The Scary History of Fairies

Forget what you think about fairies... they are not cute and definitely not harmless. In today's episode we're going back centuries to a time when they could take human form and were mentioned as part of the witch trials. What are the rules of talking to a fairy? What are the differences between Irish and Scottish fairies? And what influence did Shakespeare have on how we see fairies?! Joining Kate today is Diane Purkiss, historian and author of books including Fairies and Fairy Stories and The Museum of Witchcraft. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Subscribe to the new Betwixt The Sheets YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@BetwixtTheSheetsPodcast Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

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• 1:40Kate Lister?

  Hello, I'm Kate Lister and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the naughty podcast where we root around in the pants of history for your own entertainment. But before we can do so together, I do have to tell you, this is an adult podcast, but my adults to other adults about adult things in an adult way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And if you can't tick all of that off your box, then just be off with you. We don't need you around here, holding up the show. For everyone else, let's get on with it.

• 2:10Kate Lister?

  It is a lovely day for a stroll in the countryside, wouldn't you say? Except, what's that mysterious sound coming from inside that hill over there? A fiddle? A laugh? It's the unmistakable sound of fairies. Every story says that you should turn around and go home. Every story says that if you follow that music, you may never find your way home again. Unfortunately, I host a history podcast, so I am here marching enthusiastically towards it. Today, we are following those tunes into the other world, the fairy world, a place of dazzling queens, stolen children, shifting identities, and ancient beliefs that shaped our world for centuries.

• 3:15Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society with me, Kate Lister. Imagine living in a world where the landscape itself had a second life. Every ancient mound might conceal a palace, every lonely tree might belong to somebody that you couldn't see, every unexplained illness, sudden disappearance, and strange twist of fate could have a supernatural cause. For generations across Ireland and Scotland in particular, that wasn't fantasy, it was simply a part of life. This week, we are exploring the darker side of fairy folklore and asking what these stories reveal about fear, power, and the people who told them.

• 3:57Kate Lister?

  Joining me today is the historian and author and Oxford professor Diane Purkiss, and she is going to take us into this other realm. So without further ado, let's crack on.

• 4:15Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Diane Purkiss. How are you doing?

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Very well, and I'm so happy to be here. It's such a brilliant podcast, and I actually listened to it as well as contributing to it.

• 4:28Kate Lister?

  Oh, thank you. We had so much fun talking to you last time that we knew we had to get you back on. And we have, we haven't done this topic before, which is bizarre considering how far we've been going, but thank God you're here. Fairies.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Yes, fairies, which are not, it turns out, always tiny little cutesy pie things.

• 4:47Kate Lister?

  I, like, that's what you think of. If you, if you were to grab a bunch of people off the street and go, tell me what you think when you think of fairies, it would be Tinker Bell, it'd be Disney, it would be little tiny, like kids in fancy dress with wings, that's what we're thinking of.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's not what we should be thinking of. We should be thinking of the great fairy tradition of the British Isles, which is all about a matriarchy, a sexy matriarchy ruled by a woman.

• 5:11Kate Lister?

  I think I can get on board with this.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:13Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  So alongside us the whole time is actually the society we quite like the sound of.

• 5:18Kate Lister?

  I do like this, okay, a sexy fairy matriarchy.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  Hmm, yeah.

• 5:23Kate Lister?

  Well, how far back does this belief go? And when people in the past are thinking of fairies, yes, they're sexy and they're a matriarch, and we'll get to that, but are they thinking tiny little things with wings?

• 5:34Speaker 02

  No, they're not. So when we're talking about what people were thinking in, say, 17th century Scotland, where we have a lot of evidence from the witch trials, they're thinking of people who present as human, as we might say nowadays.

• 5:48Kate Lister?

  Human sized.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  So when you meet a fairy, yeah, you meet a fairy, and it's not immediately obvious that they're a fairy because they're miniature, they look like a person.

• 5:54Kate Lister?

  Right, okay. They look like people, they are full sized, and what kind of things might a fairy do? Do they think that they're fairies did?

• 6:03Speaker 02

  The kind of things that they mostly do is predate on humans. But this can be beneficial. So a very standard fairy story, fairies have this bizarre hunger for humans. They want humans to be their partners, their sexual partners, and also to help them with reproduction. Humans are more fertile than fairies. Also help them with things like childbirth, help them with things like breastfeeding. So they show up quite often in the lives of human people, searching for these bodily resources.

• 6:36Kate Lister?

  I'd never, I'd no idea that they were doing that.

• 6:39Speaker 02

  So a very standard ballad, which I bet many listeners will have heard of, is the Ballad of Thomas the Rhymer. So this is a bloke who's lying under a tree, and he suddenly sees a beautiful woman on horseback. And he actually thinks it's the Virgin Mary. He greets her and says, you're the Virgin Mary. And she says, no, no, no, I'm not the Virgin Mary, I'm the queen of the fairies. And now you must come with me. It's not, would you like to come with me, Thomas? It's like she's putting him under a spell. You must come with me to Elfland.

• 7:08Kate Lister?

  Oh.

• 7:10Speaker 02

  By speaking to her, he's somehow made himself vulnerable. But he's nothing loath, because she's really beautiful, so he gets on her horse and the pair ride off together. And they ride through this extraordinary supernatural landscape to the realm of the fairies, in which it's pretty ominous and Gothic. They wade through red blood to the knee, because all the blood that shed on earth runs through the veins of that country.

