Latest / Mythmakers / The Welsh Episode with Claire Fayers - Part 1

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The Welsh Episode with Claire Fayers - Part 1 · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding, I'm
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  an author and screenwriter and also director of the Centre and today I am joined by one
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  of our tutors who is also an author and expert on all things Welsh and so the theme of our
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  podcast today is Wales. So I'm going to attempt a greeting in Welsh, apologies to any Welsh
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  listeners. Shimai Shudahi.
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  Ah, tui ni'am di'ach. That's Shudahi, which is I'm very well, thanks. How are you?
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  Claire Feiers has written a number of books for younger people as well as more recently a
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  collection of Welsh myths and legends. So Claire, do you want to tell us first of all about your
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  journey to being a writer because what you're doing is what many of us writers end up doing. You
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  do your original fiction but sometimes you also do these sort of collections and other things
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  for publishers. So do you want to explain how you got to be where you are today?
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  Yes, well, it was a very long and tortuous route I think with lots of details through
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  Merquence and down in big holes and climbing back out to getting. But I have always loved stories
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  and right from a child I read voraciously and made things up in my head all the time.
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  I think I found it was just an escape from everyday life and the worlds I created in my head
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  were something that I had control over and as a child you have very little control over your
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  life and I think I loved that sense of actually being in charge of something. So I would spend
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  ages making things up and then making my characters do things and then thinking, oh what if they did
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  something else and then go for something else. So I think as a child I was naturally pointed in
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  that direction although as a child it never occurred to me that this was something that I could
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  do. Yeah, I don't know if you were like me. I used to look at a shelf of books in the library and
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  just assume everyone was dead who wrote it. Oh, absolutely. They were all rich men with
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  beards and pipes and fancy jackets and they were certainly weren't they were there were no
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  sort of pills from South Wales. It was all very people. I'm thinking yeah people like me I got
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  yeah it didn't even occur to me that it was something that I could do until I left university
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  and I went through a period of unemployment was just wanting something to fill the time and saw
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  and of course on freelance writing and marketing. I think I'll have a go and so I got started actually
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  writing from magazines, got the first things published and it was just such a thrill to actually
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  have something in print that it took off from there. Wonderful. So I was reading the introduction
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  to your book of Welsh legends and you have a very telling phrase about wherever you tread your
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  stepping on stories. So we'd like to expand on that a little because I think this is something
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  that inspires a lot of fancy writers that though we're creating other worlds like Tolkien,
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  what we're really working walking through is a sort of idealised version of our own world.
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  So you know Middle-earth is full of bits of Oxfordshire and Yorkshire and the Alps and places
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  like that where he walked. So would you want to say how that works in terms of myths and legends?
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  Yes I think in terms of Wales has got this great tradition of myths and legends and it's also
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  something I didn't actually know much about when I started writing. I was just writing the kinds of
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  stories I wanted to tell this and the things that I had in my head and then gradually as people
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  started identifying me as a Welsh writer I started feeling more Welsh I mean because of that I'm
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  looking into the Welsh stories. So many of them are actually tied to the landscape which is
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  something I absolutely love about them. I mean you're standard European fairy tales a lot of them
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  could just happen in a wood or in a castle or some sort of generic tone. In Welsh ones it's that river
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  over by there has got a monster in it and the monster is called the Avanc and if you go close
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  to the river it will leave out an eat you or that mountain is where the devil used to play
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  counts of giant jack and so much of it is specific to the locations and there are hundreds and
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  hundreds of these fragments of folk tales as well with odd bits of the devil pops up all over the
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  place in Wales. We seem to like him as a sort of trickster character and he was forever frightened
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  people who didn't go to chapel and the links will have the fairy folk and monsters and there were
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  dragons and the mountains almost every place you can find an associated legend with it. It's as if
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  people just looked around where they were and thought oh I wonder what that could be. I'm just
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  throwing inspiration from the landscape to tell stories which then gave the life of their own.
