Storytelling and place are inseparable themes in the history of human communication

Storytelling and Place

Mary Medlicott

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T= ŷ Mathri

M= athri

H= averfordwest SA62 5HB

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9 Winterwell Road

London SW2 5JB

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m= ary.medlicott@storyworks.org.uk

The countries= of the British Isles have recently seen a signif= icant revival in the oral tradition. From small beginnings in the early 1980s, th= ere has developed a considerable body of professional storytellers, people who = earn their living from storytelling in its many different forms. Professional storytelling has facilitated the rise of many new kinds of events. These ra= nge from storytelling festivals, adult performances, community storytelling projects and workshops in schools to storytelling projects in prisons, arts galleries and countryside ventures. The rise and success of the storytellin= g profession has been matched by increasing numbers of non-professional storytellers who attend storytelling clubs and festivals or deploy their own interest and sk= ills by telling stories for the sheer love of it in all kinds of voluntary capac= ities at a wide range of venues in the community. In consequence, there is now a = sizeable and still increasing audience of story listeners throughout the country. Ov= er the same period, much the same has occurred in other countries all over the world - America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia. These developments make it important to consider what particular kinds of contribution oral storytelli= ng makes and can make to our world today.

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O= ne vital question concerns how storytelling helps people in an increasingly globalis= ed and alienated world to gain a sense of connection with the environments whe= re they live and the societies of which they are part. North Pembrokeshire<= /st1:place>, my own native area, provid= es an apt example of the richness of ground inherent in the theme. As a professio= nal storyteller since the early days of the storytelling revival, I have become particularly aware of how much North Pembrokeshire stories have contributed= to my own sense of what storytelling is and can be for people I work with (and= I here include people all over the country and beyond), as well as to the development of my own repertoire of stories

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North Pembrokeshire has a very ancient history of human occupation. It demonstrates the many strata of stories that may exist in a locality and how much there may = be which cries out to be remembered and communicated. The underlying story of = North Pembrokeshire<= /st1:place> is geological; its ancient = rock forms continue to fascinate geologists and visitors alike. Overlaying that fundamental picture are the stories of human prehistory, the ancient tales = that finally became known to us in the form of the saga of the Mabinogion. These ancient Celtic stories form the bedrock of our Welsh story world. As a child, I used frequently to see the Twrch Trwyth, enormous wild beast = of the Mabinogion as it raged ashore f= rom the = Irish Sea and rampaged up towards the Preseli Mountains from the shoreline at Porth= clais near where my family lived on the St David’s peninsula. I saw it because my father not only recounted the story but reminded me about it whenever he ta= lked of Porthclais, a place where I often went walking. It was the same with the story of the Ynysoedd Gwyrddion= , the Green Isles which according to legend sometimes float in to our shores. The= y can be seen, the story tells us, from only two places in the world. One is the graveyard where, as it happens, my father and mother are buried. The second= , as I personally tell the story, is of course the imagination. The Ynysoedd Gwyrddion, also known as = the Blessed Isles, have the capacity in my mind’s eye to provide refreshm= ent to all who hear and think about them.

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T= he storyteller Hugh Lupton observes in his Society for Storytelling paper, The Dreaming of Place, ‘The = ground holds the memory of all that has happened to it.’[1]= Stories of the saints are also integral to the North Pembrokeshire<= /st1:place> heritage. Reminders of the = great history of Christianization of this part of West Wales, they linger behind place names, church = names, stories of the building of buildings, tales of encounters, pilgrimages and miracles. Although from a different and possibly later era, they belong in precisely the same league as the Creation Myths of primeval peoples across = the world: they inform us of how the land came to be as it is. At one and the s= ame time, they give us a sense both of the distinctive landscape and of the peo= ple who helped to shape it.

