Story Tellers and Black Dogs

Artwork, copyright Andrew Price

  ‘The sun sank and vanished and darkness gathered quickly… seemed to rise from among the gravestones, to come ducking out from beneath the low-hanging branches of the yew.  Mr Grimsby looked down his road home and saw it dwindling, fading in darkness…From the north side of the churchyard came trotting a dog, a big dog, and it fell in at his side. It was a black and shaggy dog, large of head and large of paw, and its back stood as high as Mr. Grimsby’s wide waist.  It looked up at him in the dusk and its eyes…gleamed red.“Hello boy… What a fine fellow you are, aren’t you?"

          "I’ll see you home,” said the dog… ”A story to shorten the way, since you’re a man for stories… What story shall it be?”

          This comes from my collection of traditional stories, The Story Collector, which is now published with Smashwords - so you can download it to a number of devices, including Kindle.
          Mr Grimsby is an elderly, retired man who amuses himself by collecting old stories from his servants and neighbours.  Here, as he pauses for a moment to rest, he meets a Churchyard Grim. The dog (or Grim) walks with Mr. Grimsby, telling a long and complicated tale to pass the journey.  (The story the Grim tells, if you’re curious, is ‘The Land Where All The Animals Say “Good Day!’)

Ancient churchyard yew: Eirian Evans,

          At the story’s end, the Grim says, 

“And now we must say, ‘good day’…I can go with you no further.”With something of a start…Mr. Grimsby looked about him.  They stood before a tall door… “Where is this?... I don’t know this place.”

      "No,” said the dog. “But you’ll come to know it.”

          I must go home,” Mr.Grimsby said, and turned to leave the strange door - but behind him was nothing but the utmost darkness… “Where are we?” 
          “At the end of the world,” said the dog.  “That is Heaven’s Door.  Knock, and they’ll let you in.”And the… the Churchyard Grim, trotted back along the road… back to Earth, back to his church where, in the last darkness of the night, he slipped again into his own grave in the north side of the churchyard.To meet the…Churchyard Grim means that your own death will follow soon.

          The Grim is a legend found all over Scandinavia and the British Isles.  It used to be believed, it’s said, that the first man buried in a new churchyard had to remain on Earth, to guard the church and its dead against the devil.  To spare a Christian this fate, and free them to salvation, a black dog was buried in the graveyard before any human dead.  The dog then became the Grim, or guardian spirit of the church.  (Behind this may lie the even older practice of burying a sacrifice or ancestor under a building.  Stone Age earthworks have been found with burials in their ditches, and Stone Age houses with graves under their floors.)

          The Grim was usually buried on the churchyard’s north side – which was associated with things a little spiritually dubious.  The Devil’s power was strongest in the north.  Suicides were buried outside the churchyard wall, on the north side; and, in Scandinavia, if not elsewhere, women traditionally stood on the north side during services, to form a protective layer between men and the Devil.  (Women being more sinful anyway, were already closer to the Devil, and might as well be offered to him as a tidbit.)

          Was the Grim buried on the north side because that was where a guard dog was most needed?  Or – as with women – was there felt to be some connection between the Grim and the Devil, or to older, pagan gods?

          It’s been pointed out that the areas of England where the Black Dog walks are the areas where the Scandinavian influence is strongest, and the Black Dog may be Garmr, the watchdog who guards the gates of Hel, the underworld’s queen.  In Eddic poetry Garmr is also associated with Odin, and Odin was the lord of the dead.  The Romans referred to him as the Germanic Mercury – thus firmly identifying Him as a soul-leader, one who guides the dead to the next world.

          Later, post-Christianity, Odin became the leader of the Wild Hunt, riding to hounds after lost souls.  But this was after Christianity had re-cast him as a devil.  If the Romans took a quick glance and readily identified him with their Mercury, who kindly guided the dead on their road, then Odin, originally, must have had a similar role.

