STING IN THE TALE 2014

Of course I've been telling stories since I last wrote - telling stories at Southampton Story Club, at Wykeham Tales in Winchester, at Heads and Tales Story Cafe in Ringwood and at their other monthly meetings in the wonderful Earthouse at the Ancient Technology Centre in Cranborne. But what goes on in these other places is recorded [by me, as it happens] on the respective Facebook pages of these other organisations [Heads and Tales, aka New Forest Storytellers, also have a blogspot of their own, where I post the same text that goes on Facebook, but in a nicer typeface.]

Here, I post about the stories I tell outside of those contexts. So, I shall post now about the three contributions I made to The Sting in the Tale, the storytelling festival in East Dorset, which is now in its eleventh year:

On Tuesday, August 19th, Maddie Grantham and I told stories at Drusilla's Inn in Wigbeth by Horton under the title Eating the Apple. "Adult Content" was really a misnomer, if you're thinking of "adult mags", because the stories were all about how men and women relate to each other - emotionally as well as physically. We began with early tales, in which Men and Women lived separately, and regarded each other as belonging almost to different species. Then we moved on to stories in which the physical pleasure they could give one another was emphasised - in one case by a Rabbi, who was concerned that a marriage should be equally delightful for both parties to it. But not all of that physical pleasure - if that's what you want - can, it seems, be found inside marriage - at least, some people need to go outside it... So, the stories were mischievous and suggestive and relied on the knowledge which the members of our audience all had, but seldom shared!

And I really have to mention Laura Gray's splendidly suggestive artwork, the three banners which enhanced our performance, Eve on the left, temptingly offering her juicy apple, Adam on the right, looking with big eyes and open mouth at what he is being offered, and in the middle the apple itself, a big bite taken out of it, showing the five pips, and the bite itself miraculously in the shape of a heart.

On Wednesday, August 20th, I contributed to the Field of Stories at Cranborne my version of The Tailor's Three Sons, a classic tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, whose main motifs appear in tales from many other lands and cultures.

On Thursday, August 21st, in the delightful venue of Allendale House in Wimborne, I told a set of four stories, entitled From the Waterside to the Chase, comprising The Abbot and King John [a traditional tale, which also appears as a ballad, and has even been adapted as a ballad in German by Bürger]; Mary of Eling [which I first heard told by Rob Iliffe, but which I have made my own over the years]; Harald and Gerda [which I stole from Susan Price's The Footprint of the Wolf]; and The Widow of Wimborne [which I took from Asbjornsen and Moe's classic set of Norwegian tales and localised in the UK, selecting Lymington or Wimborne or anywhere else, as location dictated - it's one of my very favourite stories, and when I told it at the Children's Book Festival in Southampton Art Gallery in autumn 2012 Christobel Thomas capped it by telling an alternative Grimm version straight afterwards - comparative folklore for the kids!]