Latest / Ridiculous History / Was there a real-life Rapunzel?

Transcript

Was there a real-life Rapunzel? · Ridiculous History

0:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, there are so many Catholic saints. Did you
0:28
Speaker 1: know there's a St. Noel and a Saint Benjamin? Are
0:31
Speaker 1: you kidding me? Ben? I am not kidding you. What
0:34
Speaker 1: the sat of? I don't have his patron saint information here,
0:41
Speaker 1: but I do know that he was a Jesuit saint,
0:44
Speaker 1: and I thought it was I thought it was cool.
0:46
Speaker 1: Sometimes for my friends I search out saints with similar names,
0:51
Speaker 1: which is not how you decide which you know saint
0:53
Speaker 1: is your saint. Yes, I just thought it was neat
0:56
Speaker 1: that there was a Benjamin and a Noel, both of
0:59
Speaker 1: whom were martyred. Correct? Do you have to be martyred
1:02
Speaker 1: to become a saint? Is that like a requirement? I
1:05
Speaker 1: want to say no, But I am not myself Katholic. No, no,
1:08
Speaker 1: nor am I. But I did learn something very interesting today.
1:10
Speaker 1: There are several flavors of martyr. Did you know this. Yes,
1:14
Speaker 1: there's the proto martyr, who was like the first martyr
1:17
Speaker 1: in a given region. Then there's the great martyr, which
1:20
Speaker 1: is like a martyr who was martyred under the most
1:24
Speaker 1: nasty of circumstances, like involving torture and you know, consternation,
1:29
Speaker 1: you know Jesus would have been a great martyr, you know,
1:32
Speaker 1: that kind of treatment, And that brings us to today's story,
1:35
Speaker 1: which is about fairy tales. Yes, for anyone curious about
1:39
Speaker 1: the Saint Benjamin, it is a deacon. He's a deacon
1:42
Speaker 1: in a martyr as well in Persia, and he died
1:45
Speaker 1: from merciless torture. So a great martyr perhaps, perhaps, Yeah,
1:49
Speaker 1: but hopefully we're not torturing. Our super producer, Casey Pegram.
1:55
Speaker 1: I just want to give a shout out to proto
1:56
Speaker 1: Martyr Fantastic van so good. I was listening to them today. Um,
2:01
Speaker 1: kind of sound like Nick Cave meets uh Wire and
2:06
Speaker 1: a little bit of like television kind of thrown in there.
2:09
Speaker 1: Really really cool. Highly recommend checking them out as well.
2:12
Speaker 1: Good rack Casey, good rat Casey on the case. So
2:16
Speaker 1: if you are a fan of this show, odds are
2:19
Speaker 1: that you, like us, are fascinated by fairy tales. I
2:23
Speaker 1: did a lot of research in a different life into
2:27
Speaker 1: the origin of fairy tales, which I'm sure everybody knows.