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  Yeah I think perhaps actually if we did but know that some of the ones you mentioned are generic
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  like a forest or whatever probably do have a similar origin because I was struck a couple of years
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  ago I was visiting my sister in Cyprus and they were friendly with local Cypriots and one of them
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  George was telling me a story and it went something like oh yeah and that beach down there was
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  where Aphrodite landed from her shell ship and she walked up to this spring up here and such and such
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  happened so even something like the the Greek gods and those myths and legends to modern day Cypriots
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  still have a real natural local resonance yeah I think some of the some of the better known stories
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  and the ones that have travelled everywhere maybe almost become generic because each storyteller
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  will put them into whatever their own location is or just say a forest far away. I think perhaps
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  the odyssey is a bit of an exception in that because a lot of the monsters are connected with
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  dangerous places for sailing so it's a bit like an navigation aid don't go near this
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  silhouette and look this you know because your ship full wreck it seems quite sensible warnings
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  and I also think that we do I don't know about you in your own family but I think we create stories too
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  even now it hasn't obviously reached the level of a myths and legends passed over to other people
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  but car journeys for example that you would do regularly when we had small children we would tell
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  stories about things that you saw on routes yeah we had a particular one if you go down to the
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  southwest in this country there's a sort of wicker man who points the way he looks a bit
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  dilapidated these days and so we started telling stories about the tabby man of the southwest because
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  he's got a bit of a bit early and links him up to the angel of the north which is a very fine
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  Anthony Gormley actually up in Newcastle that area and every time he passed it we'd have a new
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  story about this creature and just because he's a landmark and I felt that that was
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  tapping into that urged tell stories past the time entertain the children and actually I'm sure
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  is where a lot of these myths and legends come out I think they do and a lot of the modern urban myths
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  of the I think Terry Pratchett him at least one of his books and probably more says that they are
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  so that the the notion that these stories keep happening yeah there are certain things in the story
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  that resonates there is the yes the girl in the car who's boyfriend gets out and she hears a thump
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  thump and realizes that somebody's banging his severed head on the room for oh yeah the horror
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  stories those sort of horror ones they sort of nobody knows where where they came from who originally
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  came up with them I think going back to Wales I think there was a couple of characters recurring
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  characters this is not the Babinogian level of storytelling I'm talking more about the fairy tale
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  level that I feel particularly Welsh there's a particular Welsh kind of dragon I think and there's
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  also the creatures in the mines I know places that have mines Poland up north around here I'm
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  sure anyway Germany anyway that has mines have their little creatures in the mines but they're also
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  little creatures in the mines in Wales do you want to sort of perhaps tell us a little bit about
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  those two groups so yeah the the dragons obviously there is a very famous story of why the Welsh
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  flag has got the dragon on it and the notion that they were two two dragons were fighting it
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  actually does date back to the Babinogian the in the Babinogian there is one story in which the red
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  dragon the white dragon they're causing chaos and they are basically given a load of meat to drink
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  and when they thoroughly drink the big act of off and stick them in the cave and then later on
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  it's brought to gun a few of the Britons in just after Roman times is trying to build a fortress
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  and he doesn't know that there's the cave in the ill the dragons and the fortress whisky's
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  falling down all the time and they find out that they've got the two dragons the fighting and the idea
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  is the red dragon represents a sort of plucky Welsh people and the white dragon is the invading
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  Saxons at the time but and of course the Welsh flag was not it was not chosen as a symbol because
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  of that story but it was also like later on when people said a white of a dragon these sorts
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  of fragments of stories came up and now you've got this whole legend about why there is
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  and yeah the tapters in the mines I've got that the the the pucker they call them in well too you've
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  got them in Cornwall as well and anyway you've got mines there they will there will be strange noises
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  in the mines and echoes of sound and yes people came up with the notion that they were people
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  there and in the Welsh mines often they would tap to either warn you of danger or to show you where
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  they were the best scenes of cold gold whatever it was in reminding would be until you could sort
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  of follow the sound to to find a new witch seam or something so our Welsh dragons going back to
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  the dragon theme are they largely threat figures or are they sometimes a sort of funny benign so
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  talking for example in palm jars of ham his dragon this is obviously a modern registry modern
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  story turns out to be quite friendly whereas smoug is not so is there a range of dragon types
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  in Welsh stories I think not so much I think generally the dragons are pretty indifferent to the
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  fact that there are people so the dragons are like the original inhabitants back when whales
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  were just full of magic before the humans moved in and they were dragons and they were monsters
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  and they were the the tall of tag the the fair folk and they are largely indifferent to people
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  coming along as long as we don't get in the way and annoy them I think it is fun to think
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  generations of these things because I remember growing up you look about similar vintage to me
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  there was the fantastic animation on TV called either the engine oh gosh with the dragon doing
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  the engine yes so the dragon so I think the eggs are hatched in this the coal the furnace bit of
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  the steam engine firebox or whatever it's called don't write in please if you're a steam
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  and we'll look it up at some point that that was extremely sweet and cozy so that's my impression
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  of really all you nice friendly little dragon's yes they are yeah they they aren't yeah they
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  have so many stories that have them surprisingly is by the fact that we have one on the flag and
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  yet they do tend to be that they they are just creatures that are from almost from another world
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  and our lives don't really interact with them that much I have flag envy I think so if Scotland
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  for example doesn't be independent in you know the next decade or whatever and they have to rethink
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  the union jack I really think there's a huge case bringing the well straggling right in the
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  you know let's let's let's this really grand if we if Wells hasn't gone independent as well
