Loremen Podcast - S2 Ep2: Loremen S2 Ep2 - Shelley's Ghost and Malmesbury Abbey

Episode Date: December 27, 2018

Series 2 continues, as James and Alasdair unravel two tales of death and hubris: a romantic poet packing heat, and the Buzz Lightyear of the 11th century. Find the show notes here: www.loremenpodcast.com/episode-2-s2 @loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.loremenpodcast.com/about www.facebook.com/LoremenPod @JamesShakeshaft | @MisterABK 

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm James Shakeshaft, devourer of worlds. And I'm Alistair Beckett-King, devourer of chickpeas, mainly. In each episode, we'll unearth pieces of forgotten folklore and hold them up to the searing light of our arbitrary scoring system. This story tells the terrible tale of a gun-toting vegetarian.

So, James. Hello. My story comes from Ghosts of Wales by Peter Underwood, president of the Ghost Club. Ooh. Mm. I think I've got a book by Peter Underwood, president of the Ghost Club. Yeah.

Also, I should be clear that I'm not saying from my knowledge that he's president of the Ghost Club. I'm just reading the front of the book. Peter Underwood, president of the Ghost Club. It says it in what I think is probably.11 font underneath his name. Oh, that's good. And he is, I didn't realise, but he is one of our nation's, or possibly Wales' foremost ghost hunters.

He's very famous in the paranormal community. Yeah, I mean if you're in the Ghost Club... You're the third of the president. Who's the president? I can't work out what the first rule of Ghost Club would be. Don't tell people there aren't any ghosts. That really messes things up for us. Is he president for life?

And beyond. I mean, I think he's, based on the age of this book I'm holding, he's probably dead. I don't want to imply that I've done bad research, but I'm going to say he's dead. So this story comes from, I think, Northern Wales, and as a consequence of being in Wales, I'm going to mispronounce

several words, probably. Several L's. Yeah, there's some L's going on that I just... I think it's but I don't know. Sorry, the Welsh. Yeah, apologies in advance for the Welsh. And if I have to do a Welsh accent

It's going to be like a proper And a Southwailian accent That's all we can do It's the only one we can do But this is North Wales Where they basically sound scouse Or not Oh really?

Anyway The story I'm going to tell you Is the story of Shelley's ghost But it belongs to The ghosts of Tan-er-Acht. Which is spelled Tan-ir-Alt, but I think Tan-er-Acht is the closest

pronunciation I could find from the internet. Which means under the pass. And it's a large white house in northern Wales where many a ghost has been, I don't want to say seen, but mostly heard. At the time that Peter Underwood finds it, it's inhabited by the charming, that's a quote,

the charming Captain Sandy Livingston Learmonth, who basically, I'm going to be honest, I found this story because I looked for the person in the book with the longest name. And Captain Sandy Livingston Learmonth had the longest name. But it's also been occupied by Sir Bertram Clough Williams Ellis. book with the longest name and captain sandy lewiston learmonth had the longest name uh but it's also been occupied by uh sir bertram clough williams ellis wow uh who is the architect of uh port merion the italian style uh village in um in wales and e.f sorry in the prisoner yes the place yeah the place from the prisoner and the uh the the of Ghost Stories, E.F. Benson. And we can only assume that the E and the F

stand for something ridiculously long. I'm guessing you don't actually need to do a Welsh accent for any of these quotes. I don't know. Captain Summersby, what's your name? Sandy Livingston. I always want to say Lethbridge Stewart because that's the way he strikes me.

There are numerous hauntings. The house is always full of sounds and music and laughter. That's how Peter Underwood describes it being when he visits Sandy. Is that ghostly music and laughter, or is it just a happy place? It's both a happy place and full of ghosts. So apparently, yeah, it's a very pleasant haunted place. Kind of like the lighthouse in Round the Twist Kind of like the lighthouse in Round the Twist. Exactly like the lighthouse in Round the Twist.

I mean, that's what he says here. It's like the lighthouse in Round the Twist, a Welsh version of the lighthouse from Round the Twist. A couple of the ghostly things that happened. On two occasions, people have seen climbers in the rocks overhead, which is a rock that is called Hound's Head. I've seen climbers fall from things including Hound's Head and seen them hit branches and be injured

and then have run there and found that there was nobody there at all, even when search parties had been sent out. And Sandy himself was visited by his deceased wife. He heard her pull up in the car and then he ran to see. And then nobody came in, but the cat and the dog both came and sat in the hall and watched nobody walk into the house and they turned their heads in sync as nobody

came through the door. But the most exciting story is the story of Shelley's ghost because Percy Bysshe Shelley, the romantic poet stayed in the house between 1812 and 1813 and I guess you know who Shelley is? Yeah, he's a poet.

