INTRO:

Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world. 

These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.

I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.

Happy December! It’s the last month of the year and it’s getting really chilly over here in the UK - so we’re going to be covering a much warmer mythology over in Arabia this week by looking at the fearsome Roc. 

DESCRIPTION:

What is Roc I hear you ask? It’s a legendary mythological bird from Arabian folklore, this giant bird is said to be the oldest in existence and the largest bird to ever grace the planet.

It is usually described as a white or tawny colored bird with a wingspan of at least 48 feet, with feathers as big as palm leaves that could block out the rays of the sun onto the Earth. It was such a massive creature that its eggs were said to be over 150 feet. It’s very similar to a modern day eagle in the way it looks, so just kind of imagine a Lord of the Rings style bird that rescues people from Mount Doom in the end, but didn’t give them a lift at the beginning. 

Traditionally, Roc would only land on the mountain Qaf, which was considered the Arabic center of the world. Now you’re probably thinking that you’ve never heard of a geographical mountain called Qaf, well - here we go. 

Mount Qaf is a legendary mountain within Arabic folklore, which doesn’t technically have a location so to say within world geography, although we know it’s considered to be in the Middle East. It’s said to maybe be in the Indian Ocean, far out to sea, but from all accounts, it’s not been found yet. However, in order to kind of understand what I mean here, I need to tell you about how the Arabic world works according to their folklore and actually, the base of this is also in Islamic religion. 

So it is believed that the world was held upon the back of a giant bull called al-Rayyan, who stood on a giant fish called Bahamut which was in turn held up by an angel. The mountain Qaf was on the back of al-Rayyan, with the lumps and bumps of his back creating the mountain ranges which are technically in the centre of the earth. However, these mountains weren't made out of flesh, bone or rock for that matter - they were made out of emeralds. The Roc would make their nests and lay their eggs up here on these mountains. Alongside this, it was also considered the home of the djinn, who we’ll cover in a later episode as there is sooo much content surrounding them - but they are the actual mythical version of a genie, but were considered to be very evil spirits. 

ANYWAY, back to Roc - this is one of the rarer monsters that would actually be in abundance, they were not rare and there were loads and loads of them. They laid eggs, and mated - so they were generally a bit of a terror.

It was a terror because it was only really talked about within myth when it was causing a bit of a ruckus. It was so big that it’s diet was mostly large mammals, it’s favourite snack being elephants it would pick up from the coast of Africa. That’s how big we’re talking this bird was, and considering that most elephants weigh around 3 and a half tonnes, you can see how terrifying this is. They did also terrorise people, but we’ll get onto this in the next section. 

ORIGIN:

The name Roc is actually the Anglicized version of Rukh, which is spelt Rukh - which is the original Arabic spelling - however, Rukh doesn’t actually mean much, it’s just the name of this bird and even when I looked this up in Urdu - it’s the same meaning, big legendary bird. However, in English, it sounds a lot like Rook, which is a little bird from the Raven family called Corvids - but I will say that this apparently has no connection, but we as English speaking people can at least grasp that it’s a bird. 

This monster is believed to have existed between 1200 and 1500AD, but the origin story actually started in India in 39AD. In two different Sanskrit epics, the original tale was of a battle between the sun bird Garuda and the serpentine Naga - both of which we’ll cover another time. The story was very descriptive and said that Garuda carried off an elephant that was fighting a crocodile. This started the original myth, and throughout Arab and Persian history, the rumours of a huge bird capable of carrying off an elephant was retold through the ages.

The first ever real life experience was actually of the legendary explorer, Marco Polo - as in Marco Polo, the game you play in the pool with a ball yeah - he was Italian, and describing his trip around China back in the 13th century. He described this huge bird that attacked people and is actually given a lot of credit for spreading the myth originally - here’s an extract of his account;

“It was for all the world like an eagle, but one indeed of enormous size; so big in fact that its quills were twelve paces long and thick in proportion. And it is so strong that it will seize an elephant in its talons and carry him high into the air and drop him so that he is smashed to pieces; having so killed him, the bird swoops down on him and eats him at leisure.”

