Bringing Legends to Life with Caitlin Fitzgerald
Pardon me while I have a strange interlude. But there is nothing else. Life is an obscure oboe bumming a ride on the omnibus of art. Among the misty corridors of pine, and in those corridors I see figures, strange figures. Welcome back, my friends, to the AP Strange Show.
AP Strange:I am your host, AP Strange. This is my show, and tonight's show is brought to you by the Jackalope Rescue Society. We we the purpose of the rescue society is to set people up with a nice adoption of a Jackalope because there are many that are in need of adoption, and we don't we don't wanna support the jackalope breeders out there with their unscrupulous practices. So, go see the Jackalope Rescue Society to find the jackalope that's right for you. And on tonight's show, excited to do this one because I have a multi talented, multidisciplinary artist that I happened to meet IRL as the kids say these days and I bought a piece of art from her and then went to her website and I was blown away by the various methods that she's able to use and the research that goes into it and some strange synchronous connections between her work and stuff that I've been doing.
AP Strange:The artist is Caitlin Fitzgerald and she's just great. I'm excited to get into all of this stuff. How are you doing Caitlin?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Good. That was fantastic.
AP Strange:Oh, yeah. Well, you're fantastic. I mean, I'm not lying. Yeah. Well, just keep going back and forth.
AP Strange:I have had shows like that sometimes, but no but I mean seriously when I bought the artwork from you and then came home I'm like looking online I'm like oh oh there's even more Oh and Jackalopes and you know, oh there's a whole story behind this artwork. So I guess just to start out, what has your journey been like for the art and the research? Like which came first for you and kind of like what got you started on all of it?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah, I think that's a fantastic framing for it. They kind of just go hand in hand. Yeah. I've always made art and I've always been interested in mythology and folklore. When I was in high school, I had a fantastic Latin teacher who also ran a comparative mythology course that I fell in love with.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And it was there that I you know, from there I bought my first copy of The Hero with a thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. And when I went to college, wanted to double major in art and comparative mythology. Neither of which is super conducive for regular layman work, but, you know, I think it really illustrates what has driven the two. They're a match set. They go together for me.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:It's always been deeply researched material paired with artistic practice and I think a lot of my time has been reconciling the two with each other and kind of led me to where I am now.
AP Strange:Yeah, I mean they do seem very much intertwined. It's almost like a feedback loop where you find stuff in folklore and mythology and and old manuscripts and things like that that inspire you to wanna create the art and then kind of it, you know, it it doubles on itself and it's kind of a snowball effect,
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. I would absolutely say that's, you know, a 100% what's what's kind of happening here. The more I research, the more inspiration I'm gathering, whether it's, you know, things like jackalopes, right? Sort of an Americana folklore section or medieval manuscripts which can have varying degrees. I've I've been doing a lot of books of hours work or medieval mythology, things of that nature.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:It's sort of focused in on a few core areas over time, but it changes up a lot and they kind of all feed into each other and drive sort of all these different ways of being expressed through, you know, the illustration work that I'm doing or the stained glass pieces that I'm working on or ceramics, which is sort of a newer media for me to be working in. I really only started doing that about a year ago. And, you know, just kind of looking at different ways of telling these stories and it's really for me it's narrative driven, the stories are interesting, the timeline of them is interesting, how old these things are, right? Talk about Jackalopes, you can see them in Renaissance art. So they
AP Strange:Oh, okay. I didn't realize that. I mean, you said Americana, so I was like thinking, yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:So it's right, but it starts as an Americana, right? The traditional jackalope sort of comes in the category, I believe, of, like, a fearsome critter or a
AP Strange:Yeah. Out of lumberjack lore.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. Lumberjack lore and things of that nature, which is kind of where I started with it. But if you pull the thread, you can find something called a lepis coronatus, and my Latin is really bad, and my pronunciation is even worse, but it's a horned rabbit and they had them, you know, you can see them in medieval paintings. You can see them depicted in not not the traditional really, really old beast areas, but some of the, like, eighteen, seventeen hundred ones, you could see these rabbits depicted with horns. Anyone who's super familiar with the Jackalope theme may have heard of the papillomavirus that can infect rabbits and I think deer can get it as well that produces sort of knobby horn looking protrusions, but they so they were depicted, that's, you know, in theory, what what we're seeing, right?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Being depicted in these manuscripts, and that's kind of where this thing is, is sort of, you know, originating from. And another great example is also the Al Mirage, which is sort of the unicorn rabbit.
AP Strange:Okay. I saw one of these on your Instagram. Yes. I'm curious about that. Or Yeah.
AP Strange:Mirage is what it's called?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. It's a I believe it's an Arabic word, and it originates from, I don't know how familiar you are with Alexander the Great or what are referred to as the Alexander romances, which was it's a type of manuscript that depicted Alexander the Great in all sorts of fantastic adventures. He was off fighting giants. He was traveling under the sea. They got kind of more and more elaborate and outlandish and mythologized and some of my favorite depictions of include his horse Bucephalus.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Again, my Latin is bad. As a unicorn with a peacock tail, you know, so it's all this like fabulous stuff, right? There's there's all these monsters that are not really, you know, we know Alexander the Great existed, but
AP Strange:did he
Caitlin Fitzgerald:ride around on a unicorn? I'm not saying no. But the Almiraj actually comes from Persian Alexander romance. He was a it was a rabbit with one horn that was terrorizing an island and Alexander the Great, you know, freed the island from the menace and that was his reward was to be given this this ferocious rabbit with one horn.
AP Strange:Wow. Like, did did he kill it, or did it
Caitlin Fitzgerald:So I'm actually as I said it, I realized I miss recounted the tail. So the tail is bad. A serpent was attacking an island. Not sure why, like a big sea serpent attacking an island. Alexander the Great goes and feeds, I believe he takes the carcasses of cows and he fills them with poison and feeds that to the serpent.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:The serpent eats it and dies and the almiraj was his reward, but it was also known to be very ferocious and like a killer of men. So I'm not sure what he did with it. But it this is an example actually of of some really early research driven work on my side because I first came across them probably around 2018. There wasn't a lot of information about what this Al Mirage was other than something that was cited in D and D manuals and. Okay.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:I like a primary source. I need a, you know, a lot of times I want a primary source. Give me give me a primary source. And so I remember spending a day flipping through the, I believe, Bibliotheca National in France. They have digitized a huge amount of their collection, so you can flip through the manuscripts, and they had some of these Persian manuscripts, and you can see them illuminated to depict, these rabbits.
AP Strange:Are they in Arabic?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yes, you can.
AP Strange:Okay.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:So not not a language I could read, but there's enough translation work that I at least was able to see a primary source.
