Gosh! Have I really been neglecting this blog for over a year? Sorry!
I do have an excuse, though: I have become a father!
If you've ever wondered what baby-brain does to a storyteller's performance, wonder no more! Here I am at the Tall Tales Oscars in Edinburgh, telling the strange history of a strange health visitor...

I'm the second  to tell, about 28 min in. Enjoy!

https://www.facebook.com/ScottishStorytellingCentre/videos/1789308894441239/

Refuweegee Raconteurs is a new storytelling initiative I co-founded with my dad, and will take place in a different Glasgow venue each month. Last month it was at Tchai-Ovna, where we raised over £100 for Refuweegee. This month it took place at the Blue Chair and raised £75. Next month's will take place at Lambhill Stables, date and time TBC.

This is a particularly special storytelling club because it exists to raise funds  for Refuweegee, a wonderful local charity dedicated to helping refugees in Glasgow and making them feel welcome here.

I was the MC, and we had accordian music, folk music, blues singing, a story from South Africa, a story about a mad king ordering a river to be punished, a beautiful story by my 4-year-old nephew about the three little rescue bots and a big bad decepticon, a very moving poem by a refugee about her experiences, and a hilarious poem inspired by Matt McGinn.  The atmosphere was very warm and friendly, and it was a brilliant way to spend an evening.

Here's me doing my own wee story about brambles!

I have recently finished a futurelearn course on Hans Christian Andersen. It was very fun, though most of the learning experience, for me, came from discussions with fellow learners. The educators' style was a bit too "And here is a diagram through which we can appreciate the structure of a fairytale!" for my liking.

At the end, we were challenged to write an essay on the topicality and cross-cultural relevance of Andersen's work. I took this on, of course, from a storyteller's perspective, and here's what I wrote:

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN – WRITER OF TELLIES

Hans Christian Andersen may well have been the best known creator of literary fairytales (Biography, Date Unknown). The fariytale is generally thought of as a sub-genre of the folktale. A folktale is a story which evolved through being told and retold in the oral tradition, and this wider genre includes the myth (stories concerned with the creation of the world, the politics of the gods, the Dreamtime and any magical times before the world as we know it existed); the legend (stories concerning people and places who were, or were believed to be, real, though the details of their histories have been exaggerated); and fairytales (adventure stories, often concerning magic, whose key features include a quest and some sort of aspiration – the poor man overcomes a set of challenges to become King, or become rich; the downtrodden maid marries the prince, etc. The values espoused by a fairytale are often hidden in the nature of the challenges, eg. the protagonist who is kind to the people and creatures he meets on the way reaps the benefits of their help later in the story).

A literary fairytale is one which follows the contours of a fairytale in the oral tradition, but which has been written by an identifiable author. To understand this process, we must understand something of storytelling. Storytelling is an art which is very much alive in the world today, and to tell a story “mind to mind, eye to eye and heart to heart” (Beltane Fire Society, 2013) is a very different process to writing one down or reading one out. A story which is suitable to be told aloud, which I call a “tellie”, is likely to have certain features that facilitate the telling: a straightforward, linear plot; a limited number of characters and a conservative level of dialogue; simple sentences; optional elements which make the tale more tell-friendly such as join-in catchphrases, repetition, and bold characters which lend themselves to voices. A writy is a tale which is written and never designed to be anything other than written. It would not work told aloud. It is unlikely to lend itself to retelling. Most written literature falls into this category, thus it is possible to write a tellie, but not to tell a writy! Andersen wrote tellies, a rare skill which he was one of the first modern authors to exercise, and understanding this is key to understanding his cross-cultural appeal.

Certain aspects of folktales from the oral tradition, told since before the written word, have an uncanny habit of showing up in stories from opposite sides of the world! Cinderella, for example, appears in the folktales of central Europe, Korea, Scotland and Egypt, to name but a few (Fourth Grade Space, 2015). West Africa’s Anansi, the Native American Coyote, and Loki, of the Scandinavian (and latterly, Marvel Comics) tradition, have the same role: the trickster (Encyclopaedia Britannica,2007). In Gold Tree and Silver Tree, we see a Scottish version of Snow White, whilst Whuppity Stoorie and Tom Tit Tot are Scottish and English versions, respectively, of Rumpelstiltskin.

