Something Rhymes with Purple - Hades

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

This week, Susie and Gyles explore the fiery (under)world of Hell. Join us as we unpack the infernal regions, a place of torment for the wicked after death. We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us on our email address here: [e-mail] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com  Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:  Accismus: The feigned refusal of something you really want. Redeless: Destitute of counsel - lacking advice. Vilipend: To condemn or despise. Gyles' poem this week was 'Tender-heartedness' by Harry Graham Billy, in one of his nice new sashes, Fell in the fire and was burned to ashes; Now, although the room grows chilly, I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy. A Sony Music Entertainment production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up y'all it's your man Mark Strong Strizzy and your girl Jem the Jem of all Jems and we're hosting Olympic FOMO your essential recap podcast of the 2024 Olympic Games in 20 minutes or less every day we'll be going behind the scenes for all the wins

losses and real talk with special guests from the Athletes Village and around the world you'll never have a fear of missing any Olympic action from Paris. Listen to Olympic FOMO wherever you get your podcasts. Make your nights unforgettable

with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express.

Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Annex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Hello. This is Something Rhymes with Purple, the podcast about words and language. And I have dived, or as the Americans would say, rather beautifully dove straight in to our main theme today with that rather elongated hello, because we are now talking about the antithesis to our last programme subject, heaven. We are now talking about the opposite. We are talking about hell today, the netherworld, the abode of the dead, the infernal regions. That is our subject today. And who better to talk to about this? Thank you. The person who tells me to go to hell in the most

polite way possible, Giles, hello. Hello. Are you trying to suggest to me that hello, the expression greeting someone, has some connection with hell? No. No, I thought for a moment, oh my goodness, maybe it does, because how interesting. Give us first, though, where hello, as in a greeting, comes. And then explain to me, too, why some people spell it H-E-double-L-O, others spell it H-A-double-L-O. What is the origin of hello? H-A.

Simply the sound of it. So hello, hey, hola, ahoy. They have been around and totally fluid for centuries. And so there was no settled spelling of this. and totally fluid for centuries. And so there was no settled spelling of this. And it's really, whereas things like Soho was a hunting cry originally. So the place in London, the district of London called Soho, was so cool because it used to be hunting fields. That one has a distinct etymology.

When it comes to hello, it is all about the sounds. But just as I was saying this and you said, is there hell inbuilt in there etymology, when it comes to hello, it is all about the sounds. But just as I was saying this, and you said, is there hell inbuilt in there etymologically? You could actually make it a sort of coded reference if you really didn't like someone and say, well, hello, just as I learned rather delightfully from a group of paramedics that when standing around and just being reprimanded by their boss or just given some absolutely ludicrous instructions, they look at each other and they say, there we are then, which if you take the first letters of there, we are then, tells you exactly what they were thinking of the person in question.

But no, nothing to do with it. It's the Lord's answer. Very good. Well, we are going to hell, not in a handcart but in a podcast and the concept of hell is it as old as the concept of heaven which we were talking about last week who invented hell oh gosh well who invented it in terms of the the word itself you will find variations of it in the language of the the vikings, where hell comes from an ancient root meaning to cover up or hide something. And indeed, for the Saxons, for the Germans,

and further back, hell was a concealed place. It is all about being sort of, I don't know, hidden away in quite a sinister sense, obviously. And this idea of being covered perhaps led to the idea of it being below us because it is covered by our ground, but hell is somehow below, whereas the heavens are above. I think of words, I think of lots of words associated with hell. Inferno is one, because we think of hell being an inferno, where there are flames, it's a perpetual fire and

there are devils with pitchforks sort of jabbing you pushing you into the flames yes so it's the place of torment uh or or misery and of course we have the divine comedy um dante where he has the Inferno too so it became a larger intense fire around the 19th century but its etymology that's the word that I should be able to say is from the Latin for hell so the fire bit came in a little bit later. And again, it is all about the lower world. So inferno could also mean the lower regions lying beneath us underground. I remember being taught when I was a child about the different eating habits in heaven and hell. It was explained to me that in heaven and hell, they give you Chinese food and chopsticks. But the chopsticks are seven foot long.

