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30 Lúnasa, 2010
Please feel free to scroll down, using my bold headers to find the most interesting bits.
Having been told that not all of my stories are ancient, and that some of them deal with contemporary taboos, Gareth Stack very kindly invited me to perform at Marshmallow Ladyboy Jesus 4, which was run to benefit Exchange Dublin.
As the name suggests, MLBJ is an irreverent and iconoclastic show, through which Gareth mediates his long-standing, unrequited crush on his boyhood parish priest, who fattened Gareth with marshmallows, asserting most piously that they had been transformed into the body of Christ and would thus convey Gareth into an immutable state of grace, no matter what kind of favours Gareth did his beloved – or how often.
Gareth and the kind people at Exchange Dublin had, as usual, gone to great lengths to make the venue cosy for the occasion, laying out duvets and cushions on stage sections.
Gareth had somehow unearthed embarrassing pictures of all of the performers as we secretly like to see ourselves. Somehow he must have bribed mummy to give him one of her old pictures carrying me in her arms, glaring disgruntledly at a bagel. To repay her kindness, he had edited the photo to shrink her enormous udders to a size B, and removed her two spare tyres.
Also, he had enlisted the help of a renowned Russian philosopher to introduce each of us. Unfortunately, as Professor Spasmoffsky himself was unable to make it, he phoned Gareth at the start of the show – “Embarrassing!” – to advise that he had made video recordings and left them on Gareth’s laptop to play at the start of each act. Professor Spasmoffsky is a very interesting character, who apparently worked as a ventriloquist to pay his way though university, and to this day occasionally performs the uncanny trick of projecting crystal-clear consonantal phonemes while his lips remain perfectly immobile.
Andy Booth, editor of Blue Ireland, read delighftul tales for children.
I was on second. For the occasion, I confessed to the events of the night of one of my undergraduate mushroom soup parties, and to my participation in the sux races in a small hospital in Belfast. I advised the audience that I would deny everything afterwards, but invited them for the duration of my performance to enjoy the pleasant ilusion that they were entirely true. “If you know what I mean.”
The place was full, about forty people plus Exchange staff.
As I was performing, I saw a well known professional storyteller watching through one of the windows. I didn’t want to distract the audience by beckoning to her, but I was disappointed that she didn’t venture in. Perhaps she had other commitments? Or perhaps the beautiful picture of mummy holding baby me in her arms put her off? For few women can compete with the beauty of my mummy as she looked when I was a babe, mewling and puking in her arms. The glow of pride lit up her face. (With a strange orange tint, I now notice.)
I sat in Gareth’s chair for the first story, since it finishes with a scene where I am sitting in the driver’s seat of a crashed car, and stood up during the sux races, so as to demonstrate. In hindsight, I should have done that demo on the stage, so that everybody could see me fall to the floor. But that’s the benefit of the retrospectoscope.
I was followed by a man who showed a slideshow of his favourite sandwich while drinking and reproducing four litres of milk - performance artist Philippe Senouci – and then Tom Rowley with his story about the other Tom Rowley.
This was followed by a broad, tattooed comedian by the name of Harry McGarry, who presented his dog’s internal monologue about being de-balled, and Kevin Gildea reading some of his profoundly quirky writings.
In the pub afterwards, Tom Rowley tactfully gave me some very insightful suggestions as to how I might sharpen the two pieces I told. I’m delighted to have a filmmaker applying the principles of filmic economy to a critical appraisal of my storytelling.
.....
At a party on Saturday, I learned a traditional Hungarian opening to a folktale:
Egyszer volt, hól nem volt, az óperencián innen, az üveghegyen túl, ahol a kurta farkú malac se túr, volt egyszer egy király lány, akit Emesének hivtak.
Once upon a time, never in a place, on this side of the great sea, on the other side of the glass mountain, where the short-tailed pig doesn’t even snuffle in the earth, there was a princess whose name was Emese.
