So, during the week, I was asked “what is your favourite folktale and it stopped me in my tracks… I needed some time to figure the answer out and to think of the tales I tell and what binds them together.
I don’t just tell stories-I relive them, so, they become second nature to me and are imprinted on to my psyche, blending reality, fantasy and that part where folktales lie. Because folktales hold a special place, they are stories, but have given birth to urban legends, old wives tales and just the basic PR spin of today.
Folktales always have that strong smell of realism about them, but we all know they were created to convey a message, using possible real events, mixed in with some extraordinary ingredients.
I remember, while working in the bog with my Dad, cutting turf, we sat down to have a rest. He told me of Pol na Peiste, (the hole of the the serpent) a boggy marsh, where it was said, you could never reach the bottom, horses had been lost in there and children were warned to stay away.
Eventually, a zealous young farmer, decided to ignore the old stories and drain the bog by slicing into it and cutting his turf, the elders thought that all manners of terrors would rise out of Pol na Peiste and would haunt the locality forever. When he sliced into it, it was found to be only about three feet (1metre) deep!
Both my parents and all our neighbours, always told stories, they had heard these stories from their elders and so on. They were the last generation to live without television and you could tell! Today, we see them as gullible for believing the tales and yet, we sit and watch celebrities play out their attention grabbing lives and blindly believe, what we are told to(some of us, anyway)
The stories I heard growing up, really became ingrained in my head, fuelled my imagination and I also began to view every experience in life as a story I was relating to someone else.
The first book of Stories I bought myself, was a very rare edition of “leabhar Sean Ui Chonnaill” or Sean O’Connell’s book. A collection of stories, collected from a famous storyteller Seán O’Conaill, who was born in 1853-1921 and was from Cill Rialaig, Ballinskelligs. Professor Seamus O’Duilearga, collected his stories between 1923 and 1931 and published them in this great treasure of old Irish life. The village in which he grew up and lived is now, the spectacular Cill Rialaig Artists retweet.
These stories became the base for my storytelling career and because I grew up in a very similar system of living, I could not only relate to the stories, but easily translate the stories to a new and international audience. it is always exciting to tell a story, knowing it was recounted back in the 1850’s and back throughout history, acknowledging the idea that we only mind stories and don’t own them…
One of these stories, is my go-to story “Sean and his Mother” that tells of a young man, who gets revenge on some greedy cattle dealers, who have swindled Sean.
He gets revenge by creating the illusion that ordinary objects have magical powers and persuades his victims to buy them. it is a very violent and mercenary story, with a “no holes barred, when it comes to justice” attitude and I don’t in any way dilute it for the listeners. This really brings the original telling to life and gives the listener an insight to the thinking at the time and its inhabitants-it wasn't all magic beans, you know!
After telling the story for many years, I’ve recently sat down and wrote the story out in my words and am now, just waiting to start editing it, which will ensure a new lease of life to the story, the old tellers and my work.
But, listing off the stories I love to tell, read and listen to, I can see this common thread emerging, they all have this element of trickery about them, just like the greedy dealers believed and just like my elders were scared of the three foot bog hole, that idea of how easily, we can be fooled or fool others strikes a cord in my imagination..
The most classic and well known Folktale that encapsulates this metaphor would be “The Emperor’s new clothes” by Hans Christian Anderson.
As with any story, these stories, can be comprehended from many different angles. You can see the story from the view of the deceiver or the deceived, which makes things very interesting in the discussion, after the tale is told!
But, there you have it, my favourite folktale….
