The Other Side of the Leaf
Living with the Gods
BBC
4.7 • 616 Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2017
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Neil MacGregor continues his series about the expression of shared beliefs with a focus on societies who believe that they share the landscape with co-inhabitants who are not visible but are present. Such belief systems can be found in places such as the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu.
It is difficult, Neil MacGregor suggests, to express this relationship with the landscape in the English language. Words such as spirits, gods or beings do not adequately convey the nature of the co-inhabitants - and although these co-inhabitants cannot always be seen, they are always there, on the other side of the leaf.
Producer Paul Kobrak
Produced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | While those people can be very kind, they can also do bad things to you. |
| 0:06.2 | So you have to treat them with respect and care. |
| 0:09.4 | Hello, I'm Neil McGregor, and in this series of podcasts, |
| 0:13.9 | I'm looking at objects to see how shared beliefs help shape societies. |
| 0:20.0 | In these programmes, we explore how different communities and different societies relate to their gods. |
| 0:27.0 | In this episode, it's not the gods, but rather spirits and entities that live on the other side of the leaf. |
| 0:34.8 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:38.3 | Alas! |
| 0:39.2 | What noise? |
| 0:40.3 | Heaven, forgive our sins! |
| 0:42.6 | Pear is black, grey, green and white. |
| 0:45.5 | You moonshine revelers and shades of night. |
| 0:48.5 | Nearby, but just out of sight. |
| 0:51.2 | Playful, tricky, and potentially dangerous. |
| 0:54.3 | Our fairies, he that speaks to them shall die. I'll wink and couch. No man their works must |
| 1:01.4 | I. From Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to Shakespeare's merry wives of Windsor, whom you |
| 1:08.2 | just heard making a fool of Falstaff and on into Tolkien's hobbits. |
| 1:13.1 | Fairies and enchanted landscapes have long been a fixture of English folklore, |
| 1:18.1 | enlivening the frontiers of our fantasy with humour and occasionally dread. |
| 1:24.6 | Elves or sprites, gnomes, goblins or fairies. They're slight and quick, darting around, never |
| 1:31.3 | caught or clearly seen, always reappearing, usually close to one particular place. In popular |
| 1:38.0 | song, their kingdom is at the bottom of the garden. In the merrywise of Windsor, it's the old oak tree. And until quite recently, |
... |
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