A Scottish Storyteller

And now head over to The Other Scottish Storyteller's blog to read about the concert party (entitled "A Scots Handsel - Traditional Scottish Concert Party") she organised to raise funds for Ellon Academy pupils' trip to Ecuador.

It was a great night and now that it's over and the sweaty hands and dry mouth have gone, I can say I had a brilliant time performing Hazel Murdoch's doric song "Learning To Be A Fairy."

The acts were all really entertaining and Storyquine did an amazing job of organising the whole thing!

(P.S. Thanks for putting up flattering photos of me Storyquine! ;)

Aye, The Ither Scottish Storyteller and myself will both be taking part in AROHA's Traditional Concert Party this Saturday 17th November.

I will be a fairy. Stop laughing.

Here's the link - http://www.arohascotland.org/news/eventdetails.php?id=25

The autumn edition of the Grampian Association of Storytellers newsletter (GASlight) is now out! click here to see it.

The Rhynie Man is a pictish stone carving of a fierce man with sharp teeth and an axe which was ploughed up in 1978 at a farm at Barflat, Rhynie. (A good description can be found here http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/archaeology/sites/pictish/rhynie.pdf)

Now I always wondered why The Rhynie Man was so angry looking, until I heard a couple of neighbours arguing one night and was inspired to write the following poem.

THE RHYNIE WIFE
- by Pauline Cordiner



He bade up there on the Hill at Rhynie:
A fearsome giant that wis far fae tiny!
He wiz 12 ft tall, or mair, I’d say
And he reeked of stale sweat and decay

It could be said that his farts smelt like death
But that wis nithin when compared tae his breath!
For a’ hopes of dental hygiene were lost
For the Rhynie man never, ever flossed.

His stinkin feet were a sicht tae be seen
The corns and the bunions were jist obscene
And a terrible insult to anyone’s nose
And he had puir squished sheepies between his toes!

He’d stomp a’ roond the surrounding land
Wi a great bloody axe hud in his haund
Wi’ his sharpened teeth and his tangled beard
For miles around, this giant wiz feared.

First they’d smell him coming for his stench was foul
And then they’d hear him stomp and they’d hear him growl
And alarms would be raised down in Rhynie village
That the Rhynie man had come to pillage

The villagers would run and try to hide
But couldnae, nae matter how they tried
For he’d smash right through the cottage roofs
(For thatching isnae giant proof)

And then he’d grab fitiver he’d want
That’s how this giant made his hunt
He’d take their sheep and he’d tak their food
And he’d terrorize the neighbourhood!

The corn he’d ran aff wi, the neeps he had thieved
Til the bairns in the village were hungry and peeved
He’d ta’en mair than they could afford tae lose
Until a’ that wis left wis twa boney coos

Now ab’dy wundered why he stole so much food
And why he aye ga’ed aroon in sich a bad mood
Until a great howlin’ cry which they a heard one day
Let slip the secret and gave it away!

This scream could be heard fer miles aroon,
In Alford, Kennethmont and in Huntly toon
In Insch ye could hear it, Monymusk and Premnay
Even a wee murmur, way aff in Kemnay!

A screeching ogress’s cry – high pitched (not a tenor)
Bellowed out “I’M HUNGRY! NOO FAR’S MA DENNER!????”
And they all knew the reason for Rhynie Man’s strife
For he’d gotten himself a Rhynie Wife!

A terrible wumman aye greeting and grumblin’
Wi a stomach so huge, it was ayeways rumblin’
And she nagged him, and beat him, The Rhynie Man
Though he tried as best as any man can


He’d cook for her sheepies: boiled, roasted and fried,
But her stomach was never satisfied!
Still she’d hit him and he’d yell out for his mummy
And his cries could be heard, far off in Kildrummy!

His family had warned him over and over
That no self respecting giant should marry an ogre…
But marry her he did, and how she’s his wife
And he’ll have to put up with her for the rest of his life

And so off he goes, once again, doon tae Rhynie village
Where to feed his giant wife he must plunder and pillage
I Feel sorry for him and his ogress quinie
The tormented, hen-pecked Giant of Rhynie

I have heard this story told many times. Sometimes the story is attributed to "a stone circle in Auchterless," but in some versions the stone circle involved is the Hatton of Ardoyne recumbant stone circle on the road from Oyne to Old Rayne in Aberdeenshire. This is interesting as one of the circle stones has been used as a gate post - and has been returned to its original place! Nine stones of a possible original thirteen still stand. Only one flanker remains.

