Household Tales by Susan Price

        Telling Tales 

       The Story Collector  

       Head and Tales   

       Crack a Story

 Over the years, I've put together several collections of folk tales. For one thing, I love folk tales. And myth and legend. And folk ballads. I think learning folk ballads off by heart and trying to rewrite them, taught me more about constructing a story than anything else.

But a second, important reason for the folk-tale retellings was income. In the far-off olden days before self-publishing, it used to be said that a writer had to publish at least a book a year in order to make anything like a living. The folk story anthologies allowed me to do this because they were quick to write, the plot of the story being a given.

I never simply regurgitated a story cadged from someone else's book. From the age of about ten, I'd read widely in myths, legends and folk tales and had put together, and treasured, quite a library of them, both well-known and obscure. A lot of stories I read reminded me of other, similar stories which had different endings, settings or characters.

The many similarities and echoes between stories, even those widely separated by time and geography, intrigued me. I began reading books about folk-tales rather than of folk-tales and learned of the way such stories are classified by 'motif.' For instance, the Cruel Stepmother (or Mother) and the Incestuous Father are motifs which appear in stories from all over the world. As are the Animal Bride and Animal Groom, the Forbidden Door, the Grateful Dead and many others.

The giantess, Gerd, at home.

An example: In Norse Myth, the god Freyr, finding himself at a loose end, strolls into Valhalla and sits in Odin's chair. Everything in all the Nine Worlds can be seen from there. Freyr spots the beautiful giantess, Gerd, who is minding her own business in her own world of Giant's Home (Jotunheim).

 

Freyr falls desperately in love. Gerd isn't interested. I imagine he was too short for her. Freyr's actions, as he attempts to persuade her to be his wife, first by bribery and then by threats, lead to Ragnarok, the Doom of the Gods. That myth was collected by Snorri Sturluson, an Icelandic priest, about 800 years ago.

Roughly six or seven hundred years later, a folk tale was collected in Germany, called 'The Soldier in God's Chair.' A soldier, stunned in battle, is mistakenly admitted to Heaven before his time. While Saint Peter checks the paperwork, the soldier has a wander to see the sights. He climbs up into God's chair, and from there sees the whole world, everyone in it and everything they're doing. On all sides, he sees cruelty, hardship, suffering and grief. The soldier, despite being battle-hardened, is traumatised by this overdose of reality. When he's booted out of Heaven, back to Earth, he's a broken man. Moral: it's disastrous for mortals or lesser gods to even glimpse the full reality that Odin sees.

There is a little more to the story. St Peter, returning from his office, finds the soldier in distress and, to comfort him, lets him read God's notebook. The soldier reads that, if only people would simply be kind to each other -- that's all, just kind -- then cruelty, betrayal, poverty and all our other ills would cease. Because they cannot co-exist with true kindness. The soldier returns to earth preaching this simple gospel for all he's worth: Be Kind, Be Kind. He meets with scorn, cruelty, betrayal, violence...  The details of the myth and the story differ but they both have the same motif of the God-like viewpoint which allows you to see everything -- and the same conclusion that such a vision would be disastrous.

In putting together collections of stories, I drew on my rag-tag folk-lore library and the many versions and echoes of any given story. I recreated the stories, putting together the bits that I liked from several, leaving out anything that didn't grab my imagination.

It was still far quicker than writing an original story, because I already knew the material so well. During years when I hadn't a chance of publishing any other kind of book, I could often manage to publish a 'collection of re-told folk tales.' In some years, I managed to publish an original book and a folk-tale collection. And so I made my fortune. Not.

The first of my collections was 'The Carpenter and Other Stories' -- which I must republish one day. It was inspired by several stories from the time when Christianity was overtaking paganism: water-sprites meet hedge-priests, elves are driven from their land by church bells and dead pagan heroes come up through latrines (really) as Christian demons. (The cover shown here illustrates a tale that my Polish uncle told me: Pan Twerdowski, the Polish version of the Faust legend. It's pronounced something like 'Pan tFair-duv-ski.')

In later books, I found other frameworks to hang the stories on. Forbidden Doors was named after one of the motifs mentioned above: every story contains a door forbidden to be opened, and tells what happens when, inevitably, the door is opened. In Here Lies Price, every story, no matter how fantastical, was sworn to be true, absolutely true. The moral of the book: Not everything set in type is true, no matter how much it claims to be.

