Star Apple
It’s the time of year to tell the Star Apple story. A little child, (make it a boy or a girl), is always saying, ‘I’m bored’. The child’s mother has plenty of answers – ‘tidy your bedroom’, ‘do your homework’ or ‘go and play with your toys’ – but the child keeps coming back with the same complaint. Then one day (probably sometime about now!) the mother says, ‘Well, why not go and find a little green house with a chimney on top and a star inside.’ The child is suitably mystified. He or she goes and searches the toy box, then looks up and down the street in case one of the houses has turned green, gained a chimney and developed a star inside. No luck until… the child visits Granny who lives next door. Hearing what Mum has said, Granny says invitingly, ‘Let’s go in the kitchen and we’ll have a look.’ In the kitchen, she takes a green apple out of the fruit bowl and says, ‘See, here’s a little green house. And see it has a chimney on top (that’s the stem!).’ ‘But it’s supposed to have a star inside,’ says the child. ‘Well, let’s have a look,’ says Granny. And when she cuts the apple in half (and when you do it, don’t cut downwards but across the middle), she reveals the star inside. Try it and see. Any children you know will be amazed and delighted.
I told the story yesterday to my ‘Storytelling Without the Book’ participants on my course in Wandsworth. We had an excellent day. Nancy who grew up in the Caribbean said she’d always heard loads of stories when she was a child and then when she had children of her own, she became the storyteller for them. In the dentist’s waiting room or the doctor’s surgery, that’s how she kept her children quiet. Now she is the storyteller to her grandchildren. She says she’s very spontaneous. She makes the stories up. I explained to the course that not all storytellers make up their own. Like the Star Apple story, you can hear a story you like, then tell it and tell it in your own words. That’s also the oral tradition – and for storytellers like me, recreating and retelling the stories you love is at the very heart of it.
Last Friday I was conscious of bringing Welsh oral tradition back to life for Cymdeithas Cymraeg Harrow, the Harrow Welsh Society. It was a wonderfully well-attended evening to celebrate the 80th anniversary since the society was founded. As the President said in her excellent speech, 1929 was when the first General Election with Universal Suffrage was held. A lot has happened since then! My stories for the evening celebrated the very long length of the Welsh oral tradition with the legend of the 6th century poet, Taliesin, the beautiful folktale of the origin of the three rivers of Wales, the Wye, the Severn and Rheidol, and then to finish some of the stories of Shemi Wad, the celebrated Pembrokeshire storyteller who died in 1897.
December 21st, 2009 at 5:45 am
I well remember the first time I ever heard Mary Medlicott tell a story, how mesmerising and spellbinding it was. Her voice, almost operatic in its range and colour, held me riveted for the length of the story, and I realised when she stopped I longed for her to go on. and on. And this from my friend Mary, whom I had only met weeks before when she appeared at my door in Brixton having walked there from her own Brixton residence. It was snowing and Mary was glowing, her hands were warm (she made me feel them on my face) and that Voice! that voice shrieked and tinkled with pleasure like a sleigh full of bells. She’s been an indespensible part of my life ever since that day, a true friend and an always inspiring and mesmerising force whether in story telling mode or no. I value her and love her and she’s coming to see me for Christmas this year in New Zealand, a fact which has my head in a whirl and my heart pounding with antcipation. In fact she’ll be here the day after tomorrow! Can you believe that? Just like magic. We’ll have the best of times and then she’ll go away and I’ll be sad but richer for her visit. I hope I can enrich her life, too, while she’s here. It would make me feel that life is best when you know someone like that and you can give them something for all the things they’ve given you.