The story is set in relatively modern times - in the last 100 years or so when farming methods were becoming more modern, yet animals were still used to pull things. And perhaps when attitudes towards the old traditions were becoming more modern, yet some superstitions held fast.

There was once a farmer who lived a hundred years ago or so, at a farm not too far from here. The farm had been left to him by his father and he was becoming a wealthy man. He grew crops on his land and kept sheep, cows and had a couple of horses and oxen for use on the land. His family was growing! He had a fine son to inherit the farm from him when he grew old, and another child on the way.

Now, one day this farmer had been hard at work in the fields. He'd hired in some help to repair the old dry stane dykes and some new gateposts were needed to finish the job off. Luckily, on his land there was an ancient recumbant stone circle - the type that is very common in the north east of Scotland - which had a couple of tall stones of perfect girth that would do the job just fine!

The farmer took his two strongest oxen up to the top of the hill and, despite the warnings from his family and neighbours, used them to slowly drag the giant stones, one by one down the hill. The poor oxen were exhausted as the stones were very heavy indeed but the farmer was happy with their work and had his son feed them well and rub them down while he and the stone dyker (who was muttering words of warning) put the new gateposts in place.

Well, it wasn't long before the fortunes of the farmer and his family began to change. The once profitable farm fell to a series of droughts, blights and terrible weather. Soon all that was left of the original farm animals, was one boney old mare - the farmer and his family had been forced to eat or sell the other farm animals just to survive! His wife had lost her child and his son was ill and weak.

Finally, after much persuasion from his friends and neighbours, he pulled down the two gateposts and with a great sigh, tacked up the horse ready to drag the stones back up the hill to what remained of the circle. He truly expected the old mare to die of exhaustion on the way. But to his great surprise, the horse effortlessly pulled both stones up the hill to where they belonged! With the help of a neighbour, the stones were stood upright in their original places and the farmer returned to his home.

In no time at all his son recovered and his crops grew once more and, within time, his fortunes were restored.

The story of the farmer and his experiences with the stone circle spread and perhaps stone circles are protected today by superstition as much as they were in days gone by!

Labels: folklore, stone circles

It was a cold spring morning when my friend and I stopped off in Inverurie on the way home from a party the night before. We got some snacks for breakfast and made our way to the old graveyard in the hope of finding some of the old pictish carvings that have been moved there for safekeeping.

We found them and were just considering climbing up the old Motte which is situated within the graveyard when there was an eerie voice coming seemingly out of nowhere...

"Mornin'!!! Huv ye ever heard the story o' twice buried Mary?" (When I tell this story, he sounds a lot like Private Fraser from Dad's Army. That might help you hear him in your mind). We looked around and first of all saw no-one, but eventually, just over the dyke of the kirkyard, we saw a wee grinning mannie, walking his dog by the burn. He then told us the story of Mary Elphinstone...

Well, many years ago in the village of Inverurie, there lived a young lassie who had been happily married for a good few years to a very handsome man (some versions of the story have him as the local minister) with whom she was very much in love. Things were going well and some say she was expecting her first child when poor Mary became very unwell. Despite the best of care and prayers from friends and family, Mary's condition declined until finally, one night, she slipped away.

Her husband was absolutely distraught and couldn't think of a life ahead without his beloved Mary! He was so distraught in fact that after the funeral, he couldn't even bear to go to his wife's wake, let alone stay with her body for the next few nights. For you see, this story takes place at a time when The Ressurectionists were hard at work in Scotland's Graveyards. These were grave robbers who would secretly remove the newly-deceased from their graves, cart them off to the nearest university town, and sell the bodies to the medical school who would then use the bodies in anatomy lessons. Of course, all this was highly illegal! It had only been a few months since Burke and Hare had been punished for their part in the sale of cadavers to in Edinburgh.* With Aberdeen University not too far away, the guarding of the body of loved-ones was common in this part of Scotland and mortsafes and watch houses can still be found in graveyards in this area today (Banchory Devenick and Cluny are just two).

But back to our story... The local inn that night was busy, with many wishing to raise a glass (or two!) to young Mary's memory. How tragic to die so young! And her poor husband! He won't leave the house you know! Too upset to come to her wake or to stay by her body!

