Fairy Forts, Anthrax, Dubai Chocolate bars and Seagulls are all intimately connected and flow as one in the cognitive ether

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• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:00Blindboy Boatclub?

  Kiss the bin man's wrinkle, you handstand Anthony's. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast.

• 1:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  Can you hear that noise?

• 1:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  That's the sound of rain. As you know, I moved into a new office, a new office where I record this podcast, and I moved in here a couple of months ago. And I did this because my previous office, it was just getting too busy. It was too busy in the corridors, there were people slamming doors, talking. And I needed a quieter space, so I moved to a different floor on the building. And this floor's got less humans. But what I didn't account for is, I'm up at the very top and the fucking roof is made out of tin. So my podcast studio has a tin roof. So when it rains, you can hear it.

• 1:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now, rain isn't the most unpleasant sound in the world. There's a calming static to it. I quite enjoy the sound of rain.

• 2:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  But because of the way that audio works, I don't want to try and mask the sound of rain. And what I mean by that is, normally when there's ambient background noise, like rain or a fan, what you do is you turn on what's called a gate. And what a gate does is it quietens down background noise. But when you put on, when you put a gate on, when it comes to rainfall, you get a very strange effect. I'll do it right now.

• 2:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now you can hear me talking. There's no sound in between. But when I do speak, when you hear my voice, you also hear the sound of the rain, only when I speak, which sounds a little bit too percussive. It's strange and it's not natural. So I think we're better off with this. If we speak this way, then we're okay. Who gives a fuck about the sound of rain? It's a natural sound. What you don't want are car alarms, or you don't want human voices, human voices. There might be nothing I can do about that. There's a

• 3:23Blindboy Boatclub?

  man next door and he might take a phone call. And if that happens, I'm gonna have to stop recording when that cunt is on the phone. Actually, that's not fair to call him a cunt. He's only doing his own job. What I have to worry about is getting distracted, getting distracted by the sound of rain, because it is quite beautiful just to listen to it.

• 3:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  You can't go wrong with the sound of rain pattering on a tin roof. So I'd ask, please, that, let's just say the rain is a podcast guest this week. The rain is joining us this week on the podcast. The rain might raise its voice, it might lower its voice, it might get angry, that's what rain does, might have a little shout. But we're gonna acknowledge and welcome the rain, rather than pretend it doesn't exist. Also, unfortunately, so here, here's the conundrum I'm in. Also on my roof are some nesting seagulls. They

• 4:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  only started nesting about a week ago. They make very strange noises.

• 4:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  So those seagulls, they're on, they're on the roof of my building, they're right above my head and they're nesting. And right now, they're quiet. They're saying fuck all now because it's raining. But as soon as it stops raining, unfortunately, the seagulls are gonna start chatting and they make queer noises.

• 4:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  I've learned that over the past week, that when, when seagulls think that they're in the privacy of their nest and they don't know that humans are listening or what would, why would they be worried about a human at the top of a fucking building? When seagulls don't know they're being listened to, they've got a very different way of talking.

• 5:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  It sounds, it sounds halfway between laughter and group sex.

• 5:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  So as well as the pitter patter of rain on this week's podcast, we may have to welcome some seagulls onto this podcast as a guest too. And I'm okay with that also. The, the rain is quietening down a bit there now, but

• 5:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  the reason I have to bring the rain on as a guest this week is I know fucking rain. I'm very, when you, when you live in Ireland, you become very intimately familiar with rain.

• 5:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  And I know this type of rain. This isn't, we're not gonna get showers here. There's a man having a little, I don't know what the fuck that was. Cleared his throat, but it sounded like he came. Ah, great. There's some fucking sirens getting involved there. Wonderful. Okay.

• 6:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  So the rain's getting, the rain's getting quiet. It's gone down to a gentle patter. And.

• 6:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  So the rain actually appears to be.

• 6:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  Yeah, the rain has gone very quiet now. It's a gentle drizzle. So because of that, I'm gonna put my gate back on now. And now we've got no background noise whatsoever. We just have my voice. So if that gentleman in the office beside me wants to have another wanking cough, then he's welcome to do so. And me and you won't hear it. It won't be part of this podcast. But when the rain comes back and it's heavy, we're gonna have to listen to it again. But like I said, it's gonna, the rain this week is gonna be like a guest. A guest who's got some, some opinions to offer. And the sound of rain is a lot more interesting than some people's opinions, to tell you the truth.

• 7:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  So the rain's gone down to, it's barely perceivable now. So I've got my, my gate is back on. So now you can't hear any background noises whatsoever. The rain's gone through the toilet, but it will be back. It will be back very shortly. And the reason I know this, and the reason I have to bring the rain on as a guest this week is because if you live in Ireland, if you've lived here a long time, you get to know an awful lot about rain, about its patterns, about its behaviour, and you can predict it. And, and this current rain that we're experiencing right now, it's, it's what I call summer retribution rain. I've mentioned it many times before.

• 7:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's a bit early for it. You don't usually get it in April. I'd associate this more with June and particularly July. July and most of August. But in Ireland,

• 8:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  if you get a hot, dry spell for, we'd say 10 days, good weather, good fucking, the sun is out, it's dry. We've had that in Ireland for the past two weeks. The weather has been fucking fantastic. And the thing is.

• 8:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  When that happens in Ireland, you know that nature is gonna get its revenge. We, we have a revenge-based weather pattern. Our weather pattern is based on retribution. What goes up must come down. And this retribution rain, it doesn't let off. There's a tiny little lull right now, but it's coming back. It's coming back and it's gonna be like this, I would say for the next, for the next five days. It's just gonna rain. It's gonna rain day and night. And all you're gonna get are different tones of that rain. So I know there's no point fighting it. There's no point fighting this rain. We're just gonna have to bring it on for the podcast as a guest. Ireland is a, we're a temperate rainforest.

• 9:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  The forest bit is gone, but we're a temperate rainforest. And what happens is, so we're an island in the Atlantic Ocean. We've got these prevailing westerly winds coming from the west of the Atlantic. Okay. When it's, when there's a hot spell, when there's a hot, dry spell here in Ireland, the ground dries out. When the ground dries out from the sun, there's less moisture in the fucking ground. So now the ground heats up. The ground heats up a lot quicker because there's no moisture in it. So this is, let's just say day five, day five or six into steady, hot, dry weather in Ireland.

• 9:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  The ground is dry and hot and this acts, acts like a radiator, like a heat plate. So not the ground is heating the air, but as the ground heats the air after about a week, that hot air rises up and then it meets those prevailing westerly winds in from the Atlantic. The word prevailing there is very important. You hear that on the weather all the time. If you're looking at the fucking weather forecast, they talk about prevailing winds. Prevailing means they prevail, they're dominant. The one thing you can be certain about, you can be fucking sure about this. Ireland is an island in the Atlantic.

• 10:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  And wet, wet winds from the west prevail. They're always there. So when we get a fucking hot spell, you've got this hot plate on the ground, this dry air rises up and it meets the prevailing westerly winds that are full of water and are colder.

• 10:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  And that weather system puts us in our place. It puts us in our place, it reminds us who is boss. The prevailing westerly wind says, I'm here all the time, I'm number one. I'm the Atlantic wind, I am. You're a fucking island in a gigantic sea called the Atlantic. And I'm the prevailing wind, I'm going nowhere, I'm here all the time. So when the dry hot wind comes up, it puts us in our place. It says, oh, what's the crack Ireland, you think you're Spanish, do you? Think you're fucking Spanish with your hot, dry weather. Are you wearing a vest? You're wearing a vest, Ireland, yeah? Is that jarts? Are you wearing jarts and a vest? Who the fuck do you think you are?

