Loremen Podcast - Loremen S7Ep12 - Byron's Ghosts

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

The Loremen were LIVE in Leicester, with a bit of bloomin' Byron. We took a squiz around Newstead Abbey, old Georgie's ancestral home. And James told the tale of one crafty Jack versus a witch. Thanks to all the lorefolk who came to the show! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠See Alasdair On Tour in 2026!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 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

Look, hello, men, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from Days of Yore, with me, Alastair Vickett King. And me, James Shakeshift. The audience of the Leicester Comedy Festival, 2026. There we go. Wow, okay. Welcome. I thought I'd done the fade-out mine, but I clearly did the stop the music dead, mine. Right then.

Should we get crack-in with some stories and stuff? Let's crack on with a story. We've got loads to do. Got a lot to get through it. We've got so many story. We've got two stories. Yeah. So we're going to begin with

Byron, Byron, Blumen Byron. Because we have slightly run out of Leicester-specific story, so we're expanding it to a sort of 50 to 60-bile radius. To take in the hauntings of Newsted Abbey. Yeah, wow. Now, I personally am already not bothered about Byron. Keep behind the curtain, James was reading Byron's poems on the train up here, and I could just hear him going, under his breath.

I believe that, obviously. Oh, yes, sorry. Sorry, children. Oh, sorry. Well, it was James that said it. I was simply relaying the information. Yeah, it's reported speech, so it's fine. but I genuinely was muttering swears under my breath and you're like, are you right? And I was like, yeah, I'm just reading a poem.

Don't worry, that comes up later. So, Blumen Byron. Is it because he's a poet? Probably. It's the most annoying form of writing. The least annoying poem is the limerick, though. Fair play to it. I do like a limerick.

You know where it's going. It's got a rhyme scheme and it's often funny. Or at the very least, rude, so fine. Any other poem, no thanks, buddy. So I don't know much about Byron. Do you know much about Byron? I don't even know his first name right now.

He was a... I've got a picture of him, I think, in the slides, let's see. There he is. With more forehead than he's normally depicted having. I don't know if you can see. That was his main seduction instrument, the foreheads. He would hypnotise... Faw! Look at him.

Lock up his sister. Oh, you know. Yes. A real hotty. Yeah, a real bad guy. They're very popular in Greece because he, well, he sort of helped them overthrow the Ottoman Empire by going there and being very enthusiastic and then dying. Okay. Not in battle, just during it, but still, I'm very heroic. I've done two out of three in Greece. I've been to Greece and I've been quite enthusiastic when in Greece. Yeah, you didn't help at all.

I didn't help with anything. No. No, no, no. But you survived, so no... Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I've got one up on Byron. What is his first name? Is he Bobby Byron? George. George, Byron. I want to say George. Okay. It's a name.

Nobody's contradicting me. Everyone knows him was Byron. I think he was Lord. I think his name was Lord Byron. I thought he had long floppy hair, though. He's got a little sort of Jude Law perm. Yes. Wait, wait, wait. Are you dropping Doudelaw law here?

Jude Law gets a perm. Who knew? Well... How do you know this? Well, okay, a curly, a curl. He's got a tight curl. In some films, Jude Lord's curls are tighter than other films. So I'm... Is this slander to say someone's...

Got a perm? He's not illegal to see a man's hair, James. Right now, at the time of recording. You can't see anything these days. You can't see a man's hair. So, Newstead Abbey, that was the ancestral home of the Byron's. It was... Don't be...

Oh. There it is. As depicted in once a week in 1860. Once a week, volume two, a lovely engraving. And what I like about this drawing the people online, I don't think you can see it, is it's really got vibes of, you are standing outside an abbey. roads lead north, south, east and west. Lord Byron and his half-sister are here.

Quit, quit, quit. How is it volume two? So that's January 7th. If it's once a week, volume two. Yes, so Newster Abbey. So it was originally an Augustinian monastery. Did I say that one right? Yeah, monastery.

