Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep2: Loremen S3 Ep2 - A Christmas Miscellany

Episode Date: December 27, 2019

Ho, ho, etcetera! A very special festive edition of Loremen featuring exclusively Xmas-themed lore. What BEES do of a Christmas eve?How can YOU use a sheep to find your way home?ARE mummers plays definitely racist?All these questions and more* will be answered in this Christmas Loremen. *Only one more answer, actually. About why an old gag is actually quite funny. Actually. @loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod @JamesShakeshaft | @MisterABK

Welcome to Lawmen Season 3. This is a podcast where we investigate local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shakeshaft. The Christmas season is well and truly upon us. It is. Season's greetings. Season's greetings. Here we are in your shed.

Yeah. Feeling very festive. Cold, yes. It's absolutely freezing. You're wearing like a parka. It's chilly. Yeah. And I am led to understand that you have a collection of Christmas fancies for oh yes james yeah it's like a little box of quality street oh delicious but

the sweets are stories and there is no plastic waste yeah and the rappers are tediously rambling introductions yes on that subject i have to preface this story by saying that some of my accusations of racism proved on Googling to be unfounded. So see if you can spot those. But only within this episode. Other accusations of racism still stand. They still stand. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.

It's a Christmas time. No need to be afraid. Okay. Sorry, is that the... It doesn't really have a name. Is that the title of the story? I'm just bringing it into Christmas time. Right, okay. Vibe.

That's getting a little bit psycho, unless psycho is a Christmas film. Psycho is a Christmas film, yeah, I've always felt that. The mum's dressed up as Santa, isn't she, at the end? She's got fairy lights all on her. No, this is a Christmas. Round our way, they did Mama's Plays.

Do you know what a Mama's Plays is? I could be wrong. I think mummers black their faces, which you can't do these days. No. But they did. And they would wear sort of rag jackets, I think, or waistcoats or jerkins. And they perform, I suspect, plays that are like sort of miracle plays, illustrating scenes from the Bible or moral tales.

Right. Is any of that true? Or did I just invent a racist form of theatre? This book does not mention the racistness. Well, this is an audio medium, so I don't know why you backed your face if you didn't have that information. We don't need to get into that.

So, yeah, these mummers' plays, which... This book is an old book from the 1960s. It either is so prevalent that they committed race hate crimes whilst doing these plays that they didn't need to bother mention it in this book, or they're trying to cover it up. Right, okay. I now don't know which.

However, there were summer mummers and there were winter mummers. Christmas mummers. Also, if mummers is some sort of hate term... I don't think it is. Good. Look, if we have to bleep the word mummer every time you've said it, this is going to be incomprehensible. Right, well.

Just say the M word. Yeah, this is from a book of plays from Shipton under Witchwood. Big fan of Shipton under Witchwood. Witchwood being the forest full of witches. Oh, yeah. Amongst other things, though, we found out it wasn't. But that was the forest that had... Was that the one where there was a ghost

of a child? There was the imaginary story of a ghost of a man with black stockings to cover up for the fact that there was a real ghost of a flayed child. Yeah, of course. The old inventor ghost to cover up a ghost. It was old as time. This is a tech... I'm just going to read out the lines of this play because it's real good.

It doesn't have the dramatis personae. Personae? Personae. I never know how to say it. I've only ever seen it. Of all the things in a play, it's the one bit that they never say how to say it. Yes, isn't it? So this is Christmas time and this is the theatre of the mind.

I'm going to try and represent the different people as and when I think they come in, because this is just a list of words. Oh, lovely. In comes I, old Father Christmas. Am I welcome or am I not? I hope old Father Christmas will never be forgot. A handful of money and a cellar full of beer will welcome we and my company here. A room, a room I do require.

Step in, Jack Finney, and show your face like fire. So that's where I'm not sure if they are, because he's got a face like fire. Mm, maybe he's painted red. Yeah. Who do you call Jack Finney? My name is not Jack Finney. My name is Mr. John Finney. And if you call me Jack Finney again, I'll chop you up as small as flies

and send you to the cook shop to make mince pies. New person comes in now. In come I, the noble doctor how come you're a doctor i came all the way from slaughter to fight for the queen of egypt's daughter who's the queen of egypt's daughter i'm the queen of egypt's daughter so i think there's a lot of people coming in to this play the doctor for some reason he's trying to cure jack finney uh and then for reason, the doctor says there was an old woman who'd been dead seven years, buried eight, in a grave nine. That doesn't add up. I cured her. She lived for a year.

