Storylines is the magazine of the Society for Storytelling. To submit articles and reviews for future editions, please contact the editor at storylines@sfs.org.uk.
Edited and designed by Simon Heywood. Acknowledgements to Mike Carter. www.mikesplace.org.uk
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Publications
Simon Heywood storylines@sfs.org.uk
Email news bulletin (members only) Kevin Blackburn sfs@fairbruk.demon.co.uk
Special interest groups for health and wellbeing Janet Dowling
Area networks
Chip Colquhoun Martin Manasse north@areas.sfs.org.uk Pippa Reid south@areas.sfs.org.uk
National Storytelling Week
Del Reid
Australian Fairy Tale Society Jo Henwood 12
The Last Drut ’syla? Changing times for a Jewish women’s storytelling tradition Simon Heywood 15
Editorial 3
FEATURES
Beyond the Fireplace: The Changing Face of Storytelling in Uganda Gary Moore 4
Australian Tales 1: The Australian Fairy Tale: Is There Any Such Thing? Jo Henwood 8
Australian Tales 2: The Inaugural Conference of the
STORY OF THE SEASON 19
The Mother’s Hand David Phelps
REVIEWS
Digital Storytelling Revisited: Review article Simon Heywood 26
A Perfumed Garden: 'Tongues of Flames' by Giles Abbott 29 Gersie et al, Storytelling for a Greener World 30
Smith and Guillain, Storytelling Schools Series, Vols 1 & 2 31
To Be Continued 33
myself mainly because I got let down on copydates, without notice, by certain esteemed contributors, who shall remain nameless here. So we’re le6 with the odd prospect of a really good magazine for the UK storytelling community, which ranges across continents and centuries, but features less actual writing that I’d hoped from members of the same UK storytelling community. If this happens again I shall punish all concerned ... by continuing to write Storylines myself.
Hello everyone ... and welcome to Storylines, volume five, issue three! We are hoping to get this issue out in good time for the Society for Storytelling Annual Gathering on Saturday 18th April, at Resource for London, 356 Holloway Road, London N7 6PA. Sadly your editor can’ t be there, so feel free to pass on comments and queries to me personally or via storylines@sfs.org,uk.
It ’s always exciting to get a Storylines out. I did have to write quite a lot of this one
In the meantime, if you do have an idea for an article or review something you want to share or get off your chest by all means drop me a line. And let all your articulate, knowledgeable and opinionated friends in storytelling know that they are warmly invited to do the same. Aim for a copydate of 13th June.
See you again a little further down the road!
Uganda’s storytelling has survived political strife and brutal poverty, but it is now under threat from an unlikely source.
About 15,000 British people travel to Uganda every year. Most spend their time gorilla tracking, on safaris, or soaking up the breathtaking scenery. Like thousands of others, I went to Uganda for a few months to volunteer. But my friend Lilian, passionate about her country ’s culture, decided that I needed to hear some of the local folk stories. So it was that I found myself sitting in the ‘God is Able’ Salon and Cultural Group, in Kabale, the main town in the Kabale District, in Uganda’s Western Region. The salon doubles up as a local cultural society, and it was here that I first heard Reved Bigirilmaana and Joseph Mkamushaba telling creation stories. Reved is a hairdresser and a mechanic; workdays see him sometimes in overalls, sometimes in traditional Ugandan dress.
But Reved, and his colleague Joseph, are also storytellers. Crowds gather at the doorway of the salon as they tells stories. At regular intervals, Joseph
jumps up to shoo them away.
At one stage, Joseph reached behind his hairdressing equipment to reveal a spear and animal skin cape.
The most memorable to me of Reved and Joseph’s many stories was one called How Death Came Into The World. It was a story about a young boy whose parents get concerned because he likes killing animals. Eventually he starts killing people in their village. So his parents decide the boy who is called Death should be killed. Inevitably, the father can’ t bring himself to do it, and the boy runs away with his dad in pursuit. Eventually, the boy takes refuge with an old lady, and she hides him from his dad. But it all goes wrong when the boy starts killing her family, though by this point it ’s all too late and Death has been set free in the world. It ’s set up as a creation story but there’s a lot going on here - not least that naughty kids need to answer to their parents! and I loved the idea of Death as a petulant child.
Traditionally, these stories were told by older women, who learned them from their mothers and grandmothers.
That is still true in rural areas, where storytelling sessions are popular events, and a hut where stories are being told is sure to attract people from all over the village. While the stories generally have a moral purpose, they are fun and many incorporate humour and satire. Storytelling is thoroughly interactive; singing, laughter and even heckling are fairly commonplace. It is a communal experience through which communal values are reinforced.
I was amazed to learn that nobody had tried to record these stories, so I set about travelling to rural villages armed with the voice recorder on my phone. These rural communities were surprised and delighted that a young British guy wanted to hear their folk stories. Some of my most fun visits were to very remote villages, where a lot of the children had never seen a white person before. As you can imagine, the children reacted with a mixture of sheepish curiosity and complete overexcitement. It was also nice to visit villages with some of the medical volunteers who stopped by in my time out
there. A6er the clinics were over, we would all sit around together to hear stories, and o6en lots of local people would turn up because there are fewer chances to hear stories these days. It gave a real insight into the communal atmosphere for storytelling. My hope is that the recordings can be transcribed and translated, and eventually published for use in local schools.