          And while the Black Dog is often thought of as sinister and death-dealing, there are kindly Black Dogs.  In Somerset the ghostly ‘Gurt Dog’ is said to protect children and also travellers, walking beside them through dangerous places and frightening away the ill-intentioned.  The Black Dogs of Lincolnshire are also gentle and protective.  In fact, the Black Dog is most malevolent and is called ‘Shuck’ (Devil) in those parts of Essex and Norfolk which were most puritan in the 17th Century, and most prone to label as ‘devilish’ anything that smacked of old, pre-Christian traditions.

          Why does the Black Dog appeal to me?  Well, anything connected with Odin, that most fascinating and complicated of gods, appeals to me – but there’s also the fact that the Black Dog, in the form of Padfoot, walked the lanes of my childhood – those sooty little country-lanes trapped within the sprawl of the industrial Black Country.  And my Dad once met him!  He used to tell us the tale of how, walking home from a late night at work, he met the ghost dog – a story which I tell in my collection, Nightcomers. 

          My Dad took Padfoot walkies and lived to tell us the tale – but I think that when we have to take the road out of this life, there are worse ways to do it than in the company of a gurt, kindly black dog.  Especially if it tells a story to pass the time!

          This post originally appeared on Lucy Coat's interesting site.

Bannocks!

Bannocks or oatcakes

          Otherwise known as oatcakes, but I prefer the name bannocks because of Great Uncle Gordon.
          Great Uncle Gordon, I've always been told, was put into the Army Catering Corps for his National Service, and learned to cook. He came home on leave, full of tales of army life and eager to show off his new skills.
          His mother, Great Gran Price, went off to bed early, leaving the young folk - Gordon's younger sister and his cousins, gathered in the kitchen. Gordon declared he was going to make them all some "Scottish Bannocks, like we make in the army."
          Great Gran, upstairs in her bed, heard a lot of clattering and banging coming from downstairs, which instantly made her suspicious (she'd raised a large and unruly family.) She yelled out, "What are you doing down there?"

Great Uncle Gordon, poised to make bannocks

          Going to the foot of the stairs, Gordon said, "I'm making some Scottish Bannocks like they showed me in the army!
          Great Gran could hear things like pots and pans being rattled, but she always had a problem hearing what people said. "Eh?"
          "I'm showing 'em what they taught me in the army - I'm making some Scottish Bannocks!"
          "Eh?"
          "I'm making some Scottish Bannocks!" Gordon yelled.
          "You what?"
          "I'm making some bannocks, Scottish bannocks, like they - oh, what's the - !"
          "EH?"
          "I'm making! Scottish! Bannocks!"
          "You what?"
          "I'm making bannocks!"
          "You'm making what?"
          "Bannocks! Scottish Bannocks!
          "What?"
          "Bannocks! Bannocks, bannocks, bannocks!"
          And then Great Gran rushed down the stairs in her nightie, her long grey plait swinging, and thumped him from the bottom of the stairs back into the kitchen, shouting, "I'll teach you to use that language to me!"
          I've been keeping up the family tradition in past weeks - making oatcakes, that is, not rushing downstairs and thumping people. I have been known to do that, but not for many years.
          What I have done a lot in recent years is buy packs of oatcakes rather than bread. I could never eat the bread before it went stale, and it always made me bloated anyway. I prefer oatcakes, and I find the description on the packet, 'Rough Scottish Oatcakes,' strangely alluring. But a couple of weeks ago I found I'd run out, and I didn't want to make another trip to the shops because I was trying to get some work done. So I looked up a recipe and made some. I had everything I needed in my cupboards, and it was quick and dead easy.
           This is what you need: 225g of oats, 60g wholewheat flour, half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, 60g butter, 1 teaspoon of salt,  half a teaspoon of sugar and 60-80ml of hot water.
          Heat your oven 190c or Gas Mark 6.
          Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together. Rub in the butter - or whizz it all up in a blender until it's like breadcrumbs.
          Then add the hot water, from a kettle, and mix together into a thick dough.
          Roll out - or press out with your hands - until it's half a centimetre thick. Then cut into rounds with an upturned glass or cutter - or just cut into triangles, or 'farls' (as Davy tells me they're called.)
          Put on a baking tray and bake for 20-30 minutes. Let them cool before storing in a tin.
          I think they're better than the shop-bought ones.
          I've been experimenting. Make them with the coarse porridge oats that I make my breakfast porridge with and you get a spongy sort of bannock, which is still tasty. Whiz the porridge oats in a blender for a few seconds, and you get a fine oat flour, which makes a smoother, crisper, crunchier bannock.
          Since I've cut out sugar and cut down on salt, I missed these out altogether, and still got a good bannock - though I think a little salt does add a savour. The teaspoon given in the recipe seems far too much to me, though, and I would half or even quarter it.
          Instead of rubbing in the butter, or whizzing in the blender, you can melt the butter in the 80ml hot water, and stir it in. If the oat-flour is very fine, you'll probably need to add more water.

