Loremen Podcast - Xmas Pig 2024 with Sunil Patel!

Episode Date: December 23, 2024

The Xmas Pig keeps on rolling! Returning deputy Sunil Patel joins us for a chat about the festive customs of Sweden and Germany. But beware, you'd better have your wits about you in the depths a Swedish winter, or a glowing hog might get you! Catch Sunil on rival podcast Rural Concerns and/or the Sky Original comedy Bad Tidings. https://open.spotify.com/show/1UE33s636jHPCIUDMe622P This episode was edited by Joseph Burrows - Audio Editor. 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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their heritage, learn about their ancestors, and make new family connections this holiday season. Visit Ancestry.ca to give them a gift that is truly unique. Terms apply. A Christmas Pig to you, Alistair. Christmas pig to you, James. Thank you very much. And Alistair, as it's Christmas pig season, we've got a Christmas pig deputy law person. There's a Christmas pig in the hole. Oh yeah, there's a Christmas pig in the hole.

Welcome Sunil. Thank you. Sunil Patel. Hi Sunil. Thank you for not really explaining what this is. Oh, this is like the third one to go out. I think we've done a gabbled explanation at the start of most of them. I can do it again.

No, I meant for me. Oh, Sunil, Law Men. It's a podcast about local legends. I know that, but do I also say a Christmas pig to you as well? Well, if you celebrate the Christmas pig season. What does that involve? Is it some sort of, is it like a cult or something? Or is it?

It's sort of a tradition that's becoming more like a cross to bear for me, because we would- Porky, like a cross made of two bits of bacon. A horrible porky cross. Right. That's what that pig would have wanted. Well, we did a live stream at Christmas. We ended up saying Christmas pig because the stories had more pig in them than we expected.

And that was four years ago. And now we're really running out of pig based folklore. Yeah. Now we're trapped in a Christmas theme of our own making. Yeah. We're trapped in a prison where the bars are made of bacon. Which is fine for me. Cause I could eat my way out, but Alistair as a confirmed vegan.

I won't I'm trapped inside the prison by my own ideology. I guess the real prison is the mind. Isn't it? Wow. Yeah. That's made of bacon. Is that made of bacon? Yeah, I guess it is.

Human. Yeah. You've got one of them chains around your legs that's linked to a big ball, Is that made of bacon? I guess it is. Human. Yeah. Yeah. You've got one of them chains around your legs that's linked to a big ball, but the chains are sausages and the big ball is, is a black pudding. Yeah. That works. Yeah.

Blood pudding for our American listeners. A much more disgusting name for the same thing. Do you have to keep up the sort of pork references throughout this recording? Is that what? Unfortunately, yes. Yeah, man. I feel good for you. I feel good for you.

You've managed to find a rich seam of pork based legends, haven't you? Yes. Yes, I have. I was about to, I thought we were going to introduce Sunil more. I was going to do like a Sunil Patel from the Rural Concerns podcast, but I thought I was going to sound quite natural, but you should just move on and forget about plugging. Well, I think the audience will recognise deputy law person Sunil Patel. Of course they will.

I've done this podcast before. From Bladderd and other vaguely piggy and Christmassy stories. Yes. And also from the podcast, Slime Country, the podcast, Rural Concerns, which has, you do with Chris Cantrell, also a deputy law person, which is produced exquisitely. And exclusively by James Shakespeare. Yes. Sorry, Alistair for poaching James. He has, yeah, he's enjoying it.

I think he's having a nice time. Although when I listened to the podcast, he sounds very unhappy. He is very unhappy on the podcast actually. Yeah, I'm oddly grumpy. If you guys haven't listened to it, it's pretty strong stuff. Is it edgier than our Light-Arsed Folklore podcast? Well, a little bit, because we speak truth to power on rural concerns. Do we?

Or does Chris just start fights with biker gangs? Yeah, that's power in a sense, isn't it? We speak truth to them. And the truth is, please don't fight us. The truth is, we're quite afraid of you. Oh, and a film. And a film. He's in a Christmas film. What? C a film. He's in a Christmas film.

