2012 Spain Tour

I usually go to Spain at least once a year to tell Irish stories in English, mostly to students of English in Escuelas Oficiales de Idiomas, the national network of Official Language Schools. This year’s itinerary so far:

8 March – Miranda de Ebro. Escuela Oficial de Idiomas. As this is International Women’s Day, the theme will be “Heroines and Legends”.

15 March – Palencia. Escuela Oficial de Idiomas

The Chasuble of San Ildefonso

Another picture I didn’t have space for in Spanish and Basque Legends, this is a painting by the 18th-century artist Andrés de Islas of the Imposition of the Chasuble on San Ildefonso in the Cathedral of Toledo. The legend tells how the Virgin Mary presented Ildefonso with a chasuble made by angels, as a reward for his defence of her perpetual virginity. When the Moors captured Toledo and turned the cathedral into a mosque, they preserved the spot where she had stood, because they had respect for her as the mother of Jesus.

Imposition of the Chasuble on San Ildefonso, Andrés de Islas

And here is a treatment of the legend by the master, Diego Velázquez. Ildefonso is more realistically depicted as an older man: he was an archbishop at the time.

Imposition of the Chasuble on San Ildefonso, Velázquez

Knocked their socks off

Nadia and Zara were special guests at the Milk & Cookies session 10 May. The M&C audiences (mostly in their 20s; the venue is always packed to the legal limit of 150) are very responsive and enthusiastic, but I’ve never heard a louder or longer ovation than the one they gave to the girls. Nadia told Mary Culhaine, and Zara told The Grain of Wheat. I finally got a good photo of Zara.

Zara Evans at Milk & Cookies 10 May 2011

Another storytelling debut

I was so impressed with 7-year-old Nadia Evans’s ability to retell a story she had only heard once, when I visited her class last year, that I invited her to join adult tellers at the Chapters Bookstore session on 1 April this year. Eight now, she impressed the other tellers with her poise and professionalism.

I suggested she tell at the Dublin Yarnspinners on 12 April, and she told The Selfish Giant, which she had only heard once before, at the Chapters session. Her sister Zara (10) offered to tell The Doctor and Death, which she had learned from my CD. It’s a fairly long and complex story, but she handled it beautifully.

I was invited to tell stories at The Big Fiddle Festival in Roundwood, County Wicklow, along with Philip Byrne, today, 1 May. Philip does a wonderfully condensed and listenable version of the major set piece in Irish mythology, The Second Battle of Moytura. I suggested to the girls’ parents that they might make the trek to Roundwood, largely because I wanted them to hear Philip. Philip and I were the only invited tellers who turned up, so it was fortunate that the Evans girls were there. Nadia told The Man With No Luck, which she heard from me last year. Zara told The Red Dress, which she learned from Nadia, who learned it from me, who learned it from Liz Weir, who learned it from a Traveller woman.

During the break, their younger sister, Danielle, who has just turned 6, told me she would like to tell The Gingerbread Man. I had never heard her tell a story, but I’d heard her rattle off the names of the 32 counties of Ireland, so I reckoned with that sort of memory she’d manage all right. She was more than all right. A new star is born. I tried to video Zara with my digital camera at Yarnspinners, but it didn’t work out, and I forgot to snap her today, but here’s Danielle’s debut.

Danielle Evans, Roundwood, Co. Wicklow, 1 May 2011

The girl in the brown shirt and blue jeans to the left of the photo, Megan, aged 9, told a version of Labraid Loingsigh’s Horse’s Ears, which she learned from Irish actress Rosaleen Linehan’s recording. She was wonderfully natural and animated.

The kids are OK. The future of storytelling is in good hands. I’ll try to get a good photo of Zara when the girls appear at Milk and Cookies next week. M&C is usually very edgy and “adult” themed, but they have promised to stick to PG material next week until the girls go home at the break.

The venue in Roundwood was in a room in the community centre on the main street where the Sunday Market is held. It’s a comfortable, bright space with a minimum of noise from outside. We might have more sessions there, so watch this space.

The Tales They Used to Tell

Free Storytelling Session for Families Chapters Book Store, Dublin, 1 April

This was the first public performance for Nadia, age 8, and she handled it like a veteran. In Ireland it’s assumed the storyteller wants to sit in a comfortable, overstuffed easy chair, and that’s what the book store people provided. It was all right for an adult, though none of the adults used it except Dónal Donohoe, because he was playing a guitar. Nadia asked me if she should tell sitting or standing. I said whatever she felt comfortable with. She chose to sit. Problem was that with the slick leather cushions and her short legs, she kept sliding forward into the microphone, which also decided to swivel slowly down. Nadia kept hitching herself back up into the chair and twisting the mike upward as she told, without a bother on her, as if this was the way it was always done.