This is like the long spoon, isn't it? It's the same idea. Anyway, so in heaven, the people are happy and well-fed. But in hell, as well as being burnt, they can't even eat the food. They're already dead, but they're starving as well. It's the idea that if you're in hell, you're so ungenerous that you won't feed someone else. Exactly.

Whereas in heaven, everyone's happy and they're nice and they feed one another with the chopsticks. In hell, they're trying to use the chopsticks to feed themselves and they can't get them into their own mouth. It's a good metaphor. And in politics, what was the night of the long? It was the night of the long knives, wasn't it? Not the long spoons.

Yes. I think the night of the long knives are people just bringing out their knives and stabbing you in the back but that's politics every day who needs a night well that's true 24 7 just in terms of that idea of covering up and concealing you will find that in hades as well which was both hades was the god of the dead in Greek mythology, but also it became attached to the name of Hades' realm. So it was the abode of the dead. And that goes back to the Greek, we think, for the invisible. So it's the idea that you cannot see it, but it is there and potentially, you know, waiting for you. And then you have the river Styx as well. That was a river of the lower world or Hades. And the souls of the departed were ferried by Charon. And yeah, the gods swore their most solemn oaths to Styx, the river Styx. And that is from a Greek word meaning hateful or gloomy.

And then you also down there in the underworld had the river Lethe. Do you know about the river Lethe? I do. And crossing the river Lethe in a boat with a famous person taking you across. You're crossing the River Lethe. Anyway, tell us all about it. You know more than me. I am thinking of, do you remember the song by Chris de Burgh, Don't Pay the Ferryman?

Yes. I think that is all about crossing the river to the underworld, if I'm right. Well, the River Lethe was essentially meant to induce forgetfulness. So it comes from a Greek word meaning forgetful. And if you drank from the waters of the River Lethe, you forgot everything, all your ills, but presumably all the good things as well. And from there, it came to mean a lack of just a sort of deep unresponsiveness and inactivity, I suppose. One of the worst feelings for me is lethargy. I absolutely hate it. I imagine you do too, because you're always so busy. Yes, I don't think I'm very familiar with

lethargy. Oh, it's awful. Is it one of the seven deadly sins? I don't think so. I don't know. I forget what they are. Oh, there is all the kind of gluttony. You have greed. I've got a little mark. Gluttony and greed probably go together. Sloth.

That's the one I'm thinking of. Sloth is like a bit like, except sloth is when you're lazy and lethargy is when you're sort of lifeless, where you actually feel sort of, is that right? It is feeling lethargic. Yeah. So it's a fine line, I suppose, between apathy and lethargy. But I think lethargy for me is even more insidious because it just implies that you have no energy for anything. Which of the seven deadly sins, I've got got the list now are you most guilty of? Pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth.

Do I have to be? Oh, probably. I wish it was gluttony because I know it's not a good thing, but I just quite like that idea. Maybe envy. Oh, really? I don't know. It's really, it's hard.

I'm sure I'm guilty of all of them. What about you? I'm certainly guilty of all of them. I don't think I am guilty of sloth, but pride, certainly. No, I don't know. It's really, it's hard. I'm sure I'm guilty of all of them. What about you? I'm certainly guilty of all of them. I don't think I am guilty of sloth, but pride, certainly. Greed, I'm afraid my wife will tell you that. Lust, I'm afraid so. Envy, gluttony.

Gluttony and greed for me go a little bit together. Yeah. Gluttony, it seems to me more specifically food. Wrath, on the whole, I'm not very wrathful. And I'm certainly, I don't think I'm slothful. So, five out of seven, I suppose, could be worse. Anyway, back to the devil work. Back to hell.

Yeah. Well, back to hell. We talked about purgatory, didn't we, in our episode on heaven. So, purgatory from the idea of purging and it is the place for spiritual cleansing um of souls now i'm sure and i think maybe this was my sort of rather uninformed scared fearful belief i thought if you're in purgatory it could go either way you could go down to hell or you could go up to heaven depending on how well you did. Isn't that the case?