• 11:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  You think you're an Italian, is it? You think you're from Italy or Spain or an American? Is that what you think you are? I'll fucking show you. That's literally what happens. The hot, dry air comes up and the prevailing westerly wind puts us in our place. And then it unleashes a torrent of rain. All that cold, wet, fucking rain comes down. Because the ground has to show off. That's basically it. The Irish ground has to show off. Look at my suntan, look at me, I'm so hot and dry, look at me. It's like, would you shut the fuck up, ground? Be quiet. Shut the fuck up and don't be telling the sky. Don't tell the sky, if the, if the Irish ground could just shut the fuck up and not tell the sky

• 12:28Blindboy Boatclub?

  about how hot and dry it is, then we'd be fine. But no, it has to boast every single time. It goes to confession. The hot, dry ground in Ireland after a heatwave confesses its sins to the sky and asks for penance. I'm too dry, I'm too dry, it's too warm, I don't deserve this. Punish me, cleanse me with rain. So, so that there, that's the literal science of Irish summer rain. That, that's what that is. So that's why I know this rain is going nowhere. It's gonna be back in about maybe 10 or 15 minutes, even though it's quiet right now. Like, I, I genuinely make the case that.

• 13:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  One of the reasons the Catholic Church took such a strong hold in Ireland is because of our weather system. Because we have, because the environment, the environment teaches us about revenge, punishment and penance. Our weather system has always said to us, don't enjoy yourself too much, because if you do it too much, it's gonna rain. Like, we know it, we know it. Anytime there's fucking sun, anytime there's hot, dry weather and sun in this country, a part of us is going, oh, for fuck's sake, it's gonna rain for ages. Like, I prefer winter. Winter, it's, it's cold, but it's dry, you can predict it.

• 13:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Fucking summer, I can't enjoy a hot summer's day because I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about the rain, the inevitable rain that's gonna happen. And Catholicism, the Pope died yesterday, there, fair play to him. Catholicism, after he met J D Vance, the devil, the fucking devil. He looks like he tried to eat a packet of salt and vinegar potatoes with his eyes. But Catholicism places heavy emphasis on shame, sexual shame in particular. Now, I've done podcasts on this, it's, you can put that one on Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine in the third century, he was a bishop in the third century. Saint Augustine devoted his life trying to prove whether or not people could get boners

• 14:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  in the Garden of Eden. And he's credited with introducing sexual shame to Catholicism. But we really embraced this shame, sin, the punishment, those aspects of Catholicism here in Ireland. Often it gets blamed on colonialism. You know, 800 years of being overpowered and oppressed and eradicated by the British, that we'd become so accustomed to being oppressed, that we then chose, chose the oppression of Catholicism and gave loads of power to the Catholic Church. But I do think the weather plays a part. Straight up, our weather tells us without fail.

• 15:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  If you enjoy something nice such as sun, if you enjoy that, there will be a price to pay, guaranteed. A heavy price will be paid, heavy rain, guaranteed. And I think, I think we absorbed that, we absorbed that into our outlook of how life should be. So it's county retribution rain. That's what's happening, okay? It's county retribution rain this week. It's not gonna go away. So we're gonna have to invite it onto the podcast as a guest and live with it. I didn't. This fucking office is amazing. I have a beautiful big window. I didn't factor in the fucking tin roof. There's a tin roof. I didn't factor

• 16:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  it in. Also, unfortunately, there's nesting seagulls. There are nesting seagulls on my roof, making gangbang noises. And my heart goes out to those gulls because they don't belong on the roof of an office. This isn't their natural habitat. They're herring gulls. And herring gulls are supposed to nest along rocks and cliffs. But what's happened, the past 15 years in particular, because of biodiversity collapse, like Limerick is on the, the River Shannon, we're on the River Shannon, and we're at the mouth of the River

• 16:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  Shannon. So the Shannon flows all the way from the north of Ireland down here to Limerick, where it opens into the Atlantic Ocean. So here in Limerick City, the river meets the sea. You have this strange hybrid where some of the water is salty and some of the water is, is fresh, freshwater. There was fucking dolphins. Last week, there was a video of dolphins in Limerick City, which we've never seen before. And it probably means the food that those dolphins eat at sea, the fish is gone. So now they're in fucking Limerick City, dolphins in Limerick City looking for food. But that's why there's herring gulls above me now.

• 17:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  On the roof of my office, they're trying to survive, they're trying to survive. So those, the gulls of Limerick City that live on office roofs, they've given up on fish. They don't eat fish anymore because the fish don't exist. So now they live in cities and they eat out of bins. And urban seagulls, they're excellent at getting into bins. I've watched, I've watched seagulls rip open bins and take out food and fucking destroy the streets, but get a good feed. But now I'm not seeing it anymore and I'm, I'm very concerned about the seagulls. So what's happened in the past year is we have a scheme, I think we can hear the seagulls now, can we?

• 18:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, we have a scheme in Ireland called the, the deposit return scheme where if, if you buy a can of Fanta, fifteen, you pay a fifteen cent tax on that can of Fanta. Or if you buy like a two litre bottle, a two litre bottle of fizzy drink, you pay a twenty five cent deposit. But you can get this money back as cash if you bring these cans and bottles to a deposit return, return scheme vending machine. So now in all the, the shopping centres in Limerick, there's queues of people with bags and bags of bottles and cans, recycling them and then getting cash in return. But some people can't be arsed.

• 18:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  Some people, they buy a can of Pepsi and they go, fuck that. I'm not, I don't want my fifteen cents. So they throw it in the bin. That's fifteen cents. So what I've been seeing in Limerick City the past year in the city centre, we've got, we've got a crack cocaine problem and we have a problem with opioids. So people who are experiencing addiction, they're going through all the public bins. They're going through all the bins at the backs of restaurants and they're searching for bottles and cans to take them to the deposit return scheme. And there's fairly fucking decent money if you go through a giant bin. But now as a response to that.

• 19:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  All of the bins in Limerick City, they're now not dealing with seagulls anymore, or foxes, they're dealing with human beings, clever human beings. So now, all the bins are very, very heavily padlocked to keep out human beings. And the seagulls are fucked. How are seagulls supposed to eat now, when every single bin is padlocked? Seagulls that are already living on the top of office buildings. Because they've just given up on cliffs. They don't, they don't belong here. These seagulls don't belong in Limerick City. They belong on the coast, but now they're inland. And when I really started to notice this was... So I'm gigging in Limerick tonight.

• 20:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm doing a live podcast in Limerick tonight, in the university concert hall. Which, that's something I never thought was possible. It's my biggest ever Limerick gig. I think it's like 1,200 people. I never, ever, ever thought that was possible, that I'd be able to do a gig in Limerick City to that many people. I'm very humbled, for two reasons. My dad. When my dad retired from his job in Shannon Airport. When he was in retirement, he got a job with a security company. He worked as a supervisor. I have to say that because my ma will kill me. My ma has internalised classism.

• 21:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  So if I say that my dad was a security guard, I have to say that he was a supervisor, or else my ma would get very, very upset. But anyway, the, the building, the university concert hall, where I'm gonna be gigging tonight. My dad was a night time security guard there, for about 10 years. And every single night, he'd just, he'd walk up and down the big, empty theatre, making sure everything was okay, every single night. For about 10 years. And the next morning, I'd be a little child. The next morning, he'd tell me how he'd... He'd be the security guard in this building at night time, like the only person in this giant, empty cavernous theatre.

