Women's Stories
Newsletter for Women's History Month
Tomorrow is International Women’s Day, a day I have celebrated since I was a wee girl. I am marking this day, by telling stories online, stories where women do not need to be rescued - A Damsel Not In Distress - Untamed Tales for International Women’s Day.
We have always had stories of strong and independent women in oral culture, however they have not been that popular. There are stories of women warriors, stories of shape-shifting women that live in the wild, stories where women defy expectations of their roles in society as wives and child-bearers, stories where women walk the dark woods, stories where women’s sexualities are not forbidden but celebrated, stories where women can think for themselves. These stories are dangerous. They encourage our freedom.
Many of the stories we read were changed to be made suitable for the audience of the times. Stories from the brothers Grimm (many which were actually collected by the Sisters Wild - but not many remember their names) moved from the tongues of working class women’ to the aristocratic societies’ books. I remember reading in one of Jack Zipes’ books how his analysis of Snow White in Grimm’s showed that with each new book edition, Snow White was depicted undertaking even more housework, thereby highlighting that the woman’s place is in the kitchen and the home. This was done for political gains, using stories as propaganda.
It is natural that oral stories shift and evolve slightly each time they’re told, it is always how it was. No oral storyteller will tell the same story the exact same way twice. Nor should they, as the story is a conversation between the storyteller and the people listening. The essence of the story though must remain the same, and the person who tells the story must be intimately familiar with the country’s folklore. It is when stories are modified for societal and political reasons and printed in a book they become a two-dimensional shadow of what they were, stuck in some sort of paper time capsule.
I treasure story books, and at the same time, the best ones are written by the oral storytellers who live and breathe the stories they tell, as those stories still have a beating heart.
I read recently in John O’Donohue’s beautiful book Anam Cara how he described the wolf spider who does not build its web between two hard objects, rather between two blades of grass. If the spider web was between two stones, when the wind blows, the web would be shredded. When between two blades of grass, the web lowers with the flexible grass, to then come back again in balance. This made me think how it is with stories in the oral tradition. As culture changes, so stories too need to be the web between blades of grass, rather than the web between rigid objects. The web never changes, but becomes flexible, and therefore survives.
Women’s stories are held orally, and also in the clothes that we wear. Traditionally, stories and songs were shared whilst spinning, weaving, knitting, waulking (the practice of rhythmically beating the cloth to soften and shrink it). Women have been spinning and weaving for perhaps 20, 000 years. The earliest preserved string was found fossilised in the painted caves in Lascaux, France around 15,000 BCE, described in the wonderful book ‘Women’s Work’ by Elizabeth Wayland Barber.
There are ancient stories of weaving and spinning, preserved from old times. This month, I am excited to be a guest teacher in the wonderful course We Are the Weavers, online, starting the 12th March, created and hosted by Hanna Leigh from Weaving Remembrance.
It will be an exciting and delightful 8-week journey, where we will explore the ancient crafts of spinning and weaving, alongside the healing power of song and storytelling. ‘Our hands remember…how to gather what’s been scattered, how to spin beauty from chaos, how to weave new worlds into being, how to make magic together.’
I will be joined by the incredible Hanna Leigh, who created this gift, and she will guide us through song and ritual, and help us to co-create community spinning and weaving songs.
Sylvia Linsteadt, who will will guide us back to the Neolithic roots of European women’s traditions connected to spinning, and explore how cloth and cloth-making can hold spells of peace and prayers of regeneration and the fertility of the earth, even in times of war.
Rosemary Riedel O’Brien will teach how to spin using the humble Drop Spindle and natural fibres. Together she will help us fuse the practical elements of Spinning with the magic of meaning, and how to court the handloom to create an offering cloth.
I will be sharing two old tales of spinning, where we’ll explore the imagery and mythology of the stories – from the distaff, to the thread. We’ll look at stories of spindles and of spinsters, and how these stories can still support us today.
For millennia women have sat together spinning and weaving, why is this a woman’s activity, rather then a person’s activity? The answer for this might be very practical. It was not that women could not hunt and forage - they could and they did - however, these activities are quite challenging with a small babe. The historian Judith Brown noted that ‘no where in the world is the rearing of children primarily the responsibility of men’. Clothes were needed, and so weaving and spinning were activities which were ‘compatible with simultaneous child watching’.
In Bulgaria, Saint Petka is connected with spinning and weaving, alongside being the mistress of the wolves and connected to snakes. Although Christianised (where her story was changed for religious and political reasons), she is a likely successor of an ancient cult to the female mistress of Friday. The saint, according to Thracian scholar Mishev, is believed in the Balkans to be the protector of spinning and weaving, and she is sometimes depicted to carry a distaff or a spindle.
If you feel called to, I hope you will join me for stories of women and spinning, stories of untamed women, (both online) and stories and music for the Spring Equinox in person in Scotland, with my dear friend Megan, who is a talented harpist.
For now I leave you with one of my favourite folktales - the Husband who Stayed at Home. It is about a husband who thought that his wife’s work at home was easy and if she could do it, anyone could do it, and so they swapped places. What happened is wonderfully hilarious. Here is the link to the episode in my podcast, the Story Apothecary.
I wish you a wonderful and inspiring month.
Love, Nana x