No, I think strictly speaking, you are destined ultimately for heaven, but you have to confess and expiate your sins first, I think, strictly speaking. And crucially, people have to pray for you. So the prayers of the faithful are also going to see you through. I love the idea of people praying for you for me that's charming yes yes what about well first of all before we move on should we talk about all the expressions to do with hell please um because there are there are many um you actually before we came on and i can't remember what we were talking about but you weren't using it about me hopefully uh you use the expression go to hell in a hand cart or hand basket um that is from the 19th century and the idea is that it's you will

um have easy passage to the destination otherwise you'll just be carried there and it's going to be very very easy but it's not necessarily somewhere you want to go. You also have Hell or High Water, which apparently is a bit of a riff on Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. So, it's a choice between two evils. Shakespeare gave us the idea of going to Hell. That's in The Merchant of Venice, interestingly. And then you have the idea of not a snowball's chance in hell, which is the sort of idea of till hell freezes over. But obviously, if hell is thought of in terms of the inferno, a snowball is just not going to be there for very long. And then you've got riding hell for leather. And that is with reference to riding so fast and perhaps rather recklessly on horseback and the leather

of your saddle is going to wear away rapidly. Very good. Lucifer, have we touched on him? So, Lucifer is a Latin word and it means light bringing or the morning star. So, it's from the Latin luc, L-U-C, luc meaning light. It's where we get the name Lucy from. And the fer, F-E-R, is related to ferry, and it means carrying or bearing. And it was often used to refer to the planet Venus, actually, that appears in the sky before sunrise. But mostly it was used for the rebel archangel and known as Satan by association with a biblical quotation, which you'll find in Isaiah. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? But Lucifer also used because

of that association with light for a match. Of course. I think before your time. No, but it's occasionally, I think it occurs quite a lot in Sherlock Holmes. I was before your time. No, but it's occasionally, I think it occurs quite a lot in Sherlock Holmes. I was going to say, and also Oscar Wilde, that he talks about this. He does, I think so. Well, I certainly do in my Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries, which I love. I know you're

writing a murder mystery. I'm excited about that. I've written it. Yeah, I'm very excited. We mustn't be distracted. We'll talk about it in a minute. But anyway, when's it coming out, incidentally? August. August, any minute now. Oh, how exciting, a summer read. It is quite terrifying.

It's got a very clever title. Tell us what the title is again. Yes, I like the title. It is, well, inevitably, this is set in a dictionary department. It involves a mystery, and because of the dictionary associations, it's called Guilty by Definition. Yay, very good. But Lucifer doesn't necessarily appear,

but other linguistic delights do. There's lots of language stuff in there, yes. Well, it's a must for purple people everywhere for August reading. And, you know, Tartarus is on my list of interesting words associated with hell. Why would it be? Yeah, I mean, in Greek cosmology, it was a place of punishment for the souls of the wicked.

So it's pretty much the same as Hades. But in older Greek mythology, it was the abyss below Hades in which Zeus imprisoned the enemy, the Titans. And it was entirely sunless and dark. And again, you've got this idea of something sort of covered over. The devil is slightly different. So the devil is used again in lots and lots of different expressions that we can talk about, but you will find very similar words in other languages. You have the French diable, you have the Spanish diablo, you have the Italian diavolo, and in German you have teufel, which doesn't look as though it is related to the devil, but it is. And they all go back to a Greek word diabolos, which in general use meant an accuser or a slanderer. So again, it's of someone

who has taken the wrong path, who has gone wrong, if you like. And if you take that all the way back, it is from dia meaning across and balen meaning to throw. So you are throwing things across someone's path. Hence the game called Diablo. Yes, yes. Which is interesting. And then we have lots, as I say, lots and lots of expressions. We've talked about the devil and the deep blue sea. We have paying, what was it? Devil.

Devil to pay. There's a devil to pay. Yes. There's the devil to pay. What does that mean? Well, it's interesting that one. So some people say that that has nautical origins and that actually it is to do with, because it was originally the devil to pay and no pitch hot, which is basically it's a problem for which there's no immediate solution. And some people think it is referring to the difficulty of paying, which was a nautical way of saying corking the seam near a ship's keel that was known as the devil because it was so close to the sea. So, some say that is where

that one comes from. And speak of the devil is a shortening of speak of the devil and he shall appear because if you say his name, you are risking him manifesting. And devil may care. You have a devil may care attitude. That means being careless. Yes, that's an interesting one. The devil may care. I suppose, in other words, I will accept what consequences are coming my way.