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P= rimary among our North Pembrokeshire saints is St David. Known for the simplicity of his attitude to lif= e, David behoved his followers as he died to remember the little things that he had shown them. ‘Cofiwch y pethau bychain…’ No saner injunction could be found for life today= . Another saint of the area was Justinian who settled on Ramsey Island in order to be near, but no= t too near, St David. Justinian gave his name to the bay which today attracts man= y hundreds of tourists who wish to see the lifeboat station or travel across to the island. Aptly Justinian’s story is of rescue and transformation.

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A= ccording to the legend, Justinian’s death was brought about by his own followers = who had become disgruntled with the severity of his monastic rule. One day they= cut off his head. Before he actually died, however, undaunted by their murderou= s act, Justinian bent down, picked up his head, put it under his arm and walked ac= ross the rough waters of Ramsey Sound. When he reached the mainland, he turned a= nd placed his head on the ground beside him so as to die within view of the island and the great ocean beyond. Where he placed his head, the story tells us, a fre= sh spring of water bubbled up. Legend has it that it is still there, still pur= e, still running, a symbol of affirmation. I have looked for it often, often t= ried to decide which one it might be of the many to be found on that part of the= coastline, tumbling down the dark rocks to the sea.

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S= uch stories contribute key features to a modern understanding of a part of the world whose capacity for enchantment has been recognised over many hundreds= of years by tourists, visiting artists and native inhabitants alike. It is a place of magic, a clean and wind-scoured land of sparkling light and invigorating air. But the stories = of the saints and the Mabinogion a= re by no means the only stories that reach out to us from it today. Traditionally= in Wales huge importance is attached= to bro, the local area where an indiv= idual has his being and where he originated. The core of that attachment is to a sens= e of place; integral to it is a shared awareness and love of the other people who have lived there.

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T= he storytelling traditions of North Pembrokeshire demonstrate how integral to an appreciation of place are stories of= people, the ‘characters’ of the area. Much of my initial awareness of t= he local storytelling style came from observing my father and his friends. My father was a highly educated man but, throughout his days, some of his clos= est friends were people who had worked on the land all their lives. In the long latter years of his life, when he used to meet up with these friends, at a funeral, after chapel, at home, I would notice the ebb and flow of their conversation. It was invariably composed of, and carried forward by, the ki= nds of stories we would generally describe as anecdotes. They would be pithy ta= les, often with a well-honed punch-line, and as they were shared, each invariably prompting another, it was evident they were mostly stories which had been t= old before. They had the succinctness of the often-told tale and were offered w= ith the storyteller’s attuned awareness of which aspects would especially= appeal to its listeners. It was usually apparent too that the stories heard on any occasion were already well known to the various individuals that were prese= nt. The tide of the conversation would be a way of remembering a shared past an= d marking the continuance of friendship over time.

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B= ut there was always freshness in the conversations too. On any particular occasion, = the ebb and the flow would take the storytellers in different directions, movin= g them onto different themes, occasionally incorporating things which had not been= remembered for a long time or bringing forward new stories which had not previously be= en shared. For example, I remember several long drifts of conversation where Ramsey Island became a focus. The awesome= ly rocky island where the Breton monk, Justinian, settled with his followers in the = time of David, Ramsey Island is now owned by the RSPB. W= hen it became the theme between my father and his friends, I would hear, for examp= le, about the redoubtable Mrs Williams who farmed the island in the early part = of the 20^th century and was a character renowned for her penny-pinc= hing meanness. Mrs Williams used to make butter out on the island, then bring it over to sell in St David’s. Once when her boat capsized and the manservant swam to her aid, she shouted loudly at him as she floundered: ‘Don’t mind me, mind the bloody butter.’ Other Ramsey Island stories would be about goin= g across to help with the harvest during the Second World War or stories of shipwrec= ks that took place in the Sound, heroic rescues conducted by local lifeboat men such as Mr Eric Mortimer, whom I knew as a child, or swimming horses across= to the island.