In exchange, I offered the following:
Fadó fadó, sara raibh trácht riamh ar na cairr, ná ar na fóin póca, ná ar an idirlíon, ná ar an aghaidhleabhar, ná dada dá leithéid sin …
And a young Hungarian woman, with an obvious knack for pronouncing strange languages, repeated it after me. Beautiful!
.....
At the Dublin Flea Market on Sunday, I picked up three secondhand books for one or two euro each: Frankenstein, which I have seen Ben Haggarty perform as a two-hour tale, A Celtic Miscellany, and a collection of stories by HP Lovecraft, whom Adam has found so inspiring. Very good value! One of the stalls was books only, and the proprietor recognised me, as he had been to one of the club’s Halloween shows. Thanks for the books, Andy!
Check it out, folks! The flea market takes place on a street called New Market, near Cork Street, from 11 am to 5 pm on the last Sunday of every month: http://www.dublinflea.ie/dublin-flea-market-about-us.html
By the way, I am wondering whether there might be a space for a storytelling circle at the flea market?
.....
After the flea market, I met Tom Rowley to talk about filming a telling of The children of Lir for his Dublin Storymap. Again, Tom applied his knowledge of filmmaking deftly to the craft of storytelling, suggesting that there are certain points in the story where the audience needs to be allowed to rest for a while before the plot moves on.
Delighted to find myself talking to somebody who has such fine insight into pacing, I drew a very rough storyboard, maybe sixteen pictures in two columns on a single sheet of paper, and we reviewed the whole story to identify the key mood scenes. These include particularly the children singing to their father and grandfather on Lake Dairbhreach and the return to Sidhe Fionnchaidh, in ruins. The ending seems to have too much going on, as it involves the arrival of the monk and the king from the north, but we work out a way of making it run smoothly and economically. And, on Tom’s suggestion, we agree to close the story neatly with the image of the burial, with Fionnuala’s arms wrapped lovingly around her brothers.
Tom shows great skill and tact as a director. I enjoy taking suggestions from somebody who has such a well-developed sense of dramaturgy, and I can now understand how he manages to make his own stories so engaging. Delighted to discover somebody else who is bringing film skills to bear on storytelling. I look forward to more of the same as we develop a version of The children of Lir together.
.....
Oh, by the way, we’re also talking about holding a raconteurs’ workshop for performers with some experience. Perhaps we could devise exercises to go beyond comedy and to develop skills in conveying a diversity of moods? We might call it Unwritten Rules.
.....
Finally, some people have been asking me: “Was that story true?” I am deeply sorry not to be able to provide a straight answer to this question, but that’s what’s known as a trade secret. To find out, perform a spot at a tellers’ club, come to a workshop, and ask me there.
17 Lúnasa 2010
The last two weeks have been busy for me, including a fringe event at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, the Federation of European Storytelling conference in Reading, and Milk and Cookies After Dark.
As Claire Fitch was on the programme for the Kilkenny Arts Festival, supporting Erik Friedlander with the FLM Ensemble, we decided to take the opportunity to hold a rehearsal in front of a live audience. The proprietors of the Kilkenny Arts Café were pleased to give us permission to use the gallery on the first floor as a venue, as this might bring people in to see their exhibition. The café is on Kieran Street, which is a pedestrian street in the city centre, and the gallery is a spacious, bright room, with a varnished wooden floor, white walls and two windows onto the street.
I printed about 200 paper flyers for "Cello tales with The Oh-Aissieux and Ambiencellist / Shamanic tales with improvised cello plus electronic effects" and spent a few hours on the day handing them out to passers-by on Kieran Street itself.
When I went up to the Set Theatre to see FLM's show, I was momentarily perplexed to be greeted by Shane Latimer, who recognised me from a gig at JJ Smyth's, where I approached him some months ago to propose a collaboration. I hadn't noticed that he was the L in FLM! Claire tells me that she is now doing the same MMus as he.
It was a very engaging show, with Claire on cello, Shane on guitar and James Mackin on drums. Perhaps my previous performance with Claire has given me a new focus that enables me to engage more easily with such complex music.
