While I was turning my lockdown living room into a makeshift Jackanory studio, I recorded a version of my poem Wee Nasties as a test run for how to put the stories together.
It's been almost fifteen years since I wrote this, seven since we published it as a book, and I still enjoy reading it in schools and libraries.
And there's certainly a direct line between this and the work Mhairi and I did for the Sharing Stories project - not least the guest appearances by the Mermaid and the Frog...
Of all the stories we were told, I think this was my favourite.
All of the women around the table were familiar with the character of Fatima, a female hero sent on a quest into the woods - just like in The Well at the Worlds End. The story has so many classic archetypes and symbols - maiden, stepmother, witch, well, transformation. There's so much to unpack and enjoy. And even though we were familiar with the Snow White / Cinderella elements of the story there were parts which were absolutely new to us. Mhairi's final illustration for this story effectively reflects some of the darkness of the story, and it's by far my favourite in the book.
It's also the longest story to tell, so settle in...
One of the first stories I was told for this project was the story of Fatima's Children. I was chatting with Tamadour and she just told it right off the top of her head - and I didn't have my recording kit with me! Fatima is a Snow White / Cinderella type character, who turns up in a few stories (including the final story we will be sharing this week) In Tamadour's story, she leaves her children at home while she goes out to work.
Some weeks later, Ilona, Alison and I visited Rouzine to talk about Kurdish traditions and folklore - much of which had been suppressed in Syria. Mostly we talked about the Newroz tradition and the King under the hill - but then Roijin spoke to us about Shengay and Pengay, which features two sheep left at home by their mother while she goes out for food.
Both are "wolf at the door" stories featuring a dangerous male character attempting to gain entry to a house. And of course we are perhaps more familiar with the version in which a wolf tries to get into the houses of the Three Little Pigs.
The King and the Water Seller story arrived at the point when I realised the Sharing Stories project was starting to come together. We had spent a few weeks with an ESOL group supported by Inverclyde Community Learning and Development, and the first few weeks were mostly hilariously awkward attempts to bridge the language gaps and generally plunging down into them instead.
But on this week, we finally established a rhythm, of reading, translating, scribbling and sketching - a collaborative effort to get from the start of a story all the way to the end. It was great. And once we had all figured out that this was how we needed to do it, the stories just kept coming...
I've returned to the story of the mermaid in the River Clyde many times, she's in my book Wee Nasties, guest stars in the Rowan Tree Legion comic, has a number of stories on this blog - and it's one of my proudest achievements that we managed to get her commemorated on a heritage bench which sits in Port Glasgow town centre.
So when we were deciding which stories to share, there was never any doubt, we'd be telling our mermaid tale...
In the early stages of the Sharing Stories project, we looked to what other projects had done successfully to generate understanding and discussion around folk tales. We found out about the Timeless Tales project, which had been collecting Syrian folk tales in particular, generally within refugee camps. We used one of these previously collected stories - The King's Daughter's Earring, to share and explain the type of tale we were looking for, and heard a blended variation in return.
What immediately struck us, given that we were looking for connections, was that this story seemed to share the symbolism of the ring and the fish that we know from the story of Saint Mungo of Glasgow - so we decided it would fit nicely with our developing river / water theme.
This was one of the last stories we were told, in the last week of the project. Amal explained that her husband had been telling the story to his children each night over the phone, while waiting to come and join them in Inverclyde. We were delighted when Amal agreed to record us a version of the story which you can hear below, and then you can listen to our translation.
Part of our role in the Sharing Stories project was to find Scottish stories which complimented or echoed the stories we had heard from Syria or Sudan. We chose The Well at the Worlds End, because we heard a few different variations of the story in which a young woman is sent into the woods to fetch something - a sieve, some water -usually from a magical source.
This story also blends in elements of the more familiar Frog Prince story, but with something much more unexpected than a kiss to break that spell...
For the last year, as part of my work with Magic Torch Comics CIC, I've been working with Inverclyde Community Development Trust on their Sharing Stories project – which is funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund. Our part in the process, was to create a book of illustrated folk tales with stories from Scotland, Syria and Sudan.
The project developed directly from a comic we worked on a few years back, which had young people from recently arrived Syrian families, learning about the myths and legends of their new home town and creating a story and a learning resource related to Children’s Rights.
At the time that project felt like the first part of a conversation; we’d told our stories, and now, it was time for us to listen and hear stories back. We all know that stories, folklore, heritage – culture, can be lost during displacement, and we all felt this was one way of keeping elements of culture alive, and finding out more about one another in the process.
One of the things that worked well about the Sharing Stories project was it being housed within an organisation which was already running some services with Inverclyde’s New Scots community, in particular, a befriending programme – so we were able to tap into that. For example, Roijin invited us along to her house a few times for amazing coffee, to tell us all about Newroz and Kurdish culture. Eventually she chose the story of Shengay and Pengay, two sheep who are left alone in the house when their mother goes out. It’s a “wolf at the door” style story, where a character, is trying to trick their way into a house. We heard a few different variations.
And what we had set out to do, was hear as many stories as possible, find some with some common themes or symbols and then find a few Scottish tales that would also echo those themes. Because there’s a universality to stories, symbols and archetypes obviously repeat across cultures and we wanted to produce a book that reflected that.
Obviously, the language differences were a challenge in the project – that was almost the whole point. We spent a fair bit of time with an ESOL group supported by Inverclyde Community Learning and Development - and the first few weeks were just polite chaos, but gradually we established a rhythm. Members of the group would come in with written down texts of stories, which they would read and then another member of the group would translate into English and I would scribble it down, or we’d use google translate to try and figure it out, and all the while, Mhairi would be sitting sketching the characters we were talking about and checking if this is how they should look in our story book.
Eventually we whittled the group of stories down to 8 – which was tricky, because towards the end we were suddenly getting more and more suggestions. And the stories we chose all feature water or rivers in some way, which seemed fitting given that we’re down in Greenock, right on the banks of the Clyde.
I think genuinely my favourite day in the project, was when we finally convinced Tamadour and Amal to record their stories. You can hear their versions of The Old Man and The Apple Seller and Fatima on soundcloud.
The book was due to launch in April at our local library at an event with families of everyone involved – of course, that’s been put on hold for just now. Hopefully we’ll get that happening later in the year.
Meantime, The Trust’s project worker Ilona proposed getting them online in a few alternative formats, so for the next two weeks, we will be sharing a story each day in two different versions – one read by me in English and the other read in Arabic or Kurmanji. Here’s the first one below, from Sudan, the story of Lion and Rabbit.
Ito the rabbit is a trickster, often associated with Anansi and Brer Rabbit, and there was certainly a lot of chat and laughter about how Assad the Lion was the typical arrogant leader who values strength and fear above leadership. I think you can maybe guess who comes out best...
