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Eggs! Cracking open Myths and Legends · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm
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  an author but also a director of the Centre and today with me is our friend and frequent
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  podcast partner, Jacob Renekker. Now today as we come towards season of Easter, we had
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  a request to think about the role of eggs as they appear in the shops and they look beautiful
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  before they're fall wrapping. What is the association between eggs and fantasy? So we're going to do
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  a great stir up our eggs together and find out if we can create anything beautiful out of them
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  as a result of this conversation. So hello Jacob. Hello Julia, good to be here.
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  Okay so we've agreed to start right back at the foundational myths. When you think of eggs and
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  those sort of myths and legends kind of eggs, have you got any particular go-to ones that
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  you think are of interest? Yeah and from for me usually the older the better. So ancient
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  Egyptian has a variety of different creation myths and there's different, you know,
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  kind of schools of creation that develop. One of them is the hermopolitan theology and with that one
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  you had kind of this group of this, the Ogdoad, it's this kind of like godhead sort of thing.
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  It's like everything was all together at once, kind of this cosmic allness and then this is
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  before individual gods are created but the first thing kind of within this fullness is this cosmic egg
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  and then from that egg everything is born. The raw, the sun god is born from this egg and so
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  then everything else kind of, I don't know if that's because the sun kind of looks like a egg yolk
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  to it. So the ancient Egyptians have sold for us the problem of what comes first to chicken or
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  the egg. Obviously, obviously guys it's an egg so we don't have to debate anymore. I think
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  that idea of an egg holding the potential of life is what we're sort of picking up there and
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  you can see other mythologies or religions, early religions that have this as part of their
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  sort of foundational myth. I mean you've got it in the Greek stories. I see it's mentioned in
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  the caliber which is like the Finnish northern version. So it does literally use. Oh yeah,
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  okay, what does the Chinese mean? Is any, yeah, will you insist?
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  Yeah, well it's it's all kind of so there's there's really close similarities between like the
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  orthic egg in Greek and the Chinese myth of penguin which is a Taoist monk development and so
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  in both of those you really have this kind of cosmic egg that exists at the beginning and then
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  you have hatching from that kind of a hermaphroditic deity that then kind of from which like life
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  springs. So you have both of those in the Greek and the Chinese versions which is a really
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  interesting correspondence there. The Finnish, yeah, the Finnish, the Kalivala, that one is
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  particularly of interest to the Oxford Center for Fantasy clearly because Tolkien was captivated
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  by that, wrote his, the story of Colervo and uses that to really, in a letter to WWE or
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  WH Auden, he wrote that the beginning of his legendarium was an attempt to reorganize some of the
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  Kalivala, this is this myth, especially the tale of Colervo the hapless into a form of my own which
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  that specific one, Colervo shapes strongly the story of Torin Torinbar that we have in the
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  Silmarillion. So yeah, the Kalivala is a great one. I actually have a section of that if you want
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  to hear what Tolkien was so captivated by, he didn't actually really mold this into or kind of
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  incorporate it into his creation myth but it's nice nonetheless. Okay, let's sit back and enjoy
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  if you'd like to get to us. I appreciate you're going to read it in an English translation.
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  This is an English translation, yes, be reading it and finish, finish from what I understand is
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  quite difficult so it's it's been bumped a little bit lower on my language list to learn
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  because it's your difficulty but anyway here goes one egg's lower half transformed and
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  again this is the cause of kind of original cosmic egg. One egg's lower half transformed and
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  became the earth below and its upper half transmuted and became the sky above. From the yolk the sun was
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  made light of day to shine upon us from the white the moon was formed light of night to gleam above us
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  and the colored brighter bits rose to be the stars of heaven and the darker crumbs changed into clouds
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  and clouds in the sky. Yes, that's someone who's really looked at an egg so occasionally you do get
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  those little other bits don't you but particularly it's a fertilised egg that's yeah.
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  So yeah, that's really fascinating and of course there's two things to say about that really.
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  One is one of the famous riddles that Tolkien
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  invents is a box without hinges key or lid but inside a gold and treasure is hid.