Erik Friedlander himself was also very interesting, playing an American folk dance tune pizzicato on his cello before diverging into something more complex and amorphous. As he played, a screen behind him displayed a picture show from his childhood on the road with his photographer father.
Back down at the café, I arranged tables in an arc around a stage area in the centre of the wall. There were also a few leather sofas near the side wall. Claire approved this set-up and said how pleased she was with the room itself. It's good to know that we have the same sense of what makes a good venue.
As Claire set up, she mentioned that she had considered bringing a mike that I could have plugged into her speaker. I'd like to try that another time. She also mentioned that I might try some of the same equipment to create electronic effects. I am keen to try it some time.
The room gradually filled up as we performed, so that we had an audience of 22 people, a mixture of couples in their 20s and couples in their 50s or so. I was delighted when filmmaker Marc-Ivan O'Gorman turned up. He gave a screenwriting course that I attended in at the Gaiety School of Acting five years ago, and was very enthusiastic at that time when I mentioned my plan to start a storytelling club. An Irish artist of note.
Claire started the show at a few minutes after the hour, improvising to evoke a sense of the vast frozen forest of the taiga. I then told the story of how Rane survived near-starvation through his initiation into shamanistic dreaming. I drank from my glass of water at points of suspense, e.g. after the appearance of the shatun. By the way, I don't do this because I am thirsty or hoarse, but mostly to hold the suspense and to re-focus on building it further. As I told this story in a low-key, matter-of-fact way, Claire played very softly to accompany me. I followed with the story of how the wolverine came to steal the prey of human hunters. This took us to half-time.
I followed with Sun and moon, and then Nalikateq, finishing neatly at eight. As the giant shouted outside the hunter's house, Claire played loudly to match, and both of us maintained a suitably high volume to the end.
After the show, Marc-Ivan came and said that he had been "working up a sweat just watching me." And, indeed, my forehead was beaded with sweat.
It turns out that he himself plays music with some of the same kind of hardware that Claire uses, so I introduced him to her and a discussion of the relationship between teller and electronic accompaniment arose. She was unsure whether her volume had been at the right level for me. Marc-Ivan declared that I had made myself heard well above the cello, and enthused about the appeal of acoustic telling. Naturally, given my earlier discussion with Claire about going electronic, we tossed the topic gently back and forth. Marc-Ivan is emphatic that the direct vocal contact between teller and listener is a crucial aspect of the enjoyment of storytelling.
In conclusion, I am keen to try electronic effects, and I am also committed to demonstrating the power of the acoustic performer who makes immediate, intimate contact with the listener. Only a series of experiments can finally determine how and when best to proceed with either approach.
In any case, I am profoundly privileged to find myself at the centre of this debate between two innovative artists with an immense wealth of professional experience to underpin their views.
Having left Marc-Ivan and Claire to their own conversation about technologies, I went to talk to three women who had stayed sitting nearby. One of them was fascinated by Rane's story, particularly the detail of how the Yukaghir see hunting as a seduction of the prey animal in the spirit world. This, she said, struck her with a sudden sense of recognition. Her friend said she was "pleasantly surprised in the best possible way" by the whole show.
The third woman was an art student who asked whether I was familiar with a book called Women who run with the wolves, and whether my stories might provide insight into what makes men tick - "something I could do with". She had thought that Nalikateq had started as a story about a woman whose children were stillborn, but evolved into a story about a man's voyage. I am reluctant to engage in Jungian analysis of stories that are understood 'at home' in terms of a shamanistic reality, but it seems to me that, if the hunter in the story learns about the ways of the moon and tides and the way the hunt animals give birth, then he may also learn something about the menstrual cycle and the way his wife gives birth. Note that he gained insight into things that are "hidden to the eyes of men."