I've broken it down to August in Ian. Monastery, which was founded by Henry II as a penance for his part in the murder of Thomas Beckett, which is the guy's name also known as Thomas Beckett. Better known as Thomas Beckett. Yeah. But if people forget his name halfway through, Thomas Beckett. Perfect. You have a similar problem because your actual name is Alist Beckett King, isn't it?

So, and the original, the monastery was closed down by Henry the 8th. It's described as being closed down, which makes me imagine that they had a big sale at the end. And those sort of big neon signs, like half-priced monk stuff. And I tried to write a bit about that, and I realized, monks don't have any stuff. Yeah. There's no monk stuff. It's famous, it's kind of the purpose of them, isn't it? But also, I do think they had quite a lot of good stuff. I do think that's kind of...

Well, the wigs. Well, I think that's the reason that Henry VIII closed down. Not to be, I'm just being boring about this, but like he was stealing all the wealth of the church when he... Oh, when he dissolved. When he dissolved the monasteries into buildings he owned. Ah. And all the stuff in them became his. Like a sort of a thie Alka-Seltzer.

And irreligious. Cool. Okay. Well, so, and ultimately the Abbey was sold to Sir John Byron, who is Byron Prime in this one. He's the original. What relation is he to Lord Byron, our favourite Byron? Our Byron, not my favourite Byron. Not all Byrons.

But this, that actually is most Byron's, to be honest. If he's the first, the Byron that we saw earlier is the sixth Byron. And this Byron was 1540. And it's like a great, great nephew, because there's a bit where some Byron's fell out with each other. And that was that Byron's uncle, I'm going to get a better way of referring to him soon. The fifth one, he was badder, madder and dangerouser to Noah to war than sixth Byron. So I want to talk about Byron 5, who is also known as Devil Byron. And so in 1765, Devil Byron was put on trial for killing William.

William Chowarth. And I Google William Chowarth. And just for disambiguation, you don't want to be confused with the 1800s cricketer who's called, confusingly, William Musters Choweth Musters.

Wow. He was William so musters, they mustersed him twice. I don't know. His middle name was also his last name. And I double checked it in at least two places because that's a double. He wasn't just saying his name into an echo he came then.

It could have been coming back as he was saying it. Or like I'd sort of forgetful James Bond. Or a bad spy. I'm William Musters. Chawath Musters. Forget the William bit. Now there's a lot of confusing names. So what happened? Devil Byron managed to get out of the fact that he'd killed the other William Choweth, not the cricketer.

Do you want the picture of William Choweth? Oh, yes. Yeah, here's a lovely picture of him. He's having a lean and he's with his favourite dog and black triangle. He was never without that triangle. That was in his top three triangles. Devil Byron got out of sort of being charged for killing that guy because he said they were just having a duel. And that's why he killed him.

Boys will be boys. Yeah, so whilst he was. was a waiting trial in the tower, Horace Walpole, who people will remember from the Lawman extended universe. Yes. He's fully wooden outfit, as I recall. Yes. He had the wooden cravat, Strawberry Hill House, so got told a lot of stories, basically. He wrote that all sorts of stories were being revived or invented about Devil Byron. There was an accusation that Devil Byron had murdered a coachman and paid off the family. There was an accusation that Devil Byron

had murdered his own wife, which is undermined by the fact he then goes on holiday with that wife. It's the perfect cover story. And American author, Washington Irving. Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow? Yeah.

Sleepy Hollow. He had some, he came up with some scurrilous rumours. What do you imagine his voice to sound like? Irving Washington, I would imagine a sort of New England kind of... Yeah, okay. Go for something like that. Oh, okay, I'll do that quite. He intentionally let his house fall into disrepair because of his son's disobedience.

