Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit.

I'm Eleanor Yonega and in today's episode we'll be talking about folklore and whales,

the social uses of supernatural stories, the motifs which make Welsh folklore special,

and ghost stories just like this one.

There are many legends about Hen Urah Kors Vochno.

She rose out of the swamp on foggy nights and entered houses through every obstacle that was

devised to stop her. She breathed in people's faces and caused diseases.

She was disturbed once while she was supping on fungus and marsh beats.

She hissed like a serpent and disappeared. She was they say seven feet tall and was thin and

bony. She had yellow skin and pitch black hair that curled from her enormous head to her feet.

Nothing destroys her but fire and as she dwells in a bog that is a watery quagmire,

there is no hope for her destruction other than the deluge of fire and that would need to burn

for a long time to burn her. It is thought that she dwelt in the thick fog and that she was rarely

ever seen but was heard screaming loudly and her scream was always considered an omen of some

evil that would be for the person who heard it. She was monstrous to look upon her sinewy arms,

the long nails, her unkempt hair, her black teeth, and the deathly pallor of her whole countenance

was objectively befitting of her lingering whale which was terrifying enough to freeze the veins

of all who heard it.

To help us make sense of stories like this, I'm thrilled to be joined by Deleth Fatter and Mark

Norman, the authors of the absolutely unputdownable book The Folklore of Whales Ghosts,

out now with Calon Press. Deleth is a folklorist with an expertise in death omens and apparitions,

as well as the world's first Welsh-speaking, consulted pediatric and perinatal pathologist which

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