Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep58: Loremen S3 Ep58 - Black Annis, Leicester

Episode Date: February 25, 2021

Leicester is home to many things: the grave of King Lear, the Leicester Comedy Festival and the blue-hued, metal-clawed, child-eating ogress Black Annis. All of these are covered in this special live episode from the festival, featuring an actual audience of socially-distanced lorefolk. PLUS: Bonus Material! (i.e. things James forgot to say during the livestream.) 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. What follows is a recording of our live show at the Leicester Comedy Festival. We do a lovely introduction there which neither of us mess up. It was a really fun time, it was really enjoyable, lovely to see everyone, it was really fun. Stick around at the end for extra bits that we forgot to say when we're live. Listen to us how we say hello as well because we both sound very stressed. Hello!

Hiya! Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And I'm James Shakeshaft. And I rarely get through all of that in one go without a second take, so I'm pretty impressed with myself. I'm very impressed with that as well. I usually get through that. I'm James Shakeshaft. I tend to nail it. We've got a little room full of faces. Hello, little room full of faces. We've got a little room full of faces.

Hello, little room full of faces. Woo! That was one elephant there. I don't know, the elephant obviously doesn't have the camera on. I think someone fell over as well. Slapstick is very welcome in the podcast medium. I don't think enough people are doing it. I was expecting a more spooky woo, if I'm honest. I was expecting a chorus of oohs. I'm honest. I was expecting a chorus of oooos.

We've got some somewhat familiar names here. Yes. We've got Emily O'Shea I think somewhere. We've got Ellie the extra extra special mongoose. Who I believe is a 12th dimensional being. Hello Ellie. Minimum 12th. Are you up to 12 now at the moment?

Yeah, up to 12 and all I have to say is nuts to you! Oh, that mongoose. Cheeky mongoose. Forgot how rude the mongoose was. Careful. Wonderful. Well, thank you for coming, everyone.

Have we got any local people in? Any Lesterians? Or local to the internet? Is it called Lesterians? Lysestrians? Lysestrians. Lenkunians? What's the word?

I think it was the bean botherers of Leicester. I'm from Leicestershire, but not Leicester. You're from Leicestershire. That's the closest we've got so far. Then you are our spokesperson, our resident local. James, I believe, knowing that we were doing the show in Leicester, you have investigated a local... Yeah, I've looked Leicester right up.

Sorry? Don't know. You said that as if that was a widely used phrase, but it's not. No, it isn't. I've really looked up Leicester. I mean, I've looked it up in at least two books. Fair enough. We're talking Law of the Land. Classic. We're talking Reader's Digest Myths and Legends.

And I've got to say, up until this point, I didn't realise that we had created a podcast where people would wahey the folklore tome, Law of the Land. I like that people are waheying a book. Oh, and we've got them here today. I was once doing a gig at the Edinburgh Fringe. I began a story with, so I bought a book.

Someone booed at that point. That is not your crowd crowd that is not my audience so Leicester it turns out is named some people say mostly Geoffrey of Monmouth says that it was named

after King Lear you know from the Shakespeare play King Lear oh yeah and King Lear was fans of the podcast

will remember King Lear was a fan of the podcast yeah big time the famously mad King Lear liked the podcast. He had a fool. He had his fool. And he had his podcast subscriptions.

And yeah, he was King Bladder's son for fans of the sort of overall lawmen cinematic universe. Remember him from Sir Nils? Was he not the father of Bender Goethe? I don't know if he's related to the big-headed Welsh. The Welsh Brian Blessed.

I believe he was rumoured to be, in the same way that he was rumoured, that Leicester is rumoured to be named after him, even though that isn't true. He was rumoured to exist. Oh, come on. He named his child Gonorilla. How could that not be real?

Which sounds like a sexually infectious ape. And he sent one of his... Cordelia, he sent to... who offended him, he sent to France. Well, fair enough. In folklore circles, that's a fate worse than Cornwall. King Lear is meant to be... his body is meant

to be in a cave in the New Park area of Leicester, which is part of the Dane Hills, which is where our story takes place. Thank you, woman. Yeah, the Dane Hills. Dane, believed to be from the word for dead.