• 21:46Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then he'd freak himself, he'd freak himself out convincing himself that he heard noises and that there were ghosts. He'd have been in his late 50s at this point. So he'd convince himself that there was ghosts in the theatre. Well, he wouldn't say ghosts, he'd say pooka. And pooka, it's the Irish word for ghosts, but pooka also means fairies. Cause we don't really have ghosts, we've got fairies. And fairies in Ireland, they're not little things with wings, they're, they're ghostly, terrifying, scary demons that are part of mythology and folklore. He's got one job to be the only person in the building at night time. He's convincing himself that there's ghosts and then come home the next day and tell his

• 22:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  child, which wasn't great for my anxiety or my imagination. But I remember how he came to this conclusion. So if you're working as a night watchman in, in a giant, empty university, you, you can freak yourself out. I can see how it's very easy to freak yourself out. So one night, he was walking through the university concert hall, no one around, pitch dark. And as he's walking along the corridors, he hears a giant thud on the ground beside him and he flashes his torch and it's a belt buckle.

• 23:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  So this belt buckle fell from a great height and nearly hit him on the head and landed beside him and thudded on the ground. And he said, if it had hit him on the head, and that would have killed him, it would have hit him on the head and then he'd, he'd have slowly bled to death. And then someone wouldn't have found him until the next morning. This is the story he told me, this is what he was afraid of what would have happened. And then, I must have been like 10 and I'm going, oh my God, do you think someone threw the belt buckle? Do you think, do you think there was someone above in the theatre? And, and they threw the belt buckle from a balcony? And then he went, no, there was no one else in the building.

• 23:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  It was a poca, it was a poca. And I'm like, I'm young enough to go, it was a university, like it's the university concert hall. Like it could have been one of the several thousand students who were just staying late one night or they snuck into the building and maybe they thought it was funny to freak you out and drop a belt buckle. And he was like, no, it was a poca. And I'm like, why? And he said, cause pocas make it look like an accident, which I didn't fully understand. And I, I think, cause my dad was mad. Okay. Now that's not fair. I'm also fucking mad, but my dad was eccentric.

• 24:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  So I think he thought that if the belt buckle had hit him on the head and he died and they found his body in the concert hall the next day, that people would have believed that he killed himself by repeatedly hitting himself into the head with a belt buckle.

• 25:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  Which is the most.

• 25:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  Imagine a security guard dies in the university concert hall because he beat himself to death with a belt buckle. So that was his theory. This was the fairies. University concert hall is haunted. It's a haunted ground. He goes, it must have been built over a white thorn tree or it must have been built over a fairy fort, but the fairies are in this building and they tried to kill me with a belt buckle and they wanted to frame it as a suicide. It's always made me want to find out if, if the concert hall, if the university concert hall in Nimerick was actually built on a fairy fort. Those are the superstitions we

• 25:50Blindboy Boatclub?

  have in Ireland, that you don't go near fairy forts. And if, if you were to disturb a fairy fort and build on a fairy fort, then terrible, terrible, bad luck will befall that site. So I'm gigging there tonight. I am gigging there tonight and I never thought that would be possible. But my dad died, my dad died.

• 26:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  He never got to see me do anything with my, with my career. My, my dad didn't really even get to see me be an adult. I was in first year of college when he died. The one thing he said to one of my brothers before he died. He said about me, even though I was, I was young, he said, I'm not worried about him. He's gonna be fine, which as simple as those words are, that meant the world to me. For, for a father to say about his son to my brother, I'm not worried about him. He's gonna be fine, especially considering he was quite a, an anxious warrior. To hear those words, that meant an awful lot to me. That was a huge vote of confidence.

• 26:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  But yeah, he had no, my dad had no idea whatsoever that I would go on to become an artist or a writer. And I know it would mean, it would have meant the fucking world to him, the absolute world to him for me to be gigging in a venue where he was on duty every night as a security guard, as a supervisor, as a security guard, as a supervisor, where he was on duty every night, patrolling that place for 10 fucking years. I know it would have meant the world to him for me to be, to be gigging in that space. And the guest, the person I'm going to be speaking to at the live podcast is the Shanna Key, Eddie Lenahan, who I've had on this podcast before.

• 27:42Blindboy Boatclub?

  Eddie is, he's one of the few Shanna Keys in Ireland, which means a lore keeper. And Eddie is an expert on fairies. He's an expert on fairy trees, fairy forts, folklore and fairies. Eddie Lenahan is famous mainly for in County Clare.

• 28:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  In the late nineties, they were building the M18 motorway. This huge motorway with all this EU, European money. And Ireland is in the middle of the Celtic Tiger. And we're trying to be this modern, progressive country. And we're using our EU money to develop our roads. The planned route of this motorway in Clare.

• 28:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  It meant knocking down a fairy tree. It was a white thorn tree called the Latune Fairy Bush. And white thorn trees in Ireland, they have a lot of superstition around them. Superstition are indigenous pagan beliefs. But you don't fuck with white thorn trees. White thorn is seen as

• 28:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  like a magical tree and the roots of the white thorn. Like I've done podcasts before about the Irish other world, the other world where the fairies live. This separate spectrum of reality. The roots of the white thorn are seen to reach into the other world. So you don't fuck with white thorn because then you're fucking with the fairies. You're fucking with forces that you don't understand. White thorn is in bloom right now, actually. It's one of the first, the Mayflower, sometimes they call it. But it's a raggy, straggly, fucking hardy looking bush that always looks windswept. You tend to see, like, I know that white thorn grows along Yarthe's Couch

• 29:35Blindboy Boatclub?

  and it grows near the University Concert Hall. But when you see white thorn on its own, by itself, in a field, and it looks like it doesn't belong there, that tends to become a fairy tree. Those are the ones that people are scared of. Don't fuck with it. Don't fuck with that. White thorn is also planted beside pagan wells, beside holy wells, which we know were very important to our ancestors. White thorn is often planted in where land meets water, holy wells. Onigat Cave, which I've spoken about on previous podcasts, which is the The entrance to the other world in Roscommon, where Halloween starts. I've been down that cave.

• 30:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  Just as you enter that cave, it's guarded by a white thorn bush. White thorn was also used in Ireland to mark burial sites during the famine, during the famine particularly, where children died. There was a fucking famine going on, a genocide. People didn't have gravestones. People were dying. And sometimes white thorn was used to mark a mass grave. So anyway, in nineteen ninety-nine, Ireland has been building this gigantic motorway in Clare, the M eighteen. Ninety million euro, well, it would have been pounds at the time in nineteen ninety-nine. Lot of fucking EU money comes in.

• 31:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then Eddie Lennahan, the Shanna Key, he goes to the, to the government, to the council, to the people who are building the roads and says, you can't build that road there. There's a very important fairy tree. There's a fairy tree right there, and that's where the monster fairies and the conundrum fairies meet. And you cannot fuck with that fairy tree. Now Eddie Lennahan is a, is a Shanna Key, which means that Eddie would collect the stories of the old people, the old people of the land. Eddie collects all of their stories orally and carries on this, this oral tradition of the Shanna Key.

• 31:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  So when Eddie says, this here is a very significant fairy tree, then he's basing that on the stories of the old people from the land. And what happened? They, they didn't build the moat. They didn't knock the fairy tree. And what makes this so powerful is.

