Tag: folklore

Fox Woman

~ simonsylvester ~ Leave a comment

Another tale, another telling; at my last story circle, I performed a Siberian folktale called The One-Eyed Man & The Fox Woman from a wonderful collection called The Sun Maiden And The Crescent Moon by James Riordan. It’s a story I first heard on a podcast told by Daniel Deardorff. By way of drums and dreams he seized me by the scruff and never let me go; when I started storytelling, The Fox Woman was right at the top of my list of pieces to learn. It’s longer than Gobbleknoll or The Talking Skull, about 20 minutes or so, and I’ve been working my way up to it by way of shorter tales.

There’s an otherworldiness to this one. The titular One-Eyed Man is a pretty small part of the story – the journey belongs entirely to the Fox Woman – her anger, her longing, her choices, her consequences. It holds at its heart a crystal truth about moving through life; about what a person should tolerate, and what they cannot. It’s about ageing, changing, desire, belonging and peace. It’s vast and it’s wild.

The Siberian stories are strong. I’m currently reading The Turnip Princess by Franz Xaver Von Schonwerth: 72 folktales and fairy stories collected roughly in parallel to the Grimms, then lost for over a century in a city archive. As with my recent reading of some Russian stories, I’ve been struck by how many of them are structurally quite weak; elements appear at random with successions of unconvincing ‘and thens’ disconnected from what’s already happened. What I admire in the Siberian stories (as with Inuit stories) is that most elements of the story happen because of something else – the magic remains wild and vital, but the threads of story are causal and connected, rather than consecutive – at times almost random. As a side note, it’s fascinating to see the movement of stories through time and place – there are quite obviously elements of Grimms throughout The Turnip Princess, then what crops up but half of Three Golden Heads Of The Well? (Another story high on my list to learn.)

I’m off topic. Back to Siberia. The stories are rich in blood and fat and sinew. Eating, not eating; animals that talk to people; the Moon sneaking down by night to steal a bride; clayman, raven, elk. Animals are completely and vitally integrated with people – survival depends on food, and food is meat, and meat is animals, and animals is hunting. This is the prism through which almost every story plays out; from the mythic to the domestic, tales of tooth and blade and fur and fire. Odd thing for a vegetarian to say, but count me in. I’m there.

Telling The Fox Woman went well, I think, I hope. Ten of us met in an old Quaker graveyard high on Fellside, looking out across the town, with a large ginger cat slinking through the long grass, and the last of the summer swifts high overhead, and a robin ferreting through wild blackberries. I brought in repeated motifs to bookend the story, and that seemed to go well; one of the jokes didn’t land at all, but the other landed superbly. I extended the scene with the baskets of skins, which felt to me to make sense to the story, and I removed the scene with the reflection in the pool. I managed not to rush – to slow down and relish the flow of words. I’m increasingly drawing on my well of prose and poetry when conjuring the images. I still have a very long way to go in using my body and voice and face, and this is something to work on.

Next telling is at the Brewery open mic supporting Rose Condo – either a Zen koan called Two Tigers & A Strawberry or Queen Albine, depending on how angry I am on the night about English nationalism. Chances are I’ll be quite angry.

The Talking Skull

~ simonsylvester ~ 1 Comment

A quick storytelling post on the back of another Verbalise at the Brewery Arts Centre. The slots are 4 minutes, and I’d struggled to find a piece I liked that fit that time frame – despite having loads at 1-2 minutes and several at 5-6 minutes. Eventually I settled on The Talking Skull; originally from Cameroon, I think, and a story I’d known for a long time before I started telling any myself – and one I heard completely reinvented by Nick Hennessey when I was on the storytelling course.

While keeping the structure the same, Nick moved the action to the gibbets and heaths of old England, bookending it with singing and drums and a clutch of corbies. I’m nowhere near drumming and I’ll never be a singer, but his translocation of the story was so deft and absolutely something to learn from. I shifted mine to the mosses of south Lakeland and used a Baron of Kendal for the villain. It’s a fantastic wee piece and I loved telling it – and I loved exploring how the bones of a story can hang with different skins. That’s something to remember.

My son drew the backdrop for the projector – much obliged that lad – and many thanks to Ann The Poet for the photo.

The Six Blind Men & The Elephant

~ simonsylvester ~ 1 Comment

Another storytelling update! This week I told a story in school for the first time – popping down to tell The Six Blind Men & The Elephant to my son’s class, who are looking at Buddhism. It’s a lovely wee school and the kids were very welcoming, a string of high-fives lined up on the way in and the way out. I’d planned a straightforward telling with some questions to follow, but once we were in the moment I started calling on the kids for ideas of what the blind men thought of the different parts of the elephant. They loved getting involved, which is a lesson for future tellings. Afterwards we had a fantastic chat about the importance of sharing – and of knowing how other perspectives can deepen and strengthen our own knowledge – and then we went round the class, imagining how the bits of our own favourite animals might resemble something completely different. It was a lot of fun.

I was packing up when they asked me for another story, and their teacher kindly gave me the time to tell it. I shared Gobbleknoll, and this is where the fluidity of storytelling showed itself so marvellously – even as I was telling it, I sanitised the tale and teased out the bloodier elements – and I thought nothing of stopping to expand or explain something, even to spell out some words. My knowledge of the story and my prior tellings gave me the freedom to tell it for this particular audience on this particular day. That was exhilarating and wonderful and fun and right. The kids loved Rabbit and his stone shoes and his ears tied down. Gobbleknoll has nothing to do with Buddhism – I could have told The Vain Crane or The Tigers & The Strawberry – but it went over well.

I’m learning several more stories at the moment – Aioga, The Name, Three Golden Heads Of The Well – and more and more, I’m finding my own ideas and instincts stepping in. Adding a few words of description here, or a colour there – adjusting a clunky dynamic between two characters – expanding or reducing dialogue. A story is not a box with walls, but a gateway – a road.

I’m learning.