In a week or so, it has somehow come to pass that I will be joining the Chwedl Network of Welsh Women Storytellers for their annual Tales For The Longest Night event - where we will be sharing Celtic stories for the winter solstice.
There’s a lot about this turn of events that I love.
I love that I’ve somehow fallen in with this coven of incredible Welsh elderwomen, who cackle hard and whose words bounce off their lips like pinballs.
I love that they’ve welcomed me, and see me as a Welsh woman, even though I’ve spent more of my life in England than anywhere else.
And I love that on this long, dark solstice night, we get to do what women have done for millenia – gather together, and warm ourselves on the fire of our collective imagination, with stories from around The British Isles.
There (and here), I’m going to tell a story from the Isle of Skye, which seems fitting for this time of year.
And that story is called The Dream Makers.
The Dream Makers
There was this wild Western island, much like the ones you know, often battered by hard winds and rain.
And there, there lived a group of humans, and they were…lost.
The were walking in circles, fighting, talking over each other.
Suffering a collective amnesia, that had made them forget their shared history, and shared future.
Like so many humans before them, and after.
But these humans…these were a little different, because these humans were being watched.
There was a stag on the mountain-top. He had antlers that twisted like the branches of ancient oak trees.
He was majestic, and he was also confused.
“What. Is. WRONG with them?”
He watched them for days, months, perplexed by the ways they just kept bouncing off each other…he watched them, entranced. Until one day, he noticed something else.
A girl.
She was small, dark hair, huge eyes. She was not like the others.
She seemed to have…an idea.
In the evenings she marched, not in circles but forwards, with intent. Up the path toward the gooseberry bushes, grabbing berries and thrusting squashy red stained handfuls into the pockets of her brown dress.
She had…focus.
*****
Except one evening, she was so focused on her task that she didn’t notice.
She didn’t notice the blanket of fog that rolled off the tabletop mountain, threatening to cover her like a duvet.
She didn’t notice until it was too late.
Pretty soon, she couldn’t see forwards or back. Side to side.
For a while, she tried to refind her path, but with every step she just seemed to move deeper and deeper into the woods. She walked for hours in the darkness until she couldn’t walk any more. And so, scared, she leant her back against the trunk of a tree, sank down to her knees, and held her face in the palms of her hands.
In the silence of the night she heard a rustle in the trees. And that was when she looked up and saw them.
A pair of shining eyes. Two eyes, then four eyes, no — EIGHT eyes, yes — SIXTEEN eyes. Shining in the moonlight and looking right at her.
As she stood, shook, the herd of deer stepped out of the woodland and into the glade to meet her, led by our stag. He kneeled forward, offering her his back, and she climbed up the muscles in his powerful front legs, rested her head in the soft space between his shoulder blades, and there, she fell into a deep sleep.
The stag began his journey up the mountain. High enough to a place the fog had lifted, twisting around trees and along cliff edges, until he came to the mouth of a cave.
There, an old woman and an old man stepped out.
“It’s this one,” the stag said.
“Well,” said the woman, “we’d best get started. Give ‘er here — no time like the now.”
*******
It’s hard to write the recipe for how to make dreams.
In this tale, it takes 365 days. A lot of hard work and diligence. The little girl painstakingly watched the man and the women as, inside the cave, they would thrust their hands deep into a well and dredge up balls of slime that looked like cheese. And they would mould it into weird and wild shapes before holding it high in the air where it would be grabbed by the talons of hawks, who would fly into the night to deliver the dreams into the ears of sleeping babes.
But that recipe misses some magic ingredient. It misses the undercurrents that build in the quiet moments.
The thickening that happens on the inside, when we’re silent, and hidden, beyond the gaze of the world.
It misses the unspoken ways that winter calls to us, and dreams are made in caves like these.
******
But she knew. Over those 365 days she felt her being age and a knowing grow in her belly until she moved as if in a dance with the imagination. Until she could see the dream before it was sucked from the well, and so shaping it was like moulding a statue that she already held in her hands.
In the end, she left the cave with that knowing. The old man and woman waved her goodbye as the stag carried her back from mountain peak to sandy shore. And there, they looked out to sea, to a boat, where a young man rowed towards them. He stumbled out into the shallow waves, his britches soaked, he was impatient to reach her.
“I’ve seen you,” he said, “I’ve seen you in my dreams.”
And together, they returned to their home, to the humans running in circles.
And she taught them how to be still, and dream again.
*****
This story is based on the traditional folk tale from the Isle of Skye, which can be found here. With thanks to the tellers who have gone before, and those who will come after in this chain of dreams.
Join us at Tales For The Longest Night next Friday 22 Dec at 7.30pm, on Zoom. All proceeds go to the Chwedl fundraiser to support future female storytellers.