• 7:35Kate Lister?

  Oh, they're not messing about, are they? Wow, okay.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  No, they're not. So it's pretty serious stuff.

• 7:38Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  So when they get there, she says, and now you have to serve me for seven years. And let me just put it this way, Kate, I don't think she wants him to bring her drinks of an evening. I think she has a different kind of service in mind.

• 7:49Kate Lister?

  This sort of taps into a very old tradition of women capturing men. As we're recording now, the Odyssey is everywhere, right?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:58Kate Lister?

  And that, with Calypso stealing away, Odysseus, stay on my island and let's be, let's be sexy and we'll have sexy time. And then there was Circe as well. That happens all throughout ancient myths.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  It's actually got a name, nympholepsy, where you're kidnapped by a nymph.

• 8:12Kate Lister?

  Nympholepsy.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that, that's what happens in a way to Thomas the Rhymer as well, exactly the same narrative. And as we know, Odysseus too, struggles to get out of Calypso's island. He doesn't actually want to be with this beautiful woman.

• 8:26Kate Lister?

  No.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  He wants to go home to the human world. And this is also quite a common aspect of the fairy stories, that you would think that Thomas the Rhymer would be like, well, I lucked out. But in fact, he's quite happy to leave.

• 8:38Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  Up until it turns out that the fairy queen gives him a gift that he also can't refuse, and it's the tongue that can never lie. So in a way, that's.

• 8:49Kate Lister?

  Okay, gift vouchers are nice as well.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Maybe an obin vouch or something like that. But no, she, she evidently, it's a way of keeping him, in a sense, that he's now never going to get laid again, because he actually protests along these lines. He says, but if you give me that, you know, I'll never be able to seduce anyone again.

• 9:09Kate Lister?

  Oh, so he can't lie?

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right, he can't lie. What would that be like? Wow.

• 9:17Kate Lister?

  Right, no, I can't, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get distracted now with this idea of like a man that can't lie.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, so obviously it's a massive handicap, but it also eventually works out to be a very specific supernatural gift. Because it means that if anyone asks him a question, he has to give a completely honest answer. And even if it's not knowledge that he in theory possesses, he can access that knowledge in order to tell the truth. So he becomes a prophet.

• 9:44Kate Lister?

  Well, that's quite handy.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:45Kate Lister?

  That's not, that's not the worst thing in the world.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Powerful prophet.

• 9:48Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Um, and he prophesies all kinds of stuff and his prophecies are actually published. And people are very excited about them. They're all the kind of thing that medieval prophecies tend to be like, you know, the Moldy War prophecy. And you're like, well, what is this? Who is the Mold Warp actually? And when hemp is spun, England's down there, that kind of prophecy. But they're actually forbidden under Henry the Eighth, so they become a forbidden book. And there's actually a guy who's arrested for having them read in his house under Henry the Eighth's reign.

• 10:17Kate Lister?

  See, they take fairies, very, like, these aren't just fun stories, like you tell kids and that they're, you know, it's a fun story.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Blood prophecy, the fall of regimes, sexual predation. Yeah.

• 10:29Kate Lister?

  How far back does this belief go? I mean, I know that it's kind of difficult to trace the origins of this stuff, but.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  The thing is, we've got lots of evidence for it from a particular time. Because a lot of the people who hold to these beliefs are persecuted for witchcraft. Just as Thomas the Rhymer gets the gift of prophecy, lots of women, particularly some men too, who have dealings with the fairies, get gifts of healing that they then use to try to heal their neighbours or as part of some kind of magic that heals the land or keeps the flocks and the land safe from disease. And that then leads the Presbyterian Kirk to have them arrested on charges of heathenism, AKA witchcraft. Yeah, this is Scotland. There's a bit of it in England as well. There's a couple of cases in Somerset, a couple of cases in Rye that involve fairies.

• 11:20Kate Lister?

  Wow. And what kind of stuff do they do? This is specifically in the Scottish witch trials that fairies are discussed and evoked.

• 11:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's over ninety seven trials. Um, these are just the ones for which we happen to have records. Where fairies are a matter of conversation, they're part of what the witch confesses to. Um, and it's also part of them thinking, well, where do people's magical powers come from?

• 11:45Kate Lister?

  So they, it's in Scotland, they believed that the witches were getting their powers through fairies.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  That's right. Yeah. And so then the Presbyterian Kirk reinterprets that as actually there are no fairies, there are only devils. So this sort of morally grey.

• 12:00Kate Lister?

  See, that's interesting that they made the distinction of like, well, that's not a fairy, that's the devil.

• 12:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. It can't be a fairy. So you actually get trials. There's one trial involving a man actually called Andrew Mann, who's nympho leapted by the Queen of the Fairies and has, he claims several children with her.

• 12:18Kate Lister?

  Okay, okay.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Kind of striking. Yeah. Um, and, um, every time he says the Queen of the Fairies, the clerk actually writes down the devil whom thou callest the Queen of the Fairies. So it's as subtle as that.

• 12:30Kate Lister?

  Doesn't seem very objective.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  No, absolutely not. So they are determined to stamp out basically what it is. And Alex Walshum puts this brilliantly, and it has a huge impact on views of sexuality as well. Is that the Presbyterian Kirk refuses to accept that anything material can ever be inflicted with anything spiritual.

• 12:51Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  So blessings don't work, curses don't work, nothing that's material can be changed in its moral nature by anything.

