Tooth Fairy

Welcome to Season 4! We're kicking off the new season by looking a mythical feature that most of us in the Western world are fond of, the Tooth Fairy! Why does she even collect teeth in the first place? How does she link to the Vikings? Find out this week!

Transcript

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.

Welcome to Season 4 of Myth Monsters! This is our third year of the podcast, and there will be some cool things coming I assure you. It’s our official 3 year anniversary on the 25th March, and we’ll have some fun around that time too.

In other news, I had a lovely festive break - and I’m starting a new job next week, so it’s all busy in the Myth Monsters household at the moment.

DESCRIPTION:

So where are we heading for our first episode of the new season? Well not really anywhere in particular, this monster is from all over the world, but is most prevalent within the Western side of the globe. Yes, we are looking at the dental queen herself, the Tooth Fairy.

So most of us have heard of this little fairy who comes to visit when you’ve lost a tooth, but what is she really? The Tooth Fairy is actually not really described within folklore at all, however, the most common thought is that she is a female Tinkerbell-style fairy, who is immensely small, about the size of a large coin, who has dragonfly wings and a wand. However, another common interpretation is that she is an older, blonde woman dressed in blue who leans in through windows to fetch her prize under your pillow. 

I’ve used she to describe her gender, however, this is only 74% of the population's assumption that she is female, however, 8% think she could be either male or female and 12% believe she is genderless. I am in the firm belief that the Tooth Fairy is a female fairy, so I will be using she to describe her to avoid confusion throughout.

Her job is pretty simple: fly about in the night to collect the baby teeth of children after they have fallen out - which of course, is helped by the myth of her existence, meaning parents across the world encourage their children to put them neatly under their pillow for her collection. She rewards the child with a coin, or some kind of goodie and collects the tooth. What she does with them past this point, we do not know unfortunately. 

Like most fae, they are transactional and their fee is human baby teeth - they don’t ever come for adult teeth and so the interest is only in human children.

Her powers are mostly size shapeshifting and flight, she uses the former to shrink herself to fit under the pillow, and regain her still tiny size to fly off with a bag full of teeth and money. She does only work at night when the children cannot see her, however, there have not been any reported sightings of the Tooth Fairy, so she also does a very good job of hiding herself away. 

It is believed that there is only one Tooth Fairy, and that she is either replaced every few hundred years or that the original is still the same Tooth Fairy, working immortally for thousands of years. Although I do like the idea of being trained as a Tooth Fairy, ready to take over when the existing one retires - the joy of this is that because she’s never been seen, we’ll never know.

We also don’t know much about the Tooth Fairy population because of this, including how they might die - although with most fae myths like these, they die off when you stop believing in them - but we don’t know if this applies to a specific fairy like the Tooth Fairy. We also don’t know what they eat, but we do know that they are of no risk to people and generally are benevolent. 

ORIGIN:

Now for etymology - I don’t really know what to say for this one. It’s very literal in English, but they do have some other names in different languages, but they all translate to Tooth Fairy and there are some countries within Europe and Asia that have a completely different version of this myth with different names that won’t make sense yet - so I’ll get into those later. 

For history, we’ll talk about the typical Western Tooth Fairy first and then delve into some of these location specific versions. Surprisingly, this myth goes all the way back to the Viking era in Scandinavia, and if you’ve been listening for a while you’ll know what the Edda is - one of the oldest texts known to man, written in the 12th century with all the Viking myths in it. Well the Tooth Fairy herself is not mentioned, BUT the tradition of tand-fe or tooth fee was. This was a monetary payment given to a child for the loss of their first tooth, and it was given to Vikings for battle, as it was believed that children’s articles such as teeth were good luck - and they were strung around their necks. 

This changed through to the Middle Ages up to 1500, which is generally when wider religions started to take hold of Europe, and old Pagan traditions such as the Norse ones started to lose their impact. In England, children were forced to burn their teeth as they would save them from hardship in the afterlife, if they didn’t - they would spend eternity trying to search for them. Unfortunately, the witch hunting era followed and it was believed that a witch having a part of your ‘disposable’ body such as nails, hair or teeth gave her power over you, and children were encouraged to bury or burn them again. Although you could also leave them to the rats to eat, because they were seen as having great gnashers, it was good luck for your new teeth growing in if they got them!