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  Spoiler, I'm afraid I'll give you the answer but it clearly feels it's part of that culture that
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  he's he's working through but the other thing there I think is that we're talking about the idea
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  of an egg and creation being really old idea but actually one of the things I was I have a real
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  interest in the history of science and the person who came up with a big bang theory,
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  Georges Le Mèch who was a priest in the mid 20th century but one of these priests who was also a
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  scientist. One of the images he talked about was like a like a cracking of an egg to get that idea
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  of a lot coming out of a point so we could have actually ended up with the big egg crack or
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  something instead but they went with the big bang instead which is probably you know what's
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  big better. So it is an image which even much more contemporary scientists have reached for
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  to explain this idea of you got a sort of moment of a point of intense creativity that
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  explodes into the universe as we know it 13 points something billion years later. Okay so
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  myths and legends and we're now could sort of blend that into the world of fairy tales and
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  sort of legends where eggs have a more of a specific role as opposed to a sort of archetypal
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  creation role. The first one I thought of was of course the golden goose which I mean a golden
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  goose appears in a number of fairy tales but when one I was thinking of he's a minor character
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  oh no she sorry sorry golden goose he is a minor character in Jack in the Beanstalk as one of the
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  things that is stolen from the giant but of course there are other fairy tales where mother goose or
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  the golden goose not mother goose actually stars so have you got a sort of favorite
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  fairy tale with eggs it involved. That was a good one I do like a hunts Christian Anderson's the
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  woman with the eggs so it's the the the the aesop's version at least of the goose with the golden egg
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  you know kind of it explicitly is the futility of greed right so the goose is laying these eggs
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  instead of just like waiting for the natural process of eggs to develop then you you know
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  put some cuts it open and then tries to get the eggs but in doing so ruins the mechanism for
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  producing this goodness so it's yeah the kind of futility of greed. How it comes across in the
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  woman with the eggs in hunts Christian Anderson is there's a woman who has this this I can't
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  remember it's a dog who's the true chicken some sort of creature avian creatures laying eggs and
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  their particularly good eggs and it lays she lays all of these different eggs and she's taking them
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  the story takes place essentially in this woman's mind as she's going to the market so she has this
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  eggs she's just bouncing them on her head and she's thinking about how am I gonna like I want to
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  invest this case if I sell all of these do I do I trade so I take do I take some of that do I take
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  the money back home or do I invest in more chickens and can I get more and then once I get like
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  more chickens and more eggs then can I kind of like trade up and get a how like a farm and then
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  can I get a castle and maybe could I get a prince to be interested in me and then could I have all
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  of those riches and so she's it's kind of like thinking more more and more grandiose ideas of what
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  she can do with the this you know basket essentially of eggs on her head and she's so enthralled with
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  what could be that she trips and dashes the eggs on the ground and so she doesn't have any eggs
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  to deal with so it's it's not quite it's kind of dealing with greed in a different sense kind
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  of it's like how your chickens before they're had before I mean that's the adage isn't it
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  which I think everyone investors of cryptocurrency or any investments in fact um you know
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  because stocks go up go down as well as up uh it has that sort of it should be the foundational
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  myth of every stock exchange around the world everyone should read this before they're allowed
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  to invest right uh so have you got any other fairy tales before we move on to a sort of more
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  long-form stories no those are the ones that kind of I don't know say sprung I guess hatched
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  immediately to me as you saw but this is this is obviously a a podcast where's going to be
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  terrible puns all the way through uh it lends itself um so but if you're listening and you thought
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  obviously why didn't you mention such and such do let us know because uh we like to actually hear
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  from you uh when we do our little chats so going on to fantasy stories I was suggesting we take
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  them chronologically the first egg like most famous egg arguably um is Humpty Dumpty
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  he of all the King's horses and all the King's men who of course appears in the Alice in Wonderland
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  stories I think he's in is he an Alice in through the looking glass yeah appears in that one
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  uh which suggests he was already a figure from nursery rhymes I think I mean sometimes sometimes
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  you're not quite sure where Alice comes first up I think he was already well known um and in a
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  wonderful illustration of course with him sitting up on a wall and I think there you've got
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  this playfulness of um the nursery rhyme world and of course the key thing about that is in a
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  very general way teaching kids that you can't mend things that should break you know if you
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  break your toy all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again
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  I'm sure many a parent has used that little rhyme when I know it's been dropped on the floor
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  the ice creams fall enough to cone and to make a child laugh and there is an element of that as a
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  gentle sort of message that these things are delicate you know um so that's what I take from
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  the Humpty character and of course he's not the world's brightest so yeah but then what's
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  interesting about Humpty Dumpty is uh his use of language and like how he kind of I don't
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  want to say fashioning language but it's more like twisting and bending language to fit his own
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  purposes and you actually have Tolkien referring to Humpty Dumpty in his essay or his his
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  presentation is played with essay on fairy stories he says that you know he says like if I can
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  invoke the powers of Humpty Dumpty when he's talking about um you know the creating with the
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  term sub creation and like talking about fantasy as a mode of expression so Tolkien is familiar
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  with Humpty Dumpty and specifically for Tolkien at least at that point what interested Tolkien
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  was Humpty Dumpty's kind of silly use of language and insisting upon a word meaning something
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  that it isn't commonly then the way that it's commonly used.