Now let us picture a couple of dark characters... sitting in the corner of the inn drinking their ale. Let's call them Big Jimmy and Wee Jimmy. They aren't graverobbers really - just opportunists! They're a bit down on their luck, they've been out of work for a while and have spent the whole day in Inverurie looking for houses that seem easy to rob. Just imagine their ears pricking up at this! Poor Mary Elphinstone... Buried just today in her wedding finery! And no one to guard her grave?

Well, the two of them quickly finished their drinks and in the silence of the night, they picked up their old cart and horse and made their way through the streets to the graveyard. By now the moon was up and there was just enough light to see Mary's newly dug grave. Shovels were taken from the back of the cart and they begin to dig. Well, it wasn't not long before they reached the coffin, hauled it out of the ground and prised the lid off... and there lay Mary in her wedding dress, pale and beautiful in her endless sleep. Wee Jimmy grinned at Big Jimmy as he spied a big shining red ruby ring on her wedding finger, "Just imagine how much money we can get fur that! We'll eat like kings for a month!" he said and Wee Jimmy started pulling it off her finger.

Well, he tugged and he tugged, but it just wouldn't move. "Haud on there," whispered Big Jimmy, and off he went to the cart where he found a small hand saw. Surely the anatomists wouldn't take much off the price for a missing finger! "If we can't haul the ring off, we can cut if off just as easily!" said Big Jimmy, eyes gleaming.

Well, dear reader, I can let you in on a secret now... For Mary wasn't actually dead! She had merely slipped into a coma, and I suppose it was quite lucky for her that these grave robbers had come along - otherwise she might have ended up buried alive! Of course, when Big Jimmy started to saw at her finger, the pain was enough to shock her out of her unconsciousness. Waking up in a coffin, in the graveyard, in the dead of night, having her finger sawn off by a man stooping over her as another stood by in the moonlight with a shovel over his shoulder? Well it was all Mary could do to let out a bloodcurdling scream! What a shock for for Wee Jimmy and Big Jimmy! A screaming corpse!? They had never been so terrified in their lives! Dropping their tools and leaving the cart behind, they ran away so fast they didn't even bother to use the gate. Heaving themselves over the wall of the kirkyard, they vowed that this graverobbing business was bad for the heart and that they might just move out of the area and find a nice respectable job somewhere else... I'm glad to say they weren't seen again in Aberdeenshire.

For Mary, stranded in the kirkyard, there was nothing to do but to head off home in her bare feet.

At home, her husband had been drowning his sorrows (as one might have expected!) and had nodded off in front of the cold hearth. A frantic knocking at the door woke him from his slumber and he shook his head muttering "If I hadnae jist buried my beloved Mary, I'd swear that was her knockin'!" He put it down to the drink and the upset and tried to go back to sleep in his armchair. But the knocking continued. Eventually he dragged himself to his feet and went to answer the door.

Well! Imagine his shock when he opened the door to find Mary standing there in the moonlight - pale as pale could be, with her feet all dark from the mud, bedraggled hair, moaning his name softly and holding up her cut finger from which the blood had started to run. It is said that Mr Elphinstone fainted from the shock!

And Mary? Well I'm glad to say she returned to full health and went on to have a fine family and live a long and healthy life. And when she died? Well, she was buried in just the same place she'd woken up in all those years before.

If you go to the old Inverurie Kirkyard today, you can still see Mary's grave. And if you put your ear to the gravestone? Well you might just hear her knocking!**


Inverurie Kirkyard - showing the motte and the carved stones in the foreground (closeup of the Inverurie Horse above). If memory serves me right, Mary is buried near these three stones (away from the motte).


* Burke and Hare weren't actually guilty of grave-robbing, but of multiple murders. But that's another story...

** I kid you not! Leave a comment if you want to know why ;)

Labels: Grave robbers, inverurie, Mary Elphinstone, story, storytelling

Hi Folks!
Long time no post, eh?

I'm sure I'll get back to this at some point when things are not so hectic, but in the meantime, I'd like to direct you all to my new webpage -

http://www.paulinecordiner.co.uk

A most interesting thing to discuss in the pub! The Burry Man of South Queensferry

Labels: folklore

This is a bit of a tragic tale of childhood loss. Try not to cry, there's a dear.

