Mary Medlicott's Storyworks Blog » Blog Archive » Storytelling Starters ~ Stories: Why bother?
« Storytelling Starters ~ Picking yourself up
Storytelling Starters ~ Taking time »
But I like it. I like the birds in my life. Since installing a bird-feeder in our garden, we regularly see a troupe of goldfinches arriving â€“ often eight or ten of them. NotÂ surprisingly, these have attracted a bustling gang of pigeons that gather below the feeder to hoover up the scraps of fatball and grain that drop onto the grass when the little birds feed.Â Plus a lovely pair of robins arrive quite often,Â moving quietly round the gardenâ€™s edges before visitingÂ the area below the bird-feeder. The bossy green parakeets are not soÂ welcome.
Itâ€™s good to feel that some kind of partnership can develop between us humans and the creatures in our world. More remote in my life than the goldfinches has been the cuckoo Iâ€™ve helped sponsor over the last five years as part of the BTO tagging project I mentioned in this blog last week.Â The aim is to establish what difficulties lie in the cuckoosâ€™ way and what might be done to help.
The cuckoo I sponsor was given the nameÂ Larry. The distances he’s travelled over the last five years beggar imagination. Since 2015, he’s made four complete migrations to Chad in Central Africa and back to the UK. So even before beginning this yearâ€™s journey, heâ€™d flown nearly 40,000 miles since first being tagged. Not all the tagged birds have such success. This week came the news that a newly tagged cuckoo, Robinson, had already perished, flying into a window before even leaving the UK.
Stories have the capacityÂ to create the kind of connections between people and the natural world which have become so urgently needed today. I first got interested in the BTOâ€™s cuckoo project when my good storytelling friend, Hilary Minns, sent me details of it. I quickly got hooked. The cuckooâ€™s call had fascinated me ever since childhood when I’dÂ hear it in the fields round my grandparentsâ€™ farm. Sadly after they died, I heard cuckoos no more until, a couple of years ago, during a weekâ€™s holiday in rural Italy. However, another strong connection with cuckoos had arisen in my childhood through a story I used to be told.
The cuckoo story:
Nevern is a tiny village in north Pembrokeshire. In itsÂ churchyard isÂ â€˜the bleeding yew-treeâ€™. And yes, it really does seem to bleed and the blood is certainly red.
Nevern’sÂ cuckoo story is that each year on April 7th, St Brynachâ€™s day, the first cuckoo of Spring would arrive in the villageÂ and perch on the tall Celtic cross outside the church. Apparently it used to be thought that this had become something of a religious duty among cuckoos because, like St Francis of Assissi, St Brynach had had a special understanding of birds and animals. So it became the custom in Nevern that the priest there would not begin Mass on St Brynachâ€™s day until the cuckoo had arrived.
One year thereâ€™d been a long, hard winter. When April 7th arrived, there was still no sign of Spring. Outside the church, people waited for the arrival of Springâ€™s usual messenger so that the priest could begin his Mass. When no cuckoo appeared, they began to drift off home. But the priest held firm. Finally, as dayâ€™s light faded, a faint fluttering was heard between the ancient yew trees lining the path to the Nevern church door as a tired cuckoo flew down and settled on top of St Brynachâ€™s cross. The messenger of Spring had arrived, the first â€˜cuckooâ€™ of Spring was heard and the priest and people hurried into the Church to celebrate their much-delayed Mass.
Alas, when they came out of the church â€“ itâ€™s the sad end of the story that always, as a child, made me cry â€“ they found a dead cuckoo at the foot of the stone cross. The cuckooâ€™s long journey to Nevern across sea and land had been too harsh. But, as the story always said, â€˜it had kept its trustâ€™.
The much-needed connection:
I strongly believe thatÂ stories of the worldâ€™s wild creatures can help create and cement a sense of connection between human beings and the world of nature. This is the wisdom inÂ telling them to children. To respect the natural life of our world â€“ something that has never been more urgently needed â€“ we need all the knowledge we can get about the actuality of wild creaturesâ€™ lives. Stories are not a hindrance to this. TheyÂ help by awakening our emotions and making us care. They help create a sense of connection.
PS: First photo this week is of an engaging wooden bird from South Africa that sometimes gets broughtÂ out of my Story Bag. Second photo is, of course, a cuckoo. Third photo is a little owl, no doubt as full of wisdom as stories themselves can be.
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 10th, 2019 at 10:45 am	and is filed under Adults, All ages, Myth and Legend, Personal experience, Props and Resources. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One Response to “Storytelling Starters ~ Stories: Why bother?”
Thank you so much, Mary. Our connection with the creatures of the world is so deeply important. That cuckoo kept its trust – and so should we!