Quilting: Eileen Haley

Interview with quilter Eileen Haley

A wise, whimsical, world-embracing artist

Spring 2015

Eileen Haley

Introduction:

Eileen Haley is a Sydney-based quilter, creative writer and grandmother, who identifies as a pagan and Goddessian, attending rituals to mark the Wheel of the Year, e.g. equinoxes and solstices. She spent 12 years in Mexico in the 1970s and 80s; then in 2005 made a world trip, from which sprang a poem sequence, Full Circle (published by Ginninderra Press) and quilt series, EarthWomen. She graciously agreed to an interview for our fairy blog:

Hexagon images above, left and below, are details from quilting (with magickal effects) by Eileen Haley.

LJK: At the Australian Fairy Tale Society conference 21st June 2015, your quilting was on display at the NSW Writers Centre, showing a variety of subjects, seasons and settings, from beach rescue to Icelandic elves or Hidden Folk. Would you tell us more about these pieces?

EH: I exhibited four quilts at the 2015 Australian Fairy Tale Society conference:

• Fairies dancing at Beltane (with village witch)
• Icelandic spaewives (with the queen of the elves)
• Camogie players (with Constance Markievicz)
• Volunteer lifesavers (with Annette Kellermann)

All four are from the EarthWomen series. I chose them because they all have fairies in them. 

• Fairies dancing at Beltane (with village witch)

Beltane, 1st May in the northern hemisphere, celebrates high Spring. Veils between worlds are thin; fairies and humans mingle. A village witch dances skyclad, carrying the broom on which she has travelled to the glade. Earth Goddess is in blossom with flowers of hawthorn (May), a tree most beloved of fairies. Above the witch are embroidered details of British witch-hunts of 16th & 17th centuries. Queen Elizabeth 1st had made it a hanging offence to have dealings with fairies.

Quilt by Eileen Haley: "Fairies dancing at Beltane (with village witch)"

• Icelandic spaewives (with the queen of the elves)

Icelanders remain aware that elves inhabit their land. A 'spaewife' is a shamanic seeress. In the middle is Thorbjörg, spaewife circa CE1030, from the Saga of Erik the Red, with her words in that story. On the left is contemporary spaewife Erla Stefánsdóttir, author of the Hidden Worlds Map of Hafnarfjördur town, showing elven habitations. Right is the Queen of the Elves, a primordial numinous presence known in north-west Europe as Nicnevin, Gyre-Carling, Queen of Elphame or Frau Holle. She blends with a goddess referencing a mediaeval Icelandic embroidery of Virgin Mary, through whom Icelanders venerate Freyja, Norse goddess of love and fertility.

"Icelandic Spaewives (with the queen of the elves)"

spaewives - detail, courtesy Eileen Haley

centre spaewife detail

spaewives - detail

• Camogie players (with Constance Markievicz)

Four Irishwomen play camogie, a female version of the traditional Gaelic sport of hurley. Their uniforms are rainbow-hued, echoing prevalence of rainbows in Irish landscape and folklore. The background is a patchwork of fields peopled with leprechauns and such like. The players' companion, Constance Markievicz, was a feminist leader of the Irish independence movement, early 20th century, who abandoned high society for the Irish Citizen Army. The ballgown, corset and other garments of that life lie scattered at the feet of the players.

"Camogie Players (with Constance Markievicz)" by Eileen Haley

• Volunteer lifesavers (with Annette Kellermann)

Women lifesavers dance on a beach. Mermaids populate the ocean. The dancers' companion, Annette Kellermann, was known as the 'Australian Mermaid' and 'Diving Venus'. Swimmer, aquatic performer and film actor, Kellermann was a pioneer of bathing costumes allowing free movement. The primordial Goddess at the centre is the Ocean. This quilt celebrates women's volunteering, a strength of Australia’s social fabric. 

"Volunteer Lifesavers" by Eileen Haley

LJK: Quilting is a medium of which I’m ignorant. Would you please introduce this art-form? 

EH: A quilt is an artefact consisting of three layers of fabric, the middle usually thick, soft and woolly (the wadding). Layers are held together by rows of stitches in different directions so wadding remains evenly distributed. It’s a patchwork quilt if at least one outer layer is made up of small pieces of fabric stitched together. Quilts can be embellished with appliqué (shapes sewn on top of a layer) and embroidery. But the quilt’s essence is that it recycles old material... My mother made one out of scraps of dresses belonging to herself and her three daughters. It preserves memory... 

LJK: So there's a link between family, frugality and fairies?

EH: Grandmothers love to make quilts using such fabrics for their granddaughters. In the 2006 NSW Quilters Guild exhibition, Denise Sargo exhibited a quilt entitled ‘Faeries for Bianca’. Her catalogue note stated: “My granddaughter is a passionate, imaginative and beautiful little girl. She and I both like mauve and pink and believe in ‘faeries’ at the bottom of the garden”. A fairy quilt manifests a bond between generations, old to young (Maiden and Crone). Quilting is up there with knitting, spinning and weaving as a mythological craft. Just about every quilt shop has a section devoted to fabrics with fairies.

"Crone" from 2003 Ouyen Women's Rain Dance during Victoria's drought

LJK: How did you find out about The Australian Fairy Tale Society? Why did you join?

EH: I read an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, prior to the first conference in 2014. And I joined because I Believe.

LJK: Last year I was intrigued by an event at Mooncourt that you advertised through the AFTS: “Faerie Stories (not your regular fairy tales - not a princess in sight!)” What sorts of fairy tale characters, if any, might some of us have recognised there? And can you tell us about some of the more mysterious or lesser-known creatures? (However, I respect that fey folk are very private!)

EH: One faerie presence is the house elf, whom I learnt about in Iceland. What is borrowed becomes invisible, until returned when no longer needed. The elf in our house seems to have a repeated need for scissors. More generally, I am keen to place the fey amongst ordinary people in natural settings - peasantry in villages and countryside - not lords and ladies in castles. I am interested in seers’ experiences, not so much plots or happy endings. 