So once I went to this place in northumberland with my parents on holiday when I was just a kid and there was a campsite with an adventure playground. Rope Swings! Bridges over muddy streams! And...a REAL HUMAN-SIZED hamster wheel!

The sad thing was that I couldn't go on it because the big kids were all on it. You know... the kind of kid that had hair like a toilet brush and a neat line in scars. They would be on there day and night, night and day. I'd scamper over there after breakfast, excited to have a go! and they'd be there... Rocking back and forth, thundering the thing round and getting into fights in the thing and thus getting more scars. I'd run over as soon as we got back from each tour of a castle, each walk along a seashore, and they'd be there. After tea, I'd rush down with the jam still on my face, desperate to scamper round like a happy hamster... and there they'd be. Jumping up and down on eachother and hitting eachother with a stick, snarling and baring their teeth, rotted to the stumps by too many Spangles.

However I was determined. One night, I formulated a plan to get to go on the hamster wheel when the big scary kids wouldn't be on it.

The next morning, I got out of my bed about 6am and got dressed and sneaked out of the caravan and ran off (feeling REALLY guilty that my Mum and Dad might panic that I was gone). I opened the latch, padded down the steps, ran past the cottage with the same washing that had been out drying for 6 days already, sped past the empty boating pool with the crisp packets floating in it and positively TORE round the hedge that sheltered the adventure playground.

Birds twittered in the early morning sun. Each and every limb tingled with excitement. And there I saw it. I saw the hamster wheel.....

It moved slowly. Tantalisingly. And with heart-wrenching dissapointment, I heard a cry of laughter. Slowly I walked towards it, not truly believing that someone else would be up this early morning and on MY hamster wheel... I came up to the wheel and , small and meek, peeked inside it.

And there I saw them.

Nuns.

Laughing and running carefully with their skirts hitched up. Having the time of their lives.

I left.

I never got on that hamster wheel. We left for home the next day.

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”

I found myself telling someone about this piece of writing recently. Perhaps it was offshore, or perhaps it was Fudge that told me?

So I just raked it out of one of the books piled up behind my bed.

The aeroplanes I guess the author could easily have imagined... but the Channel Tunnel and phone lines accross the Atlantic! Coooo.

Anyway, I want you all to guess where it's from! i.e. When was it written? And by Whom? (Who? Whom. I dinna ken. We couldn't afford grammar when I were a lass)


IN A THOUSAND YEARS

Yes, in a thousand years people will fly on the wings of steam through the air, over the ocean! The young inhabitants of America will become visitors of old Europe. They will come over to see the monuments and the great cities, which will then be in ruins, just as we in our time make pilgrimages to the mouldering splendours of Southern Asia. In a thousand years they will come!

The Thames, the Danube, and the Rhine still roll their course, Mont Blanc stands firm with its snow-capped summit, and the Northern Lights gleam over the lands of the North; but generation after generation has become dust, whole rows of the mighty of the monument are forgotten, like those who already slumber under the grave-mound on which the rich trader whose ground it is has built a bench, on which he can sit and look out across his waving cornfields.

"To Europe!" cry the young sons of America; "To the land of our ancestors, the glorious land of memories and fancy - to Europe!"

The ship of the air comes. It is crowded with passengers for the transit is quicker than by sea. The electro-magnetic wire under the ocean has already telegraphed the number of the aerial caravan. Europe is in sight: it is the coast of Ireland that they see, but the passengers are still asleep; they will not be called till they are exactly over England. There they will first step on European shore, in the land of Shakespeare as the educated call it; in the land of politics, the land of machinery, as it is called by others.

Here they stay a whole day. That is all the time the busy race can devote to the whole of England and Scotland. Then the journey is continued through the tunnel under the English Channel to France, the land of Charlemange and Napoleon. Moliere is named; the learned men talk of a classical and romantic school of remote antiquity: there is rejoicing and shouting for the names of heroes, poets, and men of science, whom our time does not know, but who will be born after our time in Paris, the crater of Europe.

The air steamboat flies over the country whence Columbus went forth, where Cortez was born and where Calderon sang dramas in sounding verse. Beautiful black-eyed women live still in the blooming valleys, and ancient songs speak of the Cid and the Alhambra.

