Loremen Podcast - S5 Ep4: Loremen S5Ep4 - Stonehenge with Amy Jeffs

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

Artist, author and excellent podcast guest Amy Jeffs guides the Lorebois through the lesser known mythic origins of STONEHENGE! We meet a load of giants having an Irish spa day. We encounter the treacherous (and definitively real) King Vortigern. And we attempt to turn "Wallace and Grommitting" into a verb. Don't forget to join... us... at the Cheerful Earful Podcast Festival - 31st October https://www.designmynight.com/london/pubs/balham/the-bedford/cheerful-earful-podcast-festival-day-1 Featured image by Amy Jeffs, from Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain, 2021. LoreBoys nether say die! Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 @loremenpod youtube.com/loremenpodcast www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod

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 alistair it's another guest deputy law person is it a deputy guest law guest person day yes one combination of all those words. It's Amy Jeffs. Amy Jeffs. An actual author. Sorry, an actual another author. Yeah, sorry, thank you, James. A proper author just like me. An actual serious author.

She does her own drawings. They're not drawings. That's good. So please enjoy the tale of Stonehenge. I will. Yeah, the big one. I will enjoy it, actually. So please enjoy the tale of Stonehenge. I will. Yeah, the big one.

I will enjoy it, actually. It's the big guy. I did enjoy it when we recorded it. That's a good point. I'm going to enjoy it again. Hey, Alistair. Hello there, little James. Actually, this is standard-sized James. Oh, I'm sorry.

That's embarrassing for me. Who is the middle one that we don't usually hear from? We normally hear from big James. James XL. Occasionally from little James, but regular James. The mini system. Welcome for the first time to the podcast. Welcome, regular James.

Thanks very much. I'm just killing time till the big James gets here. Yeah, I do feel like he makes a lot of the decisions. Hello. Yes, it's me after all. I can't believe we didn't hear the sound of his boots approaching, as we normally do. That's weird.

Well, Alistair, not only have I got the Russian doll versions of me that live inside me, we've got a guest. Have we? Yeah. Did that sound like convincing surprise that was very good thank you alistair we've got the author amy jeffs here how's it going amy how are you doing yeah i'm doing good this is very exciting to be on here with you um for those who can't see alistair's face he looks like an apostle this evening oh they know okay it's a

common look for me there's something about the here. I just come out looking like a ghost in a painting. Radiant. No, lovely. And gold on your headphones that we think looks like the God's variations in a kind of Cimabue painting from sort of 13th century Italy. I would say those references illustrate you as definitely having something of an art historian about you, Amy. Is that true?

Would that be inaccurate? That's one of the latest courses I studied I'm more of a I got really into the middle ages desperately lost in the middle ages and jumped across to art history from a course that was when I was doing my BA much more about medieval languages and literature but I really wanted to study manuscripts and manuscript illumination so I jumped across to art history and did one course on uh medieval italian arts and that was pretty much all i remember just um just the way to describe my face is basically all they teach on that course yeah it's an incredible waste of money sorry no it's wonderful that was just one slide alistair are you a set text are you required reading i think i might be i think i'm canon i think um you're called a gobbet actually really a gobbet oh that sounds like some spit that's horrible that's a disgusting

sound and word i know i don't know what the etymology is and it's always troubled me but when you do an exam when you do a history paper and they have a picture of something like a page from an original manuscript that you have to analyze that's called a gobbit i think it is i don't think i dreamt that might have done it was such a horrible word it reflects poorly on you if that is a dream if you you brought that into the world that's disgusting i shouldn. I shouldn't be allowed to write. And you do. You forgot a book. Oh, thank you. I'm sorry.

I have written two books myself. It's quite serious. Alice, she does pictures too. What? Yeah. That is way more impressive. They're technically images, but I think pictures. Is that right?

