This is the final episode of season one of The St. Magnus Street Tapes This palm of the hand story is loosely based on material found in Lawrence Tulloch’s Shetland Folk Tales, especially the enigmatic tale, “The Poisoned Six-Pence.” Episode 10 is the B-side of the more ethnographic reflection of the A-side of episode 5 on the theme of community.

The content is rather explicit and includes descriptions of domestic and sexual abuse. For our UK audience seeking help regarding sexual assault or domestic abuse, there is the 24-hour freephone National Domestic Abuse Helpline, run by Refuge, on 0808 2000 247. Our US listeners can contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 18007997233.

For our Shetland listeners, more information is available for safeguarding children, young people, and adults in Shetland at Safer Shetland.

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The Saint Magnus Street Tapes are a Confabulated Communities Production. Produced, written, and narrated by Jonathan Church.

All rights reserved.

This is the penultimate episode of the first season of The St. Magnus Street Tapes.

"The body was found in the Old Cemetery in Lerwick by two young German tourists who were wandering around the Knab, just a bit turned around in the fog. They had wandered into the triangular piece of ground and read the headstones, many hard to decipher from the lichen. One of them remarked that reading old headstones gave them more confidence in the future. So many of the stones with names of those buried in the 18th and 19th century listed young children, so many children younger than 5, that they could believe the world was better now than before."

This palm of the hand story is loosely based on material found in Lawrence Tulloch’s Shetland Folk Tales, especially the tale “The Fiddler and The Cows.”

Details about Kirstie Caddel’s life have been amended and fictionalized from the account presented by Stephen Jennings from his 2019 Halloween talk given at the Archeology of Shetland Annual General Meeting, “The Many Ways to Die in Shetland.” The full text can be found on the Archeology of Shetland website.

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The Saint Magnus Street Tapes are a Confabulated Communities Production. Produced, written, and narrated by Jonathan Church.

All rights reserved.

"There was both panic and resignation in his voice. He was so alone, and had been for what seemed like a long time, for twenty years tramping from one continent to another, looking for knolls, and only finding the standing stones of stories and folktales. The only hint of wonder he found in all of Shetland was in the small village of Brettafield, but he didn’t know why, and couldn’t find a point of crossing. His sojourn was almost over. After this he would return to Aotearoa. He had found friends and common cause among the patupaiarehe. Together, they would watch their worlds slowly fade."

After 40 years of intermittent ethnographic research on the Shetland Islands, this podcast is an experiment in intimate ethnographic storytelling. Each episode of the "A-sides" follows a single theme. The same theme is explored in the "B-sides" episode but through contemporary fiction based on a mixture of themes and characters based on tales found in Lawrence Tulloch's Shetland Folk Tales

This B-side episode explores the theme of disguise explored in episode 3 of The St. Magnus Street Tapes. This palm of the hand story is loosely based on material found in Lawrence Tulloch’s Shetland Folk Tales, especially the two tales “Midwife to the Trow” and “Kidnapped by the Trows.”

This series has been made possible by the generous support of Arcadia University, especially FRANK AND EVELYN STEINBRUCKER

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The Saint Magnus Street Tapes are a Confabulated Communities Production. Produced, written, and narrated by Jonathan Church.

All rights reserved.