, so they would
they killed them sort of bleak really fast, but they would have killed themselves
first so their family could still hold onto the land because the charges wouldn't have
then been placed. So in terms of kind of like those the question of
practice. It's kind of like really unpicking these and if you've read frial documents,
they're literally written in a different link, which they're really hard to read.
It's like, what on earth is this? But we also have like
our cultural stories, and we have our oral histories as they still remain,
and a lot of those stories are like the elite versions of history that the
kind of I'm going to say, Anglo American pagan Wiccan druid seeing kind of
picked up on because it was very much like a kind of eightiest thing that
the seventies thing where this started to become more problematic than it is today.
There's a lot better authors out now, thank god, ironically. But yeah,
so unpicking practices is like, for me, it's kind of like forensic
folklore archaeology. It's like really going in and kind of not just looking at
a witchcraft child, but also looking at like a folk tale and a folk
story and like historical sites that exist on our old maps and like archaeological evidence
as well. So it kind of starts to triangulate the practices that kind of
existed around those times. And I'm probably like sure of like two percent of
what we maybe got up to you, but there are like threads that you
can see, and I just want to paraphrase as well, like I have
nothing against wickens and traditional witches and druids and all of this stuff. I
think it's like, actually, it's on the thing now, it's like its
own religion, and people are doing really lovely things with it. But it's
not necessarily like based on what I'm finding in all documents and traditions that are
before before that, and I'm not necessarily trying to reconstruct it either, Like
my writing is more there to be like, hey have you seen this like
really beautiful thing that people used to do together to honor the dead or kind
of relate to other people in their community, And then what people choose to
do with it is kind of up to them, Like I'm not placing it,
if you know what I mean. But you did write actually, but
the very early communities actually I didn't like witches, did they because with your
right system of reciprocity, it's like to them at that time, a witch
was seen as somebody that was taking and not actually giving an imbalance with Do
you want to just explain that a little bit, because we got to distinguish
between modern witchcraft and what the pre You know, the traditional idea of witchcraft
was in relation to the folk magic, which was different. So a witch
was still seen as being something different if I understood correctly what you were trying
to say. Yeah, so the witches in the stories that we'd like,
they like. I guess the best way to look at it is if you
live in a like an animistic culture, which Scotland and Gallic culture and Welsh
culture and Irish culture, and actually before the Romans came along, an Anglo
sack like the islands were this kind of more animistic based stuff. And you
can dig around in any parts of the island of Great Britain and you can
find these stories that are about animism and relationship to the environment. So it's
not particularly a Scottish phenomenon, is kind of what I want to say,
it's kind of actually across Europe to it connects is all. So in an
animistic society, when there's based on reciprocity, when you're kind of helping each
other out because you didn't have supermarkets and all that, someone would be baking
bread, someone would be laying eggs. Well, they wouldn't be laying eggs,
but the chickens would be. I guess there'd be a lot of people
doing a lot of stuff because you can all do it yourself, and it
would be a community effort to kind of make butter, excuse be burping,
make butter, make beer, or do all of these things. Right,
So if you had somebody from outside the community who was then kind of coming
in and like I'm going to steal all of the kind of the torah,
which is the fortune or the goodness from stuff, or actually steal your butter,
or I'm not going to contribute to the community, but I'm going to
take from it, if you want to look at it that way. Kind
of witch is where the first capitalists, if you like, because they were
like, well, I'm not going to contribute, but I will take for
my own self. And that's why communities were like, we must protect ourselves
from people who don't contribute. And this is the kind of the the original
historic version of a witch. And that's why when you look at all the
charms in Scottish folk magic, they're all like to stop a witch in their
tracks to do all of these things, because they are people who would just
be taking from the community. So they're kind of like a bogie person,
do you know what I mean, Like a kind of a force that lived
somewhere or a person who took a lot from other people. And it's not
like what we know as the modern version of a witch today. It's like
very very different. But that's why a lot of the old charms and folk
magic is to do with the good folk or like the witches. Basically they
were kind of seen as forces that weren't really nice or you had to like
bargain with in terms of the good folk and stuff like that. Does that
answer the question that I think it's important to. I mean, that probably
is where a lot of the hysterian witch trails came from, because the original
idea behind witchcraft was a negative seeming thing. But the actual idea of the
original witch is completely different to the other definition of witch and witchcraft, which
is seen as being in balance with nature. So it is interesting like to
be distinct with the definition because like you say that the old folk to Dishes
does seem to have an obsession with stopping witches, which would support the idea
that witches were bad, but it wasn't it was that version of what a
witch represented that weird at that time rather than the other thing that I was
find curious is like, like you say, a lot of the charms were
about the sheep, but you call them the good folk, but at the
same time they were a bit scary sounding, So did you call them the
good folk to keep them on side? Quite more elemental in their interactions with
it, as in they you want them to be good, so you're going
to call them good just in case. The type of thing is it.