Then through the air, over the sea, to Italy, where once lay old, everlasting Rome. It has vanished! The Campagna lies desert; a single ruined wall is shown as the remains of St Peter's but there is a doubt if this ruin be genuine.

Next to Greece, to sleep a night in the grand hotel at the top of Mount Olympus, to say that they have been there; and the journey is continued to the Boshorus, to rest there a few hours, and see the place where Byzantium lay; and where the legend tells that the harem stood in the time of the Turks, poor fishermen are now spreading their nets.

Over the remains of mighty cities on the broad Danube, cities which we in our time know not, the travellers pass; but here and there, on the rich sites of those that time shall bring forth, the caravan sometimes descends, and departs thence again.

Down below lies Germany, that was once covered with a close net of railways and canals, the region where Luther spoke, where Goethe sang and Mozart once held the sceptre of harmony. Great names shone there, in science and in art, names that are unknonw to us. one day devoted to seeing Germany, and one for the North, the country of old Oersted and Linnaus , and for Norway, the land of the old heroes and the young Normans. Iceland is visited on the journey home; Geyser boils no longer, Hecla is an extince volcano, but the rocky island is still fixed in the midst of the foaming sea, a continual monument of legend and poetry.

"There is really a great deal to be seen in Europe," says the young American, "and we have seen it in a week, according to the directions of the great traveller" (and here he mentions the name of one of this contemporaries) "in his celebrated work, "How to See all Europe in a Week."

I told my story, Little Nickolai, at GAS last night.
But it's awfy long. (The real version... not the red bull fuelled version I told last night!)

So here's why I wrote it. I wanted to know what terrible thing he'd done to deserve it...
It's by Neil Gaiman.

Nicholas Was

Nicholas was older than sin and his beard could grow no whiter.. He wanted to die
The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.
Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves’ invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen in time.
He envied Promethus and Loki, Sisyophus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.
Ho
Ho.
Ho.

Here I go again... getting carried away. This was supposed to be a blog for stories I'd found or had written. Not for my little distractions!

But oooh I'm just so excited! Just to explain - I'm offshore at the moment...
We were just coming up for tea and I was looking for an excuse not to go all the way up the stairs in one go - these ones are STEEP! So we stopped half way and I was asking "What's that rig? Is that a drilling rig? What do you think that is?" and was pointing to the horizon and all the installations you can see on a clear night when it's as dark as it is outside right now!

Then i spotted some faint green streaks. "And what on earth is THAT all about? What's going on there?"
My workmate goes "That... Would be the Northern Lights"

So that was enough to get me bounding up the rest of the stairs so I could get a better look (without some big pipe obscuring my view).

They weren't the most impressive Northern Lights in the world, they were just green and waving about a bit... But bloody hell I was still impressed. "They call them the heavenly dancers..." - they weren't dancing so much as shifting about in their seatsuncomfortably... deciding if they wanted to get up and ask some lass if she fancied a wee dance... but I've finally seen them ! :)

The best bit was when I scared some guy in a boiler suit by all of a sudden bouncing up and down excitedly clapping my hands screaming "I've finally seen them!" I hope the medic doesn't come to me for a mental health check :P

This post is about my name and a wee gypsie wifie and how fate influenced my parents not to give me the gruff scottish names that would have got me beaten up at school.

Now in order to do this I thought I'd have to give up my precious anonymity and give you my name! Well some of you know me anyway... but for this post I will be going by the name of "Carol." There we are :)

Anyway. This one day, my mum was in hospital while she was pregnant with me and my dad was at home doing whatever it is that dad's do while they're at home. (Usually sitting in some big comfy chair pretending they're watching some western on telly whilst in actual fact they're fast asleep with their mouths open catching flies...)

And the doorbell rings and it's this auld gypsie wifie come round the doors looking to tell people's fortunes for a bit of money. This was when where we lived was on the outskirts of town and not far into the city like it is now. Dad, having been disturbed by someone chapping at the door trying to sell him something wasn't too happy and told her that no thanks, he'd not be wanting to have his palm read that particular day thankyouverymuch. So the peer auld wifie asks if she can use his lavvie (toilet to those of you unaquaint with our tongue). And usually my dad would have told anyone asking this to just bugger aff, but he says "Aye go on up" and off she goes.