I am surprised and flattered and moved to find that these women are so keenly interested in stories that deal so intensely with the life-and-death struggles of men. But of course Rane's story describes how he dreamt of the cow elk and her calf as a woman and infant, and Nalikateq is titled after the cosmic femininity who waylays the hunter on his way to the moon, so the male protagonists in these stories are entangled in conflict with powerful feminine forces. In any case, women may be interested in such stories for the same reasons that I am interested in Angela Carter and Clarissa Pinkola Estés. We need to understand ourselves and to see ourselves reflected in stories, but men and women also need to see and understand each other through symbolic, primal narratives.
I look forward to more storytelling for these inquisitive women, and I hope my tales give them profound insight into the ways of men.
The Federation of European Storytelling conference in Reading was a very thought-provoking and enjoyable meeting of a diversity of minds dedicated to the promotion of the art of storytelling in a variety of contexts around Europe.
Clare Murphy and Ragnhild Mørch presented many of the sessions on behalf of the steering group. Very competently, too.
The conference included several demonstrations of multilingual storytelling, including Clare and Ragnhild and one other telling the tale of sun and moon and sea in English, Norwegian and Spanish. (This is not the same as the Greenlandic tale of Sun and moon that I tell.) The combination of languages made for a layered, jazzy musical effect. Similarly, Troels Kirk Ejsing presented a fugue in which the story of the Runaway pancake was told in Danish, Norwegian and German. The combination of voices in this case created an operatic effect. This was initially a little comical, as the story is hardly sublime, but the eventual effect was quite sublime nevertheless.
The fundamental approach is described as 'co-telling', which is close to tandem telling, but using two or more different languages, with some overlap of key phrases in each of the different languages, to ensure that speakers of any given language will be able to follow. I must ask Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh to try this approach to some stories in Irish and English with me. We might even take it in turns to tell in either language.
At the pub on the first evening, I was gradually drawn into conversation with Mick Gowar, a lecturer at the Cambridge School of Art who repeatedly reveals a detailed knowledge of various aspects of Irish history and contemporary politics, only to modestly dismiss it each time I note it. Mick is currently seeking funding for a storytelling archive project, and so is keenly interested in stories I might offer. He asks whether I have a signature story, and of course I have several: Rane in the taiga, Sun and moon, Point two twenty-two, and the Arabian Nights in tandem with Adam Wilson.
Somehow, Mick has an idea that Countess Markievicz carried a Mauser, but it takes a trip to the web to remind me that my source suggested she used a Parabellum. And I now know that there is such a thing as a Mauser Parabellum. Si vis pacem, they say, para bellum.
On the second evening, I met David Ambrose, who is involved with Ben Haggarty in the Beyond the border festival. He was very interested in the Narrative Arts Association, and particularly the question of how storytelling might take market share from other arts such as comedy clubs. For starters, I suggest, Adam and I are running a city-centre storytelling club that charges an admission fee and is striving to develop a stable of skilled storytellers who can muscle into the night-life market. Modest as the effort may be, David seems to buy it, offering his storytelling club in Cardiff as an example of something similar.
I missed the last afternoon at the conference to fly back to Dublin in time for Milk and Cookies After Dark.
There was a queue outside the door when I arrived at about half past nine, and I was almost turned away, but that Sarah Quigley declared me a performer.
I spent some time wandering back and forth between the main stage and the back room, wondering where the best action was taking place, until Gareth Stack finally invited me to hear him reading his own stories about his romantic failures. These included very charming accounts of his first kiss and his encounter with a girl with a contraception phobia.
This took place in a small room with duvets and cushions on the floor, and a sound system characterised by significant reverberation. Having settled in, I kicked my shoes off and stretched out on the duvets. Emily Gallagher soon stretched out nearby and I asked her whether she would tell us a story. No way, it seemed!
Gareth Stack did an excellent job as MC, inviting a series of interesting performances. A very young woman with short sandy hair and a very neat red dress introduced herself as Susie and told us of how she suffered a brain injury in the Luas bus crash and is now enjoying rehabilitation at a centre where a man with no legs and a man with only one arm spend all day playing pool together. I told the story of Sun and moon. Colm Keegan recited a series of poems. Gareth even managed to persuade Emily to come up and tell a story about a freebooting charmer she met on holiday. And she even enrolled Marcus O'Laoire into performing the charmer's dialogue. So that was a very good end to Emily's stage-shyness.