• 13:01Kate Lister?

  See, these fairies, I mean, they sound fascinating, but they don't, they sound kind of scary. Like, are they, the wider folkloric tradition in Scotland, are fairies, are they naughty, are they mischievous? And I know that you have a lot of fairies in Ireland as well. I suppose what I'm asking is, do the fairies change depending on where you are?

• 13:22Speaker 02

  No, I think that broadly speaking, the fairies in both Scotland and Ireland, and indeed the parts of England that have strong fairy beliefs.

• 13:29Kate Lister?

  Isle of Man.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, Isle of Man.

• 13:31Kate Lister?

  I've got family there, they've got a fairy bridge, Fastamai Mungavega, you say that whenever you go over it.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  Right, there you go. And you've also got the Cornish Piskies.

• 13:38Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Um, so lots of, it tends to be areas that retain a Celtic language base where these beliefs are best sustained. And particularly areas that are remote from, um, if you will, the urban mainstream of the country. But in all those places, fairy beliefs remain beliefs in basically an amoral group of people.

• 13:58Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  Who can, if you're lucky, be successfully deployed to give you some extra magical gifts that you can then successfully use in your life. And if you're unlucky, can destroy you completely. So there's a whole skill set associated with negotiating with them.

• 14:15Kate Lister?

  Such as what? I mean, if I wanted to talk to a fairy, what, what's the best tactic?

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Well, you have to wait for them to approach you to start with. You can't actually make them come.

• 14:23Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 14:24Speaker 02

  And it's very, there are very important rules, like you mustn't speak if they actually take you to elf land. You mustn't open your lips.

• 14:32Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  You mustn't open your lips to ingest any food or drink either. Because somehow opening your body means that the fairies can control you.

• 14:42Kate Lister?

  That sounds faintly erotic.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so. I think it is connected with what the fairies want you for in the first place.

• 14:48Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  And there are many, many stories about people who get this wrong and end up being imprisoned by the fairies or were still made permanently unwell by fairy magic. So there are very many cases in the witch trial material of witches who are saying, not I benefited from the fairies, but the fairies made me disabled, the fairies blinded me in one eye.

• 15:10Kate Lister?

  Oh, so like, so they have this belief for an awfully long time that effectively that there's another world of these inhabitants and that they come through.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Ours.

• 15:20Kate Lister?

  Right alongside ours and that these fairies, that they can be nice if they want to be, but they tend, they sound like they're quite tricksy. They don't sound like they're going to be your best friend.

• 15:31Speaker 02

  No, they'll make use of you. They actually behave somewhat like your feudal overlord.

• 15:36Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Um, they're sexually exploitative, they're tricky and you have to be careful what you say to them. So they're almost like possibly a metaphor for your feudal overlord. But they also provide like an alternative system of allegiance to your feudal overlord that you can use to control your feudal overlord, paradoxically.

• 15:54Kate Lister?

  And I know that there's still a very strong belief, maybe not like a super strong as in people genuinely believe that fairies exist. But you find like, whenever you go over that bridge in the Isle of Man, you say Fastamai Mungavega, and there are fairy bushes and fairy ditches in Ireland that people will not dig up and they will not go anywhere near, just in case.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  Sure. And there's been recent work, uh, by folklorists at the University of Cork on fairy houses in Ireland. And these are the houses that you can never sell, that they just remain on the market for ages because nobody market, nobody local will touch them because they're on a fairy road and everybody local knows that. So they'll let the incomer buy it and take the bad luck. But nobody in the region will go anywhere near them.

• 16:36Kate Lister?

  Wow, I didn't know that you could get fairy houses.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  So this will still be a thing.

• 16:41Kate Lister?

  That is still a thing then.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  This is, it's still a thing.

• 16:43Kate Lister?

  It's still a thing.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  It's never really gone away from Ireland or some parts of Scotland either, but it's also felt to be bad to talk about it to outsiders, um, possibly because outsiders are skeptical in a way that's corrosive. And possibly because once it would have been legally liable to have these views.

• 17:03Kate Lister?

  Why do you say it's a matriarchy? That's really interesting.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Well, it's always ruled by a queen. Um, king doesn't really have much of a role. There sometimes is a fairy king in the picture. But the, the queen is always sovereign and everything revolves around her and what she wants.

• 17:17Kate Lister?

  Okay, okay.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Some fairies, we, we have lots of male fairies. Interestingly, there's a whole category of male fairy that exemplifies the scary fairy, I guess. And that is men who died in battle.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  So a typical, if you want to meet a fairy, the fairy you're most likely to meet is one of your relatives who died at a recent battle.

• 17:40Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Joined the fairy ride.

• 17:42Kate Lister?

  So they die in battle and they join the fairies.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:46Kate Lister?

  And then they'll come back.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then they come back as a fairy.

• 17:49Kate Lister?

  That sounds a bit scary.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is a little bit.

• 17:51Kate Lister?

  That's so. So how do you tell a fairy then if they can come back? And from what I've heard is they can take various forms, but they like to take human forms. How do, how can you tell that I'm talking to a fairy?

• 18:01Speaker 02

  They usually tell you themselves.

• 18:03Kate Lister?

  Well, there we go. That's easy enough.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  They hopefully say I'm the fairy queen, like the fairy queen does to Thomas the Rhymer. So it's interesting. The other way that you can sometimes tell is colour. Fairies in Scotland are strongly associated with the colour green.

