In the bleak midwinter – a test of memory at Pin Mill

KirstyTHartsiotis2 • 6 October 2014

DSC00247 - crop Talking with my Mum yesterday about the weather (among other things!) made me think about the long-distance research I had to do for Suffolk Folk Tales. It hammered down with rain on Saturday morning, but was glorious with sunshine in the afternoon … here in Gloucestershire.  Just the opposite in Suffolk.  Weather’s always tricky, and it’s impossible to second guess it, especially four counties away!  And of course, if you work as well as write, you can only go on outings at set times – especially with train prices being what they are.  On the weekend I went over to research the Orwell Mermaid it snowed.  Oh boy, did it snow.  And then the snow bedded down.  But I had things to do, research deadlines to meet.  So off we went – and though I might have plenty to say about 4x4s in general, but stepdad really does need one to access his remote clients, and we wouldn’t have done this trip without it.

Because the story was set on the River Orwell, in that evocative location: Pin Mill. Down one of the steepest slopes in Suffolk!  Down we slithered – there is no way we could have got any further than the car park at the top of the village, I am sure.  Then we teetered down on foot – and straight into the famous Butt and Oyster pub for a warming morning coffee.  Then Mum and I went out to walk into the woods, to get an idea of the landscape around the village, away from what would have been a bustling port and boatyard.

The walk was silent except for the crunch of our boots in the crisp frosted snow. We walked past the houseboats along the shoreline, seemingly deserted in this cold weather, and then up the hill – we could barely work out where the path was going in some cases, there was so much snow.  Now, this is where memory starts to let you down.  In my memory, there was a dog, who barked, and I am sure that it was that melded for me the last scene of the story, where the fishermen’s dogs discover the mermaid lying on the frozen earth.  But am I imagining that now?  Whether or not there was a dog, the ethereal snowy landscape set the scene for me, and I knew how that last section had to be – the chill landscape reflecting the bleakness of our heroine’s emotions.  Would I have felt it so strongly if we’d visited in summer, with the birds singing in the trees, and lots of other folk tramping the paths, and coming in and out of the houseboats?  Well, the story only has one possible ending, but I know it would have felt very different, and thus I would have written in differently.

All images copyright Kirsty Hartsiotis, 2012

Holiness and profanity? A visit to Cerne Abbas

by Kirsty Hartsiotis • 15 May 2018
We all know what to expect from Cerne Abbas, don’t we? A picture speaks a thousand words on this one. Shall I give you a close up? No? We all know that by the 19 th century he was associated with fertility and that it’s said that as a woman either sleeping alone in the phallus or, er, doing a bit more than sleeping there with your partner can cure infertility. No surprises there… But there’s another fertility boost in the very same village, and this one was probably the one used in the medieval period, and, perhaps, before.

The Treasure Seekers: finding (or not) gold and wealth in local folklore

by KirstyTHartsiotis2 • 15 March 2018
If there’s one trope of folklore that appears over and over again, it’s schemes to get rich quick. Jack and the Beanstalk is, of course, one of the most universal – who wouldn’t want a goose that laid golden eggs? Lazy but often kind boys charm princesses into marrying them; pretty and resourceful maids do the same with princes. These fairy tales are a daydream, a wish-fulfilment to those stuck in a seemingly inescapable round of poverty and want. It’s something we can easily recognise in lottery ticket buying and the poring over the lives of celebrities and the royals even as austerity pinches pockets a little further and privatisation erodes the services we once had. But get rich quick stories didn’t always take place in the never-never land of fairy tales. Sometimes they take place right here, in our local area.

Ghosts of the Mounds: prehistory and ghostlore in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, a beginning

by KirstyTHartsiotis2 • 15 January 2018
Lately, I’ve been intrigued by the different ghosts that emerge from the many, many prehistoric barrow mounds in the west. I’m doing talks on Gloucestershire’s ghosts and Wiltshire’s folklore , and I’ve been reminded of how, here in the west, they form an important part of the folklore of the region. This blog, probably the first of a few, explores some of the hauntings and their tales – if you’d like the full tales, you’ll find some of them in my books Wiltshire Folk Tales and Gloucestershire Ghost Tales .

