Dancing with Trees Read online

  This Celtic pagan religion was gradually replaced by Christianity and their stories might have been lost, had it not been for the early Christian monks who took an interest in Celtic culture. They wrote down many of their stories and sagas including creation myths, epic tales of supernatural heroes, and stories of pagan gods and goddesses, shape-changers and magical animals. It is thanks to the monks of Ireland and Wales that we have the earliest written fragments of these stories, dating back to the sixth century CE. These ancient Celtic stories were told and re-told from one generation to the next and the monks’ manuscripts were copied and re-copied from century to century, evolving as the dominant culture changed.

  From the pagan period we have included two stories: ‘Ceridwen’s Cauldron’ and ‘Saving the Forest’. Ceridwen is from the Welsh tradition, a primeval mother, a moon-goddess from the oldest of the cyclical Celtic myths. In this story we witness her power as a shape-changer and are taken on a breathtaking chase as different animals hunt their quarries. Our re-telling of ‘Ceridwen’s Cauldron’ helps us to explore the web of life in our own fragile eco-system.

  Two faces of the Cailleach, another ancient Celtic goddess, feature in ‘Saving the Forest’, a story from Scotland. But there are also elements from Scandinavian culture in this story, which in one early source is titled ‘The Norse King’s Daughter’. The Viking influence in Scotland is reflected deeply through these old stories. In her youth this Celtic/Norse goddess is Bride, the goddess of spring and summer. Beara is the mature woman, the side of her which brings the dark months of the year and winter to the land. The story explores what happens when the seasons get out of balance, a lesson that is all too relevant to us today in this era of climate change. The story ends on a note of hope, with the wisdom of the young saving the day. All of the stories collected in this book reflect these basic values of respecting our fellow creatures and living in harmony with the world around us.

  When Christian monks arrived in Ireland in the fifth century, they didn’t just document the Celtic culture they found there, they absorbed a lot of its values, incorporating them into what is still known as Celtic Christianity. The early Christian saints of Ireland, Scotland and Wales were portrayed as having a special relationship with birds and animals and they continued the tradition of bardic nature poetry well into the twelfth century.

  From the early Celtic Christian era we have included the stories of ‘St Mungo and the Robin’, ‘St Brigid and the Wolf’ and St Baglan and ‘The Tree with Three Fruits’. The robin is also a popular figure in Scandinavian folklore; so again, a mixing of these traditions is in evidence.

  St Baglan’s story reminds us of the contributions that plants and animals make to human existence, while St Mungo provides a model of standing up to those who do not value life. St Brigid of Kildare, with her love of nature and her concern for the poor, is in many ways resonant with the more widely known St Francis of Assisi. Like the pagan stories before them, a great sense of reverence and love of nature is evident in these early Christian stories.

  Through the Middle Ages, literary men and women – mostly monks and nuns – carried on transcribing Celtic stories from earlier periods and composing nature poetry. However, after this period, the literary tradition began to be replaced by more popular forms of storytelling. The bulk of our collection comes from this later, folkloric, period. Many of these folk tales may well have originated from much earlier pagan times, but the historical thread has been lost over the centuries.

  By this period, Britain was already a multi-cultural space, with immigrant communities from a range of backgrounds meeting with and infusing earlier traditions with new stories and new ways of telling. These traditions would have included Aesop’s fables, likely influences on the ‘King and Queen of the Birds’, which we have included here. When the Norman traditions met with the Celtic, King Arthur was born, represented here by the story of ‘The Sleeping King’. Incomers from the forest regions of the continent would have met with the thriving forest-based communities here (partly represented by ‘Saving the Forest’) and new stories would have been born. We associate these forest stories mostly with the Brothers Grimm these days, but many of the stories here also demonstrate this sensibility. For example, we have included ‘Magpie’s Nest’, a witty tale from England about how the birds learned to build their nests by copying the magpie, which is filled with real nest-building truths. Also, ‘The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle’, a fantastical and funny campfire story about over-consumption and greed. This concept is as relevant for today’s audiences as it was many generations ago.

  From the earlier Celtic stories through to influences from Aesop, Christianity, Scandinavia, Continental Europe and beyond, all the stories collected here demonstrate a common wisdom for respecting nature and the other creatures we share these islands with. Stories travel, they have no respect for national borders and when they cross them, they have a tendency to morph into something new, to mingle and merge with local stories and, in general, to go about making themselves at home wherever they find themselves. Through bards, ballads, sailors, immigrants, travellers and grandparents, these stories have arrived on our shores and settled in our consciousness.

