Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
G'day, welcome to The Last Call. I am Matt Fradd. Thank you for being here. We've got a real treat for you.
Chapter 2: What story does Martin Shaw tell in this episode?
Martin Shaw, who I've interviewed recently, is going to sit down with me and he is going to tell me a fairy tale. I love your retelling of stories.
It is called The Birth of Oisín. Finn immediately recognizes that he is in the presence of something extremely unusual. He is just about to close his eyes and there's a knock.
Martin, thank you for coming. We just spent some time speaking about fairy tales and myth and storytelling and attending to what is small so that our world can become larger. I'm going to stick with it. There's something in it. And congratulations on your book being a New York Times bestseller. Thank you. It's called Liturgies of the Wild, The Myths That Make Us.
And when you started writing this, if someone had said, this might be a New York Times bestseller, you would have laughed maybe.
I would have had no sense. I wouldn't have been able to absorb the idea. Right up until the moment I found out that it had happened, it never would have occurred to me. I was very pleased with the way things were going already, but this is a whole other thing.
It reminds me of Lars Ulrich. I'm afraid I'll be very familiar with Lars Ulrich. So he said something about, like, if he had been told that they were going to become as big as they were, he said, I would have asked you what drugs you were on and would you mind sharing any?
Yeah.
Anyway, so I love your retelling of stories. And I said, well, let's have you in here just to tell me a story. I will. Which is a little weird, maybe.
You say, I'm going to fall asleep. I've got a pillow here. No, no. Yeah. If you fall asleep, I will take that as high praise. And when I ask you, you just say, I was doing dream work, Martin, for goodness sake. You're so unsophisticated. So- What I was thinking about, you and I were talking earlier, and you mentioned that you'd actually lived in Donegal in Ireland for a period of time.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of Finn McCool in Irish mythology?
And she says, well, look, my name is Sive. Think of scything. My name is Sive. And she said, I was that deer that you saw today. I was that doe. I am indeed a woman of the she, of the people of the hill. And he said, well, this is great news. I'm thrilled to meet you. But is there something that you want from me? And she said, well, let me give you the back story.
I have reached an age when it's time for me to marry. And one by one, the men of the fairy have been coming to audition for their role as a potential husband. But she said, the problem is, the problem is, I long, long ago fell in love with someone from your world. And he said, well, how would that be? And she said, well, I never met him until recently.
But she said, at night, when the fairy gather around the fire, And the old Shanaki, the storyteller, comes out and tells stories. The stories the fairies love to listen to are the stories of our lives, human beings. And she said there was one fella.
She said, oh, if the rivers of the world were spun of pure silver, if the leaves on the trees were spun of pure gold, he would have given them all away. Now, Finn, who's not always the sharpest pencil in the pack, he's saying, who is this man? Where does he live? And she's saying, he's quite near. And he's saying, you know, typically generous.
He says, we will explore every traveler's camp, every desolate beach, every mountaintop until we find this extremely lucky man. And you can have him as your husband. And she said, OK, let me finish my story and then things will get clear. She said, Finn, a man came to court me, very substantial man. They call him the dark man of the she. He's a great magician, very charismatic.
And he spoke to me persuasively to see if I would marry him. And I refused because my heart is with this other. And when that didn't work, he spoke angrily to me. That didn't work. And in the end, he produced a thin hazel wand He touched me on my shoulder and I became a deer.
But I knew, I knew in my secret heart, if I could get to Ben Bolbin, if I could get to the hazy place, the dimpsy time, the time between dog and wolf, the man I loved, I knew would be waiting for me there. And that is you, Finn. And I claim you. It's a beautiful thing to say to somebody. I claim you, not I like you or I've got a crush on you. I claim you.
Now, in Irish, there's a lovely word when you have an upswelling of the heart. You say, I have a groar for you. I have a groar. And it's a way of kind of testing the waters with someone. It's not an outright declaration, but it's saying, I would have a bit of a groar for you. I see your love spot.
And so I'm pleased to say that Finn, for the first time in his life, fell full in swoon with this woman. Scythe and Finn. It is the kind of love we are all a little jealous of to this day. Now, the problem was, from that moment onwards, he... he was barely visible. You know, he was off on picnics with her.
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Chapter 4: How does Finn's encounter with the doe change the story?
It's a little boy. It's like one of yours. You know, it's this little fellow with this wild bush of curls.
and he sees Finn and Finn looks at him and the boy with no fear whatsoever just walks up to Finn and puts his little hand in Finn's big hands and Finn knows I want to greet the father of my unborn child this is Scythe's son somehow this is his son and all the grief that was in Finn's heart at that moment went away
and all the joy that is in this world that is appropriate for us to have flooded in. So this boy, he took home with him. You can imagine these two were just glued. They were just glued. They just sat like mammal warmth, mammal warmth. Now the boy couldn't speak. He spoke, how could I say this? He spoke a strange antlered language. Think of his mum. He spoke a strange antlered language.
But after a while, he learned Irish and Finn managed to find out the story. And he said, well, you know, how did you even get there? And he said, well, my mum... All I know is I was born in the land of the fairy, but my mum always said my dad was from this world, but we were always being pursued by the dark man of the she.
And she said to me, if ever he touches me with a hazel wand and I become a deer again, you were to get to the hazy place of Ben Bolbin and you will find your father. Just trust me, you will find your father. And that is what happened. And I find myself with you now, dad. And so Finn held his boy's hands and he gave him a beautiful name. He gave him the name Oisin, which means little deer.
Now, Oisin turned out to be an even greater poet than his father. There are different endings to this story. Some people say that Sive and Finn were never reunited, but I find that a little harsh. I have heard other versions where at some point towards the end actually of Finn's life, towards the twilight time, He met her again. He met her and they were reunited.
But what I can tell you is the only reason we know this story is Ashene, at the very end of the age of myth and the very beginning of the age of Christianity, he met St. Patrick on a beach. And even St. Patrick, as we call him, dear steel-eyed Padre Paddy of the many conversions, even Patrick couldn't waste the opportunity of saying, tell me the stories of your father.
And as an old man, he was 300 years old, and he still spoke with that strange antlered tongue. He said, I will tell you, my father, if the rivers of the world were spun of pure silver, if the leaves on the trees were pure gold, my father would have given them all away. That's your story.
Thank you. Feels almost indecent to speak after that, so I won't. Thanks. Yeah.
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