Finally, after 3 stories, I suggested she stand up and hold the mike in her hand. She said she had to move around for the next story anyway. I told her to remember to keep the mike in front of her mouth when she moved her head. She did, and she moved around gracefully as if she had been doing it all her life. What a champ!

She told four stories: Silly Women, The Red Dress, The Phantom Steamroller, and The Man With No Luck.

Nadia on the slippery chair

Nadia standing

And not forgetting the other stars –

 

Aideen McBride - a true ghost tale from County Carlow

Caitriona Ni Threasaigh - The Selfish Giant

Dónal Donohoe - song: The Voyage of Bran

Eléonore Nicolas - Mr Wiggle and Mister Waggle; The Two Lizards

Fiona Dowling - Martina the Cockroach; Apples and Bananas

Gerry Clancy - Gadaí Dubh (The Black Thief)

The youngest members of the audience were aged 3, 4, and 5, and they began to get restless toward the end of the 2-hour session (they were great to hold on that long!). Eléonore and Fiona rewarded their patience with some lively, silly kiddie tales at just the right moment. I told The Man With No Story and The Troll Wife, but forgot to ask someone to take a photo.

As you see me, so I was …

Clock tower, A Pobra de Trives, Galicia

When I was writing Spanish and Basque Legends, I felt it was important to translate the stories with not only the content but also the style of the original authors intact. In my Introduction, I say:

“My inner eye frequently glanced at the inscription on the reconstructed clock tower in the Galician village of A Pobra de Trives. When the 17th-century church of San Bartholomé was demolished in 1928, the bell/clock tower was left standing, but was then torn down in 1968. In response to popular demand, it was rebuilt in 1996.”

On either side of the doorway are two brass plaques:

Como me vedes, xa fun [As you see me, so I was] 1928

Deixademe para sempre asi [Leave me always thus] 1996

There was no space to reproduce the tower and the plaques in the book, so here they are.

As you see me, so I was.

Leave me always thus.

The Killycluggin Stone – County Cavan

The Killycluggin Stone (1992 replica)

The original Iron Age La Tene-style Killycluggin Stone, now in the County Cavan Museum in Ballyjamesduff, is believed to be the idol known as Cenn Crúaich or Crom Crúaich, which could mean “bloody head” but I think means “head of a [stylized] stack of corn / rick of hay”. Hay is saved in County Cavan in exactly this form and size. Crom Crúaich was the harvest-god stone idol destroyed by Saint Patrick in Mag Slécht (the Plain of Slaughter).

“Here used to stand a lofty idol, that saw many a fight, whose name was the Cromm Cruaich; it caused every tribe to live without peace. … Round Cromm Cruaich there the hosts did obeisance: though it brought them under mortal shame, the name cleaves to the mighty plain [Mag Slécht = Plain of Prostrations, according to this interpretation]. … Ranged in ranks stood idols of stone four times three; to beguile the hosts grievously the figure of the Cromm was formed of gold.” From the c. 14th-century Metrical Dindshenchas (Lore of Placenames) at The Corpus of Electronic Texts (CELT) under Mag Slecht.

Some well-informed locals say the Killycluggin Stone is Crom Crúaich; others say Crom Crúaich is the stone circle — c. 20m internal diameter, consisting of 15 mostly collapsed stones — about 300m from the replica. The Stone was deliberately buried in two pieces next to the stone circle in the distant past. “Crom” in its sense of “bending” presumably refers to the circle, but it could also apply to the Stone itself with the meaning of “hunched/crouched”. One part of the Stone was discovered in 1921 (Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries 52, 1922) when it was struck by a plough. The other was found in 1952 (JRSAI 82, 1954). The Stone bears the signs of having been dealt repeated heavy blows. Saint Patrick “plied upon the Cromm a sledge from top to toe; with no paltry prowess he ousted the strengthless goblin that stood here.” (Met. Dind.) Barry Raftery, who excavated the site in 1974, discussed the finds in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 41, 1978.

The Stone was probably originally situated in the centre of the circle or at a distance from the entrance stones as an outlier. Its burial place was not where one would expect to find such a stone. The conflicting dates of the Bronze Age circle and the Iron Age La Tene-style Killycluggin Stone confuse the issue, but the two informed locals I talked to thought the Iron Age people simply installed their idol in the existing circle.

The Stone is in the townland of Killycluggin, about 3 miles southwest of Ballyconnell. “Kill” in an Irish place name often means “church” (cill), but here probably comes from coill, “woods”. Cloigheann means “head”.

Some have argued that the Killycluggin Stone is phallic (using what yardstick, so to speak, I can’t imagine) and have compared it to the Lia Fáil on the Hill of Tara. As you can see, there is no similarity.

Lia Fáil on the Hill of Tara

Photos and text © Richard Marsh 2011.