Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep45: Loremen S3 Ep45 - Grey Dolphin

Episode Date: November 12, 2020

A thrilling Kentish episode this week! James recounts the legend of 14th century kick-machine Sir Robert de Shurland. He kicked cattle. He kicked commoners. He kicked clergymen. NO ONE was safe from his pied-à-terror! This ep features a B-plot concerning a sailor's corpse with a wicked grin, who wreaked havoc on Kent's coastal churchyards. James pushes the boundaries of podcast storytelling* and gives you a startlingly accurate idea of the size of the Isle of Sheppey. (It's approximately Bristol plus Winchester). *tells the story slightly out of chronological order for dramatic effect. Loreboys nether say die! Support the Loremen here (and get stuff) patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen @loremenpod www.twitch.tv/loremenpod www.instagram.com/loremenpod 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. And I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm going to take you to Kent, the Garden of England. Kent is described as England's garden, but it's like one of those horrible gardens. It's one of them front gardens that's weirdly full of toys in a sort of display. It's got a washing machine.

Or pampas grass. Ah, yeah, we all know what pampas grass means. So that's Kent. And this story is from the Isle of Sheppey, and it concerns an animal called grey dolphin. Oh, yeah? It's actually where I saw an Elvis impersonator and the MC for the evening was a young Shane Ritchie. Take it away.

Alistair, hello. Hello James. I'm going to dispense with the formalities today. I'm going to get right into it. Are you ready? Dispense with those formalities. I'm popping them in the formality dispenser. Actually, no, that's the wrong thing. A formality dispenser would, you'd end up with more. I say take the formalities, pop them in a little paper bag, swing it around on itself to create a nice lip. Oh, nice.

Pop it to one side on the counter for later. Yeah, because we're going to need them. Yeah, yeah. Dispense with them it to one side on the counter for later. Yeah, because we're going to need them. Yeah, yeah. We're not going to dispense with them forever. No. But just pop them aside. We wouldn't be in a formality dispensary if we weren't interested in formalities.

But that's not for now. That's for another time. Yeah, another day, another time. Today, I've got a story from the Isle of Sheppey. Sheppey? Do you know the Isle of Sheppey? It is the name of the dog, as far as I'm aware. I love Sheppey. It's like the TV show set on Sheppey. Sheppey? Do you know the Isle of Sheppey? It is the name of the dog, as far as I'm aware. I love Sheppey.

Is that the TV show set on Sheppey about a dog who solves mysteries? That everyone loves, even the criminals. Yeah. That's the twist. If I knew where Sheppey was, I would do the accent of those criminals being dragged away but still finding Sheppey adorable. Where is it? It's Kent.

It's Kent. Can you do a Kentish accent? No, I hate older people of Kent. Can't stand Kent. OK, well. I've died doing Kentish accent? No, I hate older people of Kent. Can't stand Kent. I've died doing stand-up in too many Kent golf courses. I mean, I should have let them play golf, really, shouldn't I? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then say golf clubs,

but that's confusing. Anyway, the people of Kent do not enjoy my brand of off-key whimsy. Well, that's where my dad lives. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Daddy Shakes, but you know full well that your dad would despise my stand-up. I don't know, actually.

Surprisingly, he's quite into some quite odd stuff. He's into bad comedy. My favourite conversation with him was when he was like, have you seen this Harry Hill guy? Nothing about his accent makes me expect that he would like Harry Hill. Well, that's the thing. You can't tell people with people these days. Well, I've learned a little lesson about judging people, making assumptions.

So we're talking the Isle of Sheppey. Off the coast of Kent, kind of in the sort of Thames estuary bit. It's 32 square miles, the Isle of Sheppey, which is is approximately i thought i'd break it down and make it contextual for you um it's approximately the size of 11 700 football pitches yeah you're getting an idea now not really it's approximately the size of manhattan okay yeah it's approximately the size of a very very very big grapefruit you're getting an idea now. I'm getting a picture. Getting a feel for it.