I think the correct word is drawings. No, no, that they're not they're not drawings they're lino cuts yeah I was marvelling at them I didn't realise that you made those as well they're fantastic um thank you that was how it started actually it started with pictures I didn't know there was going to be a book but I um I just wanted to illustrate Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. So I started doing the Mislino cuts and found a teacher and fell in love with his work. And that was it. And then it got really out of hand, produced lots and lots of pictures

and ended up taking them to publishing houses as an idea for a book. And then they made you write the whole of the rest of the book? It was like drawing the dots with pictures. Did the captions just get out of hand yeah that's it i'm really bad like you know one-liners my instagram is a you know disgrace it's all hashtags yeah 5 000 were captions if i unless i've been given a real bum steer by the internet it's called storyland a new mythology of Britain, right? That is 100% correct.

It is. I'm holding it up for our camera. The listeners can hear the sound of James holding a book there, if you can imagine that. I know there's a word for this page. The inner cover is a map. Oh, that's gorgeous. Did you do this map as well?

I did, yeah. And actually, my husband appears in it several times. He's the bedraggled sort it several times he's the he's the the bedraggled uh sort of monster coming out of the sea in the bottom left is that his actual skull um yeah yeah he peeled off the skin and flesh of his head just to model for me and the also the figure of wayland um carving carving the skull into a bowl that was modeled by by will and he's wearing a mask as a little tribute to the whole um fact i don't know mask time james sent me a sample of the book i haven't read the whole thing yet and i apologize for that but i read your account of uh the cordelia

slash king lear myth famous for oh bill Billy Shakes writing up his version of it. And what struck me about it is, so you retell the story and then you sort of comment on the story. And like, we read a lot of folklore by serious, boring 18th century folklorists. Also, there's a lot of- The best kind. Yeah, I love that. And they've all got names like E-c-l-m johnson

and there's a lot of um stories for public consumption where they've taken a folk tale and sort of rewritten it as a fairy tale with characters and maybe internal motivations and all the things that aren't there in the original folk tale um and what you've done is quite different it feels like it reminded me of the short stories of Leonora Carrington. Now, they're not surreal in the way that her stories are meandering and surreal, but in the focus on the oddness and texture of the weird encounters that happen in the story. There's a description of Cordelia seeing a dead animal's

carcass being hung up and it's very effective and it put me in mind of leonora carrington now whether that's a compliment or relevant or not i don't know but i liked it that was a lovely an interesting bit of feedback i think that um as an art historian i and as i'm also i don't know i've just my background's very um much in in the thinginess of things um in as a you know if you are not a historian that studies the middle ages you study a lot of the material is really really important things were built to last forever things are made of gold and enamel and parchment and wood and um one of the great pleasures i think of working with those kinds of objects um like walrus ivory or something like that that you you become very attuned to the the feeling and uh smell of those materials and i came to the to the literary side of it all to write story land

but actually much more being much more comfortable with the material so i think when i was trying to um rework those those stories for a modern readership i was interested i just i liked the idea of dwelling a bit on the kind of materials that would have been in those worlds um whether it's the kind of fur of a um or pelt of a stag is pelt be the right word for a stag i'm not sure um it's definitely not jacket the stag jacket the thing is that annoys me about modern history documentaries and probably this is because i don't watch enough of them but um quite often the reconstructions aren't anything like as materially gorgeous as that era was. I mean, it'd be really hard to reproduce or reconstruct without a massive budget. But it's those times when there was nothing plastic, there was nothing virtual.

those times when there was nothing plastic, there was nothing virtual. And in the courts, which as many of these stories are set, in which they are set, there's just such substantial things. And so I really enjoyed that aspect of the storytelling. That's such a way of- It's a wonderful answer.

You might be the first guest we've had on who has smelled a walrus's ivory, I think. I don't think anybody has dropped walrus ivory smell. What's the oldest thing you've picked up? Probably most rocks. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. We forgot about...

Once again, we forgot about rocks. Silly old rocks. Sorry, that was such a silly answer. No, I... What's the oldest thing I've picked up? As in, like, something that someone made at a point? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was being a nod.

No, it was a fair point that was great it was correct gosh that's a really difficult question I'm thinking about manuscripts I've definitely held some like 9th century I remember I remember um cataloging a manuscript at the British Museum Library British Library easily done that was 9th century with, and the text had got so faded by the 12th century that someone had come in and done a conservation job on it in the 12th century. And we were now conserving it in the 21st century. And to think, to look at the 12th century text that had been rewritten in and to think when

that 12th century stuff was done it was already several hundred years old it was like whoa it was like looking through that my jolly postman um concertina whatever you remember those where you look through the layers yeah yeah and just think oh my gosh time is a continuum this is bonkers i think the 12th century person must have been like, this is old as hell. This is so old. But it's even older than that now. So they look like a fool.

