Stories Are Alive!

Telling stories around a fire - circa 2013

Last night I was telling stories at Camp Exclamation Point (CAMP!) where I go every year to share stories. The kids here face more challenges in their lives than most. For the last five years, I think it is, Odds Bodkin has joined me, and this year we had a special visit from Karen Pillsworth. Karen was standing in for Angela Klingler, who has been coming on and off for as long as I have been going (13 years).

For a change I told stories to the youngest Pods, and Odds told tales to the oldest group. I have been telling to the older kids since the beginning of offering storytelling to CAMP!. Because the younger kids only get about 30 minutes, I was able to hoof it up the hill (in a golf cart), join Odds to catch his last story and share two tales myself.

I told a story I had been working on, one I wanted to share with the CAMP! folks for the first time - The Golden Ball. They wanted another tale from me, and one young man asked me to tell the Scottish story known as The Lonely Boatman, or The Fairy Bride, depending on your source! It could be a couple of years since I have told the story. When the young man asked me, my first reaction was - no! It's been too long, I have not practiced it, I'll botch it up. But the story and characters floated to my mind and wanted to be told.

The story of The Fairy Bride, is not a silly story, it is not a story which makes us look at ourselves and laugh. It is a love story about the fey, the fair people - fairy folk. It's about losing something precious. And getting it back. It's on my third CD ('A Tangle of Tales') and is a beautiful tale. It was one of my Gran's favourite stories.

Stories, I truly believe, live within us. I have likened them before to children - sometimes errant children, who hide away when you have practiced and planned on telling them, or they can jump up and down and demand to be told.  The Fairy Bride is a gentle story, sad in places, thoughtful in others, and when I was asked to tell it, the tale stepped quietly to the front, ready to be told. It was alive, and it breathed as I spoke the words. The telling was different, easy, relaxed - I caught the elusive dragon. When the story ended there was that pause you sometimes get as folks take it all in, then a sigh, then applause. This was a large group of young people from 12 years up, not a group I would have pegged this story on, especially when they wanted ghost stories. This was not a ghost story in any manner or form. And they loved it.

Another story I tell on the same CD is called The Story Untold, Song Unsung. I end it, where and whenever you hear it, with the words: "If you know a song - sing it. For they wrap us up and keep us warm when we need to be held. If you know a story, tell it. For stories are like boots and like to travel." And I'll end this blog the same way.

If you know a story - tell it. Stories are like boots and love to travel.

Simon
17th August, 2017



Simon Brooks © 2017

The Richness and Beauty of the Selchidh, and Hiking Boots

From Arthur Rackham's Undine

I have just finished reading a wonderful book about the seal people of Ireland and Scotland. It is a journal of a journey, mainly through Ireland, and the stories collected of the Selkie, the Kane, Silkies, Selchies, Selchidh; the shape shifters. The stories are of another time but not that long ago. The book was printed in 1954, and some stories were told 'in living memory', the rest as ancient as the creatures themselves.  There is something special, timeless about the tales of the seal people.

My brother gave me the book for my birthday this year and it is one of those rare books that are an easy read which do not lose the richness of language. The writing, the narration, has an easy gait to it, but I did not want to rush through it. The stories needed to be savoured, so I would dip in and read a chapter, then sit there and mull it over. I felt I was traveling with the author, David Thomson. My brother had given me a first edition and the pages are now delicate, the dust jacket worn. It is a treasure to enjoy slowly. Sometimes I would look up words I was unsure of, words describing clothing I had not heard of, like bawneen, or the pronunciation of those tricky Gaelic words. Life of the islanders in the 1950's had the old ways upon them; the old men had certain ways of life and attitude the younger folk had started to lose. It was similar in that way to reading Mary Webb's 'Precious Bane'. She wrote of a time passing and the old ways just about hanging on, but a generation earlier in England.  'The People of the Sea' by David Thomson, is a book I will treasure for a long time.

There is something very magical about what I call the Old Stories and Ancient Stories - the folk and faerie tales, the myths and sagas of long ago, but there is something even more magical, or deeper to the Selchidh, Selkie stories. I often wonder what it is. My mother, I think, told me the story of the Woman of the Sea when I was young, or someone did when we visited the Isle of Aran in my very young days. I rediscovered the story in Kevin Crossley-Holland's wonderful book 'Northern Lights, Legends, Sagas and Folk-tales' when I bought it in 1987. It was a great rediscovery. I have been sharing the tale since then. That book got me into folk and faerie tales as an adult in my 20's.