          I've been adding flavourings too. Fennel worked very well. Hazelnuts too. Someone suggested that I soak some raisins in the hot water, and add them, and I'll try that soon.
          I'm not sure that I'll ever bother to buy bannocks again.
          Bannocks! I said, I don't think I'll ever - oh, bannocks.

          I had to look it up. The OED says it's 'Scottish and Nrth Eng. OE bannuc, prhps fr Celtic.' If only Great-Gran had known that.
          And 'farl' is 'Scottish 'thin cake, originally quadrant shaped, of oatmeal or flour, from obsolete fardel, quarter or fourth.' More of that 'slang' that Davy was tawsed for using. And I think it's a bit of a cheek to call a word that's still commonly used 'obsolete.'

  

Stories and Memories

Artist: credited to Dulac, but looks like Rackham to me (wikipedia)

          A short blog this week.
          Not long ago I posted a blog which talked about how vital stories are: how children need to be told stories in order to learn language.
          Stories enlarge a child's vocabulary and teach them the different ways in which language can be used: plain narrative, or heightened rhythmic, poetic speech, or the formal unemotive language of academia or law courts.
         Telling stories also rehearses the listeners in various situations, leading them through emotions, helping them to identify with beings other than themselves. An argument could be made for our humanity being built of story.
          My cousin, Alan Hess - who often shows up in the comments as 'Anonymous' signing himself as 'Manxli' - sent me this link. I watched it and felt like cheering.

          So there you are. Stories are memory-boxes, which protect and keep save those delicate, unstable memories, fragile as soap-bubbles.
          Now I know why my parents told me so many stories about their childhood, and about their parents and grandparents - and why I loved to hear them so much.
          I have been handed down a box of stories containing scraps of laughter and bits of feeling from as much as a hundred years ago; and when I consider it, they have certainly played a part in shaping the person I am.
          And those other stories - the folktales, the myths and legends. They are boxes storing the memories, observations, laughter and wisdom of thousands of people, from millenia ago.
          Telling stories is important.

In Conversation with... Judith Key

          This month the conversation is with Judith Key, the writer and artist.

          She contacted me recently because she’d seen, on my website, that my original agent was Osyth Leeston – and Osyth was also Judith’s first agent. So we got talking…

          Judith: I was interested in what you said about 'the daemon' and 'the editor.' (Previous ‘In Conversation’ blog with Jenny Alexander.) We all have daemons to a greater or lesser degree. It's that part of us we learn to suppress as we are growing up. As adults we control our emotions, and 'edit' our behaviour. On the whole it's a good thing. But that process of control can lead to all kinds of negative inhibitions too - it can be a double-edged sword. When it comes to artistic expression, young children show a natural creativity, while adults are hampered by all sorts of hang-ups.
           When I was teaching art to adults, I saw how students were often afraid to make a mark, in case they 'got it wrong.'  Each had an editor on her shoulder with an iron grip on the paintbrush.
           For a long time I was like that with writing. I couldn't get the stories out. I didn't know why. I kept hitting a wall. For years I stopped writing altogether. It was an amorous tramp who freed me from it.

