Good King, when Cuslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen, when the snow lay roundabout, deep and crisp and even,

brightly shone the moon that night, though the frost was cruel, when a poor man came in sight, gathering winter fuel.

You know the rest, the good king gets all caught up in the moment and says to his page,

Come on, lad, grab some booze and brisket. We're going to a party. Oh, and grab some firewood while you're at it.

If we're going to throw down, we'll need more than that noob's handful of twigs to get our rager fully lit.

And so on. Oh, Merry Transmissmus,

by the way, gentle listener. You know, good King Wenceslis wasn't actually a king at the time of this particular legendary occurrence.

As a matter of fact, he was but a duke at the moment of his untimely death at the hands of his brother, Bolloslaus the Cruel,

and his band of cronies who stabbed the Duke mercilessly,

then ran him through with a lance.

If my brother's name was Bolloslaus the cruel,

I'd be giving him a bit more of a wide berth than poor old Wenceslas managed.

Anyway, Holy Roman Emperor Otto posthumously bestowed the title,

King upon Wenceslaus a few years after his violent death,

apparently as an acknowledgement of him being a good bloke,

as the Antipodeans would say.

Of course, if history has taught us anything,

it is that not all kings are good blokes.

And that brings us rather neatly to our final story of 2003.

Now, do you remember a couple of episodes back when I lamented the paucity of Poe's prose in our recent output?

Well, we received numerous suggestions from you gentle listeners as to which as yet untouched tale from Mr. Poe's back catalogue we should use to rectify this situation,

and were quite surprised at the clear front-runner in your collective affections.

...