AP Strange:Yeah. Right.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:That was a manuscript from the time period that was appropriate for it and wasn't just, an internet website talking about, right? Because a lot of times if you're researching old stuff, everyone just starts to cite one primary source, and who knows if that source is accurate or not. And you keep seeing this person citing this person who's citing this person and it's all the same. So that
AP Strange:means It goes around the circle. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And then you find that that primary source maybe never existed or was a hoax or was a that happens, not infrequently. So I guess that, you know, it's just a good illustration of how that drive to kind of find a primary source has been present in a lot of my work and also kind of the love of the manuscript and the handmade book and, you know, hundreds of year old texts that you can many, many are now digitized now, and also shout out Boston Public Library, you can residents of Massachusetts can make appointments to go see their manuscript collection.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Fantastic. Think other libraries do as well, but, you know, I've gone to the Boston Public Library a bunch to go look at books of hours that are 500 years old, and you can spend as long as you need to with the source materials. I think that's just I'm constantly blown away that that resource is available to residents of the state. And it's been a source of inspiration for a lot of my work. But I just think it's a fantastic thing to have what a treasure trove.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:They don't have just manuscripts, right? They have art, they have founding fathers documents, they have all these things in their special collections that people can go and just make an appointment and see them.
AP Strange:Yeah, I mean, that is fantastic. In the previous episode where I was talking about illuminated manuscripts with the guest, Leah Prime, it never occurred to me that you could just go ask. There's people there that'll bring it out. And I'm like, Well, mean, I guess I kind of knew that intellectually, but I never really thought about it on a practical level. Like, Boston's not far.
AP Strange:I go there all the time. I can just you know? Why don't I do that?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And they're super pumped too. They're always excited.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:They love they love people using the resources. I will say it is an online request system. So I don't know if they could if you just, like, walked in and asked if they'd have any available because they have to kind of pull them off the shelves, but it's free. What a great way to spend an afternoon. And then there's a bar in the library too.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:So when you're done, you can go have a nice cocktail and, like
AP Strange:That is fantastic. Your,
Caitlin Fitzgerald:you know.
AP Strange:You're I'm also a big I'm a big fan of the Vibliotheque Nationale as well too because as you said, they have a lot of it online. Yes. So you don't have to go to Paris, but you can
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And they seem to have a better infrastructure than the British Museum which got hacked I think last year and so most of their manuscripts are down now.
AP Strange:Right, right, yeah, yep. But yeah, the French one is pretty accessible, would say. Yeah. Easy to use, yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Even if you don't speak French, which I definitely do not.
AP Strange:Right. I can read French just well enough to like figure out the context and then have to look up little words and stuff, yeah. But as you were saying too about the El Mirage and finding that old manuscript, like there's this really alluring kind of mystique to these old pages. It's kind of almost cooler that it's in Arabic or French or some language you can't read because it has like a mystical esoteric quality to it. I imagine that's very inspiring as well.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah, Even the books in Latin, you know, lot a lot of the materials that I've been viewing at the library are books of hours for the Cult of Saint Guineford project that I've been working on, which you get into. But specifically, it's focused around books of ours, which I really love because a lot of them are they were for the lay population and they were often for women. And you can see when you're sitting with a book that's 500 years old and you can see what pages were the favorite because they're more worn or the corners are shinier because that's where your hands were. There's something so profound about that. And also, to your point, not really being able to I can read some Latin.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:I can't read that black letter squished together, shortened, right? A lot of the words are shortened in ways that I'm not super familiar I am not a scholar.
AP Strange:I
Caitlin Fitzgerald:didn't get to double major in comparative mythology and art, I just ended up with an art degree, so you know, a lot of it is really, you start to pick things out over time and it gets, that gets really exciting as well. But it is amazing to sit with an illustration that you kind of have no context for.
AP Strange:Right, because then the pattern seeking part of your brain kind of tries to build the story where there's the absence of context, so you
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah, you mythologize on your own, you build up your own stories that's part of the beauty, part of the appeal and beauty for me for specifically mythology, folklore, folk tales, these sort of belief systems that fall a bit outside of religious doctrine is that do change over time and they become like living, breathing stories that have new endings and different versions, and that's very cool as well. Can find a really old version of a tale that's completely different from a more recent one.
AP Strange:Yeah and I mean if you uncover some of these old ones you can breathe new life into them where they may have otherwise been sort of forgotten about, which I guess was sort of the case with the Guinafort stuff, right? How did you discover Saint Guinafort? I mean, I suppose we should give listeners a little idea of who that was, but he's a Catholic dog saint, folk Yeah,
Caitlin Fitzgerald:so Saint Guineford is a thirteenth century folk saint, and he was worshipped in the Lyons area of France, and just so happened to be a greyhound and not a human, which was unacceptable to the church at a time when they were actually canonizing a lot of folk saints. It was not an uncommon practice. And so, know, kind of to give you the whole rundown, the original author of the tale, Stephen of Bourbon, was a Dominican and in the thirteenth century, we weren't quite yet at witch trials and inquisition, but the Dominicans would become the Inquisitor, one of the branches of Inquisitors for the Catholic church.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Along with the Franciscans. So those two orders would become, you know, the majority of who was seeking out heresy and witchcraft and sort of punishing a lot of those activities a little bit later from now. Thirteenth century, we're, you know, 1200s. He was a contemporary of Saint Dominic, the founder of the order. He was tasked with traveling the countryside and again in this sort of pre inquisition role, he was preaching and sort of correcting folk practices and rather than Guinford becoming like a this is heretical, this is witch based, which a lot of the tale kind of is.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:It was, it fell under superstition at that time is what they were sort of saying. And they were sort of correcting these misguided folk belief systems as they traveled the countryside. And a lot of times, though, that would look like canonizing a folk saint if they had found one who had a legitimate case, basically. And you see it a lot with synchronized saints. Know, Ireland's got tons of great examples, St.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Bridget, right? We know that's great, etc. So it was a legitimate practice to go around and do that. However, he writes in his tale, because you can kind of read a bit of surprise in his voice as he recounts this tale that he's going to the village in the area and he's receiving confession from the women that they're going through this practice to this saint, and the practice is that they will, they're led by an old woman, already suspicious. Right.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:It involves a well, again, another, you know, pagan sort of icon in a lot of well worship and water worship and things of that nature, and they are performing the ceremony where they're kind of dunking their babies and they're leaving their clothes tied around the well, and they're praying to the saint and the saint is helping them, you know, cure the babies and when he asks about, oh well, you know, who's a saint? Tell me more about him. That's when it comes out that the saint is actually a greyhound And
AP Strange:Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:That's not acceptable. If it was a guy, we'd be okay.