In the grave? What? She was in the grave, open, with no... Getting used to it. Yeah. You know how old people are like, they hate change. And then a year buried in that grave. And then she died. And then standard

graveyard practice from then on. Yeah, it just kicks in the very instant she died. I cured her and she only had one tooth in her head. And that was as long as a poplar tree. Wow. Yeah. She was sort of like an old woman. Now, that was probably why it was hard to bury her. Or maybe that's how they could tell she was still alive. They just

wiggle the tooth. She'd be like, get off my tooth. Beelzebub comes in. Here comes I, old bell bug. On me shoulder I carry me club. In my hand a dripping pan. Don't you think me a jolly old man? Wow, he comes off better than Jack. What's his name at the start?

Jack Finney. Very young. John Finney, I should say. Yikes. Don't upset old John Finney. And then in comes I I Big Billy the Sweet oh yeah big and little

great and small equally important in the pantheon of western Christianity to the devil yeah is Billy the Sweep in comes I

who's never been yet with my great head and my little wit my head is big and my wit is small I'll play you a tune that will please you all and then unfortunately

the song has been lost to the ages I mean I don't think it's unfortunate because it would definitely have been quite racist yeah that's true but i think i can i can maybe be able to shed a little bit of light here then can we go back to um the doc the doctor arriving yes because i think there's two jokes happening there that we might not be getting in come i the noble doctor and then someone asks how come you a doctor i came all the way from slaughter so that's a joke isn't it why so i think how came you a doctor? I came all the way from slaughter. So that's a joke, isn't it?

Why? So I think how came you a doctor? It means how did you come to be a doctor? And then he's like, come all the way from somewhere. A place. There is a place called slaughter. I come all the way from slaughter. So that's the first joke.

Yeah. Hilarious. Misunderstanding. Yeah. But the second one is I think they're quoting a well-known folk song, which goes, I am St. George a well-known folk song, which goes, I am St. George and a godfrey in mine. I fight for old England whenever I can.

And it does a variety of things. I fought with a dragon and brought him to slaughter. And by that deed won the king of Egypt's daughter. Ah. So slaughter, I think then there's a double play on the place slaughter. Because it brought the dragon to Slaughter and by that deed won the king of Egypt's daughter, which I guess the people listening would have known.

So they just slip in a little sort of hip sort of panto kind of reference to a popular pop song. Like they're talking about Snapchat. Yes, exactly. Right. So it's not a joke per se, but the audience would have gone, oh, I get it.

Right. And the queen of Egypt sort of just randomly turns up. Oh. Oh, so it's like a p per se, but the audience will have gone, I get it. Right. And the Queen of Egypt sort of just randomly turns up. Oh, so it's like a panto in that they have the local celebrity just turn up to be, I am the local celebrity. Yeah, exactly. Right. Okay. That's good.

We saw Greengrass. Do you remember Greengrass? Yeah. Yeah, I saw him in panto. He was good. He committed to it. McGreengrass from Heartbeat. Yeah, I saw him in Panto. He was good. He committed to it. I

think my earliest theatrical memory is seeing a Panto with Ian Smith, aka Neighbours' Harold Bishop in it as King Rat. Did he commit? I don't remember. I just dazzled that someone off the telly was in Bromley.

I'm sure Harold from Neighbours was equally impressed and baffled that he was in Bromley. I'm sure Harold from Neighbours was equally impressed and baffled that he was in Bromley. So it's got a little derailed, the story there. That's fine. I just wanted to introduce a little folk music factoid. I need the context because even with that, it's a pretty rambling, confusing story. And in fact, the next words in this book of folklore,

I find quite ironic. It says, so it reports all that speech says, in this fragment, one can make out the play pretty clearly. And they're saying that the entrant from slaughter was almost certainly St. George. Oh, there you go. And the other combatant

was unusually Jack Finney, with whom St. George fought for the king of Egypt's daughter, generally a man-woman. What? I don't know. Okay. I don't know what that's talking about. I guess that means played by a man in drag.