The tragedy in all this is that changing lifestyles are putting this tradition at risk. As Uganda gradually develops, children are sent to boarding school, families move to cities, and people become cut off from their elder relatives. The fireplace, the traditional spot for storytelling, is absent from the modern household. Development has meant new market orientated systems for farming; women farmers spend longer in the field and less time with their families.
The positive news, however, is that some Ugandans are doing their best to preserve the tradition. Reved’s cultural group is part of this work. Radio is also effective in bringing old stories to new audiences
spearheading this process, if memory serves, is Hope Radio, a popular local radio station run by a Kabale -based Pentecostal church. Storytelling is even finding a place in the school curriculum, where it is used quite innovatively. It tends to be the preserve of the younger children (aged maybe 6/7 to 13/14), and in some schools there will be a slot each week for storytelling. In the sessions I attended, there were no text books; the children just take their turn to sit at the front of the class and tell stories from memory. It gives them a chance to practice public speaking and speak their local language (Rukiga) which unfortunately is discouraged in much of the education system. These storytelling sessions are far less common in secondary schools and above, where the focus is mostly on conventionally academic subjects or sports. I think culturally storytelling is seen as a thing for kids.
But in a culture where writing is a relatively recent innovation, storytelling has a fundamental importance. For stories, of course, are not mere stories. They are the way by which shared values, experiences and
history are passed through the generations.
It would be a disaster, in my opinion, if the country ’s headlong rush to develop its economy were to be achieved at the expense of its traditions.
Gary Moore has been working for the Kigezi Healthcare Foundation, Kabale District, Uganda, since January 2014. He blogs at https:// kabalechronicle.wordpress.com/ http://www.kihefo.org/
Is there any such thing as an Australian fairy tale? For a long time people have been confident in their response: of course there isn’ t. We live in a multicultural society, 98% immigrant: people that have been gathered together in this particular place for less than 250 years, each cultural group bringing their own stories. The end result for fairy tales in Australia would seem to be an homogenised blend of English publications and American movies.
But this land has always been full of stories, passed down for tens of thousands of years. Are the Aboriginal Dreaming stories fairy tales? Or can they be seen as the equivalents of fairy tales? The purposes, characteristics and audiences of Aboriginal Dreaming stories could hardly be further from what we find in European fairy tales. They are about maintaining equilibrium, not overcoming challenges. They do not celebrate the one who stands apart from the community, or heroic problem solving ability, but obedience to the law. Heroes do not rise up from dysfunctional families, because the whole group is a shared family, and they do not
The Australian Fairy Tale: is there any such thing?
ascend a social hierarchy from poverty to royalty. No, they are not fairy tales.
Which is not to say there are no points of contact between the two; human beings having more in common than we have things that divide us: the concerns and emotions of one group are likely to be found in another. There are stories of child eating monsters, of lost children, of hunger and sleep, and transformations as punishment, which are tantalising in their similarities and differences to the stories gathered by European folklorists.
In a deliberate effort to forge a cultural identity, English Australians at the end of the nineteenth century so wanted to have Australian fairy tales that they took some stories told by Aboriginal people and retold them in a domesticated English nursery voice, overlaid with assumptions as to narrative structure, heroic qualities, and happy endings which had little connection to indigenous culture. They make for strange and uncomfortable reading today, representing as they do such arrogant cultural
appropriation, and succeeding neither as fairy tales, nor as particularly Australian. Likewise with literary efforts made around the same time to create fairy stories, as distinct from fairy tales, set in Australia. Again, the results are uncomfortable: hobgoblins amongst the wattle and kookaburras flying with fairies, the sort of thing visitors might write: not truly Australian at all. Neither could we say that May Gibbs’s creation of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, the Gumnut Babies, are Australian fairy tales either. They are recognisably Australian, yes, and magical, but they are not fairy tales: no heroic actions by the heroes, no dysfunctional family, but merely the encounters of the protagonists with allies and threats as they wander the bush.
So what makes a fairy tale or any other cultural product –Australian? Is it anything more than that the work is made by an Australian person? Meeting that criterion are all the many Australian cafés named a6er Gingerbread or Beanstalks; the shoe shops that feature Red Shoes; the wedding planners that call themselves Fairy Tale;
and the fairy tale stories performed by Opera Australia or the Australian Ballet.
It starts to become interesting when these creations consciously interpret the fairytales from an Australian perspective, such as the 2004 Opera Australia production of Humperdinck ’s Hansel and Gretel set in a Depression era hut in the bush; art photography by Ingrid Endel featuring fairy tale characters and events in bushland settings; the Aussie Gems picture books Cindy Ella and Goldilocks and the Three Koalas; and Kate Forsyth’s Young Adult novels of reinvented fairy tales. Many storytellers within the Australian Storytelling Guilds have created Australian versions of fairy tales. If there are five hundred variants of Cinderella, why isn’ t an Australian version just as valid as any other?
