Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep52: Loremen S3 Ep52 - Return of the Gabriel Hounds

Episode Date: January 7, 2021

Ah, the Peak District: nestled snugly betwixt Lancashire and Yorkshire. Quiet, peaceful, serene... that is until the Loreboys rock up!  Long-time listeners will know that the Gabriel Hounds are invisible flying dogs that presage death. We track them down to the Hope Valley, and what must be THE rudest village in England. Warning: we pour scorn on a so-called ghost farmer and dish more dirt on Jesus Christ: Serial Killer. 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 welcome back, folks, to a happy new year! Yay! Turns out it's just a new year. Eugh! Yeah.

But in these terrible times, we've got a really fun episode. I was seriously sleep-deprived when we recorded this, but I really enjoyed it. Oh, good. I told a fact about ducks, which may or may not have been in the podcast before, so let us know if I'm repeating. Duck facts. Duck facts. This story takes place in a very rudely named little town in High Peak in Derbyshire.

Folks, buckle up for the return of the Gabriel Hounds. Happy New Year, Alistair. Happy New Year, James. How's it going so far? We are recording this on New Year's Day, so, I mean, no one really knows how it's doing. New Year's Day, straight into 2020. One. 2021.

I've shot into it. 2021. Doesn't work anymore. No. We've lost it. No. The magic's gone. 2021.

2021. It just sounds like you're counting now, doesn't it? Yep. It's the only time in our lifetime we'll get to do that, I guess. Yep, there's a high point. Yeah, that's a fun thing for the year. Have that in your mind for the year. It just sounds like you're counting.

When was the last time that would have happened? 1920. And then before that, who knows? Come on, let's not blow people's minds so quickly in the year. That said, Alistair, i hope your mind is ready to be blown yeah yeah it is because i'm taking you back to derbyshire i'm taking you to the hope valley the hope valley an optimistic story for 2021 and i'm taking you to a little village called chaton i'm glad we've got video because I deliberately waited until you took a sip of water before I told you the Hamlet's name.

Chaton in Derbyshire. No, it's not a headline. I've got some sources in Derbyshire. I've got a source that lives in Chaton. That is how it's pronounced. You've got a stool pigeon. You've got a stoolie in Chaton. A stool pigeon, yes.

I didn't know you had informants. Oh, big time. It's like Sherlock Holmes' little gang of newspaper kids or whatever they're called. The Baker Street Irregulars. Yes, my nationwide fraternity of vagabonds. Yes. That is how it's pronounced, Chaton.

When my informant quizzed the person from Chaton about it, they were like, oh, yeah, no one really realised that. So Chaton in the Hope Valley. It is downstream from Castleton, which is the home of the devil's... Oh! Which is unsurprising. It all links. Yeah, it all comes together.

So, I want to talk to you about ghosts, about a boggart, a hedge. Oh. And we're going to revisit the Gabriel Hounds. Our student band, the Gabriel Hounds. Yes, yes. yes from what was it yuriko katani's episode about jin men ken yes the human-faced dog in which the three of us formed gabriel hounds and um she played keyboards oh yes yes yes i was on vibes is that an instrument or just something you were sort of i don't know emitting it's listed in old albums as though it

were an instrument, but I think probably, is it a euphemism for the drug dealer of the band? That would make sense. Yeah. I think it is a vibraphone, though, to be honest. Oh, right. Okay, okay. Which is somewhere between a silent phone and an audible phone, I guess.

I don't know. So, yeah, we're in the high peak. There's the River Ngo. N-O-E. Oh, these names are great yeah and on the bridge over the river no a lady saw a ghost farmer oh yeah he was said to have white whiskers rosy cheeks he had a knee length smock on and i quote an old hat he was holding a little tallow candle it's an old school animal fat candle on one of those like a little plate with a finger hold.

Yeah, a little Ebenezer Scrooge dish. Like, if you wanted a super portable cup of tea, that would be the saucer. Yeah, yeah. He was actually seen by a number of people around the Hamlet of Chaton, this ghost. The look of him is that traditional sort of yokel. A hayseed.