• 32:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  This wasn't about a heritage site, a protected site. There were no legal issues raised. This wasn't a site of archaeological significance. Experts weren't brought in. Eddie Lenihan's, The Shanah Quay, Eddie Lenihan's story of, "That's the fairy tree, do not knock it to build a motorway." The story was enough. The superstition, the fear of the unknown was enough for the government, for the developers to go, "Yeah, fuck it, let's not knock the fairy tree, let's build around it." The story enough, that, that, that, that was powerful enough for a motorway, an EU motorway, to get diverted.

• 32:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  People believed it. If you divert a 90 million motorway around one tree because a man is saying that this tree is a meeting point for fairies, if you divert your motorway around that for that reason, even if you think it's bullshit, you believe it. You believe it on some level. Something greater than money and progress is at play now. And the tree is still there today. People were afraid of road deaths. Eddie said to the developers, "If you knock a fairy tree, if you knock a fucking fairy tree and build a motorway, people will die on that stretch of road. The fairies, the fairies will find a way. They'll make it look like an accident. But don't build a road on that fairy tree."

• 33:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  And it fucking worked. And it's a very culturally important moment that, because it's that bridge between old Ireland and new Ireland. Old Ireland, where we have that mix of Catholicism and then indigenous pagan folk belief that's thousands of years old. And then new Ireland, which is the Celtic Tiger and EU money and being part of the developed world. But it fills me with great pride. It does fill me with great pride that...

• 34:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  We didn't knock a fairy tree to build a motorway based on pure superstition alone. It's quite decolonial. And fairy trees and fairy forts in particular are decolonial because, I'll speak about fairy forts in a bit more detail in a few minutes, but some fairy forts are thousands of years old. All fairy forts are hundreds of years old. Our pagan wells and holy wells that are guarded by white thorn trees. Some of them are thousands of years old. We were colonized by the British. Even the British who murdered us, eradicated language, culture, everything.

• 34:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  The British, even the fucking British, left our fairy forts alone and left our holy wells alone because we were so good at telling the stories. Oh, I wouldn't go near that fairy fort now. You wouldn't know what had happened if you went near that fairy fort. Terrible things could happen. Even the colonizer left these things alone. The colonizer was afraid. I don't know what the fuck Patty is talking about, but he's freaking me out. Just leave it alone. Don't cut down the tree. Just leave it alone. Cut down another one. And what I love about the the latune fairy bush in Clare and rerouting the motorway around it in 1999, it's the behaviour of an uncolonized mind.

• 35:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  Capitalism, progress, roadways, infrastructure. These things must stop because there's indigenous beliefs connected to the land, connected to a tree, connected to a fairy tree. There are indigenous beliefs with superstitions surrounding them. And maybe these things are more important than a road. Do I believe in fairy trees? No, I don't. But I do believe that indigenous folklore exists to keep us humans in line with systems of biodiversity. And I'm very happy that a tree wasn't destroyed, an ecosystem wasn't destroyed for a motorway. So Eddie Lennon did that. I had him on the podcast before and...

• 36:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  I interviewed Eddie in Ennis and when I had Eddie on the podcast, that gig was what introduced Covid-19 to Ireland. I don't know if you remember that at the time, we can laugh at it now. But yeah, the first outbreak of Covid-19 happened at my gig in Ennis at the Glor Theatre in 2020, when I was interviewing Eddie Lennahan about superstition and bad luck. And the insanity of Covid made me think, did I intrude too much? Did I ask too many questions about the fairies? And then they caused an outbreak of the first outbreak in Ireland of Covid at my gig?

• 37:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  Because I asked Eddie too many questions about the fairies. The paranoia got the better of me, just like my dad, who thought that the fairies were gonna make him beat himself to death with a belt buckle.

• 37:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  But that's why Eddie Lennahan is my guest at the University Concert Hall, Limerick. Because my dad was convinced that it was built on a fairy tree or a fairy fort and that there was some type of fairy magic that brought bad luck to the building. And it's very plausible, like I said, just beside the University Concert Hall, you have Yarhtes Couch where the otters live. And when you walk along that path, there are white thorn trees. There's three, I think. So it is possible that the University Concert Hall was built on a white thorn tree.

• 38:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  You know, I speak about planting native, you know, proper native Irish wildflower, making seed bombs and specifically planting native Irish wildflower in derelict properties. Properties that are derelict, vandalism for the rich. In the middle of a housing crisis, plant some fucking white thorn, man. Plant white thorn in your local derelict property. Bring back some fairy magic. But white thorn, it's an indigenous tree and again, it's...

• 38:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like I say, when any of these, when any of these, any stories about trees that are indigenous to the land,

• 38:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  that could be thousands of years old, there's always a reason. It's always connected with biodiversity. The role that white thorn has in, in the ecosystem is it's a protector. Like, so now is white thorn's time, okay? White thorn blooms in April and May. White thorn is one of the, the, when we're going from winter into spring, one of the first native flowers that blooms is white thorn. It's the first bit of colour. Well, it's white, but it's the first

• 39:26Blindboy Boatclub?

  bit of life that you see, even, even before the trees start to go green. The white thorn blooms come out and you know who that benefits? The fucking queen bee. The queen bee who is establishing her colony. She needs to feed on the flowers of the white thorn. The only fucking flower that's in bloom. Honeybees, bumblebees, solitary bees. So remember, one, one queen creates a hive. So that queen, she gets her food from the white thorn. Then she goes and creates her hive. And that's where you get all the bees that will pollinate everything all summer.

• 40:07Blindboy Boatclub?

  And if you think of our ancestors, you know, they've chosen this, this one tree here. This one, this one's connected to the other world. The roots of this white thorn, that goes to the other world. And I'm guessing it's, that's the tree of life. If that's the first tree to flower and the queens eat from that. And then the queen has the hive which pollinates everything. Then that's the most important fucking tree. That's the earliest one. Do not cut that down. That's very important to biodiversity. Mess with those and there's crap failure. Another beautiful thing about the white thorn is

• 40:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  So it's covered in these white flowers. But once a bee has visited those, like, we're talking thousands of flowers on one bush. Once a bee has visited one of those flowers and successfully pollinated it, it eventually turns pink. So the white thorn tree goes from white to pink when the bees have visited it and pollinated it. And the honey from white thorn was considered an absolute delicacy. The white thorn grows in hedgerows too, so little birds, little birds have their nests inside there and they're protected by all the thorns. So little birds nest inside the white thorn tree. It's a mother tree. It's a tree for the birds and the bees and it gives birth to the life of summer. And that's its role in the ecosystem.

• 41:29Blindboy Boatclub?

  So am I, am I a believer in superstitions about white thorn trees and that they belong to the fairies and bad luck will happen to you? No, I, I don't believe, I don't believe that stuff. But I consider it hugely important, very, very important. And, and this is what I love about folklore. This is what I love about mythology and ancient stories. On the one hand, it, it's ridiculous. That tree over there, that tree over there has roots that go into an alternate dimension where a supernatural race called the fairies live. And if you mess with that tree, bad things will happen to you. Ridiculous, harsh shit.

• 42:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then you ask science and science says, that tree over there is a keystone species to the ecosystem of Ireland and the crops and food that you eat depend on that tree, depend on that tree over there. It's very, very important. So don't cut that down, that'd be a terrible idea. Evidence-based science is saying the same thing that the folklore is saying, just in a very different way. But then we move on to fairy forts. And fairy forts are man-made structures. And again, A fairy fort is way more scary than a fairy tree. Like, no one's gonna cut down a fairy tree. But some people won't even walk into a fairy fort.

