Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
From caverns deep underground to sky-high mountains, the rocks and stones all around us are ancient. Greedy oni lurk in a cave in Japan; a stonecutter becomes a mountain; and a story of romance, revenge and tragedy plays out on the face of a plate. Revealing hidden fossils, gemstones, folklore and secrets, storyteller Jenny Moon's tales are interwoven with interesting facts and geological observations that will catch the imagination of readers young and old, making this more than just a book of stories.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 258
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
To Kyla, Shelley, Isla and Eddie
First published 2019
The History Press
97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,
Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
© Jenny Moon, 2019
The right of Jenny Moon to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 7509 9343 2
Typesetting and origination by The History Press
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd.
eBook converted by Geethik Technologies
Introduction
Acknowledgements
1 Stones: be they Magical or Special?
The Game of Pebbles
Finding Peace of Mind
A Coffin Stone for the Moon
The Splattering of Magic
The Rainbow Stones
2 Rock and Stone in Use
Willow Pattern Story
The White Mountain
Two Happenings in the Lives of Beryl and Bill
The Stonecutter
Stone Soup
3 The Biographies of Rock and Stone
The Tale of the Pinkish Pebble
The Tale of the Flint Stone
The Ammonite Fossil
Tales from a Limestone Quarry
4 Shapes of Rock and Stone
The Skimming Stones
The Adder Stone
Seeds and the Statue of Little Simon
The Face in the Rock
The Rock called Lorelei
Cherry and the Stone People
5 Environments of Rock and Stone
Jack Tries Smuggling
Rice Cakes for Dinner
The Girl who Learned to Hunt
Licarayén: a Volcano Myth
A Tale of Two Walls
Bibliography
This book is a collection of folk tales that are, in various ways, about rock and stone. Sometimes the rock and stone are central to the tales, sometimes rock and stone is the environment of the story, and a few stories are more about histories or biographies of rock and stone and the manner in which they have been used. Most of the stories are old ones, completely rewritten and, as happens with stories in their passage from person to person, sometimes I have modified them a little to improve the way in which they work. I have mentioned this where it has been done. Four stories in particular are a bit different. I wrote them to serve some of the aims of the book that I mention later in this introduction. They are the tales in Chapter 3: Biographies of Rock and Stone.
On occasion, inspiration to write a story for this book took me by surprise. One day, I saw children skimming stones on the nearby estuary. We joined in and that led to a tale about skimming stones. I also used the content of that story to explore some ideas about how it was to live in a Tudor village. I had done some research on this history for a small book I wrote about a boy living in a Devon village in 1590, who, like many from coastal villages in Devon at that time, sailed a 4,000-mile round trip to fish each summer in Newfoundland (Moon, 2017). But that is another story!
I will start by explaining how the book came to be written, then how I went about selecting and collecting tales for it. I should just say here that my use of the word ‘story’ and the word ‘tale’ is synonymous.
I have always been interested in stories in all of their forms. In my last job I was fortunate enough to find myself working in a media school in higher education (Bournemouth University) and so it felt relevant to engage in some thinking about what story is and its role in education. In order to think about this, I wrote a book (Moon, 2010), a large part of which was an attempt to understand why humans engage in stories – say ‘I’ll tell you a story,’ and people listen.
When I wrote the book, I was already doing some oral storytelling. I have been collecting stories for oral storytelling purposes for over twelve years, and now draw from more than 250 ‘ready prepared’ stories (that does not mean I do not have to ‘re-learn’ them). They are tales I have heard, read and a few stories that I have written. I am very selective about stories for telling. They need to be strong stories with good imagery, and clear beginnings, middles and endings. There are many folk tales that have very good beginnings, mediocre middles and no proper resolutions. They are entertaining or interesting observations that in some place, something has happened and it might happen again. As I said, stories for telling need strong endings. And the stories in this book have been selected with similar criteria in mind.
Then there is the subject matter, rock and stone. I am fascinated by rock and stone. I remember finding my first worked piece of flint when I was a child. I glowed with pride to see it in the local museum. And when we went camping as a family, I loved going to places where we could find fossils. In particular, I remember fossil hunting in Purbeck in Dorset, looking for fossilised wood at Lulworth Cove. I decided I wanted to be an archaeologist and sadly recall the day when my mother announced to me that women did not become archaeologists. Her error possibly changed the direction of my life at that time. However, I have been able to indulge my archaeological interests more recently and have been involved in excavations, experiences from which have found their way into these tales. The excavations I have been involved in, and much of our knowledge of prehistory, concerns work with and on rock and stone. My interests in geology have likewise been furthered by my involvement with the Jurassic Coast initiatives. I am an ambassador for the Jurassic Coast Trust, which supports the World Heritage site. That means that I go to events on geology and on occasions I tell stories at at them. The subject matter is of course rock, stone and the Devon and Dorset coasts, which are pretty rocky. The tale Jack Tries Smuggling was written for one such event.