There are two main schools of thought in terms of why this happens (Jackson, 2016): one is that the tales simply travel, from teller to listener to teller. Nomadic communities such as the Roma may have been instrumental in their spread, however this may not fully explain the appearance of these stories among Maoris, Australian Aborigines, who would have had no contact with peoples of other landmasses in ancient times, unless the travel of these stories actually predated the continental drift. The second theory is that certain elements of story resonate so strongly within the human mind, that they have cropped up independently in more than one place. The truth is likely to be a very complex combination of the two.

However, I prefer my own hypothesis: that there is an invisible and immortal story-dragon flying round the world, whispering tales into the ears of those who are able to listen.

Andersen certainly felt the hot, dry breath of the story-dragon in his ears when he wrote many of his works. The Tinderbox (Andersen, 1835), in which a soldier procures a magical item which allows him access to a means of overthrowing the Government and marrying the princess, is a reworking of an earlier folktale he had heard in his youth, whilst The Travelling Companion (Andersen, 1835) in which a poor but kind man meets up with a mysterious stranger who helps him outwit a hellish troll and win the princess, the twist being that the mysterious stranger, is, in fact, a dead man whose debts he paid so that he might rest, crops up in several different traditions including a Roma folktale (Roma People, ).

In A Mother’s Story, we see a mother pursuing Death to a strange world, in an attempt to retrieve her child from the afterlife. The metaphor Andersen uses is death as a gardener, who brings the woman to understand that God’s will is the prevailing factor. We never actually see the full afterlife, which is described as an “unknown land”. This resonates with the reflections od Shakespeare’s Hamlet:

“And at the dread of something after death, the Undiscovered Country from whose borne no traveller returns” (Shakespeare, C.1599).

In contrast to Hamlet’s dread of the unknown, which deters him from suicide, Andersen leads us to believe that the dead child is safe and happy.

The essential plot, that the protagonist goes on a quest to the hereafter to retrieve a lost love one, can be found in the Greek Myth Orpheus in the Underworld (Encyclopaedia of Greek Myth, Date Unknown). It can also be found in the Maori folktale, Mataora and Niwareka in the Underworld (Maori People, 1946) Orpheus’s quest is unsuccessful: he is warned not to turn back on his way out of the Underworld, but he cannot help himself, for he hears the echo of his own beautiful music. Mataora, in a break from the Western convention that one cannot return from the dead (or that it carries horrific consequences if one does), succeeds in retrieving his lost love and securing a remarkably uncomplicated happy ending.

Andersen’s tale, too, resonates with the Scottish folktale in which a mother’s baby is stolen by the fairies. She learns that the fairies have no art of their own, and she must make items of rare beauty to barter first for entry to their realm, then for her child, and finally for the right to leave. This quest, unlike the mother in Andersen’s tale, is successful, though it should be noted that the fairy-taken child is not dead. That said, abduction to an alternate realm may be taken as a metaphor for death, and since most folktales were first told in a time where infant mortality was high, it is easy to see how this theme resonates, and therefore may find itself repeated often.

Other folktale elements crop up in Andersen’s work. In The Red Shoes, a child is punished for growing obsessed with her beautiful shoes to the exclusion of her duty to God and to her family, by having a curse placed on the shoes which force her to dance until her feet are destroyed. Forced dancing can also be seen in a rather different folktale about a monster who eats a boys family, but is caused to vomit them by a drum beat he cannot help but dance to; and in The Pied Piper, in which first rats, then children, are forced to dance to the pipers tune, and are led away into a mountain never to be seen again.

Nor is Anderson the final stop on a story’s journey. Later authors of literary fairytales have clearly been influenced by his work. In Mary de Morgan’s Nanina’s Sheep, Nanina is forced by fairies to dance all night, and come sunrise a sheep is gone. This continues until a tree tells her that a sheep will be returned for each night she does not dance. She buries her feet in the soil, and the tree holds her fast with its roots; then when she strains at her restraints, she is severely injured, but secures the return of a sheep per night until they are all back. Here the theme is courage and sacrifice, rather than punishment, but the central idea is the same. (de Morgan, 1900) Oscar Wilde has several fairytales in which God accepts lovingly into His kingdom a character who has died (Wilde, 1888) – a bittersweet ending which takes on Andersen’s idea of the immortal soul giving an ostensibly sad ending a tinge of happiness through the idea that the immortal soul goes on in happiness, as seen in The Little Mermaid, The Story of a Mother and The Red Shoes.