One of the characters I spoke about at Mooncourt is the midwife to fairies – a farm woman who is called out by a fairy father to attend his wife in childbirth. The midwife acquires the ability to see fairies through this experience – usually because she surreptitiously and disobediently smears on one eyelid a magic ointment that’s in the fairy mother’s chamber. Some time later, she sees the fairy father in the local market, and greets him. He asks her, ‘Which eye do you see me with?’ She replies, ‘With the left’. He immediately blinds her in that eye, by spitting in it or spiking it with a sharp object; and from that time on she loses the ability to see fairies. This happened in Carnavon (Caernarfon), North Wales. And to a sheriff’s wife in Burstarfell, Iceland; to a country nurse in County Sligo, Ireland; and to Joan Tryrre, a 16^th century cunning woman in Taunton, Somerset.

Another set of characters are the hadas del agua of the Iberian peninsula, who live in lakes and pools. On midsummer eve (St John’s eve), when waters acquire potent magical properties, they can be seen doing their laundry on the shores, and hanging out to dry the yarn they have spun and dyed. It is a deep human impulse to venerate a pool of water. In the general folklore of Europe, wells, pools, lakes and rivers are dwelling places of Goddesses, nixies, nymphs, naiads, mermaids... people still throw coins into wishing wells...

Tree Cauldron, Eugene, Oregon; photo by Louisa John-Krol

Then there are the Icelandic elves, who converted to Christianity along with humans in the year 1000 and built elfin churches, ordained elf priests and held elfin Masses – though giants moved away as they could not bear the sound of churchbells. There’s a long history of interaction between humans and faeries. They need us, just as we need them.

by pre-Raphaelite Edward Robert Hughes

LJK: For you, poetry seems in harmony with the pictorial quilt, having power to insert us “into those realms where mapping stops... inhabited by cognate intelligences, fellow sapients, secret faces framed by leaves, flitting at the edge of vision, whispering in the night, leaving traces of their visits...” (Quoting from an invitation to your event - mysterious, enticing lines!) Can you tell us more of these worlds and how they inspire you?

EH: Faeries give a sense that we humans are not singletons, that we have kinsfolk; that the Earth has other sapients... they fill our lives with imaginative dimensions... especially important for people in poverty. Faeries are dangerous but beautiful, glowing, luminous. Faerie music is the loveliest of music; the same goes for their cuisine, attire, dance and craftwork. Faeries live in that ‘larger reality’ (as Ursula Le Guin has put it), the wellspring of creativity. 

LJK: On one of your quilts, you had stitched a verse that I recognised from a Spiral Dance recording, which my friend Adrienne Piggott performs: “We all come from the Goddess / And to her we shall return / Like a drop of rain / Flowing to the ocean...” (I’m not sure of this song’s origins, are you?) Are you familiar with this or other pagan mythic-rock music and/or can you recommend some albums, books, films, paintings, quilts, sculpture or other arts, that have inspired your art?

EH: The chant you mention is embroidered onto Volunteer lifesavers (with Annette Kellermann). It originates from the Dianic Wicca Tradition of a Goddess movement founded by Zsuzsanna Budapest in USA, 1970s. The Reclaiming Tradition of witchcraft and magickal activism, another neo-pagan child of the 70s, developed chants - then there is Australia’s wondrous visionary songstress Wendy Rule.

Literature?

• Margaret Alice Murray’s The Witch-Cult in Western Europe introduced me to the possibility that the fey were indigenous Europeans, surviving in remote locations into the Middle Ages, cultivating arts of magick and interacting with village witches.
• Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle – what an imagination, what a wordsmith!
• JRR Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings – my father gave me this in 1965, and it was due to it that I studied Anglo-Saxon and Old Icelandic in my English Honours.
• John Crowley’s Little, Big – my favourite novel; when I finish it I just begin it again.
• Starhawk – a leading theoretician of the Goddess and neo-pagan movements.
• Juliet Marillier’s Shadowfell series, Sevenwater series and Bridei Chronicles – ‘historical fantasy’, as she calls them. 
• Cecilia Dart-Thronton’s Bitterbynde Trilogy and Crowthistle Chronicles – I am fascinated by Dart-Thornton’s weaving of Australiana into her fantasy worlds. Her woods have eucalypts and marsupials. And there is a Snowy River.
• Katharine Briggs’s A Dictionary of Fairies, an astounding compendium of lore. 
• Marion Zimmer Bradley: The Avalon series, especially the magnificent The Mists of Avalon, and her Darkover series too. 
• Paul Devereux: Fairy Paths & Spirit Roads.  
• The three-volume Guía de los seres mágicos de España (Guide to the magickal beings of Spain) put together by Jesús Callejo and others. 
• The early poetry of WB Yeats.
• Rudyard Kipling’s Puck stories.
• Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Art? 

Richard Dadd, especially his extraordinary The Fairy-Feller’s Master-Stroke, and anything and everything by Arthur Rackham.

"The Fairy-Feller's Master-Stroke" by Richard Dadd

a tree by Arthur Rackham

LJK: We certainly like the same kinds of books - from plays to chronicles and anthologies - as well as art; I've found that Arthur Rackham's trees, like those of Brian Froud, provided an imaginative bridge between my ancestral folklore and the bushland of Australia in which I was raised. I’m curious now to find the Crowthistle Chronicles. You’ve mentioned “the Little People” - one of the names of the Faery folk. How do you envisage their integration, or manifestation, on this ancient continent? 

EH: People all over the world have Little People living around them, with remarkable similarities. In Australia, indigenous people have long histories of interaction with these cognate intelligences, histories fraught with danger yet imbued with wonder. To mention some from New South Wales: the yagan and boothoo geermi of the Blue Mountains; the red-eyed, hook-toed dulagar of the Araluen, Monga and Deua area; the nyimbuyn of Bundjalung country, whom clever-men sought out for instruction in occult matters and skills; and the wallanthagang of Cambewarra Mountain, who created designs that the Dharawal people used to decorate the insides of their best possum rugs. 