AP Strange:Right. I mean, I think in your writing about it, it sounded like he got the story from an older woman in the village, which sounded kind of witchy to me. I imagine going to like a little witch's, hut or something and getting the story of of Saint Keene for, you know?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. And and so he was doing a lot of this. So the the it's funny. It actually comes from a book that he was writing at the end of his life that were supposed to be examples for people's you know, for other preachers or priests if you were working on a mass and you wanted to cover different. So, he he was working on this document at the end of his life that was exempla of all these different kinds of tales.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:This is arguably the most famous even though it's not it's far more well known than it was fifteen years ago. I will say that. It's not super well known.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:But it has its it has its niche. And so these were supposed to be examples that you could give when you were make writing a mass or you were talking to you know, you're preaching in the countryside. And, well, let me tell you this story and warn you about this practice because that's the devil is tricking you into thinking this dog is saving your children, etc. So and that's where this falls under kind of the superstition. So that's where it was preaching against, like, don't fall for superstition, the illusions of the devil, the enticements.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And so he has many other like I say, he's got a whole book full of them. I have slowly kind of started to work my way through them. They're all in Latin, so I'm using really bad Google Translate to try and see the other stories, because this is just one little blip in a huge manuscript of Tale. There's some really fascinating other ones. There's one there's one where someone puts a host, you know, like the little bread you get.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:The host, what else is it called? Anyway, someone puts it in their beehive to protect the bees, and they find that the bees build a church around it and put it inside the church, and then this is considered a bad thing that has happened, that you've given the bees a communion wafer, and they've now built a church, and that's recorded as a true story. But someone did so he's got tons of tales like this. Right? And they're all I
AP Strange:mean, that sounds like a miracle to me. You know?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Right. So it's interesting because a dog saint doesn't necessarily sound like a bad thing.
AP Strange:Right.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:But, you know, it was a time where the thirteenth century in this kind of area, there was a there was a lot of tension that was starting to build up because the Catholic church was growing and growing and there was starting to be more merchant class. So, there was more trade, there was a middle class was kind of coming up, they were starting to be able to educate themselves and read and so there was attention as the population was maybe not as as just taking everything at face value from the church anymore. And so that's why we're starting to see people like Stephen of Bourbon go around and start to say like, you can't do this. This, you know, this folks ain't will have him canonize that dog. We're going to have the bones dug up and burned and you can't worship him anymore and you can't do this.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And so it's a really just an interesting look into kind of what was happening in Europe at that time and how people were, you know, taking these folk tales and develop developing them in other ways that would suit their daily needs. They needed someone to pray to to protect their children and protect against plague and protect mothers, which is what his primary focuses were, were kind of those three things.
AP Strange:Yeah, because I mean I guess he was murdered in the course of saving a child, tragically.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah so for I guess for that actual part, because I obviously didn't cover that, is how did the dog end up dead? Yeah. It's basically, the tale is that a you know, there's a knight, he's got a baby, and everyone leaves the castle except for the dog, Guinea Fert and the baby. A snake enters the castle. I don't know how many super poisonous snakes there are in Lyon's France, but
AP Strange:Right.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:One shows up here.
AP Strange:In days of yore, there were a lot, you know, so.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:It's an interesting it's an interesting, I think, look at the anxieties. Right? Snake scary. You know, that sort of like quintessential
AP Strange:They're always kind of used as a as a villain. Right, they're an easy bad guy. Yeah, right.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:So the serpent comes into the castle and is going for the baby, apparently, and the dog ends up killing the serpent in that process, overturning the cradle and blood gets everywhere. The dog's got blood, the cradle's turned over, there's blood on the floor, the baby's, you know, just like under the cradle. And nurse mate comes in, sees the scene, screams, runs out. Mom comes in, sees the scene, screams run out. Knight comes in, sees the scene, kills his dog because his assumption is my dog has killed my baby.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Finally, the baby wakes up and starts crying and the knight realizes what he's done. He's killed his dog. Right. Actually saved his baby's life and he's overcome with remorse. They bury the baby in a well and
AP Strange:The dog.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:The baby in a well. The dog in a well.
AP Strange:They just
Caitlin Fitzgerald:pop a baby in a well. Dog's fine. Whatever. So, yes, they
AP Strange:bury baby. Bizarre ending in the story. This is all your fault, baby. You
Caitlin Fitzgerald:had just woken up. I mean, this is a really well slept baby. It's like a snake comes in, its crib gets knocked over, it's covered in blood, everyone's screaming, baby's asleep. So they put the dog in the well. And fill I think they fill it in with rocks and then eventually the castle falls into ruin.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:So.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:People start praying at the well and they're finding that the dog is helping their children heal. And they're tying scraps of clothing and they're performing these kind of pagan rituals, right? It's clearly a pagan sort of inspired it reminds me a lot, I don't know if you've heard of a Cluty well, I think that's Scotland, yeah, scraps of fabric, because they describe it as having like fabric tied around the trees and their focus is solely on this well, so it's obviously all far reaching.
AP Strange:Well, it's always funny to me though because, like, the Catholic church has so many witchy elements to it and spooky, like, ritual. I mean, they have relics for all the saints. They have pilgrimage sites. There are the miracles that are attributed to those. So it doesn't seem like beyond the pale, but I guess a dog is a bridge too far for the Dominicans That of that
Caitlin Fitzgerald:is basically it, the dog is a bridge too far. And I think that's part of what you pick up, right, when you read through his initial text and he's asking, well, tell me more about this saint. Oh, it's a dog. Oh, we can't have that. It does have a lot of the things match up where it's ticking a lot of the boxes of Folk Saint that you would traditionally see canonized as an official.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Oh, miracles are being performed. Yep. Okay. We're seeing like prayers are getting answered and miraculous recoveries. Okay.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:This sounds all good. And so, you know, really the the then becomes, well, no, it's not it's not a miracle. That's the devil tricking you. And actually, a basic version of this tale is in The Lady and the Tramp, where if you were I don't know when the last time you saw the Trampos was. For me, was very long ago.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:There's a scene Oh, thirty
AP Strange:years ago. Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. There's a scene where a rat gets into the nursery. And if you remember, the dog Tramp jumps into the nursery, attacks the rat, overturns the cradle, the baby's crying, they run-in, they blame the dog.
AP Strange:Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:So Jean Claude Schmidt wrote The Holy Greyhound, which is basically that's the tech, like that's the book. It's a really great dive. He wrote it in the 80s, French author, it was originally published in French, there are English versions of it, and he goes through every instance of this of this story because it it pops up not just in this one tale. You get versions of it like I just mentioned Lady and the Tramp. There's versions in a book called The History of the seven Sages where they're sort of moralizing tales, there's a version that Ricki Ticki Tavi, the story about the mongoose that's saving the baby from a snake, is attributed as a similar esque kind of structure, so it does have a lot of folktale origins and it seems to survive after in other areas in that way.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:I think in like in Germany you see a lot of it as a folktale. The knight, you know, there's a there's several versions where it's Geenford is not named and he's not identified as being a saint that's providing miracles but the faithful hound is is like a folklore motive that you. Right. Again and again, that's protecting a baby from an interloper.
