Sunday Stories: Wudu-Wasa
An East Anglian version of Iron John
Hello my friends, wherever you are surfacing in the world this morning! I’ve straggled and loitered and hitched my way back from my pilgrimage to Inis Oirr and have just returned from Oxford where I’ve been talking at a conference along with Iain McGilchrist, Rod Dreher, Charles Foster and others. Iain turned out to be tremendously good fun: a great wit who knows his way round a wine list and is filled with stories and nimble thoughts. I now have a couple of weeks to circle what feels like the end of a new book for Penguin before taking myself over to America for the Symbolic World Conference in Florida with Jonathan Pageau and others. It’s a lively and exciting start to the year, but I’m gearing up for Ash Wednesday next week and the start of Lent. I’ll be keeping plenty of quiet time front and centre these next fourteen days.
On my route home I got to see the comedian Tommy Tiernan working on new & electrifying stories in a Galway pub then attend Divine Liturgy with my old pal Paul Kingsnorth by the river Shannon. Afterwards there was a splendid Romanian feast which I was not allowed to leave until we’d got past the sweet course. Amiable but absolutely emphatic the Sisters are. It was encouraging to see a church so packed that whole families were spilling out into the courtyard.
Talking of Paul, a video has surfaced of the two of us talking in London back in November. I very much enjoyed the night and here it is:
WUDU WASA
So, a rare old gem today. I give a little preamble to this on the audio. Much of it may be familiar from the Grimm’s tale Iron Hans (made famous as Iron John by Robert Bly). And yet, there’s all sorts of little twists of direction. I will leave this one without commentary, though keep an eye out for things you’ve encountered in our other tales, other motifs. It’s not always the easiest tale to hold onto, but I’d love to know where you find yourself. Keys that can only be stolen, elegant kingdoms residing under brooding swamps, a being covered in hair that never dries out, there’s a lot cooking here.
Edinburgh Festival, 2015: A telling of Wudu Wasa - with Paul and Mark Rylance.
Listen to Wudu Wasa:
Delicious. The connection has never occurred to me before, but somehow the single eye in this story rings echoes for me of the injunctions in the New Testament to “be not double minded.” The creature is in total integrity of being/seeing, and it’s only the child who can perceive that nature and be fascinated more than afraid. Those who cage it, suffer. The wet fur sends me off on a ponder of what it might be like to be so thoroughly immersed in my baptism that I never “dry out”; I’d certainly look like a strange wild drowned thing to the eye of the world, but oh the magic beneath the dark water… Grateful for this bread to chew on. Thank you.
A brief shout out for the Fen - a beautiful place in its original form. I caught a glimpse crossing the great twin drains, on my cycle a dozen years ago not that far from Ely and going north. Two books of Fenland tales have come by way of a long story and a brother, but I think I have only have one to hand: 'Tales from the Fens', by WH Barrett; Edit. Enid Porter, Cambridge Folk Museum, 1963. These are from 'before the Education Act, 1870', and written down in his eighties from memory, long after the old storytellers had died out. There is many a wild man in the Fen and the devil in the details ended up in the pub where young ears should not have been.