At one point, as I was passing through the lounge area beside the back room, I came across a young woman who I have previously met a few times at Milk and Cookies and at my own club. It took me a while to remember her name, but I was eventually able to bring it forth to greet her. We fell into conversation about her job, and sat down on a sofa to chat some more. She next mentioned that she had taken inspiration from Adam and me to read the Arabian Nights, and from out of her bag she produced a copy of Husain Haddawy's translation, which she just happened to have with her by pure coincidence. I'm deeply impressed! Níor mhiste dhom tuilleadh comhráite a bheith agam amach san oíche le bean a bhfuil leabhar de chuid Husain Haddawy ina mála aici.
As we chatted, Sarah Quigley passed by with a tray of sticky chocolate cake. I took a piece and went on listening and chatting intently to the erudite lady. When I looked again, my hand was streaked with sticky chocolate icing and I found myself trying to lick it off inconspicuously.
It turns out that this intriguing lady plays several musical instruments, and she agrees to consider playing violin to accompany Adam and me in our club some time.
The show went on till very late and I crashed on a couch in an apartment nearby before returning to help clean up.
Having bought rubber gloves, I got stuck into sorting the rubbish. I filled three bags half-full with glass bottles, leaving four bags of plastic bottles and cans, and another four of mixed rubbish. Next I went to the shop to buy bin tags, only to discover that there are no bin tags for recyclables. Perplexed and frustrated, I asked Ceri Bevan to put the tags on the bags, because I didn't have the heart to do something so half-assed. Thankfully, one of the women associated with the venue produced three transparent recycling bags, so that we were at least able to send three of our bags for recycling. I took the glass bottles off in my car and put them in a bottle bank on my way home.
In storytelling, so in ecological issues: the prevailing culture in this country is lagging severely behind countries like Denmark, where there are well-established routines for dealing with recyclable rubbish. What is needed at big events is a set of bins marked very clearly to indicate what kind of rubbish is to be put in each one: e.g. glass in one bin, plastic bottles and cans in another, mixed domestic waste in another. There is no point writing "landfill" on a bin, because nobody knows what that means. At the usual Milk and Cookies events, everybody needs to know whether used paper tea cups can be recycled or not, and it might be a good idea for the crew to bring its own stock of those transparent recyclable-rubbish bags.
Otherwise, the taiga will soon be defrosted and there will be no more new stories about starving anthropologists being initiated into Yukaghir shamanism.
Oh, by the way, in the course of the After Dark event, I met three young men who remembered me as the man who recounted Rane Willerslev's experiences in Siberia at the last show. One of them is a student of creative writing who said he felt the cold and the hunger as I told the tale. Another had a very vivid memory of the key motif: Rane's dream of the woman and baby, and then the cow elk and calf that he shot. It's very gratifying to know that this story makes such a big impression on others, as I can't easily judge it from a distance, given my friendship with Rane. I might push the boat out into ever more murky waters, but there are people in it with me all the way. Thanks for your encouragement, ladies and gents!
Delighted to know that the After Dark event brought in some cash to put Milk and Cookies in the black for once.
8 Lúnasa 2010
Milk and Cookies IX - Truth or Fiction turned out to be a winning concept that brought many people up to the mike to tell a story to a large audience for the first time.
Most memorable for me was the somewhat shy teenage girl who told the story of a boy with a mohawk and a very pretty face, who she met twice before his friend told her he had died of a collapsed lung. It was a lie, and now his mohawk is no longer attached to his head.
I told a ten-minute verion of Rane in the taiga - how my anthropologist buddy almost starved to death in the frozen wilds of Siberia, but saved himself by practising a kind of shamanism he learnt from the Yukaghir. A strange nightmare, a gift to the spirit of a frozen river, and a shadowy creature rustling in the undergrowth.