So when she comes back my dad has made her a cup of tea and she's awfy thankful so she offers to read his palm anyway. Grudgingly my dad puts his hand out for examination and is told this:

"Aye. There's a babby aboot tae be born intae the family, and if it's given the name wi the letter "l" in it, the bairn will be musically gifted."

So! My mum comes home from the hospital and happily, "Morag" goes oot the windae, "Agnes" is nae longer an option... and I, quite relievedly, am called "Carol."

Oh, and I have this cousin about the same age as me, Elizabeth, who was in the Scottish Chamber Orchestra.

tha end.

A personal tale of Aberdeenshire's great fiddler, James Scott Skinner.

Who... I'd not even heard of until I decided i was going to learn to play the fiddle! Which some people find rather shocking - but then my parents didn't listen to that sort of music when i was a kid.

I'm not very good at the fiddle... Still just beginning. But back in spring, I was learning to play Music Of Spey.

So, what with the good weather coming in and all, I decided that I'd walk home not through the Duthie Park (like usual) but through the Allen Vale Cemetary - which was all coming out in cherry blossom. I had my personal stereo and it had just come to the end of the album. After the music had stopped I continued walking, and started humming "Music Of Spey" (which Scott Skinner wrote). Then for no apparent reason, I stopped. I stopped walking. Not something I often do, because when I'm walking home from work I usually thunder on and nothing gets in my way!

I wondered why I had stopped, such a very odd thing.

Now I'd never been through the cemetary before and don't know anything about it's, ummmm, "occupants." So imagine my surprise when I found I'd stopped just at the grave of... James Scott Skinner!

My fiddle teacher reckoned he was trying to tell me something... That my fiddle playing (and humming of his music) is "Bloody Awful"

Be prepared ye listeners for an unbridled, fully unrestrained RANT about the substitution in our traditional scottish culture of the beautifully imperfect, purpley/whitey/green, lumpy root vegetable that is THE NOBLE TURNIP for the heinous orange blight on a scottish tradition that is THE PUMPKIN.

Jesus wept.

The reason for my rant was today's visit to Tescos. Yes Tescos... I'm addressing YOU! You have lovely adverts and Yes! We much admire the efforts of the talented Prunella Scales to increase your sales of bargain curries and delicious deli foods... but for GOD'S SAKE!!!

Pumpkins!?!?!
Pumpkins as FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE! And it's not even as if I can rant on and go "pumpkins in all shapes and sizes!" for they are ALL THE SAME SHAPE and ALL THE SAME SIZE! Totally identical! UNIFORM!

But could I find one neep? One beautiful... hairy... knobbly neep? Could I hell. There was a couple of sliced up (butchered! murdered! weeping!) "swedes" in the section labelled "winter vegetables." Swedes my arse! But in the space where in the past my dad and I would have spent ages rummaging for the neep going for the winning vegetable in the "most-astoundingly-full-of-character-and-personality-in-show" section, there was what? Pumpkins. SODDING PUMPKINS! Clean, smooth, utterly personality-free PUMPKINS.

Bloody Americans!
Now don't get me wrong... I love Americans. Truly I do! Some of my best friends are Americans!

And I really LOVE they way they have embraced Hallowe'en and made it their own. But for FECKS sake! Scotland! Can't we just keep our own, home grown neeps?

Why should the bland uniform pumpkin be given the honour of replacing the noble neeps which have been carved for centuries by small children hoping to scare off ghosties, ghoulies, ghoblins and other such things beginning with gh? (ghoulash?)

Like gaelic, storytelling, folk singing and sheep shagging, the humble turnip is being OUSTED in favour of this hideous orange newcomer. And why? "Because it is easier to carve"

EASIER TO CARVE!?!?!? Did the monks of Tibet make their giant Buddahs out of CHEESE because it was EASIER TO CARVE!? NO!

Did the inhabitants of Easter Island cobble together their giant statues out of PLASTICENE because they were a touch on the LAZY SIDE!? NO!

Did the ancient builders of Stonehenge grab the nearest heap of Salisbury clay because Wales was too far away and they COULDN'T BE ARSED!? NO!

Was the fantastically proportioned Cerne Abbas Giant fashioned out of CHALK because it was EASIER TO CARVE!? (Um. well ok he was... but that's not my point)

Think back to your childhood and remember the beautiful smell of burning turnip as you stepped out for the first time with your friends to go Guizing! Remember the turnip soup you ate for the 3 nights after the carving because "it was a waste not to use it" !

