London Folk Tales for Children E-Book

Anne Johnson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 110

Beschreibung

There is everyday magic in the tales of London. Some stories are swirling in the waters of the Thames; some are hidden in the old stones that lie beneath our modern pavements. In London Folk Tales for Children Anne and Sef have gathered stories from the words and memories of Londoners past and present. They tell of the mighty river, the streets, and the hills of London. You'll find stories of babies that turn into flowers, of tower ravens and a two-headed bird, and a child who has to travel across the world all alone. You'll also meet the people of this welcoming city: ever since the Romans, people have come here from all over the world to become Londoners. They've brought delicious foods, new music and hundreds of languages, but, most of all, great stories – London stories.

Leseprobe

First published 2019

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Text © Anne Johnson & Sef Townsend 2019

Illustrations © Belinda Evans

The right of Anne Johnson & Sef Townsend to be identified as the Authors 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 9096 7

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Our Thanks

About the Authors

Introduction: Stories of London Folk

Bessy of Bethnal Green

My Needles and Threads Will Be My Friends

Go to London: Find Your Fortune

Street Cries

Fortune Telling on Gypsy Hill

The Struggle to Feel at Home

The Sweep’s Song

I Wish I Could Go to School

What Will Robin Do Then, Poor Thing?

The Squirrel’s Tale

Adam and Eve It

Two Gold Rings

David’s War

The Children in the Magnolia Tree

Magic Water

Ravens at the Tower

Many people have helped us to bring together these tales of London folk and of the great city of London which they call home. It has been very good to share our ideas with them and to listen to their stories and we would like to thank them all for their help.

Farah Naz was reminded of a story that her grandmother told her, while sitting under a magnolia tree in an East End park; John Heyderman shared the story of how his father first came to London after escaping from Berlin at a dark and dangerous time in the past; Pernilla Iggstrom told us of the long journey that brought her to London and of the Korean story that makes her think of her own life; David Solomon lives in the place in East London where the gasometers and all the surrounding houses were saved from the fire bombs during the Second World War. We would also like to thank Payam Torabi, for his wonderful help and inspiration; Sally and Thom, Toby, Helen, Grace and Iris, who have listened to so many stories and songs and have shared their own with laughter and fun; Becky, Matthew, Iris and May, who were always encouraging; Bol, who has listened with patience and good advice to all the ideas of how to put the book together; and John Chapman, whose journey to London brought him fame and fortune that people talk about 500 years later.

We are indebted to Henry Mayhew, who in the mid-1800s contributed eighty-two articles to the Morning Chronicle on ‘Labour and the Poor’, and who was the first to interview and record their lives; also to Miranda Kaufman for her brilliant book Black Tudors, which reclaims the long-forgotten lives of people from Africa who worked and earned in Renaissance England.

A special thank you to the teachers and children of Marlborough and Park Walk Primary schools in the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, with whom we have been exploring stories for our shared project ‘We Are Londoners’, generously funded by John Lyon’s Charity. Thank you to the storytellers and musicians of Everyday Magic who are part of this project and to Holly Johnson for giving us her take on stories in progress.

Anne Johnson and Sef Townsend

ANNE JOHNSON has been a Londoner for fifty years. She is a professional storyteller and songwriter who is committed to bringing live storytelling and music into schools as the Director of Everyday Magic, which every year fires the imaginations of over 1,500 children at London schools.

SEF TOWNSEND has been a Londoner for nearly forty years and has been telling traditional tales from around the world almost as long as that. He loves travelling and collecting stories from many countries, but is always surprised to find some of the best stories right here in lovely old London.

London is a city of 9 million people and so it is a place which is full of stories. Stories of all the different people who live here. But if London itself has a story to tell, how does it tell it?

Well, it is told through things that are found on the bed of the river, the River Thames. It is told whenever a new office block or an important building is put up in the city of London. Before the foundations of the building are put down, the ground has to be dug, or excavated, very deep so the building will stand safe and strong. Now, when the workmen are digging, they often find things that have been buried in the earth for thousands of years – from the time of the Romans, or even before the Romans came to this land.

In the river, too, as well as things getting lost, like shields and swords, other items were given as offerings to the gods. Tools have been found in the river from the tiny little farming settlements that were here when ancient people worked the land to grow their food, before there even was a London.

However, it was immigrants – people who came from elsewhere – who made London what it is and who have continued to do so, until today. So, a ‘London’ folk tale may well have begun in a place far, far away from this city on the Thames which, as Londoners, we all call home.

London is the place where we hear many languages spoken in the street and this has been true since the time of the Romans in the first century AD. This is because, apart from Latin, the Romans spoke languages from the countries that they came from. These were places as far apart as Spain and Greece, Germany, Syria and Carthage, on the north coast of Africa. The Romans who came from these places all brought their own languages with them, speaking Spanish and German, Greek, French and Ancient British. This was as well as Latin, the shared language they used to make sense of and to understand the people from other places in the Roman Empire.