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F= rom such a succession of tales, I would come away aware, for instance, that one of my father’s friends (who had worked on farms near St David’s from = the age of 14) knew the local tides so well that, if someone was drowned, he co= uld almost invariably predict where the body would be washed up. I learned that= all the fields on Ramsey had their own names, and that he knew them, and that, during the Second World War, land that had not been ploughed for generations was brought back into use for growing grain. I knew that, within living mem= ory, there were people who knew how to whistle messages to each other across the waters of Ramsey Sound. Hardly any, if any, of this knowledge has any pract= ical value today. Nor is it any longer available from the particular sources from which I gained it. My father and all of those friends of his are dead. Yet there could scarcely be a time when there is more need of such knowledge. People today are hungry for precisely the kinds of intimate links it provid= es, links with the physical world we inhabit and the sense of meaning that arises from them, making us feel that life is worth living.

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I= magination needs firing if, as human beings, we are to perceive the unique qualities of the landscapes where we live and the responsibilities and pleasures of our lives within them. Be they urban or rural, places need to communicate with = us. If we are to value them, improving the condition in which we find them or guarding them from future damage, places need to be able to convey to us th= eir own particular importance. We may well ask how they can do this. Places are dumb of human language. Yet they possess a variety of ways in which they are able to speak. One is through their physical reality, the way they look= and sound at different times of day and night and through the changing seasons. Another less tangible way - which some people nonetheless claim as sensed reality - is through the spirit of place, that extraordinary capacity some = different spots possess to retain and communicate the feeling of events that have hap= pened there in the past. A third way, which naturally includes the others, is thr= ough story.

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A= cross the vast sweep of tales which comprise it, oral storytelling and place have a mutually significant relationship. Whatever the genre of the story - mythological, legendary, historical or personal - storytelling demonstrates= a remarkable capacity for endearing people to places. People appreciate knowi= ng significant details: where and when things happened, whether it was once up= on a time, a long time ago or only the other day, on that local mountain, in that local back street. Place gives character to stories. It makes things feel r= eal. It helps to focus awareness of the past. It contributes to the making of meaning. Stories of place proved vital in the development of religious beli= ef. Mount Olympus, Bethlehem and Mecca would be nothing without the stories of what happened there. In each instance, stories helped create and sustain the sense of what was sacred. They marked the meeting place between= the divine and mundane. The same has been true in the histories of peoples, tri= bes, individual families. Places where things happened to people become places w= hich focus attention, helping those that follow to gain a sense of what has been= and is important. This is still as true today.

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A storyteller’s job, says Hugh Lupton, is ‘to recharge the landsc= ape with its forgotten narratives.’[2]= Storytelling today is once again being recognised for its power to help peo= ple tap into and satisfy the human need for meaning. “Miss, is that true, miss?” I can hear the question now as it has come up time and time ag= ain in the course of the numerous and invariably effective Local Legends projec= ts which I have carried out as a professional storyteller. The question is not unusual in the course of storytelling work; you frequently hear it from adu= lts as well as children. Occurring more often with older than younger children = and sometimes in connection with the most unlikely stories, it is my contention that the question itself is highly creative. It is an indication that at the point a= nd at the moment where it is voiced everything has come alive to reveal the ma= ny potential possibilities of this strange and wonderful planet. To achieve su= ch a sense of engagement is one of the central purposes of storytelling whether = with adults or children. In schools or performances, the aim is to bring things alive. Nothing helps achieve this more than working with a sense of place.<= o:p>