There are many fun tales to be told, some stories which beg for humour. There are those filled with depth, and those with meaning, but the Selkie tales for me stand out. Is it because of the shape-shifting ability? (My son likes werewolves!) Does this dual life appeal to us because these tales offer a hope of something else when things get rough, life gets tough? Could some of us, the dark haired of us, walk to the coast, dive in and take form of a seal?

I was having lunch with Papa Joe a couple of days ago and we were talking about stories and how there are different types of tales that come to you. I am not talking about motifs or the
Aarne–Thompson tale type index, I am talking about how a story finds you. When I come across a tale I love, there are times the story is immediately lodged into my head and never leaves, like, for me, the Woman of the Sea; and The Goat from the Hills and Mountain, collected by Alma Flor Ada and Isabelle Campoy. There are other stories which I know I want to tell but stay dormant in my mind as I process them, mull them over. Sometimes years pass before I tell them, like Beowulf (still mulling around!), or those which have not yet given me their voice yet like Little Red Riding Hood - she is out and about now! Although Woman of the Sea sank in immediately, but I did not tell it for years. I would share it, but not tell it. As I said to Papa Joe, it is like buying a brand new pair of very good, expensive, leather hiking boots - you would never go hiking the same day, you would break the boots in over days and weeks. The Selkie stories, all of them, to me are like that. I have them in my mind and could tell them, but they need, no, I need to be broken in with the story. The tales need to tell me how to share them, how I personally can best serve the stories and those who listen. Some stories are like sneakers and you can jump into them and start running; some are like dress shoes, you polish them up and keep them polished; and some are like hiking boots that need to be worn for a good while before taking them out. Maybe that's why I like the Selkie stories so much, once you have worn them for a while they will last forever, and will take you to places you never thought you would go.

For a source of Selkie stories, or books with the stories of the seal people, go to my website.
http://www.diamondscree.com/selkies
Peace,
Simon

Music and Story

One of my favourite albums!

I have just finished reading a book by Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy, Fever Pitch and A Long Way Down amongst others) called Songbook.  Although it is primarily about his top favourite pop songs, it talks about the importance of music and in particular pop music.  He defines pop as most things which have a three verses and a chorus and comes in at around 3 or 4 minutes, with the occasional exception.  I also have a friend called Stevens Blanchard who has his very own pop group called Conniption Fits, as many in the Upper Valley of NH and VT will know.  He is also a D.J. (an acronym for disc jockey, someone who jockeys discs - nowadays CDs! I resent the words deejay and emcee.  Is a deejay a type of bird?  I have no idea what an emcee is, but I know that M.C. stands for Master of Ceremonies)! He says that country is the new pop! Anyway! Hornby writes about there was only 'one type of pop', but now there are many sub-divisions of pop - such as heavy metal, hip-hop, death metal, punk, R&B, soul, etc and even country and western (both kinds!), but it got me thinking about storytelling.

So, my thoughts: classical music was the 'pop' of the age, then came along those flappers listening to Gershwin, Armstrong and Bessie Smith and later: Crosby, Sinatra, Connif, and Streisand who shocked everyone at the time.  And ?!  And then they became pop. Then rock & roll came to be and everyone had to lock up their daughters, and ban r 'n' r as devils music.  Then rock & roll turned into pop.  Rock & rock became heavy or hard rock, and then heavy metal and daughters were again locked up. Then punk arrived and all children were kept safely at home, but that too turned into pop. Get the idea?

So here was aural storytelling, which began trying to explain the universe, then along came the legends, stories of real people which merged with other people and became surreal and mixed with magic.  And like the first pop, that stayed around for a long time.  A shake up was overdue, like an old library book, and people (I believe mostly Americans) 'launched' the personal story genre into the arena of public storytelling.  Once personal stories were added to the cache of storytelling genres, a punk movement (which in England was regarded as a political movement) was needed and we got story slams.  Or maybe slams are a story version of a combined punk and rap movement. Big stories made short with great economy of words, but with none of the passion lost.

And another of my faves.