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  Yeah so a kind of version of Mrs Malaprop, Malapropism which is the literary idea for comedy you
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  use a word that shouldn't be used in place but yet it can have a wonderful creativity about it when
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  it happens um and of course Tolkien was a reader of bedtime nursery tales so he knew all of this
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  from his own parenthood. Is Humpty Dumpty going out of fashion? I remember as a child that we had
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  a program which every child here would have watched because everybody watched the same programs
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  called play school which was for the little kids and they had a soft toy called Humpty Dumpty
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  who was like a character in this thing. I've seen Humpty Dumpty used as a sort of political
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  political in particularly because Trump and Dumpty rhymes. I've seen it used in a political satire
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  sense which we're not going there but um although it would be quite interesting because what they're
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  picking up on is ideas of fragility and things isn't it so it lends itself to satire but I
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  I don't know are people using children's rhymes as much at home? You've got as a younger family
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  than me. I'm on a rural road right now because he's got the cup these days. Yes he does simply
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  because he's part of a we have a book that has stitched nursery rhymes so picture somebody who's
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  done this is marvelous depiction of different nursery rhymes and Humpty Dumpty is one of them and
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  so yeah no I know it was part of a rhyme that they use in one of his swim classes they use Humpty Dumpty
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  so it's beyond just the walls of my home and I know there's a recent fairly recent children's
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  book kind of a picture book called After the Fall kind of a story about resilience what's about
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  the putting together so kind of challenging the traditional right you know that you're
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  shatter so it's kind of dealing dealing with Trump like the after what happens after things have
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  broken how do you move forward so yeah yeah yeah you have to be a bit hard boiled in life
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  yeah another another terrible one okay so moving on from the world of Alice in Wonderland
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  where do we go next well have you got one that you'd like to lob in at this point?
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  yeah at this point uh Osma of Oz so from because of Wizard of Oz the Oz series and in that
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  store particular tale you have Dorothy and friends being turned into ornaments by an evil
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  gnome king as evil gnome kings are want to do and they're trying to rescue the royal family of Oz
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  and the one thing that gnome's fear most are of course hen's eggs so this begins a treacherous quest
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  to find hen's eggs to frighten the gnome king into releasing the royal family of Oz
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  I did not know that that's very that's very pleasing um so thank you very much so I've already
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  mentioned the appearance of the um riddle about eggs in um the hobbit but we also of course get
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  gulms great love of eggs eggs is so um I think this is all down to a kind of British cuisine of like
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  fried eggs and breakfast breakfast food um though I think gulm eats his raw so there's a presence of eggs
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  um and I'm trying to think in the narnia stories I'm drawing a blank yeah I couldn't yeah I couldn't
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  yeah I couldn't I was I was racking my brain as well uh for narnia references to eggs and I couldn't
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  think of any unless it was for breakfast purposes there's probably something in the void of the
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  dawn tread you know you feel that one of those little that anyway again this is a chance for those
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  view listening who can catch us out uh to write in and say you missed the most obvious thing going
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  guys you know um so one area where I did think about eggs um in relation to fantasy stories um
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  more recent ones so there's a harry potter one and there's an eragon one so let's take the harry potter
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  one because I think they're they came out more or less baby harry potter started first yeah
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  so in harry potter of course you've got the idea of one of the quests in the sort of
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  Olympics they have in harry potter and the goblet of fire is to seek the um the golden egg
