Introduction

Although England is a small country, it is amazingly diverse. As you travel

through the country, every few miles the scenery, atmosphere and even the accent

of the people change. There are modern built-up city centers, the wild windswept

moors of Devon and Yorkshire, the domestic patchwork quilt of the rural middle

England, mountains and meadows, forests and heath, babbling brooks and rushing rivers. The English history lies spread out across the land: ancient hill forts,

ruined castles, black and white timbered manors, thatched cottages and the modern architectural feats of the Tate Modern and the Eden Project. And everywhere

you go there are stories to be found. Every rock, mountain, field, and village has

its own story. Some are well-known throughout the country, such as the stories of

Robin Hood and King Arthur; some are almost forgotten, the memories of them

lying in their place name or a mossed-over memorial—but they are all still here

waiting to be discovered and brought to life on the tongue of a storyteller once

more.

Passing on those tales from one person to another is part of the storytelling

world and a tradition that is live and well in England. Every time that Dan visits

England, he returns with a pocketful of stories, gifts to share with his audiences in

America. Sometimes those tales are shared late at night after a performance or

festival, sometimes on ajourney, the places in the story being pointed out through

the windows of the car.

There are storytelling clubs scattered all over England, some informal gatherings where like-minded people come together to swap stories, others where you

can hear professional storytellers in concert. There are a number of storytelling

festivals including Festival at the Edge in Shropshire, The Lakeland Storytelling

Festival in the Lake District and the West Country Storytelling Festival in Devon.

There is a Society for Storytelling (SfS), a national body promoting stories and

storytelling throughout England and Wales and even a museum, Mythstories,

dedicated to the art of storytelling. Wherever you go, it seems there is somewhere

where you can sit back and listen to tellers as they weave their spell of words and

take their audience on a wonderful, magical trip to faraway places. At Festival at the Edge, you can sit in the shadows near the campfires and watch as, one by one,

tellers rise from the listening audience to take their place as links in an endless

chain that stretches back through English history and celebrates the humor and

joy, the sadness and grief, the struggle and hope that folktales keep alive for the

people who have told them and for the people who have listened for countless

generations.

These stories share a commonality with the folktales of all cultures. In these

tales, we see the same struggles and hope that we encounter in stories of the peoples of the Americas or the Middle East, in the legends of Asia or Africa. As people read and hear the stories of another country, they not only gain a better

understanding of its people, they also understand their own people and past as

well. What better way to learn about another nation, another people, than through

the folktales they have kept alive through countless generations. If bridges can be

built in this world between nations, then the foundation of those bridges are the

stories that people tell in their communities and around their kitchen tables, that

they keep alive in their hearts.

Although a book like this can only scratch the surface of a country's folktales, it is our chance to celebrate the wealth and variety of traditional English stories and the talent of the many storytellers to be found here. Each storyteller has a

different voice, style, and story to tell. We hope readers will enjoy these stories

from England and hear the voices of the tellers as they read their words.