Fifteen

Fifteen...men on a dead man's chest? Fifteen...minutes of fame?

No...fifteen years since we started doing things as Magic Torch.
That's AGES. It doesn't feel like ages obviously, it feels much longer than that.

And so, a big thank you and a tip of the birthday hat to anyone who has helped us out over the years with our plans and schemes in our 100% voluntary efforts to have fun with local culture and heritage.

Here are five favourite bits of our story...

The handcarved cover to our first project - an illuminated manuscript
telling the story of Inverclyde for the Tall Ships 1999

From the days before we had photoshop, which would have made this picture much cheaper to produce...one of the massive posters from our billboard heritage project... (2004)

Neil sits ready to pass judgement at the retrial of Captain "Ray" Kidd in Greenock Court (2001)

Balloons from our hugely popular / unpopular Greenock Sugar Sheds Campaign (2011)

The formal introduction of our hero, Sir Glen Douglas Rhodes,
ushering in a bold new era of Magic Torch comics (2013)

Now seems as good a time as any to also remind ye about some of our publications from down the years...free and otherwise...

Wee Nasties free online via Scribd

Captain Kidd Comic and many more are available in our Olde Online Shoppe

Tales of the Oak folktale collection on amazon

Tales of the Oak Comic on comixology

Tales of the Oak Comic - Mr Cube Strikes

Local Heritage, Local People - Heritage as a Community Asset


We've so much cool stuff getting organised just now for release throughout August / September / October. We cannae wait to share it.

Finally, if ye want to write for the blog, or get involved with what we do, whatever that happens to be this month, just drop us a wee email.

Unlucky Bag

It has been 13 years this month since we started collecting stories locally, and here, is the very first story that was told to us, in Port Glasgow Library on a rather nice spring morning and originally printed in Clann Abhainn Cluaidh...

"So there was my gran, and there was Margaret, and this other girl J___, but remember her family still lives round here mind. That was the gang, must have been Victorian times this was. Every Saturday they'd go to the tally and get a lucky bag wi' their pocker money. Only this week, my Gran and Margaret decided on this wee thing called 'John Brown's Body' instead...a wee chocolate coffin wi a wee sweetie skeleton in it. Strange wee thing, but no stranger than what the weans eat nowadays.
That night, poor wee J___ dies in her sleep. Poison, the doctor says. Well, here mammy's goin spare, thinks it's these lucky bag sweeties whit killed her, seeing as my gran and her pal were both alright, see? So she kicks up a fuss, and eventually they perform a post-mortem - send the lassies stomach off to get examined. Long story short...her mammy wis right. Poisoned by the sweeties in her lucky bag...mercury or something. Something like that happened today, there would be a right outcry. Don't you think?"


Friday 13th of course also has its Knights Templar connections, as does our local area, enough indeed to apparently inspire a Nazi treasure hunter to visit the Clyde...

The Castle of Easter Greenock

A more detailed history of one of the last castles to fall in Greenock can be found in Williamson's "Views and Reminiscences of Old Greenock", from where the image above is taken.

In our illuminated manuscript Clann Abhainn Cluaidh, we used a pencil sketch of the same piece, which had appeared in an 1809 edition of  "Scots Magazine" along with the following text

"The view here annexed represents the ruins of the Castle as they appeared about five years ago. The Tower has since fallen, and in the course of a few years the plough will probably pass over the remains. And thus the ancient glory of Greenock is now crowned with a colony of piggeries."
We so loved that final phrase that in a nod to the situationist movement, we got some teeshirts printed for when we were out doing research / collection 'and thus the ancient glory of Greenock is now crowned with a colony of piggeries'...surprisingly these never caught on. Our Captain Kidd 'there is nothing in this world that can make it appear I was guilty of piracy' teeshirts were marginally more popular. I'd still buy one.

This ruined barony played host to a traditional castle spirit, a grey figure (gender not identified, but generally speaking, you would expect it to be a Lady) still randomly spotted wandering around the well ploughed piggeries for a period after the collpase of the castle itself, in a similar vein to the two doomed lovers who wandered down at Cresswell long after their home had crumbled.

Clann Abhainn Cluaidh

the hand carved wooden cover to the manuscript

"Clann Abhainn Cluaidh" was our first project, put together in 1999, a modern illuminated manuscript printing some brief pieces of lesser known Inverclyde history, alongside the first of the stories we had been researching and collecting; the wooden cover was carved by Eddie O'Donnell at Neil Street Community Workshops, the illuminated borders were designed by pupils at two local Primary schools, the leather binding came from the tannery up by Bridge of Weir, and it was typed and printed by a local printing project working with adults with learning disabilities; none of it was planned out like that to "tick boxes", it's just how it naturally progressed. The book was then displayed at our local library for a month, before transferring for awhile to Cornalees Visitors Centre. It's been wrapped up safely in our archive since. It's a bit frayed around the edges, some of the binding is starting to give, but it still looks great. I'm hoping we can find it a new permanent home very soon. In the meantime, we'll run some of the wee snippets and poems that were included in this book, but never reprinted elsewhere.

Looking through the manuscript, and remembering the process got me to thinking, so please forgive me a wee indulgent moment here; heritage is a wonderful thing, but it is too often confused with history, it still amuses me to think of the stick we got from so many people locally for being in our early twenties and talking about stories and legends which had no basis in fact - as if only history mattered, as if we were too young to properly understand "The History of The Town". My all time favourite remains the time we were compared to holocaust deniers for defending the possibility that Captain Kidd may have come from Greenock- a comparison as abhorrent to us as it was ridiculous.

I love history, but it can be an academic pursuit, a game of interpretation or (as we frequently found) one-upmanship about who knows most about something; heritage...that belongs to everyone...and there's plenty folk still who don't like that. It's been years since we started collecting and reprinting / retelling stories, in that time, a lot has changed, but those same stories have been retold locally and at international storytelling festivals, recorded by schoolchildren for the BBC, animated online, Inverclyde now even has a Myths and Legends Festival each year...all good things and we are glad to have played a part in that. So, if you have a story to tell, we're still listening...

"The legends represent the imagination of the country, they are the kind of history which a nation desires to possess. They betray the ambitions and ideals of the people, and in this respect,  have a value far beyond the tale of actual events and duly recorded deeds  which are no more history, than a skeleton is a man."

Standish o'Grady 1832-1915



the manuscript frontispiece to our first folk tale



From Clann Abhainn Cluaidh - The Great Fire of Dock Lane

30 October 1863
About two in the morning, fire was discovered to have broken out in a second floor apartment, near the south west corner and above Mr Douglas's, Mr McAllister's and Mr Griffith's shops. The alarm spread rapidly, and Mr Calderwood with the fire brigade was soon on the spot with apparatus, but in spite of all their efforts, the fire continued to spread on both side with alarming rapidity. Immediately, at the centre of the block of buildings were stone gables, and it was hoped these would arrest the progress of the fire; and the firemen set to work from these extremities in order to secure that result. In two hours after the fire was discovered, the whole half of the square was enveloped in flames, rising to a great height, illuminating the town to a great distance, and alarming the inhabitants, who turned out of bed in great numbers to witness the imposing spectacle. From some of the shops and offices a little property was rescue, including the safes with their valuable contents in books and documents. By five o'clock the fire had nearly exhausted itself; it gradually got lower, and when day broke the half of the square was a mass of smouldering ruins, the twisted walls only remaining with a heap of smoking debris inside.