So when a more recent situation occurred, I had a start on thinking about a collection of tales of rock and stone. I was at a ‘Beyond the Border’ Festival in 2018 at St Donats Arts Centre in South Glamorgan. Lisa Schneidau was promoting her book Botanical Folk Tales of Britain and Ireland, newly published by the History Press. I was inspired to write a similar book. What topic? Obviously rock and stone. I met local history commissioning editor Nicola Guy at the History Press stand and things moved on from there. Writing the proposal for the book forced me to think of what I wanted out of the collection of tales that might make it distinctive. They had to be entertaining, vivid and visually interesting in their scene-setting, and they needed to give a picture of the richness of folk tales and the breadth of the subject matter. Rock and stone are the very structures of our Earth, but as Muir (1986) says, ‘Stone is something we tend to take for granted.’ I wanted the book to also portray some of my enthusiasm for the rocks and stones that we can so easily pass by. So within the stories is information that is intended to enlighten and educate. In some tales this is more obvious than in others. In particular, the section ‘Biographies of Stone’ carries stories deliberately constructed around geology, archaeology and history.
So maybe after reading some of these tales, the reader will find herself or himself picking up stones and pieces of rock and looking them over, wondering on their stories, what processes of geology contributed to their form, wondering if they had ever been touched by a human being before and who that might have been, in what clothes, and when and what the stories of that rock or stone will be, long into the future after we have left this land. And maybe that reader will, like me, take interesting stones home and will have them sitting in small groups on windowsills to pick up, muse over and imagine.
Finally, a word about my background. I have shifted around in my career. I started in science with a zoology degree, and since then have moved from psychology and counselling to education, health education, and back to education again. I am interested in how people learn, and the relationship of learning to teaching and professional development. I spent time looking at how ‘learning from reflection’ and critical thinking can help people become more reflective and effectively critical. These topics and others, such as the use of story in education, have taken me to many places world wide to run workshops for higher education teachers and other professionals, including The Football Association.
In my work I have written nine books, all published by Routledge. I always wanted to write fiction. My last degree was an MA in Creative Writing at Plymouth University, a forerunner experience, perhaps, to this book.
Tales from a Limestone Quarry: I thank John Scott and Karen Mynard for so generously sharing time and these true stories from Beer Quarry Caves. I had heard some of the stories in at least five previous visits to the Quarry Caves, my favourite visitor attraction in the South West.
Two Happenings in the Lives of Beryl and Bill: I would like to thank Bill for telling part of this story at a story event in my house a couple of years ago. In modified form, it was just what I needed for the Lympstone Village Concert that year.
The Tale of the Pinkish Pebble, The Tale of the Flint Stone and The Ammonite Fossil: I thank Anthony Cline for looking through these stories in order to check and correct my geological knowledge.
I thank the Jurassic Coast Trust for the inspiration to collect and write tales of rock and stone (and the coast), and the staff of The History Press for bringing the collection into being as a book.
Hold a stone in your hand and you hold a long, long history. In that history, there may be some leftover of magic.
This is a much-modified version of a story that I heard at a Cardiff storytelling event. After telling it a number of times as I remembered and reconstructed it, and then writing it for two different purposes, I have altered the story so much that it may bear little resemblance to what I first heard. This is the nature of the folk tale. Within the story there are many themes that are common to other folk tales. Writing the story gave me the opportunity to draw on some work I have done recently on the life of poor villagers in Elizabethan England (Moon, 2017). Unfortunately, I cannot recall who was the original storyteller and I have never found the story written down.
Sara lived with her small son, Jed, in the little village of Topscombe. Like others at the time, her cottage was rough and tiny, and to support them both she worked long hours at the big house that owned most of the surrounding land. Jed might well have been closely related to the landlord’s son, but the family denied this and cared nothing for the boy, though they allowed Sara to continue to work so long as she never came inside the big house.
One dark November evening, Sara had just come back home. She had been working in the dairy, as was clear from the milk splashes on her clothes. There had been big storms during the day, but now at least, it was quiet. She raked up the fire in the hearth and put more wood on it, then lit the rush lights that gave flickering illumination beyond that of the fire. She set the cauldron of pottage on the tripod over the flames. She had two parsnips to add tonight. Jed was playing on the floor with three round pebbles that he had found yesterday by the stream. He was rolling them across the floor, trying to hit a piece of stick that he had jammed in the hardened earth floor. He scrambled up and showed Sara one of the stones. It was a white pebble with a dull pink marking on it. Sara admired it, kissed him on the head and went back to the pot. Steam rose. A small rye loaf was ready on the table. There was a pat of butter and a bit of rather dry cheese, the usual meal. The fire crackled and Jed was now agitated for his food. Both of them were always hungry.