There's lots of different theories about this thatly, and one that I particularly like
because they're called the people of peace in some areas too, and then the
good folk, the good neighbors and all of this kind of stuff. Some
people think it was like a euphemism so they wouldn't get upset with you because
you're like, oh, the good folk. Sorry, that's not a traditional
Scottish folk magic thing with the do there at all. That's just me like
doing whatever. I'm not even sure what it is, but other people think
about the it's like a Venn diagram if you've got three circles that she or
the good folk could be the nature spirits or the genius loci or the genie
locorum I think is the plural Latin. Sorry to sound a bit like twat
when I said that. So you've got the kind of nature spirits there,
You've got she is kind of deity as well. Like the good Folk in
our stories, they kind of went into their she mounds, and these are
like the Celtic like the dog there and the Morigan and all of these kind
of characters, these kind of chief spirits if you like. And they're also
the dead at the same time too, so if you want to talk about
them, they're kind of like three in one and not three in one at
the same time. So people are a bit like what what are they?
And I think they're like an umbrella term like that. She for me is
like the other worldly type people, and I think trying to put a pin
in who they are is like what's the point? It will get a little
bit kind of lost in definition. But for me, I think there's a
kind of ancestral relationship with the way that we used to work with them.
We have to bear in mind that the good Folk and the She and all
the rest of it, they only started getting written about in the Middle Ages,
so I think from the sixteenth century fifteenth century times, so we only
have like written down testimony from elite people from that time that talks about these
things these other folk. One theory is, which I like to explore a
lot in my writing, and I'm not saying it's the only one or like
this is dogma, is they actually were the people of peace because they are
your ancestral line or the people that lived on the land before you. So
if you wanted to have peace in where you were, when people were kind
of not crowned but made royal or chief, there was like a footprint in
a stone that they would stand in. And this is the stone of sconce
stuff that we've heard recently about Prince it's not Prince Charles anymore. It's King.
Sorry, King Charles. This footprint situation is like a foot in the
land and usually done in a place that's kind of significant, either on a
hill or there's lots of like standing stones or similar around it. And these
old standing stones, of course were old tombs where people were buried, like
en Mass a lot of the time. So if you were calling on the
people of peace, it's because you wanted to, you know, have peace.
So there's maybe these kind of ideas that actually they are the good neighbors
and it's not just a euphemism. Maybe that's something we've just kind of started
to think as we've grown older in a think around these things. So,
yeah, the jury is out, Natalie. Really why do we call it
not to bring their ire or actually because they are the good neighbors or the
people of peace or whatever. I suppose if you were relating to them back
then and then you disconnected from them, they probably would get a bit annoyed.
So maybe they were a lot more friendly back then when we were talking
to them. But it's a bit like when you have a neighbor you fall
out with, you know. So perhaps that's why they're a little bit more
ambiguous now, shouldn't It's not the same, you know, it's kind of
like we don't text anymore. It's kind of like you're hanging out anymore.