And that's why I don't pick up my socks around the house. So I've got naughty children. So I'm going to let this house fall into... Yeah, the abbey did, by the time it had gotten into the possession of Byron 6, the one we know, the one from the poet Byron, it was dilapidated. There were holes in. If Byron basically just had like one room that he could live in and he was, he ended up selling it to his friend ultimately because it was just in such a state of disrepair. I just, I mean, it's massive. It's absolutely massive. and Byron had a menagerie.

I just feel like if you live with a bear and your house is a mess, you can't be like, yeah, great, great grandfather's fault. Yeah, he let it fall and disrepair. What about that bear that's over there? It's like, don't look at the bear. I think the bear...

It's definitely not because of the bear. Yeah, I don't want a bear shame, but I think the bear might have done some of that dilapidation. Yeah. They're not known for tidying up after themselves. And there were no woods for it to go, if you know what I mean. And I just left my picnic basket.

Sorry, Alistair, you missed Benaz. I'm sorry, piccanic baskets. Thank you. It's like a Thomas Beckett, Thomas O'Ebecke. It's a pickeronic basket, actually, is the proper one. He mounted the sword that killed Chowarth on the wall of his bedroom. Sorry, Christopher Walken. Yeah.

I'm walking here. He spent his youth. organizing orgies at Newstead and lady years worshipping Satan I don't know about organising as well

that's just was he just in an admin position just administrative role someone's got to order the masks that's true yeah yeah yeah I'm not going to continue that riff sorry

and sometimes riffs just end in all day he trained a swarm of crickets to race all over his body. What? Yes. No, no. I want to say again in the normal, more normal voice, in my normal voice. In old age, devil Byron trained a swarm of crickets to run all over his body.

No, he did. That didn't happen. 100% no. A swarm of crickets? Yes. Oh, is that not the collective term? And what is, why is? To run all over his, but why?

I don't know. Just for evil purposes. Yeah. Okay, a wicket of crickets. No, I don't know what the collective term is. But basically, yeah, a bunch of crickets. And when he died, they all ran away, unsurprisingly. Party's over.

Yeah, exactly. No more orgies to admin. And he wept for there were no more orgies to administrate. Sorry. It's just the most pathetic evil thing I've ever heard of. Just lying in bed in your old age, lying in bed in your old age, covered in cricket, it's just been like, impressed.

No. No, I'm not scared of that. That isn't evil. It's just weird. I'm into the devil and stuff. Look at my crickets. The thing, what happened after he managed to get away with killing that guy? Which is evil?

Yes. Compared to having crickets on your body. Now, this phrase has some ambiguity in it, which, if you know much about some of the Byron's bad stuff. So he planned a holiday with his wife and sister, Isabella, Lady Carlisle. And I've looked, checked, they are two different people. Yeah. Okay. So his sister, Isabella, Lady Carlisle, he fell out with quite badly because she got embroiled in some sort of scandal.

not murdering someone. Just, I think she pretended her German boyfriend was like a royal and that was it. Yeah. I think he just was jealous that she was getting some of the scandal news.

And so he refused to talk to her and she followed him saying, oh, speak to me, my lord. And to this day, her ghost, haunts, news did. And at night you can hear that cry echoing down to passages saying, oh, speak to me,

My lord. It's scary, right? Yeah, very spooky. Devil Byron's ghost rides around the estate on a coach and horses in stormy weather, and he's chased by that sister on horseback. So if you're there at night in a storm, and that's what you see, just so you know, that's what's going on. It's just family stuff.

Let them sort it out. There's another ghost there, which is the Black Friar, which is, I guess, something from the Abbey Times. and that is what Byron, the poet Viren, wrote about in the poem Don Juan. Don Juan? Don Juan. I think, I remember hearing that in the rhyme scheme of the poem,

it's like Don Juan. Because he didn't know. He'd just seen it read. Well, actually, there's a sign of intelligence that you'd just seen it written down and hadn't actually spoken to anyone Spanish. Sorry for the shaming Lord Byron. Only on that one.