          Sue Price: Oh, yes? Tell us about the amorous tramp!

Judith and the tramp
© Judith Key

           Judith:  It happened one February morning, when I was sketching in a nearby village.  It was bitterly cold, but I was well wrapped up with woolly cap pulled down, scarf pulled up, fingerless mitts and old painting jacket, frayed at the cuffs and splattered with paint. I had my back to the village pump, looking towards the ruins of an old abbey.
          A figure appeared, weaving up the hill, evidently the worse for drink. He paused at the point where the road forked either side of the pump, and stood swaying, uncertain of which way to go.
         To my dismay, I saw we were dressed almost alike - old jacket, woolly cap, scarf and fingerless mitts. If anything he looked the smarter as his jacket wasn't spattered with paint.
          He must have misread my expression, because in the next moment I was buttonholed against the pump, and staring into his bloodshot eyes.
          Then came the chat up line every girl dreads: 'Hello, Darling, going my way?'

           Fortunately, the abbey grounds were open for the annual snowdrop walk. I managed to leg it and spent 3 hours wandering the grounds alone, mentally picking the petals off the snowdrops, thinking, 'He loves me, he loves me not, he's smitten. Help.'
           With the light failing, I had to take a risk. I stood at the exit and checked up and down the lane. No sign of him. But the car was half a mile away, and between here and there were any number of bushes behind which an amorous tramp could be waiting to leap out on his lady love...

          But that day marked a turning point in my life. Our love remained unrequited, but a few weeks later I found myself standing in front of an audience that had paid good money for a painting demo that was going wrong. The paint wouldn't dry and I ran out of chat.  It must have been the repeat of that 'rabbit-in-the-headlights' moment, when I was accosted by the tramp, that triggered what came next. I said, 'A bizarre thing happened when I went to sketch this abbey...' and out spilled the story.

          It was unplanned, natural and spontaneous.  I drew an off-the-cuff caricature by way of illustration. The story and the drawing just seemed to do it themselves, without any help or hindrance from me.

          I'll always be grateful to that tramp, as his unwanted attention had the effect of shifting my chronic case of writer's block, and unleashed a second career as a performance storyteller.

            It was a turning point. From that day, stories were back in my life. Storytelling and caricature went hand in hand. Each informed the other.

          But when I turned from oral to written work again, I had trouble. I was right back to where I was before.  I'd get so far and hit that wall. Maybe I wasn't a writer...

           Then I twigged that what I was doing was trying to edit the thing before I'd written it. Instead of allowing myself to be a conduit for the story, I'd turned myself into a dam.
           I had to get the story out, however bad, fractured, uncontrolled. Then I'd have something to work with. To do that I had to forget the 'self', just as I had that day during the painting demo. Whatever was compelling me to write this story, I had to stand aside and give it free rein.

          Letting the daemon take over can be scary - where is it going to take you? You can find yourself in a headlong gallop over some hair-raising territory in a direction you hadn't planned. Helen Cresswell once said to me, 'If you don't know where your story is going, it will sure as Hell get you there!' I didn't know what she meant at the time, but now I think I do.

          Sue Price: I know what you mean – and I often find myself writing about things I know nothing about, or scenes I find disturbing, because the ‘daemon’ has dragged me there. But if anything, I’m more scared of the daemon leaving me to find my own way! I know that, without it, my writing is mechanical. The ‘editor’ can’t do it alone!
           Judith: But at some point the editor has to get involved. When daemon and editor work hand in hand, I see it as a relationship like that between horse and rider, the one all power and energy, the other harnessing that energy and with a guiding hand on the reins. When daemon and editor are at odds, it's more like a wrestling match. The work they are trying to create ends up as a casualty.

          Sue Price: Yes! 