Yes. Like a panto. Panto style, yeah. This is just a panto, isn't it? Yeah. If anybody isn't British and is listening, do we need to explain what panto is? What pantomimes are? I don't know if I know what panto is.

I've definitely seen them. I don't know if I know what panto is. I've definitely seen them. So pantos are like bad sort of folk plays of folk tales with popular songs that people go and watch to get sweets. Yeah, they usually have furrows. And there's lots of cross-dressing. That's the other important thing. Yes. The hero is usually a male character played by a female.

Yeah. a male character played by a female. Yeah, and then there's usually the dame, which is sort of a hilariously overweight female character played by a man in a funny dress. Yes. It is just, I mean, if there was any doubt about the sophistication of British humour, that question's been answered.

Yeah, exactly. And that is Christmas, basically. That's your Christmas right there. Yeah, right through into January these days. I used to be in a local amateur dramatic society. No. Yeah. And we were in a panto that didn't start until after Christmas.

What? Yeah. What's the point? I don't know. It's just a booking error, surely. I think it's because Chippy Panto, Chippy Norton Panto, the main one in the theatre, had quite a lot of weight, so they wouldn't let anyone muscle in onto their patch. They had to wait until they finished their Panto.

Yes. So you can do yours in March or something. Yes, exactly. Okay. It was just pointless. So that's the Bubba's plan. That's the whole story. That's the whole story, really.

Yep, Beelzebub would have come to tidy away Jack Finney. Billy the Sweet would have just been generally tidying up the stage. That's nice, isn't it? A lot of admin in the story there. But it's good that they kind of make that sort of hyper-realism of like, there's a big battle, but then afterwards people do have to clear up. I mean, this is creepy as flip, isn't it? Yes, yes.

And that's how it ends. And also, I thought that was pretty weird and sort of like a fever dream. And now it turns out they're all so blacked up at the same time. Oh. Oh. For this Christmas episode, I'm just bringing in a few Christmas local legends from round my way for you.

Well, I appreciate it. Just presenting them like a sort of a Christmas smorgasbord. Smorgasborg? No, a smorgasborg would assimilate you into the Christmas lunch. Or just cubes. Yeah, no, it would definitely be cubic. Cubes of cheese. Yeah.

There's a couple of other things around our way in Christmastime that they think. If you're a girl and you want to know who your future husband is going to be, you bake a dumb cake. You bake it on Christmas Eve, a dumb cake. This is not Baking Blind, which is also a thing, but is a misleading name, Baking Blind. Baking Blind is when you prep the pastry. Yeah, you bake it when there's nothing in the pastry.

Bake it with nothing in it. This baking dumb. Except rice, sometimes. I've got these, yeah, ceramic beans. Yeah, so you bake the dumb cake. The cake has to be made in silence. The girl pricks her initials on it and sets it to bake in the ashes of a fire, leaving the door open. Then at midnight, her destined husband is supposed to walk into the room

and prick his initials on the cake beside hers and then she has to eat it right which i think is an elaborate way of getting to have a whole cake to yourself on christmas day but good but everyone this is very important for my future marriage. Also on Christmas Eve, apparently bees are supposed to sing in the hive at midnight. Oh, yeah? Yeah. What do they sing?

I don't know. Wizard? Mmm. I mean, the long pause it took before that, it wasn't good enough. We'll be edited out. Yeah, okay, all right. And the Beatles didn't do one, did they?

Paul McCartney did a Christmas song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then also John Lennon also did that Xmas song. Yeah. I don't remember either of these songs. You know, if you want to. Don't sing it. We can't afford the rights.

I can sing under 30 seconds of it. I don't think that's true. Even the most powerful Shazam is not going to recognise the song from my singing. All right. Well, we could be in big legal trouble. We could be in the big leagues. Also, at midnight, all lambs are supposed to face east. So lambs are Muslims? Well, it's east in Britain because there is to remembrance of Jesus being born in wherever it was, the stable.

Yes. But that must mean like, so lambs in the east of Jerusalem must face west. Yeah. Lambs north face south. South, north. Reasonably, yeah, yeah. Lambs on a plane would sort of be rotating as they went over. You could use it as a...

I've got to say the film Lambs on a Plane was much less scary than Snakes on a Plane. Yeah, but it was nice. It was adorable, wasn't it? It was so lovely. You could probably use it as sort of a rudimentary compass. If you were lost at midnight on Christmas Eve, you're going to be able to at least find out which way's east if you're near a lamb in a bowl of liquid. Sort of gyroscope type thing.

