Well, there are some jigs now that are very suitable for any kind of tradition.
And I've spent a lot of my time playing music, but I have spent more than that again, storytelling.
And storytelling is a very traditional part of our culture.
Storytelling, I suppose, originated from the time where there wasn't radio or television,
or anything to accompany or entertain the people.
So they all collected together in the kitchens and the homes of each other and they swapped stories.
And at that time, this country was very fluent in Irish, and later on it became bilingual.
I'll tell you a story. I'll tell you a story, but if you call me a liar,
I'll have three strips of skin from your back.
Once upon a time, when wishes were aplenty, the shaman and his wife lived by the sea.
Their hut was warm in the winter and cool in the summer,
and there was nothing that they wanted or not for except a child.
And then I'll tell you a story of a fool who is so foolish he is wise.
Well, he's so wise he's foolish, I'm not sure what you're saying.
His name is Hans. He worked for seven years.
At the end of the seven years, he'd heard about wages.
He'd come to his master's, he'd come to his wages.
He'd come to his master's, he'd come to his wages.
And he'd give you a lump of gold as big as your head.
So that's really such a great lump of gold he did to Hans and Hans.
It is quite extraordinary, I think, that at the end of the 20th century,
with advances in technology, with the sophistication of the media,
that an audience of adults of all ages and all backgrounds
want to sit quietly for an evening and listen to stories.
I mean, I just think it is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
I think it's truly a kind of humiliation to say that, you know,
even though we're bombarded so much by images.
The reason that storytelling is becoming more valuable to people,
people see it as a more valuable thing,
is because they're fed up with pre-packaged information,
fed up with people telling them,
this is what you do here, this is what you do there.
The screen, very medium, which you work on often,
not in personal relations.
There was a shop not far from me,
some penny-bearers and keeps happy.
The night ball went out the street,
the slag meat first with a razzle.
The woman on the shop, she said,
though small, no advice in the bed,
but kicked some donkey's butt instead,
believed me to be the razzle.
You know, surrounding all,
a wheel of light and sure but strong,
cooled my soot above the floor,
like the leaves of the moon down low.
In Godlet's lane, there lived a ghost
who used to dine and pee and toast.
And the bench, he came and caught a straw
that stopped his own magonum
back to the bonkers.
And the bench, he went the keen away
and his heart's content.
But he's not dead, sure he's destined
to slip around the neighborhood.
In and out of me bones,
the wheel of light and sure but strong,
cooled my soot above the floor,
like the leaves of the moon down low.
Thank you very much.
Storytelling is the art of telling stories.
And it's an oral art.
Traditional storytelling is an art
that was passed, at some extent,
still is passed down from one generation
to the next, without reference,
by and large, to written sources,
in other words, it's something that people hear
and repeat.
Here and repeat usually, fairly closely,
to the way that they first heard it.
So it can be, it is an oral art,
but it can be something which covers
either shorter narrative material,
such as, let's say, jokes and anecdotes,
or at the other end of the scale,
it can embrace longer folk tales,
hero tales, sort of, you might say,
almost saga material,
which could extend, in some cases,
perhaps to a story that might take
an hour, an hour and a half, two hours,
and in many cases, in times past,
much longer than that, to tell.
A story that might be told over several sessions.
It's often mosquito.
Adam sent the mosquitoes on mosquitoes,
flying this way and that way,
north, south, east, west, across the world,
sampling the blood and sampling the blood,
every single living creature on Earth.
And when a year was over, there was the great assembly
of all the animals and the birds,
and the mosquito kept flying back,
but the swallow was watching and waiting.
And the swallow swooped down out of the sky
and said to the mosquito,
tell me, who has the sweetest flesh on Earth?
The mosquito said, well, to tell you the truth,
the sweetest flesh on Earth is indeed the flesh of man,
the flesh of Adam and the sons of Adam,
and the flesh of Eve and the daughters of Eve.
And the swallow said, I'm sorry, I'm just a little bit deaf.
I didn't quite catch what you said.
And the mosquito opened her mouth wider to speak again.
The swallow was quick, swooped down out of the sky,
and plucked out the mosquito's tongue.
So when the mosquito came to the great assembly,
all the animals and the birds,
all she could say was, like that,
nobody could understand a word.
Take my comb,
return to your home,
and I will come to you in your dreams.
Take my comb,
return to your home,
and I will grant you
your heart's desire soon.