Oh. Or maybe Danish. It doesn't have a spooky feel to it, Dane Hills. It sounds like one of the members of Blue or something. Like a boy band kind of a name, Dane Hills. From another level, yeah, Dane Hills. Like someone who would overestimate their popularity and go solo. From a boy band.

And ended up on a Celebrity Big Brother. Once it had gone onto Channel 5, if you know what I mean. Yeah, so living in the Dane Hills, there was a big cave called... The cave lived in the hills. Oh yeah, no, that's not what caves do. They just happen. I mean, if anything, arguably a cave is an absence of a thing and not a thing in itself. I think the

viewers are getting a real idea of how difficult it is to edit these podcasts. How much I have to move my sentences around in post to make them make sense to make them even seem to make sense but no in a cave there so the cave lived in the hills within a cave within the hills there lived a beast an ogress called black agnes or black anise or at some points cat anise which sounds quite fun. She was deadly. She was giant.

She had straggly hair. She had blue skin and she had massive metal claws for hands. Metal claws? Yeah. Like an avatar Edward Scissorhands. Avatar from the James Cameron. Like Werewolf from the X-Men. That shows how well I know my pop culture. Like the popular character Werewolf from the X-Men. That shows how well I know my pop culture.

Like the popular character Werewolf from the X-Men. What's his name? Wolverine. He had a metal skeleton. Oh, yeah. That was given to him because he's just very good at healing. Right. I don't need to tell you that, the audience.

You know that. You did need to tell me that because I didn't know. Oh, yeah. In some reports, she only had one big eye in the middle of her head. And this is all based on reports from a poem from the past. And as everyone knows, my thoughts on poems, I did not read it. So I have been lumbered with this poem. Yes.

And it is troubling in so many ways. It was written by John Hayrick, a lieutenant in the 15th regiment of light dragoons in the 18th century. And it's called Black Annis's Bower. And the description of it is Black Annis's Bower being an answer to a very young lady's inquiries about the story of Black Annis. Now, there is nothing about this poem which is appropriate for a very young lady. It's absolutely disgusting. So I'm going to read some of it to James's inevitable fury. Here, if the uncouth song of former days soil not the page with falsehood's artful lays.

Soil not the page, James. Are you soiling the page with falsehood's artful lays? Don't think so. Well, don't. Okay. Black anise held her solitary reign, the dread and wonder of the neighbouring plain. The shepherd grieved to view his waning flock

and traced his firstlings to the gloomy rock. No vagrant children culled the flowerets then, for infant blood oft stained the gory den. You can't tell a child that. No. That's awful. It gets worse. Not Sparta's mount, for infant tears

renowned, echoed more frequently the piteous sound, oft the gaunt maid, the frantic mother cursed, whom Britain's wolf with savage nipple nursed. You can't say that. No. You can't write that in a poem to a child. I don't think you can talk about wolf nipples.

I've written a poem for your daughter. Does it mention nipples? Only wolves. Which there would be six of, I think. Yeah, that's true. I haven't counted. Never really got close enough to a wolf to count, where or otherwise.

It's a terrifying and disgusting poem. Yeah. I mean, she's a child murderess. You say that as if it's a defence. But in her defence, she is a child murderess. So what did you expect? Yeahess, so what did you expect? Yeah, well, what did you expect? She was used as a bogeywoman.

If you didn't obey your parents, they would threaten you that Black Agnes would come and get you. The quote is, she scratched to death with her claws, sucked their blood, and hung up their skins to dry. From the Leicester Chronicle in 1874, I think. But what I like, what I appreciate,

is she's using the whole of the animal there, from nose to tail. She's not wasting a bit of that. Yeah, not one bit of that child is thrown away. In some pictures, she's got sort of like a necklace of skulls. She looks a lot like Kali from Hinduism. And the video game Spelunky, yep. Some people think she's the Celtic goddess Anu.