Because there's traditions in Scotland where we would leave like each one thing I think
sorts of really important to point out here as well as folk magic was for
everybody right and whitchcraft feels a bit specialist today. But like if you were
a weaver, you would have a form of placating like the other folk,
or if you were a dairy maid, you would always leave like the first
little pat of butter on the back of the door that you would make,
or if you'd made whiskey, you would always pour a little bit out and
that was always for like the other folk, we'd have like gruk stones where
they would pour milk and all of this stuff, and it still happens in
some of the villages up in Scotland today and in Ireland especially, so it's
kind of like an everyday bargain thing. I'll give you a bit this,
and we're like, we'll just be super cool. But we stopped doing that
all together, right, We just kind of went, oh well. And
it's even in the oldest stories when the toad d'dan and were the whole nother
podcast the Milaseians invaded and this is where Don became the Lord of the Dead
and all of this kind of stuff, and then the tod dan and who
are like the chief spirits of Ireland and Scotland at the time, kept fucking
over the Milaseians a little bit. To be blunt, they were like,
well, we're going to just not let you do this, and so they
reached a bargain basically that the Tatha da Dana would have everything under the earth
and the Malaysians would have everything on the top of it as long as we
always gave them like offerings and we were always in relationship with them. So
I've totally butchered that story. If anybody is listening to this from like Ireland
or Scotland, please feel free to send your hate mail to Natalie and carry
But yeah, so there was even an understanding in our stories that it was
a relationship that we were in and as long as we kept the relationship going,
bad stuff wouldn't happen to our communities and to our to our folk that
we live with. So yeah, it's kind of when we've lost that a
lot I think imagine a lot of that is due to the displacement as well,
because if you because the traditions very localized in many ways, as soon
as you're not in that local area, traditions in a weird kind of way,
no longer relevant to that particular spirit because you can't access them. So
you have to you know, in every presumably every area has spirits that perhaps
want things slightly differently anyway, So sort of transplanting traditions into another like you
said, you know in historically, with you having a lot of the displacement
happening, I should imagine it's very difficult to maintain contact anyway in a way.
Yeah, Robert, one of the antiquarians, was talking about the diaspora
and how people lost their ability to see the future because they moved away and
so they lost their connection with their dead and their place. Like it's based
like the bioregional animism and the stories that moved I I kind of suggest that
the tech moved with people. And I don't mean that like the iPhones or
whatever, but kind of is I guess at the time, like we traveled
with the knowledge of how to, but we lost the connection with place a
bit. And there's lots of schools of thoughts of this. But there are
particular she mans in Scotland and Ireland which have names where people live and there's
a story And when I say people, I mean like people of the other
world live, and they kind of say, maybe this is the this is
localized, whereas other people are like you can access the other world from wherever,
and things can move around and it's kind of like, well, I
can't speak to that, do you know what I mean? But it's kind
of like in our traditions, they were very localized, as you say,
Natalie, kind of the river like the River Seven if you lived near Wales
or anywhere, the River Thames or the River de they all have like an
attendant spirit in them. And we have like really terrifying stories in Scotland about
like rivers wanting sacrifices and stuff like we'll take two people a year. I
mean, that's terrifying enough from its own literally, and there was like locks
with all lockins with like their own attendant spirits in it and everything. But
it was very localized stuff. But if we look at kind of animism as
the tech, it travels with people, and we would have traveled with that,
and wherever we were, we would have had an understanding that there was
something here that was from another place that we needed to probably be in partnership
with. And there's lots of work done by Mike. Oh this is when
I start to say people's names and they're wrong and people start semi horrible direct
messages. I think Michael Newton is a famous, famous that's a loose word.
Oh, very well known academic in Americas who trained in Edinburgh, has
re writ really beautiful books, who did a lot of study around when the
Gaels first met the First Nations people in America and some of the stories that
they shared in comment and not all of it is what we're led to believe
of like colonization. Some of it's kind of reciprocal understanding with one another,
to a lot of it is hurt people hurting people, right enough, But
there is some really beautiful examples of sharing in community, and that's something that
I'm really interested in too. We hear often the stories of harm that we
do, but where are the stories of resistance that we don't get told?
