It’s strange how stories come to mind – sometimes after a very long gap. Yesterday morning, I was wondering what I could write about this week. Suddenly I remembered a story I haven’t thought about for ages. It feels like it fits with the extremely troubled times we’re all living through at present.  

The story:

In this story, which I’ll say more about below,  there was a country that was riven by war. One frightened family – a young girl and her parents – had finally found refuge in a ruined tower in a rocky part of the land.

One day, an old man approached the tower. He asked the parents and their daughter if they would give him shelter for the night. They thought he seemed a kindly man. So they gave him some tea and some of the little food they had and showed him a tiny room with a bed where they said he could spend the night. That evening as they were sitting together, the stranger opened his leather satchel and brought out a glass ball. The glass ball shone in the gloom. Then, as he got up to go up to his room, he handed the glass ball to the little girl. ‘Keep hold of this,’ he said to her, ‘and it will keep you safe.’

As they went to their bed that night, disturbed by the presence of someone they didn’t know, the parents looked in on their guest. Lying asleep in the small room they’d given him, he looked different from before. He looked young. Beside him, hanging from the bedstead, they saw what they now realised was a false beard.

The parents felt very worried. Who was this man who had come to disturb them? Their sleep that night was troubled. But when they woke in the morning, they found that the man had gone. (more…)

This week I’m taking up the challenge I gave myself last week. What follows is my first try-out of the story I said I’d like to prepare and tell. Please let me know if you think it works. And if it does, please tell me how you would end it.

The story:

The story I want to tell you is about a traveller. The amazing thing about this traveller is that he goes on his travels every single year without fail. Every year, he goes an extremely long way and he always ends up in pretty much the same place. You’d think he might try somewhere else or vary the journey sometimes, visit other countries, see other places. But no, every single year he does the same thing.

So this is what he does. He leaves Britain at about the same time – in early summer in June or July. First, he travels down to the Mediterranean – and that’s not surprising because it’s warmer there than here. Then he crosses the Mediterranean sea and arrives in North Africa, which of course is a very popular place for people going on holiday.

After a short while in North Africa, maybe a week or two, having a bit of relaxation and making sure he’s ready for the next part of his journey, he sets out to cross the Sahara desert. Why he feels obliged to do this is a bit of a mystery. It’s not somewhere you’d want to stop. It’s extremely hot, it’s extremely dry and it’s extremely dusty. But it’s his most direct route and it usually takes him only about three or four days.  (more…)

Wildlife is always interesting. Most mornings these days when I draw the curtains, I see a big, handsome fox on the roof of the shed the other side of our back garden wall. Usually he’s still asleep. When he wakes, he stretches and yawns. Sometimes he then moves onto the tree-platform or storage-shed next door. I suppose he feels safe on these vantage points.

As for cuckoos, I learned a lot more about them last Saturday when I went to a fascinating talk on bird migration by a scientist from BTO (British Trust for Ornithology). Since then, thinking about what I learned has made me conceive a new storytelling idea namely, to devise something I could call The Cuckoo’s Story. As with the Mabinogion story I told in North Wales a couple of weeks ago, there’s a bit of a back story.

The back story:

Cuckoos were part of my childhood. In our living room, we had an elaborately carved cuckoo clock: the cuckoo would pop out each hour on the hour, much to my delight. Besides, all round my grandparents’ smallholding deep in the countryside near Cilgerran, I’d hear that crazy repetition of the cuckoos’ call throughout the  cuckoo season.

Then a couple of years ago, I was re-introduced to cuckoos by a friend (Hilary, a million thanks!), who told me about a cuckoo-tracking project being run by BTO. I signed up to sponsor a cuckoo. Welsh cuckoos were being included among the birds being fitted with tracking devices. There was even an invitation to suggest names by which the tracked birds could be known. I remember suggesting Taliesin, the name of one of the earliest Welsh poets.

So that’s how I started getting some cuckoo knowledge. In this Blog previously, I’ve mentioned the astonishingly long and (to me) heroic journey that our cuckoos make each year. Not that they’re really OUR cuckoos at all. Each year, they spend only about 6 weeks in the UK. Then they’re off –  across Europe, the Mediterranean and the Sahara and, after a sojourn in West Africa, down through Africa to the Congo. Then after their time in the tropical forests, they’re on their way back to the UK to breed.

