Loremen Podcast - Loremen S6Ep37 - The Gold Hoard of the Great Ants

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Alasdair bedazzles James with tales of gold-digging ants. Did we mention these creatures were also massive? And deadly? Well, they were! Beginning with an Old English legend from Hana Videen's bestiary The Deorhord, the Loreboys travel into a world of dubious manuscripts and outlandish beasts. Lock up your camels! This episode was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Joseph Burrows - Audio Editor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Join the LoreFolk at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠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

Arc Raiders, a multiplayer extraction adventure video game set in a lethal yet vibrant future Earth. As a raider scavenging the remnants of a derelict world, you settle into an underground settlement. Hoping to thrive, you jump on the chance to start over. But doing so means you must return to the surface where arc machines roam, and survivors' motives remain dangerously unclear. But if you're brave enough, who knows what you might find? Play the server slam open test from October 17th through 19th on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X&S and PC. This episode is brought to you by Peloton.

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And me, James, I'm taking you a thousand years into the past. Ooh, you ready? I'm going to bring a packed lunch, yes. And I'm going to introduce you to some wee beasties. Well, I hope these beasties aren't going to be attracted by my sandwiches. Don't worry, James. They are more interested in gold. It's the gold horde of the great ants.

James, I'm going to talk to you about ants. What, the film? I had a feeling you would ask because the recording session we're in is called ants with a Z, brackets, not the movie, question mark. And you wrote that. Yes, and also I'd prepared what my recording for today was called a bug's life. It's synchronicity, isn't it? Well, James, on the subject of ants, I have a rubbish riddle for you. Oh, good.

Yeah, because we're going to be talking about some weird passages in old. Old English texts. And as you and I both know, old English writers loved quite bad riddles. Can I guess the riddle before you even do the riddle? Yeah, I don't think you're going to guess, but you can try. Travels on no legs in the morning. Oh. On six legs in the middle of the day.

And by wings on my favorite day of the year, flying ant day. Is the answer an ants, James? It is an ants. Is it an ant? It is, yes. So why does the ant travel on no legs in the morning? Are they born without legs? Because they're probably little larvae eggs or somewhere, aren't they?

Are they? And is this based on entomological knowledge, or did you just say probably? Ooi, o'y, if I was the Sphinx, you'd be like, well, two of those legs are arms, sir, Mr. Sphinx. Miss Sphinx, Mrs. Sphinx, Ms with a Z as well, because you spell your name with an X for some reason. I'm having to go at a sphinx. Yeah, yeah.

You're getting very G.B. News there, James. He's flipping sphinxies. I don't even know what they're supposed to be. Why do they talk straight? When are they tell us exactly what they're talking about? Speak English, love. They're talking in riddles. They literally are there a sphinx.

I'm Googling baby ants. Worm-like legless. Oh, he's nailed at listener. Baby ants have no legs. That off the top of your head riddle is going to make my riddle look really rubbish but I did say it was going to be rubbish so thank you for that set up

that's no worries any time as we know old English writers loved riddles like that's what inspired J.R.R. Tolkien's quite rubbish riddles in The Hobbit. So here's my quite bad riddle for you James where might you find an ant in a kitchen?

Are you thinking about it? Where might you find an ant in a kitchen? Well, I'm... Unexpectedly. I'm workshopping the riddle. We can work on the riddle as we go. Okay. Okay, I'll extend it.

Where might you find an ant unexpectedly in your kitchen, especially if you spoke Latin? Ah, it is Italian as well, I think. Is it in the work surface? Oh, he's met. Yes! Whoa! A clean landing for Shakeshaft for Mika.

Yes, yes. That's it, Formica. In the Formica work surface, because, of course, the Latin word for ant is formica. Yes. Formica. I don't know how to pronounce it. And there's formic acid as well, which is something to do with that, or so much to do with that. Well, I think Formica, the work service is completely unrelated to the word for ant.

