Lore 257: Blasted

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1956 was a year of discovery.

Shopping malls were invented, as was Plato, shipping containers, fiber optics, and the patent for the first implantable artificial heart.

And don't forget the most groundbreaking discovery of them all, the cause of the common cold.

That's right, although cold symptoms have been a part of our lives since ancient times, even mentioned in Egyptian scrolls from the 16th century BCE, we didn't actually know about rhinoviruses until just 68 years ago.

That's thousands of years of uncertainty, years filled with, let's just say, other explanations.

Take for example the Kaze no Kami.

These are invisible Japanese wind spirits that have one hobby and one hobby only, inflicting suffering on human beings.

They can control the winds and can doom a sailing ship or a farmer's crop with a single exhale.

But if they breathe on you, oh, then you're really in trouble.

Kaze no kami exhale thick yellow clouds that are dripping with disease, and any human who inhales it grows ill.

When you think about it, the Japanese weren't far off.

At its basic level, a virus is an invisible airborne threat, isn't it?

In fact, to this day, the Japanese word for the common cold just so happens to be kaze.

Oh, and one more thing, try reversing the sounds.

That's right, kamikaze, as in kamikaze pilots who rained death from the air during World War II.

Kamikaze, by the way, literally translates into spirit wind.

Today, we tend to think of medicine and magic as polar opposites, science versus superstition.

But go ahead, take a scalpel to medical history and peel back the skin.

I bet you'll be surprised by what you find, because beneath the surface is a whole skeleton of folktales.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore.

If your appendix burst, you aren't going to pay a visit to a local tarot reader, right?

Of course not.

You'd go to the doctor.

But the truth is, that wasn't always the way people saw things.

In fact, for much of human history, magic and medicine were practically indistinguishable.

Just look at ancient Egypt.

In the words of anthropologist Barbara Mertz, if a man came to an Egyptian doctor with a broken leg, the physician might apply a splint, rub the leg with a mixture of honey and herbs, pronounce a magical incantation, and hang an amulet around the sufferer's neck.

And sure, as modern people, we can see which elements of this treatment would help and which might not.

But to the ancient Egyptians, all those steps were essential and connected.

It would seem very weird to put on the splint and skip the spell.

Now, before you dismiss the ancient Egyptians as medical hacks, they were actually remarkably advanced when it came to studying biology.

Heck, they even figured out that the pulse and the heart were related, something that took Europeans another couple thousand years to work out.

The ancient Greeks, another advanced civilization, had a similar blended idea of magic and medicine.

Take the Greek cult who worshipped the god of medicine, Asclepius, for example.

These folks conducted surgery and practiced medicine, but they also interpreted dreams.

In fact, the dreams were essential to the whole shebang.

Patients would be sent into Asclepius' temple to sleep and then asked to report their dreams to the cult when they woke.

And the last step was important because those dreams, they informed the healers of what treatment was needed.

Doesn't sound exactly FDA approved, does it?

But here's the thing.

It seems to have worked.

There are tons of surviving testimonials from people receiving successful treatments from the Asclepius cult for all manner of ailments.

And sure, this is all ancient history, or at least it seems that way.

But there's something I should mention.

You see, while the Asclepius cult and the times of the pharaohs are long gone, that doesn't mean that magical healing died out with them.

Far from it.

The thing is, fear is a dangerous drug.

When conventional medicine doesn't work, when you try everything and the illness still won't go away, well, as they say, desperate times call for desperate measures.

And maybe that means that Goop's latest cure-all seaweed tonic or a hoodoo ritual or a blessing from the Pope.

After all, who among us hasn't turned to prayer or superstition when a loved one's health starts to fade?

It's human nature, after all, to lean into belief when times are tough.

And if you happen to live in Ireland, well, those tough times might just mean a visit to a fairy doctor.

As late as the mid-20th century, plenty of folks in Ireland still believed that their livestock, their agriculture, and their very lives were under threat of malicious fairies.

But don't worry, there were people who could help you with that.

Namely, the fairy doctors.

These doctors, usually female elders, were good for whatever supernatural mischief ailed you.

But don't get me wrong, these weren't your average healing women.

These practitioners treated magical maladies specifically.

