16 May – Blanchardstown Library – 11 am (for older adults and children, free)

17 May – Rush Library – 11.30 am (for older adults and children, free)

22 May – Malahide Library – 3 pm (for older adults and children, free)

24 May – Cervantes Institute – 3.30 pm Spanish stories in English,
for older adults and children. 7 euros adults, 3 euros children

With the collaboration of

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.

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.

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.

This video is from a Milk & Cookies session in Dublin, 2010. In support of the veracity, or at least verisimilitude, of this yarn, here are interior and exterior photos of the cottage I lived in at the time near Avoca, County Wicklow.

River Lodge cottage, 1987

River Lodge cottage interior, 1987. Note the wood-burning stove on the right.

Also, to prove that at least part of the story is factual, here are the Bell Rock and the Spink, from my book Tales of the Wicklow Hills (2007), which includes this tale.

Bell Rock

The Spink

You can see 24 other videos from Milk & Cookies here.

“Cabeza de Perro” seems to refer to the picture of the head of a dog on the label, but Cabeza de Perro was a real-life pirate of the Caribbean. Ángel García was born about 1800 in Igueste de San Andrés, Tenerife, Canary Islands, with a severe deformity of the head. Bullied and rejected in childhood, he left Tenerife as soon as he reached adulthood and carved out a trade as a merchant, slave-trafficker and pirate, making his headquarters in Havana, Cuba. More details here.

Patrick prayed “crosfigell” (kneeling with his arms spread in the form of a cross) for three days and three nights. Saint Michael the Archangel appeared and restored Lugaid to life. Patrick commanded that everyone should set aside a tenth portion of food for the King of the Clouds and a morsel for Michael.

from the early 15th-century Book of Lismore 22.86 a39

The Hungry Tree

This tree that ate a steel bench is in the grounds of the 19th-century King’s Inns, Dublin, a college for barristers founded in 1541 by Henry VIII. It’s next to the vehicle gate on Constitution Hill. King’s Inns is frequently used as a location for period films. In fact, Albert Nobbs, a 19th-century drama starring Glenn Close in the title role, was shooting there today, 6 January 2011.

The tiny figure seated on the bench is Flat Stanley, who my granddaughter Rowan sent to me in 2009 for a class project. I released him from the envelope and unfolded him and took him around Dublin to meet people and see the sights. I took photos of his adventures and sent them to Rowan.

In the book written about him in 1964 by Jeff Brown, he was flattened when a bulletin board fell off the wall onto him. Unfortunately, the week before he arrived in Dublin a similar thing really happened to a man in a store and killed him. This meant that FS’s reception was a bit chilly.

The Children of Lir

Lir and his wife, Aobh (pronounced (“eve”), had four children: a girl Fionnuala and
her twin brother, Aed (“ay”), and twin boys Fiachra and Conn. Aobh died, and Lir
married Aoife. Everyone loved the Children of Lir for their good character and
attractive personalities and their fine singing voices, and Aoife was envious of
their popularity. She was going to kill them, but she took pity on them and changed
them into swans.

They stayed for 300 years on Lake Derravarragh, 300 years on a rock between Ireland
and Scotland, and another 300 years off the west coast of Ireland in the Atlantic
Ocean. Finally after 900 years the spell was broken and they turned back into
humans. They heard a church bell, and they went and told their story to a priest.
He baptised them, and they fell down dead of old age.

Above is a sculpture by Oisín Kelly of the Children of Lir in the Garden of
Rembrance in Dublin.