I was wearing a smart white shirt and a red, flowery tie, which I deliberately pushed to one side to undermine my credibility. I also touched my left side with my right hand on several occasions to suggest a defensive state of mind, and smiled inappropriately at one point near the climax, just to distract the audience from the obvious truth of the tale. I forgot to end with: "Má tá bréag ann, bíodh." But in any case the vote was an overwhelming "Fiction!" Hee-hee. I look forward to announcing the publication of an English version of Rane's book, which I have been proofreading.
I am looking forward to performing with Claire Fitch in a fringe event at the Kilkenny Arts Festival. Claire is on the programme, so we decided to take the opportunity to rehearse and to invite the public to watch us as we do so. It's a shame that the official storytelling events on the festival programme are designated for children. How many art exhibitions or music concerts for children are on the programme? Níl ceann ar bith ann! Liam Ó Maonlaoi "for all the family"? Ní hé an rud céanna é sin!
Along with some others, Adam and I have founded the Narrative Arts Association to promote innovation in Irish storytelling. I will represent the association at the Federation of European Storytelling's conference in Reading next week.
I'll be back in time to enjoy Milk and Cookies - After Dark, which is sure to be a hoot from start to finish.
And I'm delighted to be invited to perform in the members' rooms of the Royal Dublin Society on culture night, Friday 24 September. Details on the events page later.
11 Iúil 2010
StorySketch with Ambiencellist on 24 June was an exciting new departure for the club.
Having met Claire Fitch at the Tonguebox performance poetry evening in the Cobblestone some weeks earlier, I was delighted when she agreed to come and make soundscapes for our performances. I outlined some of our stories for her in advance, but we agreed that she would improvise without actually having heard any of them in advance.
Her set-up involved a combination of cello with an array of electronic apparatus - largely beyond my grasp - to create special effects. In simple terms, she used a pedal-board, laptop computer and loudspeaker to sample her music and play it back in loops while she improvised further.
To mark this as a very special occasion, she very kindly opened the show with lapping water and soft mood music.
My first set consisted of Greenlandic tales: Intro to Knud Rasmussen, Around the world, Sun and moon, and Nalikateq. Claire played powerful soundscapes for Sun and moon and Nalikateq. I don't remember any of the music clearly, as I was focused on delivering my words, but the fit was perfect. As the music was amplified, I found I had to deliver more loudly than usual, and this compelled me to perform "bigger" in movement as well. That old hag with the drum has never danced so energetically before.
Peter Dooley sat directly in front of the stage area, so he was the one whose lungs were taken out and laid on a dish to cool. He seemed to get a thrill out of the operation.
Adam's performed The seduction of Éadaín.
After the break, Scott Kelly turned up and agreed to perform an improvised version of Tuan of the Isles. This was just as energetic as the first time, but the content and structure were different: looser, more associative, as if Tuan were struggling to piece his lives together. The storm that struck the Nemedians knocked over two pint glasses of water. Scott recruited a volunteer from the audience to re-enact the battle between Cúchulainn and Ferdia, and well fought it was until the inevitable gae bolga put an end to Ferdia. Fair dues to Brian for accepting the call to improvise the role of Ferdia at no notice at all!
Again and again, Claire's improvisation fit perfectly.
Our last story was the Intro to the Arabian Nights in tandem, and for this Claire again played brilliantly, for about 15 minutes.
Throughout the show, Claire's Ambiencellist sound heightened the drama of the stories, compelling us to perform with greater energy. We inspired her to play, and her music inspired us to present more lively performances. At the end, she was stretching her left hand and forearm to relieve a cramp. Oops! We had been so busy performing in turn that we had lost sight of the fact that she was the only musician, playing to accompany each piece.
She protested that she had enjoyed it all the same, but we'll have to take care to give her breaks while we perform a capella on future occasions.