What do they know? Dead idiot. Didiot. So, Amy, but what have you come here today to tell us what tale have you brought well i wanted to talk about stonehenge because i live in somerset and um quite close to stonehenge and i love one of the things i love about about myth well the stuff the stories that i worked with weren't myth once they're deemed myth now but they were history or spoken of as history even though the kind of what history was a slightly different thing back then so in the middle ages it was believed that the stones that would become stonehenge had come from africa remotest africa This is what Geoffrey of Monmouth writes

in the mid 12th century or the first quarter of the 12th century. And he says they were quarried by giants who brought them to Ireland. Yeah, this all checks out so far. They're really, really big. And as they carried them from Africa to Ireland, presumably doing a bit of wading at some point.

Yeah, I was going to say, did doing a bit of wading at some point. Yeah, I was going to say, did they have a ferry? Did they have a giant's ferry? Or would they, yeah, they would have had to... I think they used to just cause way as they went in those days. Yeah, they did. And they'd take it up behind them and then lay it in front of them, like the wrong trousers. Yes, go grommets, exactly, yeah.

Not Wallace and Grommet. Like massive grommets. If I were a giant in Africa planning to get the stones to Salisbury, I would plan a little stop off in Ireland to have a rest. Well, they have a really long rest. This is ages ago. You'd be flipping tired, to be fair. The giants take these stones to Ireland

and erect them in a circle on the top of a mountain called Killer House which doesn't exist. Don't look for it Alistair. I'm not going to look for it. And it says in the text that when the rain falls on these stones it washes into pools in the centre of the ring or carol

it's also called a dance and then the giants wash in the pools and are healed of any ailments and so these stones have some kind of healing virtue that is carried on the rainwater into the pools and that's where they stay for hundreds of years if not thousands and where i want to get to to get them to stonehenge is the reign of aurelius ambrosius actually step back to a reign the reign of king vortigern the ultimate baddie king in medieval myths about Britain. Vortigern as well.

That was a good baddie name. This guy, no way he wasn't actually green in colour. He was green. He was some kind of goblin man. I can just tell. Basically, his fingers were glued together in an arch as well. Yeah. To the base of his nose.

He usurped the throne. together in an arch as well. Yeah. To the base of his nose. Yeah. He usurps the throne. He's not meant speaking. By various wily dealings, he gets himself onto the throne. He has to put the crown on his own head because no bishops will do it. Vortigern? Yeah.

Vortigern again? The vortigern should be like a really grim facial expression. It's the face of, oh, can't believe I have to crown myself. Yeah, exactly. The vortigern. And everyone in the kingdom was vortigerning. Gosh, I keep losing my thread.

So vortigern, anyway, he's a usurper king. He's a proper baddie. He sort of accidentally on purpose lets the Saxons in because he's annoyed the Picts and is worried he's going to be attacked by them. He's also, because he's usurped the throne, driven the two rightful heirs of Britain who were children at the time to Brittany,

but knows at some point they're going to grow up and come back. And their names are Aurelius and Uther. You might recognise a second name. Or possibly a first name depending how into that stuff you are probably quite into it given the audience but don't really like these kind of stories myself not interested just never really enjoyed them i prefer social realism wait a minute wait a minute is he the pen dragon is he the pen dragon guy yeah he's a dragon made of pens james yeah he's a dragon made of pens yeah he is as like a meat dragon is a dragon made of meat a pen dragon is a dragon made of pens

this is basic stuff yeah anyway anyway sorry we are sorry what happened there was we recognized the name uther and started talking about excited we know he's not even really a dragon he's not even a pen he's not even an ooth is that too silly don't too far i feel like i'm turning into my dad that's just the kind of thing he'd say anyway so ooth the pen dragon uh is one of the is a small child at the time he goes off to brittany vortigaunt's on the throne he's getting worried because the picks are angry with him he knows that ooth and aurelius are going to grow up and come and reclaim the throne and these two saxons called hengist and Horsa have turned up. They're asking for some land because they're overpopulating Scandinavia or something. And he grants them land in exchange for protection.