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M= y Local Legends projects have been conducted in a variety of areas in England= and Wales. One in schools in Havering= , a borough on the Eastern outer edge of London<= /st1:City>, confounded the prior belie= f of many of the teachers involved that children would not be aware of any stori= es of their area. Another took place in Lampeter in Cardiganshire. Others have happened in Pembrokeshire. In all cases, not only was a mass of stories rev= ealed. Children and young people eagerly took the opportunities offered them to become highly creative in = what they did with the stories. They told and retold existing stories, drawing t= hem, re-enacting them and sharing them with others. They sometimes came up with = new stories from their own experience that could easily qualify as legends in t= he future. In some projects, they seized on opportunities to extend their sens= e of connection with particular places they knew by deliberately creating new ‘legends’ about them. In all cases the work was prompted by me = telling them stories of place. And = in my experience – and other storytellers say exactly the same – it d= oes not especially matter if the places being told about are not immediately fa= miliar to the particular listeners on that particular occasion. If they are, it ad= ds to the excitement. What matters most, however, is that whichever places are mentioned the storytelling must bring them alive. It must resonate with the fact that for all of us place is an essential feature of our lives.

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T= wo examples may suffice of the creativity that can be revealed by such work. B= oth stories are about a folly, a tower which still stands on the outskirts of Lampeter. Both stories were told by Year 9 pupils –ie, youngsters of = about 14 years of age. Both reveal the intense awareness of atmosphere and the detailed features of place that can be possessed by young people as much as= by adults. It is an awareness which, if recognised, can contribute greatly to the qual= ity of all our lives.

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Story 1.

Two drovers were working their way down f= rom North Wales, collecting sheep from the = farms they passed to take them to market down south. They had reached the outskirts of Lampeter when a storm began blowing up. Looking round for somewhere to shel= ter, the two drovers saw a tower in a field nearby. Leaving their sheep, they started running to the tower as it began to rain. The rain was heavy and th= ey were glad to get inside. Inside the tower, a flight of stone steps rose up from = the doorway where they had entered. Despite the shadowy darkness, the two drove= rs started going up. And up. And up. And they were still going up when they pa= used for breath and realised from the silence outside that the rain had stopped.=

‘Let’s go down,’ one of= them exclaimed. They started going down. ‘Where’s the door?’ s= aid the one higher up. ‘I don’t know,’ was the reply. ‘= We must have passed it.’ ‘Let’s go back up,’ the first= one said, turning to go back up the steps. ‘Where’s it gone?’ said the other. ‘I can’t see it,’ said the one ahead. The= two drovers continued to search for the door. But however many times they went = up and down, they never succeeded in finding it.

And if you go to that tower after a storm= even now, you will hear their footsteps, still running up and down the stone ste= ps inside.

Story 2.

There was a mother who had two sons. When= both had become grown men, they both decided to go to London<= /st1:City> to seek their fortune. The = mother was heart-broken to see them go for her husband was dead and her sons were = her whole life.

After her sons had gone away, the mother decided to build a tower so that she could see to London<= /st1:City>. When it was finished, she = would climb to the top every evening and turn to look towards the great city. Eve= ry night, she saw her two sons. She saw they were well and busy and although s= he was sad without them, she was pleased to see them getting on well. But then= the older of the sons met a girl in London and fell deeply in love. So= on after there came an evening when the mother went up to the top of the tower and c= ould not see her older son. For several evenings, she had found it hard to focus= on him, as if there was a mist in between. On this particular evening, she cou= ld not see him at all: all she could see was a girl standing in the way.<= /o:p>

The mother comforted herself: she could s= till see her younger son and she could see he was all right. But after a while, = the younger son got involved in financial dealings and the deeper involved he became, the less he could think about anything but money. Soon came an even= ing when his mother went up to the top of the tower and found she could not see him. As with her older son, she had found it difficult to see him for sever= al evenings before. Now she could not see him at all. All she could see was mo= ney, money. Then she was cast into the deepest gloom. There no longer seemed to = be any point to her life. She could not bear to go on. The next day, she took a rope and went up to the top of the tower and after tying the end of the rop= e to the top, she hung herself from the side.

Some people say that if you go to the tow= er today, you can still sometimes see the frayed end of the rope swinging in t= he breeze.