She's like a sort of folk memory of this Celtic goddess who was... There's a description about her, isn't there, Alistair? Anu was blue and had the single eye. There's a guy called John Dudley who wrote a book called Nauology, which is the study of sacred spaces. And he describes Black Annas's bower. The cave, it seems, is now nearly filled up with soil carried into it by rains, but was, about 70 years ago, quite open, like a large oven.

Or a cave, to put that another way. I feel like he's really leaning into the she ate children thing by trying to persuade you that it was oven-like. So he has this idea that she represents the same goddess so that all across different cultures... Basically, he's a conspiracy theorist. He's like, oh, it's all connected, right? You know, she's that, but there's also a goddess, Kali.

It's like they're all the same one. And he really believes it. So he says, The tales of the cannibal practices of Black Anise of the Bower cannot be, with reason, doubted. They can. Yeah. He says that they can't.

Cannibal rites were often practiced near this cave, most probably, like the sacrifices at the Altar of Trephonius, which is hard not to say in a sort of the Altar of Trephonius kind of voice, in the dead time of night, at a spot hid from ordinary view by the woods and the thickets of the then lester forest and attended with circumstances well calculated to horrify any man but especially the rude and superstitious britons then present so rude i i think it's a bit mean of him to dismiss the britons of the period as being rude and superstitious as he writes his mad book about how there was actually a cannibal living in a cave who really ate children in Leicester. You cannot, with reason, doubt that this ogress did not eat children. Based on a poem.

From very recently. Based on a quite recent poem. There's not much description of her before that guy's poem, the old army man's poem. But obviously the legend was there because it was called Black Anise's Bower. There's an old oak tree that she apparently, at the mouth of the cave, that she would lurk in and waiting for children to come by

and then grab them, grab them with her big old claws. Which I think, as we all learned from the film Edward Scissorhands, it's very difficult to do. If you've got claws for fingers, it's very difficult to do anything and it not appear sinister. Yeah, pointing. Just pointing at something. You're pointing one knife at them,

but there's three knives pointing right back at you oh think about it actually she's quite a frightening beast but she her origin may be from a woman called agnes scott who's buried in a church nearby and is it swithfield swithland swithland in swithland it's swithland swithland thanks actually yeah i think we might edit that bit down a little bit the bit where you just say switzerland over and over again i take out one i think and then there there's a grave of a woman called agnes scott who was apparently a hermit who might have influenced this tale of black anise she is not on record as having devoured suck the blood of or flayed the skins of any children i just i would like to underline that now skull necklace she might have had a bit of a goth

necklace i don't know there's an engraving on her um on her on her grave that she was seen as a mother figure to a lady fretters i think ladyters. So she was kind of a kindly woman, but as Harvey Two-Faced Dent says, you either die a hero or kindly old woman, or you live to see yourself become described as a one-eyed hag with blades of fingers that kills and eats children in a house which is very much like a child's cooking oven. There's some lovely names there.

Was that Miss Fetters, did you say? I think she was called Lady Fetters, yes. Lady Fetters. I will check that before we put this out. You may have to issue a correction. There's some cracking names in Leicestershire. Just skimming past it, saw Groby Pool, which is a lovely name.

Groby Pool, which apparently you can't cover with pancakes. Just don't try, mate. Do not try. It's the origin of the well-known 17th century phrase, I'll thatch Groby Pool with pancakes, which we all say every day without ever thinking about what it means. The other famous phrase that we all know and love, for his death there's many a wet eye in Groby Pool,

meaning that no one is crying and the only people whose eyes are wet are fish because they're in the water of Groby Pool. I mean, I didn't need to explain that, did I? No, because we all say that all the time. Groby Pool being the only example of some water that fish live in so naturally classic example it's one of the only things that can't have a building built on it made out of pancake as well a place i liked and i don't even know what the um if there is any folklore to do with it but husband's bosworth lovely name

