Loremen Podcast - Loremen Minisode - Croft Hill, Leicester

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Despite being an obvious promo for our upcoming live show, this minisode delivers a whole load of Leicester lore in a tiny package. Find out what happens when a whole hill vanishes. Plus, James tries to make "don't look for it, it's not there anymore" a thing. Is that really the hill he is going to die on? TICKETS (feat. the mysteriously frosty image of the Lorebois) HERE - https://comedy-festival.co.uk/event/loremen-live/

Alistair. Hello, James. Hello. I'm doing my mini-sode. My beginning of a mini-sode whisper. Your secret mini-sode whisper? Yeah, it's like, psst, it's a mini-sode.

Yeah. Because we're doing a Bluin' Live again. I know. I'm going to go back into speaking in my normal register, because it can be very annoying hearing people whisper. It can be, can't it? Maybe that's the reason people don't listen to the minisodes in such high numbers. Oh.

They hear the whispering at the beginning and they think, some bum has released a full episode of a podcast, All Whispers. They think, this is a secret, I shouldn't be listening, and they just switch straight off. They think, oops. Oh, they've accidentally released a secret. Eavesdroop. Eavesdro oops. Oh, they've accidentally released a secret. Eavesdro... I'm eavesdrooping.

Eavesdroopers never hear anything good. That or they don't realise that the minisodes themselves are actually hot pod content. Yeah. Including original nuggets of lore that don't appear in the main episodes. No, not at all. In fact, it's a little

annoying to be honest i think i feel like i've painted myself into a corner by actually telling stories on minisodes yeah because if i look at the titles of all the episodes i get an idea of what we've covered from the books but now i don't know if we've covered them in a mini-sode. So it's up to you to remember. Me? Yeah. Oh, right. Oh, okay. I can't remember anything that has happened on any episode of the podcast.

I know. Hopefully this story won't ring any bells, because we're going to go to Leicester on the weekend to do the Leicester Comedy Festival again. Yep. And it's at 2pm, and tickets are available on the internet if you google lawmen leicester comedy festival i'm gonna do that right now and you're listening to this between day of release thursday and day of performance saturday it's such a small window but so i've

got a little mini story about leicester slash leicestershire leicestershire this is about a specific hill alistair are you ready for some hill-based myth yes please this is croft hill croft hill yeah and i found out about this in leicestershire Ghosts and Legends by David Bell and I looked it up online and I found a document by WG Hoskins of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society yeah if I seem a little bit distracted it's because I googled the Leicester Comedy Festival event page for Lawmen Live Saturday 25th of February 2023 and the image they've used is the standard Lawmen image, Saturday, 25th of February, 2023. And the image they've used is the standard Lawmen image. An awful lot of sharpening

has occurred to the image. Oh. Which makes it look like we're quite hoary with frost. We look aged. My eyebrows have become visible for the first time. Oh.

Your beard looks like it's flecked with snow or grey. Yeah, it is nowadays. At least that's accurate. I mean, that picture is, what, five years old now? Yeah. But somehow the process of sharpening has brought the reality of the present-day haggard James Shakespeare to life.

It's like a sort of picture of Dorian Gray, but it's just a standard mirror. And I look like, you know, the ghost kings at the end of Lord of the Rings. Oh, yes. I look like that, which I know is not that far away from my usual look, but it's quite menacing. Tale as old as time.

You start out as one of the tree people from Lord of the Rings, and you end up one of the ghost kings. Yeah. The tree-to-ghost pipeline is real. Have I told you about what um when i realized that i was no longer able to be marty mcfly and i said this to my to my wife i said you're too old yeah i'm no longer marty mcfly now i'm the doc and she said no you're old marty mcfly with his broken dreams it's my actual wife yeah that is really harsh yeah accurate though i am wearing two ties

but i'm not here to complain about my life via the medium of Back to the Future 2. No, I want to tell you about Croft Hill. It was, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which I haven't Googled enough of, but I'm pretty sure it's not a newspaper. This was a meeting spot, Croft Hill. And in 836, King Wiglaf of Mercia, I remember him, held a big meeting there of all nobles, like hundreds of people, which would have been a high percentage of the country, I guess, at the time. Oh, yeah. Held this massive meeting.

How many people in that meeting muttered to each other, this could have been a rune. It was a similar meeting to the one that King Wiglaf's predecessor had held. His predecessor, King Ethelbald. I was expecting it to be another wig, because normally it works like that. It's like W laugh and wig shaft. It was Ethel Bald.

Ethel Bald. And then got a wig, but it was evidently laughable. Brilliant. And that was held at Gumley. Gumley. Yeah, which is a lovely name. And then there's not much about Croft Hill until 11 24 when a fella called ralph bassett who was uh probably a sheriff or the lord of sapcoat but i thought he was a cartoon dog from

the daily mail wasn't he ralph bassett it does sound like a cartoon dog yeah from the daily mail from the daily mail yeah yeah apparently he hanged more thieves than ever were known before wow he hanged more thieves than there were thieves before. Wow. He hanged more thieves than there were thieves. It sounds like. Yeah, there was a lot of miscarriages of justice there. Yep. 44 men. I don't think you should hang people for being a thief.

And you shouldn't if they're not. That's like double not hang them. Oh, definitely. Definitely not if they're not a thief. Or do the next thing that was also noted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, that he despoiled six men of their eyes and of their testicles. Ooh. Eee.