• 42:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  A fairy fort takes the form of an ancient stone circle in a field, and there's lots of them all over Ireland. I visited a fairy fort this weekend, and I visited it because I'm gonna be speaking to the Shannockie Eddie Lenahan. Actually, this is a good story, so let me do an Ocarina pause now before I continue with the story about the fairy fort that I visited. I'm gonna blow into this bottle, this plastic bottle here, because I don't have my Ocarina, and you're gonna hear an advert for some bullshit.

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• 47:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  That was the Ocarina pause, the bottle blowing pause. The rain hasn't come back. I misjudged the rain. There's no pitter patter. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com/theblindboypodcast. If this podcast brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, distraction, joy, whatever has you listening to this podcast, even if you just turned it on to go to sleep, whatever has you listening to this podcast, please consider becoming a patron. This podcast is my full-time job. It's how I earn a living. It's the only thing I do to earn a living. It's how I rent out my office. It's how I pay all my bills.

• 47:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  I adore making this podcast. I absolutely love it. I love making this podcast. I adore that it's my job, but it's only possible because of listener funding. That's why this podcast exists. I'm not beholden to advertisers. I can tell them to fuck off. I can do a podcast about fairy forts, about fairy trees. I can do a podcast about whatever the fuck I want. I'm not worried about how many listeners I have. I don't give a shit about that. I want to speak about what I'm genuinely passionate about each week. That is only possible because of listener funding. All I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee. Once a month, that's it, okay? And if you can't afford that, don't worry about it.

• 48:44Blindboy Boatclub?

  You can listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. So everybody gets the exact same podcast I get to earn a living. Right? So that's patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. If you want to sign up and give me a couple of quid. And also, if you are signing up, don't sign up on the iPhone app. Because Apple will take 30% of whatever money that you give me. So fuck that, sign up on a browser and don't sign up as a free patron. Because you're just giving Patreon your data and this podcast doesn't receive any funding. Okay, I'm trying to avoid introducing a tiered payment.

• 49:27Blindboy Boatclub?

  I don't want to have it at the only way I can get rid of the free option is if I have tiers of payment. And I don't want that because I want someone to contribute whatever they like. I want to keep it like that if I can. And everyone gets the exact same podcast regardless of whether you pay or not. Patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. Do I have some upcoming gigs? I'm sure I do. I think the only thing that there's tickets going for now is that fucking the tour of Scotland and England. Right? That's happening in June. Um, starting from the first of June, I mean, I'm in Bristol. Is that June, the sixth is yeah.

• 50:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  Bristol, Cornwall, Sheffield, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, London, East Sussex and Norwich. It's a big tour in June. It's mostly sold out, but please come along to those gigs. They're going to be wonderful. They're going to be really nice intimate gigs and I'm going to have cracking guests. Speaking of dishes.

• 50:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  Like, I know over in England in particular, you don't have the type of knowledge about your indigenous folklore that we have in Ireland. I think a contributing factor to that was the Industrial Revolution. So when English people moved from the countryside to the city, you lost this stuff. But in any of the places I've listed out there, if you know any decent local folklorists or historians who could tell me about English folklore, I would love to learn about that. Like, I know that Wales are pretty good for it.

• 51:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  I know that white thorn grows in England too. And you might have beliefs about white thorn, but I'd love to learn this stuff. Cause it's, I'm very lucky in that it's easy to find out the Irish stuff, but I know fuck all about English folklore and I'd love to know more. Cause let's be honest, that's the interest in history. The history of the regular people, the beliefs and superstitions and the knowledge of the regular, everyday people, that's what interesting. Not fucking Prince Fuckface did this, the King Fuckface. Give a fuck about that shit. Stupid English royal shit. Rich people making a bullshit about each other.

• 51:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  Oh, did you know that King Henry VIII actually wrote that song Greensleeves? Did he fuck the stupid bollocks? Give a shit about that. I wanna learn about the stories of the, of the regular people, the peasants. That's what's interesting. Right, what have I got after that? I'm in Derry on the 19th of September. Come along to that in the Derry Millennium Theatre. And then I have a Vicker Street gig in Dublin on Tuesday, the 23rd. Why the fuck did I book a gig on a Tuesday there now? Tuesdays when I usually finish the podcast. Sure, it's September, I'll figure something out. And anyway, lovely little quiet midweek gigs. All right, back to the podcast, I want

• 52:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  to tell you about Ringforts. So I'm going to be gigging in University Concert Hall, Limerick, tonight, and I'm going to be speaking to the shankey, Eddie Lenahan, tonight. Because I'm doing that, I wanted to to visit a fairy fort in Limerick. So I went to one called the Grange Stone Circle in Loch Garre in Limerick, near Kilmalach, which was about about a 20 minute drive out from Limerick City. And this is, this is a very powerful fucking fairy fort. It's, it's beautiful. It's an ancient, very large, ancient stone circle, perfect circle, with all these old stones that were put there by somebody. And

• 53:16Blindboy Boatclub?

  sticking out of one of the stones is this gnarly, old fucking white tarn fairy tree. So I didn't, again, I didn't step into the fucking, I didn't step into the circle. It's huge. I didn't step into it. Again, superstition. I say I don't believe this shit, but I'm not stepping into the stone circle because it's not what you do. Not one that's guarded by a fairy tree. I was just thinking, nah, why bother? Just don't bother. Don't need to. And just respect the beliefs. So I stayed outside the stone circle. And this particular

• 53:54Blindboy Boatclub?

  Grange Stone Circle in Loch Garre in Limerick, archaeologists have looked at it. It's, it dates from 3000 BC. It's 5000 years old. So this is 5000 years old. For 5000 years, nobody fucked with that. It's just some stones, very, very, very old looking stones. Large boulders, clearly placed there deliberately in a perfect circle. That's all it is. And then one of those stones has got a, it's been split open by a fairy tree. And the fact that it's undisturbed, again, it tells us people were afraid of this.

• 54:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  This was considered powerful, superstitious, whatever the fuck. Nobody fucked with this thing for 5,000 years, ordered in the pyramids. And now here I am beside it. And what has me mentioning the seagulls this week? Who've been quiet, they haven't interrupted the podcast. What has me mentioning the seagulls this week is while I was there in awe of this stone circle in Loch Ghar, a fucking seagull shows up with a seagull who had a Dubai chocolate bar wrapper in his mouth. Which was bizarre and sad. So number one, seagulls have no business in Kilmalk.

• 55:22Blindboy Boatclub?

  Out by Loch Ghar, this is, this is quite inland, very, very inland. I know there's a big lake, Loch Ghar, seagulls don't belong there. So seagulls are flying that far inland to try and find food. Maybe they're going to the lake to get fish, but seagulls don't belong this inland. And it had a Dubai, a Dubai chocolate bar wrapper in its mouth, which it left behind. I went over and looked at it and saw it was a bit of a Dubai chocolate bar wrapper, which I'm assuming it had taken out of a bin. And the first thing I thought was, I wonder is some bad luck about the befuddled Dubai chocolate bars? Because Dubai, Dubai chocolate bars are mad.

• 56:08Blindboy Boatclub?

  I'm sure you're aware of them. I've never seen anything like it. It's a viral online trend that manufacturing can't keep up with. They're these chocolate bars and on the inside is this really gooey, sweet pistachio filling. They look delicious. I've tasted one, it wasn't worth what I spent on it. But two months ago, they just went mad viral on TikTok.

• 56:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  And everyone wanted a Dubai chocolate bar, but you could not get your hands on them. And in Limerick, there was, there was one shop and there was Cuser on the corner for homemade Dubai chocolate bars. They were making chocolate in empty Chinese food containers and filling them with pistachio cream and charging people, I think it was like thirty quid, it was nearly the same price as drugs. Demand for these chocolate bars was so great that people were selling homemade versions because you couldn't get the real thing. And now, two months on, the market is saturated. You can buy Dubai chocolate bars in fucking Lidl. There's one shop in Limerick.