• 18:16Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  And a combo of green and red is particularly a fairy thing.

• 18:21Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  So ordinary people avoid wearing those colours because they don't want to be mistaken for fairies and also because it's considered bad luck.

• 18:28Kate Lister?

  Oh, and what's a fairy changeling?

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Oh, now we're touching on it. This is a classic kind of encounter with a fairy is where a fairy comes to your house and she wants to steal typically the child or baby.

• 18:44Kate Lister?

  They steal children quite a lot, don't they?

• 18:46Speaker 02

  And they replace the child they've stolen with a replica child that's actually a fairy, but that looks identical to the baby they've stolen typically. So at first you, the mother, don't realise that the substitution has taken place. But then suddenly the child is cranky, it's badly behaved, it won't eat, it gets thinner and thinner. It cries and screams all the time. And then you realise that your child is actually now a changeling.

• 19:16Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  And now the bad part starts because there are various things you can do, which are all based on the same premise, that you have to make the changeling child suffer so that the fairies will come to rescue their own child and bring your child back.

• 19:35Kate Lister?

  Right, okay, okay, this, that.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  It's a dark world.

• 19:39Kate Lister?

  It's dark, isn't it? You've just described pretty much all babies as they can be cranky and that they can be miserable and moody and sometimes they don't want to eat. What kind of things would you do to, I think that the theory was you're going to drive the fairy changeling out. How would you do that?

• 19:56Speaker 02

  Well, a mild method is the one associated with Saint-Genevois, the greyhound saint in France.

• 20:02Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  So this is actually a dog whom the local people decide is a saint because he saves a child from drowning at the cost of his own life. They put up a shrine to him.

• 20:12Kate Lister?

  That's nice.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  And the reason we know all about it is because the Inquisition starts to take an interest and they are not in favour of the idea that a dog can be a saint. So they investigate what's going on in the region and it turns out that Saint-Genevois has become particularly the patron saint of women who believe their babies have been fairy taken and replaced by a changeling. And a whole ritual has grown up around his shrine where what you do is you leave your changeling baby in the woods.

• 20:38Kate Lister?

  Oh, no.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  For as long as it takes for a candle to burn down.

• 20:42Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 20:42Speaker 02

  After that, you go and pick up your child again and it's your child now and not the fairy changeling.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Well, we, okay, the wood probably has wild animals in it and it might be winter.

• 20:54Kate Lister?

  That's, that's a call to social services right there, that one.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Pretty close to some kind of form of child exposure or even infanticide.

• 21:02Kate Lister?

  And that was a mild one.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a mild one.

• 21:04Kate Lister?

  Oh, holy crap. Right, okay.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  So want to hear about the worst ones?

• 21:07Kate Lister?

  I think we better had to, yeah. I mean, you must have, these people must really believe that the, the child had been taken by the fairies to do this stuff.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Well, not just that, but I suspect the Saint-Genevois thing offered you a respite from a baby that screamed all the time. That, you know, you got four hours off where it wasn't your problem anymore and you just left it. And also let's remember too that, you know, before we became a rich post-industrial society, it was much more normal for women to have to leave their children.

• 21:32Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  For long periods of time. I mean.

• 21:35Kate Lister?

  Maybe not in the woods with the.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Maybe not in the woods, but it was more usual than it would be to us. They were more comfortable with it than we would be.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  And in addition, that it's, it's mild in comparison with the, and there's a a mild and weird thing you can do, which is boiling water in eggshells.

• 21:54Kate Lister?

  I've heard that one.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  And the changeling will exclaim out loud in surprise.

• 21:57Kate Lister?

  Yeah, that you do something ridiculous and then the fairy laughs or it says that that's ridiculous.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  And will reveal its identity.

• 22:03Kate Lister?

  Yes.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  Obviously that could never have worked.

• 22:05Kate Lister?

  No.

• 22:06Speaker 02

  So it's, it's kind of hard to see how that would be sustained. The nasty ones are you actually abandon the child on something like a dung hill or a rubbish heap. Or worse still, you sit the child on hot coals or on the fire.

• 22:20Kate Lister?

  Oh, no.

• 22:21Speaker 02

  And yeah, it's just, it's child abuse. And it's, it's part of a society where, again, parents considered it more normal to control a very young child's behaviour than we do today. Even nowadays, there's some division between people who will say, well, the baby's crying because it's a baby and people who will complain that it's crying anywhere near them.

• 22:45Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  So in that sense, when people live much more on top of each other and often in shared accommodation, that was probably more incentive to sort out your crying baby and even social pressure to do so. So, yeah, we do have these horrendous stories of people literally sitting their baby on the fire in the belief that it was a changeling.

• 23:04Kate Lister?

  I mean, this must have killed children.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, almost certainly.

• 23:08Kate Lister?

  Wow. Do we have records of that?

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Not under that title. That is, we can assume that some of the very many incidents in which children are burned to death might have been this.

• 23:20Kate Lister?

  Yeah. I mean, you'd have to absolutely fervently, passionately believe. And if you really did believe that your baby had been stolen by the fairies and that what you're looking at is not your baby, it's a fairy. I guess you would kind of go to any lengths to, because they think that they're rescuing their child.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Exactly. They felt like they were trying to hurt not the child itself, but the child's enemy. The reason that their child had been taken. And, and they feel like that they're striking a blow for their child, that they're trying to win back their own child.

• 23:49Kate Lister?