He's a poet. And I'm glad you said his middle name, it turns out. I did Google how you pronounce his middle name. So Shelley was a romantic poet, slash radical, slash vegetarian, slash heavily armed hippie. And that will come up later. Is he a pothead? He probably was a pothead. So he thought the government were after him, but I've looked it up and the government were after him.

Oh. Because of his radical, atheistic, seditious views. It was sort of a proto-social... He was like Russell Brand if Russell Brand had a flintlock in each hand. Flintlock may not be the historically accurate gun, but whatever it was, one of those crack guns that they had back then. I think a flintlock. Pistol.

No, a flintlock was a two-handed one. I've made a fool of myself in front of the gun crowd. Yeah, that's really your audience. That's 50% of the listenership gone. Yeah. The hardcore gun nuts are out. A flintlock! So Shelley had been causing trouble in Ireland, I think,

and then he'd gone to Dover, and he'd been kicked out of Dover because one of his servants pinned his poems to trees, and they were too seditious, so he was kicked out of Dover, and so he ended up in Tanneracht in Tremadoc, Wales, where he took a house and immediately started causing trouble and making enemies for himself there.

The biggest enemy he made was Leeson, a local quarry owner, who absolutely hated him, presumably because he was saying radical things like you should pay the people who work for you and not hit them with sticks and stuff like that. Anyway, he was a maverick. And then one night, at about 11 p.m just as the house was about to go to bed they all heard shots from uh from one of the rooms and they rushed into one of the rooms

and they saw um shelly there with with his two guns and according this is how uh his then wife harriet not his second wife uh mary shelly the author of Frankenstein, but his first wife Harriet, she records the account in a letter, and it's very much a sort of dream logic affair. It's hard to quite follow what happens, even from her account of it, in the next couple of days after it happened. It appears that he saw a man at the window with a pistol, and so the man fired at Shelley. Shelley fired. You're already man fired at Shelley. Shelley fired. You're already looking sceptical. Yeah.

All right, well, just tone it back. OK. Because it gets less realistic. Oh, God. Shelley tried to fire, but his gun flashed in the pan. But he managed to fire his other gun, because he was carrying two guns, as per Shelley. Because I think it took about 40 minutes to reload these guns,

so that's why you had two. And he managed to pop a cap in the shoulder of the man and they wrestled by a tree. Now, you'll have noticed that they were indoors at the start of this sentence and now they're in the garden. And in no account of it can I understand how they get from being in the house to being in the garden. But they wrestle and the man threatens that he's

going to murder Shelley and ravish his wife and sister which is a horrible thing to say Was his sister in the house? His sister wasn't in the house but I'm not even sure if he had a sister He may have had a sister, I should have done some research That's a bold threat It is, and also I don't

really like ravish because ravish is a word that's softened over the years it sounds like a brand of chocolates you know it's sort of oh a horrible thing to say so that that man ran off and oh so obviously the household this is about 11 p.m the household was pretty worried about that but they all agreed he was pretty definitely not going to come back so they all went to bed and then at about 4 a.m they all heard shots from the from a different room and they all ran into the different room and uh shelly was there with it with his gun and what he had seen was he had seen and i think the phrase is he had seen a man reaching through the glass with a gun now i don't know what's meant by that or reaching through the window i don't know whether that's going through the open window or actually physically

reaching through glass uh to shoot at him. And had taken a shot at Shelley, and Shelley had fired back, I think shattering the glass in the window. And was in a terrible state. You're doing a wry smile of this guy's a nut bar. But there was a hole

in Nelly's... Sorry. But there was a hole in the rapper Nelly. Oh no, he had so much on his plate. I mean, he would have had one of the guns that you can shoot several times in a go. Not two separate guns. There was a hole in his nightgown

and there was a... Demonstrating your gun knowledge there. It's a gun you can shoot several times in a row. Yeah, I'm looking for one of those guns you can shoot a lot, please. I don't want to have to spend 40 minutes reloading you're winning back the gun crowd that you lost earlier definitely yeah they're very much in at the moment so uh the bullet went through his nightgown and and lodged in the wall now you've been looking at me skeptically throughout this whole account and i can see i can already see points dripping away from the supernatural category of scoring.