Now I've got an image in my mind. The Lord of Sheppey. What? Is that title still in current parlance? The Lord of Sheppey? I'm not sure, actually. Back in 1300, the Lord was Sir Robert de Sherland. He was a small man with a big temper,

and he had a powerful kick. His kick was so powerful, he could kick over a cow yeah wow what did the cow what could the cow possibly have done to incur his wrath oh chewing was he chewing in class oh yeah i hope you brought enough cud for everyone sick some back up from one of its stomachs that's disgusting i'm kicking you over kick you right over as in kick it over as in just like kick it over not like kick it over a fence or a barn or something just kicked it over yeah not hoofing it but that's still that's pretty powerful i'm not sure many people think yeah i could probably kick

a cow over if they do they're wrong absolutely i'm gonna do a bunch of flashbacks in this story by the way okay so prepare yourself for some challenging storytelling uh all right quick quinniton tarantina okay so wait are we doing flashbacks from now the present are we doing flashbacks from the 1300s where yeah it's gonna it's gonna 1300s is gonna be our now okay and we're gonna sort of dance around that time. Nice. Right now, we're in a graveyard. And Sir Robert de Sherland is kicking an 18 stone monk into an open grave. And that monk's dying. What?

What could make a man that angry? Flashback. Oh, wow. This is like, yeah. And now it's like so many days earlier where we find out what the monk did. A beach in Chatham, the corpse of a sailor is washed ashore and he's taken up and buried in the churchyard at Chatham. And then a couple of nights later, the clerk of that church is doing some stuff at his desk late at night with the candle glowing

and he hears a tap, tap, tapping at the window. Wait, are you doing that? Yeah. Okay. And he looks up and it's the Virgin Mary. Oh, yeah? Outside his window. Tap, tap, tapping.

Well, if anyone knows about getting unexpectedly knocked up, there you go, an actual joke. That's a very good joke. How many episodes did that take for me to think of an actual joke? 70. And that was because Chatham had quite an elaborate shrine to to mary oh yeah naturally that's where she would go she came around uh to the clerk knocked on his window and told him he had to dig that sailor up because he was a sinner and he was

tainting the churchyard he she didn't want him so close to her shrine and i quote this sinful person's ghastly grinning and end of quote get him right on her yeah we're allowed to say i don't know you can't say we can't refer to the virgin mary's no i don't think you can say that okay in podcast form even in a colloquial way he's getting right on it's getting on her nerves yeah fine so so it was his leering smile he was like a stranger on the bus just grinning at the virgin mary yeah she didn't like it yeah she did not like it so the clerk dug the body up and threw it back in the river and it washed up on shepi smash cut sir robert de sherland is eating oysters oh he's not kicking anything this time not right now not yet he's kicking oysters. Oh, he's not kicking anything this time. Not right now. Not yet.

He's kicking oysters into his mouth. He's kicking oysters into his mouth. Maybe stamping on them so they flip up and sort of flip the oysters. Like he was a cartoon. Yeah, and a messenger comes to him and says, Father Fothergill is not going to bury the body. Sir Robert de Sherland flies into a rage, probably kicks over the table with a plate of oysters on it and he goes

to get his sword out to kill this messenger unfortunately i think he thinks twice this time and he goes straight to father father gill who is the 18 stone monk we saw in the earlier bit get kicked into the open grave by the way just a quick question i don't understand imperial measurements so how much is 18 stone is that a normal weight for a monk oh no well i don't understand imperial measurements so how much is 18 stone is that a normal weight for a monk oh no well i don't know about monks specifically but 18 stone is it's two stone more than me all right you're fairly tall and this guy wasn't that tall so he's quite big right okay he's hefty he's sort of friar tuck sized yes yeah yeah yeah okay so my five-year-old is just coming up to three stone all right so i would have no trouble kicking your five-year-old.