However, there was never any mention of the Tooth Fairy up to this point, and fae were massively believed in within Europe at this time - so it is interesting that it took so long for people to personify a Tooth Fairy. Because it wasn’t until 1908 when an American Newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, actually declared a Tooth Fairy to be in existence with this little extract;

Tooth Fairy. Many a refractory child will allow a loose tooth to be removed if he knows about the Tooth Fairy. If he takes his little tooth and puts it under the pillow when he goes to bed the Tooth Fairy will come in the night and take it away, and in its place will leave some little gift. It is a nice plan for mothers to visit the 5-cent counter and lay in a supply of articles to be used on such occasions.

From that point on, this spread across the western world and the myth was born. So technically, whilst the roots are within Europe and the Vikings, the myth itself was made in the US - which in itself is quite rare.

Now let’s talk about other countries, some of them had the Tooth Fairy myth, but not with a Tooth Fairy, and most commonly, it’s a mouse! In Italy, Fatina dei denti is a little mouse called Topolino, who represents Saint AAApollonia, the patron saint of dentistry. In France and Belgium, there is La Petit Souris or Little Mouse who collects the teeth, in Scotland there is a white fairy rat who collects them too. 

In Catalonia, there are Eis Angelets or little angels, in Basque Country, there is Mari Teila tu koa, or Mary from the Roof who catches teeth from children when they are thrown by children. In Cantabria, there’s a tooth squirrel called L’Esquilu de los dientis. Considering these are all Spanish, it’s quite interesting to see the difference region by region too. Most commonly in Spain and across Latin America though, there is El Raton Perez, who collects teeth for cash and has his own popular story about him and the King of Spain from the early 1900’s.

Heading over to Asia, in Japan, upper teeth must be thrown into the ground and lower teeth up in the air to encourage the new teeth to grow straight. In Korea, they would throw them onto roofs for good luck to be caught by a magpie, which comes from the word for magpie in Korean ka-chi which sounds like new teeth and that they are messengers between gods and humans. In the Philippines, the child would hide the tooth and make a wish, if they found it again in a year - they could make another! In Nepal, children would bury their teeth to hide them from the birds as they believed if a bird ate it, a new tooth would not grow in to replace it and in Pakistan, you would wrap the tooth in cotton and send it down the river at sunset for good luck.

In the Middle East, you would throw your teeth up to the sky to the sun or to Allah, in Turkiye, they could bury them where they wanted their children to work e.g. a football field for a footballer child, and lastly, in Africa, in Mali, children throw their baby teeth into a chicken coop and they would get a new chicken the next day and in Egypt, they would throw their teeth to the sun and shout ‘shiny sun, shiny sun, take this buffalo’s tooth and bring me a bride’s tooth’ and Ra would give them a new one.

All lovely traditions from all across the world!

However, this also means the reward is different - so let’s talk about tooth valuations. Of course, it differs per country and per family's economic status but on average, an American child gets $3.70 per tooth, and only 8% get a 5 dollar bill with 3% getting a dollar coin or less. There is someone tracking this though at a dental insurance company called Delta Dental in the US, who tracked the change from 1998 where the price was $1.30 per tooth to $6.23 in 2023, so it does also rise with inflation, which is pretty wild to think about. 

If you have young kids listening, send them off to come back a bit later for this part because we also need to talk about parents and lying. It’s called Paternalistic deception, and it’s what we adults and parents do for our kids with Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy - where we actually perpetuate the myths for these kids. The Tooth Fairy is commonly used to comfort a kid who has lost a tooth and to assure that the child is still a child. On average most of the ruses are up by around age 8 or 9, but parents also use this to make sure their kids are looking after their teeth - telling them that a perfect tooth gets more value than a decayed one, which from my valuation data is false.