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  let's rebrand that would be great we can have a white dragon and a red dragon that would be just
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  good I really am too on the fighting on the flag that will be really good well hopefully not fighting
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  all this racing off against each other on the flag yes yeah anyway so there we go out flag makers
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  out then that's that's my tip so is there any other sort of favorite Welsh folktales that
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  have particularly interested or intrigued you outside these dragon and tapertales they think
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  well you you have the magnogium of course and this year I was lucky to be invited to actually
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  write a story for the the new collection called the map which map grown and Eloise edited
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  where we each basis 11 different children's authors we each took a story and rewrote it
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  with children in mind which was yeah either yeah I had to one which was a story which is a bit
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  of a non-story about a man who had a dream so I had a constructive narrative but then other people
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  had the really blood first he once and he tried to make them suitable for for younger readers
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  with phone but the thing I have really become interested in is the little bits I've discovered quite
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  a few Victorian gentlemen who used to travel around Wales and they would just look at people when
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  they didn't stop in the place and ask for the stories asked people to to talk to them tell them
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  about the things they knew and recorded them and you've got lots of little detail and it's all
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  based around the local areas and the local people then and it's stuff it doesn't tend to get told
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  that seems as though they're following in the footsteps of the brothers Grimm who I think perhaps
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  one of the early well I suppose it started with the ballad collectors like person collections in
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  the 18th century if anyone studied 18th century literature they there's these ballads that
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  somebody called Percy collected which has some fantastic lots of scots stories in there and others
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  um because ballads were one of the original ways obviously of transmitting stories
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  for you yes yes it's very much so very much in the in the same tradition the people who
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  just became interested in Welsh folklore and legends and just get traveled around and kept
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  a little old and then published them did they do you sense a Victorian gentleman's editorial hand
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  on them or have they managed to keep the flavour um depending on the collections they are different
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  because you do have some which were written by to the American people there's a
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  I am she trying to remember the man's name though possibly William Griffiths or something
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  but he he was well shared it so I think his grandparents had emigrated to America and he came back
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  over ended up in Cardiff for a while and started collecting the folklore and you get some of the
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  English Victorian gentlemen very much we want to talk to the peasants and see what the peasants
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  will tell us and there's yes very much a sort of the these are the rough superstitious folk who
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  were telling us their things but there is a Welsh um a Welsh referendum and school inspector
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  who's um his essay is I've mentioned him in the introduction to Welsh fairy tale so I think
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  and he compiled an essay that was the this is the prize winner at the i7ford in the one year
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  and whenever he went around to do the school's work he would ask to be pointed towards the
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  oldest people in the place and he would just sit and chat to them and he wrote down all sorts of
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  things and that there there is no condescension or no sense of sort around and collecting these
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  curious tales and that is just one person talking to another and writing down what they say
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  and that that one is a really wonderful collection so the i7ford just for people who aren't familiar
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  with it is a cultural festival that happens once a year in a Welsh move doesn't it it moves
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  from town to town and it has you know choirs and well you tell us what it has yeah it has a bit
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  of everything it's a real celebration of music poetry storytelling writing they have some poetry
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  competitions where they will give the poets a theme and then send them away for half hour
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  and they come back and read out what they've written in that time and that kind of thing
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  I've been I've been once uh I went when actually my daughter my my eldest child was six weeks old
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  and I was carrying her in a sling she was tiny tiny and I never had so many people come up to me
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  speaking in Welsh because I think they thought I'd come to sort of baptiser in
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  I don't actually have any Welsh ancestry I'm aware of I wish I did but yeah it was a wonderful
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  event so Claire I'm looking at all of this and he's one of the great sort of bodies of stories that
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  we've inherited what do you think has carried over into our modern fantasy writing have you seen
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  any I suppose particularly the Mabinogin that must be stories from that which have are percolating
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  through the the rock strata and becoming out into different things yeah so I mean the the most
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  famous Mabinogian example of course is Alan Garnas the Elzurvis which probably is called itself
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  now but very yes but every very Welsh setting the Welsh rally where the notion is that this
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  story pattern just keeps happening all over over and over in different iterations in different
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  generations I think we should congratulate Alan Garnas at this point for appearing on the book
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  a long list oh absolutely another person who one might think has no longer writing for whatever
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  reason and there you pops up wonderful this keeps me yeah he just keeps going he's he's he's quite
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  amazing and yes and I think apart from that there are there are things that people might not
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  actually be aware of Welsh in origin like notion of I mean the tool of tech come up you you get that
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  a lot in in this sort of rural folklore don't think there's the notion that there are fair
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  fairy folk magical folk who look human and sometimes they will help sometimes they're malevolence
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  again they they sort of live in a different reality from us again so sometimes our paths cross
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  with them and sometimes we come off better for it and sometimes it can be very harmful it's that
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  notion of you're never quite sure where you are with magic and of course the whole Arthurian
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  links and I mean we're talking about the Celtic world of storytelling of course yes there's a lot
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  of shared and cross fertilization but Wales is full of places associated with King Arthur and it wasn't
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  merely supposed to be Welsh in some versions of the world and of course you've got the Welsh poet
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  Taliesin or there's a one second early type of Merlin. Those of you on your inkling inklings watch
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  Taliesin is the main character in the cycle of Arthurian poems written by Charles Williams
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  who's one of the inklings so there we are nice and joining the dots here.
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  Thank you for listening to part one of this week's podcast come back next week to hear part two
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  thank you for listening to Mythmakers.
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