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The Stories in their own words.

Lady of Powys

Years and years ago a daughter of the Earl of Powis was courting one of the gardeners. Her father disapproved and cut off the hand of the gardener. The gardener picked up his hand and threw it and the mark of his hand is still there. The gardener put a curse on Powis Castle and said that no son would inherit from his father. Since then the sons have always died leaving a nephew or a cousin to inherit. The griffins on the garden gate have severed hands in their mouths.

The young girl rode down to the river and drowned. Since then the river has claimed a life every year, and her ghost can still be seen riding her horse around the Welshpool area.

Ghost on Red Bank (1950)

A group of us (late teenagers) used to congregate at the Cock Hotel at the top of Church Bank.

One of the lads went off with his girlfriend up Red Bank and left us in the pub. Half an hour later he came running through the door white, shaking, looking absolutely terrified.

‘I’ve just seen a woman on a horse at the top of Red Bank.’

‘Where’s your girlfriend?’

‘I left her there.’

She never went out with him again.

It all happened a long, long time ago. The evil Squire of Bagbury was cursing his farmhands, laying about them with a whip, when something cracked. No, it wasn’t the whip, but the resolve of one of those poor bullied men to keep his mouth shut and keep his job. He uttered a curse and a curse so rich that the wicked Squire was gone in a puff of acrid smoke, and there, in his place, stood a black bull, and not just a black bull but the devil incarnate.

It served him right maybe. Yes, but it didn’t serve them right; the people of Bagbury and Hyssington, who hadn’t liked the Squire one little bit, found out they hated with a venom that quarrelsome devil bull who began roaming the countryside and causing havoc and panic wherever he went.

Every hour has its man and at that hour a fresh faced Parson of Hyssington Church came to the fore with his prayer book ready, to stare that malicious animal in the eye.

You’ve heard about the power of prayer, it certainly has a miracle or two to perform. It put paid to that big black devil bull. But it needed perseverance and staying power from that young parson

Off went the parson late in the afternoon to seek his quarry. When he was fixing the creature eyeball to eyeball he began to pray, reading from his prayer book as fast as his lips would let him.

The bull seemed transfixed; it followed him like a meek little lamb back to the Church. When he had it inside, he prayed some more. Gradually, as he spouted forth prayer on prayer, the bull started to shrink.

By eight o’clock it was the size of a Jersey cow. By nine o’clock it was the size of a Shetland pony. By ten o’clock it was the size of a Welsh ewe. By eleven o’clock it was the size of a sheepdog. But at that moment, when the church clock struck the hour, the parson’s candle guttered in a draft of wind and went out and he had to go home to return by light of day next morning.

As soon as he stopped praying, the bull started growing. By dawn it had grown so big that the church could barely hold it. It was cracking the walls, the cracks are still there today, and it was getting ready to push the place apart when the parson arrived back, prayer book at the ready.

Well it was a long day’s work, but he did it. He was almost hoarse, but by five o’clock the bull was the size of a dormouse. He loosened his boot, slipped it off his foot and threw it slap-bang over the tiny bull, trapping it inside. He tied the laces tight as tight could be and rushed out of the church and levered up the doorstep with a handy spade the grave digger had left leaning on the wall next to the church door. He threw the boot beneath and let the heavy stone fall back into place.

At the end of that day the parson let out a sigh of relief, which turned to a laugh and then to a roar.

“Its my job to save souls”, said he, “but today I became a hero by losing a sole, the one on the bottom of my boot”.

The bull’s still there under that stone to this day. But don’t you go looking or you’ll be the most unpopular person you could ever be.

Somewhere about the start of the 1700’s there were a motley group of lads in Wem in search of fun, but definitely not innocent fun. Anything with a thrill and a few pints of beer attached. The lads had ranged Shropshire causing upsets wherever they went and found not one door was open to them. So it was Friday night and they were in their local in New Street, looking for something apart from booze to fill their time. They tried skittles, dominoes and cards, but nothing lifted their ennui. Then one bright spark came up with an idea. “Let’s conjure up the devil”.