Andersen’s cross-cultural appeal is a consequence of his masterful ability to write a tellie. For when we connect to the world of the tellie, we connect to a rich and varied history of oral storytelling which has existed at least as long as humans have, and which, through the subtle whispering of the story-dragon, connects all the peoples of this world to each other.

References:

Andersen, HC (1835). Fairy Tales Told for Children. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel. 

Andersen, HC (1835). The Travelling Companion. Copenhagen: Unknown.

Beltane Fire Society. (2013). Mind to Mind, Heart to Heart. Available: https://beltane.org/2013/04/25/mind-to-mind-heart-to-heart/. Last accessed 25th May 2016.

Biography.com Editors. (). Hans Christian Andersen Biography.Available: http://www.biography.com/people/hans-christian-andersen-9184146. Last accessed 25th May 2016.

de Morgan, M (1900). The Wind Fairies. London: Seeley and Co

Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2007). Trickster Tales. Available: http://www.britannica.com/art/trickster-tale/article-history. Last accessed 25th May 2016.

Encyclopaedia of Greek Myth. (Unknown). Orpheus. Available: http://www.mythweb.com/encyc/entries/orpheus.html. Last accessed 25th May 2016.

Fourth Grade Space. (2015). Cinderella Stories Around the Globe.Available: http://fourthgradespace.weebly.com/cinderella-stories-around-the-world.html. Last accessed 25th May 2016.

Jackson, J. (2016). Why do different cultures have the same folk tales?. Available: http://www.jjbooks.com/blog/why-do-different-cultures-have-the-same-folk-tales. Last accessed 25th May 2016.

Maori People (1946). Myths And Legends of Maoriland. 5th ed. London: Wellington. 32-40.

Roma People (1899). Gypsy Folk Tales by Francis Hindes Groome. Unknown: Sacred Texts

Shakespeare, W (C.1599). Hamlet. London: N/A. Act 4 Sc 1.

Wilde, O (1888). The Happy Prince and Other Tales. London: Watchmaker Publishing.

Storytelling for Refuweegee

I've had a wonderful week of Storytelling.

On Tuesday I attended a workshop on making storytelling more interractive. It was run by The Village Storytelling Centre, whose workshops I can heartily recommend. The highlight, for me, was a character-creation exercise, in which we came up with a giant called Cyril, who is 947 years old and works for Barrow-In-Furness Council, but longs to be free to express himself artistiacally.

Then on Friday evening we had a one-off event, which I'm hoping will blossom into a regular thing. Tam's Ceilidh (that's ceilidh in the original and true sense of the word), which my dad organised, a fundraiser for refuweegee - a charity helping refugees in Glasgow.

There was poetry, there was music, and of course, there was storytelling. It was a real celebration of culture and community in Glasgow, and I was proud to be the MC.

A storyteller is nothing without his/ her repertoire. But building it can be a drag.

I'd like to share with you a storymine I found recently. It's got loads and loads of stories from all over the world!


 Do you have a favourite storymine?

I'm an idiot.

Many moons ago, I developed Storyship, a device for delivering a session of stories from around the world. It started off with a group of children, an A4 printed map and a felt-tip pen to draw our route, travelling the world in our Storyship, with a story from each part of the world we stop in.

 This developed to a full-size map of the world to be hung up while delivering the session. The Storyship became an actual tiny model of a ship - or, failing that, a paper cut-out. The paper version looked a bit pants and was hard to get to the right size; the model ship was very difficult to persuade to stick to a vertical map with blu-tac (and various other contrivances including magnets.) It kept falling off the world!

So why did it take me this long to realise the solution is to make the ship out of blu-tac?!

I did a Storyship session for some older adults at the Dick Institute in Kilmarnock yesterday. They were a wonderful audience who were very appreciative. And the clydebuilt blu-tac Storyship did stick to the map throughout - which is a new achievement!