Maybe your son had caught the gaze of the evil eye, or maybe your little granddaughter had been, and I quote, fairy struck, in which an otherwise healthy child suddenly withers.

Maybe you're just depressed, which, according to the fairy doctors, is caused by an evil wind hitting you in what's called a fairy blast.

I have to say, that explanation is a lot more fun than a chemical imbalance, don't you think?

Note to therapists everywhere.

We aren't depressed, we're fairy blasted.

Fairy doctors could give you herbs to cast a love spell or to make a man sterile.

They use charmed stones to heal fairy-induced madness.

They could protect livestock from the fae through potions and exorcisms.

They could bring children swapped out for changelings and return lost loved ones from fairyland.

Fairy doctors could even bring people back from the dead.

Now, I know what you're wondering, did any of this actually work?

And the answer is, sometimes.

When it didn't, though, the results were tragic.

In one true account, a charlatan fairy doctor convinced a sick man's family to leave lavish food and drink out nightly to prevent the fairies from carrying their loved one away.

He then performed a ritual complete with everything from pyrotechnics to fake ghosts.

But in the end, the patient died anyway.

The charlatan vanished, many meals the richer.

Now, I want to pause for a moment because the meals detail is important.

You see, fairy doctors didn't work for money.

In fact, it was believed that to ask for money would diminish their powers.

So when people's desperation was abused, it was rarely for cash.

But food and drink?

Well, that's another matter.

Another incident involved the child suspected of being a changeling.

A fairy doctor directed the child's parents to leave him outside for three nights, flinging water upon him to banish the devil and feed him foxglove.

This was all supposed to banish the changeling and bring the real baby back.

And in a way, it worked.

The changeling was banished.

That is, the poor infant died before the third night was through.

I'm sure it's no surprise that the quote-unquote real baby never returned.

That said, there are just as many successful accounts as failed ones.

Stories of fairy-struck girls regaining their strength and dried-up cattle suddenly fat with milk.

Now, if you're a regular listener, all of this probably sounds familiar.

It's witch stuff, right?

But listen, fairy doctors were not witches.

Yes, they performed similar miracles, but there was one major difference separating witches from fairy doctors.

That is, where they got their power.

While witches gained their magic power from evil spirits and their own ill will, fairy doctors received theirs from the fairies themselves.

Sometimes that fairy-given power would be passed down generationally from parent to child.

But whether received through bloodline or directly from the fair folk, one thing was certain, a fairy doctor was not a witch.

But that doesn't mean that their power wasn't terrifying.

Mary Donaghy was a hard-working woman.

She had three children to care for, after all, and her husband to look after, who, being blind, didn't work himself.

In the summer of 1863, the family moved to Carrick-on-Shore in Tipperary, Ireland, and there, Mary set up shop as a fairy doctor.

Now, don't forget, fairy doctors couldn't work for pay, but they could accept donations, and that's exactly how Mary got by.

It was simple, salt-of-the-earth work.

She would give herbs and charms to cows that had gone dry, do spells to bring rain back in a drought.

Mary even spent 10 months tending to an epileptic child, calming him with herbs and other forms of healing.

And under Mary's care, those dry cows began producing milk.

The rain returned, and the epileptic boy slept peacefully for the first time in months.

It was a quiet life, but it worked for Mary until, well, it didn't.

Because that's the thing about power, isn't it?

Once people get a taste for it, they tend to want more.

One night while Mary was still caring for the sick young boy, his mother had a strange dream.

The woman, Mrs.

Reeves, dreamt that her dead father had come back to life and perplexed, she told Mary about it.

Luckily, Mary knew what it meant right away.

The dream must be true.

The dead man had returned to the living.

Shortly after, Mary extended a rather unusual invitation to the woman's husband, sub-constable Joseph Reeves.

She asked Joseph to accompany her to the town of Nacro to pay a visit to none other than his undead father-in-law.

And hey, I get it.

That's not the kind of offer that you can turn down.

Suffice to say, Reeves went.

And what he saw, well, I'll let him tell you in his own words.

Yes, he said.

I saw my father-in-law, William Mullins, about 20 yards distant from me.

Now, according to Reeves, his father-in-law was wholly recognizable and wholly alive.

This wasn't just a glimpse in low light either.