2:32
Speaker 1: The origins of fairy tales are much more dark and
2:34
Speaker 1: grizzly than the Disney adaptations that you see today. Our
2:39
Speaker 1: subject today concerns a fairy tale. It's very well known,
2:43
Speaker 1: popularized perhaps by Disney's Tangled film, and that is the
2:48
Speaker 1: story of Rapunzel, the trope of a princess locked in
2:52
Speaker 1: a tower who's got a ton of long hair. It's
2:55
Speaker 1: so cool, Ben, because a lot of these stories that
2:58
Speaker 1: you're talking about that that had very grizzly roots, UM
3:01
Speaker 1: had even grizzlier roots before Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm got
3:07
Speaker 1: their hands on them and kind of sanitized them, clean
3:09
Speaker 1: them up a little bit, because oftentimes, uh, the story
3:12
Speaker 1: that led to the story was just unbearably grizzly as
3:17
Speaker 1: we're going to get into today. And then when you
3:19
Speaker 1: get to stuff like Tangled, another step removed from the
3:22
Speaker 1: Grim Brothers, it's even further sanitized with Rapunzel. It turns
3:27
Speaker 1: out that the origins of the story of the aforementioned
3:31
Speaker 1: long haired princess locked in a tower UM goes back
3:36
Speaker 1: to pagan times. Yeah, yeah, you're pagan Rome. It goes
3:40
Speaker 1: back to several different places, for sure. A lot of
3:43
Speaker 1: fairy tales UH kind of borrow things from a lot
3:48
Speaker 1: of earlier, similar, pre existing stories. That's why the princess
3:51
Speaker 1: locked in the tower is a trope that occurs in
3:54
Speaker 1: more than one place, but this story does have a
3:59
Speaker 1: real life in scent that happens in Pagan Rome. It
4:03
Speaker 1: concerns someone who became known as St. Barbara. According to
4:09
Speaker 1: the legend, Barbara was the daughter of a wealthy man
4:12
Speaker 1: living in the third century in a place called nico Media,
4:16
Speaker 1: which is part of modern day Turkey. Her father was
4:20
Speaker 1: super protective and was very, very concerned that the evil
4:26
Speaker 1: influences of the outside world would corrupt his daughter, lead
4:29
Speaker 1: to her ruination and debauchment. So he locked her in
4:34
Speaker 1: a tower, and this gave Barbara a lot of time
4:38
Speaker 1: to think so over her period of isolation. According to
4:43
Speaker 1: the story, let me amend that this is a legend,
4:47
Speaker 1: she what nol She became convinced that the pagan gods
4:51
Speaker 1: of Rome weren't all they were cracked up to be. Yeah,
4:53
Speaker 1: ben I actually saw a version of the story where
4:56
Speaker 1: a Catholic priest crept in through the window and schooled
5:00
Speaker 1: her on Catholicism. Because my question is, if all she
5:04
Speaker 1: knew was the pagan ways, how she can all of
5:08
Speaker 1: a sudden have her a grasp of Christianity? Right, That's
5:13
Speaker 1: a great plot hole to point out the story where
5:15
Speaker 1: she encounters an agent of the Christian God, rather than
5:19
Speaker 1: just realizing the Christian God, says that the priest was
5:23
Speaker 1: a Catholic and snuck into her chamber get this, disguised
5:27
Speaker 1: as a doctor, and that he kept coming in. Over
5:30
Speaker 1: time he taught her the Catholic faith and eventually baptized her.
5:35
Speaker 1: That's right. There are other versions of the story that
5:37
Speaker 1: don't mention the priest at all that imply that she
5:40
Speaker 1: was just sort of immaculately gifted with the understanding of
5:43
Speaker 1: the Trinity. And um, this goes back to this idea
5:47
Speaker 1: of her window arrangement in that tower, right, Yes, because
5:53
Speaker 1: the story says that originally her father locked her in
5:56
Speaker 1: a tower that had two windows, but when she converted
6:01
Speaker 1: to Christianity, regardless of how she did it, she installed
6:05
Speaker 1: a third window in the tower to symbolize not a
6:08
Speaker 1: stunning plot twist, the Holy Trinity. Yeah, because all that
6:11
Speaker 1: time up there alone, she kind of figured out masonry too, right, Yeah,
6:15
Speaker 1: and uh, how to make windows, yeah, with like what
6:19
Speaker 1: tools exactly. There's another version of the story where while
6:21
Speaker 1: her father was away, he had workmen that were doing
6:25
Speaker 1: some improvements on the land, or maybe even installing the
6:28
Speaker 1: windows in the first place, and that she asked them
6:31
Speaker 1: to put in a third window. And then when the
6:34
Speaker 1: father returned and saw this third window, um, he questioned,
6:38
Speaker 1: He said, daughter, what what gives? And she and she
6:41
Speaker 1: coped to her new found faith, at which point he yeah,
6:45
Speaker 1: she said, father, I am a Christian now, at which
6:47
Speaker 1: point he drew a sword to kill her immediately. But
6:52
Speaker 1: she used the power of prayer and created an opening
6:56
Speaker 1: in the wall and then teleported. Essentially, she was magically
7:01
Speaker 1: transported or I guess in this case you would say
7:03
Speaker 1: miraculously transported to a mountain gorge and to shepherds saw
7:09
Speaker 1: her arrive. Yeah. So let's let's take a step back.