Remember taking part in the Hallowe'en Neep Contest! What you could make from them!

Laurel and Hardy Neeps (aged 8. prize: One packed of cigarette sweeties - now named something else so as not to encourage kiddies to smoke)

"Dick Turnip!" complete with 3 cornered hat and missing tooth...

And where would Baldrick be? If not for the Noble Turnip!!!?

So listeners... I am begging of you today to join my fight! My fight against the characterless bulbous newcomer "the Pumpkin"!

Campaign for the Removal Of Pumpkins from Samhain! (CROPS)
Fighting the good fight since October 2004!

Join Me!


"Beautiful! "

"Character!"


"Keech"

Labels: folklore

Is it too early to be thinking about going to the Glastonbury Festival next year?

You see I had this idea that I'd like to be performing there... Although I have to admit I have NO idea how to go about it...

I visited the storytelling tent in the Healing Fields in 2003 and bloody loved it.

Pondering...

Edit: July 2007 - Well, my wish finally came true! :D http://greenfuturesfestivals.org.uk/storytellers.html - here's the link to my performing! :)

I have to put in a link to this... Bloody brilliant!
I was looking for some stuff on scottish ghosties and myths and a' that and stumbled upon this. 's hilarious!
If I'd known about this site when I was doing my bit on the Greeeey Man of Ben MacDhui... I'd have linked to this instead! :)

http://www.firstfoot.com/scotchmyth/mythframemain.htm

Now then... Dad was an apprentice aged about 21 when he was working at a farm with a couple of other joiners.

They were given a room at the top of the farmhouse and told (by the rather moody farmer's wife) that after a (very early) hour that they were to try not to make much noise as the farmer needed his sleep to get up early to feed cows etc.

But of course... having spent the night drinking (fine farm ale) they went up to their room for the night, one of the other joiners needed a pee!

But the stairs were very squeaky and it was a long way downstairs to the outside privy.

So Dad had a bright idea. (As he often does in such stories.) If you unscrew the two bedknobs from the end of the bed, you can then remove the connecting bar and use it to pee out the window into the flower beds.

Well, you know what's coming, don't you? They did this just as the farmer was lighting his last pipe of the night, he got an unintended early shower and a cry went up into the night!

Labels: dad's stories

Wow! What a great day for storytelling. I was off volunteering today at Archaeolink and wow! I am practically hoarse!

First of all there was a(n extended) family that came in. Now, it seems that a few weeks ago, I'd told them The Distressing Tale Of Skvoo The Shrew. A story inspired by a lovely Bavarian lassie called Sabina who spotted a shrew one day and named him "Deathscrew the Shrew" (Don't ask!)

The mum told me the kids were happy to see me and that she'd been woken early one morning with cries that Skvoo The Shrew was running round the house!!! I can't describe enough how delighted I am by this! :) I love it when kids REALLY pay attention...

So I told them The Tale of the Stupid Prince. The Stupid Prince is a character from another story my friends Miss Honey and Dannigan often tell. He turned out to be so obnoxious and hateful that he got his own story.

Then I told Brat And Garat (a tale of Iron Age sacrifice for the morbid kids) and Stanley Robertson's Silly Billy (Roman Style) and the story Nettle Soup (which stars my dad as Ceaoras Dubh Mor!) Then we were INVADED by VIKINGS!!! They demanded my jewels and I said I'd rather die than give them to them. So they settled for a story instead. BUT!!! It had to contain...

a) Poo
b) Pee
c) Blood
d) Guts (or it might have been a goat... I'm not sure)
e) Death

So they got Silly Billy again. THANK YOU STANLEY ROBERTSON!

Then... a reporter came round.
Now... we know our local reporters... The ones from the country papers. They're lovely! They know just what they're after. Facepaints, swords, a bit of fire! They really do turn out better-than-your-average-local-paper local interest stories.

But... This guy was from the People's Friend! What a nice guy! He took some photos... Scribbled down some notes about the iron age (I do tend to rabbit on a bit)... Photographed my Bog Shoes and then took my photo!

So. Does this mean couthy little old ladies (like the wifie that works in the shop in Chewing The Fat) will be reading their People's Friend and coming to Archaeolink for Couthy Chats?

We shall see ;)