And there's lots of them, you know, loads them that we don't get
heard. And a lot of it is working class history, which is stuff
we don't get told because we just get the elite version of stuff. And
sort of like finding out these stories is that kind of link back to like,
actually we were communities and we weren't what we were led to believe or
have been led to believe in our histories of things. And we find that
read through I think through our folk editions and our folk magic editions and histories
together, I have the meta. I've been recently always reading about the Vikings,
and I was just sort of like you realized that the world but then
wasn't what we're led to believe. We're always led to believe that they were
backwards and this and the arp. But like you know, when you look,
you were looking at the Vikings that were extremely well traveled, you know,
and certain of the Vikings sort of lineages were actually like really good traders,
and they were actually you know, always this, that and the other.
And you're thinking, well, we've got this this historical version of what
they're supposed to be. But when you actually look, like you say,
you look, you look in in the history, you've find that what you're
taught is too reductionist, and like you said, it does tend to seem
to err on the negative rather than well, actually this was also happening at
the same time, and these things were also happening, so it isn't just
that it's also this, you know, And I think it does put a
different perspective on things, Like you say it perhaps it is the elite version
of events, so it's like, well of course they were stupid because they're
not us type thing, you know, and they didn't want to do this,
therefore it was wrong. So but it's actually it was quite curious to
see how much movement happened during those times amongst certain people. I mean,
it's like they thought nothing of marching for six months up north and then marching
back down again, and you know, and you're just sort of a lot
of walking, yeah, with thoughts as well on their heads at some point.
And also my other half is the sounds a bit they're doing a PhD
in like Norse queer magic, which is really interesting because it's a narrative we
don't hear much about and I've learned. I don't know much about the Vikings,
but I do know it was a job. It's not a race of
people, so people would go raiding and it was they were Vikings, and
there were multicultural people who went raiding. There's some examples of people from Greece
and others that would join a raiding party and just like go do some stuff.
Scotland's massively, in the Ireland and Wales massively influenced with Norse culture.
In fact, some chiefs of like Scottish clans are Norse in their origin of
the kind of male line that goes through them back in the eleventh century and
stuff like that. So they've had a huge impact on this island for a
really, really long time. And not all of it is that and the
rap pillogy kind of stuff too. There was settlers and all sorts of things
that would I'm along and we don't hear these stories. Yeah, I was
going to say. That was what caught me was the diversity of the culture.
Like you say, they weren't just from one area anyway, but the
diversity of of of just the way they were, you know, it just
sort of broadened everything, and all of a sudden, you're just like,
wow, history is big. It's like, I'm re interested to hear about
the queer magic because we're doing Uh. I was interested in rooms for a
long time. And it's like with Odin, I mean, he was a
little bit what's I don't know what the word is, what the correct word
is for it, but he was seen as being not sort of like straight
out for male in his Yeah, even though people would have you believe like
Olden is the big warrior dude, right, He's not he's like a kind
of appropriator of queer culture a little bit too. Like he uses say there,
sorry, this is me showing my limited knowledge again, but say there
is like a form of folke my in North which was meant to be like
a feminine sorry, I'm doing bunny ears for people that can't see me at
home. Quote air quote a female form of magic that was meant to be
shameful for men to practice. There's lots of versions of why that is,
and we won't like I don't know enough about it. But yeah, he's
like if the original kind of Odin is like a god of necromancy and wiliness.
Like he's like not the person who led to Marvel hero that were led
to believe the same with lots of others of them. And there's lots of
really cool, interesting stories about him doing lots of weird stuff, raising people
from the dead, all lots of things, think of the dead. I
found an interesting story on your website about broad beans and the dead. I
was just like, you have got to tell us about broad beans in the
dead, because that that's just I knew you that question back in the day.