Not for the rest. So, a monk, a raid. How did Byron sound, do you reckon? Christopher Walken. Can we have Joe Pesci, please? What do you think I'm a poet? You think I'm doing an ABBA rhyme scheme? I mean, I'll rhyme things for you?

That is not Joe Pesci. A monk. A raid in cowl and beads, and dusky garb appeared, now in the moonlight, and now lapsed in shade, with steps that trod as heavy, yet unheared. Because that rhymes with a peered. His form you may trace, but not his face, tis shadowed by his cowl. But his eyes may have seen from the folds between, and they seem of a parted sarer.

Soul. How does cowl, and this is why I was swearing on the train, how... Cowell and soul... I think he did know it was Don Juan. He just didn't care about rhyming. But cowl and soul do sound very... There is at least an assonance there.

Maybe if you don't say it in Joe Pesci's voice, it rhymes more. But I didn't. But Doctor, I am Joe Pesci. I've got to say. James, I thought that I was not only quite a good poem, but a good reading from you. I was trying to be sarcastic. It came out really sincere. That's like with me and singing.

If I sing sarcastically, it sounds alright. If I actually try it, oh, awful. Really bad. And could you demonstrate that now? You're what? Are you sure? I'll sing the hits. Can you sing the pop hit Downtown?

Sarcastically. Sarcastically. please. Downtown. Things will be great when you're downtown. Everyone's waiting for you. Anyway, there's also a ghost

of a white lady. And this is described by he's already appeared once, Washington Irving. And he says that Byron's cousin saw this white lady walk through a couple of walls. But do remember, he's the guy

that said the thing about the crickets earlier on. So pinch of salt with that one. And this white lady said to be a relative of the Byron's who secretly married her father's dogkeeper. That's it. There's no further explanation. Anyway.

And the last ghost is O.G. Byron, Byron Prime, who is quite a stout guy with a big beard. And at midnight, he steps out. of his portrait in the Great Hall and goes and sits next to the fire and reads an old book. Oh, wow. It's quite a nice life, I think.

Yeah, not a bad life. Yeah, not a bad life. So those are the various ghosts of Noosted Abbey. And this next story, James. Tell me this one comes from Leicestershire. Ooh, nearly. Okay.

This is also from the Legends and Folklore of Nottinghamshire book, which was gifted to me. Thank you very much to the lawfolk. But this is a pretty close. This place is even closer, right? Remston. You heard of a Remston?

Am I saying it right? Well, have you not been to the website, Remstonvillage.org.com. Because I have. What nuggets of joy did you find there? Well, I'll tell you, yeah, a bit of information about Remston. This comes from the booklet,

Remston 2000, which makes it sound like a robot of some kind. but it is a village by Peter Twombly. No. A man who may be alive and therefore we will not pass comment on how funny his name is. Okay. Thank you for your work, Peter Twombly.

I think there's a CBBee series about him. Did I put an extra bee in CBBBs? I think I did. I put too many bees in CBBBs. Almost a thousand years ago, Twombly writes, our village name was recorded in a number of different ways. Ramps tune, Reapstern and Remplston and many others. I like Remplestone the most.

And much conjecture has been put forward as to its true origins by scholarly historians. The Oxford Dictionary of Place Names considers the name derived from Remppistun. In Old English, Tun refers simply to a dwelling place. The Remps or Remppes part is translated to mean the place of the wrinkled one. Ewe. Does Twombly have the answer as to who that really? one might be, not really. He says, perhaps referring to a character or possibly the contour of our village, the truth is somewhat shrouded in the mists of time on this matter. But perhaps, perhaps we will

work that out. The only other thing I know about Rembleston is that it was home, that it was home to the queen of the gleaners. The queen of the gleaners? The glean queen, yeah. So this is from notes and queries. Is that cleaners? Glean. Gl, gl. Gl. I'm going to translate Clearly for the mic. Gleaders. Gleaders. Gleaders. So this is from notes and queries, 1860.