All of this, of course, does not take in account that the original political advisers to the kingdom rulers were the poets and singers of the pre-Christian era.  The first Romans to Britain found schools larger than any today and wrote about these colleges as being filled with budding bards, so were the stories were first sung? In John Matthews' Taliesin, he quotes that a bard had to learn in their first year 'fifty oghams or alphabets. Elementary grammar. Twenty tales.'  In their sixth year, they learned 'the secret language of the poets. Forty-eight poems of the species called Nuath. Seventy or eighty tales.'  In their twelfth, yes I said twelfth year they go on to learn '120 Cetals or orations. The Four Acts of Poetry. During the three years to master 175 tales [in their ninth year!] in all, along with the 175 Anruth, 350 Tales in all.'  As Matthews says: 'R.A.S. Macalister writes: Suppose ... [we] keep them in school 300 working days in a solar year ...they learn no more than ten lines of poetry in a day, they will have acquired a total of 3,000 by the end of the year, and in twenty years they will be masters of 60,000 lines.  This is considerably more than twice the length of the two Homeric epics.'  I am assuming here he is saying that those epics would be memorized word for word!

Can you imagine a pop star doing this?  Granted there are some storytellers who do tell the Odessesy, and Gilgamesh, and other epics, but the rest of us?  I try hard to learn at least ten new stories a year.  It usually ends up being five or six, but still!

Taliesin - my logo

So what is my point?  As Nick Hornby says in his book, he needed the Clash in his teens, and all other music to his ears was sappy, or spineless, but now he looks for more in music than what the Clash has, now, to offer him.  As a huge Clash fan myself I feel a little resentment to his words, but the sentiment I agree with.  He has not 'gone over to jazz' yet, but then I was into jazz in my teens.  As a storyteller I am finding that the tales I tell have become deeper, that they are tales I tell are less for entertainment, but for the stories themselves.  As more and more slams happen, and they loose their punk/rap/hip-hop counter culture status and become pop, will these listeners begin to seek out the storytellers who are the Orffs, Bachs and Elgars, or the Fitzgeralds, Silvers, and Monks?  This was not quite what Hornby was saying, but it is what he inspired in my own mind and made me wonder the reflection of pop songs to storytelling.

Maybe I should look at that course at East Tennessee on storytelling and folk lore!  Maybe I would find my inner Clash storyteller, or might I find that I am now more Mingus or Mozart? Only time will tell!

The Magic Mortar

Many thanks to Tim Van Egmond who pointed me to the story!
Also many thanks to Sean Herman who allowed me to use his art. See link under image for his DeviantArt work.  He is also an amazing tattoo artist, I discovered!

The Magic Mortar, retold by Simon Brooks (c) 2012

A tale from Japan

Once, long ago in Japan, there were two brothers. The older brother was wealthy, greddy, and mean-spirited. However, the younger brother was generous, and kind-hearted, but had few possessions or money.

It had been a hard year for the younger brother and New Year was fast approaching.  How could they celebrate the New Year if they had little to no rice or wine?  The young man’s wife told him to go to his older brother and asked for some rice.  If he gave enough, they could make their own wine. Otherwise water would be fine. So the young brother made his way from his own humble home to his brothers fine palace which sat on it’s own island.

The younger brother borrowed a boat and rowed over the sea and came to the palace.  When he walked in and asked the servants where his brother was, he was told by the pond feeding the coy fish.  He made his way out down the long paths between shady trees to where his brother was.

"What do you want this time?" asked the older brother.

"Tomorrow is New Year and I have little rice for wife and children to celebrate.  Could I borrow some?  I will return whatever you are able to spare later in the year."

"No!  You should not be so generous.  Maybe if you were more like me, you would not have to come scrounging for food on New Years Eve. Go!  And don't come back!"

The younger brother rowed back to the main land and returned the boat.  As he trudged home, he felt the weight of the world upon his shoulders.  As he was walking, an old man called out to him: “What is it that bothers you so, young man? You bend your back down like mine!”  The young brother looked up and saw the man was carrying a bundle of firewood on his back.

Image used with permission from the artist Sean Herman - via DeviantArt

“Here,” said the young man. “Let me carry that and I will tell you my story,” which he did.  When they reached the old man’s house, the man pointed to a wall and said: “See that gap in the wall?”  The young man nodded.  “Well, go in there and you will see a statue of Buddha and beneath, some tiny people.  Give the little men this rice cake.” The old man gave the young brother a rice cake whose top was coated with honey. “But only when they offer you a stone mortar.  Go on! Go!”

The young brother was puzzled, but thanked the old man and made his way through the gap in the wall and saw the stature of Buddha.  A tiny shriek came from by his feet, and when he looked he saw, he found he had trodden on one of the little men. “I ma so sorry,” he said.  “You are so small I did not see you there.  Are you alright?”  He lifted the wee fellow up and apologized again.  The wee fellow saw the rice cake.

“What’s that?” asked the little man.  “It smells so good! Can I have it?”

“This is very valuable to me. What would you give me in exchange?”