So when Australians look at fairy tales, what can we see? Since the inaugural conference of the Australian Fairy Tale Society, in June 2014, we have launched local branches called Fairy Tale Rings to explore a particular fairy tale every two months. Each time we create
new stories, new paintings and food. We started with Hansel and Gretel because the theme of children lost in the bush is a very potent one historically, extending from English settlers’ fears of the land through to the loss of baby Azaria Chamberlain to a dingo while her family were camping at Uluru. We could see an historical allegory of the overburdened British Empire sending forth their young out into the wilderness, who then discover a land made of food. They destroy the original owners, and return to enrich the Mother Country with what they have taken. We could see the same story played out in Jack and the Beanstalk perhaps unsurprisingly, since the two tales are linked in the folklorists’ Tale Type Index, one tale being numbered type 327 and the other 328. Joseph Jacobs’ well known version of the Jack tale differs from other retellings, in which Jack is justified in his actions because the Giant actually stole the treasures from Jack ’s father, and this opens up the possibility of seeing Jack as an Aboriginal resistance fighter, like Pemulwuy (c.1750 - 1802). Or Jack could be bushranger Ned Kelly (1854 - 1880), whose final
siege of Glenrowan echoes Jack ’s escape with his stolen treasures: rather than cutting down the beanstalk , Kelly blows up the railway bringing the giant of the Victorian police force down upon him.
In February we’ ll be investigating The Little Mermaid, looking a character swimming at the beach, just like us. We might even see some connections with the Gay Mardi Gras.
So yes, we do have Australian fairy tales. The more we understand about ourselves, and about fairy tales, the greater the number and diversity of these tales there will be.
Jo Henwood began working as a storyteller in 1999. She is a member of the NSW Storytelling Guild and several professional organisations and is the chair of the Australian Fairy Tale Society.
A winter ’s day, 9 June 2014, and the notes of the harp call us under the vaulted sandstone of Paddington Uniting Church, Sydney, for a journey into some new thinking on the Fairy Tale in Australia.
Here for the first time our new community can explore what fairy tales are and how Australians use them; to go beyond English publications and American films to investigate our own cultural responses to these tales. Look around and you can see all manner of people. There are storytellers, fresh from the biennial Storytelling Conference (whose co founders, Reilly McCarron and Jo Henwood, are both Accredited Storytellers). There are academics, busy with doctoral research on fairy tales, enjoying the rare treat of a meeting with fellow scholars. There are writers and other creative and performance artists - those who do it for the love of it, and sometimes, too, as a profession. There are psychologists, Jungian and otherwise There are folklorists and musicians. There are some international visitors, like English Storyteller Cassandra
Wye. All come together to build a new community of interest.
Previously some had met at the Monash Fairy Tale Salon, run annually from Monash University in Melbourne. Most had explored Sarah Gibson’s Re Enchantment website and perhaps everybody had been on our FaceBook page. Carmel Bird delivered the keynote address, ‘An Australian Fairy Tale: That is the Question,’ which was particularly appropriate since her issue of The Griffith Review was published alongside an article by Reilly McCarron just at the moment when the conference was gestating evidence of the zeitgeist!
Other presenters provoked discussion on earlier Australian attempts to create original fairy tales, like Olga Ernst, and contemporary creative works like Kate Forsyth’s Young Adult novel Bitter Greens, and transported narrative structures and character types such as the Hero Thief.
We concluded with a panel of experts on particular fairy tale types in discussion on the issues of telling old stories for new audiences.
MC Jackie Kerin can show you the whole thing on the link below.
The next conference is slated for June 2015. In the meantime we will be using our FaceBook page and members’ Newsletter to keep up to date, and the website will serve as a repository of discussion, bibliographies, collections of stories, artworks and folklore. Meanwhile local storytelling communities, called Fairy Tale Rings, are meeting every two months to look at a particular fairy tales with a specifically Australian sensibility: Hansel and Gretel with the children lost in the bush; Little Red Riding Hood, snatched by a dingo; and many more.
We hope this work is only the beginning. At last we can look at fairy tales from a viewpoint that is not European. At last we can tell Australian fairy tales. How will they be told? We have only just begun to answer that question.
jo7hanna@tpg.com.au www.johenwoodstoryteller.com.au
Australian Fairy Tale Society
Like us on FaceBook
Follow us on Twitter Email us at austfairytales@gmail.com
Join our Forum on http://ausfairytalesociety.com.au/ Join the AFTS http://www faeriebard com/ membership form/
Monash Fairy Tale Salon https:// fairytalesalon wordpress com/
Sarah Gibson’s Re Enchantment website http://www.abc.net.au/tv/re enchantment/
Jo Henwood on 2ser Real Radio https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=uEU_AotVAmI
The Griffith Review 42: Once Upon a Time in Oz https://griffithreview.com/editions/ once upon a time in oz/
As I write, a crowdfunding campaign is kicking off to make a full length documentary about an ancient European storytelling tradition. With the working title ‘ The Last Drut ’syla?’, the project is spearheaded by storyteller Adam Sargant and film-maker John Sargent, both of Haworth, West Yorkshire. The film will focus on the life and work of Shanaleah Khymberg (Shonaleigh), a storyteller based in England who is possibly - the last drut ’syla, or practitioner of a hereditary Jewish women’s storytelling tradition.