7:12
Speaker 1: If if you're okay with this, ben Um, let's pick
7:15
Speaker 1: up the kind of more grizzly version, the grim version
7:18
Speaker 1: of the Rapunzel story that many people may be unfamiliar with. UM.
7:22
Speaker 1: Do you remember a show that was broadcast on Nickelodeon
7:26
Speaker 1: in the mid nineties early nineties even UM that was
7:29
Speaker 1: called Grimm's fairy Tale Classics. Yes, so it was a
7:34
Speaker 1: Japanese produced anime UM series. I think they were like
7:38
Speaker 1: twelve episodes, and I think It was distributed in America
7:40
Speaker 1: by Haim Saban of Power Rangers fame, And the thing
7:44
Speaker 1: I most remember is that the versions of the stories
7:47
Speaker 1: in this cartoon were the pretty weird, messed up versions.
7:53
Speaker 1: In the grim version of the Rapunzel story, it starts
7:56
Speaker 1: um with a married couple. The wife is pignant and
8:00
Speaker 1: she demands some lettuces from this garden, this fenced in
8:05
Speaker 1: garden that belongs to an enchantress um. Other versions say
8:08
Speaker 1: that she's like a medicine woman that has the power
8:10
Speaker 1: to use herbs to heal or to her which exactly
8:16
Speaker 1: and um, so she finally convinces her husband to go
8:18
Speaker 1: in and get her this uh It's rampion is one thing,
8:21
Speaker 1: and also Rapunzel another name for this kind of root vegetable.
8:25
Speaker 1: You can make a salad out of the leaves and
8:27
Speaker 1: the which eventually catches him because he goes back and
8:31
Speaker 1: she agrees not to murder him on site, but in
8:35
Speaker 1: that classic fairy tale trope, he has to surrender his
8:39
Speaker 1: firstborn child. That was this the cause of all of
8:43
Speaker 1: this in the first place, right Well, in her defense,
8:45
Speaker 1: she also an additioned spirit his life says, I'll give
8:48
Speaker 1: you all the herbs you want. That's right, So there's
8:51
Speaker 1: there's another plus. But the irony is that the wife
8:53
Speaker 1: only is craving these herbs because of the vegetables, because
8:57
Speaker 1: she's pregnant, and that's a big part of this story too.
9:00
Speaker 1: So he agrees and fast forward to the time that
9:06
Speaker 1: the child is born, a girl named Rapunzel of the
9:11
Speaker 1: evil Witch, by the way many versions of this story,
9:13
Speaker 1: is named Dame Gothel. How Gothic is that? And Dame Gothel,
9:18
Speaker 1: upon the child's birth, takes her to raise his her
9:20
Speaker 1: own and she actually gives her the name Rapunzel. And
9:24
Speaker 1: Rapunzel grows up to be a real looker. She is
9:28
Speaker 1: the most beautiful child in the world, with long golden hair,
9:32
Speaker 1: but as soon as she turns twelve, the witch or
9:34
Speaker 1: enchantress locks her up inside a tower in the middle
9:37
Speaker 1: of nowhere in the woods. There are no stairs, there's
9:40
Speaker 1: no door. There's just one room and one window. And
9:45
Speaker 1: the way that the witch visits her is by using
9:49
Speaker 1: her hair as rope. So that's where we get the
9:52
Speaker 1: famous line, Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair so that
9:56
Speaker 1: I might climb thy golden stare, or just to shout
9:59
Speaker 1: out to perhaps the more popular modern version. Uh, casey,
10:03
Speaker 1: we're talking about this off air. Who you guys think
10:05
Speaker 1: we could play a clip of that line without getting sued? Perfect? Perfect,
10:18
Speaker 1: So that's that's not the original line? Is thy golden stare?