AP Strange:Interesting. Yeah and then in the tarot you have like the fool has like a little dog with him too that seems to be kind of warning him about the cliff he's about to step off of.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Well, that's the thing. Yeah. The thing with dogs is they're they're really they're kind of the best versions of humanity. A lot of. Right.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And I think in a in a lot of folk tales as well, they are the foil for the wolf, which would have been a much more serious threat in medieval Europe than it is today. It would have been seen as, you know, the absolute it would have been a legitimate concern in your village. Wolves is a dangerous item and dogs would be the good version of that. There's a lot of The
AP Strange:piece of art that I bought for you is one of the Ginfurt ones, and at the time I remember it kind of reminded me of some of the Catholic folk tales from Ireland where there's like werewolves, but they're like holy werewolves and they're protectors of the village. I forgot what the name of them was but they're so I mean yeah the wolf isn't always terrible but yeah I take the point there like the wolfhound was bred specifically to keep the wolves away you know like so.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah, and I mean, and again, dogs aren't always seen as good. Right. But I think a lot of the I think specifically because it's a greyhound, which is sort of the Would have been like the bougiest of the dogs.
AP Strange:Right.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:They were status symbols, right? They were your hunting greyhounds were, you know, number one hunting dog fastest. So they would have been a very fancy dog versus just some sort of mixed breed or
AP Strange:A dog for a night, yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:A dog for a night, a fancy man's dog, definitely.
AP Strange:You
Caitlin Fitzgerald:see them a lot depicted in the unicorn hunt tapestries, so some of the versions of Geenford I've done have sort of tried to incorporate some of that unicorn tapestry, sacred unicorn hunt kind of imagery as well, because there are so many different ways you see dogs depicted throughout medieval myths and folklore and and all these different avenues, and I think for Ginfurt particular, what I'm looking to do is because there are no, there's no existing medieval art depictions. We know. Right. It was being worshiped. I'm sure there was something but you know, I'm kind of playing around with the idea of what if there was?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And so reinserting him back in, bring him bring him back up. And there's evidence, you know, Jean Claude Schmidt in his book does outline, there's evidence that the cult of Saint Ginfort was active up until like the 1930s. So he, so Stephen of Bourbon was not successful in demolishing this folk practice. There was evidence in the 1800s it was brought up in a couple letters between clergymen and in the, I believe in the 30s, cites in his book, he goes to the area and he talks to people and they were talking about a woman who would walk the pilgrimage of Saint Ginford for people.
AP Strange:So would they go to where the well was? Like because the well was demolished. Right? So they would just have to kinda go to basically where it was or
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. So he he found he found the site of where it would would have been. Right. And there's very old so the website that I'm kind of putting this all into, that cultofguinfrit.com, has I'm hoping to compile all of this as well as, you know, his book is again, that's the authority. Really good.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:It's, you know, not everyone wants to read a whole book. I've read it several times, but I'm hoping to translate kind of all of those things over into this website because he found he found like maps that show Saint Guinfritz Forest and it's written on the map. And so he was able to go to France and there is a, you know, there's a place you can go in France that this is where it would have been. There's nothing there, it's literally a forest, I think it's kind of on the side of the road now.
AP Strange:Well, it's good that it hasn't been, like, developed on, and it, like, it's just condos now or
Caitlin Fitzgerald:something. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That probably would have been even worse.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:But there, you know, there's no evidence of a of a well. I think they found they did find evidence of structures but there's not a church sitting there or anything. But his research did find, you know, there there was a site and so someone was practicing. You could pay, basically, you would pay someone to do a pilgrimage for you which is very Catholic, I feel like.
AP Strange:Yeah. Just
Caitlin Fitzgerald:paying someone else to to do it for you. But she would, you know, again, up until this this time period, she basically, she, the practice died with her, but people would pay her to walk different pilgrimage sites in the area.
AP Strange:Wow. Well, I mean, I think you alluded to there being some of some manner of revival of the dog cult through some through his book and your your artwork and everything too, right? So you think we could revive it and bring it back?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:It's funny, you know, when I I see it more and more, so I first learned about Saint Guida for probably over fifteen years ago. Yeah, it's been a while. I I first came across him in college and I, for the life of me, cannot figure out where. So, as someone who wanted to do to double major, Who wanted to study comparative mythology, I just ended up taking whatever myth, religious study sort of courses I could get my hands on and it did it ended up looking like a lot of medieval or medieval studies one on like monasticism, one on early Christianity, one that was like just focused on Abrahamic religions. So, in one of those courses, somehow, I stumbled across a offshoot mention of this folk saint.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:I still have all my college books. I still use them a lot. I can't find them in any of them. So, I don't even know which one it was. Like, I may never know where where I originally first stumbled across him, but from there, I ended up with Jean Claude Schmidt's book, which was really hard to find back then, and there was nothing else about this dog.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:You couldn't like Google it, nothing would come up. It definitely has a lot more people engaged with the story now. I think it really just speaks. It's one of the most popular things that I've created is the illumination work of Sinking Forever. I think it just really resonates.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:It's a story that really resonates. Yeah. You know, it's really
AP Strange:I mean, I think we failed to mention here too that you're doing basically, you're recreating, well not recreating, you're creating whole cloth illuminated pages like in the old illuminated manuscripts. So I mean, just to underline to my listeners that this is a very detail oriented process that takes a lot of skill. When I saw these at your table, I was looking at them, I'm like, I wonder what book this is from. And then I realized it was your original art and I was blown away by it because it looks just like a medieval manuscript.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. So that's kind of the goal, as talking about there being no existing, and that's sort of, in a roundabout way that's probably not laid out incredibly well for the listener who's just stumbling across this. The goal of this work is to answer the question of what if there were, what if sinking for it was included in all of this medieval material? So that's where the focus on Books of Hours, because they were a lay creation, you could have them customized to include whatever saints you wanted, essentially Book of Hours, and I go over to my blog, but they're a collection of prayers so that you could follow along at home basically with what they were doing in monasteries for daily prayers. They were very common to give as gifts for brides to be or to your wife or to even just to relatives.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:You could have a very very fancy illuminated manuscript made and you know, it would be a very impressive gift to give, to show how rich you were, how powerful you were, you know, so you get a lot of kings and etcetera, making them or having them made. And so I, they would have suffrage sections, which is the section in the back of the book, which is individual prayers to saints. And so that's what I'm doing is I'm reinserting him into the suffrage section with a probably poorly translated made up Latin prayer of my own. And so I'm using existing so the first one I did was for the of Hours of Catherine of Cleves, which is at the Morgan Library in New York City, and it's it was probably the first Book of Hours that I really got into. It's because it had a huge exhibition in the 70s because they unbound the book for conservation work, and at that time they made a really high quality facsimile and printed it really broadly.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:So, I got a used copy of it long, long, long ago for pretty cheap because facsimiles even can can start to get really, really expensive. I've been lucky enough to see it at the Morgan. It wasn't on display the last time I was at the Morgan. I'm not sure how often it rotates in and out, but it has, I would argue, the best suffrage section of any illuminated manuscript. They're just so fanciful and weird.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:The marginalia is got a ton of personality. The saints are beautifully illustrated. So that was the first one I did, and I've sort of been going on from there. A lot of them are I think I did the Hours of Henry VIII which is also at the Morgan, the Bell Hours of the Duke de Burie which is at the Cloisters in New York City and I'm starting to move on now to works that are in the Boston Public Library. Cool.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. They have a book called The Quebriac Hours that I've sat with a whole bunch that has a really nice suffrage section that the current page that I'm working on that's sort of just been sitting around all year is gonna be based on that.