'Evening Light' © Judith Key

          Judith: I'm inspired by landscape. Wild places. Heath, woodland, marsh. One of my favourite places is the Wash. It's an open, floating world. The editor in me sees structure, shape, tone, this colour set against that. But what excites me is the atmosphere, the shimmering light, the racing cloud shadows. Then I hear the lonely call of an oystercatcher, and I'm taken to a different level again.There is sadness and longing in those marshes. 

          That's when I tell myself I've found the 'soul' of the place. But what am I actually connecting with? Maybe some aspect of myself.

          Sue Price: Whatever it is, I can see it means a lot to you – your description is beautiful.

           But you said you’d tell me about when you had to paint a portrait of a psychotic cat… Though it’s a bit harsh to call it ‘psychotic’ if it just didn’t want its portrait painted. I hate being photographed myself.

          Judith: Oh, its psychosis went deeper than a simple reluctance to have its portrait painted. It was the most maladjusted creature I have ever met, and what was worse, its owner could see no fault in it. Maybe it sensed that I was a doggy person. It certainly took an instant dislike to me.
           I had to snatch photos of it scowling from the top of a book case, bristling under the coffee table and glaring out of the coal bucket. Then it shot under the settee where it cowered, hissing like a nest of vipers. Its owner was unfazed. 'Oh bless him, he's gone all shy!'
           I ended up with some hurried sketches, a two inch claw mark down the back of my hand, and a whole lot of snarling, spitting cat imagery burnt into my brain.

© Judith Key

          Back home, a string of monstrous caricatures flew from my pencil. (Daemon 6, editor 0). They captured the cat's character to a T! I knew it wasn't how the client saw her cat but I had to get them out of my system before tackling the chocolate box image she wanted. I managed it, after bending both my will and my pastels to her doting vision. Commissions can be a nightmare - (editor 6, daemon 0).
          Animals feature strongly in my stories, but it was only recently that I realised how that cat haunts me. Since 2010 I've written two children's books and a rough draft of a third. Flicking through them to see how I've progressed, I realise that all of them have scenes featuring the same scowling creature. And here it is again - muscling in and dominating our chat. My daemon is a cat with attitude.         

          Sue Price: Or an amorous tramp! 
          Judith: I shouldn't moan because it has given me much material over the years. Negative situations can yield much fruit. Humour works best if it has something to kick against. And yes, actually, I do like cats. It was just that cat.
           I'm sure you must have had characters that you just can't shake off - who walk into scenes uninvited and demand to be written about. Sometimes they belong there and that's fine. In fact, they can take you on a journey you hadn't expected, and that is exciting.

          Beware! Your blogspot might end up forever haunted by a glowering feline spectre...

          Sue Price: That’s okay – I’m sure Blott can cope with even a psychotic cat spectre. What are you working on now?

A cat Judith liked - © Judith Key

          Judith: Oh, I'm lugging my latest book, The Goat Boy, up the North Face of the slush pile! I try to deal with it by visualising the slushpile as a parallel universe - 
          Lit. agent 1 - 'It's a nightmare - I came into the office and there was this goat on top of the slush pile.'
          Lit. agent 2 - 'It's that Judith Key again - she never seals up her submissions properly. Don't put your hand in there - last time she sent us a psychotic cat - it had claws like Johnny Scissorhands, and I'm scarred for life.'
          Lit. agent 3 -  'Think yourselves lucky - A M Heath's had an attack of the Sterkarms - the whole place has been taken over by battle hardened horsemen and time warps. Poor old Sarah Molloy's in a right state - her desk's in the 16th Century, the photocopier's in the 21st, and the phones don't work...' 
        Sue Price: Thanks Judith - for talking and for making me laugh! - You should set up your own blog, and make us laugh reguarly!
 
           Some of Judith's work is available as greetings cards. For those, or if you're interested in her art-work, she can be contacted at inkandbrush99@gmail.com

          And here's Blott, ready, willing and able to sort out any psycho cat spectres around here...