Stingy Jack: The Complete Legend Behind the Jack-o’-Lantern | Irish Folklore for Sleep

A slow, quiet retelling of Stingy Jack, made for falling asleep to.

The pumpkin on the doorstep has a name attached to it, and the name belongs to a man who was not a hero in any version of the story.

He was a drinker, a cheat, and good company right up until he owed you something. The legend says he met the devil twice and talked his way out of it both times — once by getting him to turn himself into a coin to settle a bar bill and then pocketing him next to a cross, and once by getting him up a tree after an apple and carving something into the bark so he couldn’t climb back down. Both times he traded his freedom for a promise. And the second promise was the one that finished him: that his soul would never be taken.

So when he died, heaven wouldn’t have him and hell had given its word. He was sent back out into the dark with nothing but a single coal, which he put inside a hollowed turnip to carry — and he has been walking with it ever since, which is the point of the lantern on the step. Jack of the lantern. The turnips became pumpkins when the story crossed to America, because pumpkins were larger and easier to carve and growing everywhere.

It’s a small story with a strange weight to it: not a punishment of fire, just an endless walk with a light, and nowhere at either end that will take him.

The recording itself is the usual thing. A low, even voice, no music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Nothing in it is built to frighten you. Slow enough that following along stops feeling necessary somewhere in the first twenty minutes. If you drift off before the first bargain and surface long after, that’s the intended use. Most people don’t make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night.

Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you.

Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics, Irish folklore and old stories from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can’t sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.

Jörmungandr: The Complete Story of the Serpent That Encircled the World | Norse Mythology for Sleep

A slow, quiet retelling of Jörmungandr, made for falling asleep to.

He was thrown into the sea as a child. One of three siblings the gods took away from their father because of what they’d been told those children would grow into, and this one was dropped into the ocean that surrounds the world — presumably to drown, or to be forgotten. He didn’t drown. He grew until he had gone all the way around the earth and could bite his own tail, and that is the position he has held ever since, holding the world in a ring.

The stories about him are really stories about one god who can’t leave him alone. There’s the fishing trip, which is the best of them: an afternoon in a rowing boat that went too far out, an ox’s head on a hook, and a line that came up with something no fisherman wanted to see over the side. The giant who had come along panicked and cut the line, which is the only reason the world is still here. And there’s the evening at a stranger’s hall where the challenge was to lift a cat off the floor — just a cat — and the strongest of the gods managed to raise one paw, and was told afterwards what he had actually been holding.

They meet once more, later, at the end, and neither of them walks away from it. Both of them have always known that.

The recording itself is the usual thing. A low, even voice, no music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Nothing in it is built to frighten you. Slow enough that following along stops feeling necessary somewhere in the first twenty minutes. If you drift off before the boat leaves shore and surface long after, that’s the intended use. Most people don’t make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night.

Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you.

Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics and old folklore from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can’t sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.

Krishna: The Complete Story of His Magical Childhood Adventures | Hindu Mythology for Sleep

A slow, quiet retelling of Krishna’s childhood, made for falling asleep to.

Of all the gods in all these stories, he’s the only one most people meet as a baby — and the childhood episodes are told in India not as the prelude to his real life but as the best part of it.

It begins badly, with a king who had been told one of his sister’s sons would end him, and did the obvious terrible things about it. The child was carried across a river at night, in a storm, and swapped for another, and grew up in a cattle village with people who had no idea what they were raising. What follows is years of that village: a toddler who stole butter and was tied to a grinding stone for it and dragged it out through the door anyway; a boy whose mother looked into his mouth to check for dirt and saw the entire universe in there and then was allowed to forget it; a hill lifted on one finger and held up for seven days like an umbrella over everyone who lived under it; a snake in a poisoned river and a dance on its hoods. And a flute, played in the evenings, that people walked out of their houses to follow.

The tone of it is unusual for a myth. It’s warm, and often funny, and the people around him keep oscillating between telling him off and realising, briefly, what he is. Then forgetting again, because they love him.

The recording itself is the usual thing. A low, even voice, no music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Slow enough that following along stops feeling necessary somewhere in the first twenty minutes. If you drift off during the crossing of the river and surface somewhere in the fields years later, that’s the intended use. Most people don’t make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night.

Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you.

Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics and old folklore from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can’t sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.