Storytelling Starters ~ Red
Red has been in my thoughts all week. It’s one of the colours of Autumn and, in the UK, Autumn is certainly here. There are lots of red berries in our local park (a sign, some say, of a hard winter to come). And in our garden, the Sumach tree has turned the most stunning red it’s ever been.
So red has been in my thoughts all week which is why the stories my blog offers this week are, first, a gorgeous little Irish story that was collected by Thomas Crofton Croker and, second, a tiny part from the very first page of the very first story in the great medieval cycle of Welsh tales known as the Mabinogion. The fact that red figures in both is no surprise. Red is a colour traditionally associated with the supernatural in both Welsh and Irish literature.
Red socks: a tale from Ireland
Tom was on his way home from the fields when he saw a leprechaun in a hedge. As he watched, he saw the tiny creature reach down a drink of beer from a pitcher and then return to putting a heel-piece on a tiny shoe just the right size for his foot.
Tom was amazed. He’d never thought to see a Leprechaun. And now that he had, he remembered what he should do. ‘Now all I have to do,’ he said to himself, ‘is keep my eyes on him, and I’m made for life. For don’t they all have a crock of gold hidden away? And don’t they say that if you keep your eyes firmly fixed on them, they can’t escape, and by all the laws of the fairy trade, they have to take you to their crock of gold?’
That’s why Tom then spoke to the Leprechaun and, after a bit of conversation, suddenly reached out his hand and grabbed him, knocking over his pitcher of beer in the process. Then, sounding as if he meant it, Tom said to the Leprechaun that he’d kill him right away if he didn’t show him where his money was hidden. So fierce did Tom look as he made this threat that the little man replied, ‘Come with me across a couple of fields and I’ll show you my crock of gold.’
Well, off they went, Tom keeping tight hold of the Leprechaun until they came to a great big field that was full of thistles. There, the Leprechaun pointed to one big thistle and said: ‘Dig down under that and you’ll get the crock of golden coins.’
Unfortunately, Tom didn’t have a spade with him. So he decided to run home to fetch one. But before he left, so as to be sure to come back to the right thistle, he took off one of the red socks he was wearing, tied it tight round the big thistle the Leprechaun had pointed out and then made the Leprechaun make a promise: ‘Swear you won’t move that sock from that thistle.’ The Leprechaun promised right away.
So home Tom went. But when he arrived back at the thistle-field with his spade, what did he see? Oh no! Lo and behold, every single thistle in that field full of thistles had a red sock tied around it, each exactly like Tom’s red sock.
Tom went home a disappointed man – or as Thomas Crofton Croker put it, ‘a little cooler than when he ran out to claim the crock of gold and make his fortune.’
Red ears: the first part of the Mabinogion
Pwyll Prince of Dyfed was out hunting in the woods in a part of his dominions called Glyn Cuch. As he let his dogs loose, he sounded his horn, then he followed them into the woods. Soon, they’d run out of his sight. As he went deeper into the woods, he started hearing the cry of other hounds not his and, before long, he came to a glade. His own dogs stood at the near edge of the glade and, running into it from the far side, came the other dogs he’d been hearing. They were chasing after a stag and, as the stag ran the middle of the glade, they overtook it and brought it down.
Pwyll stared at those dogs in amazement for, in the words of Lady Charlotte Guest who made the first English translation of the Mabinogion in the first half of the 19th century, ‘of all the hounds that he had seen in the world, he had never seen any that were like unto these. For their hair was of a brilliant shining white, and their ears were red; and as the whiteness of their bodies shone, so did the redness of their ears glisten.’
What an introduction to a story! Shortly after in the story of Pwyll, a horseman appears in the glade, there’s a brief dispute as to whose dogs should have had the right to the stag and then the horseman announces who he is. He is none other than Arawn, the crowned king of Annwfn, the land which, in Welsh tradition, is no less than the Underworld.
So right from the start of the Mabinogion, we are aware that we have entered strange places. And the first thing that alerts us to the magic into which we’re about to be plunged is the appearance of Arawn’s hounds with their shining white hair and red ears.
And that’s the end of this week’s posting except to say hope to see you next week.
PS. My top photo this week comes from Brockwell Park. The second is of the Sumach tree in our garden. Oddly in view of the Welsh story above, another name for the Sumach tree is Stag’s Horn.
Tags: ears, Lady Charlotte Guest, Red, socks, Sumach tree, Thomas Crofton Croker