The big stately field oaks, their lower branches with browse lines sharply defined by grazing cattle, are still in leaf. They are among the last of the trees with a semblance of green, though they are fast turning brown and from a distance they have a patina of weathered copper Verdigris. A few frosts and they’ll join the stark bare branches of the birches and rowan in the moor gill woods.

Although there is a feeling among the trees of gathering themselves for winter, in the hedgerow along the lane the hazel coppice is already preparing for early spring by putting out hard green catkins. In February they’ll open, and their pollen will blow onto the tiny red female flowers that you need to look closely at the twigs to find.

I’ve been moving a few boxes from my cottage on the moor to my new house in the upper dales. I’m fortunate in being able to do this. It takes a bit of work off the final big move in early December – a box carried now is one less to carry later – and gives me an excuse to do some exploring.

This week I saw an ‘Evening of Storytelling’ advertised in the local social media to be held in Gunnerside Village Hall and thought I’d give it a go. As usual I turned up a bit too early and parked beneath the pale glowing village hall clock, which told me I was half an hour too soon. But that gave me time for a chat with other early birds and ample time to settle into a seat with a good view of the storyteller’s big wooden farmhouse kitchen chair.

The evening was delightful. The storyteller entranced us with twists and turns of long and short tales, never once faltering and with impeccable timing. Somehow made all the more real by the storyteller himself being blind, with his service dog waiting patiently to one side. The lights were low and tables scattered amongst the audience were lit by tea and fairy lights in bottles. At the break I had a glass of apple juice and a piece of deliciously moist, freshly baked parkin. The rest of the time I was transported into a reverie with my imagination full of carefully crafted images spun there by the storyteller.

It was a long drive home late at night down the winding lanes of the dale, so I had plenty of time to think of poems about storytellers. Here are two. The first you might be familiar with, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The opening lines, when the ancient mariner grabs the wedding guest, are now part of the English lexicon:

He holds him with his skinny hand,

'There was a ship,' quoth he.

'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'

Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

The other is not so well known, but perhaps has an echo of Coleridge’s dramatic long yarn in its nautical reference. The description was rather more similar to my evening in the village hall than an encounter with a grey-beard loon on my way into a wedding. It is ‘The Storyteller’ by Imogen Wade:

I sit with adults at the table

and smile with my lips

but inside I am thinking

of a wild wooden ship.

Do you enjoying listening to stories, either from a talking book or by someone reading to you? Or perhaps you prefer to be the storyteller yourself.

Rowan on the Moor

A Moodscope member

Here are links to the two poems:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43997/the-rime-of-the-ancient-mariner-text-of-1834

https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poems/the-storyteller/