Episode 186 – Betrayal – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 186 Show Notes

Source: Latvian Mythology

This week on MYTH, it’s time for another exciting chapter from the chronicles of Lacplesis the Bearslayer. You’ll discover the truth of Laimdota’s betrayal, why you should never trust nobility, and that cabins in the woods aren’t always bad. Then, in Gods and Monsters, two men will share the friendship of a lifetime. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 186, “Betrayal”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
When we last left our hero (back in Episode 173), a council of the gods had been called at the castle of Perkons, god of thunder. The fire and blood of the Crusades of the 13th Century are headed straight for the doomed heart of the Baltics, sure to crush the steadfast and worthy people who lived there and worshiped the gods of the council. The water nymph Staburadze, who lives in a crystal palace beneath the mighty Daugava river, comes forward at the end to tell the story of a handsome young man that she had saved from some witches. She’d like to keep him, but Perkons tells her that he is fated to be a hero so she can only keep him long enough to get him healthy. We then flashed back to the young man’s origin story, where he rips a bear in half to save his father, only to learn that the old lord is actually his adopted father. He had been given care of the boy as an infant by the gods themselves (after having been abandoned by his unknown real parents and fed on she-bear breast milk as an infant).
Back in the present-ish, Bear-Slayer is heading for the magical hero school run by his dad’s old buddy Burtnieks but stops off at the home of Aizkrauklis and his wicked daughter Spindala. Lacplesis is stunned by her incredible beauty but a bit put off when he discovers that she’s a literal demon-worshiping witch. He manages to hitch a ride down into the Devil pit as she goes to meet the aforementioned Devil. The whole gang is busy corrupting famed holy-man Kangars into abandoning the gods and pushing the false religion of Christianity instead. Lacplesis is caught and dumped in the whirlpool, thus bringing us back to where the whole story actually began. Now healthy, Lacplesis sets out for hero school again, but not before meeting the beautiful Laimdota who studies under Staburadze and both give the young hero talismans. He encounters another heroic young man named Koknesis and they promptly become bestest friends as both enroll in Burtnieks’ hero school.
The now-villainous Kangars provokes the neighboring Estonians into going to war with the Latvians, prompting Lacplesis and Koknesis to ride out to do battle with their great champion, the giant Kalapuisis. Bearslayer fights the giant to a draw, and the two become sword buddies and fight together against the real foe, the invading Germans crusaders led by the priest Dietrich.
Lacplesis and Laimdota get engaged, hooray. This took us up to the festival of All Soul’s Eve, a traditional Latvian celebration where the souls of the dead return to eat food left out by their living relatives. Everyone parties well into the night before all going to bed after midnight. In the morning, they discover that Laimdota and Koknesis have vanished. Bearslayer vows to find them himself and immediately sets out in pursuit.
Naturally, we’re not going to follow Lacplesis; instead, we’re shifting over to Castle Turaida. Inside said castle, three men were talking: Kangars, Dietrich, and Kaupa, a local lord that we haven’t met before. The first two and definitely villainous men were in the process of convincing the formerly loyal Kaupa to betray his gods and his people for the glory of Rome. They convinced him to allow German merchants to build a small town on the sea as a trading port, sending the lord to meet the Pope.
When our hero arrives, Kangars smugly informs him that he’s too late – the ship has already sailed (literally) with Laimdota and Koknesis (who are totally having an affair) aboard by choice. Dejected, Lacplesis returns home briefly before vanishing. It doesn’t take long for Kaupa to be seduced by wealth and for his people to realize that they’ve been tricked.
Lacplesis had been left to his depression with no way to know for sure whether Kangars was lying about Koknesis and Laimdota running off together. He (and we) suspect that the evil asshole is full of shit, but the story was very careful to leave room for doubt. So what actually happened on All Soul’s Eve? Laimdota had returned to her room after cleaning up the remnants of the feast as expected. Only, when she got there, her mother arrived with some additional urgent task they needed to complete before bed. Exhausted but dutiful, Laimdota followed her mother outside Burtniek’s Castle. Almost as soon as she left the safety of the walls, the young maiden was jumped by armed men and bound hand and foot. Her last sight before being carried away was her mother’s form shimmering to reveal the evil witch Spindala, who had been wearing her mother’s form as a disguise.
