Loremen Podcast - S3 Ep66: Loremen S3 Ep66 - Hand of Glory

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

If you've executed a criminal and are wondering what to do with their hands, why not get crafting and make yourself a Hand of Glory? This burglar's multi-tool is purported to do all sorts, though the evidence points (like a dead highwayman's cadaverous finger) towards them not really working at all. This episode was originally a livestream, and features a reading from notorious former-guest Chris Cantrill. The good news is, he's not reading poetry. The bad news is, James is. 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 we did a live stream last week, Alistair, as you no doubt remember. I do remember it, and since then we we have turned it into a podcast somehow. Oh, it's magic. Magic. Any technology sufficiently advanced,

you have to press Control-S really, really often just in case everything crashes. Is that the RTC quote? I think that's what he said. Yeah. What's it about? It's just about how technology gets so good,

you don't really understand how it works. And then what is the episode about? It's about the technology gets so good, you don't really understand how it works. And then what is the episode about? It's about the Hand of Glory. Technically, it's a big old life hack for burglars, but it looks and no doubt smells disgusting. Hello, James. Hello. I stood up and sort of saluted the end of the theme tune.

You stood up right at the very end of the theme tune. Oh, I'm knocking everything over. Knocking a lot of things over. Yeah. I think this has been, if anything, our most slick and professional beginning to our show yet. Oh, don't let them peek behind my curtains. Sorry, are we not doing the we peek behind James Shakespeare's curtains section in this episode? I spent so long preparing it.

I'm so ill. So James has been vaccinated against the plague yeah well the night before my vaccine the most magical vaccines eve yeah i i had what's known in the trade as um thrupney bits um the it's squeaky bum time yeah very poorly right up until currently i'm still poorly i mean we were very close to actually filming this from your toilet i think at your end i mean i don't want to use the term live stream wow so james are you okay to proceed do you think you can deliver us some hot chunks of folklore? Yes, by any means necessary.

Immediately regretting my colourful language there. Trying to weave ropes out of sand. We need to get back onto the much less gross subject of today's podcast, which is the use of a severed human hand. Tell me, James, what is today's episode about? The hand of glory. Sorry, what was that? You kind of said it in a bit of a hair metal kind of way.

I tried to sing it like John Good Jovi. Bob Bob Ovi? Where, where, Bob Bob Ovi. He sang Blaze of Glory. Blaze of Glory, yes. For, was it Young Guns 2, Blaze of Glory? I'll be honest with you, I'm not familiar with Young Guns 1, so I'm the last person who can answer that question.

I haven't actually seen it. I've only just realised that the film Blades of Glory was a play on the phrase Blaze of Glory. I didn't realise that until right now. I've realised that at a lag because of my internet speeds. Seconds later, seconds after I realised it. Yeah. Yeah. It's like when you realise that Legally Blonde

is a play on Legally Blind. Huh? Have you just realised that now? Yeah. Live on the internet, yeah, because we don't have the phrase Legally Blind here in the UK. Because it suggests that there's a degree of criminal blindness, like you can be criminally blind.

That's just if you close your eyes. Put glasses on, you monster. It is made out of a hand. Human hand. The hand of glory. It's kind of of a hand. Human hand. The hand of glory. It's kind of like a multi-tool for criminals. It seems to have multiple special powers,

like it can open doors and it will send people to sleep, like our podcast can. We're reassured. Let's be clear, our podcast sends people to sleep. It doesn't open doors. Certainly not career-wise. Let me be clear, our podcast sends people to sleep. It doesn't open doors, certainly not career-wise. Let me be clear about this.

Nobody's trying to set up a meeting with the law boys. It's kind of like an elaborate candelabra, a macabre candelabra, you could say. I really enjoy that. I feel annoyed that I've burned that pun before the scoring section now. That would have been a good category. And, unsurprisingly, there are stories about it from the past.

