Three Billy-Goats' Gruff

Three Billy-Goats’ Gruff

The ur-troll tale in Indo-European culture — the foundational folk story that encodes the entire trolling dynamic: a bridge, migrants seeking food, a troll guarding the border between Inner and Outer Realms. This is the archetype that Russia and MAGA re-enact, and that the author lived on a bridge in eastern Ukraine.

The Tale

Most famous troll tales in our culture derive from “Three Billy-Goats’ Gruff,” a Norwegian folk tale collected by Asbjornsen and Moe.

Three goats set off for a pasture. They have to cross a bridge, beneath which lives a troll. Their feet go ‘Trip, trap! trip, trap!’ and the troll calls out: ‘Who’s that tripping over my bridge?’ The youngest goat tells the troll not to eat him, but to wait for the next goat, who is fatter. The second goat says the same, and when the third goat crosses the bridge it announces: ‘It is I! The Big Billy-Goat Gruff!’ It kills the troll.

Source: Disinfolklore (5)

Three migrant billy-goats attempt to cross from the Outer Realm to the Inner Realm in order to consume the Inner Realm’s food. The troll guards the border. The first two goats negotiate past the troll by promising a bigger prize. The third goat destroys it. The tale encodes three concerns about migrants: threats to sovereignty, security, and fertility/prosperity of the Inner Realm.

The Chinvat Bridge: The Deeper Archetype

That fable is itself a folkloric reflex of a much older legend in Indo-European culture. In ancient Iranian religion, at the time of death, we approach Chinvat bridge. Chinvat is guarded by Daena. If Daena appears as a beautiful woman, we will pass into the eternal heavenly House of Songs. Yet, if the bridge narrows as we approach it to the width of a sword blade and Daena is a witch, we shall spend eternity in the hellish House of Lies.

Source: Bridge to the House of Lies

Three Billy-Goats’ Gruff is a descendant of the Chinvat bridge myth from ancient Iran — the bridge between the House of Songs and the House of Lies, guarded by Daena, who appears as either a beautiful woman or a witch depending on the character of the soul crossing. The bridge is the liminal space where truth is judged. This is what the author encountered in eastern Ukraine.

The Bridge at Stanitsia Luhanska

My intuition about Disinfolklore first manifested while I was a peacekeeping diplomat. Between 2015 and 2018, I was posted on a bridge spanning the eastern Ukrainian Donets River at Stanitsia Luhanska. That wooden and iron bridge was the only pedestrian crossing place between Russia-occupied Luhansk and the rest of Ukraine. Ten thousand civilians — mostly older women, children and those unlikely to be pressganged into military service by Russian occupiers — traversed it daily.

We whose fate it was to participate in the daily array of diabolical dramas staged there by Russian war lords became like stock characters in a long-running soap opera. The cast of players acting out roles in this tragicomedy included diplomats, mercenaries, traders, soldiers, Russian occupiers, spies, and ordinary folk just like you and me.

Source: Bridge to the House of Lies

The author was a living character in a daily re-enactment of Three Billy-Goats’ Gruff. The Russian bridge trolls sometimes manifested seductive charm (Daena as beautiful woman); at other times they epitomised demonic witches. The tale was not a metaphor — it was the structure of reality at the zero-line of war.

Trump’s Campaign: The Same Archetype

Once you get your eye in, you begin to see how it’s not just the Russians doing it. This archetypal tale was immanent in the first moments of Druidey Don Disinfolklore the Shaman Trickster Trump’s campaign in 2016 when he talks about the migrants, the criminals, the rapists coming from Mexico, which is this idea of threatening the sovereignty, the security and the fertility. So these are the three billy goats coming from Mexico into the inner realm of America. And Donald is situating, is archetyping himself as protecting it.

Source: Video Podcast: In the Faery Tale Donald and Russia always win

Trump’s 2016 campaign — “the rapists coming from Mexico” — is the Three Billy-Goats’ Gruff tale re-enacted at civilisational scale. The migrants are the billy-goats; America is the Inner Realm; Trump archetypes himself as the troll guarding the bridge. The three concerns (sovereignty, security, fertility) map precisely onto Dumézil’s tripartite Indo-European social structure. See Tool 1: Archetypal Disinfolklore Literacy.

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