• 57:19Blindboy Boatclub?

  And when you go in there, instead of cigarettes behind the counter, they have a full, a full rack of different Dubai chocolate bars. So we've gone past peak Dubai chocolate bar now. They're no longer expensive and now they're like three for one. There are so many Dubai chocolate bars that I went to an isolated five thousand year old ferry fort in Loch Ghar and a fucking seagull lands and drops a Dubai chocolate bar wrapper in its mouth. They're selling them in Kilmalk. And I'll be honest, the first thing I thought, the first thing I fucking thought

• 57:57Blindboy Boatclub?

  when that seagull dropped the wrapper was, I wonder is some bad luck gonna befall Dubai chocolate now? So I took out my phone and Googled it for the crack and yeah, there's a world pistachio shortage. Right now, there is a world pistachio shortage because Dubai chocolate bars have gone too popular. And we do have that association in Ireland. People, people have knocked ferry forts and built businesses on them. The most famous one would be, do you know that car? This is another little connection I made, but this is just autism.

• 58:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  Do you know that car, the DeLorean?

• 58:40Blindboy Boatclub?

  That you'd know it from Back to the Future. It was a nineteen eighties sports car and the doors opened up like wings. And specifically, those doors were called gull wings. Literally, the doors on a DeLorean car are called gull wings. And that's what had me connecting the seagull with the DeLorean. But anyway, the DeLorean sports car.

• 59:06Blindboy Boatclub?

  They were built by a fella called John Delorean in the eighties, who would have been a bit of a, like an Elon Musk in his day, an eccentric car maker. John Delorean used to, he was a Yank, he used to work for General Motors. And he publicly, his plan in the late seventies was, "I'm gonna make this amazing, affordable, ethical sports car, and it's gonna look incredible, it's gonna look amazing, and it's gonna be a huge success, and everyone's gonna own one. And that's, and this car is gonna be the most futuristic car you've ever seen." That's how it ended up in Back to the Future. Look at the car in Back to the Future. That's called a Delorean. It's one of these cars, right?

• 59:47Blindboy Boatclub?

  That Simpsons episode, there's an early Simpsons episode where Homer finds a long last brother, and then Homer designs a car for his brother, and it's a huge flop. That's based on the Delorean. The Delorean car is one of the greatest flops ever. And no one, no one knew how it happened. They were like, this was supposed to, "Of course I want a Delorean. An affordable sports car with incredible doors that open outwards. Of course I want one of them, give me one now, and it's affordable, wow." So what happened? So John Delorean, the American, is like, "Okay, I want to build my factory. I wanna build my factory to make these futuristic cars. But I wanna make them affordable, these need to be affordable.

• 1:00:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  How am I gonna make these futuristic cars and also make them affordable?" So the British government approached John Delorean and say, "We're gonna give you a hundred million. We'll give you a hundred million pounds of free money, right? If you build your Delorean in Belfast."

• 1:00:51Blindboy Boatclub?

  Now Belfast in the north of Ireland, right? This was like the late seventies, early eighties. There was a war. There was a war. There was a sectarian war. The IRA. The period known as the troubles, bombs, shootings, murders, the British Army colonizing every single day, the IRA, the UVF. A war zone is, it's, it's, it's not a, war zones aren't great for economic prosperity. So the British government were thinking, fuck it. Maybe if we bring a giant international car company to West Belfast and just build

• 1:01:32Blindboy Boatclub?

  this giant plant and provide tons of employment, maybe that will ease working class tensions and nobody will want to join the IRA because they've got a job in the DeLorean factory. So John DeLorean says, great plan and I'll take that 100 million of free money from you, UK government, and this will allow me to build these affordable cars. Did it got the plan? No, you can't build a car factory while there's a war going on in the middle of a war zone. Only about 9,000 cars were made. The DeLorean business fell apart. It was seen as, as a spectacular, spectacular failure of this, this futuristic car that

• 1:02:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  they just never, ever, it was a terrible failure. Two years later, John DeLorean ended up in such debt that he got caught smuggling cocaine and in an FBI sting, the FBI set him up. He was so in debt that he ended up trying to finance cocaine smuggling and got caught. He went from being a billionaire with, with a futuristic car that was going to change the world to smuggling coke and getting caught within about three fucking years. Do you know what he also did? He bulldozed, he personally bulldozed a ferry fort.

• 1:02:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  He personally bulldozed a ferry fort to build the DeLorean factory. And everybody said to him, even the IRA, the fucking IRA went to him and said,

• 1:03:12Blindboy Boatclub?

  Listen, we're the IRA. No, no, no, it's, it's nothing, we don't want money, nothing, no, no, no, no, no, look. No, it's not about that either, nothing to do with the Brits, no, no, no, we, we, we don't even have guns. We don't even have guns on us. It's not about that. Please don't bulldoze the fairy fort. We appreciate that you're building a factory, fair play to you. Don't bulldoze the fairy fort, please. Because very, very bad things are gonna happen to you if you bulldoze that fairy fort. And John Delorean, the Yank, he doesn't understand it. He's not listening, he's not listening to the community. So he, he, he bulldozes an ancient fairy fort, himself personally, in a bulldozer.

• 1:03:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then two or three years later, his business is gone and he gets caught smuggling cocaine. In Waterford, there's a pharmaceutical company called West Pharmaceutical. They also, they bulldozed a fucking, they bulldozed a fairy fort to build their plant. And if Trump has his way, that place is gonna get shut down. But my point is, in, in Ireland, we, we take fairy forts very seriously. And, you know, that story there with Delorean. There's loads and loads of, look, he, he built, I know the Brits are giving you a hundred million quid, but don't build a car factory in Belfast at the height of the troubles, all right? That's not gonna work out for you. But we will retroactively make that a boat.

• 1:04:41Blindboy Boatclub?

  No, no, it's, it's not because of that. He got bad luck from bulldozing a fairy fort. So like, I promise you, there's a fairy fort near you. Guarantee it, if you live in Ireland, there is a fairy fort near you. And an enjoyable thing to do is, when you find the name of your local fairy fort, go to duchess dot E, D U C H A S, which is the National Folklore Collection. Type in the name of your local fairy fort and you'll find all the folklore and superstitions and stories that are attached to your local fairy fort. Like the fairy fort in Loch Gare, where the seagull had the Dubai chocolate bar. Like one story associated with that fort.

• 1:05:25Blindboy Boatclub?

  And this story was written down in the 1920s, I've got it from, from duchess dot E. One story is that. It says, "It's locally known as Leas Moor because there's two other smaller forts in the opposite field. They're circular in shape. It's surrounded by an arden mound. Inside the mound is a circle of stones and the ground is level like a saucer. It is thought that they were made by the fair bulgs and used by them as a place of worship." So a fair bulg, fairies but, the fair bulg were, in mythology, a race of people on the island of Ireland that were defeated by humans and driven underground to the other

• 1:06:09Blindboy Boatclub?

  world, a kind of a, and they became a begrudging demonic race. So this story, this folklore is saying that this particular stone circle in La Garre was a place of worship for demon fairies. And the story attached is, it says, "A man named Patrick Keane who lived in Rahine went one day to Limerick to buy a flute. And in those days he had to walk, so it was very late when he was passing by the fort. It's thought that the fairies took him in and kept him there. After five days, he found himself outside the fort, as if he'd slept there for some time. He never told anybody where he'd been or what

• 1:06:52Blindboy Boatclub?

  befell him for the five days that he'd been missing. But after he went missing, when he played the flute, which he wasn't very good at playing, after he went missing in this fairy fort, when he played the flute, it was the sweetest music that anyone ever heard. And people said that he was taught by the fairies." Now what's beautiful about that story is, it's so similar to UFO abduction stories. Like that story there was written down in the 1920s and it's probably, could be a hundred, that story could be 200 years old, could be longer, could be several hundred years old. But-

• 1:07:31Blindboy Boatclub?

