Storytelling Starters ~ Macaronic
Saturday, October 27th, 2012
Last Saturday evening, I told the myth of Taliesin at an event at the London Welsh Centre, part of this year’s Bloomsbury Festival. I chose the Taliesin story in honour of Menna Elfyn, the renowned Welsh poet who’d had the slot before me.
Taliesin
Taliesin was one of the founders of the huge poetic tradition which remains one of the central features of Welsh culture. By the 13th century (he lived in the 6th) a fascinating legend had arisen about his birth and the way he gained the mystical powers he displayed as a poet. In the legend, they are specifically magic powers and I chose the story as the central part of my programme because, to me, they are the special attributes of all good poetry. My sea-tray (pictured right) helped summon up a sense of the ocean on which the baby Taliesin is said to have floated for one hundred years.