Volume 10, issue 250, a good one. I'm sure you'll agree. They had a big celebration, sort of a harvest festival type thing where someone was crowned Queen of the Gleoners. The Clean Queen. The Gleen Queen would parade through the town and their kids would celebrate

and then she would set out her laws. And this is the 1860 speech the Queen gave. I, oh, what voice would you like the queen? Queen of the Gleannes. What accent should the Queen of the Gleoners have? I'm nottinghamshire accents. Robert De Niro, you say. Yeah, that's what I heard.

I don't think I can do De Niro either. I am queen today. No, that's, I've done, I'm doing the Godfather. I'll do it as the Godfather. You do as the Godfather. Because it's about, you know, it's an important day for him, and it's important. You come to me on the day I'm a queen gleaning.

I am. I am queen today, though in a very lowly state and for a short time. You have made me queen of the gleaners till the harvest is finished. I will try to rule by right and in kindness, and I trust your obedience that I may not have to exercise my power. I will now tell you my laws, which shall father be made known by the crier of the village. First, my attendant shall ring a bell each morning

when there are fields to be gleaned. Second, half the... past eight o'clock shall be the hour of meeting at the end of the verge, and I will then accompany you to the field. A lot of this is sounding like orgy admin at this point. Thirdly, should any of my subjects enter an ungleamed field without being led by me, their corn will be forfeited, and it will be bestrewed.

Ooh. So I pretty much understood all of it, apart from the word glean. I looked it up. Does anybody know what gleaning is? in this context? Because we know the modern meaning of glean as in to sort of gather little pieces of information. Just the modern meaning is gather little pieces of information.

But its old meaning, which is pretty much the same as that, is after the harvest, when the main crops are taking it away, basically the poor people are allowed to go in the field and just pick up the bits that are left. So just like you would gather little bits of information, you would glean the, you know, you'd get the bits of vegetables that had fallen by the way. So the poor people would elect.

their queen and they'd go and basically scavenge what hadn't quite made it into the harvest. But you can't glean before the gleaned queen. Never gleaned before the gleaned queen. Yeah. Until the glean queen gives you gleaning permission. Yeah. It is forbidden to glean. It's mean to glean before the glean queen is clean.

Yeah, so that's a little bit of background to this, obviously a village steeped in folklore. But James, you've got a proper fairy tale from it. I have. It's from Legends of Nottinghamshire by Pat Mayfield. And I think I've got a cover for this. Now, the people at home are going to miss out on this, but I can only describe it.

So basically, it's just a regular homoerotic archery scene. Like most folklore books, they choose something like that for the cover. You've got Noel Edmunds there. Yeah. He's not well. He's not well in bed. A sickly Noel Edmunds.

And he's being sort of cradled and cupped from behind by... Is it Jeff Capes? It does look like Jeff Capes. I think it's Jeff Capes. So in Legends of Nottinghamshire, Pat Mayfield tells of a legend of a witch from Remston. And this witch would go around extorting food from people. She was...

Wait for cleaning time, but she wouldn't. No, she was kind of a good fella, a bad good fella. Like she was going around She was doing shakedown. Yeah, exactly. She'd be like, you know, the nice farm yard you got here. Be a shame of someone to put a curse on it.

Nice cow you got there. Be a real shame. It's a real shame. It's not quite to spoil. Exactly. And she goes to Jack's house where Jack lives with his elderly widow mother. And she saw...

I feel like I've heard of this guy before from like nine other stories. Yes. All they've got is a pail of butter. I'm going to say that again. All they've got is a pail of buttermilk. Just a pail of butty milk. Just a pail of butty milk.

Just all we got is a pail of butty milk. Mother is a pail of buttermilk, yeah? Our heritage. And the thing is, that buttermilk, Alistair, is their only source of income. I'm sorry, James. Even in the older days, a pail of buttermilk is not a source of income.