As you say, this either is just someone shooting Shelley, or he's imagining the whole thing. And the main theories about it are, one, he imagined the whole thing. And that was put about by Leeson almost the very next day. He told all the local merchants that Shelley had just made up this story because he wanted to get out without paying his bills. Harrius, meanwhile, thinks that it was Leeson himself sending one of his men round to scare off Shelley.

Yeah. And then very, very quickly putting about that story. Yeah. And later, some farmers take responsibility for it. Oh. I don't know how realistic this is, but Shelley Shelley as a vegetarian went around shooting quite a few

sheep because when he saw a sheep that looked like it was in pain or ill he put it out of his misery with one of the guns he always carried. He likes shooting He does like shooting for a sort of a vegetarian hippie he shoots a lot of things so he shot a few

sheep which doesn't sound that serious but then i suppose this is the late this is the early 19th century but like not long before this you could be deported to australia for stealing a sheep so shooting one's got to be quite bad yeah maybe you could still be deported i don't know um so the farmers said that they were just trying to scare him i'm not sure anybody is taking credit for the second appearance of uh of the specter um and and of course the other theory is that it was a government spy sent to uh i think this is shelly's theory a government spy sent to keep an eye on him uh right to shut him up because all his maverick radical views did anyone check if shelly understands the concept of reflection

i also need to add it was a dark and stormy night. I should have mentioned that at the start. A bit of pathetic fallacy in there. Did the guy that was looking in the window, was he refusing to break eye contact? And just followed him. Every time he looked over, that guy was looking right at him. Well, I mean, all right.

You've got a point. But surely he was a refined esthete. I'm sure he knows what his own face looks like. Esthete. You're doing the stoner mind there. I'm doing the doobie mind, yeah. He was a refined gentleman. I'm sure he knows about mirrors.

Yeah. That's like day one of being a gentleman. He was a son of a member of parliament. Yeah. They'd have mirrors. Yeah. You've got a point. I mean, admitted admittedly the guy

does disappear every time anybody else enters just at the time that everyone arrives oh he's just gone when the glass was shattered as which he had he pulled a gun and shot up almost exactly the same time well there's a reason why i'm pretty confident that it wasn't a reflection i do have to say that shelly claimed to have been attacked by unknown assailants on two separate occasions at other times in his life. The circus. One of them was really short and fat and the other one was really tall and thin.

It couldn't possibly have been Shelley's reflection. And the reason for that is that Shelley, quick as a flash, drew a police photo fit of the suspect to help the... And as far as I'm aware, the local police did no investigating whatsoever into this because everybody just thought Shelley had imagined the whole thing. But when I show you this, I think you'll see that they ought to,

had they taken it seriously, not have had any trouble tracking him down. And I'll add this picture to the show notes on the website. But this is a reproduction of Shelley's drawing of his attacker. Oh. So, as you can see, apparently it's a naked man whose left arm is a tree, whose right arm is a box, and whose face is like a Japanese devil mask.

It's kind of like a devilish sort of Groucho mask. And it looks like a c*** coming out of the top of his head. I'm not going to say it isn't. But what I'm saying is, if they put out an APB for this guy, he'd have stood out. Definitely. Even in North Wales. Even if he was hiding near a tree. Or a box.

Yeah. If one of his arms is a box, that's a pretty identifiable characteristic. So that was Shelley's sketch of his ghost, or his devil, as he always referred it. A further bit of credence for the story comes from Captain Sandy Livingston Learmonth, who himself

once, one stormy night, saw a grey cloakhead figure at that same window, peering in wearing a tricorn hat. And he wondered if he had seen the same spectre that Shelley fired at. And Peter Underwood wraps the story up by reminding us that Shelley's poem Queen Mab was written while he was staying here.

And he leaves us with the opening lines of Queen Mab. How wonderful is death? Death and his brother sleep. Ooh. You will come to some harm if attacked by a man with a box for an arm. That's the famous second

coupler. Sorry, I'm just always impressed by anybody who can rhyme quickly. You, Percy Shelley, Nellie, the rapper. Before the incident. So that's the story of Tanneracht and Shelley's ghost. Terrifying. On reflection. On reflection, not so terrifying.

It's scary for the household. Yeah. He's shooting for the household. Yeah. He's shooting guns off in the parlour. Yeah, like, if your lord of the manor is walking around with two loaded guns at night, you've got to be, like, you're going to be on edge, whatever, let alone whether people are coming to the house or not. Because I don't know if the stats would have been like they are nowadays, but aren't you more, most likely, if you own own a gun you're most likely to be shot by it than any other gun or something like that you were re-alienating the gun crowd yeah don't say that if you own a gun you're a cool guy sorry

al's greatest fans a cool macho pew pew oh what a man from my cold dead hands from my cold dead bucks we should just do can we do a a pro gun edit of this and an anti-gun edit just so that we don't alienate anyone I always find the NRA

the National Rifle Association right yep to be I find it for me they're already diminished in my mind because when I was about to leave school, we had to do like a booklet called the NRA. The National Record of Achievement.