So he's six five-year-olds. I could definitely kick six five-year-olds into a grave as long as I did it one at a time. He's approximately six five-year-olds or a really quite big grapefruit. Okay, I've got it in my mind now. Please continue. He's saying, this is the grinning sailor. You remember from chatham and the virgin mary and that other bible guy we can't bury him he's been rejected by both

land and sea oh great line sir robert de sherland flies into a temper now we're back at the we realize we're back at the beginning yeah we're seeing him kicking that 18 stone monk into the grave there's a sickening crunch. The monk's broken his neck. Oh, he probably didn't mean to do that. I think he did. It was probably just a lighthearted kick between mates. And then he's starting to bury him,

presumably again by kicking the dirt into the grave. Yep, yep. A couple of nights later, an angry mob arrive at Sir Robert de Sherland's door. Bing bong. Who is it? Hello. It's the mob.

Mob? Mob here? Are you the guy that killed that vicar? Yes. Right, okay. Can you sign here, please? Yep. I'm just going to need to take a picture of you by your doorway.

I was expecting an angry mob, and they'd said they'd be there between eight and midday, and it's 5pm, the angry mob still hasn't arrived, and I could have done stuff today, but I've had to be in all day i went to the loo once and i came down and there was a card saying we the angry mob sorry we missed you but we're but we're attacking your neighbor yeah there's a pitchfork in your neighbor or come along to the local sorting office to get attacked but bring id oh yeah uh so they attack robertland to, you know, to give sort of mob justice. He beats them all. They made a mistake of going at him one at a time.

So he could just... Kick him. Hoof him left, right and centre. Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick. But he realised, whilst he's quite good at fighting off angry mobs, Robert de Sherland, he needed the king's pardon. And it was very fortunate that King Edward I was sailing nearby.

He was sailing past Sheppey to go and inspect some boats or something. So Sir Robert de Sherland, also very handily, came from a long line of horse breeders that specialised in breeding swimming horses. What? He came from a long line of horse breeders that

specialised in breeding swimming horses. No, no, no. Sorry, is from a long line of horse breeders that specialise in breeding swimming horses. No, no, no, no, no. Sorry, is it a bad line? Up until now, I have to say, your storytelling has been on point. But in terms of exposition, you can't bring aquatic horses in now. I needed to hear that earlier. You can't just go, oh, by the way, swimming horses. I mean, I know horses can swim over short distances, but still.

He saddled up his favourite swimming horse. Not a thing. Grey Dolphin. And got on it, and it swam out to the king's boat, and he got his pardon, and it swam him back again. The king didn't do an awful lot of research there. No, he just thought, that's impressive. I have never seen a swimming horse before.

Just, psh, psh, psh. Your Majesty, what's going on down there? I mean, I've heard of seahorses, right, guys? And then probably after all the high-fiving, there wasn't that much time to investigate the actual claim. Yeah, yeah, have your pardon. And then when Sir Robert de Sherland got back to shore on Grey Dolphin... Sorry, can I be clear?

Is Grey Dolphin really the horse's name? Yes. What? I assumed you'd made that up sarcastically to make fun of the concept. Oh, no. Oh, I forgot to mention earlier, this is reported in the Ingoldsby Legends. Oh, of course, the Ingoldsby Legends. Your favourite and mine.

This is tale number two or three, Grey Dolphin. It's the name of the story, Grey Dolphin. I'm yet to read the maid story or look at the clock i'm so excited for look at the clock look at the clock i just can't imagine what could happen in it or the the legend of a shirt oh should we have a little ingoldsby sidebar sure just briefly i did i found out a little bit more about the Ingoldsby legends. I didn't know that much about them before. So they were written under the pen name of Ingoldsby by a vicar who had been a bit of a boy when he was younger.

A classic lad. An absolute lad. What a legend, by the sounds of it. He'd been orphaned. Classic. And he started squandering his family's money, carousing, gambling, drinking. And then he realized the errors of his ways and he rebadged himself as a vicar and moved to Kent. But then he got a bit bored, so he decided to write stories.