When the first white settlers arrived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, they brought their own fairies with them, along with cattle and horses, sheep and goats, wheat and barley, roses, pansies, apple trees, dogs, cats, rabbits and foxes... A friend tells me her great-grandmother, an Irishwoman, conversed with a little fairyman in a dairy near Tamworth. (Significant it was a dairy – fairies reputedly love milk and cheese! A wise householder would leave a dish of milk on a windowsill. A shepherd or shepherdess would throw a scrap of cheese over their shoulder.) Many here have seen fairies in their gardens: they help the plants to grow, and may even be the spirits of plants themselves. It is my feeling that in Australia fairies have not ventured much beyond gardens and farmsteads of Britainised landscape, populated with cherished plants and trees of home. I wonder why. While fairies (not to be confused with angels) aren’t the moral superiors of humans, perhaps they behaved better than us, and made a treaty with the indigenous Dulagar, enabling them to live side by side, borrow, trade, lend, mate and beget. However, we know little of this. 

Fairy lore might depict the relationship between whites and Aborigines. British fairies, according to some, are the aboriginal people of the British Isles, driven into hiding by invaders, lurking in caves or fens, some half-domesticated (a view of Margaret Murray; also of Scottish folklorist and antiquarian David MacRitchie). Katharine Briggs reminds us that this theory does not cover all forms of fairy belief, and is but one strand in a tightly twisted cord; however it is a rich strand to trace as we look into our hearts, call upon our imaginations, and weave our national narrative. 

Glowing inverted fairies by Eileen Haley

At the first Australian Fairy Tale Society conference in 2014, Carmel Bird presented a piece on the search for the Australian fairy tale, and the ‘lie’ (another meaning for ‘fairy tale’) of terra nullius. In discussion, Danuta Raine raised the possibility that it is invasion, displacement or dispossession that generate fairy tales. She referenced the Irish Tuatha Dé Danaan. Folklorists could benefit by studying Australia’s frontier history, to understand this link. For the Aborigines, like fairies, seemed to early settlers to have preternatural gifts: they could follow tracks invisible to the British eye, communicate with one another by mental telepathy, conceal themselves and vanish suddenly from sight. They seemed, too, to spend their time dancing and singing, playing tricks and laughing. 

A solitary white figure, by Eileen Haley NSW 2014

Australia’s frontier historians might benefit from studying the fairy faith of early British settlers; it might throw light on actions, fears and expectations. For example, Angus McMillan, transplanted to Gippsland from the Isle of Skye (1830s), believed he glimpsed a white woman among Aborigines. Convinced she had been abducted, he unleashed a campaign to rescue her that cost the Kurnai people of Gippsland dearly, ultimately in a massacre. How much of his conviction, I wonder, derived from the habit of British fairies of abducting women? 

LJK: A harrowing question. What are some challenges facing faery integration with existing Dreaming traditions? Please feel free to share any wisdom you have gained, in handling such matters with sensitivity. 

EH: My own project is to deepen my knowledge and awareness of fairy folklore of my ancestors, and stand in solidarity with the Aboriginal people, especially their struggles to defend and restore their cultures, languages and stories. To seek similarities; share... That way I hopefully avoid cultural (mis)appropriation and... reach a place of coming-together in honouring the Earth who is Mother to us all, indigenous and non-indigenous, human and fey.  

LJK: Eileen, it was wonderful meeting you at the Australian Fairy Tale Society conference 2015. I look forward to catching up with you at a future gathering.

EH: Thank you for the opportunity to give you this interview, Louisa. I loved your bardic work at the conference. 

Below: inverted fairies, via photoshopping effects; these, and other quilt images in this article, are courtesy of the wise and whimsical Eileen Haley.

Great Forest Storytelling & Hunter's Moon: Sophie Masson

Report:

We enjoyed Great Forest Storytelling on Saturday 18th July at Toby's Strathvea Guest House by Toolangi Forest, intermingling members of the Australian Fairy Tale Society, Storytelling Australia Victoria and The Monash Fairy Tale Salon. As a proud member of all three, I was glad to foster this cloverleaf between these groups.

Storytellers of Great Forest Storytelling, pictured below: 
Roslyn Quin (standing back right), Toby Eccles (standing back left), Niki na Meadhra, Lana Woolf (bead necklace), Cora Zon (beside her), Jackie Kerin (back centre), Fiona Price (front), JJ Retailer of Tales (zig-zag jumper), Louisa John-Krol (sparkle skirt)

Great Forest Storytelling at Strathvea, Healesville / Toolangi, 2015

Strathvea Guest House

Listeners included journalists, writers, eco-activists and fellow storytellers. Our circle fostered a love of fairy tales and other stories, of many cultural origins from Macedonia to India and the Flyways from Siberia to Australia. Interculturalism was evident not only between but within presentations, e.g. in Jackie's use of a Japanese tradition Kamishibai for a tale from The Mahabharata.

We also learned about the local habitat of Toolangi (Aboriginal for "tall tree"): last home of the endangered Leadbeater's Possum, known as the fairy possum.

Next day, our hosts showed us an example of "windfall": an uprooted mountain ash tree no longer able to hold its height, due to loss of neighbouring trees that had once formed a storm buffer. We heard firsthand tales of Black Saturday. Of how the bushfire threat worsens with faster-burning regenerated foliage or the wind-tunnels of open carnage, in contrast with slower-burning old-growth. Of smoking trees that act as Roman Candles, asphyxiating their tiny occupants. As this blog is not a political platform, I recommend these sites for advice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8loIsmDoABw
http://leadbeaters.org.au/
http://www.wilderness.org.au/articles/how-save-forest-fairy-extinction

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/280/054/094/

Leadbeater's Possum is nocturnal and very shy.

Review:

"Hunter's Moon" - a novel by Sophie Masson 

Review by Louisa John-Krol

In the Australian Fairy Tale Society’s annual conference, Australian fairy tale author Sophie Masson launched her Snow White spin-off, Hunter’s Moon (Random House Australia) on 21st June at the NSW Writers Centre, Sydney. Her heroine’s name is Bianca, which means Snow White. 

"Hunter's Moon" by Sophie Masson

The faery hue “green-gold” shines prominently in Sophie’s novel, notably on pages 51 and 107, featuring in the passage that she read aloud from Hunter’s Moon at the launch, befitting our conference theme, “Transformations: Spinning Straw into Green and Gold”.