He probably also had a... You're miming a little bit of straw coming out of your mouth. A bit of straw out of his mouthl. A hayseed. He probably also had a... You're miming a little bit of straw coming out of your mouth. A bit of straw out of his mouth and a red neckerchief. Yeah. It's the absolute textbook example. Ukip pamphlet tucked into the pocket. Yes, yeah. So a load of people in Chaton saw that ghost. I don't want to interject with scepticism too early, but what marks him out as a ghost rather than a farmer? Was he levitating? No. Semi-transparent? No.

Did he vanish? Nope. Yeah, he was either a ghost or a farmer. Just was on a bridge. A ghostly spectral bridge of some kind. No, it was a real bridge. So it's 50-50 really. There's literally nothing that marks him out as being a ghost in that.

Yeah, but like a farmer in derbyshire clearly a ghost fashion wise maybe he appeared out of time farmers do tend to be very with it trendy snazzy with the trendy fashions yeah farmers are very much at the cutting edge of fashion yes uh threshing edge of fashion scything through non-fashion things. They pull all the fashion in, run it through their blades, and then just shoot it out as a kind of mulch. Yes. Sort of big brick of fashion. Wrap it in bin bags so it doesn't get wet.

Just leave it. That's good for a few months. Good for the season. Fashion. Okay, alright then. You're not going with me ghost farmer then? I'm not 100% convinced. What about a chaton boggart? You know I love a boggart. Yes. Who doesn't?

They're from up round that area. That's where... Oh, you're flitting. Yeah, we're flitting. That boggart. He's from that neck of the woods. This guy, Lone Walker, saw a boggart. He was...

Can I just check? Was he a Lone Walker or was his name Lone Walker? Oh, Lone Walker. Was he a really cool Lone Walker? Storm's coming. But I was his name Lone Walker? Oh, Lone Walker. Was he really cool? Lone Walker. Storm's coming. But I won't stop Lone Walker. He would be so cool until you asked him where he was from.

It's not important. I have no home. They call me Lone Walker. Where are you walking to, Lone Walker? Oh, Shadow. Sorry, what was that? What was that, Lone Walker't matter i couldn't you're too gravelly and intense i couldn't couldn't hear what you said there leave me alone oh that's the

gone back to jim mankin that's why he's a lone walker do you want to lift lone walker just tell me where you're going mate i keep walking i walk on my own so he was what he was walking lone walker was walking oh yeah classic and then a boggart that was definitely not a dog and definitely not a ram blocked his way. Right. I saw a creature. Some creature that probably looked a bit like a dog or a ram, because it's weird of him to mention them. I'm guessing it was quadrupedal from the context. Yes.

And it blocked his path, and so he went to find a gap in the hedge. That was also blocked, also by the boggart. So he went to find a gap in the hedge that was also blocked also by the boggart so he went home by a different route a supernaturally forced detour basically someone was late and that was the best reason they thought that they could give like oh yeah can you just share your location then if you're on if you're on your way loan in a minute there's a boggart is it you sure it's not a dog it's definitely not a dog leaving now yeah in the taxi you aren't oh no there's a boggart in the taxi and then also at the bus stop and at the tube station. And it's not a dog or a ram. See you.

Okay, but what I really wanted to talk to you about was the Gabriel hounds. Oh, yeah. For people who don't remember what the Gabriel hound is, it's a noise, really, in the sky of what sound like hounds. Yeah. And there's a few different origin stories for them. Some people think it's the angel Gabriel, for some reason accompanied by the ghosts of unbaptised children. And he's sort of making them flock through the sky and

whipping them. And there's this screeching, horrible noise that is the sound of the Gabriel hound. I mean, that seems really unfair. It is unfair. I'm an unbaptised child. That could be me. That could be you if i died you would be up there with gabriel way older than the other kids yeah what would we talk about i don't know hey dougie i don't know what that is oh hey dougie's the current best cartoon on kids television oh right i thought it would be something like that that singing shark video oh don't in some versions they are actually dogs good or ratchet hounds're called. One of the origin stories is that there was a squire who was so much loved hunting,