Well, that's why people couldn't buy a house in those days because they were blowing all their cash on buttermilk. No, what happened was generous neighbours would give Jack the butter milk left over from the butter production procedure. And then Jack would... So he gleaned butter, basically. He did glean buttermilk.

Or milk. Yes. The Latin. He took it and would sell it to farmers for animal feed. So that's how they made money out of it. They'd flip in the buttermilk, basically. But if the witch took it, they got nothing. And so he refused.

He flatly refused. The witch, she loses it. She is not happy with this at all. She says to Jack, right, I'm going to take you in my witch's sack. So he's laughing at that. And then, but all of quick as a flash, he's inside the witch's sack. And he's being carried down the road. And the witch is basically carrying him on her back down the road,

back to her witch's cottage. If she can zap him into a sack, she could just zap the buttermilk into her own container. That's a good point. So why is she doing this? It's annoying you brought this up so early in the story. Carry on, though. So, yeah, he's on his way back to the...

He's on his way in her sack, on the way back to the cottage. And then the witch all of a sudden remembers there was a pot of lard that she'd extorted from a different farmstead. She's left it back in Remston. She's going to go back there. So she pops jack in the sack down on the verge where there's a couple of hedge cutters who are cutting back. the thorny hedges.

A bit worried about this witch's diet of lard and buttermilk. It's very dairy heavy. Look, it's all she can extort. So, and she says to the two fellas who are cutting this hedge that they need to look after a bag but don't look in it, all right?

And she goes off. The hedge cutters are pretty nervy because they know this lady and they know not to mess with the bag but then all of a sudden they hear a noise from the sack. They hear the sound of talking. It's Jack.

He says, help me out. Let me out of this sack. And what we'll do, we'll fill it with the thorns you've cut off the bush instead. And I'll give you some buttermilk. So he is, you know, he's quite a big deal. You know, he wants to get out of here with his life. He's giving up some of his buttermilk. And the two men, they do it.

They let him out. They fill the sack with thorns. He runs away. The witch comes back, picks it up. And she feels the thorns pricking her. And she says, in the style of, uh, huha. Jack.

Angelina Jolie. He's got some pins about thee lad. There was when he played a pirate one time. And then she gets back to a cottage. She opens up the sack. It's full of thorns. She's furious. She says, Jack, tomorrow I will catch and boil thee.

The next day, she goes back to Jack's place. Same deal happens. Jack says no, she gets angry, pops him in the sack, carries him off home. Halfway home, she remembers. She's left some egg. back in Remston. She pops him down next to some builders.

James, this is almost exactly what happened the day before. I don't know if you've noticed. But this story appears to be following the formula of some kind. I know. And then he calls out to the builders. Let me out. We'll fill it up with stones. They do.

The witch is carrying home. She goes, oh, Jack, your bones do crack. And then she gets home, opens it up. He's blum in stones. She's furious. And she says, Who are? Jack. Tomorrow.

Whoa. Are you doing Keanu Reeves now? Yeah, I'm basically going through the cast of devil's advocate. Whoa. Tomorrow, I'll catch thee and boil thee. So, next day, same thing happens. She goes, let do, do, do, no way, putting the sack.

Get, this time. Look at them were listening, James mimmed the entirety of that. This time, she doesn't stop on the way. She takes him all the way home She's learned from her mistakes Very smart And she says It's the rule of three

I'm going to cook you and boil you I'm just going to pop into the garden And get some herbs Now you may be a little ahead of me Is he still in the sack at this point Yes he's still in the sack But the witch has gone out to the garden To get some herbs

So the sack is unattended Yeah Yeah he gets out the sack And he fills it with her best crockery and he skiddaddles and then the witch comes back in unnecessary to fill it with anything

at this point or this is bitter but bitter yet sweet revenge because the witch picks up the sack to tip Jack out and make the soup and she tips all her wonderful crockery all over the floor

she's furious and Jack gets away and she kind of learned you know what this Jack is pretty smart I'm going to leave him be. So she decided to not extract... She decided to not exact her revenge because it was the end of the story.