Not everyone knows how to make the Old Man appear. But that lad had got a friend who’d read a witchcraft book and he’d jotted down the recipe. It all seemed quite simple too. They needed a great chalk circle on the floor leaving enough room to move around between it and the walls and to give them easy access to the bar. Then it was only a matter of chanting the magic words as they walked around the circle three times. No I’m not going to tell you what words they were – you might try it too. This is definitely a ‘don’t try this at home’ folks; you’ll ruin your lovely decor.

The third time around when their feet touched the point where they had begun, there was a blinding flash. The room filled with smoke, the floor cracked open and snapped shut and there on the quarry tiled floor was a big, black bull with an evil look in his eye and a bellow coming from deep in his throat. You’ve guessed it, it was old Jack Beelzebub, his snorting breath smelling of Old Man’s Baccy and his horns glinting in the failing light.

It didn’t take more than a blink of the eye and a screech from the barmaid before those lads regretted what they’d done. With Old Nick pawing at the chalk circle with his great big hoof, there was no time to waste, he’d escape that circle if they didn’t get rid of him soon.

They tried chanting the magic words backwards, while walking widdershins (that’s anti-clockwise for the uninitiated) three times around the circle. It was no mean feat, especially after a drink or two, but it was all to no avail. The Devil, now he was there, albeit in the shape of a bull, was fixing to stay.

This needed the Devil’s adversaries on the case, and luckily Wem is a holy place so there was no shortage of vicars, priests and preachers ready roll up their sleeves and do battle. One after another they came with bell, book and candle but as they tried to read the words from the good book up came that devilish bull with a snort and put their candles out. Good men they might have been, but they couldn’t read in the dark, so things were getting desperate. Those lads had recruited every holy man in town.

They set off to Shrewsbury. There was an Abbey there, and a Cathedral too. On their way they came upon a fancy church, so fine it could have been a model for a wedding cake. It was called ‘Battlefield’ and there was a battle to fight now. So they decided to give the vicar a try.

A fine man was the Rev. Leonard Hotchkiss. He listened carefully to their pleas and a smile came to his face.

“I’ve just bought one of those ever-burn candles with a hundred-hour guarantee. A miracle of modern science, that’s was they are”.

It wasn’t long before they reached the New Street pub and off went the Rev. Hotchkiss round the circle intoning the good book’s words, as the big black bull got to work huffing and puffing to put his candle out. Third time around that bull look pasty and pale and all blown out, which the candle flame was definitely not. Another blinding flash, again the room filled with smoke and that same quarry tiled floor cracked open and snapped shut. Then, as the smoke cleared, there it was for all to see, or not to see; because there was nothing. That big black devil bull had disappeared.

Hotchkiss was a hero, although he shunned fame or reward, his story lingered on. He got his prize some years later when the Shrewsbury School Headmaster died. The board of governors said, “none of the masters are fit for the job – make Hotchkiss the new Head. If he can deal with the Devil in Wem he can cope with some of the little devils we have in here”.

It was done, delivered, and if you doubt this story’s true just read the role of honour at the School on the hill – ‘Rev. Leonard Hotchkiss, Headmaster 1735’.

He says: “The three knights in this panel are described as 13th Century heavily armoured chivalric Knights on heavy horses, also robed and clad in armour. This might have made sense to the scribes who committed this tale to writing but in fact there were no such heavy horses in Arthur’s time period, horses were small and would find it almost impossible to take the weight of a man let alone taking a heavily armoured man into battle. So I had to reinterpret the descriptions in the text while still following the symbology and colours. To do this I modeled the 6th Century knights and horses in the garb of Roman Cavalrymen, much more in keeping with the level of sophistication available to Arthur’s Knights in their time”.

“What truly intrigues me about the parable on the vital importance of not fighting among yourselves but uniting to meet a common enemy delivered to Rhonabwy by King Arthur is did Rhonabwy learn that lesson and convince his peers? There is very little evidence, Welsh history is sketchy but it looks like the Welsh Kings carried on the infighting and inevitably had to concede their territories to English rule. King Arthur was maybe correct when he said ‘it pitieth me that men of such stature as these should have this island in their keeping, after the men that guarded it of yore.’ One way or the other thanks to Rhonabwy the story is still there and being told, one day we may grow a little taller and a little wiser and we Welsh might reunite and rule ourselves.”