Sara had just started spooning the pottage into their bowls when a blast of wind howled through the cottage. The rush lights flared then bent. Some went out. The fire flared, then roared and a strange sound rattled the air. The shutters clattered against the cob walls, but then the air was still again. Sara looked round. She tried to ignore what had happened. Then it happened again. More rush lights went out and Jed stood up in alarm. Sara went to the door to look outside. It was a cold night but the air outside was completely still. Stars shone but there was no moon. Outside there was nothing unusual. She came back in, secured the latch and started to walk over to Jed to comfort him. But where was Jed? Two of his pebbles lay where he had been playing, but he was not there. She called him, looked around the cottage, lifted the rough bedding in the corner, went outside, calling. She came in and took a candle around every corner of the cottage, calling, calling ever more desperately. Jed never disappeared. She went out again, this time looking up and down the track, looking into the nearby cottages. No one was about, no sounds, nothing but the hoot of the old owl.
She went back inside and there was Jed on the floor. It was like before, but he was now sucking the three pebbles, licking them voraciously as if they were his favourite food. He had never done that before. She pulled the stones from his mouth and went to hug him with relief, but he pushed her away and grunted. He smelt odd. Then he grabbed one of the stones from her hand, the white one, and held onto it, resisting her attempts to wrest it from him.
‘Jed, my love, thought you was lost …’
He pushed her away again and when his eyes met hers, there was a hard glare like never before. It seemed to go right through her. This was not like her usual loving child. No hugs and kisses. He must be ill – or – maybe very, very hungry. She went back to the pot on the fire and finished filling the bowls. Jed pushed his away, the stew slopping on the floor. She tried to feed him with the wooden spoon, but he ran around the room stamping and waving his arms.
It went on like that. With difficulty, she put him to bed but he kept getting up and running round. And he would not let go of the stone. At dawn Sara wrapped him up and took him with her as usual. She was doing the milking today. Holding onto Jed, she had made ready the milking stool beside the first cow when Jed pulled away from her, clambered under the cow and started suckling directly from the cow’s udder. The cow looked round and lowed in surprise. Sara pulled Jed away in horror and Jed gave her that strange glare. The stone was still gripped in his hand.
After the quick suckle of milk, Jed pulled Sara’s shawl around himself, lay on the floor of the dairy and slept while Sara got on with her work.
When Sara finished work that evening, she took Jed to Marlie. Marlie was the woman from whom everyone sought advice. She lived across the fields in a hovel under the hill. She always knew what to do. Marlie opened the door, pulling her ragged wrap up to her neck.
She looked at Sara and the child for a few seconds in silence then she said, ‘You have trouble, girl. I can see. Come in.’ She pushed back her grey plait and held out her hand. ‘Come in – and the boy.’
Jed hung back, refusing to be drawn in by Sara. He kept holding up the white pebble and he only entered when Marlie took him by her rough hand. And then he wandered around inside, apparently fascinated by the containers that lined the walls of the cottage. There were jars of potions and lotions and powders, pots of liquid, bundles of tree bark, bunches of herbs hanging from the beams. On the walls, there were strange black markings drawn in thick strokes in charcoal and chalk. He looked at them, poked at the symbols, jabbing at a particular one, tapping his stone on the symbol. Then he picked up a large spurtle, waved it in a circular movement on the floor and stood in the circle he had drawn, stood quietly for a moment, then stepped out. The old woman watched his behaviour and then showed Sara to the bench.
‘What happened?’ asked Marlie.
Sara told her how Jed looked exactly like her child but seemed so different. And if this was not her child, where was her Jed?
‘This could be a changeling,’ said Marlie. ‘We’ll need to see. It happens when they get restless. They’ve been restless lately – the Others. It’s the November storms, and there are troubles at the big house. That’s what’s upsetting them.’ She paused. ‘You had things to do with the big house. The boy, I think … ’
Sara looked down. ‘The Others are restless?’ she said. Everyone knew about the Others, but normally you did not speak of them. ‘If this is not my Jed, how do I get Jed back?’
Jed hung back, refusing to be drawn in by Sara.
‘Course you want him back, my dear. We must bide our time and do this carefully. Be back on the morrow.’ Marlie was showing them to the door. ‘I see the stone he has,’ she said as they went out.