What? Cinelli, you're in a Christmas film. Are you doing yet another one of your brilliant career moves that I don't know about until it's too late? No, I've got nothing in the works. No, I'm doing, I'm doing a little bit in a film called Bad Tidings, which is on Sky for Christmas, which is Lee Mack and Chris McCausland's film. I mean, I'm in it very little, but it is a very funny film. It's like, it's either, I watched it the other day. It's like sort of home alone, but with adults. Die Hard. That's Die Hard. Is it Die Hard? It's Die Hard. It's Die Hard, but in a suburban cul-de-sac.

I never realized that Die Hard and Home Alone were the same. Die Hard and Home Alone, if you watch it back to back, they are genuinely very similar, Die Hard and Home Alone. So maybe this is now the triptych. You've completed the triptych. Die hard, home alone, bad tidies. Yeah. Boom. Wow. That's my legacy done now.

Get down the Prince Charles. If that film gets watched every year by half the nation, that is my, that's, I'm done, I'm set, I can sail off into the sunset and do whatever I want. You'll never be able to go to a Tesco Espresso again. I can't now. Oh no. What do they shout at you? You're like, that's the guy from the nationwide advert.

Oh no. Shall we get on with some blooming pig stuff then? I've got a perfect link that you may have to do a bit of work with in the edit. Okay. Funny you should ask that, Sunil. Yes. That should cut in fine. Yeah, we'll pop that in at any point.

Sunil, you were wondering at some point so far in the episode why we say Christmas pig. Well, it might be we might be able to make up a fake folk etymology for Christmas pig. It might come from the German Weihnachtsschwein or Christmas pig, which refers to the pig that people would eat at Christmas. However, the pig is associated in Germany with luck. Glücksschwein means lucky pig. And to a German, you might say Schweinhaben, which means have pig. And what that means is good luck. You know, have good luck. So if you Schweingehabt, then you've had a stroke of unexpectedly good luck. Oh, right.

Schweinhaben is the opposite of Pechhaben, which is have pitch, or like tar, like pitch, that's the sticky black stuff. And that is bad luck, whereas a pig is good luck. And according to Christmas Ornament Legends, a book called Christmas Ornament Legends from the Merck family's Old World Christmas. This is where I found out about this. Aidan McCullen Is that just a collection of Christmas ornaments that are absolutely legendary?

Like that Father Christmas that dances and then his trousers fall down? Jason Vale It's an explanation of what all the different things you might hang on your Christmas tree mean or might mean. The Old World Christmas says, pigs have long been considered lucky animals. The term Dickbau, meaning fat stomach, is popularly used in Germany on Christmas Eve. So the idea being that, you know, it's unlucky to go to bed hungry on Christmas Eve, so you need to have a Dickbau, which is a fat pig-like stomach. And so they would have a, unfortunately, it does involve eating pigs.

They would have a dinner of roasted pork on Christmas Eve. That's not very lucky, that pig, is it? The pig is unlucky, but if you schwein gehabt, then you are lucky. I flipped over to Linda Radish. Linda Radish? Which looks a bit like Linda Radish. It's a bit, it's like Linda Radish, yeah. She's a living author, so we can't make fun of her name too much. Linda Radish's book, The Old Magic of Christmas. Can I just say on rural concerns, we would make fun of her name. Because we're not scared of speaking truth to power, okay? Just to let you know. You don't know what biker gang she might be in.

Well this Radish person sounds German, because I'm assuming there's an umlaut over the A. Yeah, it's A-E, because I assume she's American, but I guess it would have been A with an umlaut in German and it's been turned into A-E in the way that Americans do. Like graining, like mac graining. So I guess it's like Radish? I don't know. You're right though, the pig is important in the sort of the Germanic nations and the

Germanic languages and it goes all the way up to sort of Scandinavia. Linda Redish in The Old Magic of Christmas writes about the Yule Boar in her Christmas bestiary. And the Yule Boar, she connects with Gullinbursti, maybe Yulinbursti, I'm not sure, the gold-bristled Boar who pulled the Norse fertility god Freyr in a, well, according to Linda Reddish, she pulled him around in a cart, which sounds really unimpressive for a god, I think. So the boar is the god? Freyr is the god, the god of fertility.

