Episode 126: The Whitest of Privileges

## Featured Story

The Stolen Bairne and the Shide

From Rosemarie Minard’s Womenfolk in Fairy Tales in 1975. Sorche Nic Leodhas (known librarian) collected this tale.

### Overall Plot

* Two fairy women find a human baby on a cliff so they take it because free baby
* Around the same time, some human fishermen find a human woman who’s fallen off the cliff and bring her back to their village to get healthy again
* The women of the village think the baby is dead and won’t let her go to look for it. The men go and can’t find it.
* She gets a little better and goes off to search by herself for the missing baby. She wanders for days and finds a gypsy camp. The gypsies have an ancient grandmother who knows everything and they offer to take her there.
* The grandmother does a magic and tells her where her baby is. The grandmother’s wisdom only goes as far back as humanity but the Shide’s wisdom goes back to the start of the world.
* Mom wants to die but the grandmother tells her no, just wait a minute
* Time passes. Grandmother tells the mom that she might be able to get her kid back if she crashes the Shide party (ShideCon) where they pick their new ruler. The Shide cannot make anything but have great vanity and a strong desire to have unique stuff, so something like that could maybe buy the kid.
* The mom identifies two unique wonders: the white cloak of Nectun and the golden harp of Wrad. She goes to the beach and collects all the duck feathers and weaves them into a good cloak embroidered with her own golden hair. She makes the harp out of more hair and mystery ocean animal bones.
* Time for ShideCon! (The Sidhe look basically like D&D or skyrim dark elves.) She tricks a sidhe who is late into trading a ticket to SidheCon for the cloak.
* She shows the harp to the new king and bargains for her baby. She goes back to the fishing village and she and her child live there for the rest of their lives.

## Discussion Points

* Unofficial WhatAmGordie: your googler
* Is adopting a baby investment or a refund on hell taxes?
* Where did sexual fetishes come from and did ancient humans have bridge fetishes? How has human sexuality evolved over time?
* The mathematics of baby swapping and why the mom didn’t just steal someone else’s baby
* Classifications and qualifications of taxes: age, social class, etc.
* Which of the three original bop-it functions are the three hosts? Consensus: Tyler is twist-it, Carman is bop-it, Gordie is pull-it

### Notable Quotes

* Tyler: I’m trying to decide whether I do or do not want to live in a world where the Powerball… uh… billboard, instead of having a monetary value on it just has a picture of a mewling babe.
* Carman: So they bring the bort… er — the bort

Tyler: They bip the bop up the boop.
Carman: I’m a good reader. I read so many good.
Tyler: There goes baba.
Carman: I told you I’d mispronounce things in this story!

* Tyler: Were they trolls? Were they policemen? Who can say?
* Carman: That has been sex-ed as updated from [laughs] Scottish Shide stealing baby times.
* Gordie: What I recommend is get one of those bop-it machines, just let the audio play. Follow instructions. Very good night in.
* Carman: Then I had the extreme [bopit] growing up and didn’t even know.

Gordie: That’s a privileged life.
[Laughter]
Tyler: That’s the whitest of privileges.

* Tyler: Here at PetFurCo, we use the supplest butts!
* Gordie: Maybe some babies break the mold. They manage to dance their way out or they’re good enough at basketball that they don’t have to be taxes.