  Several of the stories in this collection are from the Scottish Travellers’ tradition – ‘Jack and the Dancing Trees’, ‘Margaret McPherson’s Garden’, ‘Archie’s Besom’, ‘Seal Island’ and ‘Thomas the Thatcher’. These tales, like the Travellers themselves, are firmly linked to the land, the sea and to rural life. They deliver strong messages about respecting nature and living in harmony with the world.

  The Travellers in Scotland are a nomadic people who have been recorded as living in Scotland since the twelfth century, but may have been present for much longer. They are a distinct ethnic group, believed to be descended from Northern European tribes.

  In settled communities, the rising popularity of books, gramophones, radio, theatres and concert halls began to overtake folk storytelling traditions, all but wiping them out. However, the Traveller community maintained a complex, highly developed oral culture well into the twentieth century. During the 1950s students from the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh began recording and collecting their tales. Many anthologies are now in print, the most numerous being those of the late Duncan Williamson, edited by his wife Linda Williamson.

  Until recently, the Travellers lived close to the land and many of their tales concern living in harmony with the Earth and its creatures. These stories are filled with environmental wisdom about taking what you need from nature while leaving enough berry, fish, tree, or wild animal stocks so that they can replenish themselves over the following years. A moral tone of modesty over greed is often found in these stories, which suits the contemporary environmental message well.

  While their stories are grounded in a life lived in intimate relationship to Scotland’s landscapes, plants and animals, the roots of these stories come from all over the place. The selkies and the fairy folk in the tales undoubtedly have Celtic roots, but Duncan Williamson himself thought ‘Thomas the Thatcher’ was a story that had originally come from the Netherlands. Meanwhile, ‘Jack and the Dancing Trees’ has deep resonances with stories told in the forested regions of the Czech Republic and Germany.

  Largely through the generosity of Traveller storytellers such as Duncan Williamson, Stanley Robertson, Jess Smith, Sheila Stewart and many others, these stories have become core to the contemporary storytelling revival in Scotland and are, therefore, part of this collection no matter where they may have originally come from.

  All of the tales in our collection connect us through their Celtic and folk roots with the natural world, on which our own existence depends. They have been discovered through careful digging and happy happenstance. Some we heard before we read them, others we only knew on the page before we began to tell them as part of our own storytelling repertoires. A few have been created from the tiniest tantalising scraps; others are stories that are well
known here in the British Isles and are regularly told all over the world.

  In the time-honoured tradition of oral storytelling, we have retold these stories with a twenty-first-century audience in mind and in the context of the environmental concerns of our time. Although they are told in our words, in keeping with our themes of respect and interdependence, we have included notes and telling-tips with each story, and full source information and comments at the back of the book. We have also included a guide to telling with the seasons and an index to the flora and fauna that makes an appearance in these stories.

  This collection represents a contemporary take on a centuries-old Celtic and folk tale tradition of connecting to nature through careful observation and imaginative storytelling. It is our hope that these stories will travel far and wide, meeting with other stories and with other listeners and storytellers that share a reverence and love for this earth and her creatures.

  May these stories speak to you not only of the past, but of a future in which people remember their interdependence with the rest of nature and seek to live in harmony with the world around them.

  BRINGING STORIES TOGETHER

  This book brings together two types of stories: traditional tales collected from a range of sources and the stories that each person carries with them about who they are and what their options are for being and doing in their lives. We want you to enjoy these stories, but more than this, we hope that these stories will do their work in the world by helping you, the reader, and anyone you share these stories with, to answer the important question, ‘how should I live?’ in ways that lead to sustainability for ourselves and the planet.

  In the remainder of the book, we share our own retellings of some of our favourite stories from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. These may be read by yourself in silence. They may be read aloud to a group of pupils or a party of site visitors. Or, they may be told out loud.

  Even if you have never done so before, we urge you to learn to tell some of these stories orally, without depending upon the words on the page. Something magical happens when stories are told in the old way. To tell a story is to create a sacred space, a space that contains not just you and your audience, but also all the other tellers and all the other listeners down through history. When we bring stories into our bodies and give voice to them, they become part of our lives. When we know a story by heart, we can connect more strongly with the people we are telling it to. As the Scottish Traveller saying goes: ‘a story needs to be told eye to eye, mind to mind and heart to heart.’ When we tell stories in this way, we connect emotionally with our audiences, we begin to create and to strengthen the bonds of community and we open up an opportunity for transformation to take place.

  Storytellers conjure up worlds of adventure just by giving breath to words. In the hushed space between speaker and audience the stories form. The teller gives them shape, but the sensuous experience of story, the images, feelings, and emotional resonances, are supplied by the imaginations of the people listening, making it one of the best mediums for supporting individuality while building community.

  Many excellent books have been published in recent years for beginner tellers. If you are new to this art form, we suggest you check out some of the books listed in the appendix. Even better, go out and find some live storytelling to listen to. The best way to learn is by watching a more experienced teller tell. Many communities across the world now have storytelling clubs, some of which even run courses for beginners.

