Spinning a Good Yarn: a Storyteller’s Story

“Storytelling involves thinking on your feet. I enjoy it more and more as the years go by. Zoom meetings have been a boon, allowing me to connect with more people and learn new stories. I started with Zoom in lockdown and it’s a technology we need to embrace for the future. 50 or 60 years ago, you’d have one fixed phone in your hallway. Now you’ve got the world in your pocket.

“I’ll do between six and 10 short stories in a session. I also use flash cards with Lincolnshire dialect words. It goes down well and breaks up a long session nicely. If I told all the stories I know, it would take all day!

“I always start by briefly introducing myself and telling the story of my 19^th-century ancestor, Jabez – my great-great-great-grandfather – and his adventurous courting at South Ormsby Hall on a snowy winter’s night. Your readers can hear that story HERE. Jabez is the child holding the board in the above picture taken at the Old School, South Ormsby, in 1894. I have a tape of my father telling that story, and he got it from his great-grandfather.

“Families in those days lived in the same village, generation after generation, often in a ‘thack’, a traditional thatched cottage. My family passed on the craft of boot-making. They were boot-makers, mind, not cobblers. Cobblers just repaired boots while boot-makers – also known as booters – made everything from scratch. That’s how I accidentally got my name. Generations before Jabez, there was a Harry Butters who wanted to marry. The vicar asked his name and he said “Harry Booters” in a strong Lincolnshire accent. The Vicar duly wrote down ‘Butters’ when he should have written down ‘Booters’!

“I pick up stories here and there and my list is quite extensive. I have traditional Lincolnshire folk tales, including the Dragon of Walmsgate. That greedy dragon with its armour and bad breath devastated sheep and crops across the Wolds until the good knight, Sir Hugh Barde of South Ormsby, challenged it to a duel and slew it with a lance, leaving it buried in a long barrow alongside the road between Swaby and Walmsgate Top, with the bones of Celtic men, women and children for company.  You can hear me tell that story HERE.

“I draw on my personal family history. I’ve got Japanese, Viking and Scottish tales. I keep an ear out and I’m a bit of a collector. I’m busy with the storytelling and I’m quite in demand, generally by word of mouth. Last November, I was invited to the Boston Book Festival and I talked about storytelling. They’re using the printed word whereas I do it by word of mouth.

“I do storytelling at schools and I particularly like key-stage 2. Some people imagine a storyteller reading to children from books, but I do it the old-fashioned way. I generally get a class to myself all day and I teach children how to find, remember and tell stories. I’m in demand and last June I did nine schools in a fortnight.

“There are storytelling clubs here and there, and they used to meet in pubs. There’s nothing in Lincolnshire but Zoom has allowed me to join clubs around the UK and as far afield as the USA and Morocco.

“Norfolk-based professional storyteller Hugh Lupton has done a lot to re-establish storytelling as an artform. I’m a member of the Society for Storytelling whose whole aim is to promote an art which has been in danger of dying out. Some gifted people are working hard to keep it alive. People like Hugh Lupton and Ben Haggarty will tell a saga for three hours!

“Do say hello at South Ormsby Estate’s Open Weekend and maybe we can share some stories. I tell stories to all kinds of folk, from infant schools to gardening clubs to care homes. Whether you’re eight or 80, everyone loves a story.”

Keith will be joining us on Saturday 20^th May and is always happy to chat. We love to walk the Wolds, but we’ll cheerfully admit there’s more than one way to enjoy a ramble.

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* Image of St George and the Dragon (Verona, C13) via Wikipedia PD

* Snowdrift image by Simon Harrod via Flickr CC