But the Tooth Fairy is also used as a saying for naive adults, for example, ‘who do you think brought this, the Tooth Fairy?’ so she is also still used by adults, just not in the way that we’d usually expect from childhood.

Our mythical comparisons this week are pretty easy - of course, we have Santa and the Easter bunny, being those common parental lies that we use to comfort or surprise our children, but she is also a fairy. Whilst we can’t compare her to the fickle fae of European folklore due to her humble and kind nature, it's interesting that she still has this connection to children and looks like the fairies we stereotypically use in the media and think of when we think of fairies, just like Tinkerbell.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

Now onto modern media, we have a few bits on the Tooth Fairy this week, so these are all directly relating to them!

For art, there are a few bits of classic art around the Tooth Fairy, but none of them are portraits or anything that would be considered famous art pieces - so I’d recommend having a look at independent art this week for some really lovely adaptations of this fairy, but do be conscious that there are some scary adaptations around too if you’re looking with children.

In movies, we have; Rise of the Guardians, Ernest et Celestine, Return of the Tooth Fairy, Game Plan, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, Tooth Fairy, Tooth Fairy 2, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, The Tooth Fairy, The Santa Clause, Toothless, Transformers & Darkness Falls.

For TV, we have; The Irregulars, Futurama, This is Us, The Twilight Zone, Bewitched, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Supernatural, Frasier, Johnny Bravo, The Fairly Odd Parents, Legend Quest, The Smurfs, PAW Patrol, Robot Chicken, Family Guy, Seven Little Monsters, Martha Speaks, South Park, Spongebob Squarepants, Work It Out Wombats!, Teen Titans Go!, Peppa Pig, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Fanboy and Chum Chum, Big City Greens, Tales of the Tooth Fairies & Archie’s Weird Mysteries.

In video games, we only have a few this week; Reverse: 1999, The Real Tooth Fairies & Runescape. 

I have two book recommendations this week - one for a more fun look at the fae, so probably more for our younger listeners and their families, it’s A Natural History of Fairies by Emily Hawkins, but for our older listeners, have a look at Faeries, Elves and Goblins: The Old Stories and fairy tales by Rosalind Kerven which I always suggest for fairy myths!

DO I THINK THEY EXISTED? 

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

If you’re listening with kids, it’s probably best to get them to leave the room before I give you my actual thoughts on this - I don’t want to be responsible for any dreams being crushed here, it’s your job to break that news.

Well, I hate to say it, but it’s a solid no. Mainly because duh - I grew up putting my fallen teeth under the pillow like every other European child did, I am sure. But did we grow up and believe that the Tooth Fairy still existed after some point? No, because our parents admitted that they were doing it to play into folklore the whole time.

I mean, who doesn’t want a monetary reward when a part of your skeleton eventually and expectedly falls out?! I know I do - in fact, I lost a tooth recently thanks to my exclusive sugar diet and it was taken out, and the dentist gave it back to me in a Tooth Fairy themed paper bag that tells you to put it under your pillow for a Tooth Fairy reward! I thought it was very cute and my dentist, knowing I have this podcast, thought it was very funny. 

Suffice to say, I did, in the name of research, sleep with it under my pillow and maybe you only get visited if it falls out naturally - as it was still there in the morning rather than the single pound coin I was hoping for. However, the myth is strong enough to still be super popular and prevalent within culture across the world - children do still leave their teeth under their pillow for the Tooth Fairy, and long may that continue.

But what do you think? Does the Tooth Fairy pick up children’s teeth from around the world? Let me know on Twitter!

OUTRO: 

A great worldwide monster to start the new season and the new year! It’s one I’ve been really looking forward to covering too - and a monster that I grew up with, so it’s even more satisfying to research and to cover in an episode.

Next week, we’re heading over to Germany and the rest of Europe for some copycat monsters that have made their way into common vocabulary. Yes, we’re looking at Doppelgangers next Thursday, so be ready to point out your double.

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, Youtube, Threads 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, Buymeacoffee and Patreon if you want to help me fund the podcast too.

Come join the fun though 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.