Yeah. And it was always referred to as, guys, this is your shop window. Like put your CV in there and your GCSEs and stuff. So whenever I think of the NRA, I always think of our sports teacher, Mr Lewis, going, guys, it's your shop window. Have you ever taken your national record of achievement to a job interview? I don't think I even took it back from school. I wrote a CV, which was unsurprisingly light while I was at school. Mostly like waiter at the cottage tea rooms. You've shrugged a lack of impressiveness at your own... I didn't even have a paper round. Like, you know, it's that thing like,

oh, when you were a kid, you had a paper round. The market for paper rounds... Did people really... Did children really have paper rounds? One, in our lifetime. Did you have a paper round? No, but... How many kids do you need? That's a good point, because there can only be

so many rounds, and there's literally hundreds of children. Loads of them. Isn't it like a third of all the people are children? Is that true? I don't know. That's why I said it as a question. Write in. If you're a child... A percentage

of the population has to be children, and they're being born all the time. So quite a lot of the population has to be children. Yes. And they're being born all the time. So quite a lot of them. The paper rounding age is limited. Maybe it's a... A baby couldn't deliver a paper. How long do you stay in a career of paper rounding? I suspect the turnover is very high.

What's the progression? I think you get given the papers and you stick them all down a drain and then you get sacked. You take a few metros round, free ones, for the exposure, and then you work your way up to the tabloids, then to the broadsheets, and then now

just shout blogs at people or something. I don't know. I don't know how it works anymore. I mean, strictly speaking, this is tangential to the ghosts of Teneracht. And don't know. I don't know how it works anymore. I mean, strictly speaking, this is tangential to the ghosts of Teneracht. And the NRA. So, the scores. Yes. My first category for you

is don't look sceptical before I've even said supernatural. Tone it down. He hasn't changed his face at all, listeners. You've made it worse. Supernatural. I would make it doubly worse by just simply bringing a mirror out and therefore doubling the scepticism in my face. I would shoot that mirror.

A classic case of a man fighting a mirror. The classic case. It's a tailor's oldest time. Exactly. Like, you're in a shop or walking down a high street, you catch a glimpse of what you think is a creepy old man in the window, and you look, and it's you. I tend to think it's a girl, because I've got long hair.

I regularly think my reflection's a girl. Right. Woman, sorry. I didn't mean to patronise my female reflection. An imaginary person. An imaginary person. Who is actually you. Who is me.

Yeah, I tend to think... Yeah, Shelley doesn't understand reflections. So what I see as what happened here is he was just getting ready for bed with two locked and loaded guns. And then he catches a glimpse of what he thinks is an imposing figure at the window, draws, shoots, thinks, oh, I've done it again. It's a blooming, it's a reflection.

Or was he like someone who was famously quite good looking, or is that Byron? I don't think he wasn't quite as much of a lady killer as Byron, but he was still fairly seductive. They were contemporaries? Yes. They were both together in Geneva when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Right. So he might have been a bit jealous of Byron's lady killing ways. Not killing.

He didn't kill anyone. Did he kill anyone? Byron probably killed a few people. Yeah. He was involved in the Greek revolution I think more than just sheep yeah I don't know about Shelley

but he might have been jealous of his handsome friend and then thought oh if this gets out that I thought this monster he might have shouted like oh what an ugly

before he shot and then like if this gets out that that was me that's going to be quite embarrassing I'll dive out the window scuffle myself up near a tree and then come back in and they go what happened shelly and we're not gonna try and

pronounce your middle name and he'd go oh there was this blooming fella tried to attack me and all the things he said oh terrible and um i chased him off no one worry and then gone back to bed and then and then kind of thought right i need to really make hammer home that this definitely wasn't me and misunderstanding a reflection so he just did it again in the middle of the night that's what i think happened so is that a high score for supernatural no no but i really like the little side story of the wife coming home that was actually quite chilling imagine a cat and a dog looking at a thing it's brilliant yeah i've got i've got a little toddler and he's getting into the frightening

phase where they start like he was crying the other night and i went into his room and he was looking up into the corner of the room and said like, stop it, stop it to the corner of the room. Mate, if you want me to come in here, you're going to have to be less weird. So I do like the idea of the box arm that there's one,

that a form of devil has a box for an arm. Or maybe it's like its right arm, because it was the right arm of the demon in the picture, is so chilling that it keeps it in a box. It could have been a sensitive box. In order to reveal it. So, yeah, I'm going to give this a four. A four for Supernatural? Yeah, because I was...