  The stories can be adapted to any age group from five-years of age to adults. A few, such as ‘The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle’, will also appeal to younger children.

  In days gone by, the audience response to a well told story would be silence, testimony that the listeners had been touched by what they had heard, were absorbing the message it brought to their lives and reflecting on their own experiences in light of these new narrative resources. Today’s audiences will most likely clap after a story, which has the unfortunate effect of breaking the spell a few moments too early. They may need a little help in bringing their own personal experiences and stories together in ways that can facilitate reflection and even transformation. So, before closing a storytelling session, we suggest pausing first. Invite your audience to ask themselves the following questions:

  1) What caught your imagination in the stories you just heard?

  2) What does this connect with in your own life, either in the past or the present?

  3) What new options does this story open up for being and acting in the world?

  These questions help people get into the habit of using stories to reflect on their own lives. They can be encouraged to write their answers down or simply to contemplate them. You may then wish to have a discussion about what came up in their reflections. By moving from listening to reflecting, and only then to acting, people’s learning will be deepened. Younger audiences can be helped to reflect through art. Ask children to make a picture of what they remember best, or liked best from the story they just heard. Then use their pieces of art to start a conversation.

  Of course you are free, indeed encouraged, to use these questions yourself as you read through the stories in this book.

  The stories we have collected cluster loosely into six categories. Those in ‘Air’ connect with the bird world and to flying, a source of fascination for people down the ages. While all of the birds in these stories are native to the British Isles, many are also found in other parts of the world. The stories in ‘Fire’ relate to the transformative potential of fire, for good and bad and to topics of energy and climate. ‘Water’ deals with creatures of rivers and of the sea, as well as with issues of access to drinking water and to conservation. ‘Earth’ stories take us into holes and caves as well as up into the air, through the power the soil has to make plants grow. The section on ‘The Web of Life’ presents a series of stories that explore some of the links between the various plants and animals of the British Isles, ending with a creation tale about compost! They are ecology stories. The final section, ‘Living in Harmony’, looks the most directly at how people might bring their lives into greater harmony with the rest of nature. Many of the stories in this section concern the feelings and attitudes we all struggle with that are tangled up with the overconsumption of the Earth’s resources.

  This is just what the stories have meant to us. One of the most powerful things about stories is that everyone gets something a little different out of them. For stories to live in the world, they must change and grow, so please make these stories your own.

  Happy storytelling!

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Allison and Alette met seven years ago at the Scottish Storytelling Centre on a day-long workshop about telling stories for Eco-schools. Despite our different backgrounds, we hit it off immediately, recognising in each other a kindred passion for using stories to heal the Earth.

  The idea for this book emerged from conversations we began to have while Allison was working on her MA in Scottish Folklore. Her focus at the University of Glasgow was on tracing the threads of environmental values through folktales. For over a decade, Alette’s research as a human geographer has examined the ways people use stories to make ethical decisions in relation to the places where they live and the natural world around them. As we talked, we discussed bringing these two areas of expertise together in a book that would highlight the contribution that homegrown stories from Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland can make to healing the Earth.

  Over the last few years, Allison and Alette have been actively collecting traditional stories from the British Isles that speak to today’s environmental issues. We have used most of these stories in our storytelling work with schools, libraries and organisations such as the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, the Forestry Commission, and the Scottish Wildlife Trust.

  With a degree in Drama Studies, Allison Galbraith embarked on a long and busy career in theatr
e, dance and education. While teaching drama and dance in Glasgow, Allison fell off a trapeze bar and left teaching to recover from her injuries. Her friends and dog walked her back to good health in the glorious, wild places of Scotland. Through her love of wildlife and habitat conservation, Allison focused her creative talents on stories and storytelling at such places as the Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Falls of Clyde Nature Reserve and Glasgow Botanical Gardens. She joined the Scottish Storytellers’ Directory in 2007 and has been working full-time as a teller and workshop leader ever since. In 2012, Allison completed a Master’s degree in Scottish Folklore at Glasgow University.

  Alette J. Willis has a PhD in Geography and Environmental Studies. She is a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, where her research focuses on how people use stories to make sense of their lives and of the world around them. She has published academically on the integration of storytelling with outdoor education and wilderness therapy, as well as on how people use stories to make everyday ethical decisions in relation to plants, animals and the environment. Alette joined the Scottish Storytellers’ Directory in 2011. She specialises in storytelling for science communication and is the Storyteller in Residence to the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. Alette is a published author of fiction for adults and children. Her first novel for children, How to Make a Golem (and Terrify People), was published by Floris Books in 2011.