New knowledge: (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…)

An idea or a question can lead you on a journey. This week I began to wonder if I could find a Sweet Pea story. My sweet pea seeds, sown in a pot outside the kitchen door, are just producing their first flower and I felt excited about that.

So I asked myself: are there any Sweet Pea legends? Trying to find an answer, I came across tales about many other flowers. So far as the Sweet Pea is concerned, however, the answer was No.

Yet the process of trying to track down a Sweet Pea story (storytellers do enjoy quests!) did bring one odd little connection with traditional tales. It led me to learn something new about Wem, the small town in Shropshire which is the home of Mythstories.  Mythstories is a museum of stories. I have told stories in it myself – and, incidentally, it’s also where, unless they’ve been moved in the last little while, the Society for Storytelling archives are housed.

So here’s my Sweet Pea journey: (more…)

The Handel Rose (yellow), Paul’s Scarlet (red) and Mary Rose (pink) are all positively flourishing in our garden right now, only slightly battered by this week’s heavy showers. They made me think about  roses as my theme for this week’s blog. Or how about eyes?  I’ve seen several lively pairs of eyes in recent comings and goings that started me trying to identify what was so appealing about them.

Yesterday, I got my answer: when walking down the back of Whitehall, two stories popped into my mind. One was about roses, the other about eyes. And several links between them became immediately clear. Both I first heard from other storytellers. Both are great for telling to older children or adults. Both have a riddling aspect. Suddenly it was obvious what I should do. This week, I’ll give you roses. Next week, eyes. (more…)

Two separate events have brought monkeys into my mind this week. One was receiving a message from a student on the Warwick University course I visited a few weeks ago. She was getting in touch to ask me where she could find a copy of the Little Red Monkey story that I’d told in my session. She’d liked it and now hoped to tell it. But she hadn’t been able to find a copy either on this blog or my website.

This surprised me: it’s one of my favourite stories for children and I thought I’d posted it on this blog a while ago. So I sent her a copy and told her she could also find it in my book, Stories for Young Children and How to Tell Them (A & C Black).

Now, of course, I feel I must remedy my previous omission. So please look below for the story with, at the end, a few hints on how you might tell it. Also if you’d like to hear me telling it there are links to my website. 

First, though, here’s a thought-provoking little poem. It’s called The Prayer of the Monkey and it comes from the set of poems, Prayers from the Ark, that I acquired a few weeks ago. Prayers from the Ark was written in French by the little-known poet, Carmen Bernos de Gasztold. It was translated into English by Rumer Godden and, in the version I have, was published by Macmillan in 1966. Last Sunday, I read the whole set  to a special group to which I belong. We call the group Works in Progress or WIPs for short. When we meet, each of us presents something creative that we’ve been working on.

This time, I presented Prayers from the Ark. I feel the poems are ideal for speaking aloud (reciting poetry was one of my loves as a child) and I hope soon to be offering public readings of them, for example for charity concerts. I see them as fables that are in tune with one of the world’s great needs of today – that we should as a species become far more aware that we share this beautiful earth with all kinds of other creatures, both wild and domestic.  So here is The Prayer of the Monkey. But the monkey is not the loveably cheeky monkey of most people’s imaginations. It’s a melancholy monkey. It might make us think! (more…)

“All tommorrow’s flowers are in the seeds of today.” Spelling mistake included, this was the thought on a hand-written sign in a florist’s shop I passed on Friday.

The thought kept jangling in my mind. Where had I come across a similar idea? Surely it was only a few days ago? Surely I could remember? Then, this morning just before sitting down to write this blog posting, I did.

“Life is funny sometimes – how small acorns of an idea grow into something so much more and take on a life of their own.”

The comment was in an email earlier this week from a teacher I’d worked with a few years ago. At that time, she took up storytelling with her class in a big way. It’s great to hear that evidently she has stuck with it. Obviously, it’s grown into something important for her.

Both comments made me remember a story.

The story: Tomorrow’s flowers

Once there were two water pots. One was whole. One was slightly cracked. Each day, their owner, a farmer, would sling them over his donkey, one each side, to go and fetch water from the well.