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T= o undertake the kind of storytelling work that produces this kind of story, it is neces= sary to recognise and maximise the potential of stories to intrigue and tease th= ose to whom they are offered. (And, by the way, neither of those two stories was an original Lampeter legend. Both were created by the pupils who told them.) I= t is also necessary to be confident of the common human inclination of people, adults and children alike, to get interested in places they know or hear ab= out. You have to believe in the power of story to engage attention. Storytelling projects in schools are not always easy. There are inevitable constraints on budget and time. At the same time, there is often the pressure to produce v= isible outcomes. A consequence of those constraints is the corresponding pressure = on the need to create a swift sense of engagement. It is the same in all storytelling, be it in workshops or in performance, with children or with a= dults. Engagement and interaction are at the heart of relationship. Without them, = nothing much happens and, with youngsters as with every other age-range, it is alwa= ys a question as to how to create a quick sense of connection. This is particula= rly important when youngsters may well be at that pubertal age when stories and storytelling can initially appear like the very last thing they want to be doing.

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I= n North Pembrokeshire<= /st1:place> as in many other places tod= ay, urban as well as rural, the problem of engagement is not made easier by the fact that socially the population is often an extraordinary mixture of inco= mer families and long-term native families. Yet one strong argument for local l= egends, and one of the reasons I am confident of their appeal, is that they are essentially unsorted experience. This makes them very alive. You don’t really know what you are hearing when you hear them. Are they people’s true experience or are they simply stories? They can be heard and understoo= d in so many ways and at so many different levels. As the American poet Carl Sandburg wrote:

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<= span style=3D'mso-tab-count:1'> &= nbsp; ‘… you give an anecdote out of profound and moving forms of life and one says you’re an odd bird to tell it and it was whimsical entertaining thank= you while another takes it as a valentine

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<= span style=3D'mso-tab-count:2'> &= nbsp; &nbs= p; a text for two hours talk and several cigars smoked –’= = [3]=

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L= ike all storytelling that involves place, my Local Legends projects with children d= eliberately reach out to my listeners’ own experiences. Whatever these may be, I invite them to think about evocative places they have known themselves, pla= ces they’ve visited, places where they’ve played, places they’= ;ve passed on the way to school, places they’ve feared or which have made them ask questions. The results are invariably interesting. One expressed inclination of adults today is to say that children have no experiences. The belief is incorrect. Although it may contain an element of truth since chil= dren today are comparatively very cosseted, usually spending lots more time indo= ors than children in the past, it is my experience that, often from a very young age, they do have a powerful sense of place. They see. They notice. They imagine. They fantasise. For the sake of our environment, for the sake of o= ur cultural wellbeing, for the sake of our communities, we should be working w= ith this sense of place. It is quite literally the ground of our being.

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C= hildren often reveal more knowledge than an adult might expect when invited to share what stories they know. Invited to go away and think about that knowledge, = draw the places they know, make maps of them, label them, think up stories about them, children often become intensely enthused. What might have happened in= the past in the particular places they’ve chosen to think about? What qua= lity of events occurred there that could have left distinctive echoes that can s= till be felt today? In my Pembroke= shire projects, all kinds of hugely evocative places have been mentioned as start= ing points. The deep dark pond beyond the rocks at Wolfscastle. The abandoned buildings that were once the hospital in Haverfordwest. The Lion Rock at Broadhaven. A high hill at Rosebush from which you can see a wide expanse o= f countryside. A farmhouse where horses’ bones have been found beneath the doorway. = The statue of a reading monk above the West Door at St David’s Cathedral.= The old quarry at Abereiddi, now known as the Blue Lagoon …