Ah. I think it's because it was a replacement for Micah, the stone. Mike. The replacement for Mike, but an Italian said it and already had the logo printed. Fair enough. For the trademarked brand name Formica. Yeah, formic acid is what's in the sting of an ant or a bee or a wasp. Oh, well, there you go.

And it's named after ant, formic. And it's named after ants, formica. Mm. A couple of ABK Livehacks for if you've got ants. If you have ants in your kitchen, get some tizer, and draw a face of Jesus on the work surface. And then the next day, the ants will have formed the shape of the face of Jesus, photograph it and immediately become canonized as a saint. Yes.

That's perfect. Well, you could sell it to the sun. Yeah, you could get into a British tabloid with that. Yeah, and you get some money and use that money to plug up any holes that the ants were coming in. Yeah, problem solved. With cash. I was told by someone, they said to me,

if you've got ants in your kitchen and you want them to leave, what you have to do is very, very carefully pick an ant up, just one ant, and then bring it up to, and then very quietly, politely ask it to leave and then put it back down. Hey, a man from Leeds told me that. So if that isn't true, I don't know what to believe. I can see how it would work, to be honest,

because the ant would go to its mates, like, using its chemical trails. Yeah, there's an nutter. There's an absolute nutter in there. Guys, we don't want to be in there. We don't want anything to do with this place. He thinks you can talk to ants. We've got to get out of here. But he doesn't seem to have hurt you.

That's what makes you really creepy. He was really creepy about it. He whispered. He didn't need to whisper. I can hear him. I heard it's pepper. Pepper. I don't know if that's...

This feels on the cusp of being nonsense. But you basically, you break up their path with pepper. Because ants don't like pepper. That's interesting. They're like a kid. Kipalika is the Sanskrit word for ants. And that sounds a bit like paprika. So I've just got a list of other names that ants have.

They're called Emmett. In Cornwall. Like the docked from back to the future? Yes. Yes. Like Doc Brown. That's your fault. That's your fault for bringing up that reference of Benjamin Brown.

That one doesn't count on James's list. No, that's not on my list. I'm giving a spreadsheet of James mentioning back to the future. Yeah, and apparently in Cornwall they use Emmett as a sarcastic name for tourists. Nice, yeah, because they sort of come in in a big trail. And if you want them to leave, you have to pick them up very carefully. A lot of them don't like pepper There's Nemet in Scotland

Obviously a similar word That's like the Wario to Emmett's Emmet And Pissmire Have you ever heard Pissmire? Yes Yeah, it's an archaic word What, and they called Pissabeds? Is that, no, that's

Ladybirds Oh really? I think Ladybirds were called Pissabeds or something Really? How did the house get on fire If that's what she was up to? You'd think that would have slowed

It's progress down. Yeah, maybe it's flammable. Well, there's Pissmire and Pissant, which is a word we still have, now usually just an insult for a person, both of which just mean, well, the ant part means ant, and the mire part means ant, because apparently antills smell of urine. So it's just a name for an ant,

a little Pissmire, a little piss ant. Ah, piss a bed was a dandelion, sorry. Oh, okay. Flower. That's not, you might find a ladybird on one, but it is not to be. be confused. Explains how the lady bird's house caught on fire.

Not enough wee-wee. So some of those words and the modern English word ant obviously come from the old English word, ameta. Are we going to need to beep all those piss of beds? I don't think so because we didn't say, I mean, it's just not a keg word. Yeah, there's other funny names for flowers that we've said, which we got away with. Yeah. The stinking nana, the stinking willy.

So my source here is the Deor Horde, an old English bestiary by Hannah Videen, published in 2023, James. Wait, what? Yeah, we've got a currently in print book written by a living author. Wow, it sounds like it's not modern. It doesn't sound like, yeah, so it's an old English bestiary. I suppose they wouldn't have called it an old English beastry if it was at the time and they would have simply called it a current English beastry.