The Roc was also famously featured in 1001 Nights, which was a collection of short stories from Arabic literature in the 1700’s. This legendary bunch of stories, also known as Arabian Nights, contained stories of heroes such as Sinbad, and that’s who we’re gonna talk about here;

One story describes a Roc carrying Sinbad to safety after he has a shipwreck in the middle of the ocean. He says that it carries him so high that he can no longer see the Earth, he tied his turban around the leg of the Roc to keep himself on too - which is pretty good thinking if you ask me. Another story in this collection is that of Abd al-Rahman, who landed in Madagascar, and his crew destroy a Roc egg, and then eat the chick to survive. The Roc parents chase after them, and destroy their ship with giant boulders they’ve dropped from nearby mountains. And honestly, I get it. 

Since then, there have been quite a few sightings of the bird mentioned in older travelling accounts - but all of which are believed to be exaggerations of extinct birds. 

Speaking of which, the best explanation that we can give to the Roc is that of the Malagasy crowned eagle or Aepyornis Elephant bird from Madagascar, which were massive Jurassic sized birds who could not fly - kind of like an Emu or Ostrich now. Or it could have been Haast's Eagle, which is another extinct large bird from New Zealand, that could fly and would hunt larger birds such as the Cassowary, Emus or Moa, the last one being another extinct bird - how sad, I’ve talked about so many wiped out species, such a mood killer. But either way, all of their wing spans were about 9ft long, so they were huge birds, and their eggs are still in museums all over the world. The best subjects being the Aepyornis eggs, in the Paris Natural History Museum, why in Paris, I don’t know. Probably something to do with colonisation somewhere.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

Anyway, we can swiftly fly onto cultural significance, in art, there are actually some gorgeous drawings of these, such as Elephant Carried Away by a Roc by Johannes Stradanus in 1590, Roc by Edward Julius Detmold in 1924, The Roc by Rene Bull in 1912 and lastly The merchants break the roc's egg by Gustave Dore in 1865. 

For movies, they’re only in a few; Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Aladdin - the 2019 version and The Magic Crane.

In more modern TV, you can find these in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Aladdin, the animated series, and Digimon.

They’re actually in a bunch of video games such as Age of Mythology, Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, God of War, Golden Sun, Dwarf Fortress, Sonic and the Secret Rings, Skies of Arcadia, Pokemon, Shin Megami Tensei and Saiyuki: Journey West.

For my book recommendation of the week, I would recommend Oriental Story Book. Arabic Folktales: Collection of ancient tales of East by Elena Grand and generally, try and get your hands on a copy of Arabian Nights, it’s a fantastic bunch of stories by a bunch of authors in the Middle ages, and is still a great read!

DO I THINK THEY EXISTED? 

Now it’s time for, do I think they existed?

With this one, I’m gonna say possibly - and I say this because there is proof of these gigantic types of bird roaming the earth, both winged and walking. I saw a Cassowary for the first time in real life when I went to Edinburgh Zoo in September and I don’t think I’ve ever been more scared of a bird in my life - they look like actual dinosaurs, would not recommend. 

But yes, I think this one has the possibility of being real - and honestly, we do have some pretty big birds that still wander about, but nothing to the size of this beasty, and in reality, much like all of our gigantic jurassic animals, they just can’t keep up with their own appetites - can you imagine how long it would take to take apart an elephant? No thanks, I’ll stick to my speedy deliveroo. 

Also, I will just say that this bird is very similar to the token legendary birds from other myths, such as the Native American folklore - the Thunderbird and the Greek Phoenix - never proved to exist but actually there are some little hints of fact in there.

OUTRO: 

I thought that was a pretty cool monster actually - I’m glad we covered that one and it did make me feel a little bit warmer during the very cold December months here in the UK. I can happily say that we’re going to have another special for the holidays going live on the 23rd December - I will be taking a week off for my holiday celebrations, so this episode will cover Christmas week and the week going up to New Years. So then we’ll be back on the 6th January for new year monsters hooray!

Next week we’re heading back over to the East and looking at the cute little Moon Rabbit from Chinese mythology as the weather gets colder! Get your telescopes ready and join me moon watching next Thursday!

For now, thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk - you can also find us on Goodpods and Patreon if you want to help me fund the podcast, ya know if you feel like it.

Come join the fun and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.

But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.