Today there are 300 languages spoken every day in the homes of Londoners and on the streets of this fascinating city. So, when you say ‘I am a Londoner’, you could say that in many different ways, such as:

Do you know any other way of saying ‘I am a Londoner’?

This small collection of stories has been put together by Anne and Sef and illustrated by Belinda. We are Londoners with – between us – family roots in Ireland, Wales, England, France, north-eastern Europe and Central Asia. These stories all have a connection to people who lived in London, stretching back to the Middle Ages.

Some of the stories come from Londoners we have spoken to. Some of them are very old tales. One story comes from an old ballad – that is, a story in the form of a song. These ballads were sung and the words to the ballads were sold on the streets of London. Some of these stories are imagined: what would it be like to be a poor child trying to sell watercress on the streets of Victorian London or a boy who worked for a chimney sweep? Some of the stories imagine what London and Londoners might look like to a bird or a creature who’ve made their home in this city. Some are stories within stories that people have brought with them from other lands.

Anne and Sef both work as storytellers in London schools and we hope this book will encourage you to become a detective and discover some of the stories behind the statues, the street names and the buildings of London. To find out about London, past and present, and the stories of people who have lived here and who live here now.

What better way to share than through stories? We dream stories, we tell stories, we love to listen to stories and people have been telling and listening to stories for thousands of years. We bet you have your own story. The human family is one family and this great family shows its many faces on the streets of London.

London’s windblown stories are as countless as the stars.

‘Where are you going to my pretty maid?’

‘I’m going a milking, sir,’ she said,

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘sir,’ she said.

‘I’m going a milking, sir,’ she said.

‘Then can I come with you, my pretty maid?’

‘You’re kindly welcome, sir,’ she said,

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘sir,’ she said.

‘You’re kindly welcome, sir,’ she said.

‘What is your fortune, my pretty maid?’

‘My face is my fortune, sir,’ she said,

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘sir,’ she said.

‘My face is my fortune, sir,’ she said.

‘Then I cannot marry you, my pretty maid.’

‘Nobody asked you, sir,’ she said,

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘sir,’ she said.

‘Nobody asked you, sir,’ she said.

It was the year 1300 and in Bethnal Green there lived a blind beggar and his wife. He wandered around with a little bell and a dog to guide him. They had a very beautiful daughter named Bessy. She was clever and kind and wanted to be useful to her dear mother and father. She pleaded with them to let her go and seek her fortune. They were unwilling to let her go, but at last after much persuasion Bessy left on foot, carrying what little she owned tied up in a cloth.

She travelled by night so that she would not be seen and rested hidden in the woods by day. It was late summer and the bushes and trees were heavy with berries and fruit, so she had food to eat. There were clear streams of water to drink from and to wash in.

One evening she was sitting by a stream with her feet in the cool, clear water. Her feet were sore after so much walking. She was about to get up and find a place in the woods to sleep, when a young man came out of the woods carrying a large dish of blackberries that he had collected.

He said, ‘May I help you? You look as if you have travelled far. My father is an innkeeper,’ he continued, ‘and our inn, the King’s Arms, is only over that hill. My father needs help in the inn. Are you looking for work?’

‘That I am,’ answered Bessy. ‘I will walk with you and meet your father.’

The young man spoke the truth. There was a village the other side of the hill, the village of Romford. Bessy spoke with the innkeeper and found him to be a fair man. He said he would give her a room of her own and her meals and pay her for her work in the inn.

The work was to serve the food and drinks, to wash the mugs and dishes and to keep the place swept and dusted. Bessy agreed and was very happy to have found a place to live and work and where she could save money for her mother and father. The very first week she was there the young men of Romford came to the inn, not just to eat and to drink but to see Bessy and listen to her singing as she went about her work. The innkeeper was very pleased as the King’s Arms was busier than it had ever been and he was making a lot more money.

The innkeeper’s son also thought what a good wife Bessy would make. When he became owner of the inn, with Bessy as his wife he would get rich.

Bessy got on well with the innkeeper and his wife. The young men came to the inn with gifts for her but Bessy did not accept them. She was the same to all of them: polite and friendly, but she was not looking for a husband. Still they came, hoping that one day she might change her mind.

One morning a young knight arrived at the inn looking for a stable for his horse, which had become lame. Bessy watched as the young knight led it into the stables at the side of the inn. She saw how he cared for his horse that had a lame leg. She saw how gently he spoke to the small boy who worked in the stable and heard him ask the boy to look after his horse well; and he gave the boy a silver coin. The young knight then came to the inn door and when he saw Bessy, he bowed to her and asked her permission to come in.

‘I am very dusty after my long journey and I would not like to spoil this clean floor,’ he said.