But Hengist and Horsa, these Germanic brothers, are much more ambitious than he realises. There's this very odd story where Hengist asks for as much land as he can cover with a cow's hide. And so Vortigern gives him a cow's hide and then he cuts it into a really long thong and uses it to encircle a big hill. And that becomes Thongcaster, which then becomes Doncaster. Oh, wow. Thongcaster. It's from the thong.

Yeah. Oh, Thongcaster. It's from the thong. Yeah. I did not realise how involved thongs were in the naming of Doncaster. I'm just absolutely stunned by that. Has anybody ever not tricked someone with this, as much land as you can encircle in whatever,

by whatever encircling means you choose, the person doing the encircling always wins. They never go like, I only encircled about three feet. It's always loads. Yeah, so it turned out to be a really brittle material that you gave me. Like, how much can I encircle with? Crisps. Take this walker's crisp. Yeah, they'd find a way.

They would. They'd say, look, it's one of those little bubbles. Everything I can see through this crisp yes the thin ones they poke through the bubble yeah you get the folded over ones they'd get it oh you didn't count on it being crinkled cut did you the entire kingdom's mine it doesn't make any sense they have a really big surface area don't they because they're crinkled cut yeah yeah exactly he just kept unfurling his mccoys maybe if you soaked it and got it to lie flat you'd get like two millimeters more land well the weird thing is i think this was i noticed this when camping with you james at glastonbury

um if you leave crisps out overnight in the the morning dew they just turn back into slices of potato it's very weird which aren't brittle which you could cut into a narrow strip yeah so you could do it yeah that's why i now the land of glastonbury now belongs to me made a big mistake that farmer um so vortiga now wants the saxons to make peace with the british nobles he wants to have a little bit more of a handle on his court which he's losing uh grip of he's married henga's daughter and she's turned out to be a wrong and as well so it's all going looking really bad so he invites them all to a feast he makes the saxons sit with the britons alternately like a primary school teacher with an unruly class going boy, girl, boy, girl. Yeah, so the Britons are the goodies and the Saxons are the baddies.

The future English are the baddies, believe it or not. So then Hengist shouts out, which means grab your daggers. And all of the English, the Saxons, pull out these daggers and stab the British nobles in the bellies and the bowels. And it's called the treachery at the feast. Not the bowels.

I know. And they were rewarded with as large an area as they could encircle with the bowels of a Pict. But then they tied all the bowels together. Actually, your bowels have gone a long way. And now they've got the whole place. Well, pretty much, yeah. That is kind of how it panned out.

So maybe that's what they did. There's this huge treachery. Vortigern flees to Wales. You've got all of these British nobles are dead. Anyway, I'm going to fast forward a bit because there's a lot more story happens in between, including Vortigern discovering the child Merlin because he needs some help with the crumbling tower.

So the child Merlin sort of shuffles into the into the onto the stage at this point i can't believe we're fast forwarding through child merlin but okay okay sorry sorry we just need to get to stonehenge so basically then vortiga child merlin he's coming back he's really coming back aurelius and uther grow up aurelius is the eldest he comes along um to defeat vortigern who is still hiding in wales and finds him and burns him to death in his tower and gets the throne so now we have the rightful king back on the throne and he wants to build a monument to the massacred british nobles that will stand forever but none of his carpenters or stonemasons or anyone can think of uh of anything fitting for so great a loss eventually one of the bishops says well why

don't you find that child merlin who helped vortiga with his crumbling tower he was pretty prophetic and weird and kind of truth-telling why don't you find him do you remember that emo kid who used to be hanging around here yeah he's just new weird things get him it's really that moody teen exactly so they say uh somebody told me he's at he's at the springs of gallabies which i have not worked out where that is the springs uh it's probably it sounds like a pub that's changed its name yeah it'll be one of those hip places that a cool teen would hang out at and we don't we don't know it yeah it's probably yeah or maybe it was just actual metal springs maybe we've misinterpreted it thinking it's probably yeah or maybe it was just actual metal springs

maybe we've misinterpreted it thinking it's going to be but maybe it's like an old mattress that somebody left in a hedge and merlin's sitting on it is also where you'd hang out as a teen quietly just on a big old sofa or a mattress yeah just follow the vapes then you will find young merlin yeah there he is in a cloud of blueberry muffin. So anyway, they find him, they bring him to Aurelius, whose full name, incidentally, is Aurelius Ambrosius. Sounds delicious. A shining one.