I'm just going to be carefree. I'm just going to see when that one... So devil may care attitude is from 1799 um so it's really who cares including the devil i will take what punishment comes my way and i'm right in saying aren't i that what the dickens as an expression has nothing to do with charles dickens no but dates back to when dickens was a euphemism for devil. Yes, absolutely. And there are so many euphemisms or other names for the devil, precisely because you did not want to say his name and because you didn't want to run the risk of him popping up. So Old Nick is one, and we're not completely sure where that comes from, but some people say it is linked to Niccolo Machiavelli, and others say it is a shortened form of iniquity, and that was another term for vice in morality plays, and so on.

So, there are lots and lots of suggestions for that one, but that's definitely quite a settled name for the devil. And of course, this, using euphemisms for God and for the devil and for Jesus, these all date back to an era when faith was much more part and parcel of everyone's life. And people believed and they cared. believed and they cared and so they didn't want to use these phrases yeah because it would upset people or it would upset me is that right um i suppose was it linked to profanity i suppose so because profanity as you know is from the latin profanum outside the temple. So profanity was not sacred. So the idea maybe is, yes, of choosing something that is the epitome of not being sacred when you're referring to the devil. But do you know what the oldest euphemism in the world is? Well, we think in the language. No, tell me. Bear, as in grizzly bear. We think one of the oldest euphemisms in existence,

because if you take it back to its ancient roots, it means the brown one. So again, there was that fear that if you named the animal directly, it would appear. So all that linked to superstition as well. Gosh. Well, look, I think that's enough time in hell. Let's get back to the world we know it and love it we'll take a quick break and then we'll deal with our correspondence lovely bumble knows it's hard to start conversations hey no too basic hi there still no what about

hello handsome who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. What was the last thing that filled you with wonder that took you away from your desk or your car in traffic? Download Bumble and hot takes galore. So join us every Friday wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or

on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Hello and welcome back to Something Rhymes with Purple where we get to my absolute favorite part of the show which is when we hear from you the purple people who have written in to purple people at somethingrhymes.com and you get to quiz me and Giles. We can't always promise to answer, but we will at least do a lot of delving on your behalf. And the first one, Giles, I'm going to send this one to you because you're really good at wordplay. And it comes from Laura, who is in Boston, Massachusetts. Hi, my random fact of the day calendar is telling me no word in the English language rhymes with month. Is this true?

Thanks so much. Laura, Boston, Massachusetts. Wonderful. Well, it's a very good question, and it's something that has puzzled many people for many years. There was a wonderful American called William Espy, E-S-P-Y, who wrote some fantastic books in the 1950s and 60s about words and language. And one of them was called An Almanac of Words at Play. And I remember coming across this very suggestion

that no word in the English language rhymes with month. And then I think Espy tried to write a little verse that did include it, but of course he didn't. His character had a lisp, and so it ended up with oneth, O-N-T-H. And he also, I think, tried to have runeth rhyming with month, runeth, month. But I don't think there is an English word

that rhymes with month. No, I did a bit of a scurry to Oxford Dictionaries, who very helpfully and sometimes very humorously, unintentionally probably, have a list of rhymes for various words in their dictionary and it is completely blank for a month. They just don't even bother to have a column. So I don't know one either, but I think we should put this out to the purple people and ask them if they know. Please. And if anyone's come across that poem that I was talking about, do send it in. We do know that there is, is there a rhyme for silver? I'm not sure there is.

Yes, milver. Milver. And what does that mean? Do you remember? We talked about this because we did, at one point we did think about calling our podcast Nothing Rhymes With Silver. So a milver is a bit of a maven, really. It's somebody who shows a really strong interest in a subject.

Very good. And orange, there's sort of rhymes, aren't there? Sporange and things you can come up with. But is there a good rhyme for orange? No, not that I know of. Let's ask the dictionary that I was just... So, I don't think there is an exact rhyme. Well, that's a challenge. Yes. To come up with one, if you can. I doubt that you can. But lovely questions.

Thanks, Lorna, for being in touch. Absolutely. Thank you. Who else has been in touch? So our next one is from Mithra. Hopefully Mithra pronouncing this correctly. Hi, Susie and Giles. I am a big fan of yours from Trinidad.

