Scores of skilled storytellers will converge on Dublin for a festival next weekend. Catherine Foleyis captivated.
There was a certain magic in the air when Grace Hallworth and Nuala Hayes met recently in Dublin in the run-up to the International Festival of Story and Song, which will take at Farmleigh in Dublin next weekend.
This will be "the largest group of oral storytellers ever to be brought together in Ireland", says Hayes, the festival's joint artistic co-ordinator with Jack Lynch. The aim of the festival is "to reflect the quieter and oldest of art-forms, storytelling and traditional unaccompanied singing".
When listening to a storyteller "a lot can happen in people's imagination", suggests Hayes. All is possible in a story, explain the two women, both experienced storytellers who know how to weave a spell with words. And suddenly there is talk of wizardry, magic, spells, serpents, and mer folk.
Hallworth, who was the inspiration for much of the recent storytelling revival in the UK, founded the Society for Storytelling there in 1993. She is "completely centred, the story is within her as opposed to the story being outside of her", says Hayes, looking across at Hallworth, a tall, slim Trinidadian who will celebrate her 80th birthday next year. She explains that Hallworth, a retired librarian, is more concerned with "sharing a story" than acting out a dramatic monologue.
Hallworth explains why she loves telling stories as opposed to writing them down, although she has had more than a dozen collections published to date. "I need the two-way thing, and storytelling does that. It's like an electric current that there's something happening between me and the audience . . . I get a charge, actually."
SOMETIMES CHILDREN WILL "lie down" when they are listening to her, she explains. Some adults worry that they may not be listening, but Hallworth explains "they've gone into their own world. That's what you want. When you're telling something from inside you, that it goes inside them. I know they are with me, even when they are lying down and not looking at me.
"You see this connection in other ways," she says. Sometimes, afterwards, "people come up and hug you". Do her stories have messages? "I never think of a message when I'm telling a story."
There are a number of stories, such as The Greyling, about a grey seal the fisherman brings home, which never fail to excite and enthral listeners of any age, says Hallworth.
"He picks up a baby seal and takes it to his wife, who longs for a child, and when she uncovers the seal from his sheet, she sees a baby with grey eyes. It's a selkie: a man on the land and a seal on the sea," Hallworth says.
This has all the ingredients to make it appeal to young and old, such as magic, a baby and wish fulfilment.
"It works on many levels," she explains. "I think it's such a profound but simple story . . . The songs that go with these are always full of pathos."
Hayes says that over the festival weekend, the storytellers will be joined by a number of unaccompanied singers such as Muireann Nic Amhlaoidh from west Kerry, Len Graham from Antrim and Barry Gleeson from Dublin.
Her own interest in storytelling is rooted in "the big old Irish legends", which "in the early 20th century were simplified as we developed and made part of the curriculum". But the original stories are far more bracing and original, she says, citing the legends of St Brigid and the Children of Lir as stories that were airbrushed to suit a more censorious society.
Regarding the Children of Lir, she says: "that was a very, very interesting complex story that has to do with migration, metamorphosis, our connection to animals, so it was turned into a Christian story."
Hallworth cites a story that always works with children aged from 10 upwards, concerning a young man who doesn't want to work, although he does want to make lot of money.
"Death comes to him and says 'I like your style. I'm going to set you up as a doctor. You'll heal a lot of people on the condition that if you see me standing at the head of the bed, don't bother. That person is going to die.' And he goes, and the young man is very successful."
There will be 23 performers at the festival next weekend, including storytellers from Scotland and Senegal. London-based Tuup from British Guyana, and a group from Poland called Grupa Studnia O, will also feature.
The Irish storytellers on the line-up will include Liz Weir, Kate Corkery, Niall de Búrca, Diarmuid Ó Drisceoil, Pat Ryan, Pat Speight, Francis Quinn and the two festival co-ordinators, Hayes and Lynch.
Performance styles can vary widely, says Lynch, whose own stories can centre around humorous tall-tales.
THERE IS SOMETHING mesmeric about Hallworth's delivery, whose voice is steady and fast and whose arms remain still by her sides. There are no dramatics and yet this writer is immediately drawn in, leaning forward like a child to hear what is going to happen.
"The king's daughter is sick. No-one can cure her and this fellow goes, full of certainty," she continues. And, of course, he falls in love with the princess and of course, Death arrives and stands at the head of the bed, and the young man does not want to let her die. How does he solve his dilemma, Hallworth asks me, reeling me in like a fish, my notebook forgotten on my lap, and I smile like a six-year-old, delighted that I can guess. Yes, she tells me. The dilemma is solved by turning the bed around the other way, and the man marries the princess, and he outwits Death, and I wonder what it is about Hallworth's story that is so cajoling and alluring.
Outside, the rain has stopped. A sprinkle of raindrops adds a certain sparkle to the world and Hallworth recalls how her childhood in her aunt's house shaped her love of storytelling. "In my time, you weren't part of an evening's entertainment, because you were sent to bed at seven. But because I wasn't sleeping, I used to listen to them singing and make up stories to fit into that."
And also, "there were a lot of books in the house. I was reading a lot that were far beyond my understanding. I created my own version of stories and told them to the dolls. That was the only way I could understand."
WHEN SHE WAS allowed go to the cinema, she went "on the condition that when I came back that I would tell the entire film. I had to tell the whole film from start to finish. I used to do all the different accents," she recalls.
Growing up in Trinidad, "one swapped stories at school", she says. "The tradition of storytelling was with schoolchildren but they didn't even realise they were storytellers. You can well imagine that at that time, there were no storytellers. You told stories."
International Festival of Story and Song at Farmleigh runs from Fri July 27 to Sun July 29.
See www.farmleigh.ie or www.storytellersofireland.org Some events require tickets.