The little man asked to be put down and he went and talked to his friends. When he looked back up at the young brother he said: “How about yards of silk?”

“No, this cake is more precious to me than silk,” said the young brother.

The little man ran back and talked with his friends again and came back and said: “Well, what about a large bag of gold?”

“I am not sure,” said the young brother.  “What else might you have?”

The little man ran back to his friends and a great deal of whispering began.  Eventually the little fellow came back and said: “We have a stone mortar.  Would you take that?”

“That sounds like a fair trade,” said the young brother. So out came the stone mortar and the brother handed the little men the rice cake.  As the young brother turned, the wee man called out: “Wait!  You need to listen.  That is a magic mortar. It will give you whatever you want.  All you need to do, is sing what you want and turn the pestle clockwise.  When you have enough, stop the pestle and turn it counter-clockwise and sing stop!”

The young brother could not believe his luck and ran home after thanking the little gentlemen.

When he got home his wife asked if he had rice and said, no but had something better.  He pulled out the stone mortar and told her about the old gentleman and the little men.

“Does it work?” she asked.  The young brother looked at his wife and said: “Let’s find out.”

He held the mortar in one hand and turned the pestle clockwise with the other, and sang:

“Rice, rice, can we have some rice? Rice, rice, can we have some rice?” And the pestle suddenly speeded up and rice began to flow up from the bottom of the mortar until it overflowed onto the floor!  The younger brother called out: “Stop, stop, we have enough rice! Stop, stop, we have enough rice!” and the pestle stopped turning and the rice stopped.  The husband and wife smiled at each other.  The younger brothers wife asked if he could ask for wine.  They got a vessel and the younger brother tilted the mortar over it and sang: “Wine, wine, can we have some wine?” and the pestle took itself from his hand and spun faster and out flowed wine, until he sang it to stop.

The younger brother was ecstatic! “We could have a great party and invite all our neighbours over!”  But his wife said their house was not big enough for all the neighbours. So the younger brother took the mortar in one hand and turned the pestle clockwise with the other, and sang: “House, house, can we have a bigger house?” and shots were heard and the house began to grow new walls and as the house grew it was filled with fine furniture until the younger brother sang the mortar to stop. Which it did.

And so they asked their neighbours to come and celebrate New Year with them. And the next day, on New Years Day, they came.  Many were surprised to see the new house and the fine clothes and furniture the younger brother and his wife now had, but people were too polite to ask where it had come from.

Well the older brother heard about the celebrations and came to join in.  When he saw the new wealth, of course he had to ask: “Yesterday you came to me asking for rice and now you have all this!  How did you come by all your new wealth?”

The younger brother knew not to tell his older brother, so said “I suppose that it came because of my kindness and a lot of luck!” But he said no more.

People feasted and laughed and played until late.  When people began to leave, the younger brother said, wait.  “I want to give all the children who have come a little gift.  Wait one moment.”  He went off to the kitchen and the older brother quietly followed and saw the younger brother pick up the stone mortar and sing it to produce sweet candy curd cakes.

“Arr is that how it is done, is it?” and he sneaked back to the others.  But, he did not see how the mortar was stopped.  After the other guests had left, the older brother asked his younger brother if he could stay the night.  “I have eaten too much and my belly aches.”

“Of course you can,” replied the younger brother. So he and his wife took out a tatmi mat for sleeping and laid it out for the older brother.  But as soon as the younger brother and his wife were asleep, the older brother got up and stole the mortar and took it with him to his boat and began to make his way over the waters to his island.  He was thirsty and hungry, despite what he had told his brother so looked around his boat and found some un-salted rice cakes. He picked up the mortar and holding the pestle sang out, “Give me salt, give me salt!” and salt began to fill the mortar.  He sprinkled some on his rice cake and ate it, putting the mortar down on the deck of the boat.  But the mortar continued to make salt.  As he rowed he found the boat getting harder and harder to row and then realized that the boat was filling with salt.  He tried to stop the mortar but in his panic did not say the right words, and could not have even if he knew the right words to say.  He tried bailing the boat out, but it sank and took the older brother with it as well as the mortar.

And because no one has asked the mortar to stop making salt, it still makes salt to this day.  Which is why the seas are filled with salt.

 Retelling copyright (C) 2012.  Do not copy, duplicate or reproduce in any form.  It's illegal and NOT cool.

Sources:

Ready to Tell Tales, by Holt and Mooney

The Magic Listening Cap: More Folk Tales from Japan, by Yoshiko Uchinda

Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc.

Sting of the Geisha by M. M. Rumberg