We went to Ireand first, for the King who had the Ears of a Horse (in which a Head of State must cope with his most embarrassing secret getting out - I'm nothing if not topical!) Then to France for one of Perraut's fairytales about a woman getting sausages stuck up her nose. Then to Kenya, for some animal antics with Hare, whose happy home seems to have been commandeered by a terrifying monster (this is a story I include mosty for the opportunity to do my trademark elephant noise). Then to Australia for Walzing Matilda (which they joined in with gusto); Malasia to meet Pak Pandir, the famous eejit; China to find out who will succeed the Emperor; Finland, where a melancholy prince has been convinced that it is "loathsome to be human"; and finally home to Scotland, for a rousing chorus of Auld Lang Syne.

We live in a vast and rich world of stories. So why not come aboard the Storyship and travel with me? We don't need to leave the room!

On the evening of Tuesday 6th May, I was really looking forward to the storytelling adventure I would embark upon the following morning.

On the morning of Wednesday 7th, I cursed my alarm at a stupidly early hour and had ceased to look forward to anything. Nonetheless, I dragged myself out of bed sideways, and after more than one cup of coffee, felt almost human.

And so began my latest storytelling adventure!

This adventure was to take place at Strathclyde Country Park. The Teddy Bear's Picnic is an annual fundraising fun day for St. Andrew's Hospice, to which around 2000 children come from local schools, not forgetting their beloved teddy bears, to be entertained. Entertainment includes a mobile disco, a magician, interactive theatre with a fairytale theme (provided by some students in profoundly awesome costumes) and, last but not least (well, okay, probably least), storytelling!

I wished for good weather. I wished in vain! The weather in Scotland respects no one! So I did my storytelling in a portacabin rather than in the open air. Which worked out rather nicely, as it kept me dry and the acoustics are favourable. I also had for company a giant teddy, who enjoyed my stories immensely (as he told me later in Teddese) This provided some amusement when groups of children came with near-identical tiny teddies, who looked a lot like miniature versions of the big one, and could balance perfectly on the end of its nose... before being deftly returned to the child with a sneeze.

The orgainisers of this event were in every way entirely wonderful, deftly organising mayhem, and making me feel quite at ease and looked after.

Then the children started arriving. A group at a time, and one after the other, so I was feeling a bit storied out by the end! Most only stayed for one or two stories, which meant I was dealing with different children each time, so I could get away with sticking to a small handful of old favourites. Which, broad as my repertoire is, is always handy. There will always be a few special stories I particularly enjoy telling. I told the African folktale about Hare's house being taken over by some sort of scary monster, whom none of his friends - not Zebra, not Lion and not even Elephant! - could scare off. I like this one mostly because it gives me an excuse to do my elephant noise!

I told the Irish folktale about the king with the ears of a horse. I like this one because it's all about the importance of not taking yourself too seriously - a key skill in storytelling! I also like playing Chinese Whispers with the children as they take on the role of trees in the wind whispering secrets to each other.

I told the Perrault fairytale of the Three Wishes, which I always have a ball telling because it involves sausages getting stuck up someones nose! Can there be a better reason to love a story?

And I told the Chechen tale of three baby goats getting gobbled up by a Big Bad Wolf. But don't worry, that's not as serious a predicament in stories as it might be elsewhere. Especially not when Mummy Goat has your back!

So I went home with neither voice nor energy, but very happy nonetheless. A brilliant day's storytelling for an excellent cause, and I look forward to doing it again next year.

On Wednesday I enjoyed a rather splendid community meal at Queens Park Baptist Church. The food was provided by Locavore, and the event was organised by some fantastic community-builders.

Everyone was very friendly, and the children were absolutely in their element. There was space for them to play and no one seemed to expect or wish them to "behave"! This is the sort of event there should be more of in every community.

There was also music (some of it provided by the children), and, of course, storytelling - courtesy of yours truly.

The children really took to my African folktale, and loved joining in with animal noises and suchlike.

I've always believed in the power of storytelling as a community-building tool, and if Wednesday's event is any indication, I've always been absolutely right!

Storytelling as a Force For Good

Can storytelling be a force for good?
That's the question I asked participants at a workshop I ran on Saturday at the Quaker Meeting House.

The short answer is that it's never anything else! Yet for a 3-hour workshop, we had to explore the question in a bit more depth than that.

So we brainstormed definitions of storytelling.

We brainstormed definitions of good.

And we decided that the workshop would have an "End product", a resource of some sort which we decided would be a leaflet, available to people everywhere who would do good with their storytelling!