AP Strange:Nice. Nice. So when you talk about the marginalia, it's like the well, I mean, think you've done some recreations of, the snails that are that decorate some of these books too. Like, I'm not sure if I'm remembering this incorrectly, but have you done any of the rabbits with like weapons?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yes. In some of them I have because I hope to incorporate it more because a lot of depictions of greyhounds also include rabbits because that's what you would most commonly have them hunting. But love a good marginalia, it's where a lot of humor and personality comes out in a text, it's where they had the most freedom, so you get, that's where you get like the funny snails fighting rabbits, rabbits fighting dogs, you know, a rabbit dressed up in armor, riding a dog like a horse. You just get all the funny that's where all the funny I think we're the artists that play.
AP Strange:Yeah. They're like little cartoons in the margin almost.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And you can see where more freedom was given and less freedom, and you can see some really great a lot of times the marginalia is thematic to what the, like, the rest of the text is about, but a lot of times it isn't. It's just a random, you know, naked little guy playing the horn or something. Get really weird little There's one that I really love that's in one of the books of ours at the Boston Public Library that's like a little pantsless goblin with bird feet and he's riding a snail. Don't know what
AP Strange:he's awesome.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:But he's yeah, he's just like very charming. He's just riding on a snail. He's got a bow and arrow. He's hunting something. It just seemed like it would have been a lot of fun to do.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:That would be the best part of, I think, the manuscript to illuminate.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah, I'd almost want little backstories for all those little guys, you know.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:I mean, lot of them do have established like, it's weird because I've seen that guy in other manuscripts.
AP Strange:Okay.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:I I don't know what he is. So they clearly had like in jokes or established a lot of them had established tales. You'll see like foxes dressed up as monks and that was a common sort of fable of that time. So, some of them have been lost. Some of those stories have been lost but some of them we know.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And if anyone knows about the weird little goblin naked man riding the snail, definitely let me know because send me an email. I'm curious about what he's up to.
AP Strange:I do know that the bird feet is is usually an indicator of something demonic.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Oh, yeah.
AP Strange:Right. So it might be like an imp or something like that, you know.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:He's yeah. He's clearly like a little, you know, he's he's not a he's not a cherub. He's he's up to no no good. I don't know.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. Like a hellish imp or something like that, you know? Mhmm. Yeah.
AP Strange:And I guess maybe the yeah. Maybe it's just supposed to represent temptation because the snail is about being insignificant and slow, right? So it's the thing that hinders you from making your way towards towards perdition.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Well, yeah, snails are really interesting in medieval manuscripts and depictions because there's there's certainly that explanation, right? They are seen as slothful and lazy and being in your way but they were also considered to be very the most modest of god's creatures because they were always wearing their house. So they were kind of seen as a bit pious sometimes too. And they were clearly garden pests and a lot of manuscripts you would be making your materials in house and your materials would be grown. So you would be battling snails a lot, but you could also use the slime from a snail as a binder in paint.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:So they I think it was there's a sort of like love hate relationship with these two aspects to snails in, you know, in medieval society where they were a pest. They were probably also consumed as food, but they would be eating your garden, but they were also useful. So really fascinating. The snails are very interesting to me because there is one book of hours at the library that just is full of snails.
AP Strange:The
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Illuminator clearly had a fascination with them, but many did as well because you see them a lot of depicted frequently. So it's interesting that so many of these things had layers, right? Like the greyhound having so many different layers and depictions and, you know, the snails, the whatever marginalia that it it so often wasn't just a one note, which I think is really interesting to dive into. You know, the more you pull the thread, the weirder it gets, which is fun.
AP Strange:Yeah. And, speaking of weird, I mean, I you also covered a folk saint that was a mermaid on the site. Is this right?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yes. Actually, not a folk saint. An official saint.
AP Strange:An official saint, that's
Caitlin Fitzgerald:a Yeah, even weirder, even weirder. So
AP Strange:dogs aren't allowed to be saints, but mermaids are. Okay, got it.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And yeah so Leigh Bann or Saint Meergelt or Murrigan is an Irish Catholic saint. Her feast day is the January 27 or February. Forgetting. That's another example though of of finding these layered stories and looking for primary source material. I had to kind of cobble it together from a lot of different places and the story changed quite a lot every time I read it.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:The basic story and this is, I think for Le Band, this is a clear case of a pagan tale and she was canonized and that was going to solve that problem. So, we're we're Guineford was a dog and that didn't quite make the cut. Le Band was close enough and so they were okay with canonizing her and making her a saint. Think the mermaid myths in Ireland are prolific and a lot of them follow a very similar pattern to her story. Basically who she is, is a Catholic saint.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:She's officially canonized. She's found in the lives of saints books from Ireland, I think dating back to like the fifth century. Really old. Old, old tale. Clearly it's a pagan story that has been, you know, where Ginfert wasn't allowed to become a saint because he was a dog, she was close enough.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:This is an example of taking a pagan story and making it okay for the Catholic church. So the version that I have is cobbled together from again multiple source materials and it goes: Once, long ago, Mera, the good and righteous king of Munster, had two sons. One son fell in love with his stepmother, and the two absconded from the kingdom. One night, while making their escape, their horses and company were killed by a stranger on the roads. Mighty Angus of the Tuatha De Danan, who had been fostered by the stepmother as a child, appeared and gave to them a marvelous horse to carry them and their belongings, but he warned them not to stop or to let the horse urinate until they reached their final destination or it would mean their doom.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:They agreed, but the horse urinated when they reached Ulster and the forces of its stream caused a wellspring to appear. It was here that they built their home and capped the spring with a stone and assigned a woman to watch over it to keep it from flooding the surrounding land. One day, this same woman forgot to cover the well. Some accounts say this was because she heard the screaming of her baby and ran to its aid. At any rate, the well overflowed and flooded the area, drowning the entire family except for three of the children.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:So basically three people are left alive, and it's basically the daughter's one of them. Lee Ban, she was inside her bower with her dog. The floodwaters rose, and the water didn't come into her chamber. After one year stuck inside, she wished to be turned into a salmon so that she could get out of her room. This was granted that never says who it was.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:She was turned into a mermaid, her dog was turned into an otter, and for three hundred years they're roaming the waters and they're traveling the rivers that feed into the lake. The dog otter never left her side. And it was said on clear days, you could see towers of the former kingdom below the waters of the lake. Hundreds of years passed, she's still doing her thing, and a monk who's traveling from the monastery of Bencar to visit Rome, heard singing under the water. He's on the same lake, so Li Ban appears to him.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:She tells him this whole story of everything that's happened and he asks to meet her when he's on his way back with the condition that she agreed to be buried at his monastery when she passes, and she's agreeing to this. A year later, a whole crowd is gathered where this meeting is supposed to happen. You know, word's gotten out that there's gonna be a mermaid. She's caught in a net of another monk, Fergus, who brings her on the land. She's meeting the visitors who are all waiting for her.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:They put her in a cart full of water. And as she's looking at the crowd, she sees a relative of her surviving brother and blesses him. A whole family line kind of comes from this. And while this kind of is all going on, her otter has come out of the water and a local kid kills the otter, otter dies, and she curses that family because they killed their dog.
