O'Connor The Little History of Storytelling in Cornwall

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80399-967-8
Verlag: The History Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten

Reihe: Little History of

Cornwall's storytelling tradition stretches back a thousand years. Before TV and radio, stories were told among the flickering shadows at the fireside. They whiled away the travellers' miles, long hours in the fields, and days at sea. They gladdened brief moments of relaxation for miners and bal-maidens. Travelling storytellers wandered from village to village swapping words for supper, and a rich local dialect brought the tales to life. Classic Cornish tales such as the Mermaid of Zennor and Jan Tregeagle are wonderfully entertaining, and collectively tell us much about Cornwall, its people, and its history. Join accomplished storyteller, scholar and writer Mike O'Connor as he explores the 'when, where, and why' of Cornish folk tales and celebrates the rich traditions and cultural legacy of hwedhlow.

Mike O'Connor is a powerful and engaging storyteller who performs at many events across the country. An important researcher into Cornish music and folklore, he has been awarded the OBE and made a bard of the Gorsedh of Kernow.

Autoren/Hrsg.

O'Connor, Mike

Leseproben

A WORLD OF STORIES

A STARTING POINT

To help understand storytelling in Cornwall we will start by taking a wider view. For millennia, tales have been told to record events, assert lineages, educate and entertain. Tales of the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh were written down on clay tablets about 2100 BCE. Those tales were discrete stories, but tablets of 1800 BCE record a lengthy . A standard Babylonian text appeared between 1300 and 1000 BCE. The tales have many characteristics unique to oral culture and certainly had origins as spoken tales.1 They were told for 1,000 years and in four language variants.

Storytelling flourished in classical Greece. There the spoken word was in some ways thought preferable to the dead symbols of a written language. Socrates noted that once something was written down, it lost its ability for change and growth.2 The epic tales ascribed to Homer were probably written down about 750 BCE. Many passages in the and the also reflect oral storytelling techniques.3 It is thought that the tales were first told by storytellers before they were echoed and crafted by singer-poets (, ) as stylistically coherent, poetic works. By the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, ‘rhapsodes’ told them from memory, in their travels and at Panathenaic Festivals.4

But while some were declaiming Homeric epics lasting hours, others were telling tales lasting minutes, such as Aesop’s fables. What we now call ‘fireside tales’ were also told thousands of years ago. Indeed, when considering oral cultures, it would be naive to suggest they were not.5 Many such tales survive to this day.

Across the world, stories, their subjects, their tellers and their listeners were found in all levels of society. Tales were told in palaces, theatres and homes. They existed in written forms and in memory. They were told by actors, bards and the unlettered. All this was surely true of early medieval Cornwall, but written records do not survive. To judge what may have happened in Cornwall we must study the culture of its Brittonic neighbour, Wales.6

THE ROLES OF THE BARD AND STORYTELLER IN WALES

In about 60 CE, the acclaimed Latin poet Lucan wrote of the bards of Gaul and Britain ‘whose martial rhymes preserve from ancient times the fame of valorous deeds in battle’, to ‘Pour forth in safety more abundant song.’7 In the sixth century, the first role of the famous Welsh bards Taliesin and Aneirin was to celebrate the king and his deeds, and the dour cleric Gildas criticised the bards of Maelgwn of Gwynedd for their raucous singing of the king’s praise-songs.8 As Sioned Davies succinctly put it, ‘verse was mainly, if not wholly, employed for elegy and eulogy.’9 This material was recited, sung or perhaps chanted, and ‘harps’ are often mentioned. It was copied many times before appearing in surviving manuscripts dating from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. It is carefully crafted, and to be effective in performance must have been read or accurately reproduced from memory.

Davies also reminds us that various medieval Welsh triads10 affirm both the separate identity and links between (poetry and music) and (stories and traditional lore).11 In medieval Wales, there was a distinction between the musico-literary verbatim world of the bard and the oral storytelling tradition of the . Davies quotes the eleventh-century telling of Gwydion and his friends visiting the court of Pryderi:

They were made welcome. Gwydion was placed beside Pryderi that night. ‘Why,’ said Pryderi, ‘gladly would we have a tale from some of the young men yonder.’ ‘Lord,’ said Gwydion, ‘it is a custom with us that the first night after one comes to a great man, the chief bard shall have the say. I will tell a tale gladly.’ Gwydion was the best teller of tales [] in the world. And that night he entertained the court with pleasant tales and storytelling till he was praised by everyone in the court.