lovely name i liked griffy dam which supposedly brackets erroneously takes its name from a griffin and that doesn't interest me but what i like about it is that the griffin was found curled around a well at the end of bottom lane and i like not just on bottom lane the end of bottom lane the big the big hole at the end yes exactly why would you put a well don't call it bottom lane and have a well apparently the griffin in question uh was killed by a knight they always were the griffin in question later died back to the law of land for a second this is a great book i've got a lot of time for it but this the little bit about griffidam is the one point in this book where it looked like either westwood or simpson was really trying to fill out the word count when they put um this little paragraph at the end saying as conventionally

in the middle ages a griffin was half eagle half lion a well would not be its chosen habitation dragons on the other hand commonly live in wells a dragon would have been more traditional here but would not of course have accounted for the name Yeah, so it wasn't a dragon then. It isn't realistic that a griffon would have been around the well, because we all know that's not where griffons live. I love that as an argument. Back to Black Anise. Some tales of her legend was that she lived in the catacombs

underneath Leicester Castle, and she'd just sort of make a lot of noise and be a bit weird around there, being spooky, and she had a tunnel that took her all the way back to Black Annis' bower which is quite some distance. Did she make this tunnel herself? Because I

know that some people say that she carved the cave with her own claws. With her big metal hands. Was she actually tunnelling like a giant mole of sorts? Like a really frightening mole. No, I don't know, actually. It doesn't make that obvious leap that she probably made the tunnel herself.

I can't see the council putting a tunnel in for her. No. That's why I ask. Now, Danehills now is part of Leicester City, really, isn't it? It used to be two miles outside of the city, but the city's grown. It's now, I think it's a suburban area. And in fact, I was reading an article today that said that they've tracked down Black Annis' Bower

to someone's garden. On the unsurprisingly named Black Annis' Bower Lane. You're really asking for it, really. Oh, I'd love to see the team of detectives That finally cracked the case With a map of Leicester So many red strings pinned into different places It was right in front of us But they were all made out of flayed skin

Is the horrible thing And it's beans instead of pins Because Leicester's famous for beans. You keep using the word famous and really stretching it in this episode. It was. OK, it was famous for beans. You told me, James, that... What did I say?

What did I say now? It's all right. You're not in trouble. I just wanted to have this chat with you. In front of everyone? I didn't want it to be during the middle of the live stream. But here we are. You told me that Black Anise's description is very similar to the description of a particularly Scottish witch.

And so I did a little bit of research. And the name of that Scottish witch is the Kellyach Ver or Blue Hag or Blue Witch. Yeah, the blue-faced hag is quite a big thing in old British mythology, British and Celtic mythology. There appear to be two of them. It's hard to sort of pin down a little bit, because there's the Caleac Ver, which means the blue hag, who seems to have been associated with winter. And then there's the Caleac Wisgi, like the word whiskey, the Gaelic word for water, who is associated with spring. And I think the Caleac Wizgi was known for running around with either a wand or a hammer, chopping down grass.

Neither of those are the right tool for chopping down grass. No. She'd be hacking it down with the hammer, presumably frustrated at it not having any impact. My two-year-old does a similar thing. Just attacks plants with a hammer. Why does your child have a hammer? Well, you've got to put them to work.

Lockdown, they need skills, they need skills. Homeschooling. Here's a hammer, go smash someone's tulip. My sort of homeschooling is very influenced by the Japanese film Battle Royale. At the end of that story of the Kaliak is that she gets so angry at the grass growing that she throws her wand slash hammer angry at the grass growing that she throws

her wand slash hammer down at the root of a holly bush. Which, James, is why no grass grows underneath the holly bush. I sort of feel like folklorists are just sort of doing observational stand-up comedy but based on things that nobody has actually noticed.