It ’s turning into a busy year for a tradition which seems to have been flirting with nearextinction for a generation. Shonaleigh’s work has already taken her to guest lectureships at Goldsmith’s College, Derby University, and York St John’s University, with a summer stint as teller-in-residence at the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, Tennessee, East Tennessee State University, and Timpanogos
Storytelling Institute, Utah, still to come. I’ve been recording and archiving the drut ’syla repertoire, which contains an
estimated 3,800 interlinked stories, along with a comprehensive method for interpreting them the so called drut ’syla midrash. The drut ’syla midrash seems to be an educational tool with applications far beyond storytelling simply as such. At least, it has a mysterious way of enabling Y4 pupils to leap up Key Stage 2 literacy sublevels like mountain goats up an Alpine crag. In Shonaleigh’s family tradition at least, so far as we can tell, out of all this body of traditional knowledge, nothing has ever been written down. The tradition was taught and learned by word of mouth, face to face, between grandmother and granddaughter. Accordingly, Shonaleigh was mentored throughout childhood by her grandmother, or bubbe, Edith Marks, and ‘drut ’syla’ is the word Shonaleigh picked up in childhood for what she was learning to become. Many years later thanks largely to the work of the Jewish scholar Del Reid (corroborated by close attention to the exact pronunciation of Flemish swear words it ’s a long story) those of us who had already taken an active interest in the
tradition came to see that ‘drut ’syla’ was a Dutch Jewish pronunciation of the ordinary Yiddish world ‘dertseyler ’, which is related to the German ‘erzählen’, meaning ‘ to tell a story.’
Some conclusions about the drut ’syla tradition can be stated with confidence. Storytelling pervaded every aspect of life in European Jewish communities, and the word ‘dertseyler ’ has many shades of meaning in Yiddish. A dertseyler might be an adult with a gi6 for entertaining children with storytelling. Or it could mean someone who didn’ t know when to shut up. What ‘drut ’syla’ meant in Shonaleigh’s family tradition was, specifically, a trained, hereditary, life long storyteller in residence to a particular Jewish community. She was always a woman, and her responsibilities included telling stories for weddings, parties and bar mitzvahs, more or less literally. But the drut ’syla’s role also included using storytelling in bereavement, and in facing the many other individual and collective traumas which have always confronted Jewish communities, and human
communities in general. It was a tough and tricky job, and the women who were good at it were people of high standing in the community.
But there are good reasons why much about Jewish women’s storytelling remains mysterious. Memories and records of Jewish life were depleted by attempted genocide during the Second World War. A6erwards, the breakup of traditional communities continued. Paradoxically, however, these were rich years for the documentation of Jewish folktales, thanks to the pioneering research of Dov Noy, who established the Israel Folktale Archive at Haifa, and also the consolidation of the YIVO archive in New York. Prior to this work , women’s storytelling had always been relatively sparsely recorded. Women were excluded from many aspects of Jewish public and community life. There were always Jewish women scholars and intellectuals, but they lagged a long way behind their male counterparts in numbers and prominence.
It is all the more intriguing to find references to them in the
records. Some of these are almost legendary figures, such as Bruriah, the second century Talmudic sage. For others, we have photograph portraits. Sonya Naymark , of Mohilev in present day Belarus, was highly respected within her own community as ‘Sonya di Khakhome,’ ‘Sonya the Wise,’ whose storytelling was recorded in the early 1900s by Jewish folklore collectors.
Shonaleigh’s own mentor and grandmother, Edith Marks, was born and brought up in the Netherlands. She married and raised a family before the Second World War, emigrating to Britain in 1945 to be reunited with surviving family members. Up until the mid-1980s, she was involved in what came to be known as the storytelling revival: longer memories on today ’s storytelling circuit might still recall her as a colleague of Amina Shah and the College of Storytellers. She was mentoring Shonaleigh in these years, and Shonaleigh began work as a professional storyteller a6er her death in the 1990s, slowly introducing more and more of the family tradition into her public work as
John Aubrey was an antiquary and gossip in the late seventeenth century, perhaps best known these days for a series of biographical sketches we call 'Brief Lives'. This is one of his stories.
The Pakingtons were a famous Worcestershire family. Sir John Pakington had made a great fortune in the time of Henry VII.He was a lawyer, and this was a time when, if you wanted to become rich and did not mind how you did it, a lawyer was the best thing to be, a bit like being a banker nowadays. King Henry was so impressed with him that he granted John the right to remain seated and to keep his hat on in the king’s presence, the only non member of the royal family to be allowed this privilege. Through his shady dealings he was able to set himself up as lord of the manor of Westwood, north-west of Droitwich.
His grandnephew and heir, another Sir John, was noted for his extravagant way of living. Queen Elizabeth,who was fond of nicknames, called him 'Lusty Pakington'. He had a daughter, whom he married to Sir Walter Long of Draycot, head of
How far will a mother go to protect her son?
another family that had made itself rich by shady legal dealings.