She's a cutting edge, bestiary. Hannah Vaidin is a Canadian writer. She's behind the Old English word horde, which is a blog, but also it's on lots of social media platforms, basically posting an old English word a day. Ah. And she wrote a book called The Word Horde, and this is the follow-up called the Deor Horde. So Deo is animals. Right. So a word horde is, I was listening to an interview she did with Michael Rosen on Radio 4.

A word horde is all the words that a poet might know. So it's a bit like your vocabulary, I suppose. Like the way, is it Sparky Williams, that talking budgie knew 50 words? Wait, what? That sounds like this might have been a local celebrity up your way, like the flashing blade guy. Yeah, sorry, have you forgotten? I'm just Googling. Give me one sec.

Yeah, I'm sure you recall, James. We've talked about Sparky Williams, the greatest northeastern celebrity, the talking budgerigar. with a, who had a repertoire of more than 500 words. Whoa. You did him down to the power of ten. Yes, yeah. And I, if you recall, I was annoyed because I have a repertoire of over 500 words, but my Wikipedia page doesn't mention it.

Now we know what the word for that is, in old English. It's word hoard. So, I mean, I'm thinking we could get a sort of Avengers assemble from the northeastern celebs. So we got... Anton Dex. Ant on deck. Ants and aunt.

That's Alan Robson, you flash and blade from night owls. A legend in the northeast. So we got, yeah, we got that, we got him, we got Reg Vardy.

He's the sort of... I'm guessing he's the sort of the Hannibal of this A team. With the bird would be the face, smooth talking, able to chat its way out of a problem. Reg Vardy could be the getaway driver because he's got lots of cars.

He could be. He wouldn't need to, you know, weld anything together to his car because he's probably got a car that's like that. Or he could get one, he knows somewhere. Yeah, if you need like a mid-90s Ford Escort.

Yeah. Okay, so that's copyrighted now. The Northeastern Avengers Assemble, including the phrase Avengers Assemble, that belongs to the Lord Men as well. Just to be clear. James came up with that. Not real, no.

That's what Avengers was called in specifically just the UK, the recent Avengers film, because of the old telly thing. Oh, yeah. The proper avengers. And there's no clear link, so I'm just going to start talking about the other source. Yes.

The other source for this story is Antlaw in Anglo-Saxon, England. Ant-Lore. An article from 2012, Ant-Lore. Ant-Lore. Oh, you've seen the size of those ant-laws? On that show on that stagall over there. That's an article by Marlina Cesario, also a living academic who's currently alive. Apologies to the people.

So... Come on the podcast. We'd love to have yours guess you sound like cool people. I think since 2012, the term Anglo-Saxon has sort of fallen out of favour a bit. You used to see it a lot and you don't see it as much anymore. I think because of roundabout painters, mostly. I don't know for sure. But the only time I ever see Anglo-Saxon on the internet is when there's like an AI-generated

Knight Templar defending blonde women or something. Yeah. So we're just going to say old English. Yeah. Yeah. Now, are you aware of such a thing as a sunshine prognostication, James? Alistair, I didn't even, I couldn't even remember that parrot, I mean, that budgery that could speak 500 words. Sparky Williams, yeah, you didn't even remember Sparky Williams.

I don't think I know what a, what is it? A sunshine prognostication. Is it like blue sky, is this blue sky thinking? What about a wind prognostication? Any idea? Ah, yes. This is James' area. Is that like when they say it's going to rain if you can see the bottom of the leaves? Not quite. Good guess, though. It is a prediction. It's not a prediction about what the weather is going to be like. It's a prediction based on what the weather is like.

So, for instance, in a sunshine prognostication, it might say, if the sun shines on the third day of Christmas, then a certain thing will happen. And it's the same with a wind prognostication. So in England, James, I don't need to tell you, it's often overcast at Christmas time, so you don't really get sunshine. So is it reverse pathetic fallacy? I suppose so, yeah. If the weather is nice, conventionally nice, then that means that a good thing is going to happen. And if there's wind, it'll mean a specific bad thing is going to happen. So it's usually about a specific time, you know, if it happens on this day, then something else will happen.

