THE TALES THAT MADE THE TELLER
(From F&F#48 fEB 2004)

Part of an occasional ‘strand’ (we all get hooked into internet talk) which I hope will continue. Here Amy Douglas tells us of the books and authors which influenced her as a child and eventually led her onto the path of storytelling.

Dear Pete,

I was very interested to read your article on the books that inspired you as a child. It came hot on the heels of a request from the SfS for comments and relevant project reports to inform the SfS’s response to the Arts Council’s policy on promoting children’s literature – it’s just one of those subjects that are in the air at the moment!

Reading was and still is a huge influence on my desire to tell and my joy in being a storyteller. I was one of those lucky children who was read to regularly – at home for bedtime stories; in school after lunch when we gathered in the comfy story corner, all piled on top of one another, the girls playing with each others hair; cousins and grandparents making up stories to entertain me and the weekly reward for being a relatively uncomplaining daughter during the Saturday shop of going to the second bookshop in the market and being allowed to pick one or two books to keep me going for the week. Of course the books I chose never lasted the week, but there was the library and pleasure of re-reading books to occupy from Tuesday onwards.

One of my favourite authors in the early years was Enid Blyton. I know, I know, she’s terribly incorrect and often badly written, but I didn’t notice. It was a fictional world – children with servants were linked with talking animals and dancing toys – it was a place to play and dream and I don’t feel I was brainwashed by any class or sexist issues in the slightest. It wasn’t until much later I realized how much she had taken from folklore. Later on I kept remembering one of her stories about a chauvinistic brother who wouldn’t allow his sister to explore the strange yellow door in the hillside with him. He went alone, saw the fairies dancing and opened the box with "Do not open this box for any reason" on it. Chaos ensued and in the end it was his sister who saved him by giving the released genie a curly hair from her head to straighten. I decided to tell the story with a blacksmith and the Devil, with the blacksmith’s wife saving him from the result of his boasting. I told it to my mentor, Duncan Williamson, who looked at me with a glint in his eye and said, "That’s an old story, Amy, from the travelling tradition, but you got one bit wrong – it wasn’t a hair from her head that she pulled!"

Reading books was a big influence, but just as important were tapes. My mother would record stories from the radio for me and borrow tapes from the library. The stories weren’t told, they were obviously read, but I loved to lie on my bed or the floor (and not necessarily at bedtime) close my eyes and listen. I fell in love with Oscar Wilde and C.S. Lewis through those tapes and though I have been back many times and read the story of the nightingale giving her heart’s blood for love and the Horse and His Boy, I always hear that gentle deep voice telling them to me as I read.

Teachers and storytellers (including me) often agonise over the suitability of stories for children and whether the children will be able to cope with more demanding stories, but I have come to realise more and more that often it doesn’t matter. When I was a child I loved "The Selfish Giant" and I had a picture book of the story of Osiris and I didn’t have a clue what they were about – but I could feel the magic and power of the stories. The incomplete comprehension helped to give them their magic and otherworldliness and was the very reason I loved them so much.

Like Pete I was also inspired by Alan Garner. I remember listening to an adaptation of "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" on Radio 4 when I was about 8 completely transfixed. I was ecstatic when given a copy of the book and realized it was the same story. The book begins with a retelling of the sleeping knights story, set in Alderley Edge. It has haunted me all my life and when I began storytelling it was one of the first that I told. (N.B. His new book Thursbitch is out – I’ve ordered my copy and I’m desperately awaiting its arrival)

As I grew older I began to raid my parents’ large book collection and read anything I could find from the old classics to science fiction, from the Bible to the origins of yoga. I admit to not always being discerning about the standard of writing – it was whether the story grabbed me. One of my greatest finds on my parents’ bookshelves were the authors David Eddings and Stephen Donaldson. In David Eddings there is an old man, a rogue who likes to pilfer beer and food from the kitchen, who visits the farm once a year. He is always welcome because he is the storyteller and holds all – hard-working ploughmen, children and the women who have finally sat down from serving the meal – transfixed with his stories of how the world was created. By the fifth book in the series we know that he is 7000 years old and was present at many of the events he tells of, but he is not beyond tweaking the facts with a twinkle in his eye to make a better story. Stephen Donaldson tells of the race of giants – a race who are innocent in their joy in the beauty of the world, a race addicted to storytelling, a race who have traditional stories that take three days and nights of telling while all sit and listen and keep their eyes and ears open until the satisfied sigh at the end and then all fall asleep in a pile for a couple of days.

I used to read those stories and think "What happened? When did we lose the storytellers? Why aren’t there any storytellers anymore? It’s just not fair!"

When one day I was at a folk festival and saw a storytelling workshop with some bloke called Taffy Thomas on the programme, I had to look twice to make sure it was real. I went along full of hope that it was the real thing. It was a small classroom, and in the end wasn’t a workshop at all, but Taffy simply sitting and telling stories and I was hooked. A door opened, I stepped through it with joy and it’s a path I’ve been walking ever since.

Amy Douglas

PS This is hard! I’ve probably had my word allowance, but there are so many books I should mention… Arthur Ransome, Nina Bawden, Elizabeth Beresford (all the ones that aren’t about the Wombles) and how could I possibly forget John Masefield and Joan Aiken… But the child that I was would be absolutely livid with me if I didn’t tell you that you must all give any small children you know a copy of "The Velveteen Rabbit". I listened to it over and over as a child and cried every single time. Now I’m grown up (well as much as I ever will be) I still love it. Maybe it’s because I think in some way we are all waiting and desperately wanting to be made real.

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