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  um which you have to go underwater to get and it then harry has has to work out how to hear the
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  message inside the egg and I think actually this use of egg is different from many of the others
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  because it feels more like a faboj egg like from the world of of of you know faboj eggs appearing
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  um you know protective stories about the Russian cool and things like that um as a desirable
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  item that's been handy crafted to be particularly valuable I feel that that egg feels from that
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  tradition more than because it's not a real like not going to crack into anything else it's not an
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  animal egg um but I do like that image of you have to again I'm sure everybody's read it by now
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  you have to listen to this egg within the element in which it is spawned in order to unlock the puzzle
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  and that seems a particularly pleasing way of sort of dealing with the how do you make this egg
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  into a part of your clues that you're gathering yeah and just to do in case there are visiting world
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  enthusiasts who will be up at arms they're retrieving they initially retrieve the golden eggs from
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  the dragon's nest oh I'm sorry I'm sorry oh yes you're fine because they do what they do take yeah
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  so they're going so the first the first trial was trying to get the egg so they're that was put
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  in with like a regular clutch of dragon eggs so I have to sneak in there right and grab it
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  and then that egg contained a clue to give them advantage to the second trial and so that's
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  when they had to take it to go out and they're just like screamed when it was out loud and you know
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  up above water but then like finally going under then you know also right I haven't read them
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  for a while having um like it's incredible yeah but you have given me a chance to remember
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  another egg which I think is in the first book which is Norbert yes exactly um because this
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  is going to be into a rich strain of dragon eggs here yes yes dragon eggs and he's also a
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  Hagrid has a you know soft a particular soft spot for animal eggs because he also uh
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  aragog eggs so like it's creatures of any kind Hagrid recognizes eggs as being something that's
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  you know vulnerable and worthy of protecting and preserving and nurturing because that's kind of
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  the core of his his nature and so yeah so he's so lots of eggs for Hagrid Norbert in particular right
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  in the first book yeah and I think this is where we get that thing about um Hagrid having a sort of
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  I suppose traditionally maternal role of I don't know if I think in the animal kingdom both
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  male and female birds will incubate the eggs but the idea that you have to protect it it makes him
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  feel it gives him that soft aside and of course he's completely oblivious to the danger of
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  the creatures he's hatching um which is it is very fun so Aragon I'm afraid I have to admit I
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  I think I've only read the first Aragon um novel in the trilogy so I don't know if it goes on
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  but um I do remember vividly the excitement of finding an egg uh the boy finding an egg and
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  that being the start to adventure and it does seem like a classic quest trope that you find
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  something of potential which would then launch you into a whole series of other adventures are you
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  an Aragon fan is it something that you read no it's not something that I was really that I really got
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  into but I understand from what I understand I mean it's the it's more or less the similar
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  vein is what happens in a game of thrones where you have your your long dormant right those
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  final kind of three eggs that then ultimately hatch uh and kind of introduce a new era to to a world
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  so I'd say the game of thrones and to compare Aragon to Game of Thrones I don't necessarily recommend
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  that you know both for younger audiences uh to read or for bedtime stories I think Aragon's okay
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  isn't it I mean it's kind of um yeah yeah yeah yeah it's uh YA or yeah that one is yeah I just don't know
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  if I would I don't want anybody to get the impression that if you're you know you're not hands