We talked a great deal about ways we could bring storytelling into our communities, we had some discussion about the role of storytelling in faith and vice versa, and I learned rather a lot from all the different perspectives we had in the room. None of our definitions of good came from me - that was all the work of participants!

We also practiced storytelling skills with the Voices Game (in which we say our names in different voices) and the Banal Stories Game (in which each participant is given something essentially boring to talk about in a way that makes it interesting and entertaining!), and a good old-fashioned story-building exercise.

I also introduced some tips to help with repertoire-building, which I consider the most difficult part of storytelling!

One of the things that initially disappointed me about this workshop is that I didn't get through all the things I had on my plan. But actually, this gave us the opportunity to explore the most important areas in a lot more depth. I think that's what I mostly learned: sometimes depth is more important than breadth.

At the end, we decided on the content of our leaflet, and we're staying in touch to work on its design!

Now, running adult workshops for storytellers at all levels is a big part of where I'm hoping my storytelling adventures will take me. So if you have an idea for a theme or topic relating to storytelling, on which you'd like to see a workshop, please let me know!

Burns storytelling 2014

Well, it’s been an amazing couple of weeks! I’ve done a total of 10 storytelling sessions in a total of 6 Primary Schools in and around Glasgow. Written and verbal feedback from the teachers was excellent for almost all of these, so I’m feeling very inspired and encouraged. 

I wasn’t looking to go into schools to “teach” Burns; rather, my approach was to explore Burns with the children. In doing so, I feel I have deepened my own understanding of the Bard’s work.

To A Mouse

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, 
O, what a panic's in thy breastie! 
Thou need na start awa sae hasty, 
Wi' bickering brattle! 
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee, 
Wi' murd'ring pattle! 

I'm truly sorry man's dominion, 
Has broken nature's social union, 
An' justifies that ill opinion, 
Which makes thee startle 
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, 
An' fellow-mortal! 

I doubt na, whiles, but thou may thieve; 
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live! 
A daimen icker in a thrave 
'S a sma' request; 
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave, 
An' never miss't! 

Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin! 
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin! 
An' naething, now, to big a new ane, 
O' foggage green! 
An' bleak December's winds ensuin, 
Baith snell an' keen! 

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste, 
An' weary winter comin fast, 
An' cozie here, beneath the blast, 
Thou thought to dwell- 
Till crash! the cruel coulter past 
Out thro' thy cell. 

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble, 
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble! 
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble, 
But house or hald, 
To thole the winter's sleety dribble, 
An' cranreuch cauld! 

But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane, 
In proving foresight may be vain; 
The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men 
Gang aft agley, 
An'lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, 
For promis'd joy! 

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me 
The present only toucheth thee: 
But, Och! I backward cast my e'e. 
On prospects drear! 
An' forward, tho' I canna see, 
I guess an' fear!

My approach with this was to use a simple home-made fingermouse puppet as a prop. I would address the mouse when reciting the poem, and the children when discussing the poem, which I would stop to do in between the stanzas.

The first school I went into gave me some interesting constructive criticism: the teacher liked my work, but felt that it was pitched at a younger age group. I took this very much to heart, and started looking for ways to make my sessions more challenging for older children. The first and most important change I made was to my presentation of To A Mouse.

Before, I had always paused after every stanza to explain it to the children. What if, instead, I ASKED  the children to explain it to me. That gets their wee minds birling, puts them in charge of how the poem is to be explored, and gives me a chance to see how close they are to actually understanding the poem (and to nudge them in the right direction if necessary). This approach also gives us a stronger opportunity for some high-quality as-we-go-along discussion of the poem’s deeper meanings.

The disadvantage of this approach is, of course, that it takes longer – as was noted in feedback from one teacher. It takes about 20 minutes with the ask-method, as opposed to around 10 with the tell, but I am convinced that the richness of the experience justifies the extra time.

Once I am finished the poem, I open up discussion on its ideas and themes. A lot of the children seem far more concerned for the welfare of the mouse, and asked if Rabbie built it a new home, or adopted it!  The honest answer is that the poem doesn’t say, which creates an opportunity for me to do what I think one should always do where possible: encourage children to find their own answers, by asking: “What do you think?”