Sara struggled through the next day. In desperation she had let the boy suckle from the cow and, like the first day, he settled, still clutching the stone. In the evening they crossed the fields again to Marlie’s cottage. Near her hovel there was a strange sweet smell that seemed to excite the boy. He went straight in and danced round a black pot hanging over the fire.
‘Watch,’ Marlie said. She lifted the lid of the pot. Steam rose and filled the hovel. It whisked this way and that in the draughts. There were streaks of brown and green steam and that strange sweet smell. Sara reeled back but the boy walked towards it and picked up a wooden ladle. He seemed desperate to drink from the pot. Marlie pulled him back. He wriggled free and she gripped his arm more tightly.
‘He is from the Others,’ she said. ‘This is their favourite food and he is hungry. You can feed him on this.’
She ladled brown liquid into a wooden bowl. The child jumped in wild excitement. She gave him one spoonful. He grabbed for more but she held it away from him and he seemed to calm.
‘He is a changeling,’ she said. ‘Sometimes we can reverse this. Only sometimes. Go home. Feed him this in early evening. He will sleep for a night and a day and we must hope that he drops the stone. Four hours after sunset, or when the stone drops from his hand, leave the boy, but take the stone with you. He will go on sleeping. Go to the rock stack by Dingymoor lake and leave the stone at the foot of the rocks. Climb into the stack and wait to see what you will see. Do not move until whatever you see is gone and come back to me tomorrow.’
The boy did sleep and at last the stone dropped from his hand. Sara pulled her ragged shawl round her shoulders and with the stone in her hand, she walked the dark lanes to Dingymoor lake. Recent storms had brought trees down across the track and several times she had to climb through branches. The flame of her candle threatened to die but glimpses of moonlight helped. Ahead, the rocks were silhouetted against the sky. She left the stone at their foot. She had played there as a child and remembered the way up. With a view of the lake, she waited, shivering in the night cold.
As the moon emerged again from cloud there was a sound, like the strings of a harp played by the breeze. It sung out clearly then was more muffled. The tone made Sara sleepy. When she opened her eyes, there were hundreds of them in the glade by the lake, under the rocks. They were dressed in all shades of green and turquoise, small men and women: the Others. Sara had heard many stories but never had seen them, but anyone would have known. They were dancing gracefully to the music of a small band of players who were strumming on instruments like harps and blowing silver pipes. Near the water, around ten pretty ponies grazed. Then all of the dancers turned to look at the track. A woman rode up on a white horse. Her pale gowns swathed the body of the horse. Her head was held high and whitish hair flowed down her back. Sara tried not to tremble, tried not to move. The leader turned in her saddle. Walking behind her was a group of Others and in the midst of them, though dressed like them, was someone who was different – his skin whiter, his head bigger and his hair. It was Jed, dressed like the Others, walking with the Others, then joining in the dancing like the Others and he looked very happy. They danced around the rocks in which Sara hid. Her muscles ached, cramped, and cold seeped in but still she did not move. Then a beam of moonlight cast across Jed and immediately the Others drew towards him and stroked his hair. He smiled happily, laughing.
Sara so wanted to call out, run to him, but she did not. It was hard, and harder still when suddenly a mist rose over the lake and drifted into the glade and she could see no more. When it cleared there was nothing but the water and the land, and the grass in the glade was untrampled. Dew glistened in the moonlight. When Sara climbed down the rocks, though, the stone had gone.
Back at home the Other child still slept. Next day after work, Sara took him back to Marlie.
‘I saw him, Marlie. I saw Jed with the Others – as if he had been with them all his life. But how do we get him back?’
‘Listen carefully,’ said Marlie. ‘Take a pure white hen – white – not a speck of another colour, mind. Roast it on your fire. The boy will be interested. Let him watch but keep him away. Let the feathers singe, let the fat drip and collect it in a pot. Roast the bird until the flesh is dried. Put the bones outside your cottage. Cool the grease and in the hours after midnight, smear it on the boy’s head, then all over him. They may then come and get him. Ask me no more.’
Marlie seemed exhausted and sunk back inside, closing the door on them.
Back in her cottage, Sara drew a slate from the wall under which were hidden a few coins and she went in search of a white chicken. The boy followed her but made no sound. Her neighbours were keen to sell her hens and she saw white bird after white bird only to find a feather here or there that was brown or cream. She was nearly in despair when the boy himself darted to the back of a hen house and brought out a small, pure white hen.