So imagine my delight when there was not one but two items from our dialect in your recent episodes. The first was bagasse, which was commonly heard when we had a vibrant sugar industry, and actually my dad worked at the bagasse factory. The second was tabanca, which anyone in Trinidad understands immediately without needing an explanation. Thrilled to hear these words out of your podcast. I was also wondering whether you could trace the origin of the word lime, L-I-M-E, in the Caribbean context. We use it as a verb to describe getting together with friends, i.e. I'm going to lime with my friends, as well as a noun to describe the actual event.

I went to a lime last night. Some have opined that it may have had a colonial origin with something to do with British sailors having their drinks with lime whilst on shore leave. But no one really seems to know. Keep up the good work. Thank you. Mitra. Wow, that's great.

That's brilliant. Can you instantly remind us what bag ass and... I like the way you say bag ass because it's like you're saying badass. But yes, it's bagasse. So bagasse is the dry pulp. It's like a pulpy residue that's left when you extract juice from sugar cane. So directly from that. And tabanca, oh, it's just beautiful.

I think when we had an episode on emotions, we mentioned it there. oh it's just beautiful i think when we had uh an episode on emotions we mentioned it there and it's absolutely beautiful it is from west indian english and it means the really painful feeling of unrequited love oh yes it's gorgeous well now but it can't i say it's gorgeous it can actually result in slightly violent behavior so i think it's got a dark side we don't want that no the notion is a beautiful word but we don't want any unpleasantness yes i agree i agree so um here we are with liming which i have to say me through i did not know about at all and whenever i am here about west indian english i i go to um a dictionary that i was vaguely instrumental in bringing in, only in that when I worked for Oxford University Press, we regularly talked about its compilation. dictionaries. They have American English dictionaries and they have dictionaries for many of the English spoken around the world, including there was one written by the late

Richard Alsop and it was called the Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. And I looked up there online and it says lime verb to, you could say to bus a lime in Trinidad, to make a lime, you could say to bus a lime in Trinidad, to make a lime, to pick a lime. And it's to sit, to loaf or hang about with others, as Smithra says, chatting aimlessly, watching passers-by and sometimes making unsolicited remarks to them, according to this. And etymologically, Richard Alsop says, or the lexicographers of the dictionary say, the term seems to have originated in Trinidad during World War II, evidently applied to white American sailors from the naval base who hung around areas in groups. derogatory term for a white person of a low class it says here or um you know typically um limey obviously used for for an englishman uh or a british person um because of the former enforced consumption of lime juice in the british navy to avoid scurvy so um i know mithra mentions this particular theory and that is the one that is certainly given in the Caribbean English Dictionary. But I think there are other theories to do with, you know, hanging around

under lime trees and sort of very literal application, but that is probably the one that I'll go for. Wonderful. Well, thank you for going for it. And thank you, Mithran, for everybody else who keeps in touch with us. We do love hearing from you. And I love hearing the cheer of words that Susie comes up with every week. Do they just float into your head? Do you think about it during the week and then look them up? How do you discover these words? I discover them because I spend a lot of time reading dictionaries. I was going to say too much time, but you can never spend too much time reading dictionaries. How many words are there in the world? Do we know? How many English words

for a start? my goodness there's no there's no correct answer to that question because um what do you count do you count go and then going and went um and goes do you count all the inflections um what i will say is is shakespeare probably had a vocabulary of about 20 000000 words. And today it's estimated that the average person has about between 30 and 40,000 words. But in terms of how many there are available, it just depends on how you count it. So this is a very fluid answer, I'm afraid. And there'll be hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands, but I don't know all of them, clearly. Well, but you probably know a great deal. I'm intrigued that my vocabulary and yours is likely to be twice the size of Shakespeare's.

Why can't we do what he did? Well, I agree. I agree. This is the ultimate proof that size doesn't matter. I think this scotches the argument. This solves the problem forever. Size does not matter. Shakespeare had half the vocabulary that I have and did twice

as much with it. But remember that Shakespeare was also picking up words from around him, including from the women whose voices have remained invisible or inaudible. And he was picking them up and giving them to the masses because of the prestige that he came to have. But they weren't all his, as we know. We know that, but the point is he had 20,000 words and we have 40,000 words. Yes. No, no, I'm with you. It doesn't matter where he picked them up from.