You were looking so sceptically. I was expecting... I'm not arguing. I was very chilled by the ghost driving wife story. Good. And then I remembered the funny picture of the demon, and I'd like that to be true. Okay. And I'm giving myself a four.

Very nice. The next category is naming. Okay. There are a lot of big names. Yep. Not very funny. Whoa. And they're difficult to pronounce.

Yeah. Percy Bus, Shelley? Bish. B. Not very funny. Whoa. And they're difficult to pronounce. Yeah. Percy Bus Shelley? Bish. Bish. Bish. How's it spelled? B-R-1. Hold on. Is it Briss? The Jewish romantic poet. Why is it Briss? It's when you have your

circumcision. Yep. They shoot it right off. In the mirror. They can only aim using the mirror. Percy B. In the mirror. They can only aim using the mirror. Percy Bish found the page. We're in Tremadoc, Gwynedd. These are the ghosts of Tanneracht. I mean that under the pass.

The underpass. What's spookier than an underpass? We've got Percy Bysshe Shelley. We've got Bertram Clough Williams Ellis. Sir Bertram Clough Williams Ellis to you. Port Merion. EF Benson. Captain Sandy Livingston Learmonth.

I mean, they are annoying. The artist Kiffin Williams. Didn't mention him. The artist currently known as Kiffin Williams. The Birmingham Cave and Crag Club. Oh, wow. Some of the climbers involved. There's a doctor called Dr. Brothers.

Oh, okay. This is getting better. I didn't even bother mentioning those. There's Hound's Head, the name of the rock. Yeah, just saying it like that doesn't make it better. Hound's Head. And that's it. That's all the names. I think, by your own admission, you look through this book to find the longest names.

Yes. You've tried to force the naming score, and I'm going to kick back against that. I'm going to say three. Three? Because they're quite annoying names. They're not written down how they're said, most of them for a start. Sorry Wales. Sorry Shelley fans. Alright. Hubris. Hubris.

Hubris. Very overconfident he was on his way into that circumcision. Yeah, you don't want to be overconfident handling baby's penises. Right, my next category is Photo Fit, but it's Photo Fit it where it is stephen king's it oh because uh the the terrifying figure that i showed you and we described for the listeners

which seems to be a phantom shelly's devil like it would metamorphosise, wouldn't it, into the thing that you were most afraid of. Branches, boxes. All at the same time. Yeah. Half a devil's face. It looks a bit like that... I don't... It's probably got a name.

It's like an internet meme thing. I don't know. But, yeah. Yeah. Sorry, kids. No. Sorry, the youth. You're probably the alienated kids.

All children. However many there are, we don't know. And the gun crowd as well. And my former sports teacher, Mr Lewis. He's not very pleased. If the NRA is your shop window as well, it's quite appropriate, I think, that it's obsolete in the age of the internet.

Just like all shops. Yeah, just like a high street, just boarded up. And I think, personally, Shelley will agree, windows. Evil. Yeah, so, I mean, I think that is one of the strongest... Oh, definitely. Yeah, me too. It is actually, genuinely

a distressing, frightening, dreamlike image. It's distressing to think that some poor sod thought they saw that. That must have been terrifying for them. So five out of five. Five out of five for photo fit. Great. The next category is

failures of the emergency services. Insofar as no police, no local bobbies such as they had back in the day, followed up on the photo of it. Nobody took Shelley's complaint seriously. And when all those, inverted commas, people fell off the rocks, they didn't find anyone. And shooting the sheep, I suppose, as well.

And he shot the sheep, yeah. I mean, presumably there's a legal recourse for someone who goes around shooting your sheep out of, quote, compassion. Why'd you shoot these sheep? You're a vegetarian. I shot them because I liked them. Jelly's coming round. I've got a bit of a cold. Oh, God.

I hope he hasn't brought his guns. And only advocate of euthanasia. Euthanasia. Very nice. Oh! We need an air horn. Can we buy an air horn? Just like the romantic

poets would have used every time they did a rhyme. Ah, no wonder no one liked him. No wonder. Get out of Devon! What was it again? The category is

failures of the emergency services. Yeah, the people falling off the rocks. That's... No, yeah, five out of five for that. Oh, brilliant. Institutional failures. No wonder he hated them, old Shelley.