Yeah, lovely. It's interesting, a bit confusing, because in some of the earlier accounts, Merlin's called Ambrosius. So it's a bit sort of confused as to how these characters are linked and whether they were at some some point they were the same character um and merlin says well i know what you need you need you need this uh the giant's dance as it's called it's a sand on a on a mount killer house in ireland and it was carried there by giants from Africa. It's super heavy and glorious.

If you can bring it over and put it at the site of the feast, which happens to be Amesbury, the Salisbury Plains, then it will stand as a monument to the massacred British nobles forever. Well, initially everyone laughs at Merlin, which happens quite a lot in the stories about, the early stories about Merlin. He suggests something and everyone laughs at him. That's not going to calm him down.

Either straight away or several decades later it turns out he was right does he have the last laugh yeah and then they're laughing on the other side of their faces so anyway he goes off to ireland with aurelius ambrosius's men they go up mount kiloros the men try to lift the stones they can't the giant stones what are they doing and then Merlin's like and they're like what and he's like well maybe brute strength isn't everything

to get some crisps out would do isn't it if I can look at them through some crisps then I can carry them to Salisbury I like

weedy little Merlin but I guess being good at lifting things isn't always the answer gentlemen vape vape vape, vape, vape. Maybe knowing about anime is also a talent. Yeah.

Have you thought about that? So he shook his fringe at them. And the stones rose magically into the air. I have to say, I'm usually, I'm going to do one of those things where I say something left wing. So skip ahead, Americans. I'm usually resistant to conservative attempts to construct a sort of narrative of Britain as one long, continuous and glorious thing. But I have to say, wanting a monument and deciding to just go overseas and steal one, classic Britain.

Yeah, I know. What a British move. The Irish king gets really cross and you'll see how that pans out. That's just weird because they're normally so friendly when we arrive. Although I think one of the interesting things here is that we're talking about the future Welsh.

So Aurelius and Uther. So I think what you're describing describing just take it on a maybe on like be a bit play devil's advocate is a legacy of predominantly english dominance yeah um and this is a this is a welsh story that was appropriated by the norman kings and became part of a kind of english um mythic tradition But it is actually kind of a Welsh story. They did go over and steal the monument and annoy the Irish king. I don't know whether we can co-opt it into a larger anti-imperialist narrative. Well, I'm sorry if this story doesn't naturally suit my preconceptions.

Sorry. Let's just end the podcast. There's no point. There's no point if this isn't reinforcing what I already thought. I did not come here to have new ideas. But one of the things I think myths do, and these myths, especially in Storyland, which are quite political

and they're about what land belongs to whom and why, they do they are designed to tell an audience a truth that they already believe yeah emo kids are great that stuff in your country belongs to us yeah exactly and that we you know that we're descended from trojans therefore we have the right to rule all of this whatever we can get in any horse we want yeah and so merlin does something he mutters something it might be praying it might not be and then suddenly the men can lift the stones and by some means they

end up being able to carry them to the salisbury plane it's like the four people under on the chair thing you know when you lift the chair thing up when you put the hands over the head like the feathers stiff as a board that's the one yes yeah he's done that right he is the cool kid at the party he just he just the crafts yeah yeah his way into them all lifting it yeah so and then it says and after that it just go to show that art would uh always succeed over brute strength but it didn't give a good uh how-to there was no kind of wiki how but anyway so then they these stones end up in on the solitary plains as a memorial to the massacred british nobles but the irish king is still really annoyed so he sends a