Sara paid and made the hen ready for cooking. She set up a spit over her fire and began to turn it and for hour after hour she turned the spit. The feathers singed and withered. Sharp smoke filled the cottage, stinging her eyes. Then juices and fats started to drip. The boy would have reached to dip his finger into the fat but constantly she held him back. Daylight went. She lit the rush lights and went on turning the spit. The boy started to fight her, kicking and screaming, trying to get to the pot. Then suddenly he seemed exhausted. Sara was exhausted too but now it seemed that she could hear things, beings leaping in the fire, unfamiliar shadows dancing on the walls. The smoke that curled up as the fat spat into the flames seemed to carve shapes in the air.
It felt it was the right time. Shaking deeply, Sara moved across to the door and put the carcass outside. Then she set aside the pot of grease to cool. The child had crept to a corner and now slept. The air seemed thick with moving things, but Sara could see little through the tears in her sore eyes. She lifted the sleeping child and smeared the grease on his head. He woke, then seemed to purr. He clawed at her, wanting more and more of the grease on him. As she smeared on the last of it, she heard the musical sound that she had heard before at Dingymoor lake. It stopped and there was the sound of a strong gust of wind. Dying ashes blew about inside, shutters banged and rattled. The boy stood. Instinctively Sara ran out into the yard to check for damage to her thatch, but nothing moved in the blackness. Nothing had moved and nothing was there. But when she went back in, it was all different. It was as if the air of the cottage had been spring-cleaned. It was clear and fresh. The smoke and smells had gone. Through the cracks in the shutters there were the first streaks of dawn. And standing in a thin beam of light, by the remains of the fire was Jed, so much the same as the Other child, but yet so different. He was yawning and rubbing his eyes. He ran to her.
‘Mumma, mumma.’
Sara held out her arms and hugged him. He held out to her the three pebbles. The white one was replaced by a brown pebble. The Other was completely gone, and with him all signs of chicken and grease. As for Jed, all that seemed left from his time with the Others was a vague dream of laughing and dancing and a kind lady with long hair who rode a white horse.
This story was inspired by a Yugoslav folk tale retold by Paula Crimmens in a groupwork session for older adults (Crimmens 1998). Over its journey through the many times I have told the story, it has transformed and is more or less a new tale. I still tell the original sometimes but treat it as a different story. Watching how stories evolve is always an interesting process.
Many generations of grandparents ago, there was a small village called Carasov on the shore of the warm blue Mediterranean Sea. On the land side, Carasov was surrounded by dry craggy mountains with just a few trees and scrub on their lower slopes, and olive and citrus down near the village. Goats grazed among the olives together with the donkeys when they were not pulling carts. There were a few fields of corn and a little wheat and small patches of green vegetables. Several fishing boats were pulled up on the stony beach. People were good at fishing in the clear waters.
Generally, Carasov was a happy village. People laughed and talked as they bartered, bought and sold at the market. They moved among the baskets of red tomatoes, yellow peppers and the green leaves of spinach. There were rolls and rounds of cheese, dried sausages hanging up, eggs and creels of fresh fish. There was a stall of multi-coloured woven skirts and shawls for special occasions and always the girl selling ribbons. This was what it was like usually.
When the market had been cleared on the market day nearest to the full moon, a meeting was held in the large hut by the marketplace to deal with village matters. Elders, dressed in traditional robes, would manage the discussion of the next feast day, the fayre, trade with other villages along the coast, the state of the fishing, the goats, the crops, the olives and the occasional disputes between neighbours, though usually these were rare.
But one early summer, things were not so good. Winter weather had dragged on into a soggy spring. Storms washed the newly planted seeds out of the ground so they had to be planted again, and seeds were expensive. A fishing boat was wrecked and three of the five fishing boats left had rotten planks that needed to be replaced, so few fish were landed. There had been little for sale in the market for a while. People were tired of the cold and wet and sometimes they felt hungry. No one remembered it being as bad as this in their lifetimes. They grumbled and complained and became fed up with each other, and at the meeting they were fed up with the elders because all they reported on were the disasters. After a particularly negative speech, a man stood up, looked all round and said, ‘We need no more words like yours. Things are bad, we know that. We need cleverness. We need more peace of mind so we can be wise and make things better. There’s no peace here now.’
People nodded and clapped. The Chief Elder stood, unsure whether this was criticism of him or not.
‘It seems that people agree with you, Perov. So how do you suggest we gain more of this peace of mind you talk about?’
Elders were meant to sort things out.
There was silence then slow murmuring. The elders turned to talk among themselves and people started to drift away, grumbling again. Then a young girl clapped her hands for attention.
‘We can’t go on like this. There’s not enough food for my family. Can’t we go and learn to gain peace of mind in the Great City? With the teachers and the tall spires there must be the knowledge we need there. We could bring some back.’