Oh, yeah, like winter's going to last longer or something. It's a little bit like, yeah, Punksetorny Phil, is that his name? Yeah, yes, yes. The film, Groundhog Day, yes. That was on television. Are you sure? Grandhog Day, like imagine a podcast where people just remember the same information and talk about the same film every single time.

Misremember the same information and never learn. So there are sunshine prognostications. in two manuscripts that have really uncatchy titles, which I feel obliged to say. And they're mentioned in Cesario's article. There's Hatton-1-15, or 115, in the Bodleian Library. But I mentioned that one, because it has additions, annotations and additions written by someone called the tremulous scribe.

Have you heard of this guy, the tremulous scribe? No, but I like the sound of them. Better known as the tremulous hand of Worcester. because of course we don't know anything about him apart from presumably him presumably a monk of some kind we don't know anything about him apart from his handwriting and it's wobbly James

oh he had wobbly handwriting so he's I mean they call him the tremulous hand we infer that he had a rest of a body but we just don't know wow if he's from the north-east will he join our northeast Avengers Assembly I don't think Worcester is technically in the northeast alongside the flashing book

yeah but these things are often inaccurate Oh, lads Oh I ain't Get on a new plane Ha ha ha ha ha Lovely stuff That was the T

stood for tremulous A pity The oldest example Of a sunshine prognostication That Cesario could find Is from manuscript called Cambridge

Corpus Christi College 391 Or CCCC3991 Not great names not great names. And I think I'm going to quote, I think I'm quoting from that one. I'm going to try and read it in old English and then in English.

Apologies to any Anglo-Saxons listening. Apologies to any racist listening who are offended. Yeah, we don't need to apologize to them. Apologies to any old English people who've got a time machine and this is your experience. Sorry. There are better things you could be doing. You might be able to follow some of this,

depending on how well I pronounce it. So let's try. Yuf thy fourth day, sunnishcheineth, than oth beoroth, olfenders muckle gold, them, ametum, the thorn-gold-hawd,

Healden, schulen. So, I'm sure you picked up amatum, there, ants, yeah? Yeah. Muckl gold? Yes, gold means gold. Yes. If you were Scottish,

you would have guessed, muckl means much or a lot, as in many a mickle makes a muckle. sunshineth you think come on come on James yeah

he got that it got that straight away sunshine sunshine yes sunshine so it that is if the sunshines

on the fourth day then the camels will bear off much gold from the ants which then must guard the treasure right

so alfendas is camels so that is that's an so the rest of them are quite ordinary predictions about things

that might happen and this prediction this prognostication seems really weird. Why would camels steal gold from ants, James? Yeah, don't know. The answer might be found in Hanavideen's book, De Ord, in a section called Animals Unheard of,

or, and I'm going to say it in old English, un your freerlicking deor. On your freerleckin decor. They have not been freerlicht. They are unrefreyerlicking. Someone's complimenting or dissing my wallpaper? It's Deiard, J.R. Okay.

So these are animals that are rare, strange animals. So according to, there's an old English text called The Wonders of the East or the Marvels of the East from about 1,000 AD. And I think, James... The Marvel's Avengers Assemble of the East. I think you've read this one, actually, James. Or at least, I think you've used it as a source before because I think the blemys come from this text,

or this is one of the text that mentions the blemies. Right. Do you remember them? Yeah, are they at no head? They're heads in their head in their tummies. They're the ones with heads in their tummies. Not just one big foot that they use as an umbrella. They might also be, they could also be in the same book.