Reeves said that although it was around 8 p.m., the light was good and they stayed to watch the resurrected man for some time.

Now, if this were me, I would have reacted strongly to the situation to say the least.

But Reeves wasn't afraid.

In 19th century Ireland, it was often believed that the dead weren't really gone, but rather taken by the fairies to live in fairy forts.

That being the case, it wasn't too wild for someone to come back.

And Mary Donaghy was far from the only fairy doctor to dabble in necromancy.

After showing Reeves his dead father-in-law, Mary told him that he should send food to the newly risen man.

Humans can't eat anything in the fairy realm after all, without being trapped there forever, so this guy must be starving.

Who knows when he had last had a good meal?

And Reeves did as he was told.

In fact, over the course of the next four months, Mr.

Reeves sent the dead man bread, butter, and tea as often as, and I quote, once in each of the 24 hours.

Sometimes he had his niece deliver the food, but most of the time it went into one person's hands and one person's hands only.

That's right, Mary Donahy.

Oh, and the ghost must have really enjoyed his tea-time snacks because soon he brought friends.

The Reeves dead son appeared after more than 20 years in the grave.

On another occasion, a deceased aunt was there, then another relative named Tom Sheehan.

And it wasn't just Joseph Reeves bearing witness anymore.

His wife encountered the specters too, as did their surviving son, Terrence.

These other phantom family members would need to be fed, of course, and so more food and tea commenced.

Apparently, the revenants were picky eaters.

They would often return the offering if it wasn't to their liking, claiming that their newly regained bodies were still too delicate for certain foods.

Oh and when I say claim, I mean they could talk.

Apparently Mrs.

Reeves and her resurrected father had a conversation with each other every night between 11 p.m.

and midnight.

Now, with all of this hubbub involving endless trays of tea and people coming back from the dead, the townsfolk started to take notice.

And as they did, some began to get suspicious.

After all, it sure seemed like Mary Donaghy was staying well fed and watered amidst all these offerings along with her family and so four months into the affair a concerned citizen decided to take Mary Donahy to court the charge cheating certain persons the Reeves showed up as witnesses of course but here's the wildest part they were witnesses in Mary's defense Throughout the entirety of the trial, Mr.

and Mrs.

Reeve insisted that they hadn't in fact been cheated at all.

They swore that the people they had visited, fed and spoken to over the prior four months had indeed been their dead relatives.

After all, they would recognize their own family members, wouldn't they?

And they weren't alone in their claim.

A retired policeman by the name of Hayes came forward, testifying under oath that he'd himself had relatives come back from the dead and had also seen Mrs.

Reeves' father in the flesh, as well as the Reeves' dead son.

And the courtroom was baffled.

Heck, the Reeves were a highly respected family.

Hayes was a trusted officer of the law.

And here they all were, claiming that their folk nurse had resurrected the dead.

Flummoxed, the attorney named Mr.

Vowell, addressed the jury exclaiming that the witnesses must have been out of their senses.

The newspapers seemed to agree.

There was no way the dead were walking freely among the living.

The witnesses must be delusional.

Not just delusional, bewitched into delusion.

You see, resurrection was absurd.

but witchcraft, mind control, no, that could be real.

Mary Donaghy, the courts ruled, was no resurrectionist.

No, to pull off an illusion like that, she must be none other than a witch.

She was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 12 months of hard labor.

Amidst it all, the Reeves never stopped insisting on Mary's legitimacy.

After one of the trial days, Constable Reeves approached Mary.

He clasped her hand.

He leaned in close, and then he said, Never mind, Mary.

No matter what they say, I believe what you told me and what I have seen.

And here's the thing, the witnesses were never actually disproven.

No one figured out how Mary conducted her trickery, which means that maybe, just maybe, it hadn't been a trick at all.

It was not the farmer's lucky day.

He had gone out to the fields only to discover that his entire herd of cattle had fallen ill, and he knew whose fault it was.

The fairies, of course.

But thankfully, he also knew exactly what to do.

He would go to Biddy Early.

Entering the old woman's home, Biddy Early welcomed the farmer with a smile and asked him to sit.

Then she placed a black bottle on the table.

Or maybe it was blue.

It really depends on who's telling the story.

At any rate, a little bottle sat between Biddy Early and the farmer, but she didn't offer the guy a drink.