It's like a romoed story I'm trying to think pythagon Is it the Pythagorean
story about why he stood and didn't go in the field of beans? Yes,
And what their theory about the beans and the beanstalk was, and what
happened with the beans when you ate them? What happens to everybody when they
eat beans? But yeah, apparently like beans are the food of the dead,
right, And this is coming from And I can't remember the source where
this comes from. And I'll have to put footnotes to you for your show
so people can be like, what on earth is that Scott talking about?
Oh, that's this okay, fair enough. So beans were like seen to
be the souls of the dead, that the souls of the dead would travel
up the bean stalk and they would form beans, and like that, if
you wanted to stop the restless dead, you would throw beans like tried,
like beans from bean pods at them, or like in Roman times, like
the lava they kind of gathered around crossroads and stuff like that. And you
can see why crossroads are a bit spooky for us today. And we have
like a huge folk magic tradition around crossroads in Scotland and the hole of the
UK. But anyway, they would throw these beans at the at certain festivals
and I can't remember the name of them, but they begin with l and
they were around about the thirteenth of May and Lamaria Lava something festival anyway,
But they believed that these these beans would be the soul of the dead,
so you could feed the restless dead them. But also the reason why you
farted is because you were like letting go the spirits of the dead. Apparently,
I'm quite a gassy person, so I'm like channeling the spirits every day
apparently. But also like Pythagoris was core because he wouldn't cross a field of
beans like it was a bean field. And apparently he was caught when they
were chasing him to put him to death because he believed that if you walk
through this field of beans, he'd be like treading on new souls that were
coming into the world, and he didn't want to kill. It's quite a
straight The thing that I couldn't get my head around is like weird beans were
attracted to being spirits. Sorry, we're attracted to bean plants, and then
they traveled up the stork and then became beans or inhabited the beans. But
it was still okay to eat them, and then you just like let them
go at the other end after you digested the bean around them. And I
just like, I don't I can't get my head around the fact that it's
okay to eat the dead because you can release them at the other end.
Yeah, And I'm sure there's a lot more to this story that I'm kind
of being able to like paraphrase for your podcast. But I know in Italy
and other places they have particularly broad beans that have like these cookies that are
like and I don't know the Italian name for them, but they're like shaped
like beans, and it's like part of the festival of the Dead stuff that
they would have these bean cookies too. But yeah, Ni, I don't
quite get the kind of metaphysical Are we transmuting the beans? Are we letting
souls free? Like where do the souls go when they're beans? Do they
get like do they go on bees? There's so many questions, right,
like to be dead souls. There's stories that they do. I mean,
it's like a just so story, isn't it. But it's like someone with
a dark a dark mind has come up with it just so story as to
why beans make you guessy, you know, it's just sort of yeah.
I mean, like I can understand if they'd like grown beans is a crop,
a small crop to collect the beans, and then every year you'd have
a funerally write for them, and it was a symbolic passing on of the
dead or a locking up of the dead to stop them from roaming. But
the whole eating thing unless like I mean, it's almost cannibalism of so thin.
It was like, I think, like everything, it's not like a
yes, no thing. I think there were people in Roman times that he
looked to Pythagorism or like you're absolutely off your box. Beans are not dead
people, we will eat beans. I think, like because Pythagoras is like
quite from what I understand, a bit of a cult, and like they
didn't trust him very much because of his like mathematical way of dissecting the universe
and things like that whole other subject that you can probably I'm not an expert
on it at all. I just kind of know that he was a bit
like hung out with people to talking about the Pythagorean theorem of space time or
whatever, like quantum physics of its day and he had like quite a cult
following around him, and that the Romans wanted to not happen. So maybe
this is like maybe the propaganda story of beans. It's just that it's like
a pyth Iron propaganda tale, Like there's a reason why with these there's always
an association with food, with folklore and old traditions and linked to death.