10:22
Speaker 1: And that's of course the Beastie Boys from the incredible
10:25
Speaker 1: album Paul's Boutique. And this is how Rapunzel's life is
10:34
Speaker 1: set to be for the rest of her life. As
10:36
Speaker 1: you can imagine, she's pretty bored in this tower. She
10:39
Speaker 1: muses herself in any number of ways, combing her incredibly
10:43
Speaker 1: long hair, possibly learning about masonry, possibly learning me sory,
10:46
Speaker 1: singing to herself, building windows, whatever. But singing is the key.
10:51
Speaker 1: Singing is the key because the handsome prince. Of course,
10:53
Speaker 1: it's gotta be handsome prince. Here's this malefluous singing and
10:56
Speaker 1: comes a calling and then she lets down the hair.
10:59
Speaker 1: He doesn't even know. I don't know. It's it's unclear
11:01
Speaker 1: to me. How does he get up there in the
11:02
Speaker 1: first place. He doesn't know how to ask for the
11:04
Speaker 1: for the hair. He stalks her. Oh wait a minute,
11:07
Speaker 1: he does know, because he's overheard the witch doing it.
11:09
Speaker 1: He stalked her at this point. Yeah, that's not creepy
11:12
Speaker 1: at all. He keeps coming back to listen to singing.
11:15
Speaker 1: He's like, what's going on? I'm so interested. Presumably he
11:18
Speaker 1: even impersonates the voice of the witch to get her
11:21
Speaker 1: to let down the hair in the first place. And
11:23
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden he appears to her and
11:25
Speaker 1: she's like, WHOA, who's this JABRONI coming in through my
11:28
Speaker 1: window trying to pretend to be my grandmama, because at
11:31
Speaker 1: this point she thinks the witch is like her family.
11:32
Speaker 1: She doesn't remember her parents. Um and they get it
11:36
Speaker 1: on right. Eventually he continues to visit her. The number
11:41
Speaker 1: of visits depends on the version you read. And eventually
11:44
Speaker 1: the prince asked Rapunzel to make an honest man of him,
11:47
Speaker 1: and they agree to get married. And they say, okay,
11:50
Speaker 1: next step is that we have to figure out how
11:54
Speaker 1: to get you the heck out of here. So they say, look,
11:58
Speaker 1: we know when Dame Awful, the enchantress or evil which
12:02
Speaker 1: comes by, So every time the Witch comes by, I'll
12:04
Speaker 1: be out of side, out of mind, but I'll visit
12:07
Speaker 1: you in the night. And when I visit you, I
12:09
Speaker 1: will bring you a piece of silk, and I won't
12:12
Speaker 1: bring it all at once. I just visit your night
12:14
Speaker 1: after night, bringing a piece of silk, and then you
12:16
Speaker 1: will naturally make a ladder out of it, because she
12:20
Speaker 1: has also acquired that particular skill or craft. But something
12:26
Speaker 1: goes wrong, you know, as things are wont to do
12:29
Speaker 1: in the fairy tale world. The which overhears this plan
12:33
Speaker 1: um and while the prince is away, she goes up there,
12:37
Speaker 1: confronts Rapunzel, slabs off her hair with a butcher's knife
12:42
Speaker 1: for like a pair of scissors or or whatever is
12:44
Speaker 1: depending on This is the version, and then sends her
12:47
Speaker 1: away into the wilderness. Yes uh. In in the first
12:51
Speaker 1: edition of the Grim Fairy Tales version, she says to
12:56
Speaker 1: the witch, without knowing exactly what she's saying, that her
12:59
Speaker 1: dress is growing tighter around her waist, which is an
13:02
Speaker 1: allusion to pregnancy and the and the witch catches on.
13:07
Speaker 1: And then in the second edition, she cuts off Punzel's
13:10
Speaker 1: hair throws her out in the woods. The prince comes
13:13
Speaker 1: calling that night, and the evil witch lets down the
13:18
Speaker 1: hair that she has cut off. He climbs up. You know,
13:21
Speaker 1: we can imagine he's looking forward to uh spending some
13:25
Speaker 1: time with his fiancee and to his utter and abject horror.