Ugh. Yeah, he's a rotter, Ralph Bassett. He sounds like a cartoon character from the Daily Mail. They say that on December nights, you can hear the dying groans and weeping of loved ones from that incident. Now, apart from that horribleness,

it was a place of pagan revelry, or at least semi-pagan revelry. And people would sing, play music, and dance on the hill after church on a Sunday. Until in 1637, a Puritan vicar of the nearby Shawell, or Shawell, or Shaul,

I don't know how you pronounce it, he put musicians in stocks and actually paid a piper, John Wood, 18 d's not to play on a Sunday. Wow. He just paid him to go away. Yeah. He did the classic, anyone got any requests?

He'd go, yes, can you play far away? So, can I just check? He put musicians in stocks. He put musicians in stocks. Right, I heard magicians. Which some people might think was justified, but not me. I love a magician. Well, because there was all this pagan revelry I imagine there was some close up magic

at the very least a couple of wizards and someone with a fire poi and a diablo I loved a diablo when I was a kid I liked the whipping you know how you whip your arms all cocky like but yeah this vicar no one liked him When I was a kid, I liked the whipping, you know, your whip, your arms. Yep.

Oh, cocky like, but yeah, though this vicar, no one liked him. He apparently preached very long sermons and his prayers were so long that the congregation quote have called for a lantern and candle to go home by. Whoa. Ouch.

It's a long winded, fun stopping vicar. He sounds awful. He's like the reverse wig laugh. Yeah, he's not having a laugh. Another time, this rector, offered by violence to take away a fiddle or

instrument from one William Ward of Easonal. Willie Ward, give me a fiddle. Yeah. That's an example of how he might have said it. Or I'll bop you. I'll blooming bop you one, despite being a man of the cloth. Wow.

And the reason we know about this is because there was a court case in which the rector was suspended by the ecclesiastical court and fired. Not literally suspended. Not like the other guys. No, not like those guys. Okay, just given a... Maybe just take a few days off because you seem quite stressed at work.

Is everything okay? You seem really annoying. I feel like you're taking quite a lot of stuff out on that guy with the fiddle. Yeah, oh, Billy Ward. That's just Willy Wobbly. He's fine. Leave him alone.

Yeah, let him fiddle. Don't put him in the stocks. He can't fiddle yeah that's just willie wobbly he's fine leave him alone let him fiddle don't put him in the stocks he can't fiddle in the stocks um yeah um yeah and he was he was actually fired from being a vicar in the end that fired from being a vicar fired from being a vicar for taking it too seriously for being far too puritan in37 and all, which is around the time that, you know, Christmas was getting abandoned, what not. Yeah, wow. A bit much even by the standards of those days. So that was all on Croft Hill. Now, this is a classic case of don't look for it,

it's not there anymore. The hill is gone. Wow. Also, just to be clear, that's not a thing. Don't look for it, it's not there anymore oh that's a thing you said that like it was your catchphrase it's a thing i've never heard that phrase before don't look for it it's not there anymore don't look for it it's not there but you know when people say like oh and then uh and such and such used to go to this pub don't look for it it's not there it was knocked down to make way for a block of flats this hill was knocked down the hill was knocked down the hill was knocked down to make way for a quarry

the opposite of a hill a hole in the ground yeah the anti-hill an own hill an unhill i feel like since i said earlier that i can't remember anything that happens in the podcast we'll probably get lots of messages of occasions where you have said don't look for it it's not there anymore and i'll be humiliated but what you could do alistair is you could go back through episodes of the podcast and you could edit out all those pieces so when someone when they go looking for it it's not there anymore oh the student becomes the master. Mm-hmm. The hill has become the quarry. Quite the tables have turned, Mr. Croft. The table has become four legs on a piece of wood standing up in the air.

Or four holes going into the ground and then a flat hole at the bottom. Yeah. A mine. The untable. You've described a mine. Yes, that's a mine. The untable. You've described a mine. Yes, that's a mine. So, that's a little mini-sode of how a hill can become an unhill. Yeah.

Great, great life. The live show, of course, is not going to feature anything about quarries or knolls. It's still going to be original content, like I said before. I mean, obviously, me repeating the phrase original content is actually not contributing to the production of original content much like pj and duncan repeating the the rhymes we've got so many lyrics twice in the same bar but they do so they've got so many lyrics they're frightened to use them so i think it is actually quite meta they say they've got so many lyrics they're frightened to use them so many lyrics we've got them in stores.

They're showing how frightened they are to use all the lyrics that they've got by repeating some lyrics that they've literally just said. I think a lot of people did PJ and Duncan a disservice. Do you think we're like the PJ and Duncan of folklore? How are we, man. So if you want to see the duo everyone is calling the PJ and Duncan of folklore, everyone's saying it. Yeah, yeah.

Don't look for it. There's a lot of people saying it. They're saying it out loud. It's like the oral tradition. There's no written record. You won't find it if you Google. Yeah, don't look for it. It's not there anymore.

there's no written record you won't find it if you google yeah don't look for it it's not there anymore but if you come to the big difference in leicester saturday 25th of february at 2 p.m you're going to hear a lot of people saying wow it's the pj and duncan of folklore oh my god i really hope that is we can audibly hear that when we take to the stage. That's the PJ and Duncan of folklore. That's the PJ and Duncan of folklore. It's the PJ and Duncan of folklore. We're whispering again. We've returned to ASMR. This is the ASMR of people muttering that the PJ and Duncan of folklore. I'll tell you what, though.

I will tell you some ghost stories on Saturday. And if you're very, very good, I'll tell you a story about a magical thumbnail. Yeah! And not like a YouTube one. I mean tell you a story about a magical thumbnail. Yeah. And not like a YouTube one. I mean like a human's. Oh, a human's thumbnail.

Disgusting. Yeah, it's gross. See you there.