He had fewer than us and he did more with them than us. We are hopeless, Susan, you and I. But he created more as well, which is gorgeous. And he played around with words, didn't he, all the time? So for my trio, do you remember that when it was in the Heaven episode, I unfortunately chose three that weren't very heavenly at all. And I tried to redress, I promised to redress the balance, at least for one of mine, for the trio in this episode about hell. So I'm going to choose a word that I have always loved.

But when I tried to use it in my novel, my editor came back and said, I'm afraid that every publisher is sick to the back teeth of this word and it's vetoed. The word cerulean, one of my all-time favourite words. Oh, yes. I love it. I thought it was pronounced cerulean. It can be. It's C-E-R-U-L-E-A-N, isn't it? Yes.

It's because the sky is a cerulean blue. Cerulean. It's from Latin, and it means deep blue in colour, as you say. Like a clear... The sky can... The ocean can be as well. Anyway, apparently it's so overused now, so was told to change it so there you go but i'm going to give that one anyway because i think it's beautiful and it's slightly heavenly uh then i'm going to go back to the dark side

and have the very pleasing to say word hyphenated that as an adjective um vilipend and to vilipend is to condemn or despise someone it just sounds very i think there should be a disney character called vilipend um yeah i just like the sound of that one so that seemed appropriate for hell and also readless r-e-d-e-l-e-s-s which means R-E-D-E-L-E-S-S, which means devoid of counsel or destitute of counsel, if you take the dictionary definition, i.e. lacking advice. And we have seen quite a lot of that, arguably, during the run up to the general election here in the UK, where it could be argued that some leaders are not taking the advice of their team. Anyway, readless, R-E-D-E-L-E-S-S. But explain why the read part of this. Rudderless, I understand. Yes. Readless. Why is a read?

Yes. It goes back to an old word meaning wisdom. So, you know when we talk about Æthelred the Unready? Yes. So, it wasn't that he wasn't prepared as such. It was that he did not have the wisdom of others. So he was ill-advised is the idea. So it goes back to an old English word for wisdom, understanding, consideration. So Ethelred the Unready was ill-advised.

Do you know, I assumed that he didn't have red hair because he'd been another one that's got red hair um i don't know but no nothing to do with called oh well there you are that's it means ah so ethelred ill-advised it'll ill-advised ethelred yes if you're readless you you are again ill-advised or already. Yes, if you're readless, you are, again, ill-advised or you just probably maybe don't take the advice of other people. Well, I've chosen a couple of short poems. I know I've dipped into my anthology of Ruthless Rhymes by Harry Graham before, but I was thinking about hell and I wanted something that was a bit lighter than hell, but these are very dark poems. Harry Graham wrote Ruthless Rhymes. He was hugely popular in Victorian Edwardian times for these naughty poems that looked

at life through rather sinister dark glasses. Anyway, I love them, but some people find them a bit shocking. Billy, in one of his nice new sashes, fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes. in one of his nice new sashes, fell in the fire and was burnt to ashes. Now, although the room grows chilly, I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy. It is dark, isn't it? This next one is even worse. Baby in the cauldron fell. See the grief on mother's brow. Mother loved her darling well. Darling's quite hard-boiled by now. Oh my goodness. Your laugh is quite diabolical as well. Yes, but isn't it interesting?

I think the devil is a much more interesting character to play than God. I mean, don't you agree? Would you rather play a witch or an angel? Would I rather play one? Yes, probably the witch. Yes, because you would cackle away. Yes. Cackle is such a good word, isn't it?

Cackle is a great word. Cackle is a great word. And hopefully we've given lots of great words. We hope to our lovely, lovely listeners. Thank you so much for your company today. We absolutely love having you along. And we particularly love your emails. And if you remember,

the email address is purplepeople at somethingrhymes.com. And a reminder too, that Something Rhymes with Purple is of course a Sony Music Entertainment production produced by Nayodeo with additional production from Jennifer Mystery,

the brilliant Richie Lee and Olly Wilson. To hell with it. It's done.