Beware the Shutterkin! December 6, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
Beach has previously given examples of bosom serpents, the idea that animals, particularly snakes can live within the human body. But consider the following freaky description. What is this thing? The quotation comes from the Athenian Oracle (II, 380) where reader’s questions were answered.
Whence proceeds the Shutterkin?
Physicians have imputed this Shutterkin (which resembles a Weezle) to the Steam and Warmth of the Stove-Pots, which vivifies the natural Irrigation of the Uterus, which has a Tendency to form something, as the Guts, and Intestines, by an undue Disposition of Hear, etc. from Worms; it usually comes forth with the Birth of the first Child, which it sometimes corrodes; as soon as it comes into the Air, it will run up the Walls, and strive to hide it self, but they do all they can to kill it immediately.
Wow, so let’s get this clear. Unlike our typical bosom serpent that crawls into the body, either by being drunk or consumed, or through the vagina, anus or mouth during sleep, the Shutterkin is spontaneously created in the uterus. Of course, there is a long history of spontaneous creations in the body, but these are more normally worms, surely. This is a ‘Weezle’: in other words a weasel, a nasty mammal about a foot long. Ask chickens or Toad of Toad Hall what they think of this homicidal fellow? Beach keeps thinking of a carnival game when a sock with a face called the weasel was dropped down a tube and players had to ‘kill’ it with a stick.
Davide Ermacora the go to guy for bosom serpents writes that ‘This is a complex of folk medical notions that finds immediate juxtaposition with the so-called 17th-century Dutch phenomenon of zuyger/suyger/ulyger (’sucker’) or sooterkin, a monstrous parasite conception developed simultaneously to the human fetus of a worm-like animal sometimes with shapes similar to a mouse.’ Sooterkin is clearly related to Shutterkin. Shutterkin is not in Wright’s Dialect Dictionary. Borrowed from Dutch or just an English version of the same? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
8 Dec 2016: Chris S brings this up, ‘Possibly just a tangent, but a disgusting one with a lazy cite using Wikipedia:
Note that Beach has met this one before. thanks!