She didn't even open it.

Instead, she stared deeply into the glass as if the ordinary bottle were a crystal ball.

And then, she snapped her head up and spoke.

You planted a white thorn bush, yes?

The farmer nodded amazed.

I planted it just recently in my own field.

You put it along a fairy path, Biddy Early said with certainty.

You must go home and dig it up.

And the farmer did as told.

And as soon as he had removed the white thorn, his cows immediately returned to health as if they had never been sick at all.

It's a miraculous story for sure, but it's far from the only tale about the powers of Biddy Early, the most famous fairy doctor who ever lived.

Now, before we delve deeper into her life, it's worth noting that it's hard to tease the facts from the folklore when it comes to Biddy Early.

She was likely a real person, yes, but that real person is clouded in legends.

I'll try to separate the magic from the matron, so to speak, but nothing is fully certain.

That said, here is what we think we know.

Bridget Early was born in 1798 in County Clare, Ireland, and she entered into a tumultuous world.

Rebellion was afoot, leaving the nation bloody and uncertain.

Bridget's parents were poor.

Her mother, Ellen, spun the family's clothes from flax grown nearby, and as she worked, she taught her daughter about herbs and plants, how to make a tonic from dandelion roots, and fortify the heart with hawthorn.

When Bridget was only 16, both of her parents passed away, and with no money, no family, and nowhere to go, the young woman took to the roads.

It's thought that she spent some time in a workhouse, although other accounts claim that she spent these years living among the fairies, learning their secrets.

You see what I mean, about teasing facts from folklore?

At any rate, by 1817, she had found a husband and settled in the area of Fecal, one of the most superstitious regions in Ireland for what it's worth.

And it was there that Bridget Early applied the knowledge her mother had taught her and became the famed figure as we know her today, Biddy Early, the fairy doctor.

Like other fairy doctors, Biddy Early could heal animals and humans alike, freeing them from supernatural ailments.

But what set Early apart from the rest was her magic bottle.

No one quite knows where it came from.

Some say that her dead mother, worried for her daughter, came back from the dead to give her a powerful gift in the form of a magical blue bottle.

Others say that her son Sean won it in a fairy hurling game.

Still others say Bridget had gotten the bottle while living as a changeling.

But no matter its origin, one thing was certain, it had come from the fairies and with it, Biddy Early could cure any disease.

Oh, and that's not all.

By gazing deeply into the murky glass, Biddy Early could see the future.

Suffice to say, the thing made her pretty darn popular.

People came from miles around to visit Biddy Early and her magic bottle.

And she was apparently a great hang, too.

Her house was a popular spot for parties, merriment, and plenty of free-flowing booze.

Men seemed to like her too.

After her first husband passed away, she went on to marry three more times, the last time to a man in his 30s when she was in her 70s.

On top of all of that, she loved her fellow poor and she hated landlords, who she had known to curse now and then.

On one occasion, when a landlord tried to evict her, she exclaimed, you'll be leaving before I do, both in and out.

Not long after, that landlord died in a fire, half inside a window, and half out.

In short, Bridget Early was a force to be reckoned with, and people loved her for it.

But not everyone.

You see, while the townsfolk saw Biddy Early as a benevolent figure, the church disagreed.

According to the stories, priests cautioned the people of Fecal that a visit to Biddy Early was nothing short of a mortal sin.

Clerics accused her of colluding with the devil and killing her four husbands.

In 1865, the Catholic Church even resurrected a 300-year-old anti-witchcraft law solely so that they could bring Biddy Early to court.

She was just special like that.

On the day of the trial though, her clients flooded the courtroom to come to her defense.

And there, in front of the church itself, witness after witness insisted that the work she did was for good, not for evil.

At the end of the day, Biddy Early walked free.

But here's the thing.

Just because she won the battle didn't mean she won the war.

Though the court ruled in Bridget's favor, history has been less kind.

Because you see, she isn't remembered as a healer.

She isn't famous for her benevolence or her medicines.

Biddy Early, you see, is remembered as a witch.

It makes sense, doesn't it?

As antiquated as it might seem, all this talk of fairies and witches and magical cures, I think we can all understand where folks were coming from.

