Tales of the Oak : Stories...Twice Told

Magic Torch are delighted to reveal that we have received funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund "Your Heritage" programme to deliver a new project - "Tales of the Oak", which over the next 18 months will create a new storytelling club and publish two new books.

The new project will include

- opportunities to be trained by the Scottish Storytelling Centre on how to use oral tradition to celebrate local heritage

- new research in local and national archives to collect supernatural tales and local folk stories

- publication of a fully illustrated "scary storybook" retelling local legends and stories for children 4-8 years old

- publication of a 1950s style "terror comic" featuring scary stories and retellings inspired by local legends and ghost stories

- a new storytelling club, with sessions running Winter 2012, Spring / Summer 2013 and again in Winter 2013

- a chance for local schools to be involved in a Scary History competition; pupils will be asked to submit their own scary story with the winning entry included in the childrens book or illustrated for the comic.

The storytelling club will be run from The Dutch Gable House, and you can find out more on how to be involved on Doors Open Day there on Saturday 8 September.

We are not looking for people to do a formal presentations, or give a performance; it’s not a book reading or a drama group. We want to draw inspiration from the tales that folk used to be tell around firesides. Those folk were not professional storytellers, neither are we. We want to help restore an old oral tradition by creating a new living tradition. 

We'll be sharing regular podcasts of stories from the club on our Soundcloud page and hopefully via itunes as well.

The blog will be the main way to follow what's going on in the project, so be sure to bookmark us, or subscribe via email / feedburner.

The entire project is volunteer run, with all the funding being used to pay for project outputs like storytelling training or the publications.

If you've been following the blog for awhile, you'll know that over winter we like sharing ghost stories. In fact, our first book, published in 2000 even included a few. We've had stories about cursed trees, sad tales of forgotten loves and over on my own blog Stramashed there's been the tale of The Duchal Well and some sugar sheds flash fiction based on the urban legend of The Catman

But there's always more to hear
- what's the story with the Arts Guild ghost, surely now lonelier than ever?
- any Cappielow Ghouls?
- any truth to the rumour of Roman legionnaires marching over the moorland behind Kilmacolm?
- is Ravenscraig haunted?

Project funders, Heritage Lottery Fund, are keen to hear from Inverclyde groups with other heritage project ideas. Interested groups can find out more from the website www.hlf.org.uk or by contacting Development Officer Louise Hastie directly on LouiseH@hlf.org.uk.

We love collecting and sharing stories, and this new project will let us do that in all new ways, we're looking forward to you getting involved. You can contact us at aulddunrod@gmail.com

For now, here's one we made earlier....

About the Heritage Lottery Fund

Using money raised through the National Lottery, the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) sustains and transforms a wide range of heritage for present and future generations to take part in, learn from and enjoy. From museums, parks and historic places to archaeology, natural environment and cultural traditions, we invest in every part of our diverse heritage. HLF has supported more than 26,000 projects, allocating over £4 billion across the UK and more than £1/2 billion across Scotland. www.hlf.org.uk

The Greenock Fair

A Greenock Tram all decked out for celebrating...

The Scottish calendar is littered with famous festivals  such as Hogmanay and Halloween, which are rooted in tradition and folklore. Yet while all Scots are happy to first foot or raise a toast to the bard, there are also some peculiarly parochial dates in  our  diary, dates which warrant further examination. Almost every town in Scotland has its own fair, traditional holiday periods celebrated in summer. The oldest of these ancient market days is of course, the Glasgow Fair,  originally established by a charter from William the Lion in 1190, but latterly the last two weeks in July when factories and offices closed for summer holidays  and everyone  went "Doon the Watter" to Largs Rothesay and Gourock.

Greenock for her part celebrates the fair on St Helens Day, at the end of June, close to the summer solstice and has done for over three hundred and fifty years. In 1635  John Schaw Laird of Greenock  received a charter from King Charles the First  which conferred upon Greenock the rights and privileges of a Burgh of Barony which  amoung other things  gave the people living there  the right to hold two annual fairs  and to trade in home made commodities. 

The day was looked forward to for months, not merely for the holiday, but for the celebrations that came with it, and often as summer approached, the townsfolk would be heard to say, “hoo much hae yae saved up for the fair?”.

The fair itself was held either at Westburn Street, or St Andrew's Square, and it was truly a sight to behold. A whole host of caravans, all decked out with flags and bells. The blast of trumpets, the cracking of riffles – an invitation to joins the celebrations. Waxwork models, photographers, magicians, merry go-rounds, plays and musicians; all just some of the attractions one might see in bygone days.

Yet as time marched on, the fair diminished in size, until one day, the caravans came no more. Today the fair is still celebrated, although in a very different way. No longer does the town come together to toast its own, but rather we travel far and wide on Fair Saturday. Actually, mostly just to Blackpool and Largs…but all the same have a right good Fair Saturday!

If yer stuck for something to do...you can read a wee story of some Old Greenock Characters enjoying a Fair Saturday in times past, or ironically enjoy the 80s feelgood hit "Walking on Sunshine", because as we all know, it ay rains on fair saturday...

Your History 2

Here's a big phrase "intangible cultural heritage".
Big in the sense of "wordy", big also in the sense of "really quite important". So what is it?

ICH is tradition, superstition, stories, songs, rituals, festivals...the parts of history and heritage that a community preserves by passing it along to itself. The stuff you cant touch, but that you can hear and experience...in short..all the really cool stuff. So, in our neck of the woods in Inverclyde, ICH would be things like the New Years Day Dip, Comet Festival, Going Galoshans, stories about The Catman and so on - living traditions.

However...tradition needs more of a helping hand than it used to, as communities shift and change and people communicate differently, we pass less and less along in the way we used to...but no one would want us to lose decades and centuries of traditions forever.

Edinburgh Napier University are compiling ICH on a wiki. That sentence may sound a bit weird to you, but have a look at the Intangible Cultural Heritage Project in Scotland to see how you can help keep your communities traditions alive.

Follow them on Facebook here.

And enjoy some classic New Year Intangible Cultural Heritage with this clip of Up Helly Aa...