Tales for a Dark Winter's NIght

Renardine This time the story was about a busker and an urban fox, both of whom I met in my very first year of teaching in a small school in Birkenhead. At the end of that first year two strange events  occurred  and that led me in turn led me to research, many years later, the legend of Reynardine. 'Raynardine' in English folk-lore is a shape-changing spirit which can be a man by day but a fox by night and who is said to spirit young women away to his castle in the high mountains. But what could that possibly have to do with a street performer and an urban fox in Birkenhead? There are many different sets of words to the Ballad 'Reynardine' including some that have travelled from this country to America and back again. Here are the words that I used; One evening as I rambled, The weather being fine I overheard a young woman Converse with Reynardine   He said “my pretty, fair maid, You’re beauty does shine clear. All in this lonesome city, I’m glad to meet you here.”. ...

 Lambton's Worm 4th February I come from Newcastle originally, and still visit the magical Northumbrian coast each summer. Being very involved in folk music therefore, it was inevitable that I would become interested in the Northumbrian Smallpipes. My set was made by David Burleigh, now retired but until recently a prolific pipe maker. If you asked him how long it took him to make a set of pipes he would always say, 'well, there are two answers to that, a week, and nine years' What he meant was that he turned out a set of pipes once a week, but each set was nine years in the making due mainly to the need to season the wood at each stage of the process. The tune I played was meant to be 'Brafferton Village' but it morphed into another tune called 'Crawley Dene' without my permission. Brafferton Village was written by Kathyrn Tickell, something of a phenomenon on the instrument. If you want to hear her playing the tune, go to  Brafferton Village/Walsh's Ho...

  The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry March 2021 This story is about something that happened to me at the very end of my teacher training course, so I used it to also outline my introduction to, and long association with the wonderful organisation then called 'Colony Holidays for Schoolchildren' and now known as 'ATE Superweeks'. I was introduced to Colony Holidays by a friend called Ginny in my second year of teacher training. I couldn't possibly have known at that time how important Ginny's kindness to me was to be. The experiences that I had on that course and on successive 'Colony Holidays' were remarkable and life changing and have fundamentally influenced my styles of teaching and parenting ever since. I owe Ginny a lot, but lost touch with her many years ago. I have re-paid the favour however by guiding many other young people towards that training course and time and time again their experience and their responses to it have been equivalent to mine. ...

 Robin Hood and the Three Squires I had some brilliant Science Teachers at school, and between them they led me into a career as a Secondary School Science teacher. There were two other teachers who had  a great effect on my life though. Mr. Cary was our Music Teacher. I didn't do music to 'O' Level, but instead was assigned to the 'non-exam group' who had one 40 minute lesson of music every other week. Mr. Cary clearly despaired of teaching us anything complex, so instead each week he gave out books of folk songs and we spent 40 minutes singing those, often with him taking requests for our 'favourites'. The other teacher was our brilliant English teacher, Mrs. Elliott who taught both English Language and English Literature, my best two subjects at 'O' Level, despite my decision to head Science-wards. For Literature we had to study Robert Graves' book 'English and Scottish Border Ballads' (I held up my dog-eared copy in the story session)...