As we discussed in the trailer, there's the French book Le Petit Albert. Le Petit Albert. The small Albert. The tiny Albert. Yeah. People may not have listened to the trailer, so let's recap. Could you tell me a little bit about the grimoire of Little Albert? It's just like a french

book of spells oh all right it's just a french book of spells and it tells you how to make a amongst other things your own hand of glory noticeably it's got a the french version has a lot more herbs in it and the british version has a lot more horse wee in it british version is just chips the french French version is sort of, you create a light sort of souffle type of a thing. The British version is, you bake it with suet for four hours and then use it to murder someone.

Exactly. I found an English tale of it in our old, do you remember Grey Dolphin? Yes. The horse. Of course I remember the horse Grey Dolphin. As I recall, it was kicked into the sea. Yes, it was from a guy who loved kicking.

And he kicked an entire horse into the sea. He kicked in the morning, he kicked in the evening, he kicked in the middle of the day as well. Yeah. He probably had restless leg syndrome as well at night, I imagine. Well imagined, because his diet wouldn't have been very good. He would have been a jiggler. That was from a collection of tales by the Reverend

Ingoldsby, which was a pseudonym for a bored man. Very few busy people have time to come up with a pseudonym, in my experience. A pseudonym is very much the slacker's nom de plume, isn't it? You haven't necessarily written anything,

you've just adopted a pseudonym. It was that guy that wrote Patty Morgan, The Milkmaid Story. Look at the clock. Of course, look at the clock. Of course, look at the clock. Of course, look at the clock. Is that the same collection that had the cannonball head, sort of Lego head swap?

Hamden Pie. Yeah, Hamden Pie, yeah. Oh, yeah, I think it did have a legend of Hamden Pie, yes. I think that was the Inglesby story. These are all crackers. This is the one that opens up the piece, the nurse's story, The Hand of Glory, and it's a blooming poem.

Sounds like an Oasis lyric. This poem is sub-Oasis level at points. And that is saying something. I'm not a fan of poems. And this one, right, this is the opening couplet of this poem. On the lone bleak moor at the midnight hour. That doesn't rhyme. Moor and hour.

You've got to say it in a Ge a geordie inflection on the on the lawn bleak moor it's not he's not a geordie he's from kent the lawn bleak moor and the midnight oar on the lawn bleak moor at the midnight oar what you're going to do is change accent between the first and second sentence it's just for each word for each word yes beneath the gallows tree hand in hand the murderers stand. That's a bit. And then by one, by two, by three. So I think there's three murderers standing hand in hand. So one murderer is both... Are they going to swing him up or something?

Are they going to do a one, two, three, swing? It's like the standoff in Reservoir Dogs, but with hand-holding instead of guns. But holding hands. Yeah, it's nicer. And so they're at the gallows, and this story is basically covers the whole acquiring of the hand of glory and the use of the hand of glory i mean before i go into it

do you want to do you want to tell your tale of um certainly you've got one from up your end haven't you yes there is a story of the hand of glory that takes place well interestingly it may or may not be county durham i think it is on the cusp of County Durham and Yorkshire. This story centres around High Spittle, also known as Old Spittle, the Old Spittle Inn. The kindly folk in that inn took in a beggar. However, he was no beggar, James. He was, in fact, a thief disguised as a beggar.

Sorry, I thought you were going to be more surprised. No. I was expecting more of a sort of shocked reaction from you there. Well, this was from when it was Yorkshire days, wasn't it? It doesn't surprise you at all that there were thieves going around. But he wasn't an ordinary thief because he had the hand of glory with him and he used it in the manner you described to put the entire household to sleep so he could go about his business once he was in.

However, the cook of the inn was a naturally suspicious woman. I would posit she was from the Durham side of the border and had a sort of a keen and canny intellect about her. What she did was she only pretended to fall asleep and as a consequence did not fall under the spell of the hand of glory and was able to rouse and alert the rest of the household to the burglar's nefarious doings. So she just sort of closed her...

