An October’s Evening

Happy Halloween!

As you might guess, being a storyteller, I have a few Halloween tales to tell. In this blog, I am sharing with you a video I produced a few years ago. It is a collection of some of my favorite October tales.

There are five stories I share. The first I call The Gravedigger’s Wife, a humorous tale, which I adapted from King of the Cats, collected by Joseph Jacobs in his More English Fairy Tales.

Actually, all of the tales I will tell are from one or another of Jacobs’ collections.

The second tale Jacobs derived from ballads collected by Francis Child in his voluminous work The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.

Third is the tale I renamed The Loathsome Worm of Bamburgh Castle. As a storyteller, I need to put my own spin on the tales I tell. The source is called The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heugh. It is a fairly unique story. Its motif comes up in Arthurian legends and an Icelandic saga and is covered by Francis Child.

The fourth tale I find very interesting. Katie Crackernut, a Scottish tale, is the reverse telling of the Grimm’s Twelve Dancing Princesses. In Crackernut, there is a prince being danced to death rather than princesses deceitfully sneaking off to dance.

I end with The Witches Cloak, originally titled The Horned Women. Here we have witches galore.

Two additional production notes. Although I cast these as stories for an October evening, they were actually recorded on a hot and humid July night in front of a fire! Also, keep an eye out for the brief cameo appearance of our cat Ivan (the terrible).

Enough said; here is the link: An October Evening of Tales. Enjoy.

P.S. Here is another little one: Jabberwocky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XyFtYYXtPM