13:31
Speaker 1: He meets the witch instead of her Punzel, and she says,
13:35
Speaker 1: you're never gonna see that girl again. She throws him
13:40
Speaker 1: from the tower, which I think in most versions of
13:42
Speaker 1: the story. He ends up hitting a thorn bush and
13:45
Speaker 1: he goes blind. They they poke his eyes out. And
13:48
Speaker 1: that's the thing, dude, And that anime version I was
13:50
Speaker 1: telling you about it does that. It has that happen,
13:53
Speaker 1: and it's sort of like it's not like bloody or
13:56
Speaker 1: like you know, scarred, weird gouged out eyes or anything,
13:58
Speaker 1: but he's kind of got like red, patchy kind of
14:01
Speaker 1: scratch marks all over his eyes and they're sort of
14:03
Speaker 1: like closed, you know. Um. And then he also wanders
14:06
Speaker 1: the wilderness and eventually here's that singing that he liked
14:10
Speaker 1: so so well and realizes that it's Rapunzel and he
14:14
Speaker 1: she has given birth to twin boys, um I believe
14:17
Speaker 1: according to UM, the grim version UM. And then she
14:21
Speaker 1: cries tears of joy into his eye holes and he
14:25
Speaker 1: is cured and the site is restored to him. HM.
14:28
Speaker 1: So you know, as much trials and tribulation as they
14:30
Speaker 1: go through, it does ultimately end up with them all
14:32
Speaker 1: living together. He takes her back to his kingdom because
14:34
Speaker 1: he can see now and find his way back, and
14:36
Speaker 1: they all live happily. Ever after, there's a rogain moment
14:40
Speaker 1: in some versions of the story too, because he touched.
14:42
Speaker 1: When he can see again, he touches her head and
14:44
Speaker 1: her hair magically grows back, just like Zoop yep and
14:48
Speaker 1: uh the evil, which when she throws the guy out
14:52
Speaker 1: of the tower, she ends up dropping Rapunzel's hair somehow
14:55
Speaker 1: and it leaves her trapped in the tower. But this,
14:58
Speaker 1: you know, how we're talking about the amalgamated origin of
15:03
Speaker 1: what we call modern fairy tales. We do know that
15:07
Speaker 1: Rapunzel itself has, at least the Grimm's version does have
15:12
Speaker 1: a more recent than Roman times influence. A story called
15:18
Speaker 1: Petro Sinella or Parsley written by a guy named giam
15:22
Speaker 1: Battista Basil in his collection of fairy Tales in sixteen
15:26
Speaker 1: thirty four, and it's it's kind of the same, but
15:30
Speaker 1: it's a little more r rated because the encounters between
15:33
Speaker 1: the prince and Rapunzel are much more explicit and sex. Yeah,
15:38
Speaker 1: it's a little little more graphic, little more late night
15:42
Speaker 1: skin imax at the time. Yeah, indeed, and in the
15:45
Speaker 1: grim version of the sexes is simply implied by the
15:49
Speaker 1: baby bump by the tightening waist. So back to St. Barbara. Uh,
15:55
Speaker 1: did she have hair long enough to let someone climb
15:59
Speaker 1: up a tower? You seen it? Could someone climb up
16:02
Speaker 1: a tower using anyone's hair? In St. Barbara's case, the
16:07
Speaker 1: hair is not not as important, it's not not really there. Yeah,
16:12
Speaker 1: it's just like you assume she has. She presumably had
16:15
Speaker 1: a bob. Sure. So when we last left Barbara, her father,
16:23
Speaker 1: who in in this version story is named Diascurus uh,
16:27
Speaker 1: pursues his daughter somehow finds this magic mountain gorge uh,
16:32
Speaker 1: and then he's like, where is she? Where is she?
