Our entire class was devoted to telling stories today. Since many of our participants had been away over the weekend and all of them had been in Dublin yesterday we started off with personal stories. No surprise that my perspective is that the most significant souvenirs they will return with are the stories of their experiences. We talked about how stories revolve around trouble – whether large or small- and how stories are distinguished from anecdotes by the telling of what changed as a result of the experience. In short, stories document transformation. I taught them Donald Davis’ story structure device “The Five P’s” (people, place, problem, progress, point). We applied the structure to Fidencio Ybarra’s experience of a troublesome encounter at St. Stephen’s Green. They then each shared their story with two neighbors and then four of them got up to tell their stories to the whole group. We heard about anxiety over male room-mates in a hostel in Cork, the frantic search for an old friend in Dublin, an unsuccessful dash for the Athlone train, and a day of disappointment in Dublin’s fair city. Very enjoyable!
We then moved on to the telling of the first set of traditional stories. At the beginning of our class I told the students that they would be hearing well over 100 stories in The Irish Storytelling Tradition. There are 20 of them and they will each be telling three, so right there we have 60. Add in the stories told by our featured tellers Eddie Lenihan, Pat Speight, and Liz Weir, plus the ones that Laura Rutherford and I will tell and we should be well over the 100 mark. With that in mind I decided to carefully document all the stories told.
Last week Laura Rutherford told:
1. The Children of Llyr (Ireland’s most famous story that she put together from several sources)
I told:
2. The Cailleach at Loughcrew, 3. The Best Walker in All Ireland (from Gearoid O’Crualaoich’s Book of the Cailleach), 4. The Young Son (story of Newgrange), and 5. The Dagda’s Harp
Today we heard eight stories:
6. Shelli Curtis told Grandfather’s Ghost from Henry Glassie’s Irish Folktales,
7. Angela Roman told The Man Who Lost His Shadow from Sean O’Sullivan’s Folktales of Ireland.
8. Alysa Brimacombe told The Magpie and the Fox from O’Sullivan.
9. Michelle Fish told No Man Goes Beyond His Day from Glassie.
10. Sarah Stevens told Finn McCool and the Scottish Giant from an online source.
11. Nikki Dugie told The Grain of Oats from Paddy Tunney’s Ulster Folk Stories for Children.
12. Faye Daniel told The Hound and the Hare from Glassie
13. Kim Wellman told The Transaction with the Other Crowd from Eddie Lenihan’s Meeting the Other Crowd.
They all knew their stories well and told them with conviction and enthusiasm. I was impressed with how well they chose stories that fit their personalities. It was an excellent first session and I’m very much looking forward to hearing the rest of them tomorrow.
From the left in the phot are Kim Wellman, Shelli Curtis, Sarah Stevens, Angela Roman, Faye Daniel, Michelle Fish, Alysa Brimacombe, and Nikki Dugie.
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