Art of storytelling undergoes a revival in Wexford

The storyteller suddenly stops to ask the younger members of her audience a question: how did St Patrick get the snakes to leave Ireland?

He used his eyes, volunteers one. He banged a drum, suggests another. But the final answer offered provides the most enduring image: "He beat them up!" Storytelling nights are like that; you have no idea what's going to be said next, or who's going to say it.

It is Friday night in Castledockrell, Co Wexford, and the Mall Hill Rambling House, a newly-renovated community hall, is packed to overflowing for the village's first storytelling event. The fear an ti, Paddy Jordan, is first on his feet telling a scandalous story about two local men, who both happen to be in the hall, and their ill-fated attempt to adjust a woman's dress at Mass last Sunday.

Not a word of it, of course, is true, but that doesn't detract from the unrestrained laughter as heads turn to examine the reaction of the story's "victims". They're chortling louder than anybody.

A couple of recitations and a song later, a professional storyteller, Liz Weir, from Co Antrim, is asking everyone present to "try and see the pictures in your head because that's what storytelling is all about. It's about seeing pictures".

The Irish Times is still seeing pictures of St Patrick beating up the snakes when Liz has progressed to telling us where they went and how they got there:

Some got on cheap flights to Majorca,

Others booked apartments in Spain,

They were all heading out

And there wasn't a doubt

They weren't going to come back again.

So the reason the snakes all left Ieland,

And this is no word of a lie,

They all went to places

To bite people's faces

And be reasonably sure that they'd die.

Liz, who travels the world spinning such yarns, is unhesitant when asked to reveal the first secret of being a good storyteller: "You need to be a good listener and you need to be sensitive to what story suits what occasion . . . I don't come in with anything specific in my head until I see the people."

On Saturday, that was one of the tips she was passing on to a group of 20 trainee storytellers ranging in age from 15 to 70 who are currently attending workshops on the ancient art.

Funded by the Wexford Organisation for Rural Development (WORD) and the public library service of Wexford County Council, the training programme will culminate in a two-day storytelling festival in Bunclody at the end of the month.

Ms Yvonne Byrne, of WORD, said the training course was designed to enable those already involved in storytelling to meet professionals from Ireland and abroad, "and to get them introduced to new techniques, new styles, new rhythms and other ways of doing things".

The storytelling tradition has always been strong in Wexford and is undergoing a revival. Castledockrell, where Friday's exercise will be repeated monthly, joins a list of more established venues like Ar mBreacha in Ballyduff and the Father Murphy Centre in Boolavogue.

While there are certain rules to be observed, anything goes on such nights.

Paddy Jordan became involved in storytelling about two years because he was "fed up" with television. "I don't look at television any more. I prefer this sort of entertainment . . . It's an alternative to what we have on television, which is nothing."

The Bunclody storytelling festival, "Stories from the Hearth", will take place on Friday and Saturday, November 26th and 27th. The line-up includes an American storyteller, Patrick Ryan; Camilla Dorcey, who links stories from Ireland and Africa; and Liz Weir.