  Oh my God, that's terrifying.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  I know, it's just horrible and really disturbing.

• 23:58Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Diane after this short break.

• 24:08Kate Lister?

  In case you weren't aware, World Mental Health Day takes place in October. And I don't know about you, but I'm taking this as a reminder to practise some proper self-care. Saying no to plans I don't want to go to, guilt-free snacking and Halloween movie marathons. It's also the perfect time to check in with yourself and your mental health. For many, it can mean taking that step and speaking to a professional who can help and guide you through any difficulties you're having. But often when you try to do that, it's still way harder than it should be. A lot of online therapy platforms don't accept insurance at all, which means even during a month focused on mental health, you're stuck paying out of pocket or signing up for an expensive monthly subscription. This is where Rula comes in.

• 24:53Kate Lister?

  They partner with over 120 insurance plans, making the average copay just $15 per session. That's real therapy from licensed professionals at a price that actually makes sense. Because the whole point of World Mental Health Day is making sure people actually get help, not just think about it. And Rula sticks with you throughout your journey, checking in to make sure your care is actually helping you move forward. With World Mental Health Day this October, it's a good reminder that taking care of your mental health can start with one step. Visit rula.com/shets to get started. That's R U L A dot com slash S H E E T S. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  mod.com is changing the way people battle excessive fatigue. Ever hit a wall in the middle of the day and a third coffee just doesn't do it anymore? Here's what's actually happening. Coffee only briefly blocks adenosine, the chemical that tires you out. When it stops working, your system is flooded and you crash. Modafinil is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way. Modafinil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness, including dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, histamine, glutamate and orexin. It's a more complete solution that gives you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy. To learn more, go to mod.com.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Fill out your intake form, meet with a licensed provider and if approved, Modaler ships straight to your door. Go to mod.com to get started. That's M O D dot com.

• 26:40Kate Lister?

  Hello, betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right. It took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there and the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 27:22Kate Lister?

  I mean, so they take babies. It sounds like some of them are taking men.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yes, they are. And they can also take adult women.

• 27:30Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  And again, there seems to be a breeding farm aspect to this, that the fairies who take adult women are using them as either wet nurses or breeders. So there's a wonderful story about a woman called Catherine Fordyce, who's called Trowelbound Catherine. She's taken by the Trowels, which are a kind of Norse fairy that you find in the Shetland Isles.

• 27:57Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  So they're still fairies and they behave like all the other fairies, but they're called Trowels and not fairies because they're using a Norwegian loan ward. So she is taken by the fairies and the story goes that some people have a vision of her while they're passing an area known to belong to the Trowels. And she's just sitting there on a seat and she begs them to save her and they don't know what to do, so they just leave her behind. And the next night, they all have a dream in which she says, why didn't you bless me? Because that would have freed me and now it's too late.

• 28:29Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  But she also, this is also connected with then a child is then born in her family who looks just like her. And they think that maybe it's the same person. So they call the child Catherine Fordyce as well.

• 28:44Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  And she then gets taken by the fairies too.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  So it's this whole saga of a kind of, almost like a slave culture in which she is simply being used as a breeding animal to produce lots of fairy babies. And there's an element of that in the Andrew Mann story that I told, where he's had lots of children with the fairy queen. And from the fairy queen's point of view, the idea is meant to be that he's got this strong male seed that can produce lots of babies in what would otherwise be her infertile body.

• 29:15Kate Lister?

  I think a man wrote that story.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Well, a man told that story.

• 29:18Kate Lister?

  A man told that story. Yeah.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  He's pretty elderly by the time he tells it.

• 29:21Kate Lister?

  That's definitely, a fairy queen is probably not that interested in human men, to be completely honest.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Well, there's lots of stories about it. There's a guy called Goodwin Wharton in post Restoration London, where a con woman brilliantly convinces him that every night the fairy queen is coming to him for sex. And he's only too willing to believe it. And then she convinces him as well that the sister of the fairy queen has become jealous of their wonderful sex and she wants to have sex with him as well.

• 29:50Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  So now he believes he's having sex with two fairy women. And of course, it always goes in the same direction. The con woman says, yeah, what they really need is silk curtains and some nice gold dishes to eat off.

• 30:02Kate Lister?

  Yeah, that's what fairies need.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. That's what they want. And they want you to honour them. And when you've produced all that stuff, they'll make you king of the fairy realm as well.

• 30:10Kate Lister?

  I wonder if that'd work today.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  He's quite a posh, he's quite a posh guy. He's quite an educated guy. So my dad-

• 30:17Kate Lister?

  It's a potent fantasy though, isn't it? Is that, you know, some mystical creature is going to come from the other world because you're just so sexually irresistible and just, and just use you. There's a long and established tradition of things like warding off witches and evil spirits. I mean, occasionally they find what they call witch bottles.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:36Kate Lister?

  Buried in chimneys and things like that, full of stuff that was supposed to scare the witch away. Do we have anything like that with, with fairies? Are there any customs or superstitions for either keeping them away or keeping them happy?

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Rubbing bushes. If you come across a rowan tree or bush that you don't know is there, and you cut a branch of the rowan bush, that will keep the fairies away from your house.

• 30:56Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's a good tip.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Also good. So if you tie a red ribbon in your hair, or you protect an object by tying a red thread around it. And in some parts of Scotland, all the twigs, because they actually bleed red sap, are also considered potent against the fairies. But what you're talking about with a witch bottle is actually a counter magical spell, which is different from a preventative spell. The witch bottle is meant to actually trap the witch, like a genie.