And he would sit in a cart and a gold bristled boar, Gullinversti, would pull him around the place. Yeah. Freyr's pig rings a bell and a gold bristled boar, Gullinverstie, would pull him around the place. Yeah, Freyr's pig rings a bell as a sort of general... that's often part of the wild hunt, isn't it? That's one of Menneby, the links to the wild hunt. One of the versions has pigs and that's men who have come from the Norse tradition of Freyr being pulled. Well, it's not expressly Christmassy, but... No, none of it's Christmassy anymore, Alistair.

It's been four years. But what? I'm about to whip it right back to Christmas. I'm about to curl that tail all the way around and bend it back to Christmas with the Glowsoe. You're about to aura your own borer. The Glowsoe. That's good stuff, James. Linda Reddish brings it back to the the Glo-So, or glowing sow.

I shared this with you, James, and then you shared a very different take on, I think, the same creature. So I'm going to read you what Linda Raedish has to say, and then maybe you can add to that, James. But Linda says, aside from the pig on the top of the table, i.e. the one that's being eaten, in Sweden, if you weren't careful, there might be another one underneath it. She was the glosso, or glowing sow, and if you knew what was good for you, you would leave three stalks of wheat standing in the field at harvest time as an offering to her.

You might also set out a bowl of porridge and a few fish heads for her to consume as she passed by on Christmas Eve. You could see the glosso coming from a long way off, for her eyes burned like coals, and her bristling back shed sparks as she moved. If she found the offerings too paltry, she would stay on to haunt the dark space under the tablecloth throughout the twelve nights of Christmas. Which doesn't sound that bad. Just having a pig under the table.

I'd have it a pig under the table would be inconvenient. They're big? Big pigs. Yeah. Sorry, is it a boar or a pig? This one's a pig. This one's a sow., big pigs. Yeah. Is it, sorry, is it a bore or a pig? This one's a pig. This one's a sound. Oh, right.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Although I can't remember which book I read it in, pointed out that pigs and boars for a quite a lot of history, weren't that different that, you know, you go, the modern pigs have, you know, with all of the soy and the YouTube content, they've become soft and weakened. I do have some more gloss on as it's called in my, in my readings. I found Glow so gloss on like wax on wax off gloss on gloss off. Yes. I've got this from the website folklore Thursday.com.

Sorry, just to, just to interject a lot of this so far as you looking at pig related facts from the past. Is, is that what it is? That is what this is. Yes. It's Christmas pig. Yeah. Yeah.

I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to have a go at you. I was just wondering, but is there like, I should I be waiting for a bit, like a long scary story about a pig? You're about to get it. So now you're about to get a short story about a pig. You're about to get it, Sunil. You're about to get a short story about a pig that's not very friendly. This is the gloss on. So from folklorethursday.com, Tommy Kusela, PhD.

Does he have a PhD in being a minor gangster? I don't know. Tommy Kusela, PhD. Pretty hard, dude. I think PhDsela, PhD, pretty hard dude. I think PhD means something else. Pretty huge dude. I've seen it written down as pretty huge dude. Yeah.

No, I think Tommy's a decent person. We're not like a moth. Probably would on rural concerns, but not here. Yeah, actually rural concerns we would. Chris would go like a telly. So basically if you find yourself in the Swedish countryside of a nighttime, you want to be aware of some glowing eyes coming at you because that could very easily be the gloss on which it's got a similar etymology, glow and saw.

So gloss or meaning sow, glow meaning to glare or stare. So it's a stare pig in this case. And this big pig will, will come at you. So according to Peter or Petter Rudbeck, a Swedish writer in his antiquities from Schmaland, apologies for the pronunciation. It's an A with a circle on top of it. I don't know how you say that one. Apologies for the pronunciation. It's an A with a circle on top of it. I don't know how you say that one.

I think it's like an O sound, I think. Okay, the antiquities from Smoo-land. I said O. Smoo. Smoo. Not Smoo. Smoo. I don't know.

Smoo-land. I gather you've run out of all the British pig stories then have you over the years? And this was published 1697 to 1700 or probably written around then. If you were to do something called the Year Walk, which is like a walk and you were to do that every year. It's a video game. It's a really good, spooky, Christmassy point and click game Year Walk where you explore Swedish folklore.