Until reading Hunter’s Moon, it had never occurred to me that the name “Snow White” echoes the two-syllabic rhythm and rhyme as “moonlight”. Sophie highlights this in the novel’s opening, by describing garments in lunar hues invoking pearl, mist, silver, rain and wisps of cloud. She sustains this metaphor throughout the novel. 

If descriptive detail defies the popular maxim “show don’t tell”, Sophie artfully channels it through Snow White’s memory, for the tale is narrated in the first person. Not that abundant description need worry us one twiddle. Action and dialogue have ample space in our extroverted era. It can be just as enjoyable to experience language as a dance between sound and image: between such musical devices as alliteration or assonance (on the musical side) and similes or other metaphors (on the visual side), with words forging a sensual alchemy of both.

Of particular note is the seventh chapter. It is here that the book’s title, Hunter’s Moon, is most overtly established as a metaphor. This is the turning point in Bianca’s coming of age, from passive girl to woman of action, determined to survive and avenge her father’s death. Ironically, she must recognise her role as hunted prey, before she can truly leave victimhood behind to become a hunter. 

Numerically, this chapter mirrors the seven rescuers - healers, fellow outcasts - who are neither all male nor all dwarfs. As an underground musician I relate to this motif of outsiders, having often explored them in lyrics, from Holderlin’s novel Hyperion, to the poetry of Cavafy, who lived in exile in Alexandria; also in the myth of The Golden Fleece, not only in Jason’s banishment, secret tuition under a centaur, or dangers confronting the Argonauts, but also the Otherness of the witch Medea. Fortunately there’s not simply one dwarfish den, but a vast network of caves or warrens; havens for freaks, like sets in the TV series’ The X-Files or Carnivale.

Sophie’s Prince of Outlaws reminds me of Robin Hood, a tale my Welsh Dad told with verve. To me Bianca’s prince also personifies Hermes / Mercury (ref: Karl Kerenyi’s book Hermes, Guide of Souls), in the god’s guise as protector of exiles, granting disguise to those who flee persecution. Hermes personifies paradox. He may guard homes from robbery, classically appearing as a garden statue, or a sentry of stone, as in Peter Greenaway’s great film The Draughtsman’s Contract, yet is also Patron of Thieves! Who better to protect us from deceit, than the trickster himself? Such contradictions are relevant to a young person in danger, who is learning how to hunt. 

The stereotype of Snow White as a blank sheet of innocence, calls for such rounding or deepening. After all, the moon’s gleaming brightness is transitory, and bears a dark side. Thus the psychological landscape of this tale is both the lunar world of Artemis / Diana, and the riddling world of Hermes / Mercury. In this lunarscape of disguise, dreams, revenge, curses and mirrors, we remember a lesson from Shakespeare: that things are not always what they seem. Surprises ride on the narrative device of giving readers a head-start in dramatic irony. We suspect that something is wrong, ahead of the protagonist, for whom romance weaves its own self-deception. One suspects that moonlight may be involved in enchantment, as in Romeo and Juliet; or that spirits of nature, from witches to fairies, may be implicated, as in Macbeth, or A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The theme of double-dealing, of echoes and mirrors - not only as literal glass but as a newspaper (The Mirror) that flashes reality back at celebrities; and as automatons that simulate life - highlights the nature of moonlight. The latter at once reveals and deludes; illuminates or conceals; delights or haunts us. In the final demonstration of witches in Macbeth, a king within a vision holds up a mirror or magic glass to the audience, at which moment Shakespeare’s punters surely wondered, what did their own king, James I,  really see? Did he catch himself in that reflection, and contemplate his own heritage or future legacy? His predecessor, Shakespeare’s other great royal patron, Queen Elizabeth I, Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, emanating her own kind of snow-white purity, and was acutely conscious of image. So a queen in a timeless fairy tale wonders how people see her. So we, too, wonder if our lives might find an echo. What impression do we make? How many will remember us? For how long? And how so?

Admirers of Marina Warner’s book Women who Run with the Wolves, or fans of the television series Once Upon a Time, will surely appreciate Sophie’s interpretation of wolves, appearing in various guises. It’s not possible to be more specific without dropping spoilers. So I’ll just speculate about the similarity of adjectives “lunar” and “lupine”; moonlight and wolflike. Somehow these images and sounds belong together.

Sophie Masson, photo by Zoe Walton

Publishing over 60 books, Sophie has mentored many writers. Snow White moves through an intercultural landscape whose inhabitants hail from many origins, bringing an array of myths and customs to the tale. The author herself was born in Indonesia, of French parents, and speaks many languages. After our conference Sophie flew to Europe to research The Pied Piper.

I highly recommend this crepuscular pearl and look forward to reading more of Sophie’s oeuvre.

- Louisa John-Krol

Great Forest Storytelling - Strathvea

Strathvea Peacock

Great Forest Storytelling

We have a couple of spare rooms for guests wishing to stay overnight after Great Forest Storytelling at Strathvea Guest House, 755 Myers Creek Road, Healesville / Toolangi, Saturday 18th July.

Participants include Jackie Kerin, Lana Woolf, Toby Eccles, JJ Retailer of Tales, Cora Zon, Louisa John-Krol and Rachael Hammond.

Saturday has two storytelling sessions: family-friendly 2:30pm & evening 7:30pm. Each session is $15. Or $25 for both. This ticket fee is waived for overnight stayers. Reduced room rates apply for this weekend only: $130 to $165. You are welcome just to listen, or share a tale.

Enjoy fairy tales, songs, wonder stories, myths, poems, ballads, ditties, legends and other yarns by the fire in the beautiful 1920s ambiance of Strathvea Guest House, surrounded by tall trees of Toolangi in the Yarra Ranges, last refuge of the fairy possum.

The Fairy Possum is critically endangered

bird in Toolangi

For room bookings, directions or info on meal planning, Tel Strathvea: 5962 4109
Email Strathvea Guest House 
Copy me in so I can assist you with liaison: Louisa
Or request addition to the Great Forest Storytelling event page via my Facebook profile.