he would take his hounds out even on the Sabbath. The Sabbath? Naughty. But you're supposed to keep the Sabbath holy. And one time on the Sabbath, he was out with his hounds and they all went in a church. That is the last place you want to go with your hounds on a Sabbath. when in a church that that is the last place you want to go with your hounds on a sabbath and he was cursed to go in the sky after he died with his hounds and sort of hunt around in the

sky i guess for stuff that story reminds me of another apocryphal jesus folk tale that we didn't include in last week's episode that's sort of relevant oh yeah which is on christmas day it happened so and it's about a farmer who was so poor, he had to plough the fields even on Christmas Day because he couldn't take a single day off work. And then Jesus appeared to him and said, what are you doing? It's my birthday. It's Christmas. What are you doing? What are you ploughing for? And he said, well, I have to plough because I'm so poor.

I have to plough even on Christmas Day. And what do you think Jesus did? Well, going off the other stuff that he did to those footballers. Based on what he did to the junior footballers, yeah. Did he kill him with a trick? He immediately killed all of his livestock and family and they all died. Whoa! And then the farmer dies and that's the end of the story.

Thanks, Jesus. Spike! Doesn't fit in with the rest of your teachers, Jesus. So that'd be a lesson to you. Don't plough on Christmas Day. Wow. Don't hunt on the Sabbath. Look I don't want to be part of cancel culture. I don't think Jesus should be cancelled just

because he murdered four people. Minimum. And several cows. He did a lot of good. And those pigs. And those pigs that time. Yeah no fair enough. Fair enough. It's easy to judge isn't it. And that maybe that's why he also said judge not lest ye be judged. Just because he knew he had old tweets about murdering footballers. Murdering footballers with cool tricks. Sorry, I interrupted there. That's fine. The sound of the Gabriel Hound is a warning. It's bad.

If you hear the sound of the Gabriel Hound, someone's going to die. A bit like the Pelton Bragg. Yes. Similar instance, according to Derbyshire Ghosts and Legends by David Bell. It has the clipper of the skeletal monk pointing at the map. There he is, our mate, the skeletal monk pointing at a book. You know it's legit. Similar instances have been experienced by people in Castleton, Hathersage, Edale.

It really put them on the map. In the 1930s, a woman at a farm in the sub-Hamlet of Chateau-en-Mort, a death was foretold by the sound of the Gabriel Hounds. Sorry, the real tone shift there. A death was foretold. Which David Bell points out, the legend of the Gabriel Hound continues even in this time of television and computers.

Even with your computers, even with your Pentium 486s. Yeah, even with RAM at the levels it's at nowadays. Yeah, whatever that may be. Easily 32 meg. Yeah, people still believed in Gabriel Hounds in the 1930s. They should have spent less time worrying about Gabriel Hounds and more time worrying about their address. Shat on more?

Are you... Wow. At least it's not coastal because you would have Shat on by the sea. But the story I want to tell you is a lovely story. It's from Tales and Traditions of High Peak by William Wood. Sorry, this is how i need to i have to pronounce you know like the um you know the whopping joke that we both make which we explained in a somewhat labored manner in a few episodes ago yeah yeah whopping means big but when

you go in on the train to whopping uh the announcement tells you that the platform is small the platform is small and then it goes this. It's actually quite small. And then it goes, this station is whopping. Hilarious. Yeah. We've now explained that joke twice on the podcast. Whenever I hear of a town that starts with EG High Wycombe, High Peak, High Holborn, I kind of have to pronounce it High Holborn or High Peak. And the writer of this is called William Wood. Anyone with a surname Wood, I kind of have to pronounce William Wood. Ah, nice. So this story is the death token

or the tale of the Gabriel Hound. I love an oar. Nobody does good oars these days. No. It died out with Edward Gorey. So Mr and Mrs Bowman had a few kids and their youngest, Mary, she fell in love with a neighbouring small landowner, small farmer, no, farmer, a neighbouring small landowner. Small far... No. Farmer. A neighbouring farmer called Bert. You meant to say landowner of small stature, James. No, just he had a small holding. That's a little personal. Which is not euphemism.

