Children at two inner-city schools in Dublin have been creating a piece of New Zealand in the playground over the past month; and they've been making a terrific racket while they're at it. Aided by educational consultant Chris Kinder, more than 80 pupils at Gaelscoil, Inchicore and St Gabriel's, Aughrim Road have been hard at work on a project for the ninth annual Scealta Shamhna festival of story-telling, hosted by the National Museum and the Two Chairs company. Its theme this year is "imirce" - migrations - inspired by what the organisers see as the close parallels between the oral cultures of Ireland and New Zealand.
It's the responsibility of the youngsters to provide an authentic tribal welcome, haka and all, for those Maori storytellers and musicians who have travelled to take part in the festival. However, it's not all noise and energy. As Kinder explains, these children are learning to recreate the marae, the traditional meeting space of Maori people, the formality of which must be respected. Setting out from within the bounds of one culture to explore another can prove an enriching and educational experience but as these schoolchildren realise, this is a journey which must be undertaken with caution.
All the same, the festival organisers are not afraid to effect a fusion of styles and traditions. Appearing on the same bill as veteran storyteller Eamon Kelly is storyteller Rangimoana Taylor from the Ngati Porou tribe, and in contrast to the quiet tales of the Armagh seanachai John Campbell is the high vocal energy of the Ngati Ranana group. In the midst of these performers is Niall de Burca, a professional storyteller born in Dublin but based in New Zealand; to him, Scealta Shamhna director Susie Kennedy pays tribute for devising the theme of this year's festival.
De Burca sees this as an opportunity to inform as much as to entertain, and to go some way towards the correction of prevalent stereotypes: "The perception I had was that the impression people might have at home of this side of the world, down under per se, was largely dominated by Australia," he explains, "- that in many people's minds, over here seems to be another universe."
Yet this is a universe constructed, to a significant degree, by Irish New Zealanders, who form some 17 per cent of the total population. De Burca points out that the islands now known as North Island, South Island and Stewart Island were firstly named New Munster, New Leinster and New Ulster by European settlers: "The story of our people in America is relatively well-documented, as is the one in Australia," he argues. "But although from most parishes in Ireland, people went out to New Zealand, even though a lot of Irish people came here, that's not so well known in terms of Irish people's stories in this part of the world."
And yet, the literary history of New Zealand reveals a long rollcall of Irish immigrants and influences. Why, then, should de Burca speak of the need to throw light on the importance of the Irish as storytellers in the country?
Richard Corballis, Professor of English at Auckland's Massey University, considers that the history of the Irish impact on the storytelling, as distinct from the literary, culture is less easy to trace. Those elusive codes of Maori culture would have been even less accessible to early Irish settlers, he argues; so, while the two oral traditions may have subsisted, the idea that they merged seamlessly into one culture of storytelling is misguided.
"There actually hasn't been a strong storytelling tradition in New Zealand," he argues. "That sort of solo performance didn't exist in the settler culture. There is, of course, a solo tradition in the Maori culture, but it's more in the form of formal oratory, these long orations that precede social events, establishing authority by doing the whakapapa as they call it, the family tree." As for the Irish settlers, Corballis finds little proof in 19th-century documents of storytelling beyond the gold fields, beyond the domestic context. As a culture, it was as much a closed shop as the marae of their tribal neighbours.
Yet one participant in the festival has a tale to tell with which the historical facts would appear to be at odds. When Connemara storyteller Eddie Bheartle O Conghaile visited the Glistening Waters storytelling festival in New Zealand six years ago, he was amazed to hear a story told by a man from Fiji which was virtually identical to a moral tale handed down through his own family, reckoned to date back to 3000 BC.
"It was almost exactly what I had from the Celtic origins," O'Conghaile remembers. "I asked him where he had got it and he said that it was from an old man in a little island close to Fiji. I found that connection with the Maori storytellers, that we had something very much in common. And it must have originated somewhere, I think probably Africa; because our first people came from North Africa, we still have traces of that in our storytelling. And they must have started out from the one point at some time, because some of the signs that they used, the Maori use as well, the signs you find in Newgrange."
Niall de Burca, too, believes in the universality of certain stories; motifs and symbols common to both traditions suggest to him an original common ground between Celt and Maori. The differing views of theoreticians and practitioners suggest a vast scope for debate as to the nature of ancient links between the Irish and Maori culture. Meanwhile, Scealta Shamhna aims to celebrate modern ties as well as old. And besides, the festival director is adamant that such debate is secondary to the real business of storytelling. So, too, are questions which may be raised about the capacity of the Irish to welcome and accept the idiosyncrasies of immigrant cultures as a whole: "We're not an anti-racist group, though indeed we would subscribe to those kinds of politics," Kennedy explains. "But the stories are the epitome of cross-cultural activities. Through telling stories, one would hope that that would promote an understanding of another race. There aren't direct parallels, you know, we're not trying to force the point. We're just looking for a sharing, really, of the two cultures."
And the fact of difference is not being suppressed in the playground-cum-marae of Chris Kinder and his apprentices. From the beginning, he has framed Maori as an example of another culture, albeit one related to Ireland in ways. Nor, he insists, does the schools programme attempt to raise the bicultural agenda - these children may be at the age when attitudes towards others are formed, but the festival does not undertake to force-feed morals to the future generation. "Scealta Shamhna is about storytelling," Kinder reiterates, "about storytelling in two different cultures. And what the children learn from that can be a simple transference of the two, or they mightn't pick up too much more except for having a good experience."
Eddie Bheartle O Conghaile, however, considers that they stand to pick up a great deal more. "The storytelling," he says. "It's the best thing for children. In New Zealand I understood from some of the families that I stayed with that one of the reasons for the revival in storytelling was that the young people were losing the language, they could only speak in the language of the TV, the jargon they'd come across. They were doing this so that the young people could think and talk for themselves and use their own phrases and language. And this needs to be done here. This is the land of the stories."
The Scealta Shamhna festival of story-telling runs from tomorrow until November 12th. For information phone 01 6777444
