Once upon a time, in a teeming metropolis, there lived a wise woman who was learning the craft of the Ovate. One day she left her home, travelling far and wide to attend a great gathering of storytellers. Whilst she was there, she met a Bard of great skill. She looked at him, he looked back at her, and they recognised one another, for both of them were from the seedgroup called Tamesis. They talked, listened and learned all they could from this gathering of bards. Inspired, they decided to call a meeting of the tribe upon their return, so that they might pass on the tales of wonder and mystery. And so the cycle began anew. From all sides of the great city, seekers of the art of storytelling came to gather by the hearth and listen…
I came to this meeting without having the slightest inclination to learn how to tell a story, but with a certain curiosity about the mechanics of how stories are created. At the start of the meeting we heard a short extract from an OBOD podcast where Philip Carr-Gomm talks about the way we are often starved of the mystery and healing potential of stories, in the typical 21st century culture surrounding us. If anyone who missed the meeting would like to hear the extract, all the podcasts are linked from the main OBOD homepage, http://www.druidry.org
Mark H played his flute, then told us a tale from the isle of Skye, about two young lovers who could not bear to be parted, even by death. Though I’d read tales that weren’t so dissimilar before, it didn’t matter. Hearing the story told, rather than reading it, added an extra dimension, and I found myself quite moved by the ending. Yet the rest of us were not just here to be an appreciative audience, for next we were given a task. We learned how to memorise a tale by making a story stick, (in both meanings of the word – you decorate a wooden stick in order to aid your memory, making the story ‘stick’ in your mind). Sticks were at the ready beside the hearth, and Liz brought out an array of items such as material scraps, feathers, paper clips, pipe cleaners, embroidery thread and buttons. It was a cache to give any magpie hours of fun, or in our case, everything we needed to create our story sticks.
We got to work, although play might be a better way of describing it. Each section of the story was represented by something we added to the stick. For example, the story began by describing a skilled hunter. We might choose to memorise this section by fashioning a little bow and arrow to attach to the stick, or wool to represent the animals he hunted, or anything else which would remind us of his occupation. Some of us chose to make sticks for the story Mark had told us, whilst a few others decided to work on other stories. One by one, we told the others all about the sticks we had created. It was fascinating to see the diversity of ideas, even with those sticks which represented the same story. It was not just that we used different materials to describe the same events. Our interpretations and emphases on certain parts of the story varied somewhat too, making each stick unique. The exercise underlined the point that a story which is spoken rather than written down is something dynamic. We derive our own meaning from the story, and even the same story told by the same storyteller will never be told in quite the same way another time.
Another technique for memorising stories was to make a drawing of a character, or even a feature of the landscape, describing what happened to them over the course of the story. We didn’t try this technique out, but it sounded like it could be useful both for people who are learning stories and for those who wish to write new stories from scratch.
Just as there was a story at the beginning of the meeting, there was another at the end, and this time Liz was our storyteller. Another tale from Skye, this time about a girl who gets lost whilst she is gathering berries. Help comes in the form of deer who guide her to meet the makers of dreams. As with the previous story, it was rich in symbolism relating to animals and the natural world. I loved the idea of birds taking all the symbols of dreams away in order to tuck under our eyelids, with the birds of good omen bringing happy dreams, the birds of ill omen bringing nightmares, although corvids always seem to get a bad rap!
Thanks Mark and Liz for such an enjoyable meeting.