She just closed her eyes. She just did the classic old, I'm asleep. She was illegally blind. I suppose in a technical sense, yes, she was illegally blind. James, are you ready to hear friend of the show, Chris Cantrell, speak and tell you how to make a hand of glory? Yes, I am, please. Yes I am please. Cook along at home.

Cut the hand from a criminal hanging in chains on a gibbet by night. Keep it for 13 days in complete darkness in a strong salt pickle mingled with the urine of man, woman, dog, stallion and mare. Because we're getting

older than that. Turn it over every night, take it out and dry it in the sunlight for three days. Then bend the fingers round a stick, so that a candle thrust between them will be tightly gripped and hang the hand on a wire. A good way

up inside your chimney, where it must stay for a month. During this time, burn no coal on your fire only wood. On each of the first 13 nights of the month throw a bundle of moist herbs and mown grass onto the fire to give off a goodly steam and fume. The herbs include sage, rue, green larch, ash, oak, include sage, rue, green larch, ash, oak, ragwort, nightshade, coltsfoot and, of course, field yarrow. By the end of the month, the hand should be hard and brown, ready to be claimed. Great care is needed in the claiming, otherwise it all fails. Drive a nail into some ancient oak and hang the hand there three times overnight. For another three nights lay it at the midnight late. Take bloody two. For another three nights

lay it at midnight at the centre of a crossroads and leave it there for one hour. If neither man nor beast has moved it from its place on the tree and on the road, you can proceed to the third right, which is to hang it over the keyhole of a church door and keep watch beside it in the porch all night till cock-crow. And if it be that no fear hath driven you far from the porch, then the hand be true one and it be yours. To make a supply of candles take three pounds of tallow from three types of animal but not sheep or pig and mix

with a few drops of a man's blood and a pea-sized lump of fat from the body of either a man or a woman. The wick must include a few strands from a hangman's rope and only milk or blood can quench it and break the magic sleep it has caused what do you make of that then james yeah so that's how you do it basically simple and so yeah there's two seem to be two main versions of hands of glory one one sort of has candles on each finger that burn and then another one that kind of looks like a swear the star-shaped hand with the candles coming out of the tips of the fingers that's quite familiar to me because i just watched the folk horror film the wicker man again oh yes and of course there's a hand of glory

in the wicker man is there not in the wicker man itself but in the film yes i didn't know about it when i watched it me neither i i just thought that's an unattractive candle why would you have that but he um the the main character finds first of all the dead body of an old woman with a hand removed and then later on is almost put to sleep with a hand candle handle i think actually the that the fingers are themselves candles and there's a flame at the tip of each finger in that film. It's very creepy. That's how some people do it. That's how the witch in The Nurse's Story, The Hand of Glory does it.

Oh, yeah? I managed to work out from the horrible rhyme scheme. Listen. Listen to this for a bit of poetry. This is the description of the witch. Her nose it is hooked, her back it is crooked, her eyes blear and red. On the top of her head is a much,

and on that, a shocking bad hat. A shocking bad hat? I love a shocking bad hat. He's just chucking in catchphrases of the time. Yeah. That's a shocking bad hat. Shocking bad hat. And so she took four hairs that they'd also plucked from the

hung gibbeted man and used them to make the wicks with a little bit of fat from her cat. Oh, a little bit of cat fat. You need a pea-sized amount of fat from a person, or in this case a cat. Now, is it possible to get fat out of a person or a cat without rendering them dead? Or are we throwing away an awful lot of fat excellent rendering pun totally unintentional as you could tell i don't know i think nowadays in the age of antibiotics yes you could but i think back then you're it's very difficult to nip out yeah i mean you could just lipo suck some out homemade lipo suck with a biro again not advised so basically

they go into the house that they're going to rob and they use the hand of glory as sort of like a jedi mind trick to open the door shazam the door unbolts all opens and they light all the the candles on the fingers and apparently in one version of this story one of the fingers wouldn't light and that's because someone was still awake. Oh, okay. They went on with the heist anyway. All right, yeah. Everyone who was asleep stayed asleep, but there was the old miser who lived there

was counting his money and he was awake, so he didn't fall asleep. Miser. Forever counting their money. Flipping misers. What are you doing in there, you old miser? You're either counting it Or swimming in it