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  if you're child if you're child loved Aragon or that if they like Aragon they'll love Game of Thrones
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  don't want to make sure that they and they might but then some of you as a parent on point of view
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  introduce yeah one or two years right see my children was kind of young as well they're just becoming
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  adult at the time Game of Thrones was on and I remember them trying to steer me away from watching it
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  because they thought oh it's too it's too tough for mum um it's not my cup of tea anyway but um
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  yeah so what the other way around in our household so what I what we haven't seen whilst we've
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  been talking and is any association between rabbits and eggs now I am under the impression
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  going to the Easter theme that um this is something that started in America because I've seen
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  you know that thing on where the president appears with the Easter bunny and um it may come from
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  another folklore that's been imported into America I don't know yes but I go yeah well I just
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  want to put it out there that is one of the weirdest of our traditions okay what where's it come
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  from explain so here is yeah so there's there's there's a fantastic article on this by the American
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  Library of Congress which is kind of like the national repository for American books and other
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  world books and so this historian there goes through a really deep kind of examination of American
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  folklore and tracing it back where exactly came from so according to our historian friend
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  um uh it's coming initially from a reference from the venerable bead so coming from
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  from the upnose upnose in the year 10 yeah yeah so and and so bead this is the only reference to
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  um uh ostra um a kind of Anglo-Saxon goddess and so this this goddess isn't
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  referenced isn't documented in you know non christ any non christian sources this this reference by
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  bead right a christian um is the only reference to this talking about this particular goddess uh
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  and then that's kind of picked up on uh by uh Jacob Grimm when Grimm uh the Grimm brothers Grimm
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  are putting together you know if they're compiling their folktales linguistics of uh the
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  German country and so in their book in 1835 um uh the uh German mythology so bead bead is about like
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  about 700 ish um uh ADC um and then so this is you know a thousand or almost a thousand one
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  thousand years later the Grimm brothers actually proposed that uh ostra that
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  has one reference from the venerable bead um must have been a local you know a uh a
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  British kind of localized version of a more widespread Germanic goddess named ostra um it's
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  related to the word east right okay um um but it's difficult to say if there was how broadly that
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  goddess ostra was in german um uh myth largely they're they're picking up on it but there aren't
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  real good records of it being widely spread so we don't know if it's just kind of a further
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  taking one reference obscure reference to a possible goddess english accent goddess tying it to
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  broader english accent culture and trying to find connections and so here's where it kind of comes
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  uh into american tradition is uh 1874 you have uh well this is this is this one's actually a
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  German tradition then that that's kind of building off of the brothers Grimm um this 1874 work
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  is another book on german mythology who examines the uh tradition of the Easter hair
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  each ar and that's so so this author Adolf Holtzmann actually proposes a connection between
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  the Easter hair and the ostra goddess mythologically so that that's what's happening over in germany
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  and then in america there's some heavily uh german populated areas like Pennsylvania in particular
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  um uh where you have german immigrants and so in uh 1883 uh h crebs uh in the first volume of
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  there's an english journal on folklore uh here's what he says talking about easter eggs now
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  tying eggs bringing us back to our topic of eggs easter eggs with the easter hair from german um
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  and so originally the hair this is this this is where this kind of generates from uh so somehow