The Secret Disclosed: ghostly riots in Bury St Edmunds

by KirstyTHartsiotis2 • 7 December 2017
I’m all about ghosts at the moment, what with Suffolk Ghost Tales coming out next week. But this blog is a bit naughty, as it’s actually inspired by the background to a story in my previous Suffolk book, Suffolk Folk Tales . The question is, how do ghosts come to be? You’d think that it would be by someone dying and proceeding to haunt a place, wouldn’t you? But that’s not always the case … sometimes they are conjured up out of the collective mind of the people, and such is the case for the Grey Lady of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.

On Downham Hill … a fairy story for Halloween

by KirstyTHartsiotis2 • 11 October 2017
It’s the ghost month, October. The month of Halloween and Samhain, when, once again, the veil is thin between this world and the Otherworld of the fairies and the dead. The nights are drawing firmly now, too – at the end of the month, we’ll be changing the clocks and suddenly the evenings will be short. It’s a month for storytelling, for telling tales of that Otherworld. I’ve got a number of gigs coming up in the next few weeks to do just that, and to reveal the hidden places where you might find … something else …

Ancient flying machines!

by KirstyTHartsiotis2 • 7 September 2017
I’m telling stories about ancient technology at Gloucester History Festival on Saturday , and flying machines do come into it…

Roman Wonders! Heron of Alexandria and Ancient Automata

by KirstyTHartsiotis2 • 21 August 2017
In a couple of weeks on Saturday 9 September I’m telling stories, Roman Wonders, as part of the Gloucester History Festival . Last year I was there telling Gloucestershire tales with Inkubus Sukkubus , but this is a little different – the brief was to tell stories of Roman invention and innovation for a family audience. So what did the Romans invent? I didn’t want to tell stories of siege engines or roads, so I looked further afield until I found what I wanted – steam engines, vending machines and robots!

A Ballad Lovers Tale: The Famous Flower of Serving Men

by KirstyTHartsiotis2 • 31 July 2017
The ballad I chose certainly is out there, and remains a favourite ever since those early days more than 30 years ago. My stepdad wasn’t convinced I’d like Martin Carthy straight away, thinking his singing and playing rather an acquired taste for a Duran Duran aficionado, but I loved him immediately. My stepdad played me his own favourite, and it was this ballad, from Carthy’s album Shearwater , 1972 , that I chose to retell for the Ballad Tales book: The Famous Flower of Serving Men.

The Maid, the Maggot and the Saints

by KirstyTHartsiotis2 • 11 April 2017
On National Dragon Day this year – you might know it better as St George’s Day, the 23 April – two agents from DCHQ (Dragon Conservation Headquarters, not the Other Place) in Cheltenham Agent Green and Agent Krisa will be coming to the Museum in the Park , Stroud, at 3pm to teach dragon tracking and to tell dragon tales straight from the archives – and straight from the dragon’s mouths…

Is John Ball a dream?

by KirstyTHartsiotis2 • 28 November 2016
It’s a tough one, this. William Morris’s novella A Dream of John Ball paints a heroic picture of one of the most complicated and contested episodes in English history: the so-called Peasant’s Revolt of 1381. The main character, dreaming his way back to the 14 th century from Morris’s dirty, depressed and over-populated London to a clean and well-kept Kentish village, discovers he has arrived at exactly the moment when John Ball, the excommunicate priest recently sprung from Maidstone jail by a growing body of rebels, arrives to preach and incite the locals to take up their weapons and march on London. The villagers are decent, happy to share what they have with the stranger, and all too glad to follow John Ball to bring down the feudal system and reinstate the primordial communism known by the first men and women, when there were no gentlemen. But was it like that?
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