So it's like, there's no grass underneath the holly bushes. What's going on there? What's that about? Probably someone put a hammer down there. Did they throw a hammer? Ever tried to mow your lawn with a hammer? And there's one last account of the Keliak I'd like to share with you, principally because it comes from a guy writing in 1703

whose name is Martin Martin. Ah, Martin Martin. Martin Martin. Martin as a first or surname is not what I would expect from someone from 1703. Yeah, it's a bit of a 90s name, Martin, isn't it? 90s sitcom, yeah. Martin Martin's so good they named him twice. And he tells us about there is a whirlpool, a Scottish whirlpool,

which is why I said whirlpool in a really bad accent there. Whirlpool. Off the west coast of Scotland. Whirlpool. a Scottish whirlpool, which is why I said whirlpool in a really bad accent there. Whirlpool. Off the west coast of Scotland. Whirlpool. Is it whirlpool? Which is known now as the Calliach. Wow. And it's a vast whirlpool.

It's there all the time. It's probably blue. And he refers to it as a famous and dangerous gulf called Corrie Vrecken, about a mile in breadth. It yields an impetuous current not to be matched anywhere about the Isle of Britain. The sea begins to boil and ferment with the tide of flood, and it resembles the boiling

of a pot, and then increases gradually until it appears in many whirlpools, which form themselves in sort of pyramids, and immediately after, spout up as high as the mast of a little vessel. No, is that not high enough for you, James? They say it's like a little boat. It's the height of a small boat. Small boat could be really small. It could be a toy little boat. It's the height of a small boat. Small boat could be really small.

It could be a toy. Or the house being the size of a small oven. That's like a little portable one that just fits one potato. Copyright, actually. I might get on Dragon's Den with that one. That's not... On the subject of potatoes, keliakwizgi, water hag,

also means a diseased potato in Scotland. But the Corrie Vrechan whirlpool was said to be the washing machine of the keliac, of the big hag. And she would wash her clothes there in the foam in a huge swirling washing machine. And it was said that she washed all the tartan in Scotland white. Whoa. That's how much she washed.

I hope she didn't have the metal sort of scissor hands. They're going to rust right up, aren't they? They're going to rust up. They're going to ruin your tartan. She's going to ladder your tartan. Oh, dear. I hadn't even thought about it from the tartan point of view. This is a disaster.

Shall we get scoring? I think it's time to score this tale. But we're going to do something different because we have an audience here, which is allow you to choose the score for the different categories. It's what you've always wanted. Just what literally nobody asked for at any point. No one has ever asked for. What is the first category?

Well, it's got to be names. James, why do you think you deserve five out of five? Because Black Harness, I've been looking at the subtitles to see if it's ever come up as anus. But it's mostly come up as anus, which is annoying. Oh, no. Oh, no, that's because I said anus. Anus has come up. Anyway.

You're listening to the podcast where a man reads his own subtitles slightly after saying things and ends up in an infinite loop of the word anus. So we've got Black Anus. We've got Black Agnes. We've got Cat Anus. Lovely. We've got Anu., we've got Cat Agnes. Lovely. We've got Anu, and we've got Agnes Scott. That's one person.

Minimum six names, is that? Six names. That's good. That's a good amount of names. On the other hand, Martin Martin. He's got half a name. We've got a little reference to King Bladdered. We've got Lear.

We've got Leaster. We've got Leaster, yeah. Which is, I think, how Geoffrey of Monmouth sort of backronymed that Leaster came from Lear. Yeah. Yeah, very similar process to the Griffidam Griffith. Griffidam, another name. Husband. Husband's Bosworth.

Husband's Bosworth. Husband's Bosworth. And Gonorilla, the sexy monkey. How many more names do you want? Dead Hills? The Dead Hills? Yeah, that's good, that's good. Shall we throw it to the people? Yeah. Get voting. Do you think this is a five, a one, a two, a three, a four?

Those are the numbers. Those are all the numbers between one and five. I like how you spiced it up by not saying it in a traditional order. I'm no mathematician, James. As poems are to you, so numbers are to me. Democracy is awful, isn't it? So slow and confusing. It's a four.

