Mind Moves:" The Other Crowd, The Good People, The Wee Folk and Them are a few of the names given to the fairies by the people of Ireland.
Honoured for their gifts and feared for their wrath, the fairies remind us to respect both the world we live in and the forces we cannot see. This is the world of creatures who, by turn, afflict, enlighten and instruct those who cross their paths, a world of mysterious taboos, dangers, otherworldly abductions and enchantments. "
This extraordinary introduction into the world of myth, magic, mystery and imagination opened an evening of storytelling in UCD by renowned Co Clare storyteller Eddie Lenihan. Around a fireplace, with candles flickering, the students gathered, participating in one of the many events surrounding the Please Talk campaign in UCD.
This is a movement to remind students about the mental health value of talking and that talking is a sign of strength, not of weakness. Ironic that in a nation of storytellers we must now enjoin a generation to talk.
For some of the students, this was their first experience of the traditional talking and storytelling of an era long before their time. And they loved it. Or so it seemed.
If attention is a measure of pleasure, this was special. Perhaps being with a group - when there is nothing but the voice of the teller and the ear of the listener - appealed. For there was a wish for more when just one more story was offered at the end of the session.
Afterwards, there was a gathering around the storyteller, asking questions, telling him stories, checking half-remembered myths and seeking his story books and CDs to share the magic of the experience with others or to recapture its emotion by reading or listening again to some of the stories that he had told.
But there was something else that happened. Individuals who arrived alone departed as part of a group. The intimacy of fireplace, story and tradition united the group. This is because people participate in stories and emerge as co-conspirators in this cognitive creative construction of an alternative world.
At the storytelling session there was the silence of listening and listening in silence. Each person there, conjuring up from the words they heard, their own special internal imaginative image of the places and people, the landscape and events the storyteller described.
There were details of dress, deportment and disposition given in words; words of such poetic majesty that it seemed as if the spaces beside the storyteller were being peopled by the people he described.
Sometimes the storyteller leapt, literally, from his chair and captured the antics of those from other worlds, or the terror of mortals colliding with "Them" unawares.
Sometimes it seemed as if he himself was of their ilk, light of foot, with flowing beard and intense eyes; one could be forgiven for letting the imagination run as wild as his locks or the musicality of his voice.
Sometimes that voice was projected to portray the power, might and magnitude of an event. Sometimes a hush descended on the room and the storyteller's voice also dropped to a whisper, so that the listeners sat forward, fearful, attentive, rapt, to catch what could only be spoken softly, of such portent were his words.
Afterwards, people said they felt they were alone in the Shannon field from which there was no exit, or beside the bewildered farmer watching his hay being saved by strangers who vanished as mysteriously as they appeared.
Or they shuddered at the consequences of damaging a fairy fort, or experiencing the terrible shivering famine starvation that befalls those who walk upon the féar gorta, the famine grass, where those who thread upon it die unless they put bread into their mouths and swallow it.
Occasionally the storyteller crept forward, tiptoeing quietly, slowly, to issue a hushed warning of what happened to folk who were ignoble. Waiting in those pauses, the listeners held the word that had just been spoken and waited for the next word to be said, to hear what happened, to learn, not just the fate of the characters, but of humanity itself.
And if young women feel objectified today, there were defiant women in the past that played prominent parts in Irish heritage to inspire them.
There were Aoibheall, protector of the O'Brien clan, Máire Rua McMahon, a virago, feared and avoided, Lady Betty the Roscommon hang woman and Moll Shaughnessy "a terrifying spectre to all foolish enough to pass the lonesome heights of Barna by night".
And if young men need reminding about what is brave, valiant, noble and heroic within them, the storyteller had hundreds of stories for them too.
The rightness of reminding students that they derive from a tradition of storytelling and encouraging them to please talk again about what is important to them is an important innovative mental health intervention.
Make of that what you will, that's one sense that can be made of it.
Marie Murray is director of the student counselling services UCD. Further information on Please Talk at www.pleasetalk.ie and storyteller Eddie Lenihan at www.eddielenihan.ie