However, the lady was not strong, and within a few years of marriage, she died in childbirth, though not before giving birth to a son. This boy, who had been named Thomas, was himself not a robust child and Sir Walter, concerned that he must be sure of an heir, resolved to marry for a second time. He chose a daughter of Sir John Thynne of Longleat, another newly rich family who were more inclined to settle disputes in the courtroom rather than the battlefield.
In the course of time she too gave birth to a son, James, a fine, sturdy creature. So the two boys grew up together, one frail and weak, looking almost as if he were a fairy changeling that the next breeze would knock over; the other a pug-dog of a boy, who was already tormenting flies by the age of two.
The elder child's step-mother, naturally, listened attentively to every cough and sneeze the boy made, hoping that this was a sign he would soon be at death's door, in which case she
would be more than happy to help him through it. But, as so often happens on these occasions, Thomas proved a squeaking gate, which rattles a lot but never completely comes off its hinges. As her husband got older and closer to his death and young Thomas remained on this earth, disinheriting her own son, she decided that she would have to be a little bit more proactive in the matter.
She declared that it was ruining the boy to keep him mollycoddled in the house all the time; he should be out riding. That was the only way that he could be made stronger. Not just that, but he must be sent off hunting and the huntsman must see to it that he took all the dangerous jumps at speed and gallop at every opportunity. Unfortunately the dratted child proved to have a good seat and could not be dislodged from his horse and looked in no likelihood of breaking his neck. Even when he was sent out in the most inclement weather and came back cold and dripping, he seemed to take no harm by it. Indeed it was seen that the boy did seem to be getting stronger and Thomas' stepmother was
universally celebrated for the good care she had of her stepchild; praise she took through gritted teeth.
Time passed and Sir Walter became more and more frail, and as if he was in some way sucking the strength from his father, Thomas' health prospered. Dame Long was secretly beside herself with worry, though she must make an outward show of happiness that this cuckoo thrived so. When the boy was sixteen Sir Walter's health suffered a long illness from which it was for some time feared that he would not recover. That he did was held to be due to his wife's constant care and tenderness. But that scare was sufficient for the lady to steel herself for a more direct attack on the creature that made her life miserable.
For many years she had discussed with James, her own child, the miseries of being a younger son. How he was bound to have to go out in the world to seek his fortune, rather than live the happy life of a gentleman that would be the lot of his brother. He would probably have to be a soldier and go
abroad to fight in the bitter Thirty Years War that was then ravaging the continent, with uncertain consequences.
As for Sir Walter, he had once been a hearty devil-may-care fellow, but his recent illnesses had played on his mind. Like many lawyers, there were deeds in his past that he did not look forward having to explain to his Maker. Increasingly he was being drawn to the Puritan branch of religion, especially that bit that ruled that the more you indulged yourself in this life, the more sure you were to suffer for it in the next.
One day James sidled up to Thomas just as he was setting off for the stables. They had never been particularly close and Thomas was a little surprised to find James seeking him out.
'What are you up to today?' asked his half-brother.
'Just going for a ride.' 'Come with me then. I'm riding into the village.'
'Father does not like us going there. He says it is a place full of sin.'
'What does the old man know about anything? Don't come if you're frightened.'
'I am not.'
So the two rode to the nearby village. Thomas was surprised about how friendly James was being to him, but having no animosity for the young man, was hopeful that this might be a sign that they could become friends, the way that he thought brothers should.
There were two public attractions in the village the church and the pub and James had no intention of heading for the church. Thomas, on the other hand, had never been to the pub before. Of course he was used to drinking a little beer at mealtimes, but otherwise he was an abstemious lad who was only interested in riding and was a little surprised to find James not only greeted by name but also as someone who was likely to bring excitement and good cheer to the morning.
James seemed willing to live up to his reputation, being very generous in treating those who happened to be in the tavern that early in the day. He also let
Thomas know that it was a local custom that no one was expected to pay for their drink the first time they entered a pub and James would be more than happy to pay for everything, He was also very insistent that they uphold the family honour by matching the yokels drink for drink.
Over time it dawned on Thomas that the room he was in had become much more crowded than it had been. It was also much warmer. His head seemed to have become much more clouded and it was thus more difficult for him to hold onto his thoughts than he was normally accustomed. It was disconcerting but not altogether unpleasant. Soon he was rather surprised to be joining in the laughter and jokes, even though he was not too sure what was going on.
After a couple of hours of this, James noticed that Thomas was becoming decidedly sleepy and thought it was time that they make their way home. There were enough willing hands to help him get his half- brother out into the fresh air, but the only way that James could get the now mostly insensible
Thomas to stay on his horse was by draping him head down across the saddle, like a dead hero returning from battle.
So they arrived home. Thomas' stepmother had been watching from an upper window. When eventually she saw the two horses approaching, she rushed to her husband's study.
'I fear something terrible has overtaken your son. James is bringing him home and he is lying across his horse. There must have been a terrible accident.'
Both concerned parents rushed to the main door just as James arrived, leading his brother's horse. His mother let out a terrible cry as James leapt down and pulled the still mostly unconscious Thomas off his horse.