Revisit Work in Progress Part 1

Revisit Work in Progress Part 2

Revisit Work in Progress Part 3

Last summer Shropshire Council invited Mythstories to put forward a proposal for storywalks with the Ukrainians who are settled in the County.  We were thrilled.  Our volunteers and the staff at Shropshire Supports Refugees had been talking of this project for a couple of years and now, with funding from the Council, the time was right.

The Ukrainian community is housed across Shropshire, which is a very rural County.  We wanted to showcase the different spaces of Shropshire and its diverse natural beauty, introducing the community to places they could revisit for leisure and pleasure, and provide an opportunity for the families to come together.  But most importantly we wanted to pass on the myths and legends that make these places so special.

We were lucky enough to benefit from the translating skills of Stas at Shropshire Supports Refugees, and he worked closely with our Storyteller Amy Douglas to ensure all the stories were communicated no matter the current English language skills of the listeners.

We held six storywalks over late Autumn, Winter and early Spring:

Ellesmere

Click the link below for a family creativity challenge based on the Mrs Ellis story…

Carding Mill Valley

Onny Meadows

Haughmond Hill

Here’s a film of the story of Sabrina which Amy told…

The Stiperstones

Embedded below is a film Amy made for us about Wild Edric of the Stiperstones…

Much Wenlock

Click the link below for a family creativity challenge based on the story of St Milburga…

Thank you to Steve, Shropshire Supports Refugees’ volunteer mini-bus driver, who not only brought the families safely to and fro, but was also knowledgeable about the sites we visited.  And to our own volunteers who gave up their Saturdays to steward the walks.

And thanks to Bloomberg Philanthropies, we were able to give the community bookmarks and postcards in their native language, with QR codes leading to the Mythstories’ app. which they can download in Ukrainian and use to explore more.

And special thanks to Shropshire Council who commissioned the walks programme

Dez says, “The left hand panel of The Dream of Rhonabwy Triptych shows three lieutenants / Knights of Owain ap Urien coming to deliver bad news to their leader.

Incidentally Owain ap Urien or Owain mab Urien aka Ywain in the later Arthurian canon, is the son of King Urien of Gorre (North Cumbria and Northumberland) and the enchantress Modron aka the sorceress Morgan Le Fay; and for fans of the museum was the bump in processional giant Morgan’s tummy, see https://mythstories.com/museum-exhibits/bertilak-morgan-processional-giants/.

Owain ap Urien in the central panel is ensconced in a game of gwyddbwyll with King Arthur and apparently the game has come to life on the nearby fields with Owain’s Ravens (warriors) battling with Arthur’s Knights, although the two leaders are, in fact, allies.

Each of Owain’s Knights bring increasingly worrying news for Owain, who implores Arthur to stop his Knights harassing his Ravens. Arthur’s response is always to tell Owain to stick to the game in hand, saying, “your move”.

Painting this story persists in presenting temporal challenges. Arthur is a 5th Century leader from the immediate post Roman era in Britain, although he and his Knights are often portrayed as Chivalric Knights of the middle ages because their stories were not committed to paper (or parchment) until the 12th Century.

I wanted to, as much as possible, show the Arthurian story as unfolding in the late 5th Century so needed to find a way of interpreting the text which is so prescriptive on the nature and colour of the clothing and equipment of its protagonists, to be relevant to post Roman Britain rather than the Romantic Knights of the middle ages.

The middle image depicts Gwgawn Red Sword but the text doesn’t tell us why ‘Red Sword’ became attached to his name, although he is said to have ‘a scabbard of red deer-hide, tipped with gold’. Maybe he was such a fierce warrior that his sword was always blood red when he returned from battle. I have added red garnet jewels to the hilt of his sword and a large garnet decorates the pommel, but this is simply my imaginings.

I chose a heraldic style Red Lion for the pendant on his tent as I wasn’t at all certain that a 6th Century Briton would have ever seen a lion in the flesh. It is possible that the Romans may have imported some African Lions into the Arenas and Amphitheaters in Britain in previous centuries but very unlikely that any would have survived into the 6th Century.