On the way to the well every morning, the uncracked pot would mercilessly boast to the other. ‘I’ve got no cracks but you’re rubbish. I don’t know why our farmer doesn’t chuck you away.’

And so on…and on … Every day it was the same (and I think there are some people who are just as destructive in the way they put others down.)

In the end, the pot with the crack burst out to the farmer: ‘I can’t stand it any longer. I’m no use at all. You should throw me away. Who would want a pot that is cracked?’ (more…)

Happy Easter – and here’s my Easter gift to you: a Russian rhyming story about an egg. I put it into this blog for Easter 2012 but I think it’s worth repeating (with a repeating photograph too).

The story:

In grandmother’s shed
Lived a speckled hen.
On the day of my story, it laid an egg.
The egg rolled down
From shelf to shelf
Until in the end it found itself
In a little keg made of aspen wood
In a dusty corner where the donkey stood.
A mouse ran by too near the keg,
Wiggled his tail, and broke the egg!
At this great catastrophe
The farmyard donkey began to cry,
The fat old pig let out a sigh,
A startled chicken rose to fly;
The gateposts shrieked,
All doors creaked,
The milk-churn leaked;
And the priest’s daughter,
The little girl in my story,
Carrying water
Broke her bucket.

All in a dither
She came to her mother
And said:
Mother, mother, have you heard the news?
In grandmother’s yard
Lives a speckled hen.
Today, she laid an egg;
The egg rolled down
From shelf to shelf
Until in the end it found itself
In a little keg made of aspen wood
In the dusty corner where the donkey stood.
A mouse ran by too near the keg,
Wiggled his tail, and broke the egg!
At this great catastrophe
The little donkey began to cry,
The fat old pig let out a sigh,
A startled chicken rose to fly;
The gateposts shrieked,
All doors creaked,
The milk-churn leaked;
And I, the priest’s daughter,
The little girl in this story,
Carrying water,
Broke my bucket.

When she heard this story,
The wife of the priest
Dropped her yeast
And seeing her dough fall to the floor
She headed straight
Through the churchyard gate
And said:

Husband, husband, have you heard the news?
In grandmother’s shed
Lives a speckled hen.
Today, she laid an egg;
The egg rolled down
From shelf to shelf
Until in the end it found itself
In a little keg made of aspen wood
In the dusty corner where the donkey stood.
A mouse ran by too near the keg,
Wiggled his tail, and broke the egg!
At this great catastrophe
The little donkey
Began to cry,
The fat old pig let out a sigh,
A startled chicken rose to fly
The gateposts shrieked,
All doors creaked,
The milk-churn leaked;
And our dear daughter,
The little girl in this story,
Carrying water,
Broke her bucket.
And I, your wife,
Dropped my dough to the floor!

When he heard all this,
The holy priest with a terrible look
Tore the pages out of his book
And scattered them on the floor.
And do you know what happened then?
The wind came and blew the pages across the farmyard into the river
And the river-waters carried them off
And that’s why I can’t tell you any more of the story.

Happy Easter!

Today is St David’s Day (more on that later) and also the last of my current series. Getting Participation has focussed on Early Years children but is applicable, I believe, to all ages. Enjoyment and relish of words; the value of vocal tone and pauses; the enormous power of silence – all such things can make an enormous difference in storytelling. On other previous occasions, I’ve written about rhythms, refrains and rhymes as vital in helping children to feel included and also, of course, about props.

But today I want to write about the over-riding point of all this, namely why participation is worth bothering about and the value of working to achieve it. I have a storytelling anecdote which might help me convey what I’d like to say.

Why it’s worth it:

One time I was telling stories to a class of 14 and 15 year-olds in a Welsh School in mid Wales. We were in an otherwise empty room for the storytelling. The pupils were sitting on cushions on the floor and looking very relaxed. Some began moving onto their stomachs, their heads propped up on their upraised hands. Suddenly, surprisingly, right in the middle of the story, one of the boys moved onto one arm, lifted his head up and spoke to the room. ‘What’s going on here?’ he said. ‘What’s happening to us?’ (more…)