'I'm sorry, father. I tried to stop him but he would insist on going to the inn.'
There is a strange trait in all of us that, when our worst fears are found to be baseless, we turn to anger instead of relief. So it was now with Sir Walter.
'The boy's drunk!' he bellowed.
Recognising his father's voice, Thomas shook himself free of his brother's arm, smiled idiotically at the assembled people, took a few stumbling steps forward, then collapsed onto his knees ans was promptly sick on his father's leather shoes.
Sir Walter was so incensed that he was determined to disinherit his elder son immediately. As luck would have it, the noted lawyer, Sir Egremont Thynne, his wife's brother , was staying in the house at the time and he was happy to draft the necessary documents. Thomas was able to say nothing in his defence; in fact, that afternoon, if someone had approached him with a loaded pistol, he would have been happy to take it out of their hands and put himself out of his misery.
Sir Egremont's clerk was fetched, who could turn the draft into a proper legal document ( to engross it, to use the technical term). That would mean sitting up all night to complete the work. As he was writing by the light of a candle, he thought he saw a shadow on the parchment. When he looked up he saw a
hand reaching for his quill. He gave a start but when he looked again the hand had vanished.
Thinking it merely his fancy and the result of working too long into the night, he went back to his writing but again a long white hand, surely that of a woman, came into his vision, reaching out as if to stop his pen but, once again, it vanished as soon as he looked directly at it.
Now badly shaken, it was several minutes before the clerk could steel himself to start up the copying again. As soon as he did so he saw the hand again and this time he had the distinct impression that it was reaching out to grab his own hand. He had dropped his quill and was out of that room faster than ever he had moved in his life before.
He was down the stairs and into his riding coat before anything could stop him. He stayed long enough to tell the astonished servants what had befallen him and that no reward on this earth would get him back into that room. Then he was out into the night and to the stables, there he got on his horse and put as many miles as he could between
himself and the house.
Sir Egremont was fetched from his sleep and the strange goings on explained to him. However, he was made of stronger stuff than his clerk and angrily went into the room and completed the document. If he was troubled by a spectral appearance he never spoke of it afterwards. So the new will was ready for Sir Walter Long to sign and seal by daybreak, which he happily did.
Sadly Sir Walter did not live long after these occurrences. Whether this was because of his general ill-health, disappointment at the actions of his son, or that his wife did not want time to mellow his displeasure it would be impossible to say. However, he was not going to go quietly to his grave. The clerk was so disturbed by the events of that night that he went to the Pakingtons and told them that their daughter's son was in danger of losing his birthrights. They were incensed and were intent on doing something about it. Naturally they turned to the law.
When Sir Walter's body was carried to his funeral it was arrested at the church porch by officials appointed by the Pakingtons. A massive court case followed, that made quite a few lawyers' fortunes. In the end it was decided that the estate be split in two, so that both young men should have sufficient estate to maintain themselves as gentlemen. Thomas learnt of his mother's intervention and was forever grateful and did all he could to honour her memory. He never went into a tavern again.
John Aubrey, the seventeenth century man of letters. Fragments are often more fun to work with than longer, fuller tales, giving more scope to re-hydrate them while hopefully remaining true to the original context.
Putting together 'Worcestershire Folk Tales' was a very different experience than working on 'Herefordshire Folk Tales'. Herefordshire is my birth county and I had grown up with the stories and knew how to pronounce some of the stranger place names. Worcestershire was my maternal grandfather's county but he had died a decade before I was born, so I was going to have to rely on the archives. Fortunately the folklorists who had gone before me did a good job and kept alive a wide variety of tales, such as this fragment
David Phelps has been telling stories since 2005. He is the author of ‘Worcestershire Folk Tales’ and ‘Herefordshire Folk Tales’ (The History Press, 2013).
Joe Lambert: Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community
Carolyn Handler Miller: Digital Storytelling: A Creative Guide to Interactive Entertainment
Digital storytelling in its most basic form is what it sounds like: telling stories using digital media. If that sounds like just uploading films from your phone, then that ’s because, well, basically, that ’s what it is ... and if you’re already wondering why that might require a textbook or a three day workshop - or a university department then you’re beginning to appreciate the challenges facing the authors of these books, especially since both are new editions of textbooks originally published a dozen years ago.
There are at least three obstacles to any claim to authority on online culture. Firstly, it changes too fast. Secondly, it really is a grassroots, vernacular phenomenon. Any would be teacher needs to have something to teach that people cannot figure out for
themselves: a quick browse through Youtube suggests that people are already pretty good at figuring things out for themselves. Online humanity, seemingly, needs no teacher.
Or does it? Paradoxically, the web is also the opposite of the grassroots. The most viewed videos on Youtube are all music releases by mass market artists who would probably be famous if the internet had never been invented. Digital storytelling might find a niche in this conservative, commercial world, as a mutant form of advertising, but it ’s a moot point whether humanity really needs more advertising.