Toolangi Forest

Meet Moët, the Strathvea Watch Peacock

Following day, weather permitting, we go into the forest to explore trees and temperate rainforest gullies of the Toolangi Forest. Maybe have lunch at the Singing Gardens, where larrikin poet C. J. Dennis lived. We respect diverse needs as to how long you stay, whether you tuck in early with a book, commune with fairies or spin yarns all night by the fire. 

Welcome Fairies!

Other News:

Wonderwings Fairy Shop reunion - April 2015 at Myths & Legends Fairy Shop, Gisborne - was fabulous. My report of it entails a history of Wonderwings for which I'm still compiling imagery.

News from The Monash Fairy Tale Salon: our celebration of the 150th anniversary of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - part of Glen Eira Storytelling Festival, Caulfield, June 2015 - was, dare we say, wonderful, from cats to cards. My full fey report will follow soon with pictures.

I was delighted to sing at the Australian Fairy Tale Society conference - Transformations: spinning straw into green and gold - at the NSW Writers Centre, Sydney on 21st June 2015. Every presentation inspired me, each in its own idiosyncratic way, from pantomime history to savvy subversion, quilting to glass-blowing. Great to meet authors, whose books I read over the next days: cheeky Refugee Wolf by T.D. Luong, and luminous Hunter's Moon (launched at the conference) by Sophie Masson.

Fey regards, Louisa

Nell Bell, faerie elder

Can you find the waterfall spirits?

Faerie Report of our visit to Nell Bell 

On 19th December 2014, three storytellers visited Australian doyen of storytelling, Nell Bell,  Westgarth Aged Care Facility. It was the season of Little Red Riding Hood for The Australian Fairy Tale Society, which I call basket bunting: dressing up in berry red & bonnet white, bringing cheer to the elderly. It needn’t be as literal as donning a red cape or cap. Or a splash of gold glitter, if we’re into Lang’s lupine fire-branding Golden Hood. It’s the spirit of giving, of visiting, that sparks the child’s journey to her grandmother. We three visitors were: Anne E Stewart, JB Rowley and me, Louisa John-Krol. Despite our punctuality, Nell was waiting by the entrance. We asked if we’d derailed her time with Happy Hour that filled the centre with raucous carolling. But Nell gleefully waved us past. Her walking frame had become a propeller. 

We wanted to know how Nell became a co-founder of Australia’s first state storytelling guild. Or the second. Nell thinks Western Australia might have pipped Victoria to the post. 

According to The Children’s Book Council, which awarded her the Leila St John medal, Nell Bell is defined by generosity of spirit and love for children. Born in the 1920s, her contribution to children's literature began in the 1940s when, as Assistant Matron of Sydney’s Ashfield Foundlings Home, she pioneered the first story time for 3–5 year olds and ran it regularly. 

Her interest in stories led to further training. In 1975, as a librarian at Preston East Technical School, Nell taught Introduction to History of Literature and Books. That year she toured schools and libraries in China and, in years to follow, visited New Zealand and America. Qualifying for her Secondary Teachers Certificate the next year, Nell started a Children's Book Club, introducing students to literature via storytelling in the classroom. She published an article—The Importance of Oral Literature—in the Education Department magazine.

Nell recalls a literature conference in Frankston in 1978 where she met Monty Kelly and enjoyed inspiring discussions about stories across both written and oral traditions. After that came a gathering at Erskine House, Lorne, where the idea of the Storytelling Guild surfaced. It was also Monty Kelly and Nell Bell who designed the Guild logo, a harp. They wanted to make a connection with the bards of old.

In the 1980s, Nell obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Children's Literature at the University of Melbourne, as well as a Graduate Diploma in Children's Literature at Toorak Teachers' College (in her essay it’s called Victoria College - Toorak campus). For copies of this essay entitled “Witch Stories in Children’s Literature” dated 15th November 1982, contact me: Louisa John-Krol; its typed format is too faint for scanning but for now can be photocopied & posted via surface mail until I retype it for the web. 

As part of the 1988 Bicentenary, Nell joined a delegation of Artists in Education sponsored by the Australian Federal Government and the JF Kennedy Cultural Centre in Washington sent to America as representatives of Australia. From the 1970’s to 1990’s, Nell mentored many storytellers including the visitors in this report. Anne E Stewart had begun storytelling in 1977; JB Rowley a decade later – first connecting with the storytelling guild circa 1989 – and me, Louisa John-Krol, circa 1990 in Wonderwings Fairy Shop in Richmond, run by “the other fairy Annie”, Anne Atkins. Both Anne E Stewart and I were among its pioneer fairy storytellers. JB Rowley recalls: “Nell and others used to meet in private homes, such as Julie Halpin's, and we would exchange stories, usually based on a theme. Nell was very encouraging of new 'talent' and I recall going out to a school with her to see her in action.”

Nell was the first storyteller to perform at Dromkeen and was Artist in Residence introducing students to literature via storytelling at Methodist Ladies College, Richmond Girls High School and Presbyterian Ladies College. She’s been involved in the Victorian Branch of the Children's Book Council and Victorian Committee for UNICEF. In 1995 she participated in the launch of Children's Week at National Gallery of Victoria. She worked as a storyteller at Camp Quality, Melbourne Children's Hospital and Radio of the Air School in the Northern Territory. To quote “The Harper” (Newsletter of The Storytelling Guild of Vic, Autumn 1997): “Nell has a great love of people and a strong belief that story can show how all aspects of life form a continuing cycle to be celebrated and shared”.

That is how, in 2005, the Children’s Book Council awarded Nell Bell the Leila St John medal for her services to children’s literature. (Presentation did not occur until 2011, when she travelled with her daughters to receive the award in person.)

Another fascinating segment of Nell’s history as a folklorist came to life with a Melbourne journal “Swag of Yarns”, edited by June Barnes-Rowley in some 30 volumes starting 1997, then seasonally between 1998 and 2006, except for two years (2002-2003), when its editors were Peter Dargin and Pat Dargin. Swag's weblink is old and does not evoke the enjoyment of sliding that smooth magazine from its sheath, opening its pages and reading those columns, which carried a wealth of folklore from many sources and times. 

