| WOSAS : F722 |
WOSAS/CD226/track3 R763.wav |
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| Sound recording, story; a folk tale and ghost story, told at the fifteenth Storytelling Unit Clubnight, at an unidentified venue, London, 1984 | |
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| A story told by an unidentified storyteller. A man's wife dies, but before she dies she makes her husband promise to always be faithful to her. The man cannot fulfill his promise and is haunted by his wife. He seeks the advice of a Zen Master who tells him, next time he encounters the ghost, to take a handful of beans and ask her how many beans he is holding in his hand. The man does this, and the ghost vanishes. | |
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| The story is followed by a examples of other traditions and traditional stories where beans and rice have similar powers, or play a magical role, with comments from Ben Haggarty about the story Ol' Hag, and from Sally Pomme Clayton about The White Goddess. | |
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| audience:- | adult; contributing storytellers |
| recording quality | |
| condition:- | fair |
| completeness:- | complete |
| duration:- | 0 hours, 5 minutes, 50 seconds |
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| 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. | |
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| storytelling:- |
storyteller male |
| administration:- |
storyteller; promoter: Ben Haggarty storyteller: Daisy Keable; Georgiana Jerstad; Georgiana Keable storyteller; musician: TUUP; Godfrey Duncan |
| storytelling:- |
London, England
1984 storytelling club: Storytelling Unit Clubnight storytelling club: Clubnight 15 |
| gift from:- |
storyteller: Ben Haggarty |
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