Veteran activist Joe Lambert stakes a claim to be a digital storyteller of the kind who teaches people and communities how to use the web to liberate or empower themselves, mainly by making and sharing short films narrating their own experience, in a facilitated workshop environment. The best of his book is the interviews and conversations with people who collaborated on his projects: here there is a real and exciting sense of engagement and the
possibility of change. Carolyn Handler Miller ’s book claims to teach readers how to be a digital storyteller of the more conservative, commercial kind. She blandly advises us that digital storytelling involves advertising which is not too obvious about the fact that it ’s advertising, and which gives the viewer the illusion of a control they don’ t actually have and she makes that sound wholesome and professional as well, which is certainly quite an achievement. Part of Joe Lambert ’s book tells the story of how his collaborators ended up drawn into marketing projects for huge corporations, and a6er reading Miller ’s book I can sort of see how that happened. What are we, as storytellers, to make of these books? They ’re great on the digital; are they great on the storytelling? Miller has some really interesting things to say about the narrative structure of games. But generally, and strangely, both books insist on the primal need for a good story, but neither seems in any haste to define what a good story is, or what makes stories good, and neither contains much specific guidance on how the reader can
get better at coming up with good stories. Relatedly, when they do describe oral tradition, they tend to do so in suspiciously simplistic terms of ancient campfires, story circles, and one -size -fits-all monomyths of the sort which probably never existed until Joseph Campbell decided they did. Miller, for example, clearly thinks that the interactive nature of digital storytelling is a wholly new thing. And clearly it isn’ t. Shrewd listeners in oral cultures have always made their mark on their storytelling: heckling, interruption, turntaking and disputation; boredom and inattention; rapt silence, laughter, tears these things are the lifeblood of many oral traditions, and, even today, live storytellers don’ t get far today before beginning to encounter them the hard way. That ’s exactly how a traditional story, over time, becomes the legacy of a whole community as well as the work of a series of gi6ed individual artists. Sweeping all this aside with a passing nod to Campbell, Miller blandly assures us that oral and prehistoric storytelling must have been “[a]t best ... an extremely weak form of interactivity.” Why must it?
Because it wasn’ t done with computers? Yeah, right.
For all that, it would be unfair to dismiss these books out of hand Each is a goldmine of useful ideas and information on its own subjects the technology and its social and commercial applications and I can see myself returning to both for those reasons. Besides game structure, Miller is fascinating on augmented and alternative realities, and convergent media. But specifically as accounts of story and storytelling, it can be frustrating to see such incomplete and o6en misplaced perspectives offered as the expertise of leaders in the field.
Joe Lambert, Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community. 4th edition (paperback ). Routledge / Center for Digital Storytelling, 2013 (2002) ISBN 978041562703-0, £23.99
Carolyn Handler Miller, Digital Storytelling: A Creative Guide to Interactive Entertainment 3rd edition (paperback ). Focal Press, 2014 (2004) ISBN 978041583694-4,$44.95
'Tongues of Flames: The Story of Sir Richard Burton'
Told by Giles Abbott Supported in song by Naworz Stowtellers, Walthamstow March 9th 2015
Long ago, amongst immigrants of another world, I first heard the tales of Arabia's 'Thousand and One Nights' from old men with the sand of travel in their shoes. As I grew up I gleaned a little knowledge of their English translator, Richard Francis Burton, and as a teenager I learned to appreciate Burton as a heroic figure, a folklorist after my own soul. Giles Abbott's telling of the story of his life was a vivid, perfume-soaked tapestry; a portrait of a linguist with a gift for dialects in every language he spokeprobably around twenty at least; a soldier whose penchant for disguise enabled him to
enter the most forbidden of Islamic cities, as a wretch, or a doctor able to converse with all levels of society; one of Europe's best swordsmen and a devious chess player; a savant who did not suffer fools gladly.
After the death of the man, the deeds of the grieving widow. Burton's 'Arabian Nights'; translations from the Koran; parts of the Kama Sutra; Sir Richard's work on the erotic classic,'The Perfumed Garden': this and all Sir Richard's notebooks were consigned to the fire.
Interspersed throughout this mosaic of one extraordinary man's life was the fireside light of a Persian or Kurdish carpet of song from the ethereal singer Naworz. The beauty of his voice carried inspiration and captivated the attention- indeed, demanded equal attention with the storytelling.
It will take a long time for any of this to slip the memory and imagination.
Alida Gersie, Anthony Nanson and Edward
Schieffelin, with Charlene Collison and Jon Cree (eds.)
Hawthorn Press, 2014 ISBN 9781907359354 £20.00
The 23 authors of these 21 articles are experienced workers in several established approaches in contemporary storytelling, including therapy, green and alternative spirituality and education. They have been meeting since 2005 as part of the Tales to Sustain programme. This engaging collection of essays has the air of proceedings from a rollover conference of almost twenty years’ duration
Formidable challenges lie in wait for anyone applying the art of oral storytelling to the problem of ecological crisis let alone the problem of explaining in writing exactly why and how this approach might yield any tangible results. As an old proverb says: if telling stories could change the world, the world would already have changed. But storytelling can create a space where change can take place. Here we see it in action, seeking to do just that: there are some arresting and inspiring accounts of first hand experience at the coalface of modern storytelling.