But realizing he already had a bit of a reputation he needed to sort of disguise who he was so he wrote it under a pseudonym yes of ingoldsby and his one of his first stories was published in a magazine that was edited by young charles dickens oh of uh charles dickens fame yeah yeah young young charlie d chucky dick I don't think they called him that. I think they did, going by his reputation. Also, Charles Dickens helped maintain the mystique by saying that he had no idea who Ingoldsby was because people sort of worked out that Ingoldsby wasn't the real person and they wondered who the real person behind Ingoldsby was

and Charles Dickens claimed that he didn't know, sort of kind of keeping the legend going. You would be able to tell if Charles Dickens had invented the character because he would be called like Mr. Fizzle Wazzle. Yes. You can tell if it's a made up person. All of Charles Dickens' lies would be obvious. Where were you? Oh, I was hanging out with my friend, Jorben Bingelding.

If Charles Dickens had heard of the Boaty Mc mcboat face saga he wouldn't have seen a problem he'd have said that's a great name for a boat the people these days who sound like charles dickens characters are all american republicans you know like newt gingrich they all have names like yeah like hunch powers or there's the there's the american man who i used to own a football club called Randy Lerner. Hey, we all have different learning styles, James. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Back to the story. That was an unexpected flashback. Unexpected Ingoldsby sidebar. That was more like you just sort of, you got a bit bored during the film and you Wikipedia'd a few of the actors. Anyway, back to the story. So a wet robert de sherland is there on his wet swimming horse and then i i just haven't accepted i haven't

i haven't bedded into the film world where a swimming horse is a acceptable thing that's the leap that you have to make yeah that's a suspension of disbelief but all the stories say that he got his horse to swim out to the boat and back. And then one of the versions I've read is that he comes from a long line of swimming horse breeders. Because you think if you lived on an island, you'd think they would have boats. Yeah. And you'd think that that would be the medium of conveyance. Yeah.

Or an animal that was better suited to swimming. Or maybe a boat. A horse has got to be the least swimmy animal. Or you could do like a carriage. You could just get your swimming horses and then tie them to your boat and just... That's a good idea. Like a dolphin sled. You'd think you'd need something with wider paws, though. Yeah.

Horses' spindly little legs, don't they? They'd be grabbing... Presumably they bred them to have really wide legs. Flappy hooves. Sort of like crossbreeding horses with bats. Yeah, it's simply science, James. Yeah, it's simply science, James. Yeah, it's just science. Right, and so he's back on the beach,

but there on the beach now is an old crone who's cackling away, and she says to him, Hey! Your horse has saved you, but it'll kill you in the end. That was really good. I really liked that voice.

So Robert de Schoen is like, right, fine. Gets his sword out, cuts his horse's head off. What? Yeah. Just because they're on the say-so of a crone? Hey, it's going to kill him. And he goes on with his life, carries on with his life, just leaves it there as well.

Okay. Some people say he buries it on the beach, but most of them sort of imply he just wanders off. He kicks it into the sea. No, he definitely doesn't oh okay because many years later he's riding past on a on another horse that he doesn't like as much a land horse of some kind or this is presumably some sort of standard land horse right okay and he goes past that point and he sees the skull of gray dolphin and sat on that skull is that witch again. And she's cackling again.

Yeah. As he gets off his horse and he runs over to give her a big old kick. She's like a giant golf ball on a little bone tee. But as he goes to kick her, she vanishes and he boots the skull so hard that a tooth goes through his boot and into his foot and he gets gangrene and he dies kills him dead kills him stone dead and that's the story of sir robert de shirland you can find his tomb in a church on sheppy the door says kick three times to enter at the feet at the feet of his two at his feet on the the tomb. I wouldn't go anywhere near his feet.