AP Strange:Yep. Right.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Finally, there's a squabble between all of these monks that are from different monasteries because they wanna figure out where Li Ban should be buried when she dies. You know, either at my monastery or my monastery, etcetera. And an angel appears and says that a two white stags, or in some versions, their bulls are going to appear. You'll you'll yoke the cart that she's in to these two animals, and they're going to bring you to where she's going be buried. And so the next morning these, you know, beasts from heaven show up and they yoke the cart and they bring her to the original monastery, the original monk who saw her in the water.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And she is offered a final choice at that point. She can roam the Earth for another three hundred years or she can be baptized and die immediately. And at that point, she's pretty done and she chooses to just be baptized and die immediately and ascend to heaven. She's also told she'll ascend immediately to heaven. And that's basically it.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:She's like, okay, they baptize her. She drops dead and that's how she became a saint.
AP Strange:Wow. Okay. Well, I mean, after hundreds of years with your dog and then somebody kills it, like, why do you why would you wanna hang around anymore? You know?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Literally. So the versions I only found one version that includes all of this, one or two versions that include the whole account with the dog. If you look it up, you'll see a lot that just say, oh, she just chooses to die. And I'm sort of like, why would she just be like, you know, if it was just like hanging out.
AP Strange:Right.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Whatever. And then you get the full image of this faithful hound is is killed. Yeah, you'd probably be like, okay, I think I'm I think I'm good. You killed my dog. You've been fighting about where you want me to be buried.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:I'm like, am I not here? You know, I've just been sitting in this cart while you fight amongst yourselves and you killed my dog and I think I'm over it.
AP Strange:Well, it's almost like, wow, Ireland ain't what it used to be. I used to be able to.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Like my day. A girl wouldn't get bothered with her dog.
AP Strange:Her otter dog. Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Boredom has this very sad element that that isn't in the other versions I found that is also really beautiful as well. Know, hopefully, she's reunited.
AP Strange:Well, it's also kind of this weird, like, sublimation of the old pagan stuff. You know?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Oh, definitely.
AP Strange:Right. Like a passing of it. Like, I kinda have a image in my mind of like Gandalf the White on the boat kind of taking off, you know, like, at the end of the the whole series, you know?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. And there's a lot it's funny because there are a lot there's a lot of mythology in Ireland about mermaids, lots of stories about monks catching mermaids, lots of depictions of mermaids in churches. So it was clearly a big theme. But yeah, it becomes a very symbolic story about the closing of that era, right? That she becomes the end of pagan belief systems in that country, kind of.
AP Strange:Right. And then just different forms of Christianity took over Ireland and it ended well with it ended well for everybody.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:An interesting I think that's where folklore and fables and mythology become so fascinating for me is because it starts to look at the way belief systems have sort of impacted the way we think about things, whether it's, you know, why is Lee Ban a saint? Why is Guinaford not? Wells are involved in both. Dogs are involved in both. Women with their faithful hounds are involved in both.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:It's really really fascinating. And it's interesting to see how the stories get to survive or what gets to survive of them,
AP Strange:and
Caitlin Fitzgerald:what doesn't. And I think it comes down to right who's telling the story or controlling that narrative. So it's a really interesting sort of you know, you kind of have to pull the thread again, right, to get that. And
AP Strange:they both have like kind of a fairy realm theme too, because I guess Unifer was one of his cures or miracles was that he could have changelings exchanged back for the original child.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Was heavily associated with changelings. I I also have a bit of a pet theory that I don't have very much evidence at all to back up that his worship may have been a sort of a an echo of maybe an Artemis sort of cult in that because she was associated because of the vetula aspect, the old lady, the woman who's sort of helping with this right, this protection of children, this association with hunting and.
AP Strange:Hunting, yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And dogs were sacred. Again, I don't have any evidence, but there's a lot of association with Geenfer in particular with Sirius, the dog star, and there's a lot of sort of Artemis, Sothis, Isis, synchronization amongst those sort of goddess heads and you know, his ritual in particular with an old lady and dunking in water and you know, she was obviously the tale made her an old lady but she would have been a, you know, someone who had the knowledge of these specific rights that would protect changelings and children which Artemis was heavily associated with and we don't really know much about sort of the sacred practices but you know, it could be an indicator of a really early site of belief and, you know, she was worshiped in in those sort of areas. So,
AP Strange:Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Never know.
AP Strange:But I they
Caitlin Fitzgerald:all become echoes of each other, right? It could have been a much earlier pagan. Clearly with the change, right, clearly with the changeling stuff and the wrapping of the fabric in the well, that all says pagan.
AP Strange:Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's fascinating stuff to conjecture about, and I think in your artwork, the piece that I bought, you can see the Sirius stars in the background, and it's almost like Uniferts being ascended is kind of levitating, you know.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's the the apotheosis. So that's the that is you are sort of called to heaven. Again, kind of looking into reinserting him as a as what if what if this pendulum swung the other way?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Right? It all down to Steven of Bourbon just saying no. What if he said yes?
AP Strange:He could have. What a jerk. It's funny
Caitlin Fitzgerald:because the irony of the Dominicans is that they're one of their big symbols is a dog carrying a torch. Right. As Dominican because of a pun basically. So, Saint Dominic, according to legend, his mother dreamed of seeing a dog carrying a torch running around the world before he was born and as a pun on Dominican is Dominique Canes being the dogs of, you know, the hounds of of god and so, one of their images is a dog that often looks quite greyhoundy carrying a torch. So, interesting that a Dominican would become associated with this this sort of saint in particular.
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. Well, that's that's all that's all really fascinating stuff. But we've been going for a bit now and I did definitely wanted to get into one more thing with you because in addition to all this other fascinating stuff, you do stain glass And, I was going through your Instagram posts and I saw a window that you were working on and noticed that it was for Bolleskin House. And I was like, what?
AP Strange:No way. The Bolleskin House? Because listeners to the show who know me know that that's kind of a synchronicity for me. I kind of recently did a presentation in Gettysburg that was heavily involved Bolluskin House and it's always been a subject near and dear to my heart. So I know don't if you wanted to talk about your journey with Bolleskin and how you kinda came to that subject matter and that kind of work.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. Yeah. Definitely a synchronicity there. So basically, I think stained glass is probably my favorite of materials and it requires a lot of space. So Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Now recently have a setup where I really can work on stained glass. So it's it's a near and dear one to me. Expect to see some Geenford windows coming.