This collection is at its most persuasive when it affords a glimpse of living traditionbearers such as Yabiye Sogobaye, the Bosavi storyteller from Papua New Guinea, recorded by Edward Shieffelin in 1968, only a couple of years a6er the Bosavi were first contacted by westerners, a6er generations living “more or less sustainably without exhausting their subsistence base or degrading their forest ” (p.158). Shieffelin carefully describes some of the secrets of the Bosavi’s relative success, and the ways in which their
storytelling records and teaches it. In our planet ’s uncertain future, this kind of expertise sounds like it might repay closer emulation.
Simon HeywoodChris Smith Phd and Adam Guillain
2nd edition. Hawthorn Press. Storytelling Schools Series, Vol. 1.2014. ISBN 9781907359385 £45.00
Chris Smith Phd
147 Traditional Stories for Primary School Children to Retell
Hawthorn Press Storytelling Schools Series, Vol. 2. 2014 ISBN 97819073592 £45.00
Years ago, when I was first venturing into schools to tell stories, with great idealism, zero contact with living tradition bearers, no repertoire, and scant insight into which stories would speak to which listeners, I could really have done with a big fat book , clearly and engagingly rewritten, with about 140- odd folktales in it, arranged by age group, with useful hints towards further research, ring bound, with a coffee proof laminated cover, and a slim companion volume with a programme of developmental exercises which assume no prior knowledge.
Come to think of it, I probably still could do with a couple of books like that. So I say good for Chris Smith and Adam Guillain for finally having written them. Here they are.
The authors are foundermembers of the Storytelling Schools group, which provides training and resources for teachers wishing to implement the Storytelling Schools model developed ultimately from Pie Corbett ’s work for the National Literacy Strategy around 2003. A6er a decade of development, the model, which forms the
basis for these books, consists of learning and teaching a systematic programme of storytelling skills across a whole school, designed to promote confidence, fluency in spoken language, and reading and writing skills, and to impact positively on teaching across the curriculum.
I have one quibble, and it ’s big bigger than these two books, in fact. The stories retold here are generally cited as ‘ from West Africa’ or ‘ from Scotland’ or ‘ from First Nation America,’ until, of course, modern writers and performance artists get hold of them, at which point, it suddenly, magically becomes appropriate to bestow a named - and o6en flattering - author credit. On the relatively few occasions when an actual tradition bearer gets something approaching equal billing, the credit is not always even accurate: the Lakota/Kiowa Apache storyteller Dovie Thomason is twice credited as ‘Dovie Thompson.’
This is not merely unfair. It ’s self limiting for us to fail to appreciate how much we change a story by changing the context of its telling. Traditional
versions of ‘Bird in Hand,’ for example ( Vol. 2., p. 361), are more than gentle tales of a family spat between a ‘ village chief ’ and his sulky son, which is how they appear here. The story was already old when it was told during the Holocaust, as between a Jew and a German soldier, and it concerns a life and- death battle of wits between deadly enemies. Primary school kids could certainly relate to that. In these books, they don’ t get the chance. It ’s fine to dilute or otherwise adapt a story, from choice or necessity. But readers will come away with a strange idea of storytelling if you don’ t tell them when you’re doing the diluting - especially if busy teachers are tempted to treat your resource as a one stop shop, and not seek other sources of information.
Still, rant over. Twenty years ago, I’d have killed for these books. Today, on balance, I may be handling them with caution. But I’m certainly keeping them on the desk.
Simon HeywoodThe Society for Storytelling needs volunteers to carry out its aims of promoting and preserving storytelling. We convene small, focused teams to help us carry out our work. The Society currently has three active teams:
Web Team Publications Team
We are seeking to expand our activity as a Society in the following directions.
The SfS runs two events currently the Annual Gathering and National Storytelling Week both organised and co ordinated by volunteers. We are always open to offers of additional help with these and would like eventually to extend our roster of sponsored events. Do you have experience in event organising? Would you like to extend your experience? Would you like to take advantage of the opportunities of co - ordinating
your existing events under the SfS umbrella?
As part of our strategy to build audiences for storytelling, we aim to create digital recordings of storytellers The Audio Productions Team will be responsible for sourcing material and organising production and distribution.
The SfS aims to serve as a central information hub and point of first contact for storytelling in Britain. The Marketing Team will publicise the Society ’s work , creating and disseminating news stories to the media and designing and producing marketing materials to promote the Society and its activities.
The work of the Society is supported by membership contributions and donations.
The Fundraising Team aims to supplement this core income by idenitifying fundraising needs and securing grants and funding.
The Society is a charity with the goal of supporting and promoting storytelling in Britain but it relies on the support of its membership. We aim to develop the advantages of membership and make membership more attractive to prospective and lapsed members.
The Podcast Team aims to complement the Society ’s strong web and social media presence by producing a range of regular podcasts with topical content on the storytelling world.
If you are interested in joining one of these teams, please get in touch by email to admin@sfs.org.uk.
New Storylines articles are available instantly at www.sfs.org.uk to members of the Society for Storytelling. To become a member, visit www.sfs.org.uk/join or phone 01939 235 500.
And don’ t forget if you would like to submit an article or review, contact the editor via storylines@sfs.org.uk.
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