Yeah, but it's a lamb. So that's Christmas. Your Christmas lamb compass only works on christmas day yeah and yeah oh there was another thing queen's college in oxford oh yes they have a christmas tradition that they bring out for their christmas dinner the head of a wild boar wow for everyone to have eating on because it relates to an old story where a student in the medieval times was wandering in the woods of Shotover studying Aristotle. And he was so engrossed in his book, he didn't realise a wild boar was bearing down on him. And he looked up just as the boar was about an arm's length away. And he jammed the Aristotle book as the boar was about an arm's length away and he jammed the aristotle book in the boar's mouth and the boar said it's all greek to me and choked and died you might call

that poetics justice oh that's nice yeah that's very nice which is a book written by aristotle yeah just to clear up just to clarify I'm just checking. They know. Well, that didn't happen, James. What? The boar didn't say that. No, because it had a book in its mouth. How could it speak? It was choking,

midway choking to death. Yeah. Not only, I mean, it's a fairly literate boar because that's a Shakespeare reference, isn't it? It's all Greek to me. And this probably happened.

Hold on a minute, this happened in the medieval times. So Shakespeare hadn't written that yet. Maybe he nicked it from the boar. I'm going to have to, if I'm wrong about that being Shakespeare, I'm going to look a fool straight after doing a really good Aristotle reference. Yeah.

Ups and downs, isn't it? Yeah. So that's my Christmas roundup. Thank you. I didn't know it was going to be a Christmas roundup. No, did I? But thank you. Jingle bells, Sam.

Jingle Bell Sounds. Jing, jing, jing, jing, jing, jing, jing. What's your first category, James? Names. Names. Excellent, I think. I've literally picked a play that doesn't have a dramatist personae. No, it doesn't have that, but it's got um what's that um old jackie johnny john finney john finney yeah doctor from slaughter um the doctor from slaughter i like b elzebub's nickname bell bug bell bug yeah for people who haven't got time to say b elzebub

in full those are excellent names billy the sweep billy Sweep the word mummers is fun if it's not a hate crime and if not racist that's a really fun word I think it's a I think it's five out of five James the Christmas spirit has flowed through me even though it's obviously not

I've decided to give it five you though what day is it it's five out of five the five of five as big as me sir go and fetch me the largest five.

Supernatural category. None, because it was a play. Yeah. The suspension of disbelief? The magic of Christmas is in all of us, so I'm bringing it up to one. For the magic of a child's laughter. Not that a child would laugh at that absolute toss.

Or an Aristotle joke. It might have got the reference to the Queen of Egypt's daughter. It might have. And slaughter is an actual town. That's a good joke. That one's a good joke. That one's a banger.

It's one. One out of five. People's standards in the past were low, weren't they? Is that the next category? Yes. Yeah. Yeah,? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, they were. Yeah.

Five out of five. Great. A five out of five for what you presented being rubbish. Yeah. The final one, gold rings?

Well, there were no gold rings in the story, James. I'm sorry. I thought it might have got around that by Christmas. But I've tricked you. No. No.

It could have had maids are baking. Oh, yes. Bees are dancing. Yeah. One Lambjo rating. I think it is zero gold rings. A zero out of five. Which itself is shaped like a ring.

Oh, that's nice. Yeah. So it's visually satisfying. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, James. God bless us, everyone. I hope you enjoyed James' Christmas stories. If you're interested, the phony accusation of racism

was me saying that mummers wear blackface. In reality, they actually paint their face a wide variety of colours, including, in my defence, black sometimes. Yeah, some mummers do have them. You might say. Yeah, you could. And you did. Yes, I'm very proud of that.

And next time on Lawmen... Yeah, what are we going to hear about? I'm going to tell you a story that comes from Edith Sitwell's The English Eccentrics about the quacks

of London ooh as in docks no it doesn't mean docks dodgy doctors merry Christmas merry everybody Merry everybody.

Oh, I could have given you one out of five. I could have given you God blesses every one out of five. That's a missed pun. What's that weird sound? Is that like a sleigh on the roof? It does sound like something going through snow. Yeah. Christmas miracle.