16:36
Speaker 1: And the first shepherd says, I don't know, don't talk
16:39
Speaker 1: to me. But the second betrays her, and for doing this,
16:42
Speaker 1: this shepherd gets turned to stone and all the sheep
16:45
Speaker 1: in his flock are turned to locust. And because of
16:48
Speaker 1: this betrayal, Diascorus does find his daughter and he decides
16:54
Speaker 1: what not to kill her himself. That's right, well, at
16:57
Speaker 1: least at that moment um. But yeah, if he felt
17:00
Speaker 1: like she deserved uh, you know, her day in kangaroo court, right,
17:07
Speaker 1: which means that she was dragged before the prefect of
17:10
Speaker 1: the province, a guy named Martineus. Yeah, and um, this
17:15
Speaker 1: is where it really starts to get ugly. Um. The
17:19
Speaker 1: court I guess you could call it, beat her mercilessly
17:23
Speaker 1: and UM beat her with pieces of raw hide on
17:27
Speaker 1: her back. They rubbed her wounds with what you'd call
17:31
Speaker 1: a fur cloth, I guess, just to kind of exacerbate
17:34
Speaker 1: the pain. Um. And at night she, according to this
17:38
Speaker 1: legend or story, she prayed um to what's referred to
17:43
Speaker 1: in this article from O. C. A. Dot org as
17:46
Speaker 1: the heavenly bridegroom UM and Jesus the Savior Um. And
17:51
Speaker 1: according to the story of this martyrdom, she her wounds
17:55
Speaker 1: were spontaneously healed. UM. And then when they found her killed,
18:02
Speaker 1: they beat her and brutalized her even more. Yeah. They
18:06
Speaker 1: started to use torches to burn her, or attempt to.
18:10
Speaker 1: Those torches went out, Uh when they were getting close
18:15
Speaker 1: to her body, and they kept trying torture, she kept
18:18
Speaker 1: healing through the power of prayer. Osciate, by the way,
18:23
Speaker 1: is the Orthodox Church in America website, which is a
18:26
Speaker 1: great resource for stories of saints. Eventually, they say, well, look,
18:30
Speaker 1: she's not going to renounce her Christian faith. She's obviously
18:35
Speaker 1: for some reason, healing very quickly. Uh. So they eventually
18:41
Speaker 1: decide that they are going to kill her. And one
18:46
Speaker 1: version of the story they say, okay, well, let's see
18:48
Speaker 1: you heal from a beheading. In another version, the torture
18:53
Speaker 1: continues to where her body is raped, wounded with hooks,
18:56
Speaker 1: She's led naked through the city as people mock her.
19:00
Speaker 1: Then she is eventually beheaded by by her father. Yeah yeah, um.
19:06
Speaker 1: And and you know, and this version of the story
19:08
Speaker 1: that we're reading is from this religious site, so it's
19:11
Speaker 1: kind of presented as fact. Um. It's clearly one version
19:15
Speaker 1: of the story that incorporates some of these mystical religious elements. Uh.
19:20
Speaker 1: And and and an added element of come up. And
19:23
Speaker 1: her father and the prefect were apparently struck by lightning um,
19:28
Speaker 1: brought on by the wrath of God um and instantly killed.
19:32
Speaker 1: What goes around comes around, right. This story continued because,
19:41
Speaker 1: as as is the case with so many saints, uh,
19:44
Speaker 1: relics of her body remained. And in the sixth century,
19:48
Speaker 1: the relics of this great martyr Barbara, because as you said, oh,
19:52
Speaker 1: there are different types of martyrs. The relics of the
19:55
Speaker 1: Saint were transferred to Constantinople and then they stayed there
19:59
Speaker 1: for six or years before they were transferred to Kiev
20:04
Speaker 1: by a daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comenos, who
20:09
Speaker 1: was also named Barbara. And that is where these relics
20:13
Speaker 1: rest today at Kiev's St. Vladimir Cathedral, where an acathists
20:19
Speaker 1: to the Saint is served each Tuesday. And here's the thing.
