In this episode Mike and Will cover the concluding third of ‘The Five Jars‘, M.R. James’s little-read children’s book. Expect earwig racing, bat balls, dragons and horseshoe mayhem!

The readings for this episode once again come from the excellent Librevox audiobook of The Five Jars, read by Peter Yearsley.

Links:

• Iron in Folklore (Wikipedia)
• The wonderful world of mouse racing (Youtube)
• N or M? (Wikipedia)

Contemporary children’s novels with a similar touch of the weird:

• The Box of Delights by John Masefield
• The Midnight Folk by John Masefield
• Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

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In this episode Mike and Will delve into the middle third of M.R. James’s ‘The Five Jars’ and encounter talking owls, two flavours of sinister old women, and all manner of supernatural trickery and tomfoolery!

Readings this week are once again extracted from Peter Yearsley’s excellent Librevox recording of this story, with added help from Debbie Wedge.

If you don’t have a copy of The Five Jars in your collection, you can read the whole thing online at Thin-Ghost.org.

Also, Letters to a Child, extracts from M.R. James’s highly entertaining correspondence with the young Sybil Cropper can be read online at the Ghosts & Scholars website.

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