Yeah. I mean, it's pretty clear in retrospect that Shelley was pretty much right about everything, I think. Which makes that picture doubly terrifying. Indeed. Like, doubly terrifying if you held it up to a mirror. And my final category, gun poet. Gun poetry, yeah.

I can't think of a shootier, I mean apart from maybe poets who fought in the First World War, I can't think of a shootier peacetime poet than Percy Bysshe Shelley. That's a good caveat, yeah. Because like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon

probably shot a few. That was very much like... It was quite a shooty event. Very much the point of the whole thing. It was awfully shooty. Siegfried Sassoon grabbed a live grenade and threw it back into a German trench. He named himself the nickname Mad Jack. Really?

Percy Shelley was attacked by Stephen King's it, so everybody's had it tough. A mirror ghost. Yeah, he's got at least two guns on him at all points, ready to shoot sheep, whatever, all comers, sheep, windows, probably shooting people off the rocks. Yeah, that was probably him. He'd have a go. It happened in a different century, but I wouldn't put it past him.

He probably shot that bloke's wife. Well, you did go... See, the original category was gun-roaring poet. Gun poet. And then you put in the caveat of peacetime and reminded me of all those World War I ones. So it's gone down to a four. Just because of Wilfred...

Yeah, and the Sassoon guy. I did a slow nod in honour of our fallen soldiers. It's a four, all right. I'm not budging. This tale features Funny Monk. Is the sound quality really different? Should we say something about the sounds? Nah.

Nah. This one's Malmes... I didn't look at the bit of Wikipedia where it told you how to pronounce it. Malmesbury I didn't look at the bit of Wikipedia where it tells you how to pronounce it. Malmesbury Abbey. M-A-L-M-E-S-B-E-R-Y Abbey. Malmesbury Abbey. Malmesbury Abbey. Malmesbury Abbey.

And this is a tale of... Crap, Superman. A guy called Oliver the Monk, or Brother Eilmar, which I guess is probably the original name. For some reason, they translated his name into modern terms because we wouldn't understand that people in the past had silly names. I don't know whether to go with Brother Eilmar or Oliver the Monk. Oliver the Monk.

Oliver the Monk. Okay, so in 1010, Oliver the Monk, inspired by the Greek fable of Daedalus, Icarus' dad, built himself wings and jumped off the top of Malmesbury Abbey Tower and he flew for 201 metres but crashed and broke both of his legs and was maimed for life. For 200 metres?

I think it's a furlong. It was reported as a number of furlongs and that basically is about 201 metres. Now that's presumably along and not just down. Yeah. They think it was 15 seconds worth of flight. They sort of reckon that's how long. Pretty good, Oliver the Monk.

And in later life, always complained, probably apart from the fact that he's got broken legs, that he should have had a tail. He thinks the tail would have... That would have saved him. But yeah, he touched like wings to his arms and to his legs. And this was immortalised in a stained glass window, which he can go...

Which he went through. Also, by the way, people say, oh, and it was immortalised in a stained glass window. That's probably the most fragile medium. That's not immortal. Yeah, that was immortalised in an Etch-A-Sketch in 1986. And the stained glass window

shows him holding a mini glider and looking off into the distance. It doesn't show him ploughing into the earth. But almost has a thought bubble, thinking, should have had a tail. I knew it. Yeah, and that wasn't the end of his superpowers. That wasn't even the beginning of his superpowers.

He also prophesied the Norman conquest when he saw Halley's Comet. This is apparently what he said, and this must be translated, because this is, for once, this is not me reporting speech inappropriately for the time this is word for word this is word for word what wikipedia says that he said to hayley's comet i can only imagine you've come have you you've come you source of tears to many mothers it is

long since i saw you but as i see you now you are more terrible, for I see you brandishing the downfall of my country. It's not specifically about the Norman Conquest, is it? No. It could definitely have been more specific. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. But that's prophecies, aren't they? Yeah, that is prophecies, yeah.

No, by prophecies, far be it from me to criticise it as a prophecy. It's excellent. Yeah, it's bang on. I think as a prophecy, it adds something in its argumentative... You've come, have you? What are you doing here? Anyway, yeah, I did more research than just Wikipedia Mind. I looked at Malmesbury Abbey's website

and having looked at a lot of websites for folklore-related things, this is quite a good website, surprisingly. Because if you haven't looked at a lot of websites for folklore-related things, this is quite a good website, surprisingly. Because if you haven't looked at folklore websites, it is, would you say 1999? Oh, yeah. It is a world of blue hyperlinks and animated GIFs. They're definitely... And signing our guest books.