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A significant proof of the kind of excitement and awareness produced when children or adults are provided with the opportunity to work in this or sim= ilar ways is when they are sufficiently inspired by the stories they choose to w= ork on to decide that they must now go and visit or revisit the places in the stor= ies. When a class of pupils becomes sufficiently enthused about the story of the Preseli giant, Skomar Oddy, to ask to go on a trip to the mountains to look= for him. Or when the boys who have created a story about a Roman galleon breach= ing that iron-age hill at Rosebush then decide that, like the boys in their story, t= hey will go and spend the day on that hill in case they can see that galleon themselves … These are the kinds of occasions when it becomes most evident that stories of place have the potential for creating a new sense of connection between people and the landscape. A connection which links the p= ast, the present and the future, it involves precisely the kind of emotional exc= itement identified by Joseph Campbell, the renowned American folklorist, in writing about his students at Sarah Lawren= ce college. When you’re talking about things the students ought to be reading, Ca= mpbell noted, ‘and suddenly you hit on something that the student really responds to, you can see the eyes open and the complexion change. The life possibility has opened there. All you can say to yourself is, “I hope this child hangs on to that.” They may or may not, but when they do, = they have found life right there in the room with them.’[4]=

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T= o get a story you have to give a story. This is a well-known motto among storytelle= rs and story collectors. An input of local stories of place provides a powerful starting point for creative work with children. It can equally powerfully provide a starting point for adults. My own experience of telling Pembrokes= hire stories to adults is that the stories communicate. Whether or not the storytelling is occurring in Pembrokeshire or elsewhere, with Pembrokeshire= -born people or incomers, there is an ~~observeable~~= observable effect. This is no doubt because the stories have inspired me myself. The inspiration is something I can pass on. Without that initial depth of feeli= ng, the stories would not come to life.

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M= y own experience is matched hundreds of times over by other storytellers. In diff= erent parts of Wales over recent years, storytel= ling projects and performances with adults have demonstrated the same kind of success in terms of motivation and engagement as the Local Legends projects= I have mentioned. Some of these projects have happened in Welsh. Some have happened in English. In Carew in South Pembrokeshire a productive project sponso= red by Planed showed the power of stories of place for involving local adults. In = North Wales at Tynewydd, the creative w= riting centre, storytelling courses involved participants in going out into the ar= ea to experience some of the nearby evocative places which occur in Welsh mythology. At Theatr Felinfach near Lampeter, storytelling performances of = the stories of the Mabinogi helped inspire a local campaign to identify who were the local storytellers in the area and what stories they had to tell. This = in turn led to story sharing trips around the locality. At the recently founded George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling at the University of <= span lang=3DEN-GB style=3D'mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>Glamorgan, Ewart Evans’s person= al belief in the value of ordinary people’s stories of their own local experien= ces has given new impetus to the sharing of storytelling research and performance. =

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P= art of the purpose of all storytellers is to impart our love of story to others. Inter= est in storytelling continues to grow. In one single issue of the online storytelling newsletter from the Society for Storytelling, I notice details both for a conference taking place at the = University of <= span lang=3DEN-GB style=3D'mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>Plymouth on Place, Writing and Voice and, alongside it, a call for storytel= lers to get involved in a project involving historical buildings in Ruislip in Middlesex. The conference presents a series of ta= lks about ‘the local’ through consideration of the written and spok= en word. The Ruislip project is about regeneration. Similar news items are now quite common. Storytelling and place is at last being recognized as a power= ful modern tool. Yet it still saddens me personally to notice, for instance, how little attention is curr= ently given in children’s education to stories from their own local landscape and culture. This is an especially sad lack in Wales where the existence of the Cwriciwlwm Cymreig should give plenty of opportunity for this kind of work.= But the problem is far wider than that. For the sake of our sense of connection= to the communities around us, for the sake of our sense of connection to the e= arth where we live, our communities as a whole still need a far greater apprecia= tion of the living power of story and far greater provision for it. ‘So the first task, as I see it,’ says James Hillman, the American storyteller and therapist, ‘is restorying the adult … in order to restore t= he imagination to a primary place in consciousness in each of us, regardless of age.’= [5]=

