Episode 77 – The Man with the Roller by E.G. Swain

A Podcast to the Curious - The M.R. James Podcast

This episode Mike and Will put on their dancing shoes and head out to the lawn, only to encounter The Man with the Roller by E.G. Swain!

Massive thanks to podcaster Jim Moon of hypnogoria.com for letting us use extracts from his reading of this story in the episode! You can listen to the full reading, as well as all Jim’s other E.G. Swain readings here.

Note: we realised after recording that the repeated references to dancing on the lawn ire probably a bit of black humour regarding Andrew Birch who, being hanged, clearly did some ‘dancing’ of his own in relation to his activities on the lawn!

Notes:

• E.G. Swain (Wikipedia)
  There is rather scant information about E.G. Swain available online, but his wikipedia page is a good place to start.
• The Stoneground Ghost Tales (Project Gutenberg)
  This story and all the others in the volume can be read and downloaded for free here.
• Stanground (Google maps)
  The real-world Stoneground can be found just outside Peterborough. The church is much as Swain would have known it. The rest of the village, not so much, but these historical maps can give you a good idea of what it was like before the modern housing and industrial estates took hold.