I hate a miser There was a little boy called Hugh Who was peeking through a cupboard door At the miser Like a miser peep show Do people pay the miser to look at him It's a good way of earning money if you're a miser Because you're going to be doing it anyway

And then they come in The burglarsars the murderers well soon to be murderers whoa whoa whoa oh you really really spoiled the twister i think they called murderers in the first line three murderers holding hands no you are right it was set up from the beginning anyway he cuts his head off and the poor boy i think because he's got one eye closed and one eye open he's sort of in the thrall of the Hand of Glory. And he can't open that eye and he can't shut that eye. So he has to watch the murder in the old miser. But he's frozen because he's half illegally blind, I guess.

So I'm not sure how useful this Hand of Glory is that if you are asleep, it makes you asleep. But if you are awake, it makes you unable to close your eyes. That isn't ideal in a burglary situation is it yeah this is one of the bits of the poem that is actually quite good but fancy pork you aghast at the view powerless alike to speak or to do in vain he doth try to open the eye that is shut or close that which is clapped to the chink though he'd give all the world to be able to wink no for that this world can give or refuse, I would not be now in this little boy's shoes,

or indeed any garment at all that is Hugh's. He undermines his... He builds attention there and then very much undermines it, I think. That's an actual line. You didn't write that bit at the end. Any garment at all that is Hugh's. Nope. That's ridiculous.

It seems like he just called Hugh so it could rhyme with shoe. So they get away, but then basically they go to a pub and have a carousing drink up. Oh yeah, yeah, I should imagine. The little boy goes and gets the local law folk. So they got caught. They end up hanging.

There's a black gibbet frowns upon tapping to moor where a former black gibbet has frowned before. It is as black as black may be and murderers there are dangling in air by one, by two, by three. And you say he didn't publish under his own name, this poet. There's a symmetry because it's the gibbet, I guess

it's meant to imply it's the gibbet they were looking at at the beginning where they stole the hand. I guess. Oh, yeah, so it all links. It all comes back together. You remember the witch? they stole the hand i guess oh yeah so it all ah it all links it all comes back together you remember the witch i remember the witch yeah they do the usual witch tests they pop her in the water and she can swim so she must be a witch and then before they get the chance to do anything to her when a queer looking horseman dressed all in black snatches up that old harridan just like a sack

to the crupper behind him, puts spurs to his back, makes a dash through the crowd and is off in a crack. No one can tell, though they can guess pretty well, which way that grim rider and the old woman go, for all see he's a sort of infernal duck crow. And she screamed and cried when they fairly decided that the old woman did not much relish her ride. So I guess that's the devil. Yeah, yeah.

Come take her to hell. I think she's going to hell, yeah. And Duckrow. Yeah, what is that? He's the father of horse gymnastics. That is gymnastics on a horse. Oh, not a horse doing gymnastics itself. They can't do the Y shape at the end, can they? They can't do much.

He had a show in London in Covent Garden, and some people call him the original Chippendales, because him and his sons would ride around on horses in flesh stockings, fleshings, so they would appear naked, pulling poses on the backs of these horses, and the people would go and watch them do that, and they're referred as the original chippendales which led me to look up the chippendales you know wikipedia has like a

little sort of fact box my favorite bit is chippendales purpose erotic oh yeah what's the purpose of the chippendales erotic what's the purpose of this visit chippendales. Erotic. What's the purpose of this visit, Chippendales? Oh, the purpose is erotic. Did you pack this very small suitcase containing seemingly not enough clothes for all of you yourself?

Yes, we did. Just one case for the lot of you. How are you managing that? That made me laugh a lot. And there's a moral. Oh. There's a blooming moral.