And he was a poor farmer, but Mary loved him. And now, I read this in the book. I had to reread it, and then I had to Google it with SafeSearch on to find out what this was a euphemism for so mary and birch were absolutely obsessed with the i quote consummation of love at the altar of hymen okay yeah i mean i think i know what that means yeah are they just talking about the old um rumpy pumpy it it no doing it no that's a euphemism for marriage hymen was the greek god of marriage oh that's confusing yeah consummation of their love at the altar of hymen is actually that's actually

you know doing it by the book for those days fair play they wanted to get married they were pure their love was honest or something he. But the parents chose the husband for Mary, a chap called Galliard, who was a relative of the local lord. Oh, Galliard. Oh, I can see him now. Slick back hair, a sneer on his lips. He's trampling over

flowers and not caring. Absolutely massive holding. If he trod on a snail, he wouldn't think twice. He'd probably go back and try and get another snail. He'd try and find that snail's family and get that. You know, like Jesus did. He'd probably have an assistant with him, like Gaston's friend,

who's always running after him, so he can be really cruel to him to establish for the audience that he's the bad guy. Yes. But Mary's brother and sister sister they devised a plan because they wanted to help mary out to marry well sorry to consummate the love their love at the altar of hymen yeah that's how i would describe it yep so mary fell ill everyone really worried parents really worried galliard was like i'm not gonna get to marry this girl and then one afternoon

mary was in the back room, in bed, looking ill, looked like she'd taken a turn for the worse, and they heard the Gabriel Hound. Which is a bad omen. The death token. Mary's mum was distraught. She said, oh no,

if the Gabriel Hound's barking for Mary, we're screwed. I mean, I'm definitely putting words into her mouth there. This is absolutely foobarred yes she said this is balked yes using contemporary slang and then the next morning they went to mary's room and mary was gone and her mother again was that she's oh no the gabriel hounds have taken her galliard fuming storms out probably kicked him goat or something. Of course he does. Of course he does. What happened? Mary had snuck out and eloped with Birch.

Ooh, yeah. To consummate their love at the altar of Hymen. And the Gabriel Hound had been the brother and sister making the noises of a Gabriel Hound to trick their parents that their youngest child had died. Just like Jesus would. Making the noise of a Gabriel Hound. Yes.

Yeah. Well, ask not for whom the Gabriel Hound barks. Who Gabriel's the Gabriel Hounds? Good question. Or Ratchet Hounds, as they're also known. In Westwood and Simpsons, The Law of the Land, it does, I think, point out that... Whoa, whoa, whoa.

They're not going to pick holes in this watertight story, are they? It was a gabble ratchet. Oh, a gabble ratchet. I've heard that phrase. Yeah. Gabble just being the noise, and then that sort of got changed into Gabriel Hound, and it's probably a type of duck. That's not for whom the hound quacks.

If it sounds like a Gabriel Hound, it's probably a duck. Have you heard that rumour that ducks quacks don't have an echo? Yes. That isn't true, is it? I don't think so, no. Why would it? I don't think it's true. But how did it come to be believed? I guess it's just early days of the internet kind of rumour, isn't it? Just people making stuff up.

Because it's not something that... If you went into a cave or a crevasse and said, you know, echo, echo, echo. Echo, echo, echo. I've been in that situation and nobody's ever gone let's get a duck and bring it here. I've never seen a duck that near a cave because they're usually in much more open

land. In nature, they never appear in areas where there are echoes. I presume that it would be difficult to get a duck to do anything that you wanted it to, apart from eat bread. Yeah, they are a notoriously troublesome and willful animal. Yeah, you can lead a duck to a cave, but you can't make it quack. Good saying.

Probably. So, Rachel, my lover and confidant, likes to tell me animal facts. Yeah. And one of them was, her friend was working in conservation with ducks, and she told me you had to be very careful with ducks, because they get very stressed when they're being handled. This is why you can't just carry them around until you get into an echoey cave.