I mean, we had a conversation with Neil who spoke about his great great
grandmother who was a sineta and so would eat the salt with a piece of
bread to release sins. So there's always been that association and those themes around
food and souls. And but it's quite interesting because these you can you can
observe them in and out of time. Though things are quite there is changes
and it does kind of transfer, and there is you can see how it
moves from one to the other. There is themes that remain the same throughout
time, even in terms when you speak about the vikings and how they were
portrayed. We still have people today that are portrayed in such a way that
actually their culture isn't really understood and is minimized or you know, barbaric sometimes.
So these things haven't changed there's still these themes there as well, do
you agree, Yeah, one hundred percent. And the sinets stuff is really
really interesting. Like there's the like Wick Dirge stuff that we have from nearwork
because I live in the Scottish borders where there is the Anglo Saxon Marsh kind
of really unruly wild West type part of Scotland that nobody wanted to own at
one point as well. They just kind of annexed it from England and Scotland
and we just kind of stole cattle from each other on the rag. That's
pretty much what we did. But that idea of like the shriving this is
kind of interesting because it was Shrove Tuesday recently, right, which comes from
like the shriving of souls and stuff and the sin eater of the salt and
the and the bread is like taking on that sin of that person to allow
them to not go to purgatory. It's quite a heavy cultural burden, I
think, and for me it feels a little bit like the scapegoat stuff that
we used to do back like the Romans used to do when they would like
put the sins of the community on the goat and then send the goat out
into the wilderness, kind of like off your pop take that all with you
and yeah, and like in Scottish Folk edition, we have food editions around
all of the festivals, but they involve bannocks. I don't know if you
know what bannock is. It's like a kind of ohe ohe biscuit e cake
and they're tasty. Some of them are not so tasty, depending who's making
the bannock and stuff. But we have bannocks at each of the major Gallic
fire festivals all the quarter days, so that's like Belton there and Sway and
all the rest of it. And the Nasa which is the August one and
butter and milk are very present in our kind of fook editions around around death
and tobacco as well. Apparently there's stories that Saint Mary was a smoker because
when so she smoked the sin away and it's to help the body move on,
and there's loads of stories like that and kind of like oral culture in
Ireland and Scotland, and that's why at the wake you would always have food.
You would always have like what would like the three bowls as well,
so you could divine things at someone's funeral if depending on where you put your
like hand in these bowls, or depending on where the dead person put their
hand, which is a bit wild that they would move it and be like,
hah that ball. Now you're fucked, So I I'm allowed to swear
on your fuck it happened to you? Want to wake that that? That
would probably be the mildest way when you come out. Literally, HiT's move.
What's going on? So all of the Yeah, and food, and
I think food and community and life and death are like so like food,
food of funerals is just reaffirming life sometimes to you, right, it's just
kind of like a nurturing thing to do. But food associated. But there's
like plants associated with dead and different times as well. It's kind of like,
yeah, I would be here for like a whole meaty subject talking about
kind of like funerary plants and like the plants found in the Grimoi verum and
all of that kind of stuf, like in the three different Yeah, it's
like a whole le thing. It's like you're going to have to come on
every three months. Chapter three, Scott talks more about dead it's a really
interesting topic and that it's so multi fascet as well, and you can see
how you can see the progression, you can see the change, but you
can also see it appearing in other areas as well, so it transfers as
well. So it is really interesting. We are coming towards the end of
our show and we definitely do need to have you come back on because it
feels like we've literally just scratched the surface of lots of information. But before
we do, before we end, can you tell us a little bit about
where we can find you, how people can find you and your You mentioned
your website. It's the kind of content that's there, so they know what
they're looking for. Yeah, apparently lots of bean recipes and he loves food
and so he loves one of those. Finding the random superstitions involved. Yeah,
I don't know if she's told you the one about black blackberries. That
was interesting and again that was a Halloween as well, wasn't it. Blackberries?