That's good. A very decisive four. But actually, you were quite close to a five. 50% of people went for four, but a strong 37% went for five. And delightfully, no one went for one. Good. A four out of five for names. That's a strong start, James.

OK. What is the next category? Next category is supernatural. Supernatural. start james okay what is the next category next category is supernatural supernatural oh how natural is one big eye that's like a pool in the middle of your big blue face so big you couldn't cover it with pancakes don't try you'll lose those pancakes that's pretty supernatural a giant witch washing a tartan scottish underwear in a huge whirlpool. That didn't happen, did it? I don't think so. That's not natural.

Couldn't have happened. There's a griffin, which should be a dragon. Even within the realms of supernatural, it's not being natural. So let's turn it over to the law folk. No ghosts, though. Good point, Ellie. Are we getting chat heckles that I can't see? Checkles, yeah.

Any dust, asked Jonathan. All right, Jonathan. There was no dust, was there? Maybe some of the mud in the cave would eventually have dried out. What is mud if not wet dust? A lot of people are complaining about the lack of ghosts. James, you have been hoist by your own ghost petard here by trying

to pass off a mere cannibal witch as supernatural. Let's see are the results ready? Let's see what the results are. It's a three. Average. And a small percentage of people thought it was a two, which means there's a small percentage of people who think that a woman really did live in a cave eating children.

That's worrying. Made good use of the things that she found. It's like an evil womble. Like an abhorrent womble. Things that the everyday folks leave behind their children. So, next category, James. I don't think I know what the next one is.

Next category. It's subterranea. Oh. That's a word? That is a word. I don't know if it should be subterranean or subterranean, but there are actually a number of caves in this story. You've got a cave she lived in. You've got a cave she lived in. Yeah.

You've got the tunnel. Yeah. We've got the grave of King Lear in New Park where he hid like a coward. Oh, yes, of course. Random diss from someone in the past. Just put, oh, yeah, King Lear's buried in a cave that he hid in like a coward. Is it cowardly to die? Is that...

Evidently, according to this one. The chat has lit up with womble opinions since the wombles came in. We've opened a whole can of womble worms. We've kicked the wombles nest. Good point from Axolotl Pete that wombles are themselves underground slash overground. Yes. So

you've made up a, I think somewhat weak pitch that subterranea is a theme of this. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. She lives in a cave the size of a small oven. The shape of a cave. She built her own tunnel, massive, very long tunnel. It's like a two-mile-long tunnel that goes underneath a river.

All right. The real woman's dead, so has been buried. Where do you bury people? On the ground? No, under the ground, Alistair. Subterraneanly. All right, well, putting on my judge's wig, I direct the jury to think very carefully about whether this is a valid category. There's a well. We didn't give a minus option, which is for the best, I think.

I guess that would be underground of numbers, wouldn't it? If zero is the ground. That is the underground of numbers, yeah. Oh, two. Two, James. What? Yep, two out of? If zero is the ground. That is the underground of numbers. Oh, two! Two, James. What? That is an outrage. 32% of people can't be wrong. Final category. It's It

from Stephen King's It. That's the category. It's It from Stephen King's It. Is she It from Stephen King's It? She is, yeah. She's It from Stephen King's It. Lived, yeah. She's like, she's... It from Stephen King's It lived in a cave. It would eat children.

Oh, yeah? It was quite scary. Blue? It might have been blue. I don't want to worry you, James, but Lucy in the chat has just asked if minus points are available for this one. So I don't want to alarm you.

I know you were hoping to go out on a high five, but very good. Your float too in Groby Pool. That's good. That's nice. No one's going to cry for you apart from the fish or something. It's it from Stephen King's It. It's a one out of five for Stephen.

That's shocking, James. Well, I don't think we're going to ever let the audience vote again. We're going to go back to our... This has been an absolute disaster. Whatever the word is for two-person dictatorship, that's what we're going back to. What an absolute disaster for you, James. How do you feel?

