#AmWriting

the lovely folk of Greenock Writers Club

We had the pleasure of visiting the Greenock Writer's Club the other night to give a talk on the nicely broad theme of "Fantastic Fiction".

We have always tried to use local history and heritage as a jumping off point for fantastic stories; our original grandiose plan when we started collecting 13 years ago was to help create a mythology for the area, starting the story of Inverclyde hundreds of years before the arrival of the industries that we continue to mourn. 

It was a great opportunity for us to showcase some of the papers and stories of questionable local antiquarian Sir Douglas Rhodes, an avid collector of curios and "unusual" news items and stories. We have printed a few pieces on the blog over the last year, some directly quoted from his papers, others written by us, inspired by something from his collection. 

We read a few of Sir Glen's pieces out on the night, including this wee fragment which has actually just been adapted for a graphic novel being produced as part of the Heritage Lottery Scotland funded Identity project.

Visiting the club reminded us as well just how many interesting and creative groups and people there are in the area, just getting on with doing what they enjoy. For lovers of old photos, there's the Inverclyde Old and New Blog or Greenock in Old Photos Facebook Page. If you like your old places even more ancient, check out Inverclyde Visual Archaeology Project. We hear there's a number of very interesting arts projects potentially lined up for Greenock Sugar Sheds, Absent Voices is one of them. Arts for Inverclyde gives a real flavour of just how many artists there are working in all fields across our community.

Sometimes groups are quite happy working the way they work, and that's great, but it's always worth remembering that there are support and funding opportunities out there if you are part of a group who would like to develop new ideas or involve even more people. CVS Inverclyde ran a funders fayre in Port Glasgow last week with funders along from a whole range of organisations including The Robertson Trust, Big Lottery, Heritage Lottery Scotland and Lloyds TSB Foundation, all keen to invest locally.

These funders don't just fund Inverclyde of course, there's opportunities for all, provided you can meet the criteria set by the funder, it's always really important to check out what funders will consider; however, in Inverclyde we do get less than our per-capita share of Lottery funding; that is, proportionately, we spend more on the gambling aspect of the Lottery than we get back in good cause funding. 

Maybe you've got an idea that could even up those odds...

arctic rope, yesterday

Old Greenock Characters - Scutcher Dan

Here is another of John Donald’s Old Greenock Characters, from the first volume of his collection, the story of Scutcher Dan…

His is a sad tale, the story of a young man gifted by nature with a fine physical appearance and endowed with gifts which, properly cultivated and directed, should have achieved popularity and success; but whose weak will, further weakened by self-indulgence; dram drinking (even in its earlier and not immoderate stages) and the flattery of his associates unfitted him to withstand a reversal of fortune, so that he fell an easy victim to the insidious imp which lurks within the cup of false cheer and inebriation.

Daniel McKinnon was a cooper to trade and reputed to be an excellent craftsman duly appreciated by his employers, Abram Lyle and Sons, Nicolson Street; Thorne and Curtis, manse Lane; and others. He had receieved a fair education and possessed musical ability both vocal and instrumental, so that being a violinist of parts, able to sing a good song, good looking, good natured, and rather gay, his appearance was welcomed whether on the concert hall platform at the “Free and Easies” or in more select private gatherings.

Such a young man, handsome and open handed, was sure to find favour with the fair sex, and Dan set his affections upon a prepossessing young domestic, employed in the west end of the town. His love was apparently returned and the pair were betrothed,

“Oh, how this spring of love resembleth
The uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun
And by and by a cloud takes all away.”
The lady changed her mind and discarded the fervent lover for a richer suitor. From that day Daniel McKinnon was a broken man.

He sought forgetfulness, or at least relief, in an excess of careless pleasure and dram-drinking, neglected his work (to the sorrow of John Watters, his foreman at Thorne & Curtis’s, whose good advice fell on deaf ears), became the associate of degenerate companions and sank lower and lower in the social scale, until we find him as “Scutcher Dan”, a labelled waif, homeless and harmless, the butt of street gamins and fools barely wiser than himself, and an object of pity – generously tempered with sympathy, however, by people to whom his story was known.

The woman who jilted Dan became the wife of the then proprietor of an old-established and well known tavern in the east end (the Eagle Tavern, established 1815), and acquaintances of Scutcher, meeting him near the place, would, in a spirit of mischief, press him to have a drink therein. Fond as he was of liquor, that was an invitation which Dan stoutly declined.

“No, no!” he would cry “not there, not there;’Push-up’s’ or any place but there. She jilted me, she jilted me. Anything I would drink in there wid pizen me. She jilted me, she jilted me.”
On one occasion two or three thoughtless young men actually dragged Scutcher within the premises and right up to the bar. His old sweetheart stood smiling behind the counter.
“Come away, Dan, come away,” she said, persuasively.
But Dan continued to struggle with his captors.
As soon as he was free, he threw his arms aloft and glared at his former fiancé.
“Curse ye, curse ye, you’re the cause o’ this,” he hissed, and fled from the shop.