If I think it is helpful, I will ask a couple of questions myself: How was Burns feeling when he wrote this? And Is this poem about a man or a mouse? (My favourite answer to the latter was a wee boy who tilted his head contemplatively then said “Well, I think it’s about 80% about a mouse, and about 20% about a man.”)

I’ve found that the best way to summarise the overall idea of the poem – which I will usually do towards the end of the discussion session – is to relate the idea of best laid schemes going agley to an experience with which the children will be familiar.

“Does anyone here like building with wooden blocks?” Most do. I say that I do too (no lie! I’m a big wean!)

I then ask if they’ve ever had the experience of spending all day working on a tower only to have it knocked down. Hands go up. Some nod. Some wince.

I ask how it made them feel.

So now it’s a feeling I know, the children know, Robert Burns knew, and so did his mouse. The connection is made, and the heart of the poem is accessible! Ta-dah!

Storytelling

It would seem reasonable that, being a storyteller, I would, at some point in my sessions, get down to some actual storytelling. Therefore... Tam O’ Shanter!

Burns’s terrifying and hilarious epic is too long and difficult to perform straight through (though I can!) for Primary children, but the poem has such a strong narrative that it works as well told as a story. With some of its themes and content, it needs be tamed a little. It is for the storyteller to judge as he/ she goes along, by the age and character of the listeners, how and to what extent this should be done.  Thus it is one of the best examples of how reading from a page can never compare to genuine, live oral storytelling!

The storm is almost a character in this tale, and so I have the children provide the sound effects for wind and rain and rattling windows. Sometimes they are timorous – permission to make a dreadful racket in the classroom is a rare privilege! But once they get into it, they usually blow up a magnificent storm, and holding fast my imaginary gude blue bonnet as I gallop around the classroom on an equally imaginary horse hardly require the effort of imagination!

This tends to be my favourite part of the session, the children are there in the moment and so am I, the classroom dissolves and witches take form. The magic of storytelling is electrifying, and I oft provoke a satisfying GASP when Meg makes it to safety without her tail!

I then move on from Tam O’ Shanter to collaborative story-building. I tell the children that Burns was often visited by his Auntie Betty, who told him scary stories when he was wee, and that this might be where he got the idea for Tam O’ Shanter. But certainly we know that he loved scary stories, and that the best birthday present we can give him is a brand new scary story! The children are well up for it, and I produce, as a talisman to indicate who is telling this part of the story... Timmy Tattie the Tartan Teddy!

I start the story with a group of children in a suitably scary situation – haunted house, wandering in the dark woods... and then...

From the first “And then”, the story belongs to the children. Some contributions will just be another monster or a lot of screaming and running; sometimes it will be a fiendishly clever plot twist (One of the stories ended with all the monsters chasing the children turning out to be their parents in disguise, there to teach them a lesson!)

Weird and wonderful adventures have sprouted from this exercise, which was almost always successful, and gave the children the chance to participate creatively.

There was one occasion, however, when I didn’t use that exercise because there were too many children.  I switched, instead to a story-building exercise called The Journey, where the children are told to hold in their minds each story-element in turn: A form of transport; A place (in this case, a SCARY place!); A Person (in this case, a SCARY person!) to meet on the way; Something Exciting to happen when we get there; Something To go Wrong with our form of transport when it’s time to go home; An Alternative Way to get home... and then we go home. I then mix and match the elements of selected children’s stories, so we end up with a collaborative story that is rather silly and fun. The advantage of this is that every child has their own unique story in their mind, and can develop it later if they want, so no one feels left out. The disadvantage is that it is over-structured and formulaic, and doesn’t allow for the same creative free flow of controlled anarchy that pass-the-teddy does.

Songs

Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonnie Doon is a beautiful, poignant, sentimental song, lamenting lost love whilst waxing lyrical on the beauties of nature.

You Shouldnae Stick That Up Yer Nose is a song which is... rather different.

The challenge I put to the children is to guess which one Robert Burns wrote. Needless to say, they mostly all get it right (and the few who don’t are, I suspect, at it); then comes the hard question: why? What makes you think that? What are the clues?

