Dec 9, 2016
Our main story in this episode is The Curse of the Royal Soil: A Marvellous Tale of the Sleeping Princess, the Watcher of Flowers and the Unfortunate Messenger and the Hardships that Befell and how things came to Pass in the End. Preceded by a couple of shorts: first, Mr McGregor gets his comeuppance, and then we meet the King and the Golden Pig.
Music: Creepy – Bensound.com.
James: Here are some Totally Made Up Tales brought to you by the magic of the internet.
Andrew: "Have you seen my cup? It's full of
coffee and I want it." Mr. McGregor was a bastard. Everyone hated
him, particularly the morning when he fired half his staff.
Subsequently, the remaining staff plotted to kill him in a devious
fashion.
"We could booby trap his car."
"Too risky. What if it caught fire and blew up
on us?"
"We could tamper with his swivel chair."
"Too fraught. We've no way to ensure he sits on
it."
"We could knife him."
"Yes! That's the simplest solution."
So, one day, Mr. McGregor was reading the
newspaper while someone fetched his coffee, and Mavis from Accounts
snuck up behind him and knifed him where it hurt. The police
determined the cause of death was accidental consumption of a
knife, and no one was punished.
The end.
James: Once upon a time, back when things like
this happened, a golden pig was due to be sold at market.
Andrew: The king heard of it and immediately went
to buy it as a gift for his wife.
James: He was opportunistic and wily, far more
cunning than your everyday royal.
Andrew: The previous king was a fool, and had
died a poor man's death and thus he was cunning but had no money.
How was he to obtain the pig?
James: First, he took a sandwich from the royal
table and traded it for a cockerel.
Andrew: The cockerel, in turn, he traded for an
abacus.
James: The abacus he swapped for a cart.
Andrew: For the cart, he removed both wheels and
swapped the parts for a barrel of ale and two goats.
James: Two weeks later, he had enough finally for
the golden pig.
Andrew: But alas, it had been sold to a
merchant.
James: Who should it belong to? The king, who as
king, naturally felt he had some claim over the nicer things in the
land, even though he was so poor, or the merchant who had bought it
fairly at market?
Andrew: There was only one way to decided the
dispute: through a traditional fiddle contest.
James: The day of the fiddle day dawned bright
and crisp, and the common folks started running around, excited by
the prospects of the contest ahead.
Andrew: The merchant rose early and tuned his
fiddle.
James: The king, meanwhile, slept in 'til noon,
trusting in his luck.
Andrew: The referee declared that they would
begin with shanties and both played vigorously. Victory fell to the
merchant.
James: The second round was jigs and one after
another, both men played with gusto, but once more, the merchant
was victorious.
Andrew: Finally came waltzes, and here the king
had the edge for he was naturally in three parts, as many monarchs
are.
James: With the waltz going on in the background,
the populous was swept up in dance and the pig danced away too.
Andrew: The king was declared the loser, but
having learned the waltz, he couldn't complain.
And now: The Curse of the Royal Soil: A
Marvellous Tale of the Sleeping Princess, the Watcher of Flowers
and the Unfortunate Messenger and the Hardships that Befell and how
things came to Pass in the End.
Once upon a
time, in a faraway land, there lived a woman in a cottage.
James: She had lived there all of her life and
before her, her mother and before her and before her, back as far
as the villagers around her could remember.
Andrew: She was renowned, far and wide, for her
wonderful talent of growing flowers.
James: She did not grow flowers in the way that
you or I would. There was never a hint of pruning or grooming or
watering or feeding.
Andrew: She was an exponent of the now-forgotten
and no longer taught art of flower watching.
James: She would gather herself, sitting on the
ground and with an intense look of concentration upon her face,
will forth flowers to erupt from the ground in front of her.
Andrew: The flowers that she grew were
beautifully fragrant, colourful, attractive, alluring,
bewitching.
James: All through the kingdom, she was known for
this, and much sought after, for her flowers could bring couples
together, could enable them to conceive and could, in some cases,
heal even the most ghastly sickness.
Andrew: Anybody experiencing drama, passion,
confusion or loss in their life would surely want her flowers in
their time of need to comfort them and to bring them through to
safety.
James: In times long past, the flower watchers
had been a redoubtable sect, many of whom went into battle for
their kings and queens, but these days, there is only her left.
Andrew: One day, while hard at work in her garden
raising flowers, a man came down the lane leading to her house,
riding a fast horse.
James: She could tell from the way that the horse
was panting and blowing air through its nostrils that this man had
ridden long, far and indeed hard to get here to her.