  It's so similar to UFO abduction stories. People who get abducted by aliens, what happens? Aliens come, these beings take them away, and then they have a sense of missing time. They don't know how long they've been away from. But also, what you get there is the Irish other world. I did a podcast about this a few podcasts back where I compared beliefs about the Irish other world with quantum physics. The Irish other world, it's not about linear time. The other world is an alternate reality where time does not exist. It's not a concept. And anyone who is able to visit the other world where the fairies live, they don't experience time. Things operate differently there. So this

• 1:08:13Blindboy Boatclub?

  fella who went into the fairy fort, the fairies abducted him. He doesn't know how long he's been away, but when he arrived back in our world, it was five years. And when he arrived back, he had the ability to play the flute magnificently. So what's been implied there is, how long does it take to learn how to play the flute brilliantly? Multiple years, I'd say. So he went off to the world of the fairies when he entered this fairy fort, the one that the fucking, the seagull brought the boy chocolate to me. This cunt went into the fairy fort, and the fairies took him away for several years. And then they taught him how to play the flute brilliantly. Now, this belief system

• 1:08:56Blindboy Boatclub?

  that also has parallels with African American belief systems, like, now you know, Irish and African American people, they're mixed in America. So, blues players, blues players in Mississippi, right? 1920s, 1910. Robert Johnson is the best example. Robert Johnson is one of the most important blues players of all time. He was an African American fellow from Mississippi. And they used to say about Robert Johnson, Robert Johnson was so good at playing guitar, that one night, he met the devil at the crossroads, and the devil showed him how to play guitar like that in exchange for his soul.

• 1:09:37Blindboy Boatclub?

  That same story, I'm reading that same story here in local folklore in Limerick about a fucking stone circle. A flute player went into this circle, the fairies took him away and then he could play the flute wonderfully. But what's being implied, because the fairies are evil, is what did he exchange? What terrible, bad thing is gonna happen to this man, this wonderful flute player? What bad thing is gonna happen? Because nothing good ever happens to anyone who walks into a fairy fort. But I wanna finish the podcast by speaking about what fairy forts are and why are we terrified of them?

• 1:10:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  Why is there so much superstition around these stone circles, these old stone circles that can be untouched for thousands of years? Why are people so afraid of them? So, there's between forty thousand and sixty thousand fairy forts or stone circles in Ireland. That's loads, that's a lot. That's why I said to you, you've got a local fairy fort, just find it. So what were they? So a fairy fort usually is, it's a circular mound in a field. Most of the time it has ancient stones.

• 1:11:01Blindboy Boatclub?

  And what they were was like castles or forts. People lived there, but most likely to cattle, cattle lived there. So you go back several hundred years, I'm talking pre-Christian, alright? A thousand years, two thousand years, whatever you want. There was people living in Ireland, what did they live in? They would have built like permanent wooden camps.

• 1:11:34Blindboy Boatclub?

  So they'd have, they'd have built mounds and mounds of earth to defend. And then a lot of timber in this circular shape. Defensive and moats, right? So think of this circle with mounds of earth. And then underneath the mounds of earth, you have a depression in the ground. So this is a defensive structure. It's very difficult to get in there if you're attacking. And then they'd have stuck a lot of wood and on the inside, they would have had some houses inside there. And this is where people lived. Any place in Ireland that has Rath in it or Lys in it, L I S. It means that there was one of these ring forts.

• 1:12:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  They were called ring forts. It meant that there was one of these ring forts where people lived. If you wanna see an example of what they, they would have looked like, go to a place called Craganown. Craganown is, I think it's in Clare, it's not Limerick, it's in Clare. Craganown is a reconstruction of one of these ring forts and you can walk around it. If, if a place in Ireland has Rath, Lys, Dune, Cair, Cashel. Then all of those places had a ring fort. Rath Mines, Lysmore, Rath Farnham, Dunleary, Cashel. These names, these names tell us this place once had a ring fort.

• 1:12:59Blindboy Boatclub?

  These circular mounds with timber where people lived, but also cattle. Now I'm gonna simplify this. So before Christianity, before five hundred. We, we didn't have towns or cities in Ireland. Very strange, but instead what we had were tons and tons of these ring forts. And people were pastoral. Cattle was hugely, hugely important. We cleared loads of forests and Ireland before Christianity.

• 1:13:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  Was a cattle based economy. We can see this from, from the records of how valuable cattle was. Everything was, all value was traded against cattle. The most powerful person was the person who had the most cattle, the most cows. One of our most famous stories, the Tyne Bull Cooline, right? This epic piece of mythology. It's about a, it's about a cattle raid. It's about a queen and a king fighting over who's the most powerful, who has the most cattle. Whoever had the most cattle was the most powerful. And people used to raid. Cattle raiding was a huge thing. People used to steal entire hards of cattle.

• 1:14:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  So all of these different ringforts were at war with each other, stealing each other's cattle. So holding cattle inside a ringfort, keeping your herd safe was very, very important. You were protecting from raids. Like I mentioned earlier, the Irish weather is revenge based. If you've got a sunny period, you're guaranteed the retribution of the rain. That's what the weather tells us, the weather. The weather ingrains retribution and revenge into us as people if we live on this land. Well, some historians have said that. Ireland before Christianity was a, was a particularly, not Christianity, but Ireland before monasteries and towns.

• 1:15:05Blindboy Boatclub?

  Ireland, when it was just a lot of ringforts and people moving with cattle, was very revenge and retribution based. Because the entirety of society was based around stealing cattle. This, this family, the O'Neills, they steal fucking cattle from the O'Briens. And then a war starts and then someone is kidnapped. And then there's, I'm going to kidnap your sons for ransom and then you're going to give me the cattle back. I'm going to steal that bull. Consistent, continual feuding and retribution based around cattle raids and violence and fighting.

• 1:15:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  And then needing to have thousands and thousands of these ringforts, these secure ringforts that you keep your cattle inside. Well, I read, I read a beautiful paper, an academic paper by a historian called Patrick McCafferty this week, with an incredible theory about Irish ringforts. You see, these ringforts became the fairy forts. These, like, you're talking about beliefs about a place across hundreds of years, even thousands. And the average person didn't have writing, they just had stories.

• 1:16:20Blindboy Boatclub?

  So what was once, what was a ringfort a thousand years ago? This place where humans or cattle lived, that was a structure made of wood. Once that becomes abandoned, the wood rots away. And all you're left with is this circle, this mound, this strange unexplained mound that you don't know what it does or what it's for. And maybe stones, if stones were used. So the ringforts, they become fairy forts. The people of Ireland, hundreds of years pass. You can't remember what that thing was for, what it was called. So people just go, I don't know what that fucking structure is. I don't know who built it.

• 1:17:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  It must be the fairies, because no one knows. And it was there before I was born. It must be the fairies, don't fuck with it. But Patrick McCafferty goes farther.

• 1:17:14Blindboy Boatclub?