I inevitably get answers like “The second song was stupid” “Burns poems are more depressing, and that was more funny”. Some pick up on the anachronisms: You Shouldnae Stick That Up Yer Nose features a surreal assortment of objects being stuck up noses, many of which were not invented in Burns’s time. Some will say “There are more Scottish words in the first song”, which leads to discussion of different types of Scottish words. Some will say “There are more tricky words in the first song”, which is true: The second song is much easier to understand! This can stimulate a terrific conversation about the old-fashioned Scots language of Burns, and wonderful words like Cranreuch, which we don’t use any more.

The BEST answer I got was “The first song was more folky.” There are no right and wrong answers, but... that kid pretty much nailed it! It also provided a wonderful way in to a conversation about different musical styles.

Even answers which were a bit wide of the mark (“Robert Burns wouldn’t write anything rude!”) can stimulate a lively discussion, and get the children thinking about language and style.

And, of course, I usually finish up with Auld Lang Syne.

The half-hour sessions

One school had me split the hour between two groups. These sessions were tricky because I had to condense things a lot. There were also mixed ages, so I had P 7s and P1s in the same group, and this made it difficult to find the balance. Toning Tam O’ Shanter down enough for the wee ones, whilst still keeping it engaging for the big ones. I also reverted to explaining rather than asking about To A Mouse. This was both to save time and to make it accessible for the wee ones (though it still went over the heads of the very youngest). I also rattled through Tam, and sang only You Shouldnae Stick That Up Yer Nose to ask whether Burns wrote it. Not ideal, but I think I packed quite a lot of value into these half- hour sessions.

But I discovered something about Pass The Teddy: it actually works better with a mix of ages, with more sophisticated elements being added by the older children, whilst the younger ones just throw in some extra monsters for good measure!

Triumphs

Two or three of the sessions – one in particular – stand out in my mind as particularly energised and wonderful, where the kids were participating brilliantly, the discussion was really deep and challenging, the ideas were creative and whimsical, and everything went right. These are the ones from which I floated home on a happy haze of success. These are the ones I’ll never forget so long as I live.

So, in the interests of shamelessly blowing my own trumpet, here are some of the best comments I’ve received on feedback forms from teachers:

“Fantastic experience for children, always engaged”

“Covered a variety of Literacy Outcomes + Experiences”

“Good starting point for the children to take further”

“Thank you! We enjoyed the Storytelling!”

“Energetic and enthusiastic presentation and very engaging – children listen intently and thoroughly enjoyed it.”

Challenges

But... it would be a great big hairy lie with flies buzzing round it to say that everything went smoothly. There were challenges.

Though Pass The Teddy was, for the most part, one of the most successful and enjoyable activities, there was one session in which it simply didn't

 work. The children were a bit too giggly and over-enthused, which meant it took far too long and I struggled to maintain any sort of coherence. Another problem was that at the start of the story they were sitting in very neat rows, making it easy to pass the teddy along one row then back along the next... however, a certain amount of shuffling went on and they didn’t keep their shape, making it difficult to tell who had had a shot. It had gone well in the immediately previous session, same school, same set-up, but with slightly older children. Nonetheless, I think the pass-the-teddy exercise is better suited to a classroom than an assembly hall. The Journey is a reasonable substitute for these situations. Mistake made. Lessons learned.

Other challenges involved changing time constraints forcing me to drop some of the planned activities. With my time again, perhaps I would have done less discussion on To A Mouse and made making time for Auld Lang Syne a priority (There was only one school at which I missed out ALS.)

But I think that I worked very hard to overcome the challenges I faced; that I learned from mistakes, and that I have a much stronger sense of what parts of my sessions need the most work, so I think overall I can find cause for optimism even in those sessions that could have gone better.

Conclusion

I really, really miss this project already! It’s been a bumpy ride in places, but overall, a very fulfilling one.

Burns absolutely belongs in the classroom, because his genius wordsmithery and wit in the language of the common Scot open a window into the human soul. If he is presented to children in bite-sized chunks, with the style and flair of a talented storyteller (if I do say so myself!) something of that joy and energy can be shared, and there is no limit to what youngsters can achieve under its influence.

New Blog

Hi! I'm Alastair, I'm an author and storyteller, and I've started a new blog for my storytelling adventures!

I've actually just finished a rather awesome project celebrating Robert Burns in primary schools in and around Glasgow.

It's been a lot of fun, with mostly excellent feedback, and I'll be telling you about it in detail very soon!