Andrew: Her keen eyesight detected that he was in
the livery of a royal footman, someone coming to see her from the
palace. Something must be afoot with the royal family.
James: The messenger arrived at her door, swung
down from his horse and prostrated himself in front of her.
"His majesty, the king, requests that you come
at once to assist his daughter, the princess."
Andrew: "But what is wrong with the princess?"
she asked, "I must know the sickness that I am being asked to
cure."
James: "Nobody can tell," said the messenger, and
indeed, it was true. For the princess had fallen into a deep coma
and although many curatives had been tried, many people had been
consulted and even the greatest magic had been attempted, nothing
had been able to rouse her from her slumber.
Andrew: "Very well," said the flower-watcher,
gathering herself together. And, mounting the horse behind the
messenger, they rode back to the palace.
James: As their horse approached the capital
city, the woman could see far and wide the signs of grieving within
the kingdom.
Andrew: The princess was a popular figure and
people were beside themselves with sadness and worry that she
should have been taken sick so close to the eve of her 18th
birthday.
James: Flags were flown at half mast, many people
wandered through the streets weeping openly, and when they reached
the palace gates, they were received at once by the king.
Andrew: "Ah, I have a great sorrow in my heart,"
said the king, "my daughter, my beloved daughter lies sick and
surely you can bring her to life again."
James: The plant-watcher was shown to the
chambers of the princess where already all around her bed had been
placed planters full of soil, ready for her to do her work.
Andrew: "Leave me in peace," she said, "I must
have peace to concentrate. I shall raise a bed of fine roses and
the scent will surely wake your daughter from her slumber as we
pass it under her beautiful nose."
James: And so, as the rest of them excused
themselves, she sat on the floor at the foot of the princess's bed
and started to concentrate.
Andrew: The minutes passed, the hours passed, the
days passed, and when one full week had gone by, the first red rose
begun to open its bud and the petals spread wide, releasing their
scent into the air.
James: The plant-watcher opened her eyes and
smiled and looked at the princess lying on the bed.
Andrew: She took the red rose and passed it
gently across the princess's face, taking great care not to scratch
the royal brow with any of the thorns.
James: The princess twitched in her sleep, but
did not rouse.
Andrew: The wise flower-watcher immediately knew
that all was not as it seemed. She returned to the anxiously
waiting king and queen and said to them, "your majesties, I fear
that there is something that you are not telling me.
James: It is clear to me that the princess is
held back within her childhood and so a beautiful rose in the soil
of the place that she grew up should indeed have roused her."
Andrew: At that, the king turned to his wife and
receiving a barely perceptible nod from her, said, "ah, there is a
sad tale that few people know but that you can be entrusted with in
our hour of need.
James: The princess did not grow up within these
walls, but in a faraway castle owned by her father, my brother.
Andrew: He died tragically in the civil war and
after that, I adopted her and since then, the castle has lain empty
on the edge of a desolate marsh on a windswept coast looked after
only by an elderly caretaker."
James: "Very well," said the flower-watcher, "you
must send at once a messenger to this castle, for the only way to
bring the princess back to you is using flowers grown in the soil
of her childhood."
Andrew: And so it was that the same messenger,
the fastest rider in the king's forces, was sent out to ride to the
very farthest edge of the kingdom across the desolate marsh to the
windswept coast where the abandoned castle stood.
James: As he crested the last hill before the
marsh, he saw the castle just peeking over the edge of the
horizon.
Andrew: And, as the miles of marshland passed
under the hooves of his horse and the castle grew larger and
closer, it seemed to him to be a place of great desolation.
James: Dismounting, he was met at the castle
walls by an old man.
Andrew: "Ah, you'll be the messenger then," said
the old man.
James: "I am here on an urgent mission from the
king," said the messenger, "I must have —"
Andrew: "Yes, yes, you must have, you must have.
Come, come first. There is no hurry here, young man. You must be
hungry and your horse needs water."
James: So saying, the messenger followed the old
man inside and as he did, he could not help but notice that the
beds that normally should be teeming with flowers were barren and
empty.
Andrew: And the vegetable garden too was terribly
overgrown, the orchard, in fact, everywhere that plants grew was a
mess.
James: After stabling and watering his horse, the
old man led the messenger into the great hall where he put down in
front of him a strange meal of berries and fruit.
Andrew: "Let me tell you a tale, young man," he
said as the messenger tucked hungrily into the strange dishes in
front of him. "Let me tell you a tale of this castle and how it
came to be abandoned.
James: I was a much younger man when I first saw
this castle. I was carrying the sad news of the death of its lord
and master.