assassin and young beautiful aurelius ambrosius happens to be sick with fever at winchester and he's lying in bed and a doctor comes in to tend to him but it's not a doctor it's the assassin in disguise and he gives him a sleeping draught and um and it's actually poison and aurelius dies in his bed and uther sees a dragon in the sky with rays coming from its mouth that cover ireland and france and all sorts of other places and uh ascends to the throne and Merlin interprets the vision for him and explains to him that his descendants will rule across vast areas of land but many territories and thereafter Uther is known as Uther Pendragon the very final sentence of my story is that when he dies he gets buried at Stonehenge and then I have an epilogue which is

that I really like the idea of it's a bit like the 9th century book with the 12th century corrections I like the idea that when we look at Stonehenge we think of Neolithic people and solstice stuff and if we put medieval goggles on it's a tomb for Uther Pendragon, Aurelius Ambrosius, and a monument to British nobles born from Africa by giants. With all of these ancient monuments, there is many layers of stories which have, for a period of time, functioned as history with different perceptions of what is true and what is important. perceptions of what is true and what is important and that on the medieval a303 that is what you would have thought as you drove by you crawled by in your rubbernecking queue of wagons also if you look at stonehenge through a giant's eyes smaller it's a sweet hot tub yeah yeah that was a fantastic story thank you i had i had no i did not know that the stones of stonehenge came from africa you know it's not true right days yeah also i still don't know that

because it is a lie but what an interesting lie we could have called the podcast that really james just interesting lies interesting yes oh that's a good that yeah all right okay if we get if we do ever invent that time machine that's third on the list. So, Alistair, are you ready to score us? I would love to. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So then.

Right, Amy, I reckon we start strong. Go with naming. Go with naming. Naming. Naming. The category of names, you say? Yes, the category of namings. Well, it did involve a guy

I know called Uther Pendragon. Man with the pen of a dragon. That's impressive. And his brother Ambrosia... Aurelius Ambrosius. Custard. The man made mainly of custard.

There was about a million other amazing names. What was the name of the evil king, the original evil king? Original and best? Vortigern, yeah. Yeah, it's like an evil triangle or something. Being a useless king is considerably worse than being an evil king, I think, in medieval imagination.

There's no excuse for it. So, I mean, come on. They're all really good names. And it would be an attack on the Welsh, the English, the Saxons, the Picts, and the Irish, and Africa, for them to give anything less than a five. And giants. It's a five.

It's got to be a five for names. Those are all good names. Good start, good start. start okay right emmy go second let's go with supernatural it could be a bit sticky but let's try sticky supernatural just just supernatural okay well if that doesn't work then try sticky supernatural yeah we'll come back to that well i thought i thought this was genuine history. Whoa, I thought I was learning the actual history of how those stones got there. This is how he gets us.

But now you're telling me that it was actually magic. Well, I think it was, though. Merlin, young, teen Merlin, young Merlin, the prequel, getting the stones from Ireland to Salisbury, that didn't happen through natural means. There was no logs and boats and so forth. He just managed to... They didn't do it with logs like Gromit in The Wrong Trousers.

Obviously, the logical way, James, of doing it would be to gromit your way across like The Wrong Trousers. The Wrong Monoliths. Yeah. Like the wrong trousers. The wrong monoliths. Yeah. But they didn't do that. They didn't do that. They used magic. He just said, he just used his emo, his weird teen emo powers.

Yeah. He just breathed his vape breath on them. Popped on a bit of the old Smashing Pumpkins, or whatever it is the kids listen to these days. I imagine it's the same, but with a different name. And he's just got the job done with straight up magic. So that's pretty good. Was there any other magic?

Oh, there was a dragon. There was a dragon shooting sunlight out of its mouth. And there were giants, yeah. They were just simply giants. They were straightforwardly giants. I think it's a four but I'm knocking one point off some actual history

creeping in yeah where well I may have been wrong but I've rendered my verdict so it's too late to revise it now fair enough

I suppose okay alright then let's let's hit him with never underestimate an emo you with never underestimate an emo. You should never underestimate an emo. You don't know what a goth could be capable of.

This sounds like you're about to go into a musical number. I thought I was doing an important assembly for the school to be like, you know, they're people as well. So just talk to your friends. If you don't have friends, that's a shame because it's probably a bit too emo. So just, you know, cut your hair and cheer up. Sorry, I've forgotten what I was saying. Emos are very sensitive and lovely people.