Recently, at the Westgarth Aged Care Facility, Nell participated in Bridging The Gap Through Art. She was pictured in a news report sharing memorabilia with a boy, glasses perched on her pert nose, mouth in full fletch releasing a volley of words. The caption read: “Generation gaps don’t come much bigger than the gulf between elderly citizens in primary care and primary school students”. 

Could those little visitors guess how communication had changed across this woman’s life? How we receive stories has altered irrevocably. Nothing replaces face-to-face, eye-to-eye, mouth-to-ear storytelling that happens orally, sometimes with the warmth of a handshake, or crawling onto a knee, or cresting in the curve of a well crafted phrase, resting in a pause, knowing we can’t press stop,  rewind or fast-forward. It’s tit for tat, since the storyteller has no luxury of revising those moments. Trust on both sides.

Returning to Little Red Riding Hood, reminiscing on our visit to our Grand Mother of Storytelling: the wolf as deceiver or devourer constituted misrepresentation of wolves, as folklorists have addressed. There have also been gender switches, as in the TV series “Once”, where Little Red Riding Hood herself turns out to be a werewolf. Yet, setting aside species and simply contemplating a beastly presence, it’s possible to interpret the threat as another danger, like greed; a fixation on “keeping the wolves from the door”. Could we make do with less material gain, to foster more intangible richness? In childhood I recall the magical conjoining of dreaming and time as one word, Dreamtime. A friend cautions me that it’s a bit dated, which is the case for most of what I love. Indeed ‘The Dreaming’ is a beautiful term, too. Yet Time and Dreaming still form a natural pairing, for without time - or rather its shadow, timelessness - how can we ever dream?

Old to young, our tale's begun

Web-spun, spindle run

Fire drum, the wolf is done!

(Louisa John-Krol)

Hardest part of visiting my fairy storyteller at her great age was not confronting mortality, but trying to comprehend how such a vibrant life could be compressed into that tiny room. How do we honour our elderly? Chronicle their lives? Continue their legacy? Visit?

“I carry inside my heart,

As in a chest too full to shut,

All the places where I’ve been,

All the ports at which I’ve called,

All the sights I’ve seen through windows and portholes

And from quarterdecks, dreaming.”

(Fernando Pessoa)

Visiting Nell Bell, storyteller & faerie elder:

Louisa John-Krol, Jb Rowley, Nell Bell, Anne E Stewart

We tip our hats to storyteller Susan Pepper, who purveys the highly effective “story-catching” with elderly people. With a background in Arts Therapy, Susan was integral to the My Story project at five Uniting AgeWell aged care facilities that employed 30 volunteers as well as two staff members in collecting and collating stories from residents. You can read about her inspiring work here

Related links:

June Barnes-Rowley (JB), storyteller, educator, author

Report of our visit by storyteller Anne E. Stewart

Nell, Louisa, Annie and JB are mentioned in this article at Wiki

This report, above, by Louisa John-Krol

Fairy academic Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario

Fey Events:

The Monash Fairy Tale Salon

13th June, Glen Eira Storytelling Festival

Celebrating 150th Anniversary of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Glen Eira Town Hall, Hawthorn Road, Caulfield, Melbourne 
Info

The Australian Fairy Tale Society annual conference 

Sunday 21st June 2015, Winter Solstice

“Transformations: spinning straw into green and gold”

NSW Writers Centre, 
Garry Owen House, Callan Park, Balmain Road, Rozelle, Sydney
Info

Interview: 

Interviewee: 

Dr Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario 

author & one of Australia’s leading fairy tale academics

Interviewer: 

Louisa John-Krol

singer, writer, faerie storyteller

L: We met at Monash University through The Monash Fairy Tale Salon. 
How or why did this group form? What are the salon’s origins, in fairy tale history?

R: When I started working at Monash, I looked at introducing reading groups as a way to bring together academics, postdocs, postgraduates and Honours students. I wanted to build a sense of community – a way for people to support each other at each stage of the academic journey. The Sidhe Literary Collective was the first group and we ran a few symposiums including ‘Vamps, Vampires and Va-va-voom’ and ‘Tights and Tiaras.’ This was a way to have fun with popular culture and to reach out to the community, while still examining the issues through a scholarly lens. I really wanted to create a group focused on fairy tale, though, so I discussed this with my then student, Belinda Calderone, and she kindly agreed to take the lead. We were both, by that point, really interested in the fairy tales of the ancient regime period and so we liked the idea of creating a ‘salon’ atmosphere. It’s a little difficult when most of our meetings take place in the Menzies Building, which isn’t very baroque at all! But it’s the spirit of the thing! We’ve also been so excited that the salon is open to the public and other storytellers and artists, like yourself. We do like a nice ivory tower (from which to hang our braids!), but we’d far rather welcome people into our tower than to shut them out. Everyone has given so much to our understanding of fairy tale and helped us to evolve as lovers of fairy tale. It wouldn’t be possible to do the things we do now without the support of fairy tale lovers within and without the tower!

L: As a founding member of the Australian Fairy Tale Society, and panel chair at the launch of the Griffith Review’s volume Once Upon a Time in Oz, you are engaging with public life in a meaningful way. Who are some of your own contemporary mentors?

R: I wish I had more time to focus on public speaking, because I think there’s an active, interesting debate out there about the role of fairy tale in our society and it tends to occur in a vacuum of knowledge about the longer traditions of fairy tale. That’s where people like yourself and myself can help! We should know our fairy tale history! I’ve never met Marina Warner, but the moment I read From the Beast to the Blonde, I knew I wanted to follow in her footsteps. The way she is able to communicate her love for storytelling through scholarship inspires me and even today, she’s writing about the real problems facing the future of academic institutions and continues to make me think deeply about the systems within which I operate. My PhD supervisor, Peter Fitzpatrick, is also a huge influence. He’s such a warm, enthusiastic scholar, writer, and director. He taught me how to be honest and open when teaching and how to confidently handle criticism. And it has to be said, my Mum has always encouraged me and she’s lead such an amazing life helping others. She mentors me every single day.