AP Strange:Yes.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Voleskine House is just an amazing site. I haven't actually been to Voleskine House. I have been to the Highlands. The house was under private ownership at that time, so I wasn't going to, you know, go trespass on someone's property. But I think I first read about it in Perderabo, which was Richard Kaczynski's really excellent book on Alastair Crowley.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And I don't I think you have been following Voleskine House for a while. I did listen to your
AP Strange:Oh, yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:I know you have been like an early supporter. So as you know, they have during the pandemic, they were posting a lot of stuff about the restoration of the house. It just sort of the timing ended up where they kind of got stuck up there clearing rubble in high pandemic times and I ended up catching a ton of their live streams during the pandemic. They would do a live at five, which I think was like 11:00 my time because I was in New Orleans at the time. So several hours time difference.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And I just remember, you know, the pandemic was such an odd time in everyone's life.
AP Strange:Oh, yeah. Yep.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And watching watching them clear rubble, just like wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow was so endearing and fascinating at the same time. I remember when the house had, I think the second fire right after they bought it. You know, there were so many people just saying like, that's it, it's done for. It was such a oddly strange, like oddly sad moment. Yeah.
AP Strange:Yeah, because it was kind of like well, my talk I compared it to that whole Monty Python bit, which only occurred to me in the moment with the falling down and sinking in the swamp, but Right. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, it was because, I mean, for people following it for a long time, it's like, oh, they just bought it and they're actually making headway and gonna rebuild it and then it catches on fire again. You're like, oh, come on. You really didn't think they were gonna come back from it.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Right. I think that was really what you know, and, obviously, the Internet is full of opinions. Right? So
AP Strange:Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:So kind of long story short, that was super impactful for me for whatever reason. You know, again, we were all going through it. And I I remember I was doing a kitchen renovation, and I just remember being like, this is so painful. I can't imagine doing this like, clearing out an entire house's worth of rubble wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow by hand every day and you're just stuck in the middle of nowhere because no one can go anywhere. We're all sheltering in place and and you're like, well, now I'm stuck with a house that's just full of rubble.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And so at the beginning of this year, I actually reached out to them because when I do have a day job, it's in marketing. If anyone's hiring, if anyone needs a marketer. My role was eliminated last year because of a merger. And at the beginning of this year, I was looking at places to volunteer. I wanted to just keep building my skill set and resume.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Know, if you work in marketing, it moves fast and if you're not continuously doing different things, you can get left behind really quickly. So I thought to myself, you know, why don't I just reach out to a bunch of organizations that I like what they're doing and see if they need any marketing help. And they were the ones who enthusiastically said, yep, we do. We really need some help. And so I started with them in that capacity in February, and they mentioned they were looking for, you know, in passing conversation, they were saying they were looking for someone to make a stained glass light.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And I was like, well, I have the space to do it now. So I, you know, I said to them, well, what are you looking for? What kind of thing are you looking for? And long story short, I ended up making this light for them and it incredibly got there safe and sound.
AP Strange:I mean that's a heck of a ship packing and shipping process all the way to Scotland. What I presume was a pretty large light, right? I mean you have pictures of it but that must have been a hefty item.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. It was it's about 33 inches across. It was all done in millimeters. So Okay. For, you know, European measurements.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:But, it's about 33 inches, you know, round, and it's made with Yakogany glass, which would have been period appropriate for, you know, sort of an Egyptian revival theme, late Victorian design, Yakogany actually they're a company based out of Pennsylvania, but they actually remake traditional Tiffany style glass, so using his recipes, who he would have been the name in that sort of time period. And it weighs 20 pounds. It's got over 80 feet of lead. It's got steel rebar reinforcement on the back to keep it from bowing. It was a ton of fun to make.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And I still can't believe every day that it made it there safe and sound because it did go missing for a little bit, but back to the house eventually.
AP Strange:That must have been stressful, but it was just
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah, yeah, it was really stressful. May have taken a couple weeks off my life not sleeping on that one, but honestly, it shipped really fast and then it kind of got stuck and then it got apparently there's like one delivery company in the Highlands and they don't really give you updates once they have it
AP Strange:packed, which is
Caitlin Fitzgerald:fair. But it weighed 90 pounds when it was fully packaged in a crate. I had to custom build the crate for it. It was really like a crazy fun experience. I'm so lucky that I got I've had some really fantastic stained glass teachers and I got to harass all of them about this, and it was I mean, they got hundreds of years of experience weighing in on the best way to make this light.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And I was just so appreciative to have that community supportive. Glass artists are very like, it's a lovely community. And, you know, like I said, I was just able to act like I did a class last year in Italy. I was able to ask them their opinions. I did.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:I took a class with Judith Schecter in Corning, New York this year. I was able to ask her what she thought I should, know, how do I support it? What's the best way to ship it? And again, all of that expertise came together to make sure that light looked its best and arrived safe and sound.
AP Strange:Yeah, Well, that's that's amazing. And then, hopefully you do get to go there eventually.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:I'll be yeah. I'll be going next year. So, they are in the final phases of renovation work. Okay. Major renovation work, should be wrapping up soon.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:They were supposed to wrap October, but they've run over a little bit, which, you know, it's major, it's everything. The work they're doing in the house is just like is stunning. If you if you've been watching the social media at all. You know, the bespoke paneling, the custom fireplaces, you know, they've just the the paint schemes, the furniture they've been able to they've done a lot of salvage work. They've had some beautiful bespoke pieces put in like this light, but they've been able to find some like fantastic, know, Jacobean fireplaces and, you know, salvaged chairs and these incredible pieces.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And so next April they'll be having their grand opening so I'll be there for that.
AP Strange:Yeah, sounds awesome and you know I had been following them for listeners the Bleskin House Foundation I think is
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Bleskin House Foundation.
AP Strange:You Google that, you can find their website, but they have a page on Facebook that they do regular updates, they're on Instagram I believe, yeah, you can kind of see that process and see the pictures and kinda how they arrived at some of this stuff. So I've loved following along with that over the years and I didn't catch any of the livestreams, but I like seeing the picture updates and reading what they're up to and the progress they're making and it's been a journey for that building.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:It's been a wild journey and if anyone's interested, would say in the more esoteric history of the house, Doctor. Andrew Wiseman did a fantastic talk for us. A little earlier in the year and so that is up on our YouTube channel. If anyone wants to listen to that, it's about, you know, Crowley's time at the house.