At the time of The Carpenter, I retold these stories in what I now think a rather plain, dry way. Then, I thought it was how folk-stories should be told. Later, I realised that, in fact, this was the way they were retold in the earnest Edwardian and Victorian collections that had made up so much of my reading. The stories wouldn't have been told like that at firesides when such 'household tales' were the only form of entertainment in many districts. It wouldn't have been the way they'd have been told to lighten tasks, when women gathered to make candles, or help a bride stitch all the new clothes and bedding she'd need for her new life.

Stories were often told as part of ceilidhs in Scotland and Ireland.
Today ceilidhs are  often assumed to be dances or musical performances, but ceilidh simply means 'a visit'. It was originally a social gathering at someone's house and didn't necessarily involve music or singing, unless the mood took those present for a sing-song.

People might chat about everyday matters or remember their childhoods or 'the old ones who've gone,' which is a kind of story-telling. A lot of the stories I heard as a child were of my parent's childhoods, my grandparents' lives, my great-grandparents' lives and even some snippets about my great-great grandparents.

Someone who had a reputation as a story-teller might be reminded of a story, and tell it, or be asked to tell a story. These get-togethers weren't called 'ceilidhs' in England and Wales but there's no doubt they took place there too. After all, if, two hundred years ago, you lived in the middle of an English moor or heath, you couldn't put on the telly or go out clubbing. Maybe the hamlet didn't even have a pub. (Even if it did, women often weren't welcome.) But you could go round to your friendly neighbour's and join others there -- probably bringing a bit of food or drink with you.

I read of one old Irishman, locally famous as a story-teller, who knew so many tales, he could tell a different story every night for a year. Sadly, as people left the district to look for work, there were fewer people to listen. His son reported that the old man was reduced to telling his stories to his beached boat, so he wouldn't forget them. The son also confessed that he himself  'had no mind for remembering stories,' so when the folklorists came, with their notebooks, the old man eagerly told them his stories because he had no one else to pass them on to.

These fireside tales weren't listened to in solemn silence. Some people didn't want to hear the story and chatted among themselves about other things. Others had heard the story many times before and would pass comment on it or make jokes. (As my father did when I told stories to my youngest brother. "That Saint George, he had no business going around killing dragons just 'cos they ate a few princesses. Dragons are all extinct now, thanks to that busy-body." My brother loved the stories and it amused my father to tease him with interruptions.)

The Story Collector by Susan Price

I started putting this background chatter into my retellings, as well as using a more relaxed, conversational style. In The Story-Collector, Mr Grimsby, a retired factory manager, collects stories as a hobby. He persuades his maidservant to tell him a story, and she recommends her grandmother as a source of more. The grandmother puts him in touch with another story-teller, an old soldier. One night, as Mr Grimsby walks home past the graveyard, he's joined by a large dog. 'You're a fine fellow,' he says and is taken aback when the dog volunteers to tell a story while they walk. The dog is the Churchyard Grim, the dog sacrificed and buried in graveyards, to guard the souls of the dead. The Grim walks Mr. Grimsby to Heaven's Gate and the last story he collects is told by the Virgin Mary over a cup of tea. (That's her, bottom right, on the cover, with halo.)

Head and Tales by Susan Price

In Head and Tales, the orphaned children of a navvy walk across country to reach the home of their grandmother. For protection, they carry with them the severed head of their father, who died of camp-fever. Whenever the children are troubled or in danger, the head opens its eyes and tells a story, to cheer, guide or protect them. Why put a grisly severed head into a collection of fairy-tales? If anyone's curious, I explain more here.

While reading about the ceilidhs where stories were told against the background chatter, I also came across the idea that these stories worked almost like spells. There were some that could only be told at a funeral and others told only at a birth or a wedding. Others were told at certain times of the year -- maybe the idea that ghost stories should be told at Christmas is a survival of this? After all, some believe that Christmas Eve and the setting out of food and drink 'for Father Christmas' is a survival of the pagan 'night of the returning dead.'

Telling Tales by Susan Price

It was this notion of stories working a spell for certain occasions which lay behind the framing of 'Telling Tales.' There are four sections to the book: The Bride's New Clothes, Leaving Home, Funeral Food and A New Baby. For each occasion, neighbours gather and stories are told, while the listeners interrupt with comments and jokes.

I should add that -- though not X-rated -- it isn't a book of 'fairy stories' for young children. These are folk-tales and they mention wife-beating and infanticide, as well as more fantastical things, such as bottled soldiers. That is, a regiment of soldiers in a bottle. After all, soldiers 'bottled' by what's often found in bottles is too routine for a story.

Susan Price won the Carnegie medal for 'The Ghost Drum'

She won a Guardian prize for her book, 'The Sterkarm Handshake.'

Her website can be found here.

Her  books for younger readers can be found here.