Exactly right, yes. So she just let him off, even though that's really annoying. What I would get the pot, go in, put the herbs in, then go get the jack. And then just put him straight in. Yeah.

But yeah, no, she didn't. She gave up at that point, yeah. And we have an illustration, I think, of that final scene from... Is that from... What was the title of... Pat Mayhew's legend? Yes.

Legends of Nottinghamshire. And it's a very 70s book, and this is a very 70s illustration. I don't know if you can see, Jack has Kevin Keegan's perm. It's just like very 70s. Is that as perm slander? No, he definitely had a poem.

He was officially permed, okay. Yeah, he's skedaddling over the roof. For some reason. And there's lovely detail. There's a hand of glory in the picture there. It's replete with folkloric nastiness. There is a satanic sideboard. And on the satanic sideboard, you've got the devil themselves

and an inverted cross and an inverted pentangle, it looks like. The devil's sideboard. And presumably that's where she kept Biawzebub's crockery. I didn't mean to add a sound effect. It was good, though. It worked. Spooky. It's like the devil was here doing the washing up. So I think it's about ready for scores times, right?

It certainly is score times. Are we going to ask these guys their opinions? I think we should put it to the audience by way of applause. Yes. Okay, so first category. Yes, what are you doing first? Supernatural? The witch was very supernatural?

Yeah, she was supernaturally, you know, stuck in her ways. She did teleport a guy into a bag three times. Yeah, but you're right about the buttermilk thing. She just teleport the buttermilk into her tummy. or when she's... Or, you know, she doesn't need to go back to get the pot of Lard. Yeah.

She just teleporting. Yeah. I don't know what the rules are. We just don't know what the rules are with this witch is teleportation skills. The world's building on this story is atrocious. Oh, but the characters are so rich. How does the magic system work?

Mm. Supernatural, there were some ghosts, right? There was. The white lady... That was Washington Irving. The friar, the black friar, that got the poem. There was the fifth Byron, Byron 5? It comes out of the paintings. No, that was original.

O.G. Byron. He came out of the paintings, had a nice little sit-down and a read. Not very frightening. Your own measuring system, James, is things are more supernatural when they're scary, and just sitting down and having a little quiet read is not frightening. No, that's true. Oh, yeah. Oh, it could have been reading.

a very scary book. Yeah, like, I could have been reading a scary book like Jaws or something. He could have been reading Jaws. Easily.

I mean, these are all great points. I don't know if they're helping my points for Supernatural. Well, it sounds like the audience is behind you on Supernatural. Five ghosts. Yes, because we got, we've got Byron Five,

his sister. We've got Byron Prime, Blackfriar White Lady. Yes. Oh, should we give a... Well, let's put it to the crowd. I mean, I don't reckon it's a five. I think it's a...

I think it's a four. Do we think it's a four? By the way, I think that might be a three, actually. Whoa, whoa. Okay, do we think it's a five? Oh. Fewer, but louder people. And that is how politics works.

Yeah. Second category? Let's go for naming. Naming. Now, don't mark me down for all the Byrons, because there were three minimum, and there were an inferred three, further ones. Yeah, yeah, definitely. There were other Byron's in between. Yeah.

But we had the queen of the glean queen. The queen of cleaning. The queen of the gleaned queen. That sounds great. It was devil, Byron. Yeah, devil Byron is good. We had the place of the wrinkled one. Yes. Good name. William Musters char with musters. That's what I said. It's like that buffalo thing. That sentence that's made out a buffalo said again and again. Charles William Musters char with musters. You're familiar with Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo. We've said it before.

We don't have time to explain. And we don't know how to explain. That's what makes us such great crime fighters. We don't get results. We don't know how to get results. No. We don't even know what the rules are. We're not actually employed by the police.

