In folklore, bears are the harbingers of Spring and last weekend, visiting friends in Berlin, I saw a good many of them. Like the painted elephants that appeared all over London in the summer of 2010, these were extremely colourful creatures. Unlike the London elephants, which disappeared at the end of the summer when they were auctioned off for charity, the Berlin bears are there to stay. The bear. after all, is one of the symbols of the city and they are among its new emanations.

Bear stories

Covered in slogans or embellished with pictures, upside down or arms raised in a wave, the Berlin bears kept reminding me of bear stories. One I recalled while walking around is a foundation myth of the Modoc Indians of California. A very touching story, it tells how the little daughter of the Great Spirit is peeping out of the mountain in which they live when a great wind catches at her hair and blows her out of the mountain. After sliding down the snowy side of the mountain, the little girl ends up being found and raised by a mother bear. When she is grown, she marries one of the mother bear’s sons. Their children become the Modoc people.

But alas, when stories are prompted, it’s not always a matter of remembering them fully.  One of the curses of the storyteller is sometimes being plagued by half-remembered things, flotsam from stories that, once encountered, are no longer there in your mind. Back in London, I’ve had to try and catch up. One question that was bugging me had been prompted by my favourite among the Berlin bears, the blue one painted with signs of the cosmos. Wasn’t there a constellation or two that represents bears? And the answer, of course, is yes. It’s a story that occurs in Greek mythology. (more…)

A young friend of mine was still a teenager when he said to me once, ‘When you tell me a story, the room goes all still.’ How time passes! He’s nearly 40 now.

But I know what he means. When Helen East was at Waterstone’s in Piccadilly telling her London Tales  last week (her book of these is published by The History Press), there was a palpable sense during the storytelling of moving into a different place and time.

A welcome gift?

So what’s to be done when time feels harassed, weighed down by anxieties and things that have to be done? When that’s so – as this week for me – I try and remember Mink, that hero figure in North American Indian legend who brought the sun to the people. Later, according to another story of him – and I see that I told it in this blog four years ago on November 19th, 2011 – Mink also brought time to the land. But after he stole that clock from the white settlers’ house, there was a big downside to the new possession.  From then on, time became something that had to be managed. The story warns that we have to be mindful. Without care, time can dominate.

A welcome gift?

A wonderful counterbalance comes in those old Welsh folktales where someone sits under a tree to listen to the sound of  birds singing and, wholly enchanted, becomes oblivious of time going by.

Robyn Meredydd is one such fellow in Carmarthenshire lore. It’s a lovely summer’s day, the sycamore tree is in full leaf and the bird is singing so sweetly. But when Robyn eventually  comes to himself, the tree is withered and dead, his farmhouse when he reaches it is covered in ivy and the old man who comes to the door turns out to be his own nephew who confesses that when he was a child, he’d once heard about an uncle called Robyn who had disappeared.

Time is a puzzle. Yet it seems to me that any of it that’s spent listening to the singing of birds is refreshingly worth it –  one of life’s inestimable pleasures. It restores a sense of calm and the confidence to think that, after all, life’s problems can be managed. Certainly it’s a whole lot better than, last night, the sound of the foxes screeching the night away out in the back.

 P.S. I hope you’ll agree that, in their way, both my photos this week are symbols of time. (more…)

Now I’m in my 60s, I feel I can finally come out. I love books. That’s it. I love books. A long time ago, when the Storytelling Revival was gathering steam in the early 80s, it felt impossible to say such a thing if you wanted to be regarded as a storyteller. Everything had to be oral. And as an aspiring storyteller, you preferably had to be seen to come from a long tradition of ‘oral’ with a family culture of oral taletelling behind you.

I’ve always loved books. I love stories and storytelling too. But I also love books. Many of the stories I tell come from books. But of all the books I’ve read, only a minority were ones I deliberately picked up to look for storytelling material. During the last couple of weeks, however, a book I got sent to review for The School Librarian  unexpectedly turned out to be real storytelling stuff – a bit  like coming across a newly written Odyssey.