Right. They don't have mouths or eyebrows, so they have no way of expressing their emotions. Yeah. And apparently they can actually die. The ducks can actually have heart attacks because they can't express their emotions. Because they bottle it up.

Which is why ducks are like northern men so it's that and all of the white bread those are the two reasons well that is the end of my tale of the gabriel hounds what a tale and the town of chaton i mean these gabriel hounds are they ducks are they babies are they dogs is that how the town got its name because all of those things are famous are famous defecators yeah i would have thought the the nature of the plummeting audio would have told you which they were quite conclusively maybe not with babies babies and ducks there's probably some overlap yes definitely in the early in the early years. Yeah.

But it comes out basically like banana puree. Various different types of mustard it goes through. Two-foot stream once, my firstborn did, when he was led on his back. A two-foot stream? A two-foot stream of it. And I sort of tried to catch it in my hand and force it back in like I was doing a Hadouken.

Like a what? Like a Hadouken. Like a fireball from Street Fighter 2. That makes sense, because in that situation, I would have just gone back, back down and become electrified. Yeah, like Blanka. I guess that, really, we shouldn't be encouraging listeners to punch... Punch poo back into babies' bottoms.

No, we shouldn't. You think they need telling? Yeah, it's one of those things that if we didn't put the message in and it happened, we'd feel awful. Don't punch poo back into baby's bottoms. Oh, it's like the bum gun all over again. I guess that's how violence escalates. It starts off with a bum punch. Eventually, you've got a bum gun.

What's next? A bum bomb. A bum bomb. And then we all live in chat on. That is an amazing story. Yeah. You're going to score it? Yeah, let's score this baby.

Let's score it. OK. Possibly duck. Or dog. Or just geese. Probably just geese. Let's go with names. Feeling pretty confident.

You are right to be confident, James. I don't even see how I can haggle. No. Because there's a village called Chaton. Yeah. And there's a village called Chaton Mall. Yeah. And those are actual places.

Yes. That's five out of five, isn't it? Yes. It just is. It's the greatest location in Britain. That's the thing. We don't even need to mention... I don't need to mention any of the other places.

No. No, I don't think so. We don't know the name of that farmer who was a farmer. The ghost farmer. In an old hat, wearing a baseball cap backwards. Ooh, that's old-fashioned. Wearing a Kangol hat. Oh, yeah.

It was no fear when I was in school. No fear of beanies. I don't even know if there were beanies. We probably didn't have the technology then for beanies. Yeah, it's five out of five for names. Yeah, five out of five, come on. What a strong showing there. up supernatural well i really don't want that farmer to drag yeah well i mean my mind went straight to the farmer who is not not a ghost

so much as a man on a bridge yeah yeah so he's not very impressive on the other hand you've got the gabriel hounds yeah one of three things flying through through the air, making a noise. Great. Ghost babies, ghost dogs. Ghost ducks. And we all know how terrifying a ghost duck can be. Yes. I don't want to belittle that in any way. No. Otherwise I'd be in stoke right now. But that was a long callback to the first ever trailer

we put out for Lormint. Has anybody listened to that? Message us on Twitter if you got that reference. Yes, please do. And we'll send help. We've got a boggart. Yeah, a boggart that isn't a dog or a ram, but could be a goat because that's been left open. Yeah, or some sort of dog ram.

Yeah, or a chicken riding a rabbit. Could be any of these things. It might just be a goose. The problem I have is, yes, you've got a lot of supernatural there, but in the actual story that you told me, it's fake, isn't it? The Gabriel hands didn't come. Yeah, someone uses the belief against them. And so it's a three, I'm afraid.

Okay. We've got to have a lot of respect for him for that. That's a good scam. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's a great scam. If the category were scams, if the category were beezer wheezes, five out of five, but it's not. What about my next category, though? out of five, but it's not.