20:22
Speaker 1: The Orthodox Church um is largely what holds this martyrdom
20:28
Speaker 1: in such high esteem. The because of some of the
20:31
Speaker 1: scarcity of of real historical records about this um, she
20:35
Speaker 1: actually was taken off the list of martyrs and saints
20:39
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine by the Roman Catholic Church. It's true,
20:43
Speaker 1: It's absolutely true. But there's pretty compelling evidence that this story,
20:48
Speaker 1: this princess in a tower trope did lend, uh, did
20:53
Speaker 1: lend some inspiration to the story that we now know
20:58
Speaker 1: as Rapunzel. And of course, if you have seen Tangled,
21:01
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff was cut out of this story.
21:04
Speaker 1: And uh, have you seen Tangled? No? I have not.
21:07
Speaker 1: I have not, But I'm gonna go out on a
21:10
Speaker 1: limb and say there probably wasn't a beheading. No, I'm
21:12
Speaker 1: pretty sure not. But again, even in that I was
21:14
Speaker 1: pretty traumatized by that um anime version where the prince
21:18
Speaker 1: gets his eyes gouged out by thorns, even that being
21:22
Speaker 1: the sort of more sanitized version. And it makes sense.
21:25
Speaker 1: The grand brothers were essentially um historians, and they collected
21:29
Speaker 1: oral tradition of all of these hundreds, I believe, of
21:33
Speaker 1: folk tales they then used as inspiration for their Grimm's
21:38
Speaker 1: fairy tales. And a lot of these older folk tales
21:44
Speaker 1: from an academic perspective or a folklore perspective, are immensely
21:48
Speaker 1: and endlessly fascinating because they provide a window into the
21:54
Speaker 1: realities of the time. Because in in the early version
22:00
Speaker 1: of stories that would later inspire this fairy tale, or
22:03
Speaker 1: the grim version of the fairy tale, a lot more
22:07
Speaker 1: emphasis is put on the idea of pregnancy and the
22:11
Speaker 1: use of plants as medicinal aids for pregnant women or
22:16
Speaker 1: for people when they give birth. And the problem is
22:20
Speaker 1: that this is a very dangerous time in a woman's
22:23
Speaker 1: life because and still is. You know, it was such
22:26
Speaker 1: a dangerous sign because there were many, many complications that
22:30
Speaker 1: could result in injury or death to the mother or
22:33
Speaker 1: the child. So this worry of having to trust someone
22:37
Speaker 1: who is doing things that seem inexplicable or hence supernatural,
22:43
Speaker 1: is a salient and immediate fear. I mean, it's it's
22:45
Speaker 1: often a sign of witchcraft. Are seen as such when
22:49
Speaker 1: a woman um is close to nature and understands how
22:52
Speaker 1: to harness some of these herbs in ways that the
22:55
Speaker 1: average lay person does not um and that says looked
22:57
Speaker 1: upon with suspicion. And it's almost that thing where making
23:01
Speaker 1: a bargain with a woman like this, you're sort of
23:03
Speaker 1: rolling the dice because you don't know if she is
23:06
Speaker 1: there to heal or to harm, and you know that
23:08
Speaker 1: she potentially has the power to do either, and you
23:10
Speaker 1: have to trust her right to do that. So it's
23:12
Speaker 1: sort of it's it's kind of personifying that inherent paranoia
23:17
Speaker 1: that comes along with putting your faith in the hands
23:19
Speaker 1: of another person who you're not really sure of their motives.
23:23
Speaker 1: I guess, right yeah, or you don't trust right sure.
23:27
Speaker 1: And as I believe I mentioned in an earlier episode, man,
23:30
Speaker 1: what a what a terrible gig to be a healer
23:34
Speaker 1: back in that time, because even if you did your
23:37
Speaker 1: best and something went wrong, people would decide you were
23:39
Speaker 1: a witch. There's one interesting thing that we we should
23:43
Speaker 1: probably we have to mention right the To me, the
23:46
Speaker 1: most fascinating thing about saints is that they're often called
23:50
Speaker 1: the patron saint of one thing or another. And Barbara,
23:54
Speaker 1: despite surprise some people to learn, is the patron saint
23:57
Speaker 1: of armorers, artilleryman, arct X, mathematicians, miners, and the Italian Navy,
24:03
Speaker 1: the whole thing. And if I'm not mistaken, that comes
24:06
Speaker 1: from the the idea in the story that her abusers
24:10
Speaker 1: were struck dead by lightning, because when you're a minor
24:15
Speaker 1: you're often subject to cavens and even explosions from combustible
24:19
Speaker 1: minerals and things like that. And um, the idea that St.
