The Welsh Episode with Claire Fayers - Part 1

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