The wicked gang carried Spindala to Turaida, where the ship that was to sail to Rome (by way of Germany) was waiting. Her captors ignored all her tears and pleas for mercy – they had been paid to do a job, and they didn’t much care who got hurt in the doing of it. Waiting for her was Dietrich, the priest in charge of the invading Crusaders. He came to sit with the still weeping Laimdota to try and soothe her fears. “Don’t worry, dear maiden. No harm will come to you on this ship. You are amongst your own countrymen here, servants of the loyal lord Kaupa. They will come to your call and attend to your every need, my lady.” Everything except wanting to return to her home and her fiance, that is.
The ship carried them speedily to Germany, where Dietrichs and his captive – I mean guest – went out to see the countryside and meet its people. Being a priest in charge of conquering the heathens and bringing them to bask in the love of Christ at the point of a sword, he naturally used this time to try and convert Laimdota to the ‘one true faith’. Laimdota listened to the priest’s many flowery speeches and fiery sermons with obvious contempt burning in her eyes. Each time, Dietrichs asked her to convert and become a bride of Christ, reborn anew. Each time, her answer was the same: “Your Christ kidnaps his brides to wed them against their will. I will not forsake my gods, nor will I forsake the vow I have already made to wed another. I love my dashing hero and have pledged him my hand with my father’s blessing. Our hearts are united in love, and there is nothing that you or your kidnapping Christ can offer to make me forsake my beloved. It is a waste of time and effort to try and tempt me this way, so why not just let me go? The longer you keep me a prisoner, the worse the retribution of brave Bearslayer will be when it finally comes.”
Dietrich was…not a good man to say the least. He had no issue with murdering entire villages of innocent people if they refused to convert to his invading religion. His conscience had long ago withered away to nothing, leaving him all but immune to shame. And yet even he felt some strange emotion stir in his chest at the fair maid’s bold, heartfelt words. Her lament would have moved a better man to pity; it moved Dietrich only to embarrassed silence. With nothing else to say to the young woman who stared him down in this foreign land she had been abducted to, he left her be without a word.
Although she was now to be spared further attempts to save her pagan soul, Laimdota was still not free to return home. Kaupa, as her countryman, should have been moved to help her escape the clutches of these foreign invaders, but he had been blinded by visions of wealth and power. “It is not fate’s plan that you should return just yet, my lady. You must remain here a little longer.” It was bullshit, but Laimdota could see that Kaupa had forsaken his allegiance to his homeland and joined with the villains. She would simply have to wait for an opportunity to escape or for fate to bring some rescue.
Frustrated with his lack of progress with converting his prisoner, Dietrich decided to dump her in a convent. He figured the nuns would keep her out of his hair while he went about his evil scheming. Plus, bonus, Laimdota would be completely surrounded by women devoted to his religion and his god, so maybe some of their faith would rub off on the Latvian woman. After abandoning her to this fate, both Dietrich and Kaupa soon forgot about her completely. Her kidnapping had really been more of Spindala’s thing, so the two men quickly moved on to other plans and schemes.
The prioress of the abbey, as the head nun, took it upon herself to convert this heathen woman to the one true faith. This started out amicably enough with the prioress showing Laimdota the respect that was due her station as a lord’s daughter, but the preaching and calls to renounce her false gods never stopped. Quite the opposite – they got more and more insistent as time went on. With each new refusal to abandon her faith, the prioress’ attitude towards Laimdota became less friendly and respectful, growing colder and harsher. When that too failed, the prioress resorted to naked threats. “I’m done playing nice, child. Either renounce your wicked devil worship and embrace the love of Jesus or I will turn you over to a local lord to be made into his sex slave. Test me and see if I’m joking.”
Laimdota, who had been resolute in her polite but firm refusals to abandon her gods thus far, believed the prioress. An earl’s son, a cousin of the prioress herself, had visited the convent not long before. He had been very loudly taken with Laimdota’s beauty and had made some less-than-godly comments about what he’d like to do with her, given the chance. In fact, he had directly asked the nuns to give their prisoner to him as a gift to take back to his estate and do with as he wished. The earl and his son were both of the opinion that anyone who wasn’t a Christian had no rights. Since they were the law of the land, that made their opinion the legal precedent.
Laimdota knew that this was a very real threat. She still hoped for rescue, but she needed to buy time for help to arrive. Getting gifted to the earl’s son could easily end with her dead in a ditch somewhere, so Laimdota had to play along. She bowed her head meekly. “You are right, Prioress. I have clung to my wicked ways out of fear and doubt, but you have shown me the light. I will lay aside the gods of my heathen homeland and embrace the love of the one true Christ.” She was bullshitting of course, trying to buy time, but Laimdota was a decent actress and so her ‘conversion’ was accepted as genuine. Mostly.