I don't know. So we've touched on this book before. And according to this book, there is a special kind of fametta, ant, that gathers grains of gold. Oh. So there's a bit of a mystery about the word Valkyrie, which Vardin mentions, because according to the O, it comes to English from North mythology in the 18th century. But in old English texts,

you've got this word whale career, which seems to mean Valkyrie. One creature in a beastry is described as having Valkyrie's eyes. So what's going on there? Bit of a mystery. So wonder that the East says, I'm reading from the Deo Horde here, Ants, that's Ammeton, are produced there in this land of Capi or Gorgonius or Valkyry. As big as hounds, that's hundas. They have... Ants. Ants as big as hounds.

Yikes. They are feet like a grasshopper. Gresshoppen. They are red and black in appearance. Who is, again, pronunciations, all probably wrong. So I don't need to just describe it for you, James. I've got pictures. Whoa.

Please open your envelope. Oh, those are dogs. Well, yeah. What's happened is, I think. the writer wrote that they were ants the size of dogs. The illustrator has gone, yeah, dogs, yeah, yeah, no, no, I said ants the size of dogs. He's said, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know a dog looks like, mate. And he's, he's just drawn dogs with kind of slightly grasshoppery feet. So in both cases, there's two different manuscripts there. First one are exactly, look exactly

like dogs. The second one, they look maybe like possums, perhaps. They're sort of maybe a large rodent. They've dogs, but they've got long, long, feet. Oh, I think those, I think you're looking at camels. Those are, those are meant to be the camels because they've got a bump on the back. But at the top of the second one, you'll see there's little sort of rabbit-y kind of creatures, and I think those are the ants. So what's going on there?

I can't explain why the illustrations look so weird. But you can see, what are those ants doing in the drawings? They are attacking... The fabric of space? Not the... In the other picture, they're attacking the camels. Yes, yes, they're having a right. Oh, good ding-dong.

at the camel legs. They are very dangerous. And it does look like they're attacking the fact, like just digging into a really sort of meaty earth. So basically these ants... Can I show you something that I think looks more like what you've tried to describe there? Yes, please.

I've just shared a link with you to the logo for the Italian petrol station, Aging. Oh yeah. And that's like a six-legged dog with fire coming out of its mouth. Yeah, I'd say that's more like an ant. Yeah, it is more like an ant. I always see that, I spit on holiday to Italy a couple of times. Whenever I see that logo, I do think like, what, like, is like someone said to the illustrator, oh, can we have a dog for our logo?

And they're like, yeah, yeah, sure thing, dog, six legs, breathes fire. Yeah, dog, I'll do you a dog. So, James, these ants, whatever they are, they gather gold, supposedly, in the east in India, which for the writers of these. old English text was a very vague place that they didn't know a lot about. Unlike you and me, who are very worldly and wise and know loads of stuff. Oh, big time. Hey, I can think about Italian petrol station logos. I'm a man of world. He is. Very much a man of the world. If you want to steal the ants gold and why wouldn't you? So there's a very simple procedure. You're going to need a lot of

camels. You're going to need several cannibals. You're going to need several camels and you're going to need to start early. I just realized I've revealed that I work at night. You're going to need to start early at 11am, which I now realize it's actually not that early. That is not early. That's kind of, it's nearly midday. You're going to need to hang around until 11 a.m. Sure. Hang around till 11 a.m. It'll be hot and the ants will go to sleep underground. Because they're dogs. Because that's the phrase, isn't it? Bad ants and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. Then you need to tie up the foals of the camels, they call them foals, I think these days we say carves,

the young camels on one side of a river, and then you cross the river with a male and a female camel. What are we on now, step three, maybe? Yeah, yeah. Step C is steal the gold and loaded onto the female camel, and then the ants will stir,

they'll, oh, what's going on? The ant, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. The ant, ant, ant, ant. Ant, Ant, Ant, Ant, Ant. Yeah, the classic ant noise. And they'll swarm after you. So you're leaving the male camel behind, basically, as a decoy. So they all go for the male camel. And it keeps them busy, which I think, based on the way this story appears in other texts, means they eat, they devour the male camel.