Well, you, you do the year walk. You wander around the snowy forests and then, and experience folkloric supernatural occurrences. No spoilers. Well, if you do that for seven years on the seventh year, you will meet an old man on a horse with a flaming head and that horse is carrying a stick with runic carvings on it. But you know what, Sunil, I'm not here to tell you about an old man on a horse with a flaming head. Don't want to know about the horse. You want to hear about in the 19th century, this had evolved into being

Glosson. So you do your year walk and on the seventh year, Glosson comes for you. What, so they just changed their mind and said, actually it's a pig? Well maybe some guy was like, yeah, it wasn't an old man, it was chased by a pig. It's probably the local police, they're like, who did you see? And then they just showed photographs of all the usual pigs that commit crimes in the area and then just insists it must have been one of these guys. Interesting that they said it was a sow as well. Well this pig would run at you. Right. And described in horrific manners.

It had a hundred eyes all over his body, each of them shining like vile fire, which I guess is like poo on fire or something. What? Well, a vile fire. Oh, I see. It's got to be something nasty on fire, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A pig doesn't strike me as that scary really. Yeah, the boars are scary, aren't they? Oh, well, I haven't finished describing them as boar. In the past, these, these, you know, you're wandering through the woods, you startle a

pig or boar and they come at you. They've got tusks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're armed. And in fact, this one would either run at you and get you on its back and it would carry you around from seven weeks to three years until you were either bewildered, insane or have died from exhaustion. Okay. Which those ramp up quite quickly, to be honest. Yeah.

I mean, that is quite scary then. That is quite scary. That is quite scary. That is quite scary. Or even scarier still, it runs at you with its razor spikes along its back and it's trying to run between your legs in order to cut you in two. James Bond style. Yes. Do you expect me to oink?

No, I expect you to get cut in two by a big pig. And how do you kill, how do you kill this pig? How do you defeat it? Well, cross your legs. One. It is easy. It makes a sign of the cross as well. You can also use seven year old nuts, magic nuts, seven year old magic nuts. So you got what you collect them seven years ago and make the magic.

Well, yeah, presumably you collected them on your first year walk and then you bring them out on subsequent year walks. Why would you do seven year walks in a row if the consequences of doing that are so bad? What's the boon? I don't know. I can't see an upside for it. I probably could have done more research on that, but it sounds like... I'm sure looking at a website, it counts as research, James.

But how long is this year, this year walk? What is it a day? You go along for a day every year. Is it just a walk like after Christmas dinner? Is it after dinner or something? Is it like a boxing day walk? Cause I've done quite a few boxing day walks, you know, I haven't kept count. Grab those nuts and cross your legs, James.

Be ready. This year, James, stay in and watch bad tidings on the sky. Triple bill of diehard home loan of bad tidings. Followed by rural concerns chaser. If you watch them at the same time, they should sync up. You could also use fishing nets to stop it or general black arts is all, that's where the guidance ends. General black arts is something we should be well versed in. Which is, what is the black

arts? Is that little bits of magic or just like knives? It is, it is magic I think. And in stage magic, this will interest you, Sunil. In stage magic, it refers to... Wow, what a burn. What an absolute burn that was. It refers to the use of theatrical blacks to create stage magic effects where everybody's wearing. Because basically, if the black velvet curtain's there, you can get away with a lot of stuff

by just covering something with black velvet curtains there, you can get away with a lot of stuff by just covering something with black velvet. Who are Christmas pig? Or should I say, Weinachtschwein? Alistair McClendon Weinachtschwein, Weinachtschwein. Jason Vale You're not going to say thank you, Sunil, for saying it. Alistair McClendon Yeah, sorry, I forgot what it meant briefly. What does it mean? Good pig. Jason Vale Weinachtschwein. Alistair McClendon And Schweinharbern to you, Sunil. Schweinharbern with all your many dealings. Jason Vale Schweinharbern to you, Alistair. Schweinharbern to you, Sunil. Schweinhaben with all your many dealings. Schweinhaben to you, Alastair. Schweinhaben to you, James.

And Schwein, bless us, everyone.