AP Strange:Mhmm.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:I think obviously your audience would find that really interesting and writing a whole book. Every owner of that house has such an interesting history. I've just been really pulled in. I just got a book from the library about one of the that mentions one of the owners who is her name was Mary Rose Hilburton, and she was a suffragette and an activist and a painter in Scotland, and so was her mother, and she lived in the house painted out of the house. So there's a book about Scottish female painters at like the turn of the century.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:It's just a really interesting, just so many interesting characters. The Fraser family, obviously from Outlander fame,
AP Strange:Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Built the house, and there's a Frasier fireplace that has gone in, sort of honoring that history. Very interesting as well, Archibald Campbell Frasier, you know, very involved in sort of repealing the Highland Dress Act so that people in the Highlands could wear tartan again and things of that nature. So it's just chock full of really fascinating history and I just really love what they're trying to build with this sort of community center that's focused on, you know, preservation of the house, arts, education, know, Yeah,
AP Strange:they're talking about hosting retreats and stuff like that, right?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah, and making it just a community space where people can come and learn or enjoy. It's going to have something for everyone. It's going to have beautiful gardens. They have, I think, like 35 acres of wildflowers they've planted. They put in an apple orchard this year, and all the apples are going to be donated back to the community.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:They have an incredible solar array set up and thermo heat system that they've done with Rye Cruden. They're just making this really very cool place that they want everyone to kind of come and enjoy and have something that's interesting for everybody there. And the house is gonna be, it's already stunning. I can't wait to see it when it's done. It's just incredible to think that, you know, six years ago it was just rubble.
AP Strange:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's been an amazing an amazing work of art in and of itself. The artisan and craftsmanship that that has gone into it and the perseverance, which I guess is appropriate for Frater Puerto Raba's legacy.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. I I'm coming in early twenty twenty five. Right? Obviously, I've watched the house, but I don't know if I could have been shoveling rubble and I probably would have run out of steam a while ago. So, yeah, it's definitely the group there is great.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:It's a really nice volunteer community and everyone's really enthusiastic about having the space finished. Yeah, it's wild to me to just see how far it's come. Getting a roof up on it was, you know.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, it's got to be heavy because they did like a slate roof, right?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah, it's all reclaimed. The bali bali color reclaimed slate.
AP Strange:Yeah. So because I have some pieces of the old slate and some piece of some, like a bag of ash that came from the old house that I bought because, for listeners at at at the time, could buy some I think you still can. You can buy old rubble.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:You can still get there I will say like they are starting to run low on some of it so right if you're interested in in some of that original sandstone slate etc definitely check out thebolleskenhousefoundation.org. Things are still up there for now, but I have heard that some of the items are running lower. They've had good support. That's another one I can't imagine. Where would you store it all?
AP Strange:Yeah, well I was happy to know that the purchase that I made went toward the the restoration, you know?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Everything goes towards supporting the restoration, the foundation, you know, next year once the grand opening is done in April, the house will be open for visitors, so you can even now start purchasing advanced tickets or vouchers, but it'll be open for people to enjoy. So it'll be great to see that phase of the house where people can start to enjoy it and get to see the Highland areas because it's a really beautiful part of Scotland. Inverness has some really cool stuff going on. Hoping to bring some, you know, support for the local economy in the area, and Loch Ness is just a really beautiful area. Like I said, I've been to the Highlands, I didn't go to the house, but that whole area is just gorgeous, and I'm, you know, can't wait to go back, but it's beautiful out there, and there's so many cool things and historic sites, and this will be just another one that people can really go and spend a really cool day and very excited to see it wrap up.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:It's crazy to I mean, for some reason, I just still can't believe it's even like getting to that phase. I think a lot of people really did think that it was just not going to be able to come together.
AP Strange:Yeah, yeah, I mean, kind of hope it would and then to actually see it come to fruition after all this time is pretty gratifying.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Monumental amount of work and they are they're very, very close now. It's it's very cool to see the updates and, you know, see how far the house has come and start to put those all those pieces in there. It's really neat. But yeah, for listeners that are interested, grand opening announcements will probably be coming a little later, you know, towards the end of this year, since the focus is on wrapping up the the reno work.
AP Strange:Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah. Next April and the house will be open seasonally, like April to September. That's sort of how things go in the Highlands.
AP Strange:Okay.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:And it'll be really fun site. You should get out there.
AP Strange:Well, yeah, I have to work on getting a passport and see if I can make that happen because I I don't even have a passport right now. So.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Mine mine is on my desk because it expires at the end of the year, it's much easier to renew it than to
AP Strange:Oh, yeah. Yeah. You don't wanna go through that process again.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:No. I'm gonna need though.
AP Strange:Yeah. But for listeners oh, yeah. You will need it.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Gonna have to be over there helping this grand opening. So
AP Strange:Right. Yeah. But for listeners, again, just check out paleskinghousefoundation.org. Is that what Yep. It And of course, check out Caitlin's artwork online because and their website because all of this stuff is is like I said, I was blown away because when multidisciplinary in art the way you are, I like to dabble in a lot of things, and I like to think I'm good at a lot of it, but I'm actually just really mediocre at most of it.
AP Strange:I think I'm pretty good at writing and I'm pretty okay at talking and then, you know, everything else I'm pretty mediocre at. So to see you be to see examples of your work where you're doing various things like the research and the manuscript illustrations and the stained glass and the ceramics and the jackalopes that you saw on your website, I'm like, she's great at all of it. Just some people are just great at everything.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:That is kind of you to say, I could show you some of my first pottery pieces and they would prove you wrong.
AP Strange:Well, yeah, I mean, but you got there is the point of it, you know?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah, unfortunately, you know, one of the upsides of not currently having a day job is lots of time to practice, but
AP Strange:Right, right. Yeah. So in that respect, where can people find all your stuff online?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Yeah, so you can find me at kaitlynfitcheraldart.com, cultofguinfurt.com for all the Guinfurt related. I'm on Instagram at kaitlynfitcheraldart, I'm on Facebook at kaitlynfitcheraldart, I like to keep things easy. I currently have about 21 Jackalopes that are going to be up at Lemieux Gallery in New Orleans through the end of the year, so if anyone's in the greater New Orleans area you can go check them out, they will be available. They make great Christmas gifts. Where else can people find me?
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Oh, I'll have some pieces at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Christmas sale at the December By the Museum of Fine Arts at their location.
AP Strange:And in Boston,
Caitlin Fitzgerald:in Boston, and I have an Etsy as well, if anyone's looking for. Anything magical, illuminated ceramics, couple glass pieces or jackalopes.
AP Strange:Yeah, excellent. And yeah, Christmas is coming folks and you can if you buy stuff from Caitlin, you won't be supporting evil corporations. It's a good way to go.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:More treats for my pets and more treats for me.
AP Strange:Yeah. You'll be supporting a woman and her her stalwart hound. Yeah.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:You gave up pretty well through this. I'm really impressed.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, good dog. Good dog. So, yeah. Alright.
AP Strange:Well, thank you so much for coming on. This has been a blast, and I know people will love listening to this, so thank you.
Caitlin Fitzgerald:Oh, thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun. Sorry you got rambly, but
AP Strange:Oh, no. Yeah. Rambling is kinda part of the part of the deal here. That's one of the things we do. So alright.
AP Strange:Talk to you soon. Alright.