However the part of Gwgawn’s description in the text that made me stop dead was… “and on his feet were hose of fine white buck-ram, and buskins of black leather were over his hose, whereupon were golden clasps.” I am in my seventieth year but I had never heard of buskins, a sure sign of a misspent life I thought and began to search the internet. Wikipedia gave me a definition, ‘A buskin is a knee- or calf-length boot made of leather or cloth, enclosed by material, and laced, from above the toes to the top of the boot, and open across the toes.‘ I also found out that buskins were worn by the Ancient Greeks and the Romans, and they were still a fairly normal footwear in Medieval times up to the 16th Century. I chose a pair of Roman army surplus buskins for Gwgawn being closest to his time period.

The lower image of Gwres of Rheged presented me with a more semantic puzzle. What exactly did ‘speckled’ suggest? Gwres was the possessor of ‘a tent speckled yellow, the largest ever seen’, also he had ‘a mighty lance, speckled yellow’. What does speckled mean to you? Speckles are not exactly spots, probably smaller I hypothesized, maybe a little more ill-defined around their edges, and most notable for their proliferation. One can have a spot but I’ve never heard of anyone having just one single speckle. After a little musing I decided that speckles on something like a large Roman style Military tent would be larger than those on the shaft of a mighty lance.

Later in Gwres description I was halted in my tracks again by ‘hose of fine Totness’. I knew hose was stockings or long socks, and I also knew that Totnes was a place in Devon, surely the extra ‘s’ on the end was just a typographical error, but I had no idea what ‘hose of fine Totness’ would look like. Despite the lateness of the hour I sent a text to a curator of textiles I knew and she was able to tell me that these stockings would have been woven using fine quality wool. Totnes was a centre of the wool and weaving trade and the phrase ‘hose of fine Totnes’ would mark out their wearer as man of quality, who only wore the best available stockings.

The eagle on Gwres tent I have based on a Roman Legionary eagle. There have been many stories about Legions losing their eagles during tours of duty in Britain – a mark of real humiliation for the Roman Army and a true prize for any Celtic Tribe lucky enough to claim the eagle as booty. No eagles have ever been discovered in Britain but maybe Gwres just might have had one.

After Gwres delivered his woeful message to Owain he was sent to the battlefield to hoist his banner at the point where the battle was at its fiercest. And when he did suddenly the tables miraculously started to turn, and Owain’s dead Ravens came back to life to renew the fight.

Now I can move on to the right hand panel of the triptych, hopefully as a wiser man, but I’m sure that panel will pose new problems for someone brave enough to try to picture The Dream of Rhonabwy.”

Go direct to Work in Progress Part 4

Revisit Work In Progress Part 1

Revisit Work In Progress Part 2

“Moving on from perspective and size ‘The Dream of Rhonabwy’ presents other challenges. Not least the anomalies of a story set simultaneously in two time periods separated by 500 years + of ‘Dark Ages’.

What clothes should the characters be wearing? The story is recounted as a memory of what Rhonabwy saw. Would he see and describe things from his 12th Century viewpoint relating to what was familiar to him? Because of those ‘Dark Ages’ he’d have little, if any, knowledge of history and the immediate post-Roman period of King Arthur, unless it was passed on through those intervening years by orally transmitted stories. We don’t know that but we do know how Storytellers relate their stories to their listeners’ lives and lived experiences. So stories can change in their detail considerably over the years.

Is the story just a dream? I don’t think so, I think Rhonabwy travelled back through time, summoned by King Arthur. So I’ve chosen 6th Century styles of clothing for the characters in Arthur’s retinue. And the tents aren’t elaborate jousting tournament tents, but in the Roman Army style probably left behind after the Romans left Britain.

The story, however is saturated with significant symbology so I have kept to the colours described in the text although the appropriate dyes wouldn’t have been available in the 6th Century. The colours, like the smoke represent that magical other-world Rhonabwy has been drawn into.