Yeah. And it's in rhyme. I promise this is the last bit of poetry I'll read today. This truest of stories confirms beyond doubt that truest of stories confirms beyond doubt that truest of adages, murder well out,

in vain may the blood spiller double and fly, in vain even witchcraft and sorcery try. Although for a time he may scape by and by, he'll be sure to be caught by a hue and a cry. It's not great poetry, is it? Yeah, and not a great joke. No, no, I don't think so. We've found two stories of Hands of Glory. Are there

any stories of Hands of Glory actually working and actually making everyone go to sleep? Because so far it sounds an awful lot like cutting a hand off someone and then almost immediately being arrested. Yeah, I think that's how it works.

A cynical person might say that they don't work at all. Do you want to score me then? I think I'm ready to score you. Thank you very much, James. Yes. Okay, then. Naming. The category of naming.

Well, Hand of Glory is great. It sounds a bit rude. Le Petit Albert. It's disgusting. Le Petit Albert. Little Albert. Where? The Spittle Inn.

Sounds disgusting. Hugh. Little Albert. Where? The Spittle Inn. Sounds disgusting. Mm. Hugh. Little Hugh. Little Hugh. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. That is kind of it. Those are all the names.

OK, let's ask the hand. I think you are looking at... How many candles? I think you're looking at three. OK. Three candles. Supernatural. Oh, very.

What's natural about chopping a hand off a criminal? Nothing. If you're not going to use it for some sort of joke. It ain't natural. It absolutely ain't natural to chop a hand off, nor to cast a hole in under a mystical sleep, and to be carried off to hell by the devil himself upon a horse. That's fairly supernatural.

It's got the power to make sleeping people sleep yeah and awake people go about the business and people with one eye closed get frozen for some reason yeah anybody who is winking anybody who's trying to indicate either that they are attracted to someone in a creepy way or that they and the other person share a secret, innocently winking, as I'm demonstrating now. Classic criminal activity. Yeah, a wink, absolutely, yeah. If you've got a final pitch to make, make it now, before I render my judgement like a single pea-sized bit of fat out of a man.

I haven't got anything more. You've got nothing more in the tank. I think it's a four. That's pretty good, that's pretty good. You happy with that? Yep. And third cat then yep i heard you nearly go into final category there so very professional to catch yourself yeah

well the thing is remembering to do that is not the memory of what the actual category is out of my head oh what a shocking bad rhyme scheme shot Shock and bad rhymes. Shock and bad rhymes. There were some... Shock and bad rhymes. Shocking poetry. Some of the worst poems I've ever heard. And it wasn't even read aloud by Chris Cantrell. So I can only imagine the horror.

It had nothing to it. It was just the deep bass baritone of James Shakespeare delivering that. So really, you added everything you could to that. Thank you. And it still came out awful. So I don't want to talk myself out of points here but would it be worse if it didn't rhyme well actually the more and the hour one didn't really rhyme but it was meant to rhyme it wasn't it was meant to rhyme and then the rest of it sort of rhymed too much because he was almost rhyming hue with hue i haven't disliked poetry this much since being compelled

to read Simon Armitage at GCSE. I'm not a Simon Armitage fan. Don't like it. Especially his GCSE stuff. I may not have bummed across America with only a dollar to spare, a pair of busted Levi's and a Bowie knife, but I have cradled a laughing child. Well, that sounds boring. That sounds much more rubbish

than having a knife and being in America. Imagine that, though. You're trapped. Your hands are bound with twine. Someone opens the boot of the car. You gasp cold air. It's Simon Armitage.

And you say, can you cut my bongs? And he says, no, I don't have a knife, but I have cradled a laughing child. Oh, Simon Armitage. I don't need that. Look at I have cradled a laughing child. Oh, son of Armitage. I don't need that. Look at my baby.