While the female camel runs quickly to get back to her foals on the other side of the river, and you escape with the gold. So that's how it's done. and it only costs you one camel. One male, I suppose you've still got the female camel to make more camel. Exactly. Great bargain. As long as you don't run out totally of male camel. So that is the legend of the gold hoard of the great ants.

But what a weird legend. What a weird thing to believe. And that can only happen if the sun's shone on the third day or something. Yeah, in the... Is that step zero? I don't know why that is predicted to happen at that particular time. But clearly that prediction is a reference to this myth that people would have been familiar with or educated people at least would have been familiar with, I think is the idea.

It is a bit, to be fair, I see that is a bit like me mentioning back to the future at any opportunity. Yeah. Like old tremulous, Mr. Tremulus, monk Tremulus must have just were like, I really want to tell people about these big ants that are like dogs. Yeah. Okay, so on the third, if the time's on the third day, have I ever ever. I told you about ants the size of dogs and how to steal their gold. But it seems like it might not have sprung out of nowhere this ant myth.

Cesario links the gold digging ant to something called the mimicoleum or ant lion. What? Yeah. You've never heard of the ant lion. No? Well, if you lived in old English times, if you lived a thousand years ago, you probably would have. Right. Everyone knows that an ant-lion is basically a cross-breed between a lion and an ant.

Whoa. It's hard to imagine how it happened. Yeah. I don't want to presume too much, actually, in this one. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I'm going to answer the unspoken question. The father is the lion. Aye, aye, y, I think in that case, the answer definitely not very much to his den. The ant lion had a father with the face of a lion and a mother with the face of an ant.

although as far as I can tell they are ant-sized with the head of a lion and especially fierce it's like the original the fly yes it is like the original the fly and the reason I say

that it was probably widely known in the past is that the ant lion is the answer to one of St. Old Helms riddles in the 7th century and most of the answers to the riddles are like ordinary objects and animals

according to Cesario so that sort of proves that people would have just been like Oh, yeah, an ant-lion, a thing we all know about. Gregory the Great described Satan as Leo Rector-Vocator et Tigris et Mermacoleon. That's like a lion and a tiger and a lion ant. Oh, okay. But what are these? So maybe the big ants were ant lions.

Richard Barber thinks that they might have been honey badgers based on the way they're described and that the gold was honey. That would be a bit disappointing if that was true. Just pop in a pin of it, you barber for names. I'll pass. And so the same story that I told you appears in Herodotus, the Greek, so it must have reached the old English writers from, you know, Greek and Latin and that sort of thing. I haven't got the history in front of me in great detail, just fill in the blanks listener.

And he also wrote loads of inaccurate stuff about the mysterious East. But unlike the Blemies and all the other stuff, which is clearly just made up nonsense, But it does seem like this legend has its roots in the East, in India and Tibet. Or I guess as they call it there, here, they don't really call it the East, do they? From their point of view, it isn't. No, it's, I think Sinosphere. That sounds way more offensive, I think. It does, but it does.

I think that's more except, because everything else is based like the East, the Oriole, is basically based on someone making it up who isn't. from there. Well, I apologise for my Occidental language there. Nice. That was a good pun as well. Yeah, it was a pun on accidental. Yeah. Anyway, so this legend seems to exist or to have existed at some point

in India and Tibet. There's an ancient Sanskrit text. Oh, that's not Sinosphere then, sorry. Yeah, I did think it was not likely to be. It's the Indosphere. Okay, all right. There's an ancient Sanskrit text called the Mahabharata or something like that which mentions Pippilika gold.

So, do you remember I said? Lika was the Sanskrit word for ant. Yes. Again, apologies for my pronunciation here. And in that text, someone is given jars of ant gold, which I think supposedly was just very fine powdered gold, which kind of makes sense that ants gold will be quite small if we're talking about the little ants. August Franca, in his history of Western Tibet, 1995, talks about being in the village of

Kalazi, which is in India now, but I think would have been regarded as Tibet at some point in the past, I guess. Mm-hmm. And collecting the same stories about gold-digger ants. He writes, I was even shown the kind of ant, which according to the belief of the Kalatsi people, was the gold digger. It was a very tiny creature and far from the size of a dog or fox. But we must allow the story to have grown a little on its way from India to Greece.