If you were to paint this story what style of dress would you chose? The choice is wide… mid 6th Century to coincide with King Arthur’s lifetime; mid 12th Century Welsh costumes to match Rhonabwy’s lived experience; late 14th Century / early 15th Century to coincide with the written version of the tale which was penned in Medieval Welsh in ‘The Red Book of Hergest’; or modern day dress to make the painting relevant to your audience today. Maybe none of the above or a mixture of some or all of those and more?

Go direct to Work in Progress Part 3

Go direct to Work in Progress Part 4

Revisit Work in Progress Part 1

Dez says…”I probably should have known better than to even try to attempt to picture this tale but ever since I first told the tale it has fascinated me. It is set near my home and the pull of local tales is very strong somehow knowing the places where the stories took place gives you an urge to keep the tales alive by telling them whenever you get the opportunity. This tale is not an easy one to tell in fact it comes with a warning in its conclusion…

‘And this tale is called the Dream of Rhonabwy. And this is the reason that no one knows the dream without a book, neither bard nor gifted seer; because of the various colours that were upon the horses, and the many wondrous colours of the arms and of panoply, and of the precious scarfs, and of the virtue-bearing stones.’ from the 1877 English translation by Lady Charlotte Guest.

For an English speaker it has many difficult names both to pronounce and remember and the dream sequence is quite complex and difficult to decipher. So as a storyteller I had to resort to finger painting on my i-pad to fix the chronology in my head, and I’d share my pictures with audiences when I told the story. I’m sure many purists wouldn’t approve, but it’s the only way I had a hope of remembering all the characters names and the ancient Welsh version of chess, gwyddbwyll.

Looking back I think as soon as I started to put images to the story I had made the decision to paint the tale. I say paint the tale because I don’t consider myself an illustrator. To me illustrations are adjuncts to written words. Oral, spoken word storytelling can be accompanied by pictures, in fact most storytellers remember stories in pictures in their imaginations, that way they have the freedom to shape the stories to words that fit their audience, they do not recite a text.

My pictures aren’t great respecters of the rules of perspective, I usually start planning canvases by drawing a spiral in the Islamic fashion and then place my composition on the curves. I still employ the same practice planning the digital drawings I produce. In the central panel of the triptych above the spiral intends to draw the viewer’s attention in to Arthur’s Garnet Ring and then the crumbled remains of the red playing piece on the game table; two crucial points in the story.

Also from the Islamic tradition of Mughal Court Art Miniature Painting I also ignore perspective, sizing characters by their importance. This was the ideal medium to employ for this drawing as the Dream of Rhonabwy is a story where size is all important. Just see the quote below…

‘Then came Iddawc and they that were with him, (Rhonabwy and his two comrades who had been transported back through time) and stood before Arthur and saluted him. “Heaven grant thee good,” said Arthur. “And where, Iddawc, didst thou find these little men?” “I found them, lord, up yonder on the road.” Then the Emperor (Arthur) smiled. “Lord,” said Iddawc, “wherefore dost thou laugh?” “Iddawc,” replied Arthur, “I laugh not; but it pitieth me that men of such stature as these should have this island in their keeping, after the men that guarded it of yore.”

The central panel is a little like a religious icon too as it doesn’t deal with one moment in time but a continuum of events at a scene.”

Why has it taken so long (nearly a year)?

Dez says…“When I’m working on a story I’m telling it to myself over and over and gradually, as I do, I get to understand more and more, what it’s about. I’m changing and revising the picture along the way to incorporate my deeper understanding of the tale. Time is crucial for this kind of development, the story matures slowly like a good wine.

For instance my idea to put the Welsh hills behind Arthur changed about six months into the process. I realised that the motive of smoke was effectively the gateway to transport Rhonabwy and his comrades back in time to the magical world of King Arthur so that world should be surrounded by smoke.

The story presented other conundrums too, the final image had to show what was happening on the table, and at the same time convince the viewer that Rhonabwy could see what was happening on the table although he was such a ‘small man’ and therefore actually viewing it from below. I hope I managed that, but it took a great deal of thinking and that took time!”

Go direct to Work in Progress Part 2

Go direct to Work in Progress Part 3

Go direct to Work in Progress Part 4

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