Andrew: It was during the time of the civil war,
a sad chapter in our nation's history when two royal brothers
fought for control of the land.
James: I was the last bearer of the sad tidings
of the death of the prince and when I told his wife, she was sore
stricken with grief.
Andrew: So badly did this news affect her, so
deep was her grief that before my very eyes, she slit her own
throat. The blood ran across the courtyard of the castle and seeped
into its very soil.
James: She had been buried barely a day when the
new king's men came to take the princess away to the capital, and I
remained here along with the last of the old family's
retainers.
Andrew: From that day onwards, the atmosphere of
the place seemed to change. It was as if all the life had gone out
of the very stones of the building, and one by one, the venerable
plants, the ancient trees, the thriving vegetables in the gardens
and orchards of the castle began to wither and die.
James: And more slowly but just as inexorably,
the retainers, one by one, wasted away before my very eyes.
Andrew: It seems to strange to me that each of
them in turn would from some inexplicable sickness waste into
nothingness and I pondered long and hard what it could be that had
caused their death.
James: Eventually, I realised that I'd been so
horrified by the manner of the old queen's death that I had avoided
anything to do with the courtyard ever since.
Andrew: Anybody who had gone through that
courtyard or touched its soil tainted by the blood of her royal
suicide was cursed."
James: The young messenger put his head in his
hands.
Andrew: The blood drained from his face and the
young man emitted a low moan. "Oh the tragedy, for it is that very
soil which I have been sent here to collect on behalf of his royal
majesty."
James: "You'd better use gloves," said the old
man.
Andrew: Early next morning as the sun was peeping
over the horizon, the messenger woke and went down to the courtyard
with the gloves and trowel that the old retainer had given him.
James: He carefully filled a satchel with the
royal soil and prepared to ride back to the capital.
Andrew: Pausing at the gate of the castle, he
turned to wave farewell to the old man who had been so helpful, and
in doing so noticed a tiny speck of the soil that had lodged on the
edge of his wrist.
James: Dismissing the man's tale as mere
superstition, he flicked the soil away with his gloved hand and
rode off back to the capital.
Andrew: All day and all night, he rode and the
next day, he arrived at the castle and was ushered immediately into
the royal bed chamber by the king's steward.
James: There, the flower-watcher carefully took
the soil and distributed it amongst the planters to provide the
environment of the princess's childhood that was necessary to bring
her back.
Andrew: And so it was, dear listener, that
everything turned out as the flower-watcher said it would do. The
rose was grown in the soil of the princess's childhood. The scent
awoke her from her deep slumber. She was able to celebrate her 18th
birthday and come of age and all was well. Except for one
person.
James: In the days after the celebration, the
messenger noticed nothing different, but as the days turned into
weeks and the weeks turned into months, he began to feel a hunger
that he could not satiate.
Andrew: Since that one fateful day, the day on
which first he touched the royal soil and then he saw the sleeping
princess, there had been but one all-consuming thought in his mind
at all times.
James: The image of her behind his eyelids as he
slept at night, the vision of her in front of them as he wandered
through the city during the day… he could not think of anything
else.
Andrew: Ah, so deeply was he in love with the
princess that he pined and pined and began slowly to waste
away.
James: After a few months, he was unable to
continue his job as a messenger and after a couple of years, he was
unable to continue to afford living in the capital and wandered the
country increasingly alone.
Andrew: A lonely nomad he was. He ended up, after
years of wandering, in the farthest parts of the kingdom, and one
day, he came over the crest of a hill, and saw before him a wide
and bleak marsh.
James: On the road in front of him there lay a
dying soldier who called out to him.
Andrew: "Young man," cried the soldier, "young
man, please help me. I am on an urgent mission that I will not be
able to complete for I am expiring."
James: And the soldier told the young man of the
battle that he had come from and the prince who had fallen
there.
Andrew: "Go — go convey this message to the queen
in the castle that her lord and husband is dead. Take it to her
personally. You are the last bearer of the news."
James: On the other side of the country, the
flower-watcher sat on the dirt in the middle of her house and
started to concentrate.
Andrew: First she imagined a tiny seed deep
underground. Then she imagined the first tiny root and shoot, each
reaching out boldly in opposite directions.
James: In her mind, she saw the root system
develop and strengthen and the shoot gradually make its way to the
surface.
Andrew: Meanwhile, in a far-off castle in barren
soil, a solitary snow drop poked its head up through a
long-neglected flowerbed and the process of renewal at last
began.
James: I've been James and I'm here with Andrew.
These stories were recorded without advanced planning and lightly
edited for the discerning listener. Join us next time for more
totally made-up tales.