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  there's making this connection that the hair uh seems to have been a bird that was uh related to
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  ostra um the ostras the north this goddess of kind of like spring this proposed goddess of easter
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  and spring uh in among the germans it's claimed that she has a you know bird emissaries and that
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  there's a tradition that one of her birds this goddess transformed into a quadruped right four
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  legged animal um and for this reason that the hair in grateful recollection of its former quality
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  as a bird and swift messenger of spring goddess is able to lay eggs on her festival at Easter time
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  so that's why rabbits and eggs is this kind of proposed yeah this proposed connection to like this
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  this is like the game of telephone but somebody like three people like two or three people down the line
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  have had a little too much to drink right and then there's kind of like maybe i thought somebody
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  said something like this it must have been something greater like this and then it kind of develops
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  in snowballs and then all anything's fair game apparently at this point and then rabbits are
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  laying eggs there's a easter goddess uh and now you can purchase colorful eggs and spend your
• 28:43
  hard earned money buying chocolates and whatnot to appease your children who will be demanding it
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  from you yeah i mean obviously it gets taken over by the powers of marketing and commerce at some
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  point to end up as a bunny and everybody has to buy them um but i think you know there's a more
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  basic connection which perhaps explains the link which is if we are the pagans or the easter festival
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  as opposed to the christian one um which was chosen to fall at this point for there's of course
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  it's a good it's a turning point for you you see why why it's but there's a the fecundity idea so
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  rabbits lay a lot of little rabbits bunnies and this time of year the birds are laying a lot of eggs
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  in the northern hemisphere so let's put those together and you give the rabbit the job will go
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  around collecting the eggs so you can sort of see that and it's you know okay even to this day
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  adult children in my household insist that we do an easter egg hunt in the garden with a basket
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  they don't put rabbit ears on or anything like that it's not it's the actual finding of the eggs
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  such as the tradition here um and of course you then get um you know three months later you find
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  some of them have been forgotten when you're digging in the garden so um so it has a i think
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  it's almost got bigger over here than it used to be because when i was little it was much more about
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  you got one easter egg uh okay where is now it's you got to go on hunts uh lots of
• 30:18
  stately homes in the country do like big east egg hunts in big massive estates you know
• 30:23
  so it has got as many as yeah it's it's great it's me i don't know if that's like folkloric or
• 30:30
  mythological inflation right will it commercial right anytime the money's involved like it's always
• 30:34
  gonna cost more it's gonna balloon you're gonna have to buy more and i think that actually ties
• 30:38
  into some of the like broader themes that we see that you mentioned earlier about like what
• 30:42
  what do eggs represent and i know like with some people friends that i had uh their parents put
• 30:48
  you know put actually money in the eggs or like candy in those plastic eggs right so it's it's
• 30:54
  finding the treasures that are inside the eggs um and so when you're looking at eggs it seems like
• 31:00
  you didn't know so you didn't know what was actually gonna be in it if it was a candy what type of
• 31:05
  candy was it gonna be the candy that you actually liked or is it gonna be one you're gonna have to
• 31:09
  you know con your younger sister into trading trading you for yeah uh to get the actual good one
• 31:15
  right but but this idea of like potential you know there's new life that you mentioned there kind of
• 31:19
  the the the correlation between springtime abundance for candy like you said then this idea within
• 31:27
  the egg of potential that we saw with the at the beginning uh of our discussion here with the myths
• 31:33
  right so everything in the world being involved being being kind of compounded compacted into something
• 31:39
  so small that then can uh develop and i had something with a cs Lewis use this imagery uh in i
• 31:46
  thought a really moving way of an egg is kind of a silly way but also a moving a uh way in uh
• 31:53
  mere christianity when he's talking about kind of personal transformation um and development
• 31:58
  this idea of potential right um is okay if i read both yeah no let's have a bit of cs Lewis
• 32:04
  all right uh so he says uh we can only and we rig in referring to personal transformation
• 32:10