L: Your blog’s title, Doc in Boots, heralds a love of costume. Your presentation about bonnets at a 2013 Monash Fairy Tale Salon symposium in the university’s Rare Books collection, saw you sporting a Mother Goose cap. What is your theatrical background, e.g. in London’s music halls? How does this segue with fairy tales?

R: Oh, I will never live down that cap! It was fun to play with the actual fashion, though. I was – and still am – a bit of a musical theatre geek. I wasn’t a performer, myself, but I loved that world and I got involved with the scene. My Masters and PhD theses are both based in musical theatre and, of course, Disney grew out of musicals. I basically came into the fairy tale fold through Disney! I had the most fun and I’ll still defend Disney against its most scathing critics. Disney is far from perfect, but it does get a lot right, too. I always advise people to just watch Lilo & Stitch, which is a loose variation of “The Ugly Duckling.” I think I have a very visual interest in fairy tales, too, which is partly informed by my theatrical and film interests, so I find the fashion, in particular, fascinating. 

L: You question why fairy tales carry less description of men’s attire than that of female characters. You’ve also noted that a man can wear the same suit and shoes for a year, or at least duplicates. On the upside, women enjoy more diversity of fashion; on the downside, more scrutiny. Waiting in a doctor’s reception, if I reach for a well-thumbed popular magazine, I encounter a barrage of photos with bitchy captions about celebrity fashion bloopers. Objects of attack are nearly always female. Any insights on this phenomenon? 

R: I think this has a long history. Regardless of what we might like to think, what we wear does ‘speak.’ I don’t think people have to be interested in what they wear, but clothes will always give away something about the personality, status, wealth, and aspirations of the wearer. I used to worry about those bitchy captions, but after flicking through just a few commentaries on, for example, Oscar gowns, it’s amazing how one critic will love a dress and another will hate it. Each critic is caught up in their own web of social and cultural values and so will think about fashion in a different way. In fairy tales, clothing is a tool, even a gift. A glass slipper can make all the difference. Particularly when women had little access to patriarchal power structures, they would manipulate public discourse through fashion. I find that fascinating.

L: How have fairy depictions evolved in post-colonial Australian illustration?

R: Our early fairy tales coincided with the Edwardian fairy movement, so our fairies looked a lot like, for instance, the Cottingley fairies, only they would be talking to koalas or riding kookaburras. There was a real consciousness of Australia’s difference from ‘the Mother Country,’  yet a yearning to reconcile that difference. Illustrators like May Gibbs started to play with a more Australian vision, born from flora and fauna, but it was still a White vision. I think our fairy depictions are slowly growing more diverse and certainly more strange. I particularly love the illustrations of Shaun Tan. They aren’t ‘pure’ fairy tales, but there is something of the fairy about them!

L: Your expertise includes children’s literature. Would it be fair to say that you are also an avid reader of YA (young adult) fiction, particularly fantasy? How about science fiction, magic-realism, comic books, gothic or murder mysteries?

R: It’s odd – I really didn’t read a lot of children’s literature as a child. Although Anne of Green Gables was a huge influence, it’s true. I have been reading a lot of YA literature, though I’m a little behind at the moment, since I haven’t even finished The Hunger Games! I read a lot of different fiction. Recently I’ve been dabbling in early twentieth century women’s writing – if you get a chance, Stella Benson’s Living Alone is a quirky, amazing gem. I’ve also been re-reading Terry Pratchett, because I’m sad about his death and he’s one of the most amazing storytellers I’ve ever had the privilege of reading.

L: Why does the literati distinguish between “literary fiction” and “genre fiction”? It saves the most lucrative awards, critical media commentary and prestige for the former. Surely fantasy, with its rich metaphors and inventiveness, is more adept at enduring the test of time? Some trendy prize-winners (I suggest) pretend to be true to life, yet really just pump out platitudes, patriotism, pop-psychology or hackneyed cluster phrases, reflecting back the accepted wisdom of our era. I find this quite deceptive. How about you?

R: Completely deceptive! I think part of the problem, too, is that we devalue humour. Joss Whedon once said, “Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.” So often, ‘serious’ literary fiction is grim, grim, grim. Life has humour. The wisest, most amazing things have been said with humour. The most serious issues have been made plain with humour, too. The other issue I have with a lot of ‘literary fiction’ is that it often isn’t… fun. I always worry when people read a book without really enjoying it. That’s surely the point of storytelling? To entertain? It’s a deeply unfashionable thing to say, perhaps, but I believe it’s important. You can say vital, difficult, unpleasant things and still be entertaining.

L: Over the past century or so, the visual art world debunked hierarchies of painting, wherein landscape had been regarded as an inferior subject to portraiture. We also saw proliferation and democratization of music genres. Could the 21st century signal liberation of literature from categorical shackles? As someone trained in casting analysis across modes, how do you think the literary world can learn from its sister arts? 

R: I think it’s starting to learn, but there’s many barriers to pull down. The genre areas of literature are far happier to engage, I think, but we’re getting there! It’s learning to be less defensive of one’s discipline boundaries. I’ve been cheekily trying to get Greenberg’s graphic novel of Hamlet taught beside Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I think Shakespeare would have been all for that, the old thief!

L: Some disciplines are magnets of buzz words such as “sustainability” or “public good”. Our institutions still use managerial jargon, despite the Global Economic Crash that discredited its gurus. Since education swung away from the Humanities, depression has risen. It reminds me of an old Sufi tale where a dervish is looking for his key in the street “because the light is stronger out here”, knowing full well he lost it indoors. Many people seem adverse to seeking wisdom in places where it is most likely to be found. In which subjects would you like to see more funding, and why?

R: I think we just need more reasonable funding models and better communication of those models. I still talk to people who think it’s ludicrous to give a grant of a million to a philosophy project till I explain what that million pays for – that it pays for teaching relief and scholarships and conferences and such – that it isn’t just a lump sum given to the academic, but a sum of money that makes it possible to extend and communicate knowledge. We also need to stop thinking of universities solely as training grounds for employment. I really don’t know what job you’ll get with a major in Literary Studies and that’s the wonderful thing about it – you can do anything! And I think the value of study to our lives beyond work, beyond job prospects, is sorely overlooked. I’m not naïve – there is absolutely an urgency for people to be employed and that should be on our minds when we design degrees. But even the best business degree is no guarantee of employment and often the degrees that offer more flexibility pay off in the end.

