PseudoPod 710: Sandy the Tinker

[Bdoomed]

PseudoPod 710: Sandy the Tinker

Author: Charlotte Riddell
Narrator: Cian Mac Mahon 
Host: Alasdair Stuart
Audio Producer: Marty Perrett

“Sandy the Tinker” originally appeared in the collection Weird Stories in 1882


“Before commencing my story, I wish to state it is perfectly true in every particular.”
“We quite understand that,” said the sceptic of our party, who was wont, in the security of friendly intercourse, to characterise all such prefaces as mere introductions to some tremendously exaggerated tale.
On the occasion in question, however, we had donned our best behaviour, a garment which did not sit ungracefully on some of us; and our host, who was about to draw out from the stores of memory one narrative for our entertainment, was scarcely the person before whom even Jack Hill, the sceptic, would have cared to express his cynical and unbelieving views.
We were seated, an incongruous company of ten persons, in the best room of an old manse among the Scottish hills. Accident had thrown us together, and accident had driven us under the minister’s hospitable roof. Cold, wet and hungry, drenched with rain, sorely beaten by the wind, we had crowded through the door opened by a friendly hand, and now, wet no longer, the pangs of hunger assuaged with smoking rashers of ham, poached eggs, and steaming potatoes, we sat around a blazing fire, drinking toddy out of tumblers, whilst the two ladies who graced the assemblage partook of a modicum of the same beverage from wine glasses.


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[Scuba Man]

I think I’ve been in the forest-sun too long: as soon as I saw this story (as I’m cooling down indoors), I immediately (and very incorrectly) assumed this story had something to do with Sandi-D from the movie Grease. And the author’s surname is Ridell ... As in Ridell High School?! Is this some meta-reference to Grease.

https://youtu.be/LNPZw6NHG2Q

Humming that awesome title song (Grease Is The Word)... And fantasizing about Olivia Newton John,
ScubaMan.

[Scuba Man]

The end-piece helped this story. Me? I found .....

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

the parson who exchanged his soul for that of the local tinker a nasty character. He went off to do whatever missionary work he likes... apparently without a care of the world. I suspect that bastard’s final fate isn’t set yet. If Satan {the dude with the sword at the waterfall} is so easy with his broken promises, the preacher gets his reserved-spot-in-hell in the end.

The story had a Dante’s Inferno vibe to it.

And no. It has NOTHING to do with the movie-musical, Grease.