  permanent kind of positive forward movement into into something more and bigger than yourself
• 32:15
  he says we can only do it for moments at first it is hard but the sort of compromise we're all
• 32:20
  hankering after is harder in fact it is impossible it may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird
• 32:27
  it would be a jolly site harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg we are like eggs at present
• 32:33
  and you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary decent egg we must be hatched or go bad
• 32:41
  yeah so what that actually is picking up on which i'm sure you're no Jacob but um there was this phrase
• 32:46
  around at when he was at school of being a good egg you'd say if somebody they were good egg
• 32:53
  um like they're a sound chap it's that kind of idea so he's he's he's nodding to that phrase which
• 33:01
  still used but now it's got slightly you know it sounds very posh you say he's a good egg you up
• 33:07
  yeah it's got that sort of um public school feel to it i was reflecting on this um because i've
• 33:14
  written a lot of books and i was thinking when have i used eggs myself and i've used them in two ways
• 33:20
  in fantasy one is the dragon egg potential so my first series of fantasy books was called the
• 33:28
  companion's quartet and in the second one of those um two of the dragons are having a clutch of eggs
• 33:35
  and when they hatch one of my main characters is connected or paired up with a golden dragon
• 33:44
  the idea so that's like the idea of and who becomes her lifelong friend
• 33:48
  and living beyond her life because obviously dragons have you know long life spans um so i've
• 33:54
  used that and the idea of that incredible gift that you get a dragon's egg i've also used it to
• 34:00
  comedic effect i wrote a time travel story um in my melphoster series it's called melphoster in the
• 34:08
  time machine which uses the fabrige egg idea so the thief in this story has well stand back a little
• 34:17
  bit hg wells is the time traveler um she's like the time machine it's the one uh very famous time
• 34:24
  travel story but at the beginning of that story there's a prototype which he sends off randomly
• 34:30
  into the past he's not actually traveling on it and i was thinking where does that go so my
• 34:35
  characters find this prototype and the thief is using it to steal uh items and leaving behind in
• 34:42
  their place as a sort of mockery i was here a piece of fruit so he steals the um biggest diamond on
• 34:50
  the queen victorius crown and puts an orange there and uh he goes and steals a fabrige egg in
• 34:56
  there's our school and he leaves the pineapple uh and so on so i use that idea of the fabrige egg
• 35:03
  being the the thing that if you're a gentleman thief uh you'd want to steal so i had unbeknown to
• 35:10
  myself been linking into this tradition um you know of that you've you know already seen
• 35:17
  goes all the way through your myths and legends so just a wrap up our discussion as we head towards
• 35:24
  Easter um we need to think now in our little game of where in all the worlds in all the fantasy
• 35:32
  worlds is the best place for something i wonder where in all the fantasy worlds is the best place to
• 35:39
  actually hatch from an egg so the idea here is i suppose you might be a bird but you could be a dragon
• 35:45
  or some kind of snake or a human if you think that's possible where would you like to hatch out and
• 35:51
  find yourself yeah this is a good question i think when i think about this another thing about
• 35:57
  this more broadly um looking at like being hatching from an egg in you know trans media like
• 36:04
  different across not just in in novels but in other storytelling modes and i mean you have
• 36:14
  pokemon go right where you're okay with your phone trying to like catch you know gather eggs
• 36:19
  collect them nurture them and hatch them um i don't know that i i don't think i don't think i would
• 36:23
  want to allow myself to have literally leave my fate up to somebody with a cell phone who uh so
• 36:32
  i'm probably not pokemon go um but perhaps something uh more i was thinking uh uh Jim Henson's
• 36:41
  fantasy world of sesame street so we have these creatures right so like i i think i would consider
• 36:47
  that a fantastic word where you have talking you have you have monsters talking animals of different
• 36:53
  sorts that live side by side with humans and so big bird one of my favorite kind of like almost
• 37:01
  like personal totems uh identifying with growing up so the giant enormous bird uh who hatches and
• 37:09
  has his own nest uh there on the street uh and interacts with other children and adults so
• 37:14
  just like the world of Jim Henson it's like accepting understanding not afraid to like shy away from
• 37:21
  they're not shying away from the difficult difficulties of uh of of life of emotions right um of
• 37:29
  loss even uh but it's just kind of like a neighborhood a community where people want to understand um
• 37:37
  sometimes don't but ultimately they try and then everybody kind of together comes uh comes through
• 37:43
  on the other side stronger as a community so Jim Henson's world of sesame street is where
• 37:48
  i think i would want to hatch us uh from as an egg and i've just this has given me a chance to think
• 37:53
  of one enormous area that we've neglected which of course is the phoenix the phoenix egg so that's
• 38:01
  my pick i'd like to be a phoenix egg because of course you come back again um you you could be the
• 38:08
  phoenix in harry potter but of course it comes also from older cycles of um at least entails and
• 38:15
  all over so i would choose to hatch as a phoenix egg but i'm getting a little bit of a benefit of
• 38:21
  eternal life there so it's a bit of a cheat but um let's let's do a nod to the phoenix which i think
• 38:27
  is probably worth a program all of its own well yes and actually let on those lines for my uh tip for
• 38:34
  this round is actually uh the it's a book um that has this gorgeous illustration it's on the cover
• 38:41