 For years before his death, Scutcher did little or no work; indeed he was said to have become heart-lazy, and would not even wash his face, while his garments were so torn and tattered that his skin showed here and there through the rents. The fact, too, that he, a jorneyman cooper of acknowledged ability, visited cooperages in which he worked, and there, in the sight of former fellow workmen, humbly gathered up spales to sell as firewood, showed only too plainly his complete loss of self-respect.

His musical taste and ability, however, enabled him to convert a corned beef tin into a crude kind of fiddle, from which he extracted weird music – strains from another sphere. In the lower streets of the town, where most he played, his queer instrument and strange sounds attracted many people and drew many coppers.

There are two accounts of his death – one, that he was drowned by falling between logs floating in the East India Harbour; the other, and probably correct version being that, after “dossing” on board of a tug-boat, which he often did, he was coming ashore in the darkness of an early morning when he missed his footing and fell from the gang-plank into the harbour. He died in, I believe, the late (eighteen) sixties.

Get Folked

Horrible and terrifying news for all those British parents who apparently don't like reading fairy stories for children...over 500 new fairy tales have been discovered in an archive in Regensburg, Germany, collected by a local historian Franz Xaver von Schonwerth, a contemporary of the Brothers Grimm. Celebrate this momentous find by reading The Turnip Princess right now.

It's been a while since Disney tackled myths and legends from Britain, and no one was that fussed about The Black Cauldron. (I think it's pretty good though, and even better, it's connected with the former Welsh Kingdom of Strathclyde) However, Disney / Pixar are apparently pulling out all the stops for the release of Brave, set in the Highlands, including teaming up with VisitScotland to promote tourism.

Last month, the Association for Cultural Equity started making the field recordings of prolific American folklorist Alan Lomax available to listen to online. It's a remarkable project, and you can literally lose yourself for hours in the collections. Lomax travelled the world collecting and recording, and this week, there's a particular treat for Scottish folk; Alan Lomax recorded hours of ancient ballads, childrens songs and Gaelic work songs from all over Scotland, these are now available to stream online.

As the American election continues its interminable warm up with various "super" days of the week, why not momentarily forget about separating out the fact and fiction of Romney's taxes or Obama's broken promises, and check out the truth behind some George Washington folklore...did he really have wooden teeth?

It is easy to sneer in disbelief at the fact that witchcraft is still considered a very real blight in some parts of the world, but in recent weeks there have been several horrifying stories in the news...superstition should never be taken lightly when the human consequences are all too real. Of all the stories however, the Ghana football team apparently casting spells on each other is the least disturbing.

At the other end of the witchcraft spectrum, everyone's favourite slavonic witch who lives in a house with chicken legs, Baba Yaga, makes her Blu-Ray debut this month. I have yet to see this slice of 70s surrealism, but based on the reviews, Im not sure they focussed too much on the folklore elements of the character and went instead for what we now like to call a "reboot" into the world of fashion photography. Ehm...yeah...let's stick to classic Baba Yaga action for our folk tale this week...

This Is My Home

The final track from our Downriver CD, is also the only original piece written for the album. Shelagh McKay recorded The Mermaid for the project, but also wrote this quietly celebratory song about her hometown; a wee momentary shelter from the storm of negativity that seems to so often wear us all down round here. Enjoy.

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.

Get Folked

A wee experiment now. A potential new irregular feature of folktales and breaking folklore news from the world Outside Inverclyde.

The big ridiculous news this week (timed to coincide with the new TV series Grimm) was that apparently parents are reluctant to read their children fairytales as child abandonment, dead grandmothers and delicious gingerbread men are too frightening for todays children..or perhaps more accurately...todays parents. I've read and been read all the stories on the scary list...and yes, fairytales really only came to prominence in the Victorian era as something to share with children...but you really have to wonder about how ridiculous our "waiting to be offended" society has become when the Victorians start to look progressive. Here's the wonderful Maria Tatar talking about her book "Enchanted Hunters", which explores what inspires children to listen to and enjoy stories...even the scary ones.



Happy Saint Gobnaits Day! Who? A new study by prominent Irish folklorist Celeste finds that Irelands (many) Holy Wells are frequently associated with miraculous dragon slaying Holy Women rather than men.

Want to drink as the ancients drank? Why not try this handy recipe for delicious metheglin, a flavoured mead which predates even wine. Mmm. Fennel.

Tired of boring old Arthurian legends? Want to see them reborn in an alternative universe? Then you should help fund 13 Legends on kickstarter. Read more about this series of graphic novels here.

Where myth and archaeology collide...have British archaeologists discovered the secret of the Queen of Sheba's legendary wealth?

How has storytelling and folktale tradition changed in Iran? Explore one perspective on the history of Persian folktales.

And, on Valentines week, remember that Russian folklore tells us that a couple will only ever be truly happy if they are able to cook porridge together. (note - not a folklore euphimism, this actually means cook porridge) I hope you and your true love enjoyed yours.

Here's Lotte Reiniger's version of  Hansel and Gretel...if you can handle it...