What about my next category, though? My next category is what it isn't. Could you explain that category to me? Well, it is what it isn't. Sorry, this is like talking to a Lewis Carroll character. Yeah, because the boggart was not a dog nor a ram. Oh, yeah. These things are defined mostly by what they aren't.

The farmer, he wasn't a farmer. He was a ghost. He wasn't a ghost. Even though all the evidence pointed to him being a farmer. Fair enough, yeah. The Gabriel hounds in the story weren't a Gabriel hound. Weren't a Gabriel hound, mate. And the euphemism of consummation of love at the altar of Hymen,

it's not what you think. No, you're right. There have been a lot of curveballs and small holdings, neither of which should be any impediment to consummating love at the altar of Hymen, of course. I think the only thing that counts against it is how you pronounce Chaton, because that is what it is. That is pretty much what it is. That's a good point. It's hard to argue that Chaton works on multiple levels as humour. Should we talk about Chaton more? I'm still enjoying it.

OK, so for the category What It Isn't, I think it's... Well, What It Isn't is five out of five. It's four out of five. I knew I was leaving myself wide open to that sort of... Yes, you did, and I punched the number back into you. Yeah. OK, then, final category, starting as we mean to go on in 2021. wide open yes you did that's all i i punched the number back into you yeah okay then final category starting as we mean to go on in 2021 2021 peak poo yeah i feel like i when we started out i

didn't intend to co-host a largely poo based folklore podcast that wasn't i don't think we even discussed poo no i don't think came up no poo. No, I don't think it came up. And yet we've got to the point where we can't get through an episode without poo creeping in. Without one of my infamous poo-based anecdotes. You even slipped in. I didn't even notice it at the time. You slipped in a poo-based anecdote. Yep. About the two-foot chute.

A two-foot chute. Not only was it an anecdote, it was also a bit of a brag. I was bragging vicariously through my children. Yeah, your days of two-foot shoots are past. Oh, long gone. Yep, the glory days are over. That's all you can do. Look on from the sidelines,

hopefully sheltered behind some kind of plastic shielding. Some sort of PPE. Yeah. So this is peak, in the sense of this is the peak district this is it happened in the peak district and we got the the old the devil's um upstream yes that's right there running down the hill yep um yeah making a two-foot streak look like peanuts and if these any of these beasts were flying overhead, you're going to get a peak amount of poo. I think it's five out of five for peak poo.

Peak poo. Now, I don't know if we're going to maintain that level of poo throughout 2021. I think hopefully we've peaked. And will it have a trickle down effect into the later episodes? I mean, that can happen, yeah. Please, if you are listening, if anyone is listening to this, please let us know if we need less or more poo in the podcast. We'll try for less.

Let's try, as an experiment, let's try for less poo for a little bit. Yeah, for a little while. Yeah. Because I think I've run out of poo-based anecdotes. I need to store a few new ones up. Oh, the last thing you want to be doing is trying to engineer poo anecdotes. I've actually got a new... I do have a brand new one that I'm still reeling from. I don't think I can tell it.

No. I don't think I can tell anyone about it. It will go to the grave with me, figuratively. Not in a little bag like dog poo. Bag like dog poo. His seminal first album. Collaboration with the Gabriel Hounds. You've been listening to Lawmen with me, Alistair Beckett-King.

And me, James Shakeshaft. If you've got folklore you'd like us to examine with our... What's the opposite of forensic? General. Yeah, if you'd like us to absolutely skim any topics that are local to you, send us an email or a tweet or get in touch via the Patreon. Is it patreon.com forward slash lawman pod yes it is there's other goodies on there it's basically like an only fans but for pictures of dust only dust

so what do you reckon, James? Did I do that duck fact before? I don't know. You've compared maybe other things to northern men before. Yes, probably. There was some sort of tough exterior monster that had a soft interior that was kind of like the Werther's original of monsters that you compared to northern men.

We have no way of knowing except for listeners telling us. and i'm sure they will duck facts yeah it's not so much a section of the podcast duck facts it's just duck fact the same fact being repeated many times so we've got james shakeshark life hacks and alistair beckett king's duck fact