Yeah, yeah, we have we have a story about the devil and
the blackberries having a big pets on them in Scotland. That's it, that's
the story. Yeah. Yeah, apparently on Google it might have been a
bit sanitized because apparently the devil licked them, but or or or befouled them,
so it was a little bit vague as to how he did fouled your
blackberries, and al really was. I was at an event that evening and
in my pims was a BlackBerry so and it was Halloween, so I was
like, well, this is a that's literally like a trick as it is
like a Yeah, I was a Probatavian. I definitely t it. I'm
definitely at that. But yeah, where to find It's hard to spell a
gallic word, right, So you can find me on my website, which
is the Kayaks hyphen Hyberium herbarium even dot com that's c A C A I
L L E A C H S hyphen h E R B A R I
U M dot com. That's once or more for the people at the back.
No, you can find me on Instagram under the same name kayaks Varium.
I'm also on threads to I have wee bits and pieces on YouTube.
We do tend to hold events. We tend to hold events. What's that
mean. We held quite a lot of events before COVID happened, So there's
like odd bits of video and folklore and stuff that you can find on the
YouTube channel of people talking who aren't me, which was probably good for people
to just hear that since I've waffled on about stuff for an hour and I'm
not really on Twitter. Find it a bit of a dumpster fire, to
be honest. And you can find me on threads to Facebook too, and
there's a page on there, so yeah, that's where you can reach out
to me on all of those different platforms. And I'm on the Odd podcast
now and again when people let me lease talking about beans and parks and dead
people. Definitely kind of pie like Thearious Beans. It's a whole like restaurant
that should be in the West End somewhere. Yeah, and we've had lots
of serious talk and loads of information, so kind of a really lighthearted question.
We had a little bit of a converse station before about our interest and
we spoke about being interested in horror films. So the top horror film or
why top horror film and why? Oh, there's so many good ones to
choose from. I kind of want to mention the one that I mentioned,
Bora Chattan, because it's not really a horror film, it's just ridiculous,
which is the Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, and it's in
nineteen eighty six, it's PG. Thirteen. It's ridiculous and funny, and
yeah, stick the stick the trailer had as to this podcast and you'll see
why. But I think one of my most favorite horror films I watched for
a while is probably The Baba Duke. I kind of like horror films that
have got a bit of a kind of story as to why, or an
allegory is to like, that's about grief, isn't it? You know what
I mean? It's not necessarily the Monster under the Beds about family that's sad.
Those kind of films that make you think that the Babaduk is great.
Especially when it turned up on the LGBT Recommended Film watch list, that was
a good move. I did really like that film as well, because it
is one of that makes your brain think a little bit, because if you
looked at it superficially, you can understand the horror story, but actually when
you kind of dissect it a little bit, you can see the messages and
the undertone of them, which makes it gives it a little bit more.
There's more fear in there. When you understand the complexity of that film.
So yeah, I'm there with you with that one. Yeah, it's good.
It's nice. Trying to think of one that I saw recently and it
slips my mind. But there was something about a black bar and it was
kind of like a folk horror film where she was in a little village and
I can't remember what it's called, but there was a black bar and it
was like a little bit wicker man and a little bit kind of we come
from a small village and we do weird things for this person. It was
fun. Oh well, think I know, I know that the film is
so weird because that's the second time I've had this conversation about that film in
the last two days. So maybe it's a divine message. Carriage, get
it on. We'll watch it because it does sound really good. You think
the name of it? No, no need though. Yeah, there was
this film about some things and these things happened in it and it was really
good, So you should watch it. You can't find that film. We've
got Avocado Jungle of Death Variety, Variety. It's a reverent and funny that
film. I wouln't take it too seriously. But yeah, the Black Barn
film whatever that was called Lord of Less Rule, that's what it was called.
There we Go, and it's got like a carnival mask on the front
cover of the poster. Look that it came to me at half past nine,
There we Go, That would comes to me at three o'clock in the
morning. Thank you for that. Thank you so much. Thank you for
joining us. It's been for inviting me, it's been grand. And thank
you for giving me the space to offfle on about stuff that I love.
It's always a pleasure, So thank you. Nice to hear you speak,
and we look hopefully we look forward to having you back if you would like
to come back before perfect Well, I'm going to say good night, thank
you everyone that's listened, and we will see you next time. The THO