Look at the baby. That is not helpful in this scenario. It's A, boring, and B, unhelpful. I'm trying to move it away from Armitage. I did a little bit of... Just looked into Swiss Army knives today just because it reminded me of a Swiss Army knife. So I just looked at all the different things you can have on a Swiss Army knife. And I it reminded me of a swiss army knife so i just looked at all

the different things you can have on a swiss army knife and i saw a picture of a swiss army knife that was a foot wide that's not useful is it that's not practical it's impractical but it was impressive is it used by like a whole phalanx of men like it's the swiss army's pen knife for the whole one for the entire army anyway anyway how many points do I get for a shocking bad rhyme? Shocking bad rhymes. James, I must say, I'm alive. Thank goodness. And so I give on to you some fives.

Brilliant. Excellent. It didn't really rhyme, but... That's exactly in character. Five out of five. That's more like it. That's the sort of rhyme he's doing, five out of five. Rhyming five with five.

Final category, precious bodily fluids. Another classy film reference there to Dr. Strangelove. Thank you very much. I drink a lot of water. I'm what you might call a water man, which is why we have to add a little bit into the middle of the live stream where Chris Cantrell talks so I can go and have a wee. I don't know if Chris knows that that's the reason he was brought in to this episode.

Toilet cover. Anyway, well, there's Old Spittle, for once. The name of the inn, even the name of the inn is quite bodily fluidy. Yeah, Old Spittle. Nothing worse than Old Spittle. Oh, yeah, I'll at least make it fresh. Come on. Man urine, woman urine.

Basically every... Dog urine. Every flavour of urine. Man horse urine, woman horse urine woman urine basically every dog urine every flavor of urine man horse urine woman horse urine yeah lady horse urine mare and stallion not i don't mean centaurs uh where would the we come out on a centaur no one's even clear on yeah because their sort of torso comes there and then they've got four legs so it would be natural you'd need one of those you know those adapters that have two nozzles that you put onto the taps to turn it into a shower in order to bring the two streams together to cross the streams if you will and produce a single jet of centaur or a double decker urinals that's a lot of we i think they just go anywhere who's gonna tell them

who's gonna tell them there is fats kind of a liquid yeah there was milk i have to apologize here i missed out a bit of the story because the cook in old spittle i don't know if she'd heard chris canterall's reading of of how you make it but it can only be put out with blood or milk and she tipped a bit of milk over the candle to put it out and that was how she was able to save the household i'm sorry sorry. I didn't set that up properly. Specifically skimmed milk. Skim? Oh, really?

It has to be skimmed milk? Yeah. So, blood, milk, urine, spittle. Terrible Red Hot Chili Peppers album. Disgusting Red Hot Chili Peppers album. Yeah, it's a solid five out of five. It's five disgusting bodily fluids out of five. Thank you very much.

I think I've earned it. You really have. You've worked really hard. On my own struggles with my precious bodily fluids. I mean, yes, you've been presumably clenching for the entire recording. So that is... No. And that's the problem.

Should we thank Chris? Thank you very much to the Delightful Sausages, Chris Cantrell. If you haven't listened to their Radio 2 special, it's really good. And I say that with an unintentional note of surprise in my voice. And their podcast, which is... Their podcast, Tiredness Kills. It's the reverse hand of glory. Yeah, exactly.

They've got a podcast that keeps you awake. We've got a podcast that puts you to sleep. It's the perfect up-or-down-er situation. And thank you to James for surviving. Soldiering on. Little medal for James. Little brown star. James, I'm going to ask the question that is on everybody's lips.

Mm-hmm. Everybody's brain lips. Mm-hmm. How's your bomb? Are you still not better? Yeah, I'd say I've moved up to type 5. On the Bristol stool chart? Mm, the BSC.

Oh, is that your qualification? Now I understand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got a level 7 BSC. That puts a lot of things into context for me Well, if you would I don't think, can you go to Patreon from that? I just don't know Can't go further than

a 15 minute radius of my own house If you'd like to support this disgusting folklore podcast, you can. Go to patreon.com forward slash lawmenpod. Don't look for lawmen pood. Not a thing. Don't set it up either as some sort of joke.