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E= veryone loves a good story. However fast and exciting the advance of modern communications technology, storytelling still has the ability to grip and engage people’s attentions. A new book of my own, Shemi’s Tall Tales, may indicate the kinds of creative cr= oss-connections that can result. The book is a rewriting of the tales of an old 19^{th
century storyteller of the Fishguard area who was originally called James W=
ade
but became locally well known as Shemi Wâd. My father first told me a=
bout
Shemi when I was a child and I had been telling his stories to audiences in
Pembrokeshire and elsewhere long before I was invited to create a written c=
ollection
of his stories for a modern audience. While doing the research for the
introductory chapter about the life and times of Shemi himself, and plannin=
g an
associated series of oral storytelling events, I came across a rich seam of
living local memories of Shemi among Fishguard and Goodwick people. The sto=
ries
are redolent of a sense of place. But part of the greatest pleasure is
rediscovering all over again how strongly that sense of place communicates
across the years and across cultures. The stories when told are enjoyed as =
much
in England as in Wales, by secondary school boys from Africa, India and Chi=
na as
by junior school children in Fishguard itself. A sense of place is a shared
human experience. Storytelling is the ideal channel by which to convey it. =}

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S= torytelling cannot help but look towards the future as well as drawing on the past. Thi= s is because of its implicit power to effect change. It is a transformative medi= um and crucial to any assessment of its potential must be the recognition of i= ts central fundamental power – its capacity to engage. Storytelling needs investment. It needs recognition. It needs funding. And where its capacity = to engage is identified and built upon, it has an enormous amount more to offe= r. It can help the world to recognise the value of putting down roots in an increasingly rootless world and how those roots can feed us, enabling us in turn to value the earth where we live.&nbs= p;

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S= o much in ordinary daily human life goes unremarked and unremembered. The Pembrokeshi= re poet, Waldo Williams, noted his own frequent sense of yearning, especially = at dusk and when alone, for the many things that are gone, the little words of vanquished languages, the talents and crafts of past ages, the feelings of hearts that once felt joy and sadness. ‘Is there only silence for the= se things now?’ he asks in his great poem, Cofio:

<= span style=3D'mso-tab-count:1'> &= nbsp;

<= span style=3D'mso-tab-count:1'> &= nbsp; A oes a’ch deil o hyd mewn cof a chalon,

<= span style=3D'mso-tab-count:1'> &= nbsp; Hen bethau anghofieding teulu dyn?

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I= s there anything that can hold in memory and heart the old unremembered things of t= he family of man? In my experience, after it has once been recaptured, the sen= se of remembered lively life always results in a torrent of requests for more stories. “Do you know any stories about Rosemarket, Miss?” “Have you got any stories about Martletwy?” The experiences of story give us all, as storymakers and storytellers, a fresh and remarkable = new experience of ‘how the geography of mind adheres to the geography of earth’. In the article on stories of place where this extremely apt phrase occurs, Scott Russell Sanders posits the idea that each of us carrie= s an inward map on which are inscribed, as on Renaissance charts, the seas and c= ontinents that are known to us. ‘On my own map,’ he notes, ‘the reg= ions where I have lived most attentively are crowded with detail, while regions I have only glimpsed from windows or imagined from hearsay are barely sketche= d, and out at the frontiers of my knowledge the lines dwindle away into blankness.’[6]=

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E= veryone has their places, however little time they have as yet given to thinking ab= out them. My places are in Pembrokeshire. Storytelling has provided me with my = own way of filling them out. My passionate belief is that this opportunity shou= ld be extended to all our children, and to their parents too, enabling them to experience that richness of mental life which in turn makes the world aroun= d us alive to all our senses.

<= span style=3D'mso-tab-count:5'> &= nbsp; &nbs= p; &= nbsp; &nbs= p; &= nbsp; &= nbsp; &nbs= p; &= nbsp; &nbs= p; &= nbsp; &nbs= p; &= nbsp;

<= o:p>

M= ary Medlicott

J= une 2008

<= span style=3D'mso-tab-count:1'> &= nbsp;