Just because she was now supposedly a true believer didn’t mean she was free to leave. Christian or not, Laimdota was still the prioress’ prisoner. Depressed and frustrated by her extended captivity as well as the effort of pretending she was feeling no such thing, Laimdota was exhausted. One evening, she took to her room early to cry in private and pray in secret to the gods she still believed in for aid. Her prayers were interrupted by a commotion down in the cloister. It grew nearer and louder, and Laimdota recognized men’s voices raised in anger. She’d heard soldiers in the heat of battle enough times to recognize this as an assault on the cloister.
The nuns were not prepared to defend themselves and had no weapons even if they had wanted to try. People rushed everywhere, screaming and praying for salvation from the armed brigands invading this holy place. The terrified voices of the nuns grew quieter as their owners either fled or were silenced, which made it easier to hear the bootsteps approaching her door. The lock proved no match for several swift kicks, which slammed the door open, revealing a horde of armed men and a single monk. The abbey’s guards, who were supposed to prevent this sort of thing, stood beside the invaders, clearly on the same side.
The monk smiled cruelly at the armored brigands. “Here she is, as promised. We give her to your lord gladly. Take her with our thanks for his work at cleansing this holy site of her pagan filth that has stained these stones for too long. She will defile this cloister no more, and anything that happens to her after she leaves these walls will be no more than she deserves.” And he left her alone with the leering soldiers. They quickly fanned out around her, leaving her nowhere to run. Rough hands seized her and dragged her from the illusion of safety and out through the cloister. Laimdota wailed, begging the nuns and the prioress for aid. She was supposed to be under their protection. There was no response. The nuns had all fled to their church and bolted the thick doors against the invaders. They had no interest in risking their neck for this foreigner and would stay safely locked away until the danger was passed.
Still weeping and begging, Laimdota was dragged out of the cloister and thrown across a horse. Her kidnappers gathered their own horses, preparing to ride away, taking Laimdota to a terrible fate. Sitting there, smiling cruelly, was the earl’s son who had wanted to make Laimdota his plaything. That smile promised all kinds of torment and horror that would drag on more than long enough for her to wish for death. “Let the woman go.” The armed kidnapper all looked up in surprise. No one was supposed to be standing against them, what with having the local lord’s blessing as well as the tacit support of at least one monk. A tall, armored stranger stood there, a massive war club over his shoulder. “I won’t ask again. Surrender now and leave this innocent woman be or I will crush each and every one of your skulls.”
The brigands looked at each other with a sneer. He was one and they were many, so they charged. The stranger’s club left his shoulder with unbelievable quickness, catching the first man in the temple before he’d even realized that he was being attacked. He crumpled bonelessly to the ground, skull caved in beneath his helmet. Moving like a whirlwind, the lone warrior danced through the soldiers, parrying blows with his shield as he moved towards the man mounted on Laimdota’s horse. Dodging a desperate strike, the stranger smashed the mounted soldier’s helmet with such force that he was knocked clean off the horse to crash into the dust.
The slaughter lasted for only a few minutes before all of the armed men lay motionless in the blood and the mud. Only the earl’s son was left standing to face the stranger. He cowered as the blood-soaked warrior strode towards him. “You honorless dog! You bastard hiding behind the pretense of faith! Know that this free-born woman is heir to such honor that a little lordling like you is unfit to even hold her cup. I doubt that there is a single person in this entire bullshit country that can equal this woman’s worth. I should kill you where you stand for this indignity. Lucky for you, I have need of a messenger who people will listen to. Run back to your father and tell him, and all of his fellows, that the freeborn sons of the Baltics will crush the skulls of everyone who dares invade our home, even as I have this day. Run along with your tail between your legs cur, and know that if I ever see your face again, you’re a dead man.”
The earl’s son didn’t need a second invitation. He turned tail and ran as fast as he could, leaving the corpses of his men behind. The stranger watched the lordling run until he was sure that the little asshole wasn’t going to try some kind of sucker punch and then turned back to Laimdota. He pulled his helmet off to reveal the smiling face of Koknesis. With a cry of joyful recognition, she ran to her rescuer and caught up in a huge bear hug, heedless of the blood. “You’re safe now, and thank the gods I was in time! We don’t have time to catch up right now though. We need to get the fuck out of here ASAP. Grab a horse and let’s ride. We can talk once we’re safe.”