So, both and were heard in high-status households. It is unlikely that bardic skills, requiring years of training, were often deployed in working-class situations. But the skills of the were essentially those of fireside storytelling. Gwydion’s celebrated storytelling skill would be as much in place in cottage as in court. The evidence of domestic or social storytelling is in the survival of many traditional tales of great antiquity.

THE BARD AND STORYTELLER IN CORNWALL

There are clues to such activity in medieval Cornwall in the 12 This Cornish-Latin lexicon, compiled in about 1100, was based on Ælfric’s of about the year 1000. Its listing includes (bard, musician, entertainer) and (poet). It includes (reader) and (orator), thus drawing a distinction between the conveyors of written and oral material. It also has (harper), (piper), (fiddler), other musicians and their female counterparts.

These words echo distinctions apparent in the invitation proclaimed to the whole Brittonic world by Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd to attend his festival at Aberteifi in 1176. This is often identified as the first recorded Welsh eisteddfod. At this event ‘he appointed two sorts of competition; one between the bards and poets and the other between the harpers, fiddlers, pipers and various performers of instrumental music’.13 The shows that the Cornish were expected to have all the skills needed to accept Lord Rhys’s invitation, though we do not know if any did. The suggests that in Cornwall the (bard) worked alongside the (storyteller).

Early bardic activity in Cornwall is also hinted at in several medieval tales, though they reflect the (later) time of their creation as much as the early medieval period. There can be little doubt that the successive impositions of Saxon and Norman administration seriously affected previous Cornish custom and practice, especially in high-status contexts. However, that was probably less true of working-class society. The Cornish , or fireside storyteller, would not have been immune to cultural influence and linguistic change. But, as we will find, about 150 years after the Norman conquest, Cornwall retained unique folk tales, suggesting a thriving pre-existing oral tradition of domestic and social storytelling.

FROM BARD TO VERSE

Several books from the high medieval period purport to tell of legends and minstrelsy associated with Cornwall in earlier years. With care we can learn from them.

THE HISTORIA REGUM BRITANNIÆ

The () was written by Geoffrey of Monmouth in about 1136. Hugely popular and once considered historical, it supposedly records British history from the time of the Fall of Troy to the Norman Conquest. In the first and last chapters, Geoffrey tells his readers that while writing the book he struggled to research the early kings of the Britons. His problem was solved when Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, gave him a ‘very ancient book’ written in the British tongue. Geoffrey claimed that his faithfully translated that book into Latin. Geoffrey’s work is now discredited. But although now considered historical fiction, the made famous many British legends, including tales of King Arthur and the founding of Cornwall.

TRISTAN

The popular tales of Tristan describe minstrelsy at the early medieval court of Mark, King of Cornwall.14 They were documented by many, including Thomás of Britain (c.1173), Béroul (mid-twelfth century), Eilhart von Oberge (c.1170) and Gottfried von Strassburg (c.1210). Thomás wrote that his source was Bledri, a Welsh master storyteller, possibly a twelfth-century king of Dyfed.

THE

The thirteenth-century by Heldris de Cornouaille (perhaps a pseudonym) exists in a single manuscript found in Wollaton Hall, Nottingham in 1911.15 The tale is of ‘Silence’, the daughter of Cador, ruler of sixth-century Cornwall. Cador (as Cado) is a historical figure mentioned in the and other sources. The son of King Gerrens of Cornwall, he is a friend and possibly a relative of King Arthur. In the Silence, disguised as a young man in order to secure her inheritance, runs away with two minstrels. They teach her to sing and play harp and (medieval fiddle). A feast is described at which ‘One fiddled a Breton lai; the other harped .’

LE MORTE D’ARTHUR

Thomas Malory’s of 1470 was compiled from multiple French and English sources including the It has many references to minstrelsy, but inevitably Malory’s text often reflects his own late-medieval times. In Malory, Tristan learns to play the harp in Brittany during a seven-year apprenticeship, which parallels the long training required of Welsh...