Stories from the fireside

FIONA McCANN hears tales of frisky fishermen and farmers with big turnips, at Farmleigh's Festival of Story and Song

THIS IS a story about a big old house surrounded by beautiful gardens in a big old park in Dublin. Once upon a time – specifically last Friday – a group of story-hunters gathered in the ballroom of the big old house. As the rain pelted down and shook the glass chandelier under the ornate stucco ceiling, the storytellers came from Iceland, Germany, Wales, Scotland and the far corners of Ireland, and with them the singers, harpists and the bards.

From Claire Muireann Murphy came the story of a changeling; from Sibba Karlsdottir, the story of a fisherman attempting to have his way with a recalcitrant mermaid; from Suse Weisse, the story of a queen who gave birth to a baby dragon with a penchant for eating princesses.

From Mary Medicott we heard the story of Shemi Wad who was flown all the way from Wales to the Phoenix Park by seagulls, only to be shot back to Fishguard in a cannon. And with all these stories came harpists Fionnuala Gill and Helen Davies, and songs from Phil Callery and Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin.

And that was how the second Farmleigh International Festival of Story and Song began, with an evening of stories and singing called Lift the Latch, emceed by the festival curators Nuala Hayes and Jack Lynch.

But the stories didn’t end there. As the sun came out on Saturday, stories continued to crop up all through the gardens and grounds of Farmleigh, growing wild by the Golden Ball and scattered through the Sunken Garden.

Anyone in search of a good yarn could happen upon a farmer and his family attempting to pull up their enormous turnip (as related in the cowshed), or a young man riding fairy ponies from Donegal to Dublin (as told in the Courtyard).

As children gathered up tales of talking frogs and cross-dressing wolves, adults were entertained with Robin Williamson’s Celtic Tales and Miceál Ross on the Fires of Lughnasa.

Away from their fireside homes, the stories crept into the spaces around the big old house. On Sunday, more stories were sung, read, spun and shared, some as Gaeilge, some in English, some in the quick-changing expressions and illustrative actions of their tellers.

Not one of the hundreds of little and big people who came to this three-day event paid for the tales they took away: the entire festival, part of Farmleigh’s summer programme, was free of charge.

By the Sunday afternoon, the big old house spilled out its last stories, and the story-hunters filed home, their ears ringing with tales to be taken back to firesides and bedsides all over Ireland, where, retold and revisited over years and generations, the stories, and their place in Irish culture, will hopefully live happily ever after.