Laimdota wasted no time. She leapt up onto one of her now-dead kidnapper’s horses as Koknesis did the same. They left the abbey in the dust, following a small rutted track into the forest to shield themselves from any possibility of pursuit. Koknesis led them to a small cabin on a distant mountain that had been built to shelter woodcutters away from home. Since there was no one there at the moment, the two of them could rest up in relative safety and plan their next move.
They rested in the mountain hut for a few days before moving on. Assuming that the little lordling might not appreciate being utterly humiliated, the duo figured they needed to travel as fugitives. That meant a disguise. Koknesis already looked like a traveling knight, so Laimdota dressed up as his page. With luck, it would be enough to get them to a seaport and onto a ship back home.
As they traveled, Laimdota told her rescuer the tale that we’ve just covered. In turn, Koknesis revealed how he had ended up here. On All Souls’ Eve, Kangars came to speak with him. He said that Kaupa was about to head out to Germany but he had letters for Burtnieks that he would not trust to anyone but an honored member of the lord’s household for they contained sensitive information. Remember that, although we know Kanagars to be thoroughly broken to the will of Satan, he is widely considered a wise and trusted man by the people of Latvia. Thus, Koknesis saw no reason to doubt him. He knew that Burtnieks was currently keeping a vigil for All Souls’ Eve, so it seemed perfectly reasonable to head out before dawn to Turaida, which was not far away.
He rode with the fallen holy man to the castle to meet with its lord Kaupa. Upon arriving, Koknesis was told that the messages were not quite ready yet. As an apology and as thanks for acting as messenger, he was invited onto the ship to have breakfast. Kangars served the wine for everyone – a gift from the priest Dietrich who likewise had not been revealed as a true villain. The wine was incredibly strong and he was encouraged by his guests to down cup after cup until he was absolutely shit-faced and passed out. The lad slept for hours, finally waking with a pounding head after they were many miles out to sea. He was headed to Germany whether he wanted to go or not.
It was played off as an accident (everyone else he had been dining with had also gotten very, very drunk, so it was plausible). Ashamed that he had let his appetite get the better of him, he sank into a depression. The others on the ship tried to console him, promising Koknesis that things were not nearly as bad as they seemed. He would be able to have a good time in Germany, seeing the country and getting to know its people before returning home none the worse for wear. Koknesis allowed his thirst for adventure to lift his spirits and began to look forward to this unexpected excursion.
When they landed (having no idea that Laimdota was a prisoner upon that very same vessel), Koknesis disembarked to live and learn with the German monks. He spent some time at this monastery, content to expand his mind. When he grew bored of this, he traveled the nearby lands to spend time with the local earl. There, he sparred and jousted with the lord’s knights. Partly this was for training and exercise and partly this was to show off on behalf of his people. The German knights were indeed quite impressed with Koknesis’ displays of strength and skill.
It was in the midst of all this traveling, training, and studying that Koknesis first heard rumors of a woman from the Baltics being held prisoner in Germany. It took him some time to run down someone who knew enough to point him to the actual cloister where this woman was being kept against her will. Remember, as far as he knew, Laimdota was still back in Latvia safe in her father’s castle, so he had no reason to think that this mystery woman was his best friend’s fiance.
As he was acquiring this intelligence, he also overheard some of the knights talking at the lord’s keep. He discovered that the earl’s son had developed an unhealthy obsession with this Baltic maiden and was planning to raid the cloister to steal her away for his own vile uses. Koknesis was a true hero and he knew that he couldn’t sit by and allow this travesty of justice to transpire, especially not to one of his people. He followed the earl’s knights in secret when they set out on their raid, vowing to save the young woman from this wicked fate. When the innocent woman they dragged out was revealed to be Laimdota, Koknesis’ rage knew no bounds. He abandoned any plans to slip away from the camp with her in the night. Caution was burned up in the fires of his righteous anger and he stepped out to slaughter these foul villains to a man. Partly for the reasons he stated and partly out of a sense of obligation to the earl who had been his host, Koknesis spared only the earl’s son, though he thoroughly humiliated him first to drive the lesson home.
Having thus caught up on how each of them had come to be on the run in this foreign land, the duo made their way across Germany towards the sea. Neither knew the land terribly well having not planned to come here, so they were mostly operating off of the young hero’s training at Burtniek’s hero school. We’ll have to leave them to this perilous journey for now, because it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s resentful figure is the committed bachelor.