Illness is terrifying, even more so when our loved one doesn't seem to be getting better no matter how much medicine they take.

Who wouldn't want to believe that there was a simple way to take control of the situation, to literally magic the suffering away?

And it also makes sense that the Catholic Church wouldn't take too kindly to that sort of thing.

Miracles, after all, are supposed to be their domain.

If people can get it elsewhere, well, the church suddenly seemed a lot less necessary, didn't it?

No, the clergy couldn't have that.

Except, well, you know all those stories about Biddy Early in conflict with the church?

It turns out they aren't exactly true.

There is no historical record that she was ever taken to trial.

In fact, there is no historical record of her clashing with priests and clergymen at all.

All that stuff about the trial, this classic tale of folk healer versus religious institution, that exists only in the oral tradition, in the legends that have cropped up around Biddy Early, after her death.

In reality, the church seems to have loved Bridget Early as much as everyone else did, and she loved them right back.

She apparently invoked the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost during each of her miracle workings and bid her clients to follow the church's teachings.

When she died in 1874, a whopping 27 priests were said to have attended her funeral.

One priest even described her to his parishioners as a saint and implored them to pray for Biddy Early's soul.

Oh, and that mysterious bottle?

It's believed that on her deathbed, Bridget asked a man to throw it into a lake where the fairies could reclaim it.

That man just happened to be a priest, the very priest in fact, who lovingly performed her last rites.

And I get it.

We live in an era of oversimplification, of fast facts and headlines flashing on our phone screens designed to be ingested in a single moment.

It can be tempting to take someone like Biddy Early and plop her into a category we are familiar with.

that of the persecuted witch.

Stories are all about categories, after all, familiar tropes and and motifs that help us make a complicated world seem cleaner and more simple.

But reality is different, and the truth of Biddy Early is that she couldn't be so easily pigeonholed.

And at the end of the day, I think that can be said for all of us.

The fairy doctors of the British and Irish Isles aren't the only healers in the world who commune with the fairies.

Far from it.

In most non-Western cultures though, these practitioners aren't called fairy doctors.

No, they're called shamans.

And I'd like to introduce you to one of the most powerful groups of shamans in history.

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The boy was only 15 when it started.

It was sometime in the early to mid-1900s.

One minute, young Ibrahim was watching a herd of sheep on a mountain meadow, and the next, his mind had left his body.

And I'm not talking about your typical teenage daydream.

No, his spirit was traveling to the land of the fairies.

When Ibrahim came to, he was forever changed.

The fairies, you see, had chosen him to receive a special kind of power.

He could now communicate with them and heal people of supernatural ailments.

When the king learned of Ibrahim's new powers, he invited the boy to dance for him.

Naturally, he obliged, and as he danced, seven fairies appeared before the boy's eyes.

Three days later, he danced again, and then again.

And after that, the fairies once more took Ibrahim's mind away to their distant realm.

For five days I stayed there with the fairies, he said in an interview years later.

They gave me a blue glass with blue milk.

I drank the milk and then the great mother gave me permission to go back.

When my relatives and friends saw me, they were very happy.

I was back.

I went home with them, but I couldn't eat anything.

I was still with the fairies.

My mind was with them.

And I know what you're thinking right now.

A person taking off to fairyland and given special healing powers.

Magical blue fairy glass.

It sounds like classic Irish fairy doctor stuff, right?

Except that it's not.

Ibrahim lived in an entirely different part of the world.

He was from Hunza, a region in Pakistan surrounded by some of the highest mountain peaks on earth, sealing the culture away from outside influences.

Ibrahim had likely never even heard of Irish fairy doctors.

And yet the Hunza people had an eerily similar equivalent.

They were called Bitan, which essentially translates to shaman, and young Ibrahim was only one Bitan in a long line of mystical men and women.

Now, the Hunza people people believed that nearly everyone had some connection to the spirit world and could do tiny acts of magic, like casting an evil eye, but that's small potatoes compared to the Bitan's power.

Bitan, you see, could speak directly to the fairies.

These fairies, known to them as the Peri, are strikingly similar to the ones that we know from Celtic lore.

They're tall and lithe, sometimes up to two meters high, and are known for their mischief.

Like Celtic fairies, they're also morally ambiguous and might help or harm humans depending on their mood.