  Geraldis of Wales, the fellow who wrote the original topography of Ibernica, which I've done multiple podcasts on this. If you're a perpetual Declan, you know what that is. But Geraldis wrote about Ireland, he was a Welsh fellow, in the 1100s. And in the 1100s, he said that the place was littered with ringforts. So Ireland was full of these ringforts, these circular structures. But by the 1100s, the Irish had pretty much abandoned the ringforts. So if we're to believe Geraldis of Wales in the 1100s, he's saying that something happened that made Irish people go, we can't live in ringforts anymore, get the fuck away from them.

• 1:17:55Blindboy Boatclub?

  So there's a deadly bacteria called anthrax. Anthrax, you don't come across it much now. Anthrax is, it's one of the scariest bacteria in the world, because they reckon if terrorists used it in a bomb, it could kill millions of people. Anthrax is deadly, absolutely fucking deadly, kill an entire village in a week. And anthrax is, it's naturally occurring. It occurs in animals, it occurs in cattle. Cattle can become infected with anthrax and die. And the humans who are in contact with this cattle, they will also die.

• 1:18:38Blindboy Boatclub?

  So Patrick McCafferty has a theory. He looked at the Irish inales.

• 1:18:45Blindboy Boatclub?

  So these, these ringforts, like I said, some of them are thousands of years old, other ones are hundreds of years old, and they were definitely circular enclosures used for cattle. So let's just say a thousand years ago,

• 1:19:04Blindboy Boatclub?

  there's an outbreak of anthrax in the cattle, completely plausible. You can read the annals, there's multiple plagues happen in Ireland. People don't know the names for the diseases, but they list out the symptoms. So let's just say one ringfort, there's like 200 cattle inside there, and now they all get infected with fucking anthrax. And all the people inside there get infected with anthrax. That's everybody dead, every cow dead, every person dead. No escaping it. Anthrax is deadly.

• 1:19:39Blindboy Boatclub?

  So all of these people die in the ringfort. And then their bodies rot in the ringfort.

• 1:19:48Blindboy Boatclub?

  And the wood rots away, and hundreds of years pass. And everything's forgotten, the bones have rotted away, and now you're just left with a weird mound.

• 1:20:02Blindboy Boatclub?

  Just a strange circle of grass in the landscape, or maybe some stones on it.

• 1:20:10Blindboy Boatclub?

  So let's just say 300, 400 years passed. There's no writing, and the Irish people 300 years later are just curious about this stone circle. Or maybe they want to take the stones. They see that the stones are there, and they're pre-cut, and they want to take them. Well, McCafferty's theory is that

• 1:20:33Blindboy Boatclub?

  the people who would have started digging at that spot, the anthrax bacteria can actually stay in the soil. So it's possible that some people in Ireland started digging up ancient stone circles, and then they would cause an anthrax plague in their community, and hundreds of people would die. And then it's entirely possible. That they planted a white thorn tree on that stone circle as a warning, as a warning. White thorn means danger. Don't fuck with this. So you have these ring forts, cattle are being kept inside there. Anthrax is very common as a cattle disease and we

• 1:21:18Blindboy Boatclub?

  know it can stay in the soil and you can wake it up hundreds of years later if you disturb the soil. All it takes is, is a handful of those instances in Ireland with ring forts. And people don't know what, they don't know what germ theory is, they don't know what illness is. All they know is someone fucking dug up one of these ring forts and the entire village died. The cattle died, the people died, they all died. What did they do? They dug up the ring fort. Then stay the fuck away from these ring forts. That's fairy magic. That's when you go at these ring forts, you're obviously fucking with the other world and the fairies will get you. Plant a white thorn tree to warn people. And Patrick McCafferty,

• 1:22:03Blindboy Boatclub?

  his theory, his theory is that's, that's why, that's why we're terrified of fairy forts and fairy trees. We've just forgotten. It's, it's, you're talking about superstition and oral tradition over thousands and thousands of years, warning us about the, the very legitimate fear of anthrax in the soil. And it was, it was an essay I read by him and he finishes it with, no, no scientist, a scientist in Ireland hasn't tested ring forts or fairy forts for anthrax, but he wishes someone would. I think it's a fucking brilliant theory.

• 1:22:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  I think it's a wonderful theory and what it ties back to too. And I've done a full podcast on this. I just can't remember the name of it. And I'm not rehashing all content, but I will bring all contact, all content up if it supports the argument that I'm making now. There's this thing called long-term nuclear warning messaging and it's fascinating. Nuclear waste is a thing. When we make nuclear energy, we've got tons and tons of nuclear waste. And nuclear waste is, is deadly, deadly poisonous.

• 1:23:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  It'll give you cancer, it'll kill you, radiation poisoning. And, and nuclear waste, it doesn't stop being deadly for hundreds of thousands of years. So we have this really deadly substance that will kill people. And there's nothing you can do with it. So what we do do with nuclear waste is

• 1:23:43Blindboy Boatclub?

  scientists bury it deep into the earth. They go to these caves and they bury nuclear waste, deep, deep into the earth. But even in 20,000 years, if, if, if someone or something was to dig that up in 20,000 years, it would be deadly, it would still, it would kill a lot of people, it's nuclear waste. So the scientists have to imagine. If we bury all this nuclear waste here, how do we tell someone that it's dangerous in 20,000 years?

• 1:24:17Blindboy Boatclub?

  20 civilizations might have collapsed, we don't even know if humans would be on the earth. Would it be aliens? Will people speak English? How do you tell someone 20,000 years in the future? Do not dig here, something very dangerous is in the earth, please stay away. Because humans are curious, we love digging shit up. So lots of the solutions they had was, they would use megalithic stones. So where nuclear waste is buried, they would get large stones that are pointy and scary looking, scary looking stones that stick out of the earth. And they would hope that someone in 20,000 years would be freaked out by this.

• 1:24:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  And they'd say, stay away, to make a site of nuclear waste feel spooky or feel threatening in some way. Threatening and supernatural. Another theory was to create religions, songs and folktales about nuclear waste. That would be scary enough that it would last thousands of years, even if writing collapses. So, so Patrick McCafferty, when he was, he, he didn't bring this into his anthrax theory. This is me adding to it, but what if that's what the white tarn tree is?

• 1:25:36Blindboy Boatclub?

  When it comes to these ancient stone circles, these fairy forts, there's always, there's a white thorn tree there. That's the bit that freaks people out the most. I don't know what this mound is, I don't know what this circle is, and why in the fuck is that gnarly scary looking tree right there in the middle? Who put it there? Why is it there? I'm freaked out, I gotta stay away. Maybe that's what the white thorn tree is. Six hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, somebody dug this up, and anthrax spread and caused a plague and killed hundreds of people. So they planted the white thorn tree as a warning. Stay away. This means danger. This means forces that you don't understand.

• 1:26:21Blindboy Boatclub?

  And they probably genuinely believed that that was the fucking fairies. If you dig into the soil and everyone dies, and your belief is that the other world is underneath the earth, that's the fucking fairies, that's what that is. So that's all I have time for for this week's podcast. I don't know, am I gonna bring up the anthrax theory with Eddie Linnahan? Because he genuinely believes in the fairies and I don't wanna burst his bubble. But I love the anthrax fairy fort theory. I think it's fascinating.

• 1:26:53Blindboy Boatclub?

  Alright, rub a swan. No, don't rub a fucking swan.

• 1:26:58Blindboy Boatclub?

  Feed, feed an urban seagull. Feed an urban seagull, they're getting fucked over by this, this new battle law, lads. They're really getting fucked over. So feed an urban seagull if you see one. And don't cut down a white thorn tree. And don't walk into the middle of a fairy circle. God bless.

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