I really thought I had something with it being it from Stephen King's It. It's the catchiness of the title that I like there in that category. I think that's what sold it for me. It being It from Stephen King's It. Yeah, and then the bit about it eating children, and I didn't really think much further than that, and then I realised It was ten past four.

Well, on that note, this has been the Lawmen podcast. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming, folks. Thank you for coming. We're going to leave the stage now. I've been Alistair Beckett-King. And I've been James Shakeshaft. Can we have a little round of applause for James? Because he tried. He made an effort there.

Well done, James. There you go. There you go. One out of five. One out of five. you have been listening to lawmen with me alistair beckett king and me james shakeshaft and several law people from the world of the internet yes jeff the talking mongoose is on the internet of course he is with those little hands, he could easily log on If you'd like to support all of this Whatever it is that we're doing You can get on the Patreon

It's patreon.com forward slash lawmenpod Follow us on Twitter, at lawmenpod Instagram, same address And, oh, we've got some merch on coffee Which is ko-fi.com forward slash lawmen no pod you know how to spell it right so first up i've got a correction it was lady ferrers not lady fetters or lady fretters as i said during the thing neither of those those were accurate. Okay. Ferrers. Also, neither of them are really names.

Yes. And so something seemed odd about them at the time. What you'll notice there is I read the name up until Lady and F, and then, as is my want, didn't read the rest of the name. Yeah, you improvised. You went off in a Miles Davis style. Yes, but name-wise. And just noodled around the name.

Miles. As I like to call him. So the main bit of stuff that I forgot to say was about Black Anise being involved in Richard III's stuff. Dickie 3. Dickie 3, the trilogy. Richard 3, Return of the Princes. No, no. That didn't happen, actually, did it?

They never returned, so that doesn't work. No. So what happened with him is he died at the Battle of Bosworth. I don't need to tell you that. No. But he set off from Leicester. So he left his lodgings at the Silver Boar Inn. And on his way out, his heel, when he was on his horse, his heel struck a stone pillar.

And Black Anise said, when you come back, your head's going to hit that. Oh. Yeah. he was on his horse, his heel struck a stone pillar, and Black Anise said, when you come back, your head's going to hit that. Oh. Yeah. She was just standing there, was she? Yeah, apparently. It feels like things were different in those days, that a claimant to the throne

could just be hanging out with a cave hag, cannibal, witch, like that they would socialise. Well, she was just knocking around. She said... Next to the stump. The actual verse that she apparently said was the boar that has silver hue the king's return shall change to blue the stone that tomorrow his foot

shall spurn shall strike his head on his return i've got that wrong there she actually said it before the first stone thing happened oh so he left the silver boar pub hit his foot on the stone went to battle of bosworth got killed got slung over the back of a horse, brought back to Leicester. And apparently his body was hanging down so low that his head was at horse rider foot height and it struck that self-same stone. Chilling. And the people that had killed him wanted to take him back to where he'd left from, the Silverbore Hotel. And they came into town and were like, where's the Silverbore Hotel? Because he's still got the booking. There's no reason to let it go to waste yeah

exactly he'd got breakfast they wanted to get that breakfast yeah check out at 11 there's nothing about you have to be alive and they looked around and the the landlord of that pub was obviously a little bit worried that you know he'd put the king up for the night which is all great that's does well for your business unless your king gets killed. Oh, yeah. Because then the new people in charge are probably not going to be fans. It's just become Tudor time, suddenly. Everything's roughs now.

Everything's roughs. Everything's roughs. So, yeah, he's adjusting his rough. Everyone's frantically roughing themselves. He's going, I don't know where this silver ball pub is um i'm the landlord of as you can see the blue ball pub he points with a with a blue paint streaked hand at the freshly painted sign and so all of black anise's predictions came true the ball that had the silver hue the king's return shall change to blue the stone that tomorrow his foot shall spurn shall strike his head Amazing.

And some people think that was attributed to Agnes Scott, who unfortunately died 30 years before it happened. That is bad luck. Which you could argue is a very strong case against her having ever said that.