• 31:25Kate Lister?

  That's right. Yes.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  And there are fairy spells like that as well. There are fairy bottles too. And the main thing with fairies is that if you can learn their name, you can summon them. And so posh magicians with a university education will actually have long lists of names of entities that they can summon. And some of those will be fairy names.

• 31:47Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's amazing. What, do you remember any fairy names?

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Well, actually, there's a magic book that was discovered by Barbara Mowat that interestingly contains the name Oberion, which is very close to Shakespeare's fairy king Oberon. Yeah. So that was a fairy name that you could use.

• 32:03Kate Lister?

  Amazing. I'm just thinking of anyone that's listening to this pregnant and trying to search for, for baby names. You don't meet many Oberons.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  No, you don't. The sister of the Queen of the Fairies, for what it's worth, that Goodwin Wharton was sleeping with was Penelope. So that could count as a fairy name.

• 32:17Kate Lister?

  Yep.

• 32:18Speaker 02

  And Shakespeare invents the name Titania, unlike the name Oberon.

• 32:21Kate Lister?

  Titania is lovely when you say it all in one go, but it would get shortened, wouldn't it?

• 32:25Speaker 02

  I think that'd be very awkward, wouldn't it? At the playground.

• 32:27Kate Lister?

  Yeah, you wouldn't want that. You wouldn't want that one. So this belief, it sounds like it's like very, very far in the past. It's just something that they used to believe in, you know, the olden days. But the belief persists to this day and it can still, it can be very, very powerful. Like, tell me what happened to Bridget Cleary.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Well, this is the ultimate changeling horror story. Bridget Cleary was murdered by her husband in 1895, so not that long ago.

• 32:53Kate Lister?

  Really not that long ago.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  And he said, when bailed up for the murder, that the reason he had killed her by setting her on fire was because he believed she was a changeling. In his defence, he seems to have actually gone to the local fairy fort and sat there for three nights believing that Bridget would ride out on a white horse, the real Bridget, and that he would be able to pull her down from the horse.

• 33:22Kate Lister?

  And this is in Ireland?

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Yes, in Ireland. So it's Rantiparay area. So what ensues from this horrific case is a massive colonialist conversation about the idea that Ireland is still disgustingly primitive. People who have these beliefs are objectively much lesser than English people, that they need the British to help them to rule. Ireland is portrayed as Bridget Cleary as this vulnerable woman, subject to male violence, being protected by Britannia, who puts his sisterly arm around her shoulder. So because it's so laden with these colonial

• 34:06Speaker 02

  discourses, it's actually relatively difficult to be sure what really happened. And different people, different folklorists would give you different answers. Angela Burke's answer would be slightly different from mine, because I think actually Michael Cleary clearly did believe that she was a changeling. Nothing else really explains his behaviour.

• 34:23Kate Lister?

  So there are some people that argue that this was just a straight up murder and that he's saying, oh, I see. Right, okay.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  So if you're familiar with the, the song, The Wife of Michael Cleary, Cleary, for example, and that just straightforwardly wants to say that he killed his wife for being uppity.

• 34:36Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  And, and there is some evidence that she was uppity. And to put this in some kind of context and give you a sense of the incongruousness of it, this was a woman who had her own business of dressmaking, for which she used a Singer sewing machine. So it's kind of amazing that a woman who was using a Singer sewing machine to make clothes for her community could be regarded as a fairy changeling by her husband.

• 35:00Kate Lister?

  That's insane. That's crazy.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's chilling that those two worlds could collide. And so one way that we could interpret Michael Cleary's actions is that he had become increasingly furious about changes in his wife's behaviour. Remember when I told you about babies before?

• 35:21Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  That his wife was perhaps behaving in a way that he didn't like, which is ultimately what a changeling baby also does. It does things you don't want it to do. So it may be that what happened was that her behaviour changed as her business grew. They moved into quite a posh house in the village is another factor. And the reason they were able to, I gave you earlier, it was believed to be a fairy house by everybody else.

• 35:45Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  So he may have never liked that idea as much as she did. And it may have become a sore point between them.

• 35:55Kate Lister?

  Was there, was there any earlier indication that you thought that she was a fairy? Did it just seem to come out of nowhere? I mean, what happened to her?

• 36:02Speaker 02

  She develops an illness of some kind.

• 36:04Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 36:05Speaker 02

  And because there wasn't much in the way of an NHS in late 19th century Ireland, they get all the village healers round. And the village healers suggest supernatural causes for her illness. And they offer a series of remedies that are also supernatural, which he forces her to take. Apparently she's unwilling. So it's various kinds of milk in which various kinds of herbs have been steeped.

• 36:33Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  Again, it's probably unpleasant to taste, on the analogy that making the changeling suffer will bring back the real person. So they try all these remedies and evidently he continues to be dissatisfied. So then he gets some friends round and between them all, they set her on fire to see what will happen, using kerosene to start the fire. Again, an uncomfortable note of modernity. And then either he alone, or he and the friends leave her body in a shallow grave and he heads off to the fairy fort.

• 37:10Kate Lister?

  Really believe in his gonna say it?

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. So a possible rational explanation for his behaviour is a thing called Capgras syndrome.

• 37:20Kate Lister?

  What's that?

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Oh, it's amazing. I just find this extraordinary, but it can happen to anyone. Apparently, if you get a blow on the head, this can happen to you. You suddenly think that somebody in your life has been replaced by a perfect replica of them.

