What Is the Story Road? A Season of Irish Storytelling Festivals
The Story road has been good to me this season! My heart is full and my soul is satisfied from the great stories and beautiful community that I meet on the Story Road. It was a season of travelling that saw me with suitcase in hand every month of the summer, but gone are the days when all I saw were airports and offices. When you travel as a storyteller you get invited into people’s lives, hearts and homes.
A season of story spaces on the Story Road
I feel so privileged to tramp the Story Road, to be invited to share stories from the 5 deep wells of Irish Storytelling on a world stage. This season saw me travel from the East Anglian Storytelling Festival on the coast of England. Strumpshaw Tree Fair in Norfolk in the grounds of the fantastic Steam Museum, and Festival at the Edge in its new home at Bromyard, Herefordshire in the UK. Then I was back home for my annual story pilgrimage to the Listowel International Storytelling Festival where I hosted Jim Brulé from New York and Omar Belaarej from the World Storytelling Café in Marrakech as part of my #StoryBridges project. Once I had waved Omar and Jim off from my home in Cork City I was off to Oulu, away up in Finland, further north than I have ever told a story before.
The story spaces were indoors, outdoors and in the in-between spaces of barns, tents, churches and halls. All threaded together in my beloved stories from the 5 deep wells of Irish Storytelling.
Five stops on the road
At the East Anglian Storytelling Festival, I brought a show called Sea Stories from an Island Country. Tales from one island, carried across the water, told on the land of another island country. The East Anglian Storytelling Festival is very special, led by the fantastic Sarah Lloyd Winder, a beloved friend from the ‘Mad for Road’ collective. We often travel to one another’s story home ground, and I was delighted to host Sarah and the other Mad for Road gang in Cork two years ago and in Kerry six years ago.
No one is a stranger for long at the East Anglian Storytelling Festival, it has become a festival I look forward to every year. I know I will meet great storytellers and have an absolute blast steeped in the art form I love so much, but I also look forward to meeting my Story Family, my Chlann Scéalta. Sitting around the fire between shows, sharing the craic, the banter and swapping story wisdoms.
My set included the Choctaw Gift, Capaill Bán Na Mara (White Horses of the Sea), and Manannán Mac Lir. You could have heard a pin drop as we swayed to the rhythm of our beautiful stories from the unending deep wells of wisdom that feed our hearts, minds, souls and need for connection to one another.
The Strumpshaw Tree Fair is a beautifully formed festival led by the unstoppable Candy Sheridan. She boasts a Romany and Irish Traveller heritage and the welcome and camaraderie in the fantastic grounds were testament to the céad míle fáilte (hundred thousand welcomes) attitude she holds in her bones. We told stories amid wool weavers, chocolate makers, cider brewers and crafts of every description. Including a brilliant basket weaver. The music was excellent and the welcome warm.
I was delighted to host Candy for a visit to Sheehan’s Storytelling Cottage in Finuge when she visited family in Limerick during the summer.
Festival at the Edge, in its new home at Bromyard in Herefordshire is another of my favourite sessions on the UK based Story Road. I stayed in a beautiful Yurt and our weather felt more like a Mediterranean Summer rather than what I’m used to in the UK. I had four beautiful Storytelling Sets and a workshop. Digging deep into the 5 deep wells of Irish Storytelling – Our 3000 year old myths and legends, Stories from my Stones (I’m a Cork girl to my bones), Stories from the Irish Diaspora sent home across the sea, Bean Feasa (Wise Woman) stories and co-created stories. During my workshop on threading and weaving stories, the fantastic participants made two stellar stories which I later told on my podcast with Jim Brulé[Cork to New York](https://www.cork2ny.com)
The Listowel International Storytelling Festival, my annual story pilgrimage, where I hosted Jim Brulé from New York and Omar Belaarej from the World Storytelling Café in Marrakech, as part of my #StoryBridges project. It is a very special festival to me where everyone I meet feels like part of my Chlann Scéalta (Story Family). It is the festival where I ‘grew up’ as a professional storyteller and where I meet some of my favourite tellers, poets, musicians, singers and dancers. In Listowel you meet the living tradition of the Irish session.
The Irish Festival of Oulu, in Finland is further north than I have ever told a story before. This year Brent Cassidy, the founder and Artistic Director, invited me on the recommendation of Eamon Keenan, a dear storytelling friend from Antrim who has told at this festival for the past 15 years. Here I met Aslan and An Chéad Ghlúin Eile and the magnificent 20ft high Pegasus. The session was MIGHTY! and the sense of community strong in this wonderful festival that celebrates everything Irish. I was delighted to be billeted with the very talented traditional Irish speaking teller Máirín Uí Loughlann and to meet old friends from Storytellers of Ireland. Performing at the festival was brilliant but meeting this gang on the Story Road felt like coming home.
I speak a lot about the ‘Story Road’, it is such a liminal space. It exists in terms of buses, trains and planes and the people that you meet on the journeys to storytelling gigs. But, to me, it is much more than this, it is the place where I meet my Chlann, and like the tale of Brigadoon it rises and descends into the ceo draíochta (magic mist). Never again will you meet exactly the same people, or have this exact soundscape and magical moment, but there will be new ones with old friends that travel the same path. A well-worn path over millennia, a path of secrets, wisdoms, heart lifts and wonderful people who are brought together by our love of stories.
Now in these early days of the Samhain season as I shift gear to a slower pace, I reflect on the nourishment made by this gathering of wonder-full people and feel deep gratitude to these festivals for the community it fosters. Who have you met on your own life’s road, and how has that changed things for you?
Your free Samhain Workbook is here
Le Grá, Maria
In stories, all things are possible.