Brunt Boggart is the book in question. It’s the kind of book I’d like to read out loud to young people. Maybe I’d also like to read it to adults. The language is inventive but also direct. Its rhythms feel like those of spoken language. Names for things and people sound folkloric but freshly coined. What characters say is idiomatic and also spicy  like what you want in an oral story. Places and landscapes give the sense of being familiar, as if they’ve always been there and the underlying story is one whose theme is deep in all myth. It’s the search for the place where everything comes right.

Brunt Boggart – the story

Greychild is a boy who’s brought out of the forest when the boys-who-would-be-men of Brunt Boggart go into the forest to find and fight Wolf. Is he a wolf-boy? He’s certainly strange. Brought back into the village, he gets socialized. The girlen love him and plait flowers into his hair. But there’s something else inside Greychild. It’s a memory of his mother who, as he recalls, used to come into the forest to see and feed him until one day when she came no more. (more…)

Ducks in Brockwell Park this week made me laugh. I love it when they go tail up, head down, orange legs flapping like mad. Then when the eclipse was occurring this Friday morning, I thought about Earth’s dependence on the Sun. Although only a small darkening happened, the birds in the garden went quiet and it felt strangely cold.

After the eclipse, I found myself plunged – this upcoming Blog in mind, no doubt –  into the characteristic mode of the storyteller. Down inside, you start digesting and sorting all kinds of stuff that may have gone into your mind in the past. Then suddenly up come findings – stories, poems, odd bits of memory. And the magic is that, somehow, the findings are all linked in some way.

So here are three items from my cosmic soup of yesterday morning accompanied by two photos of those Brockwell Park ducks. I hope you enjoy the mixture and see the links between the items. For me as a storyteller, they bring the additional pleasure of realising that, between them, they have something to offer for all ages.  

1. Five Little Ducks (more…)

Doors have so many meanings, signal so many different things. At the end of the Second Branch of the Mabinogion (see below for details), there is a brief account of a marvellous journey. Seven chieftains are returning from Ireland bearing with them the head of Bendigeidfran, their leader. He has told them to bury his head on the White Hill in London. This will give protection to this island for the future (and by the way, it makes me think that, if his head is still there, we really have no need of Trident.)

On the way, the seven chieftains are twice delayed, once at Harlech in North Wales where, for seven years, they are enchanted by the singing of the birds of Rhiannon. Then they move on to the island of Gwales (it’s what we now know as the island of Skokholm off the coast of Pembrokeshire). On that island, there is a royal dwelling in which they find a large hall in which there are three doors. Two doors are open. One is closed. And Manawyddan, who is one of the seven bearers, says it must not be opened.

For 80 years, the seven chieftains do not open the door and in all of that time, they remain oblivious of all the sorrows they’ve ever seen or suffered. Nor do they age – and all the while the head of Bendigeidfran, provides good company to them as he had promised. Then of course – for it has to happen – one of the seven men opens the door that’s been shut and at that point they all know they must move on. (more…)

This week I’ve been preparing for a Storytelling evening I’ll be giving in Llangollen on 10th October.  The event is for the Story Circle regularly organised there by storyteller Fiona Collins . My preparations for it feel a bit like the gardening I’ve also been doing in my garden this week. A garden takes time and effort to make and time and effort to maintain. When it’s going right, it gives great pleasure.

From the Land of the Magic

My Llangollen programme is a new one – From the Land of the Magic. The title comes from the Welsh, gwlad yr hud, which is a phrase that has been applied to Penfro, Pembrokeshire, the part of Wales I come from. The light there really is magic. It’s no surprise to me that so many Pembrokeshire stories reflect its enchanting effects.  

My stories for Llangollen will include some smaller ones I’ve often told before as well as one big one I’ve told before but not often, namely the story of Manawyddan which comprises the Third Branch of the early Welsh cycle of  stories, the Mabinogion. I feel this ancient story is extremely relevant to our world today dealing as it does with how to bring a halt to the incessant taking of vengeance.