This story comes from Lithuanian Mythological Tales, collected by Nobertas Velius and translated by Birute Kiskyte in 1998. Two men had been friends for most of their lives, both of them old bachelors. They hung out together all the time and got along famously and never ever fought. The two men were always together, no matter where they went. Everyone knew that if you saw one of the two somewhere, then the other was surely around somewhere. Were these men living a sort-of-secret gay life? Maybe. The story doesn’t actually say, but it doesn’t really dispute it either.
Time passed as it always does and eventually, one of the two men died. The surviving old bachelor was left alone in the world to fend for himself, and he quickly realized that he didn’t care for it one bit. It was awkward and lonesome going everywhere by himself, and all of his favorite haunts reminded him of his dead friend. He was no longer young, so the odds of making another close male friend at his age was, statistically, unlikely. The obvious solution to his problem was to get married. At least then he wouldn’t be quite so alone. If he couldn’t have his friend to talk to anymore, at least he’d have a wife. This makes his theoretical bride sound like a consolation prize and she very well may have been.
The man was fairly well-to-do and well liked, so he didn’t have any trouble finding and courting a suitable woman in short order. It had always been an option, he just hadn’t wanted to. You know, for reasons. It didn’t take long at all for them to decide to get married since, as we’ve seen, the man cared more about being married than about who he was married to. The wedding party with all the bridesmaids and groomsmen rode together over to the church for the ceremony. As it so happened, the path there took them by the graveyard where the man’s friend was buried. Since graveyards are often in close proximity to churches, this isn’t quite as coincidental as it seems.
The man asked the driver of his carriage to stop and let him out. “Wait for me here. I won’t be long – I just want to go and say a quick prayer over my friend’s grave.” He was the groom so the driver shrugged and stopped to let the man climb down. Just beyond the cemetery gates, the man saw his friend standing there amongst the graves. “You waiting for me, my friend?” The dead man ignored the question. “Aren’t you on your way to get married, my friend?” The living man looked down at his wedding finery and then back up at his dead friend (who he was being very chill about seeing back from the grave). “Well, yeah I am.” The dead man nodded sagely. “As I thought. Well then, drink a glass of wine with me. For old time’s sake.”
The man saw no reason not to raise a glass with his dearly departed bestie, so he gladly accepted the wine and drank deeply. The two chatted about nothing of any great importance, mostly catching the dead man up on all the latest gossip. They drank a second glass and then a third. The groom realized that he had been in the cemetery longer than he had intended. “Well it’s been a very pleasant surprise seeing you here like this, but I’m afraid I must be off. They’re going to get tired of waiting for me if I don’t head back soon.”
The groom walked back the way he had come and headed for where he had left the carriage waiting for him. Only when he got there, no carriage was waiting for him. Nobody had stayed behind to wait. They must have gotten impatient and headed on to the church without him. He started running down the road after them, cursing softly. “Can’t believe they just left me like that. I wasn’t gone that long, and it’s not like they can start the wedding without me. It’s just gonna take longer this way.”
It was a long, exhausting run to the small town where the wedding was to be, but something was off. The town didn’t look right. There were a thousand minor differences from what he remembered, each small in its own right but disconcerting when taken together. The church was still more or less where it should be, though it too was altered from what he remembered. The man hurried into the church to speak with the head priest, who was inside. “Padre, has there been a wedding today?” “No, I’m sorry there’s no wedding scheduled for today.” “Can you just check, Father? Please?” He gave the priest the couple’s names and the kindly priest obliged, searching his book of records thoroughly. His eyebrows shot up as his finger stopped in the middle of a page. “Well that is strange indeed. There was such a wedding in this church, but it happened 300 years ago.”
Stunned, the would-be groom wandered out of the church and into the town. The myriad of changes made sense now – 300 years had passed while he drank with his dead friend, a century for each glass of wine. The man realized that he was even more completely alone than he had been before: no wife, no family, no friends. Depressed and utterly without anywhere to live or any way to support himself in this depressing future, he soon died himself. His ghost found its way to that same graveyard and was reunited with his friend, who was of course waiting for him with a smile. Now they could be unmarried bachelors together forever as they had always truly wanted.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on TuneIn, on Vurbl, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Instagram as MythsYourTeacherHatedPod, on Tumblr as MythsYourTeacherHated, and on Bluesky as MythsPodcast. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff.
Next time, it’s another listener request story. You’ll see that you should really never trust a stepmother, that the months are some pretty chill dudes, and that being greedy never works out in the end. Then, in Gods and Monsters, Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious isn’t the only way to never be at a loss for words. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.