Oh, yeah. And visitor counts that don't work anymore. But what's good about them is that they are protected against the Millennium Bug. He's got quite a fancy website that lists the achievements of Miles Reavory. It's got a number of firsts. The achievements of the Abbey. Well, it was the home to the first Saint of Wessex,

St. Adhelm. The first King of England, King Athelstan the Glorious. And the first man to fly, Brother Isleman. So that kind of undermines them all. I mean, if that guy had just been King of England for 15 seconds, I don't know if he'd be that bothered. And also, another thing, in doing a little bit of extra research about the Abbey,

it has the gravestone of Hannah Twinoy, died in 1703. And they didn't list this on their list of achievements, but she was the first person to be killed by a tiger in England. Wow. So the tiger was in England as well? Yeah. Not the first English person to be killed by a tiger,

but the first person to be killed by a tiger in England. In England, yeah. If anything, that is an achievement of that tiger. Yeah. More than of her. Well, confusingly, it happened in a pub called The White Lion. That is annoying. Yeah, that is not, they're not optimising their SEO there. There's like a little thing, again, I took a picture of a website, the website Wikipedia.

Yeah, I've heard of it and this is um this is there's there was like a plaque and an inscription uh and it says to the memory of hannah twinoy she was a servant of the white lion inn where there was an exhibition of wild beasts and among the rest a very fierce tiger which she impotently took pleasure in teasing notwithstanding the repeated remonstrance of its keeper one day whilst amusing herself with this dangerous diversion the enraged animal by an extraordinary effort drew out the staple sprang towards the unhappy girl caught hold of her gown and tore her to pieces and her gravestone says in bloom of life she snatched from hence she had not room to make

defense for tiger fierce took life away and here she lies in bed of clay until the resurrection day they'll cab it at the end which is not clearly not part of the rhyme scheme I bet if she's been truly torn to pieces on resurrection day she's just going to be sort of tumbling in, a couple of limbs a few organs

she's in collabs she's going to need a bunch of pillar slips to get through them pearly gates. But that's... For future reference, James, if I'm mauled to death, don't put it on my gravestone. Just... Everyone will know anyway.

I don't want a poem about it. I don't want a, oh, a rhyming thing. Alistair killed by owls. And that they could see the inside of his bowel. Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing I don't want on my grave. And now we shall score... For Marmbrie Abbey. For Marmbrie Abbey.

Marmbrie Abbey. Marmbrie Abbey. I think I need to have a run up to it every time. Marmbrie Abbey. Yeah, okay. First category. Firsts. Ooh.

Ooh. Yeah. Are you thinking extra points just by putting firsts first?. Yeah. Are you thinking extra points just by putting firsts first? It's confusing. Manufactured an extra first? Yes.

Okay, well what firsts were there? First King of England? First first was the first saint of Wessex, St. Adhelm. Okay.

Yeah, well. First King of England. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Sorry, first saint of Wessex. Yeah. Well, sorry first saint of Wessex yeah well how many saints of Wessex have there been subsequently

I don't know what even a saint of Wessex is it's like yeah do you have that it's like a patron saint you don't

it's not a temporary position like Saint Anthony is not the first patron saint the first saint of travellers he is the saint of travellers the first saint of children

it's not unless there's backup saints that you pray to if the first saint of travellers. He is the saint of travellers. The first saint of children. It's not a... Unless there's backup saints that you pray to if the first saint is not available. Like busy. Yeah. Like Santa's helpers at Christmas time. There's other miscellaneous secondary and tertiary saints. Yeah, wait a minute.

What do you mean the first saint of Wessex? Did I write that down wrong? I don't care. That one's out. I'm vetoing it. So you're first first, not a first. Okay, well I've still got the first king.

We're on a hard zero so far. First king of England. King Athelstan the Glorious. That one counts. That is good. So that's one first you've got so far. Oh no.