And then Michael Paisal, a Frenchman, wrote a book in 1984 called Ants Gold. Michael Paisal. And he solved the mystery, or so he claimed. He traveled to a very hard-to-access part of... part of the world. I'm reading again from Deor Horde now. So he was a French ethnologist. He managed to slip into an area prohibited to foreigners due to its proximity to the tense ceasefire line between Pakistan and India. And what marvelous creature did Paisal behold in this prohibited region? The Marmot, an adorable furry brown rodent that makes it home, and which

weighing as much as 11 kilos or more, is the largest member of the squirrel family. Paisal claimed that the Dansar plain, a high plateau overlooking the river Indus, was home to marmots that in the process of digging out burrows flung gold-bearing sand into the air. Supposedly, long ago, the Brogpar, the people indigenous to the region, once collected this cold dust. Ah, I've just looked up marmot, just, and I've just been reminded of what a marmot looks like, and it's very cute. And they're adorable, James.

Yeah, I just send a new link. It's also, it's the rodent from the... the old meme, the turning around meme, looking surprised. Yes. That was a marmot. It's all capybiras this year, by the way. Yeah, it's all about capybara's these days. It's got big. Capitbara's a big in 2025.

Yes, and baby hippos. Really? You've not seen a picture of a baby hippo before? No, no. James, you haven't lived. No, I haven't. Well, as nice as that story is, I think there are real problems. according to Vadin later scholars

said that all of that was nonsense. Oh! Or at least filled with so many narrative errors geographical and cultural that they called his conclusions into question.

So we may never know which type of ant hordes gold in its ant hills. We do know how to get the gold out. You just need three camels. Yes, minimum three. One camel family. Camel family where you're really not attached to the dad.

You just need to ruin a camel family. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, with a deadbeat dad. I've been trying, I might have had a far away look at my eyes during this, during the recording because I've been trying to come up with a pun on that would be a sort of ant that you would keep money in. Because there's the joke, the kids joke, what's the biggest ant? A giant. Well, yeah, that or the elephant.

Oh, very good. Yeah. So what kind of ant would you keep? money in. I don't know. I haven't thought of it. I can't believe you reeled me in there and you haven't even got a pun. I just, well, that's why my faraway lookers not stop being far away, it's not got nearer.

What's the wealthiest ant, the self-reliant? Oh, that's nice. You know, really its wealth is in hard work more than gold. Well, that extremely disappointing investigation and pun aside. Go on. Would you like to score the gold hoard of the great ants? Yes, please. All right, my first category is supernatural.

Well, I think we're dealing with a cryptid here. At least one cryptid, possibly two cryptids. Yeah. We've got the lion ant. What, dogs? We've got dogs, yeah, explain that. Red and black dogs with the legs of grasshoppers. Aren't they hyenas?

I do like the idea of a little ant with a lion, little lion's head. Yeah, it might be so cute and funny, wouldn't it? That's quite cute. Quite cute and weird. And we've got the prognostications, the sunshine prognostications, the wind prognostications. That's kind of supernatural. Mm-hmm. And presumably, Tremulus the monk had been scared by something, and that's why his writing was

so like that. No doubt, he saw a ghost and then went all shaggy from scuba. do as a consequence. Or the Australian pizza chain, Eagle Boys. Yes. We've talked about before their logo looks like it's pronounced like that to me. I've just realised though if he if he was shared like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, it would have just been the old rector of the monastery pretending to be a ghost and

therefore not supernatural. Well, so you got an ant with a lion's head and then you pull that ant, that lion's head off. And it was an ant. And it was a different ant. It was Old Man Pissmire. So perhaps not the most supernatural episode we've ever done. What else? Honey Badgers, cute.