L: We attended Kate Forsyth’s session Respinning the Magic at the Victorian Writers Centre in November 2014. How do you see Australia’s fairy tale heirs faring in the global literary fray? In addition to being a celebrated fairy tale researcher, you are a writer. What currently enthrals you?

R: I’m currently enthralled by age! I love writing about, and researching about, older characters. There’s so little room in our storytelling for the adventures of older characters – why should the young have all the fun? I think Australia’s fairy tale heirs are doing really well. It’s a vibrant market and I love seeing the successes of Kate Forsyth, Danielle Wood and others and I really love introducing them to my students. Nothing makes me happier than when I spot a student with an Australian novel or short story! If I just had more reading time myself!

Dr Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario at Monash University

Her blog, Doc in Boots

Rebecca-Anne’s original story entitled “The Death of Glinda, the Good Witch”, was published in the magazine Aurealis, volume #77 and illustrated by Matt Bissett-Johnson.

Review by Louisa John-Krol:

Glinda charms us with her refusal to join water aerobics, earning herself the distinction of being a “witch” rather one of the “biddies” or “bats”. Perhaps it’s not so much the swimming itself she’s rejected, but the hoopla surrounding it, from ear-plugs to gyrations in swimwear. I like the fact that she’s kept her hair long (in contrast to the convention of clipping locks as if conceding loss of power). Glinda piles her hair atop her head, with one rebellious magenta strand, heralding adventurousness.

Depictions of the physical effects of old age are affectionate, with neither pity nor parsimony, as in this description of Em: “She was all tendons and nubbly joints, all of which she carefully folded up into a wicker chair near the mail boxes.” With gentle humour, Rebecca-Anne contrasts the body’s inevitable organic fermentation and creaking, with the more ethereal nature of memory, tenderness, puckish humour and persistence of magic.

Use of metaphor is appealing, as in the suggestion that some humans are like peas from bean pods, “hard little seeds placed into tidy envelopes marked with the month, year and variety”, a fate against which Glinda has rebelled throughout her life. Yet that hasn't stopped her encounters with death from stacking up. She's lost a lot of loved ones.

Alliteration pops up effectively in such phrases as the “shamble of shame” - the humiliation of shuffling across a room in front of onlookers, from an empty mailbox to one’s quarters.

A strong writer can make something as simple as orange juice poignant, in this case through an unnaturally bright hue, a long cry from the juice of golden orbs that Glinda had once grown. Her light floral scent hints at that lost oasis. Or perhaps its continuance?

Mr Straw’s remark that the outside world is “all going to weed” (or “pot”, as Glinda corrects him) rings true of a mentality that I’ve often encountered among the elderly, as well as middle-aged peers: that life could not possibly be so great for the young. Enter doom-porn. Easy to become addicted to the notion that we had it better than anyone. The ego doesn’t mind letting go of life’s reins, if it thinks the next rider isn’t going anywhere interesting - better still, racing to disaster! It’s like muttering, “Any party I’m missing will be a doozy.”

Em overthrows this gloomy egotism when she remarks later, “Things are going to keep growing after we’re toes up, Glinda the Good. There’s a reason they say we’re pushin’ up daisies after we’re gone.” It is no coincidence, then, that both daisies and poppies feature abundantly among the flowers of this tale. They are dancers between life and death: double-dealing flowers, concerned as much with shrivelling into seeds as they are with spreading them.

There’s a lovely interplay of the “locks” motif, from coiling hair (once red-gold, like that of fairy tale heroines such as Rapunzel or Little Red Riding Hood), to padlocks, signifying the binding or protection of secret knowledge: “Don’t need a fancy book covered in locks to keep out the curious” says Em, speaking of the Great Book of Records, which seems to be a kind of modern Grimoire or Book of Shadows, with instructions on spells, amulets, talismans, divination and so forth. For me it also hints at the Akashic Records; the concept of a timeless compendium in which our histories, poetry, music and other musings are recorded and stored, beyond mortality. For Glinda’s fellow residents, such a book might seem to fall behind the internet, losing some of its mystery or clout. Yet there is an air of hopefulness in the penultimate paragraph; of inspiration blown onward toward fresh germination, through Glinda’s final dream and memory of her mother: “She liked to grow poppies, casting seeds to the winds as she sang.” They echo the dead, dried poppies in the opening paragraph, “heads ready to burst with seed”, thus forming bookends for the story, like sentry-witches. 

No other flower evokes, so clearly as a poppy, the meadows of The Wizard of Oz, to which we find other allusions in this tale including erstwhile Dorothy, the Tin Man (Old Nick), Mr Straw, pig-tails, a clicking of heels, a Kansas storm, a rainbow (even if on cloth over a chair), checkered aprons, lace, golden ringlets (not unlike a lion mane) and, of course, Oz. 

Something ancient lurks beneath all this. Mr Tok might be Father Time; The Tin Man / Old Nick could represent Death, Change, Alchemy, Transformation; while Miss Cuttenclip - cutting out figures from wrapping paper - embodies a Spinner, one of the Fates or Norns, who snips the thread of life.

In many respects this story is an extended metaphor in which a home for the aged is a seed-pod, a vase, or garden of drying flowers. Whilst physical capacity for breeding is long gone, the elderly may still bear seeds that potentially nourish life. Some carry a culture’s memories and dreams.

So we need a new verb. Glindering.

To read "The Death of Glinda, the Good Witch":

AUREALIS #77

Australian Fantasy & Science Fiction

Edited by Michael Pryor

Published by Chimaera Publications at Smashwords

Copyright of this compilation Chimaera Publications 2015

Copyright on each story remains with the contributor.

EPUB version ISBN 978-1-922031-33-4

ISSN 2200-307X (electronic)

Hard copy back issues of Aurealis can be obtained from the Aurealis website.