The first man to fly. I'm going to allow it. I'm going to allow it because he did fly for 15 seconds and that isn't falling. No. You clearly glid. he must have glided

yeah a certain distance cloud we can say cloud cloud he must have glided or is gliding flying well

according to the um film Toy Story yes it's falling with style well but that film sort of disputes whether or not it is falling you style well but that film sort of disputes

whether or not it is falling you know you're right at the end Buzz admits that he's not actually flying yeah no

oh no but then they're still flying no he does just admit it's not flying so zero points so far we've got a first one first the King of England

King Athelstan the Glorious we all know yeah he's one of the most popular ones he's got all the money the first person to be killed by a tiger in England

two that classic two firsts benchmark it's two out of five damn it I should have at least thought of five as well

yeah you were never going to get more than four and you've only got two because I'm vetoing two of them I thought but maybe it's the first

tiger to kill someone oh you're including the tiger now yeah what's the first tiger to kill someone. Are you including the tiger now? Yeah. What connection has the tiger to Malmesbury Abbey? It was near it

when it killed Hannah Twinoi. You're lucky I'm not taking points off for that attempt to squeeze more points out. No.

The tiger's not buried there. Yeah. I'm sorry to have to be so strict but I feel like you've been quite cheeky.

Okay. So second category, hubris. Oh, there's a lot. Yeah. So, his hubris led him to think that he could fly. And then even after he'd been injured for life, the only thing that was wrong with his plan was the lack of a tail. Yeah.

So, you know that if he'd been anything less than completely incapable of movement, he'd hit him back up, that church spire, with a completely unnecessary rudder tail. It reminds me, like that thing they used, was it Red Bull or something, sponsored that event where people would jump off the pier. I should imagine it was, yeah.

And they just went straight down. That's what I imagine this was, but a monk. So, slightly funnier. Well, yeah, but not into water. What's funny about imagined this was but a monk so slightly funnier well yeah but not into water so because what's funny about that is there's a

big sort of hilarious splosh as everyone plummets into the water however you might feel about it no one wants to

see a monk crushed the hubris of Hannah kept teasing a tiger she had a tiger by the tail

and she was told not to but she still carried on thinking, this is a hilarious game. This choosing went on another... It was a long-standing exhibit. The tiger was there all the time, and this went over weeks and months. I don't know if we can guess that much detail.

It definitely... She was told not to, but she carried on, seemingly on a different day. It is... As workplace harassment goes, it's an extremely hubristic case of that. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

And, well, King Thingy the Glorious. Oh, is that hubristic? I don't know how glorious. He's dead now, isn't he?

Yeah, exactly. Fair enough. That's quite hubristic to be king and then to die. And Ollie the monk had the hubris of thinking

that he could have a chat with a comet and tell him off as well. All right, it's four out of five. How about that? Definitely. It's four out of five, but if the comet had kicked him, it would have been more. I'm just people saying that that was now a prophecy when it's just a man getting annoyed at the sky. Oh, who's this? You coming in here again.

Yeah, yeah, Hayley's comet. Being interested at the sky. Oh, who's this? You coming in here again. Yeah, yeah, Haley's Comet. Being interested in the sky. Flying. He was jealous, wasn't he? Because it never fell down. It just travelled through the sky without hitting anything or maiming itself. We'll get it out of the way then. The classic Supernatural.

Supernatural. A nice round zero. Yeah, because it's not even worth debating. I don't think I can't sorry about that that feels bad naming though naming

Hannah Twinoy Hannah Twinoy Oliver the Monk which is actually quite a good name even though it sounds rubbish and he's got two names Brother Aylmore or whatever Brother

Aylmer Brother Aylmer Eylmer E Eilmer? Yeah, yeah. Again, I didn't look at the bit of the Wikipedia page that tells me how to pronounce things. So he's got two names. You've got...

Ollie the Monk. What was it? Athelstan? What was the name of the king? Oh, yeah. I just can't remember that guy's name. Athelstan, yeah. I did remember it.

Athelstan the Glorious. That's a good... It's a good nickname. That's a great name. The Ty... Yeah. The Tiger... Did the tiger have a name? No, but it was sometimes spelt with a Y.

I feel like I was maybe overly harsh earlier, so I'm going to say four out of five for naming. Yes. Including tiger being spelt with a Y. Yes. In the name. I didn't think I'd get that fast. So, James, you have a hilarious joke that you've written down

to end this episode with yeah I guess you could say that Oliver the monk wasn't in his attempt to do

flight wasn't one of the right brothers he was the wrong brother because he was

a monk he was less right more wrong brother he was less of a right brother more of a right brother

more of a wrong brother yeah so this I'll feed you into it again so how would you sum up this story in an amusing way James

well if you imagine me taking off my sunglasses while I'm saying this it would be this monk in trying to fly proved himself less of a right brother

more of a wrong brother thank you you've been listening to lawmen the lawmen of james shakeshaft and alistair beckett king please subscribe rate review and recommend to a friend you can tweet us at lawmenpod or email us at contact at

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