Hazel clutched the comb and ran home with it.
On the following night,
she hardly fall asleep
when Dora appeared in a dream.
They were like mermaids, definitely.
Dora was beautiful, more beautiful
than even Hazel could have imagined.
Dora was the colour of chocolate
with a bit of cream added to it.
Her face was round and smooth,
not a blemish, not a mark.
But Hazel had no time for admiring
the beauty of the mermaid.
Her gaze was fixed on the green glory of hair
that framed the mermaid's face
in gentle waves,
flowed over her shoulders,
that flowed down to her waist,
that cascaded down past her waist,
and sheathed her fins.
And so he said,
well, let's do something tonight.
Let's get out.
And Storytelling provides a wonderful place
for them to go and imagine.
Imagine.
Remember, we bring the words out of our imaginations,
but the listener receives the words
and turns them into their imaginations.
That's why, though, when I tell a story,
I may strike something in you
that just wrenches at your heart
and will bring it here or make you laugh
because you pulled up an image
that is so powerful to you
that you're going to emotionally respond to it.
It's important to have listeners.
Just talk to yourself all the time.
Obviously, a good listener has to
let their imagination go free
to try and see the pictures in their head.
Storyteller tries to communicate an image
and the listener has to translate that
so no two people see the same pictures in their head.
I think, obviously, body language
can tell a lot from whatever
with you watching you and listening.
But I would do a lot of storytelling
if people heard blind, visually, there.
And, of course, for them,
they see the pictures in their head.
Well, among the travellers,
especially the Scottish travellers,
there's a tradition that
when you tell a story,
the person you heard it from
is standing just behind you
as you tell the story.
And the idea is that
when that person told the story,
the person they heard it from
was standing behind them.
When that person told the story,
the person they heard it from
was here.
Behind the storyteller
is a line
of voices,
of ancestral voices behind you.
And there you are at the end of a line
and there's the people before you
they don't know the story
and you're passing it to them
and then you become
the figure behind the shoulder
of somebody, maybe, in the audience
who takes the story and thinks
I want to tell that myself.
There
cruise
notes in
the air of sounding
happy
step feeling
and please
deal
every note is
of this
bounding
all in the
valley
if he were me
each step I take
by
the winding river
where
we ramble
in the hills
of your
reminds me of
Edward
my bannish lover
and it makes
me lonesome
on love and shore
a
crop of sorrow
my heart
is reaping
my hopes
of bannish
and my looks
of decay
in the night
time
when all are sleeping
awake
I am
weeping till
the break of
day
the light has
fled me
and war has
wed me
why did you leave me
my love
lost all
love compelled him
and banished
Edward
said not to
forsake me on
and shore
Ireland
we had a particular
advantage over many other parts of Europe
in that the living tradition survived
and to some extent still survives
so that we have the record
it isn't
folklore as such
it's simply a mirror image
of it it's an exact image of
what was there
and that's very important in itself
but it is equally important
that we should study
that tradition
that we should actually be able to say
what is the nature of that tradition
the old traditional tales
aren't being told as much
they have to be revitalized by people taken up in books
or from the archive
of the folklore commission
or the Austrian Folk and Transport Museum
but I do think it's very important
to cross fertilization
for example here in Derry during the Italian festival
I took the Italian Calvino's book
Folk Tales, Time Folk Tales
and told them to today's children in Derry
by listening to stories from a different country
you get to know
about the culture
for example the American Tales
the Aboriginal stories of the dream time
I think that's a very valuable thing
and we live in a multicultural world
and it's very important for people to know
what it's like for other cultures
to be very valuable
I think also
as well as multiculturalism
storytelling can bridge all sorts of barriers
of age for example
bringing together very young people
and very old people to share their illnesses
and stories
we've done work with physically impaired
and intellectually impaired children
and adults where
sometimes people say oh
they wouldn't listen to a story
if it's the right story
they're not only listening but they would tell stories
you can dramatize the stories for example
so I think storytelling first
on this
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It was a beauty, hallo, that's one day
Oh, no, it was the truth
In the eye of a Johnny
That made me the man who was ready
And there we are, smiling, sacrificing for me
The moon to the valley
It fell, the world was fading
When I won the heart of the world
Oh, don't try me, she went lovely and fair
Like a rose from summer
It was a beauty, hallo, that's one day
Oh, no, it was the truth
In the eye of a Johnny
That made me the man who was ready