Yeah. Crime fighters. Yeah, we got... Paul Tombley. Paul Tomley. Peter Twombly. Peter Twombly. We don't know.

We don't know where he's. We do know where he's from. He's from Repston. Yes. And, yeah, the other name, Remplstiltsdstone, skon. Yeah, that's what it said. Yes.

Rampestune, Reapston and Rempleston. Rimpleston. Yeah. Oh, come on. Okay, I'll say three. Okay, it's nothing for three. It's nothing for three. Four?

Oh, there's only for four, but I think you might be a... I don't want to... Jinks it, James. Back. Five? Rampleston. Rampelson doing a lot of heavy lifting there, I'm thinking. Wow.

Now then, let the cowls decide. All right, now we all enjoy the call back to previous lawmen category, Let the Cows decide. I don't feel like the audience really got on board with the cowl, and it came in a bit where you were really unenthusiastically reading a poem. Yeah. I just don't see it carrying a huge amount of weight in the room. Okay, so

Great question How many cowls were there? For the tape, the question was how many cows were there? Well, one. We might infer that there had been more cowls when it was a monastery. Yeah, before it got the big cowl sale, closing cowl sale.

Yeah. All cowls must go. Cows, cows, cows. Two cows for the price of cowl. By now, paying nothing for six months. Yeah. Cowls. Mm.

Buy now, cowl later. Cowl, don't run. No, the other way around. Run, don't cow. What we're testing is here, can you boost a score simply by repeating a word during the scoring section?

Yeah, three. Oh. Do I hear two? It's not looking good. Do I hear, let's just check. Five. Derisive laughter for five. Wow.

It's four. That was just rubbing it in, I was still. That's actually cruel. Then, uh, do I hear one? Well, whoever suggested it up in the chat, I hope you feel terrible. Not even everyone. Clap some people sullied their ballot paper.

Is that the word sully? I don't know. That suggests that you've done something really unpleasant. What is the real word? Spoil. Spoil. Put to sully it. bang, bang, bang, what are you doing in there?

It's not even a door. It's just two sides. That's why they had to get rid of the doors. He sullied the whole ballot box, actually. It's a secret ballot, but don't take it too far. Be reasonable. Category the fourth. Final category.

Isn't it byronic? Don't you think? When all you want is a spoon and you've seduced your half-sister. Yeah. Isn't it Byronic? Isn't it Byronic? All you want is some buttermilk.

And now your crockery's broken. Yep. Byrony. I think the issue is, we don't know what Byronic means. So we're not sort of saying, isn't it byronic? We're genuinely asking. Yeah. Isn't it any of this byronic?

It would be Byronic to... kill someone and say... It's like being killed in a jewel? Yeah. When all you wanted to do is look at a triangle. Don't bring a triangle to a gunfight. That's what we learned from that guy. And not your favourite one.

It's going to get sullied. All right. I'm not even going to count up to five. I'm just going to come straight in at five. Yeah, I think so too. Okay. for the final category, isn't it byronic? Do I hear five? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Lester. That was a lot of fun. I hope you enjoyed it too. I think give yourselves a big round of applause, and thank you very much for joining us. I think I might be playing music now. This is Alastair. I am not able to refer. record the intro and outro for this episode because I am on the road like Jack Carowac in Cordyroy. I'm in a Norwich Alleyway recording this, which is not where I normally record. Come and see my few remaining tour dates. The tour is called King of Crumbs and there's a few shows

left. There's a last few tickets remaining for the two London tour dates. Why don't you buy those? It would be nice to sell those shows out because it takes a same amount of effort to do the show irrespective of how many people are in the audience. So please bear that in mind and buy all the tickets. Yeah, I think that's it. Cheers, James. Just edit this and make it sound like I wasn't in an alley in Nodge. Thank you. Allister, the audience is too smart for us. We need to get out of here.

Just to let the people on stream now, the heckles are coming from our friends, the bikers, who have been basically bullying us at all the live shows. Reving their hogs. I'm