Well, it's like one of them ones where they've got like the stone model of what's inside on the top. Oh, yeah. And at the feet of that is a horse's head rising from the waves. Oh, nice. Yeah. I do like those sort of frozen in carbonite tombs they used to do. The less realistic ones, the better, though. The sort of the MS Paint job versions where it's like yeah he's got eyes

doesn't he what do you want i can't do dogs from the front but no he's got a horse's head rising from the waves at the bottom of his and the church has a weather vane which is a little model of grey dolphin oh as a little postcode little post-credit sequence the body of the grinning sailor oh yeah washes up again in gillingham and they bury it in Gillingham Church. And in Gillingham Church, they had a magic cross that did miracles, a full-size Jesus cross that did miracles. Oh, yeah, yeah. You want to go for the full size when you're ordering.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know it costs more. But it's that incremental thing that they do with coffees, that the full-size one, it's only about like 70p more than a little cross. Exactly. Go grande. But they just know that you're going to justify it for yourself. And so, yeah, that used to do miracles until they buried the grinning sailor in their churchyard. And then it stopped doing miracles.

I see. So just to hold you to account here, James, the proof of the sailor's evil is that the church didn't experience any miracles. Yep. No more miracles there. Compelling. You go there looking for a miracle, you're not going to find one. Wow. Well, that definitely means the sailor was evil. Exactly. Finally, you're on side. Like when he went to kick that witch that wasn't there. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Proof that the witch was there. Proof that the witch was there.

What a horrible man. Who? Sir Robert de Sherland? Sir Robert de Sherland. What an awful man. But he died. Horrible, horrible story. He did die, but not early enough in the story for me. I don't know if that... He died doing what he loved.

Kicking stuff. Kicking things. I tell you what, I didn't like the people of Kent before, and I haven't changed my mind. He died doing what he loved. Kicking stuff. Kicking things. Yeah. I tell you what, I didn't like the people of Kent before, and I haven't changed my mind. Score time. Come on, kick them towards me. You're going to kick a five right back at me for Supernatural. Supernatural, okay. We've got a mysterious witch crone character.

We've got a random witch. Making prophecies, yeah. Yeah. She's got no backstory. We don't really know what her motivations are, except to do evil. She's an agent of chaos. We've got the Virgin Mary, her apparition. Yeah. The opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to supernatural ladies.

Yes. A.K.A. women. We've got a grinning sailor. Yeah, we've got the grinning sailor. He's going to mess up your cross. Oh yeah, he's upset three different burial grounds. Yeah. He's wreaking havoc in the Thames estuary area. Yeah, and what else? Swimming horses, it's pretty weird.

I mean, it's pretty impressive kicking power. Yeah. But I don't think that's supernatural amount of kicking power, I think. No, you don't believe that kicking a monk over is supernatural? Remembering that's the equivalent of five toddlers. I'm not saying it's justified, but I don't think it's unnatural. You don't think it's unnatural? It's a kick a monk.

So what you're saying is kicking a monk is natural. It's the natural way of things. It's just youthful high spirits. It's boys being boys. Who among us that he who has never kicked a monk? Come and kick this monk. You should try it. It's brilliant.

Monk kicker. He's kicked a monk. Come and kick this monk. You should try it. It's brilliant. Monk kicker. He's such a villain. He's the man, the man who kicks a monk. Awful guy. I'm going to say it's a three for Supernatural. A three.

Yeah, because that's what I think you would give me. Yeah, I think that's fair enough. Yeah, because you'd be like, well, there weren't really any ghosts. There weren't any ghosts, but it wasn't like a standard humdrum history. It was not a standard humdrum history.

No, it was full of colour and excitement. Yeah, it's a three. It's a decent three. Well done. It's a decent three. Okay, naming. Naming. I got Desherland.

I got Grey Dolphin. That's a really good slash confusing name for a horse. Yeah. It's like dolphins are grey. Just say dolphin. Horse that's a bit like a dolphin. Brackets, it's good at swimming. Just call it that. Just call it horse that's a bit like a dolphin. Brackets, it's good at swimming. Just call it that.