24:23
Speaker 1: Barbara would protect you from lightning or from those kind
24:26
Speaker 1: of pitfalls of that bad profession, right yep. Absolutely venerated
24:31
Speaker 1: by Catholics who faced the danger of sudden and violent
24:34
Speaker 1: death at work as well. And she her name is
24:38
Speaker 1: invoked against thunder and lightning and all accidents arising from
24:42
Speaker 1: explosions of gunpowder. And interesting side note, the Spanish words
24:47
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara, then the corresponding words Santa Barbara, UH signify
24:52
Speaker 1: the powder magazine of a ship or a fortress. And
24:55
Speaker 1: back in the day, it used to be standard operating
24:59
Speaker 1: procedure to devasta at you of this Saint at the
25:01
Speaker 1: magazine to protect the structure from suddenly exploding. So there's
25:06
Speaker 1: the more you know, star flying over my head. And
25:09
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara, California, which is on the coast um has
25:12
Speaker 1: a lot of oil and gas fields. And of course
25:15
Speaker 1: Santa Barbara is Spanish for St. Barbara. Fascinating And now
25:20
Speaker 1: we have to ask ourselves what other secrets do modern
25:24
Speaker 1: fairy tales or modern versions of fairy tales hold for
25:28
Speaker 1: us here in twenty nineteen. We'd like to hear your
25:31
Speaker 1: story about your favorite fairy tale secrets. I'd also like
25:36
Speaker 1: to before we close out the show, give a shout
25:39
Speaker 1: out to a new follower I have on Twitter that
25:43
Speaker 1: just made my day. I think Casey and no, I
25:45
Speaker 1: think you'll both enjoy this. Somebody made a Twitter account
25:49
Speaker 1: called ridiculous History out of Context where they just take
25:53
Speaker 1: uh quotes or interactions from us and post them without
25:57
Speaker 1: explaining where they came from or what they pertain to.
26:00
Speaker 1: What we have a joke Twitter account we do and
26:03
Speaker 1: I don't know who. I don't know who does it.
26:05
Speaker 1: I assume you're listening. I just wanted to say thanks.
26:07
Speaker 1: So we've arrived. If you want to follow them, follow
26:10
Speaker 1: them at out Ridiculous on Twitter. Yeah, I really just
26:15
Speaker 1: do the Instagram thing. You can follow me at Embryonic Insider.
26:19
Speaker 1: You can follow me at Ben Bolan. You can also
26:23
Speaker 1: meet the best part of this show, your fellow listeners
26:26
Speaker 1: on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians. Big thanks as always
26:31
Speaker 1: to a super producer, Casey Pegram Casey, I've got to
26:35
Speaker 1: look up saints and see which which one you might
26:38
Speaker 1: identify with. I'll get back to over the weekend. Big
26:41
Speaker 1: thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Thanks to
26:44
Speaker 1: Gabe Losier, our research assistant associate, whatever you want to
26:48
Speaker 1: call him. He is the stuff, A genuine Jim. That guy,
26:53
Speaker 1: Gabe is an absolute gift. We have some things coming
26:56
Speaker 1: up for you, so stay tuned. We might have some
26:59
Speaker 1: spell guests in the mix. We might have the return
27:03
Speaker 1: of Christopher Hauciotis that's right. And in the meantime, we
27:06
Speaker 1: would love it very much if you would say nice
27:09
Speaker 1: things about the show on iTunes or your podcast platform
27:12
Speaker 1: of choice. Now they'll see they'll see that you're supposed
27:16
Speaker 1: to call it Apple podcast now, but don't let them cool.
27:19
Speaker 1: You can call it whatever you want. You know what
27:21
Speaker 1: we mean. Yeah, see you next time, folks,