• 37:33Kate Lister?

  That's weirdly specific.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  It is incredibly specific, but there are many cases of it on record. It's rare, but it's not completely unheard of. So this can even happen in relation to your pet dog, let alone your wife or child. So if you've ever seen the movie Coraline, where the mother's been replaced, that's Capgras syndrome.

• 37:55Kate Lister?

  What causes that?

• 37:57Speaker 02

  Um, some kind of neurological dysfunction, which means that your brain can't process identity anymore. So somewhat like the idea of the man who mistook his wife for a hat.

• 38:07Kate Lister?

  That would explain it.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So that would be a sensible explanation for what happens in some of these cases. And certainly to Michael Cleary.

• 38:17Kate Lister?

  What happened to him, by the way?

• 38:19Speaker 02

  He, um, eventually, this is part of the controversy, light sentencing not just a thing of modernity for crimes against women. Um, the judge decides that it's manslaughter and not murder because he has these primitive beliefs. And in some senses, believe not to be able to help himself. So big eye roll there.

• 38:40Kate Lister?

  I think that is a big eye roll, isn't it? That's, I mean, I guess you could see that the logic is if he really genuinely believed he was helping his wife, but no, no, that's not, wow.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  It's kind of an abuser's charter. I thought I was helping her by hitting her.

• 38:57Kate Lister?

  Yes, it is. It absolutely is.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  So it's a very uncomfortable case all round. I think he probably did really believe it, but I personally would have banged him up for longer.

• 39:06Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Um, because he's clearly not.

• 39:08Kate Lister?

  You can't be setting people on fire, can you?

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly, yeah.

• 39:11Kate Lister?

  What about the other people that were there?

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, some of them get charged with a form of grievous bodily harm, um, and do some time.

• 39:19Kate Lister?

  And this, this happens in the 19th century and there was, was it a resurgence of belief in fairies in the 19th century? But cer- certainly they became very interested in them. I'm thinking about the Cottingham fairies who were not set on fire, but.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  No, no, but, but what we might want to pivot back to is just that, um, it's possible that Michael Cleary himself was influenced by the Celtic revival literature, the Celtic Twilight stuff that people like Yeats were churning out. A lot of which are about fairy abductions and changelings. So I think it's possible that what actually happened was that he had learned about, um, the changeling myth from reading Yeats's poem, The Stolen Child. Um, and so rather than fairy beliefs being some kind of sign of antique primitive culture, it might be a sign that he was literate.

• 40:12Kate Lister?

  I'd never even thought of that before.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  So I think that's a really interesting possibility.

• 40:16Kate Lister?

  A huge resurgence of interest in Celtic literature and medieval literature and folklore in the 19th century.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And it's sort of weaponized as part of Irish nationalism. So some of the people who are writing about Michael Cleary are actually sort of warmly enthusiastic about the idea that these primitive beliefs survive. Whereas others are horrified and see these primitive beliefs as something that needs to be extirpated. And just recently I did find another Irish folk tale recently collected um, by a folklorist, again, from the University of Cork, because they're doing such brilliant work there. And it's in a book called The Book of the Collyc, which is a, the book's about basically magical wise women who are older. Um, and it's, it focuses on a cunning woman, um, an Irish witch, um, who

• 41:07Speaker 02

  it gets into a row with a, a village man who's always criticizing her and saying she's superstitious. And then his wife gets sick and he calls the doctor and he tries all kinds of modern medicine. And eventually in desperation, he approaches the witch, whose name is Mari, and says, can you help my wife? And she bursts out laughing and says, you should have come to me years ago because your wife's been swept, that is taken away by the fairies. And it's not really your wife you're seeing, it's a changeling. So she embarks on this whole explanation of how he needs to get his wife back by arriving at a particular place on a road, drawing a circle with water that she'll give him on the road.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  And then approaching the second horse in the fairy ride, pulling the rider down into the circle. Um, and that will be his wife. And the first time he does it, he makes an ass of it and doesn't succeed in pulling the rider down. So they have another try the following month. And this time he manages it and it is his wife.

• 42:15Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Diane after this short break.

• 42:29Speaker 01

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• 43:28Speaker 03

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• 44:36Kate Lister?

  So how do we get from these fairies, which are human sized and scary and powerful and they can kidnap you and they take your children and you have to burn them with fire? How do we get from those to these tiny little Tinkerbell type creatures?

• 44:54Speaker 02

  I want to say that Tinkerbell is scarier than you think, but I'll relay that for the moment and instead talk about the tiny bit. This guy, William Shakespeare, is mostly responsible for the cult of tiny fairies.

• 45:05Kate Lister?

  That guy, okay.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  So he, um, writing under Elizabeth the First is naturally apprehensive, as most of her subjects were about living under a female ruler. They kind of weaponized the idea of the fairy queen to defend her. But Shakespeare's play Midsomer Night's Dream is also really a mean prank on the fairy queen in that play to Tanya, who is enchanted into having sex with a donkey.

• 45:28Kate Lister?

  Oh, yes, yes.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Um, and brought it back under the control of her king.