Just call it horse that's a bit like a dolphin. Brackets, that's good at swimming. Don't call it a seahorse. No, that's going to be... We've used that one. That's going to be confusing. What about Father Fothergill? Father Fothergill, not bad.

Daddy Fathers. I Love Sheppey. The Grinning Sailor. The Grinning Sailor is the best because it sounds like the name of a haunted pub. But Robert de Sherland, I was thinking as well, the Sher. Is that the same shir as your shirban shir and does it have the same meaning as the shir in shirban yes also in speaking to jimmy shakeshaft he's from shoreditch area originally and the shore in shoreditch refers

to sewer refers to your shir oh really because it was the sewer ditch that's why it was like the poor poor people area because it was basically the where everyone dumped their poo from the posh bits of london so sure ditch is actually ditch yes and robert do land i would find that believable frankly that first of all it would explain why he's on an island away from everyone else yep and he's such a he's awful he really what an awful guy yeah i think that gets me some surely some extra naming points it's four out of five for names okay then next category guys listen to women will you uh first of all i endorse the category good high fives all around a high five uh yeah no no i'm not scoring yet no no don't try and trick me

thought i could don't try and trick me i've got a short memory it's not fair um listen to women so the crone listen she's right she was right she was right however had he not listened to her he wouldn't have cut the head off yeah it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy isn't it she tricked him really but maybe it would have got him another way may yeah may i mean it had ample opportunities to drown him while they were swimming that's true and then there's the virgin mary they listen to her they listen to her there's a don't leave this grin and sail in here you'll ruin your cross no miracles is kind of standard isn't it it's a standard amount of miracles and then look what happened when it washed up in um in sheppey i forgot what actually happened when it washed up what What happened? I don't know if I just skipped over the bit in the Ingoldsby

where it explained why Sherland was so keen on burying the grinning sailor in his church. Did it cause the amount of trouble that an unexpected body washing up would have caused? And no more. How many episodes of Bergerac does a body wash up and then a monk gets kicked into a grave i haven't seen that before okay i haven't seen i haven't seen that before that is unexpected yeah i can see why you put

the monk kicking in the cold open that's that's the big bit isn't it that's i'll stay through the ad break just to find out who kicked that monk and why why is he kicking a monk into an open grave he can't possibly have a reason oh but wait oh and a little sidebar on the old grinning sailor. After they buried it in Gillingham and it broke their cross, they tried to dig it out, but it just kept sinking further and further. That's disgusting and spooky. Yeah. Wow.

Okay, so I think it's actually a one out of five for listen to women, but I think that sounds bad. That is... Sounds bad for the podcast. So I'm going to go with another three, just out of embarrassment. Good lad. Final category. It's all kicking off.

Oh, there was a lot of kicking. There's a lot of kicks. What a kicky story. We've got kicked cows. We've got kicked monks. We've got kicked oysters, potentially. I might have made that bit up. We've got kicked dirt.

Mob, an entire mob. We've got kicked mobs. We've got kicked dirt mob an entire mob we've got kicked mobs we've got kicked skulls how do you swim what's what's half of swimming you're damn right it's kicking especially if you're a horse yeah it's kicking isn't it that horse is kicking i've got a man who literally kicked himself to death how is that possible he did it he found a way so much did he love kicking and i bet after he realised that that crone's prophecy had come true through his own actions, I bet he wanted to blimmin' kick himself. You're right. He would have been kicking himself after that.

It's the only thing he knew. It's all he knew. No, you're absolutely right. I'm lining up a five and I'm booting it your way. There you go. And I'm controlling it. Oh, nice. And passing it on the diagonals.

Oh, yeah. Good. Making space. Little triangles. Making little triangles. Playing it into space. Making space. When I was playing football as a kid, that's what it always was.