I feel like they're more cute than they are supernatural. They're not cute, honey buddies, aren't they? Famously really dangerous. Yeah, yeah, but that's what people like about them. All right. Marmots. Marmot. Marmots always as well get me confused because in Thundercats,

in some of the later episodes, Mumrah had a dog. which was called Marmutt, which was basically, it looked like a bulldog, looked like a grey bulldog. That doesn't sound adorable at all. No, it's horrible.

What was the point? Sorry, what was the question? Two. Time travelling Valkyrie, is that worth nothing? No, yeah, it's worth nothing. All right, I accept the two. Second category, names.

Yes, okay. And here's a real opportunity for you to give me five. here, James. It has to be five. It simply must be five. We got Emmett, Nermott, Pissmire, Pissant, Pippelika. All of them. All of the names. The sunshine and prognostication. By the exciting album. Forrestor. Was it someone that just, you know, they have the big letter at the start on those sort of old documents. Is that just scare him?

And then he's just For the rest of it Capi Gorgonius whale crea Yeah, those are the names of the ghosts in Pac-Man And of course, Clyde Yeah, absolutely five out of five I accept your five My third category, James, is

I am saying they are gold diggers Nice, very good A reference to popular and uncontroversial musical artist Don't Don't or do look up the news on that one Because they've got gold

digging ants James They got gold digging ants And I am saying they are Gold diggers You see Yes Yes

We should have signed a preen up With these blooming ant dog things Or I don't want to tell people I live their life Maybe we should never have married them They're a dog Everyone told me

They were a dog And I didn't believe them People told that ant and that lion that it wouldn't work out. And it did. They are in love, James. Look at their happy and terrifying children. They've now founded a chain of petrol stations across Italy.

Five. And my final category, he's off again. What's this one? Well, this category describes when people are going off on their own subject, for instance, me talking about the etymage of words. James, you talking about back to the future. Yes. It's flee from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Yeah, and playing his boss, we know. And also the writers are at this, the tremulous hand, just, you know, going off on one about these weird ants, even though nobody even asked. Nobody even mentioned ants. Yeah, definitely a five out of five for that one. I can't knock it. Oh, and I suppose Michael Paisal, as a sort of travel,

writing his travelogue, he literally was off. Yes, he went off on one. He knows some legends. His legends go to another school. You wouldn't know about them. yeah definitely five out five cannot knock it well thank you very much and again if anybody is a scholar of old english listening i'm just really sorry about all of the pronunciations and errors that i no doubt made but i i just wanted to talk about magic ants i'm a bit sorry about some of

the aspersions i might have cast upon those old english people yeah are you worried that you're going to be cancelled for saying a bad thing about someone who died a thousand years ago. Yeah, you never know. With our listeners, it is possible that the tremulous handstands will come out and tear you apart. It's like Swifties.

So, yes, we were, it was ants, James, the usual large dog-shaped ants. Of course, it was ants all the way down. Well, if anyone would like to hear bits that were cut out from that episode, I imagine there will be some. But if you want to hear it, it's at patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod where you can join us there. And you can also get access to the lawfolk discord to meet like-minded law folk. Thank you very much for all the people who already do support us. And a massive thank you to Joe, the editor, for this.

A giant thank you. Thank you very much, Joe. Giant, thank you. James, what do you call a psychic ant? Oh, I don't know. A clairvoyant. James, are you an Ed TV or a Truman show? Are you a boogs lifer or are you an Ants man?

I am a Truman show, but then I also am an Ants man. Ants. Because the Marxist themes were more explicit in ants, weren't they? Yeah, but... One of the ants says the workers are in control of the means of production. But Woody Allen is the main character. Yeah, if my memory serves correctly, it's a Woody Allen starring... Well, then, let's just watch A Bug's Life starring Kevin Spacey then.

And John Lassiter. Oh, no. As Harry the Mosquito. No.