I grew up in Perthshire, in a family who believe in the importance of maintaining our Scottish oral storytelling and folk traditions. Most of the folklore stories I share now are ones I grew up hearing from my family and family friends. Storytelling was a very important aspect of my childhood, partly because there are so many good storytellers in my family and partly because I am legally blind. My bad eyesight went unnoticed until I was eight years old, by that time I had become exceptionally good at listening and remembering what I had been told, especially if it was a story.
After university I looked for careers that had some kind of storytelling element in them, which is how I started working in museums. Museums are filled to the brim with stories, although, with so many objects, choices have to be made regarding which stories to tell.
In every culture we have three kinds of stories: stories of the castle, the government; stories of the church, or religious stories; and stories of the village – folk stories. The first two story types are told to you as top-down information, telling you what the ruling powers or religious leaders deem important for you to know. The third story type is told from person to person, heart to heart and these stories tell you everything.
Through our oral tradition in Scotland, folk stories are passed down from generation to generation, creating a multigenerational cultural memory bank. These stories are filled with the hopes, dreams, fears, daily lives and beliefs of working-class people, offering you insights into history, hidden in plain sight. However, historians often favour the written word over oral tradition and because there are limited sources written from a working-class perspective, we more often hear stories as recorded by the ruling classes or religious orders.
Aside from the written word (which doesn’t tell you everything) and the spoken word (which is hard to pin down), museums can offer another way to learn our stories: through objects.
One of the most influential points in my museum career was assisting in the facilitation of object handling sessions. When you handle an object, it creates an immediate visceral connection with history that you don’t get from only viewing objects shielded by glass cases, or only reading about them. Suddenly you see the maker’s marks, the grain of the wood, the way the object has been shaped and decorated by another human hand.
The object could have been made by someone one hundred or one thousand years ago, but time suddenly becomes irrelevant because there you are, holding that very same object in the same way, feeling the same textures and weight of it. And if you’re doing that you begin to think of objects differently. You think about the materials and techniques that went into the making of this thing you’re holding.
In Scotland we have a lot of traditional folk beliefs specific to making and to materials. Iron for example, was believed to have protective properties against malign spirits. Singing waulking songs when working with cloth didn’t just help keep rhythm, it appeased the spirit of weave and web, the Loriag. Certain trees, such as Rowan and their berries or wood, have been used in traditional folk festivals for centuries. Yew is a tree which represents death and the afterlife and rebirth in Scottish folklore, so a quaich (drinking cup) made of yew, used at a wake, a funerary tradition, suddenly has a great many more stories to tell you than the simple object label, “quaich, wood, 17th century.”
Object handling is an effective way to bring hidden stories into plain sight. Folk collections have always interested me because the objects are connected to the folktales and folk traditions of ordinary working folk and so much of our folklore mentions everyday objects found in folk collections. On returning home to Scotland to have my son, I decided to start sharing our folk stories and include objects in my tellings.
Over the last five years, I have travelled around schools, pubs, libraries, museums, telling stories and recording oral histories. I’ve collected stories that relate to folk objects and a number of folk objects that relate to stories. These objects can be handled regularly without harm, objects which bring a new dimension to learning and storytelling. Many of the objects have been donated by the people I have met and shared stories with. Some of the objects I use are replicas of historic objects made true to the original by contemporary artists, others are genuinely historic, while still being robust enough for handling.
This collection, which I use as part of my storytelling, is called the Travelling Folk Museum. I travel up and down the country with objects from this collection, working with many different audiences such as schools, youth groups and elderly groups. I make sure to design each event around the needs and aims of the client.
As well as telling stories from oral tradition, which feature these objects, I also use the objects to talk about tangible heritage (how and why they were made, what they were used for, who used them and when), and intangible heritage (folk and traditional stories the object feature in, superstitions, beliefs and cultural importance surrounding the object, including the materials they are made from and the techniques used to make them).
A multidisciplinary approach to storytelling and teaching helps to make academic subjects accessible. The intangible parts of our culture make excellent discussion points for people of any age and background.
What I am doing is not altogether new. I am enacting a centuries old tradition in Scotland, the ceilidh tradition of sharing stories and songs. My sessions are not performances or lectures. A great many adults attend my sessions and I’m aware everyone comes with different levels of knowledge and expertise. This means we can learn from each other.
I work closely with the communities I visit, for example, people in my local area have requested sessions which include more Scot’s and Gaelic language and more folk traditions to reflect the culture and history in our county. With this in mind I have developed a series of storytelling sessions which include, not only storytelling and object handling, but also Gaelic waulking songs and traditional crafts. So we sing, share stories, look at things and make things together.
I’ve been met with enthusiasm, support and encouragement for sharing sides of our working class history we don’t often get to hear about. People at my sessions have also been very generous in sharing their stories with me, adding new versions, layers and levels to old stories or hidden histories as well as adding knowledge around making techniques. By doing so, people actively help to keep that multigenerational cultural memory bank up to date and I carry their stories with me to my next event.
For example, the Fisherman’s jumper (gansey) pattern samples I use as handling objects. These were made by Katrhona Ireland who has had fishermen in her family in Musselburgh for nearly 200 years. Katrhona shared her family history and made handling samples of some of the different symbols woven into fisherman’s ganseys on the East Coast of Scotland. There is a story that fishermen drowned at sea could be identified by their ganseys, because of the different patterns knitted into them. Many historians dispute this due to a lack of written sources and dismiss it as folklore. However, during two storytelling and object handling sessions with retired groups, I have been told personal stories of how relatives found drowned at sea were indeed identified by their ganseys.
What I am doing with my Travelling Folk Museum is a version of something people in Scotland and Ireland have been doing in our ceilidh cultures for centuries. Sharing stories. I know no other form of communication more human than telling stories. And it is my joy and honour to tell them, person to person, heart to heart.
“You are the river
The carrying stream
Bringing past and present into the future
Winding through,
The landscape
Histories
Stories
Communities
People you love
They change your course
Add to your sparkleYou carry them with you.
They remain
Give harmonies to your voice
Echoing and ringing
With each of your twists and turnsFeel them bubble from your depths
Find them hidden in the silt
Or shining through
Your ever moving soul
Like bright pebblesBring them to your surface
whenever you choose
And should you choose
Weave them
into the place you are
Your home, a park, forest
or front step
The last place you were together
The places they loved to beDraw out the memories
and knowledge you carry
Remember them
in tastes
smells
musicWhether you are a raging torrent
pounding the groundOr slow sips of silver
murmuring roundYou are the river
that carries them“