Yeah, I'm broadly in favour of the emos and the goths and all Fizzy goths? Having grown up in the countryside it does feel like goth is more of an urban I was going to say, do you get rustic goths, James, out your way? Or do they just dress like scarecrows

and creepy Halloween pumpkins? You will occasionally see a rural goth but it does look out of place in a driving drizzle. On your night cameras, like a badger. It's scurrying to its set. A little bit like young Merlin.

Sorry, I briefly forgot what wizard we were talking about. He is the original rural goth. He's the original rural goth. It doesn't get more rural than that. Well, he comes from Carmarthen, doesn't he? I think it ought to be a high score, but I feel like I'm going to

give it a one, because it seems like it's more emo to give it a one. I feel like I'm giving it a one with a tattooed teardrop, which is the shape of a heart. And you should laugh as you say it, because that really gets his goat. Yeah yeah i think you are

gonna get some revenge well i'm i'm giving him something to mope about he should be thanking me never underestimate an emo i am i underestimate you i underestimate you merlin what are you gonna do i expect no comeuppance. We shall have to wait and see. Okay, then final category. Land grab. Yes. Sorry, I jumped in.

You're making a dramatic pause. I got excited. To be honest, it's the right thing to do for this category. Boom, land grab. Land grab. Yes. So I'm very impressed. I'm always impressed when people manage to get a hold of some land

by encircling it in an unexpected and humorous way. E.g. crisps. Ideally crisps. I don't know that there are that many stories that involve crisps, but it's an area that's underexplored. Not yet. Have you finished your new book? I have not.

You've finished your new book, A.B. Let's get some crisps in literature yeah i also in a way going and stealing seeing some nice stones in your irish neighbor's garden and going i'd like to have them for me yeah is that's kind of a land grab because a lot of a lot of land is made of stone essentially isn't it point and does does the giants taking the stones from Africa count as a land grab well how else are they going to pick them up and when they were doing the Wallace and Gromit style

causeway that would also have been them grabbing and depositing land so where's that mountain yeah mountain's completely gone I think it's another 5 out of 5 Where's that mountain? Yeah. That's the mountain, yeah. The mountain's completely gone. I think it's another five out of five.

Thank you very much. Oh, thank you so much, Alistair. That was good, because if he'd given us anything under, we'd have just taken a five. Just taken it, just taken it. Just taken it. Oh, that would have been better, actually. Too late now. Looked at it through a crisp and said it was ours.

Amy, thank you so much for coming on the podcast that's been a joy let's get those plugs back in what what is your book called what is your new upcoming book called my book is called storyland a new mythology of britain it's out in the us now uh and it's it's a collection of of stories running from before Noah's flood with the African giants all the way up to the Norman conquest. Retelling origin myths about Britain and where it came from that circulated in the Middle Ages with commentaries explaining how those myths came to shape the Britain we know today. And there's Wild Tales from Early Medieval Britain, which explores an old idea of the wilderness through early medieval stories. Thank you very much, Amy. And is illustrated with wood engravings.

Ooh. Hello. She's taking on wood. Steady. What's next, brick? Actually, paper. James, you've mistaken this for a Big Bad Wolf situation. Oh, I've confused books with the three little pigs again.

No, it's easily done and you did enjoy it again i did enjoy it again yeah i did enjoy it again well done simple tale of a load of rocks a load of welsh rocks that went on holiday and got lost because that's my idea about stonehenge you don't hear about rocks going on holiday that much. They're just tourists. You think the rocks are on holiday? Yeah. So, Alistair, if people wanted to see us do this live, is there an opportunity?

I think they should just give up. Or, alternatively, on the 31st of October 2023. 2023. A.K.A. Hallowsween. Come and see us in Ballam, South London, as part of the Cheerful Earful podcast festival. Oh, and check out our Patreon for a load of bonus episodes if you want.

Go on. Yeah. Do it. Of course, in those days, they wouldn't have been able to read A303. They wouldn't have any idea what it was actually called. No. They would be like, the A303? They'd be like, well, we don't know because we're medieval.

It's the olden days, they would say.