Pari ruled over wild animals and have the power to cause natural disasters.

If you offend a pari, you might just end up being buried in an avalanche or have your crops struck with blight.

Now, to be fair, it's hard to tell if you've offended something you can't see.

The pari are invisible after all.

At least they're invisible to most people.

The bitan though can see them as clear as day.

Now before you start googling how to become a bitan and see the fairies, it's worth noting that you can't.

That is, people don't choose to become Bitan.

The fairies choose you.

In Hunza Lore, they say that in the springtime, the pari descend from the sky dimension among the mountaintops, known as the upper world.

Down on earth, they then go from house to house, smelling the breath of all the newborn babies.

If a fairy smells something that they like, the pari will select the baby to be a bitan.

Now, it might take years for a parent to learn that their child had been chosen, but when puberty arrives, the fairy will return and tell the kid that they are to become a Bitan.

Basically, the you're a wizard hairy equivalent of ancient Pakistani shamanism.

If the child resists, which apparently is pretty common, it doesn't go very great.

The kid might fall into a coma or grow grievously ill, only recovering when they accept their destiny and agree to become a Bitan.

And if they don't, well then the poor kid dies.

If they do accept their role though, the fairy who chose them will fill the little girl or boy with incredible knowledge and power.

The Bitan will now be able to communicate with the fairies, their spirit traveling to the upper world and back at will.

It does take effort though.

In order to allow their souls to ascend to upper world where the pari live, the bitan have to perform elaborate rituals.

First, there's drumming and dancing.

Then the bitan drinks blood from a male goat's severed head.

They'll smoke juniper leaves and dance more.

And finally, the bitan falls into a trance and their mind begins to fly.

In this trance state, the Bhitan can predict the future.

They can foresee the fate of a harvest season and predict death and danger.

When travelers become lost in the towering mountains, Bhitan would ask the fairies to help find them.

They were even important political figures.

Bhitan played a huge role in state and national affairs, helping defend their cities from evil and averting fairy-induced natural disaster.

And then of course, Bhitan also had the power to heal, which, just like the Irish fairy doctors, they did for free.

Now, because the Bhitan could see the fairies, that meant that they could see when a fairy was hurting a human being.

And just like the Irish fairy doctors, this made them perfectly suited to treat supernatural ailments.

When someone got sick and regular medicine wasn't working, it was time for the Bitan to step in.

They would treat everything from psychiatric issues to demonic possession to infertility, not to mention a bevy of other diseases.

Unlike fairy doctors, though, they didn't use herbs and tinctures to heal people.

No, a Bitan, like our young friend Ibrahim, healed through ceremony.

He might sacrifice an animal to the parry or donate flour or butter as an offering.

Then the Bitan would mutter incantations, essentially apologizing for any offense that the patient may have accidentally caused.

The history of the Bitan stretches back farther than we have a record for.

Even as outside forces pushed through the mountains and attempted to stamp out the tradition, the Bitan endured.

It survived the arrival of Islam between the 11th and the 15th centuries and the British invasion of 1891.

Even in the face of colonialism, the Hunza people refused to let their folk traditions die.

Even so, it's impossible to stand against empire and technology forever.

Slowly, their power started to trickle away.

When the British took over, the Bhitan did survive, sure, but they were definitely demoted.

No longer essential state-sponsored oracles, they were only folk healers now.

As more modern medicine made its way into the region, more and more of the Hunza people turned away from the Bhitan and toward traditional doctors.

Today, most Bhitan have been relegated to the role of regional novelty.

They put on shows for tourists dancing for money.

Tragically, we will likely see an end to the Bhitan altogether within our lifetime.

That is, of course, unless a baby is born with breath so sweet that the fairies simply can't resist.

This episode of lore was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by Jenna Rose Nethercott, research by Alex Robinson, and music by Chad Lawson.

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It's a bargain for all of that ad-free storytelling and a great way to support this show and the team behind it.

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There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video.

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And as always, thanks for listening.

Here we go,

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you can obtain Wi-Fi and Mazarin with the local con ATNT Fiber with Al-Fi.

ATNT connected the change all.

ATT Fiber has responsibility.

So I wanted to visit Wi-Fi extended ATNT with a dinner.