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Tibetan Butter Tea

Sound recording, story; Tibetan Butter Tea, a wonder tale and transformation tale from Tibet told by Sally Pomme Clayton at the ninth West London Storytelling Unit Clubnight entitled The Feast of Heart's Tongue, at Common Stock Theatre, Hammersmith, London, 19th February 1984

A story, told by Sally Pomme Clayton, about a young man and young women who fall in love. The young women's mother is furious, as she has already arranged her daughter's marriage. She orders each of her three sons in turn to kill the young man. The third unintentionally poisons the young man and he dies. The young women throws herself on his funeral pyre, and their bones fuse. The furious mother separates the bones, which then undergo further transformations and need to be separated time and again, until eventually their souls rise up to the heavens.

audience:- adult; contributing storytellers
    recording quality
condition:- fair
completeness:- complete
duration:- 0 hours, 10 minutes, 32 seconds

The West London Storytelling Unit Clubnights or The Storytelling Unit Clubnights were begun by Ben Haggarty, TUUP and Daisy Keable in 1982 shortly after beginning to work together as the West London Storytelling Unit (W.L.S.T.U). They took place on roughly a fortnightly basis during the atumn and winter months, in community centres in Acton, Shepherds Bush and Hammersmith. The clubnights were an opportunity for anyone to come and tell a story, or perform music on the condition that it had a toe-hold in tradition. The performance of original poetry and the reading of original writing was actively discouraged as there were plenty of other fora for 'new writing' elsewhere in London. In 2007 Ben Haggarty explained that the clubnight format was in part inspired by the College of Storytellers, but with the aim of doing something less bourgeois, for a younger audience and which was not dominated by Idries Shah's mission to promote his vision of Sufi storytelling. The clubnights also took inspiration from the anarchy of the London Musicians Collective clubnight events in Camden. The clubnights led Ben Haggarty to inaugurate the First UK International Storytelling Festival at Battersea Arts Centre in London in January 1985. After the 1985 festival a few further clubnights were run, before ending in 1986. The clubnights were superseded by the formation of the Company of Storytellers who pioneered the touring of adult evening shows throughout the UK, and by the formation of the Crick Crack Club in 1987, which focused on the programming and development of professional storytellers, their performance skills and their repertoire for adult audiences.

storytelling:- storyteller: Sally Pomme Clayton
female / British

origin:- Tibet


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Images of clubnight events at Common Stock Theatre

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administration:- storyteller; promoter: Ben Haggarty
storyteller: Daisy Keable; Georgiana Jerstad; Georgiana Keable
storyteller; musician: TUUP; Godfrey Duncan


storytelling:- Hammersmith, London, England: Common Stock Theatre
19 Feb 1984
storytelling club: West London Storytelling Unit Clubnight
storytelling club: Clubnight 9
The Feast of Heart's Tongue


gift from:- storyteller: Ben Haggarty


©  The London Centre for International Storytelling: 2007
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