Oh, yes! There will be future occasions. For one thing, she has very kindly agreed to perform at a fringe event at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, where she is already on the programme:
Erik Friedlander & FLM Ensemble
http://www.kilkennyarts.ie/events/details/erik_friedlander_flm_ensemble/
What a privilege it is to perform with a musician/composer/improviser of such great skill and experience! Now I just have to find a good venue.
One of the sketch artists complained that the show portrayed women in a poor light. After all, why is Nalikateq described as a hag? And what about those licentious, treacherous women in the Arabian Nights? Perhaps I enjoy this story for the humping? I protest that, while the tyrannical kings in the Arabian Nights are misogynistic, the tale itself satirises them, but she is not satisfied. I confess that Adam and I tend to tell tales that appeal to us as men and so they may not represent women's mythology very well. To settle the issue, I invite her and her friend to come to a workshop so as to perform stories of their own choice, to present favourable feminine mythic images. They are agreeable. Looking forward to that!
Any more takers for a workshop?
Two very talented visual artists, Leila Pedersen and Daniel Lipstein, were in the audience. Leila has been talking to me about telling stories at an exhibition by Daniel and herself in September, and so, after we had tidied up, we went for drinks and a free-ranging chat about storytelling and the visual arts.
Daniel turns out to be a very interesting character. He is Israeli, but has been living in Ireland for many years, training and practising as an artist, depicting particularly his own dreams, which he regularly records in a diary. Naturally enough, he is haunted by the dream-like imagery of the hunter driving his dog sled through the sky. He mentions Bible stories, of which I know very little. Like another Jewish friend of mine, Daniel reads the Bible in Hebrew, and is also familiar with the Kabbalah - an esoteric interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. (I would have pronounced "Kabbalah" with the emphasis on the second syllable, but he pronounces it with the emphasis on the last.) He also enjoys exchanging Sufi stories. This is sure to be a fruitful collaboration.
Meanwhile, Adam and I have discovered more instances of bowdlerisation of ancient Irish tales. The wooing of Emer provides an excellent example.
In Marie Heaney's book, Over nine waves, Emer asks Cúchulainn why he has come. Her text reads as follows:
--
Cuchulainn did not give Emer a straight reply. His answer was a riddle that Emer alone could understand and she answered him in the same strange way. She knew from his words that he had come to court her and since she admired and loved him she was pleased.
--
This omits some beautiful and bawdy dialogue, as detailed in Thomas Kinsella's 1969 translation of The Táin, as follows:
--
"May the apple of your eye see only good," he said.
Then they spoke together in riddles.
Cúchulainn caught sight of the girl's breasts over the top of her dress.
"I see a sweet country," he said. "I could rest my weapon there."
Emer answered him by saying:
"No man will travel this country until he has killed a hundred men at every ford from Scenmenn ford on the river Ailbine, to Banchuing - where the frothy Brea makes Fedelm leap."
"In that sweet country I'll rest my weapon," Cúchulainn said.
--
And so on.
Now, I wonder ... Which version are we going to use?
While I'm on the topic, I had a perplexing conversation in riddles with a beautiful young woman myself recently.
Having coffee with another man and two women of my acquaintance, the conversation turned to names.
"What I think is a great name, is Aillil," says I.
Nobody else recognised it.
"It appears in several of the ancient Irish sagas," says I. "But for some reason it's unknown as a man's name now."
"You'll just have to have a son and call him Aillil," says the younger of the two women with an arch smile.
I felt my face turn white, and, struck by the elusive wonder of this extraordinarily beautiful idea, I was too slow to make the riposte that comes to me now: "Could you help me with that?"
This ambiguous remark tormented my thoughts as I tried to catch a nap that evening. Was this an ingenious put-down, a demonstration of razor-sharp Freudian insight, or a very daring flirtation?
Choosing the best possible interpretation, I invited the witty lady to come and see me perform - the debut of my account of Rane's omen.
Unfortunately, she had a prior engagement that evening.
Uair eile, deireann sí go bhfuil buachaill aici. Is dócha gur bhaineas ciall bhréagach as a focal cliste.
Eller hur?