  actually uh of the phoenix this is Jim K's depiction of uh of the phoenix uh from his illustrated
• 38:48
  harry potter book so this is harry potter a history of magic um it's uh a book that kind of catalogs
• 38:55
  a number of different exhibits um that the uh british library has done on different mythological
• 39:01
  creatures kind of pairing those with elements and mythological elements from uh JK Rowling's works
• 39:07
  and the wizarding world so there's a section here in Jim K if you haven't seen Jim K's illustrated
• 39:14
  versions of uh the harry potter books uh they are phenomenal they are treasures uh to be sure and one
• 39:20
  of them uh he does a detail of all the different uh dragon eggs that are mentioned uh and they're
• 39:26
  incredibly ornate and colorful and just a delight actually have it right right here so you have a
• 39:33
  variety of uh eggs different shape sizes uh you have even like a little kind of scaled there to show
• 39:39
  you exactly how many inches they are so um one wonderful book that kind of combines the historical
• 39:46
  mythological with the fantastic and the creation has the pages from um uh uh Rowling's uh personal
• 39:54
  you know writing sketches outlines and that sort of thing so if you're a creative
• 39:59
  and or just somebody who likes myth this is kind of where both of those worlds uh meet where you can
• 40:03
  see kind of the creative process and how it intersects with um world myth and ideas that we have
• 40:09
  about different fantastic things that's lovely and of course it reminds me of one aspect about eggs
• 40:14
  which we haven't mentioned is you don't know what you're going to get absolutely until it hatches
• 40:19
  so it's a wonderful surprise which is a bit like creativity you don't know what you're going to get
• 40:23
  until you hatch the idea um my tip actually is connected with the inklings rather than
• 40:29
  eggs which is i've got fascinated recently by Dorothy Elf Sayers now she is a um well known as a
• 40:37
  crime writer but she was very similar in some ways to C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams in that
• 40:45
  during the late 30s early 40s she became a public broadcaster on Christianity and she wrote plays
• 40:52
  a bit like T. S. Eliot's murder in the cathedral for um the various there was like a
• 40:58
  a revival of the mystery play idea uh in that mid-century period and she's absolutely fascinating
• 41:05
  i i've not she's one of the figures i've actually managed not to read until recently but i'm
• 41:10
  finding her absolutely fascinating and enjoying really my way through the Lord Peter Wimsey um
• 41:18
  opus which he starts off being a bit of a twit upper-class twit kind of that figure and he gets more
• 41:26
  and more interesting and by happenstance because i happen to have the last book in the house here
• 41:32
  in a very old i read the last book first and what i'm really fascinated about is that in that story
• 41:39
  once the the nair du well has been arrested it doesn't stop there but she stops to consider
• 41:47
  the effect of having to put because in those days there was a death penalty the responsibility
• 41:54
  of the detective for taking somebody to the gallows and his feelings of guilt and stress particularly
• 42:01
  because he's a PTSD um sufferer and i thought yeah that is really interesting because so we're so
• 42:07
  used to the handcuffs leave them away i would have gotten away with it if hadn't been for you
• 42:12
  meddling kids were used to that but actually to keep the the story running and saying oh what happens
• 42:18
  next is was fascinating so um that's interesting have you what sayers have you read uh her
• 42:25
  book mind of the maker uh it's coming in the post uh fantastic okay i've read um the there's a
• 42:34
  one of her plays zeal's deal of lord has the similar idea of creativity in it which
• 42:42
  is very well having picked up on our conversation about a Tolkien and creativity yeah
• 42:47
  lots of the ideas chime very well yeah Tolkien though i think they knew each new of each other but
• 42:53
  they didn't actually they weren't friends the friendship was between cs Lewis and Dorothy and
• 42:59
  yeah um anyway so that's my tip have a look at Dorothy L sayers you can either go for her
• 43:04
  detective stories or have a look at her mind of the maker if you're interested in the sort of
• 43:08
  creative process or a biography um because she is a fascinating woman i found that she was the
• 43:15
  in the first cohort of oxford graduates women graduates to be awarded a degree they picked seven
• 43:21
  people in 1927 women uh to have the ceremony and she was one of that's one of those seven
• 43:29
  but it took Cambridge shame on you Cambridge my first alma mater took them till after the Second
• 43:35
  World War to confer degrees and a little sidebar story here is i met a wonderful old lady at a party
• 43:44
  who had taken her degree in finally taken her degree in 1992 because she had been in the in they
• 43:53
  they they they thought oh all those people who took degrees before the end of the forties they're
• 43:58
  still alive but we haven't actually given them a ceremony so they wrote to all these old ladies um
• 44:03
  they were old by then saying would you like thinking about five people would turn up they had enough
• 44:09
  of these elderly ladies who were all very firm stopped they all turned up for two days worth
• 44:13
  of graduation bringing the whole of Cambridge to a stop as everyone applauded which is a lovely image of
• 44:21
  yeah of a fun waiting for the reward uh having to delay gratification there anyway so um thank you
• 44:29
  very much Jacob for discussing um there's a theme of eggs so uh everyone enjoys if if you get
• 44:36
  Easter egg if you enjoy it um or your Easter egg hunt or your Easter bunny even if that's your thing
• 44:44
  but um thank you very much everyone for listening
• 44:52
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• 44:58
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• 45:05
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