As for the work of preparing my overall programme, I’ve adopted my normal technique – Mind-Mapping.  Mind-Maps are what work for me. They prompt  me to remember what stories I know, bring them into  fresh focus and enable me to create new programmes and themes. So, how to do it?

Making a Mind-Map (more…)

Round the campfire? In the caravan? Here’s a good story to tell. I came across it this week while sorting and clearing old papers. As usual with tales that get briefly reported in old guide-books and magazines, the story had no title. The only identifying feature was that it took place on the island of Mull. I’ll call it Late Encounters.

Late Encounters

Late one moonlit evening, a hiker was walking through woods on his way back to his digs. The hike had taken him further than he’d calculated and it had got much later than he’d intended. Suddenly, out of the shadows ran a dog. The dog came straight up to him wagging its tail and lifting its head towards him, obviously wanting to be stroked. The dog was an old collie dog. The hiker had no fear of it and when he eventually began walking on, he even began to wonder if the dog would come with him as some dogs do when you come across them in the countryside. So he couldn’t help feeling disappointed when, as suddenly as  he’d arrived, the dog ran off back into the woods without so much as a backward glance.

‘Strange,’ thought the hiker as he went on his way. But about half a mile further on, it felt even more strange when he heard sounds of something  approaching. He hoped it might be the dog. No, it was a man, an old man, as friendly-looking as the dog had been.

‘ Goo’night,’ said the man. ‘Out late?’ ‘Yes,’ said the hiker. ‘Misjudged the path. Got to get back to my lodgings.’ ‘Well never mind,’ the old man said, ‘it’s a good night for walking by any account.’ ‘Strange thing, though,’ said the hiker. ‘I met someone else just now – well, not a person, a dog, very friendly.’ ‘A  dog?’ said the old man. ‘What was he like exactly?’ (more…)

Stories come in many shapes and forms. For me, that’s part of their fascination. For example, last weekend I sang in a concert in Porthcawl where the first of the two pieces we sang retells a story that was first written down as far back as the 12th century. More than that, the person at the centre of the story was someone who’d lived yet longer ago, back in the 6th century A.D. (more…)

For me, as surely for others, it was a shocking moment. We were at the Radio 6 Late-Night Prom in the Royal Albert Hall. What was on offer was the characteristic Radio 6 mix of classical and pop music.

One of the performers was Cerys Matthews (who, like me, happens to hail from North Pembs). She came out on stage in trouser suit and fedora and began with some Tudor songs she said she’d dug out of original Tudor music albums. The second song was a lively jig and the words she sang to it were Welsh. I don’t know where those words originated: they sounded like a traditional folk-song, or maybe Cerys had made them up. In any case, they really suited the music and, judging from the applause, the item went down well with the audience. But in the lull before Cerys’ next song, a great rendition of Blueberry Hill, a voice shouted down from the top balcony and what it said was: ‘Your language is dead.’

Why? Why would anyone want to say that? Can anyone feel so challenged by another language, another culture, another people, that he or she would want to see it dead? (more…)

On Thursday this week, there was ice. I went with my camera to Brockwell Park . The mid-day sun had turned the surface of the bigger pond into kaleidoscopes of sparkle and glitter. Ducks and Canada Geese and seagulls and moorhen were taking deliberate steps across the ice like little old men with sticks. Where ice had melted, they lowered themselves gingerly into the water and paddled about. When pieces of bread were thrown towards them – for several people arrived with bags of it – there’d be a sudden great flapping of wings and huge cacophonies of cawing as the birds rose up, chasing each other to the food.

Ducks

‘Ducks,’ I was thinking. ‘Ducks …’ The image must have been stirring my thoughts. For when I was on my way home, my brain suddenly dived back to a snapshot image that I remembered from an old story. It was an image of one or two ducks turning head down, tail up, diving for something deep below the surface and bringing up beakfuls of mud.

Snapshots from stories can display a powerful tenacity, lingering in the sub-conscious for years until something happens to reanimate them. (This is, of course, one of the reasons why stories are so important to humans, feedings our brains, creating connections.) But what was this story with its image of ducks? (more…)