Make space. Make space. Which I think means get away from the ball. Get off the pitch. You get off the pitch. You haven't made enough space. I'm on the white line. Continue to make space. Get over there in the Greggs you haven't made enough space you're on i'm on the white line continue to make space get over there in the gregs that will be enough space there weren't

gregs when we were kids were i was in the north we've always had gregs uh it hadn't spread yeah yeah so you may you may have adopted gregs but i was born there probably wasn't gregs i don't know that sounds like something batman would say but not about greg's i don't i mean i haven't watched all the batman films but he's never mentioned greg's at any point because the problem i had in footballing i'm quite tall um so as i as i came up behind someone to sort of challenge them my shadow would fall across the pitch before them and i remember i distinctly remember someone looking over their shoulder and then going oh it's you oh and then realizing i wasn't going to be able to successfully tackle and at that point i realized that the occlusion of light was the main thing i brought to the game right of football so did you just start running alongside the striker to keep the light out of

his eyes so that he could concentrate on scoring. Like a parasol, yeah. Basically, you were superseded by the peaked cap. They put me out of business. Back on the bench. I was so bad at it when I was in primary school. How bad were you? I decided to be the referee, so I made red and yellow cards to give red and yellow cards. And I got a whistle.

Oh, no. I didn't have the innate authority. No, the gravitas. I didn't have the gravitas as a kid. Did you try and recruit a couple of other nerds to be linesmen? Yeah, exactly. Lesser nerds. The people who were even lowered down on the pecking order than me.

Was it a piece of card that you coloured in with a felt-tip pen? Oh, no, proper coloured cards, so I'd shelled out. So you had, like, the rest of the A3 piece of card? Yep. With just a small... With a small little corner cut out, yeah. Did you laminate them? No, I'm not mad.

No, I'm not deep. I'm not sad. All right, square. Good laminator. Never laminated anything in my life. You've been listening to Lawmen, a podcast by me, Alistair Beckett-King. And me, James Shakeshaft.

That was a good story, I thought. I thought so too. Very kicky. Hey, don't kick kids. Don't kick kids. If you'd like to end the kicking and bring peace to the world, you can support the Lawmen podcast. If you go to patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod,

there's a myriad of choices of ways that you can support us and help us keep the podcast going. And if you'd like to hinder the podcast, meet us every Wednesday night out by the bins. Bring your kicking shoes. While preparing this episode of The Lawmen Chronicles, I mentioned the 1968 Iron Butterfly song, In a Garda de Vida. James Shakeshaft seemed not entirely familiar

with that particular track and asked me to start the recording. Here's what happened next. I want this on record. It's just In a Garda de Vida. In a Garda de Vida. No, In a Garda de Vida. In a Garda de Vida, baby. In the Garden of Eden, baby.

In the Garden of Eden. Don't you know that I love you? So what does in the Garden of Eden? What does it mean? Yeah. I think it means in the Garden of Eden, but it's not. It's not in the Garden of Eden. Is it like Bandido?

Was it written by the same person that named the Bandidos? In the Garden of Eden, baby. It's very much the Bandido of biblical gardens, yes. In a garden of Vida. But the weird thing about it is those are the lyrics. In a garden of Vida, don't you know that I love you? In a garden of Vida, don't you know that I'll always be true? And that's basically all the lyrics in the song.

The song is like 12 minutes long. And half of it's in what sounds like a made-up language. It is amazing. Is it an actual language? I don't think it's a real language. You're not being offensive language. It is amazing. Is it a natural language? I don't think it's a real language. You're not being offensive there. Good. I just wish it was the 60s.

I wish you could be in the office where they have to pitch their new albums to the suits who don't understand the pot-smoking kids. Well, they have to go like, okay, so it's called In a Garden of Eden and it's 12 minutes long. Do you mean In a Garden of Eden? No, no, no, Square. In a Garden of veda in a garden of veda think about the seos how long is it and the great thing about the comment center in youtube

it's all people going like this is so much better than the radio edit which is two minutes long and it's just like the three verses whereas the the proper version is those three verses and then just 12 minutes of acid noodling on the guitar. Because it goes on for flipping ages. It's like Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. But at least Dylan wrote different words for each verse. Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.