• 45:33Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  Um, and in that play, there's also an abundance of teeny weeny fairies with names like mustard seed to illustrate their tininess. So I think it's an effort to reduce and bring back under patriarchal control this scary matriarchy living alongside us at a time when that. Seemed like it was a particular matter of stress for Elizabeth's subjects. And people really run with it, you know, they they write kind of fairy fanfiction. Michael Drayton writes a poem called Nymphidia about tiny fairy knights jousting on beetles. And a guy called Simeon Stewart writes another one, which is kind of a tribute to the Caroline monarchy, the monarchy of Charles the First, who was, by the way, fi- four foot eleven. So it kind of seemed relevant.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  And yeah, so we suddenly get a plethora of literary teeny weeny fairies.

• 46:23Kate Lister?

  See, that's nice because most of the time when I ask people the question of how did this thing become distorted and wrecked, they they always say it's the Victorians, the Victorians did it. So it wasn't then this time.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  It wasn't, no.

• 46:34Kate Lister?

  The Victorians are off the hook.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, Victorians were actually quite interested in what I would describe as the dark side of fairies. So Victorian fairy painters like John Anster Fitzgerald or Richard Dadd, or even Arthur Conan Doyle's father, were really keen on the idea that fairies are pretty scary. And they didn't, they didn't portray fairies as necessarily innocent or positive. Even Tinkerbell, who's really kind of, I guess, an Edwardian and Georgian fairy, is actually quite a scary character. She tries to kill Wendy.

• 47:05Kate Lister?

  Oh, she does, doesn't she?

• 47:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:08Kate Lister?

  Yeah, that's not nice.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  She's pretty up for it. She's fiercely possessive about Peter Pan.

• 47:13Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  And she's also kind of the only woman with an adult sexuality in the play.

• 47:19Kate Lister?

  That's a good point, yes.

• 47:22Speaker 02

  And Disney based her portrayal on Marilyn Monroe.

• 47:25Kate Lister?

  I didn't know that.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think there's more depth to Tinkerbell than perhaps we might realise.

• 47:33Kate Lister?

  I think that probably is.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  The innocent fairies that you're probably wanting are the flower fairies of Cicely Mary Barker.

• 47:39Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Those fairies really are pretty bland. But she only created them to get children interested in botany, actually. The goal was to use fairies as a kind of lure to get children to look properly at flowers.

• 47:54Kate Lister?

  So there's a final question then. Where are we today with fairies, do you think?

• 48:00Speaker 02

  Oh, we're back to scary fairies, aren't we?

• 48:02Kate Lister?

  Scary fairies?

• 48:02Speaker 02

  Romantic sea fairies.

• 48:03Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Because if you brace yourself, read the works of Sarah J. Maas, for instance.

• 48:09Kate Lister?

  Oh, fairies fucking, right?

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, fucking fairies, yeah.

• 48:12Kate Lister?

  Yes, that's got to be, well, no, that's not new, is it? You've already said that they often steal.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  It's a reversion to something older, yeah. And and her first book, the the first book in that series, A Court of Thorns and Roses, is based on the Thomas the Rhymer Ballad, which also has a version called Tamline, which is about a scary fairy who's rescued by a human girl from having to be a fairy.

• 48:35Kate Lister?

  They're being sexy again.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  In the story I was telling about the changeling woman. She has to pull him off his off his horse and hold on to him while he transforms into various hideous shapes.

• 48:48Kate Lister?

  So that's fascinating. We're back, we've got sexy fairies again.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're back with sexy fairies. Sexy male fairies, sexy queens of the fairies. We've reverted to type after a brief aberrant interlude in which fairies were anodyne.

• 49:04Kate Lister?

  I wonder where they're going to go next.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  It's a great question, but I'm certainly hopeful that we're in a realm now where people can continue to play with these ideas.

• 49:16Kate Lister?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  And turn them back into ways of thinking about female sexuality that are positive. I mean, to be sure, the Queen of the Fairies is not big on consent, but she certainly does get to remain beautiful.

• 49:30Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 49:30Speaker 02

  Notwithstanding a massive sexual desire. I think that's positive.

• 49:36Kate Lister?

  So there's a final, final, final question then. When you find yourself like in a fairy fort or going over a fairy bridge or near a fairy house, do you ever not observe it or do you always do it just in case?

• 49:45Speaker 02

  I always do it just in case. I am fully, fully in favour of taking an agnostic approach to the supernatural. Pay it the respect it deserves. I saw a raven in Scotland and I bowed.

• 49:57Kate Lister?

  Nice. Diane, thank you, you have been absolutely wonderful. If people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Well.

• 50:04Kate Lister?

  Apart from the fairies, they they don't come looking for Diane, she's fine.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  My most recent book that's relevant to this talk is a book called The Museum of Witchcraft. I also do a lot of talks for an organisation called Seed Talks, including talks on this kind of topic, the supernatural. And they have lecture series where you can play them anytime, kind of like a podcast.

• 50:28Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much for coming by, you have been wonderful.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  Thank you very much, it's been wonderful to be here, Kate. And I could talk about fairies all day.

• 50:36Kate Lister?

  Thank you to Diane and thank you to everyone for joining us. And if you like what you heard and what you saw, we are on YouTube after all, then please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you'd like us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall, produced by Sophie G, McKenna Fernandez and Georgie Turner. The engineer was Hanif Hussain and the senior producer was Freddy Chick. Thank you to Diane and thank you to everyone for joining us. And if you like what you heard and what you saw, we are on YouTube after all, then please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts.

• 51:19Kate Lister?

  And if you'd like us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Tim Arstall and produced by Stuart Beckwith and McKenna Fernandez. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.