A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.
― C.S. Lewis
Kids love a good story, we all know that. Imagination is their currency, their thing to do, their whole world. Nowadays, however, it is hard for the older stories to get in on the new game: media has become the new mythological cycle, the new haunted house story. It has, in a way, usurped the role of aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, that older kid forced to look after the tinies at a dinner party, the cool kids at the back of the bus. Even parents. in a (completely tragic) way.
Mass media products may instil a form of “wonder” in young viewers, but leaves nothing for their imagination. It’s like real wonder. Diet Wonder.
Wonder lite ™
I think this may be avoidable (for the stories, at least. Parents - we’re in a battle all of our own). The one sure fire way to slay the attention-hogging dragon of iPad and Disney+ is to tell the tales in the way they were first told. Not from the pages marked by Roald Dahl or CS Lewis or Jacqueline Woodson, all whilst you sit at the bottom of their bed (hoping they bloody-well fall asleep). Not by pausing “The Little Mermaid” to give the real version a fun-snatching airing. Not by um-ing and ah-ing your way through a half-remembered story you swore blind you knew.
Tell the tale of the place you’re in. The tales of how what they can see came to be.
What are these tales, and how does one tell them? Let’s see if I can explain.
There are few professions where impromptu, off-the-clock calls to do one’s job are welcome. If you asked, say, a builder to start erecting a stone wall in the car park of a supermarket as he loads his shopping into his car, he’d be justifiably peeved. An unexpected street-side appendectomy would be unbelievably stressful for a passing surgeon. Oh, and one must never ask a waitress to go fetch a sandwich when she is not on the clock!
For storytellers, I find, it is almost never the “wrong time” to tell a tale. It is, perhaps, less a profession for most of us than a vocation. A calling, maybe even in as literal a sense as one could accept.
Yes, I have told a story whilst I was on the toilet. Yes, the door was locked. No, I don’t know if the listener nipped off for a cup of tea in the middle. Yeesh.
I was fortunate enough to have such an experience recently. A former colleague of mine (and my beloved too - we briefly worked together once), our colleague’s husband, and their two wonderful kids, were holidaying on the South Wales coast. Given that we live about an hour away from where they were staying, we decided to meet up on the long expanse of Aberavon Beach, a kid-friendly place near the stinking carbuncle of a town, Port Talbot.
NB: As much of a dump as Port Talbot may be, you’d be hard pressed to find a place that has borne more talented musicians, actors, singers, sports stars, and all-round wits than there. The people are incredible there. Air quality, not so much. You can fart freely - nobody will suspect it was you.
There was an added bonus for this holidaying English family: beyond the Kinder Bueno Ice cream and mango sorbet the kids got to enjoy, beyond the sand, surf, and mercifully rainless clouds that day, we brought along our newly arrived baby for his first trip to the beach.
For me, however, that day’s joyous moment was to be found with their children.
These glorious little people had remembered that the last time we’d met I had told them a story about a dragon. And then one about a knight. And finally one about a giant. They really remembered the giant story quite well (the tale of King Arthur and Cribwr Gawr - the “Combing Giant” - the greatest most terrible giant who ever lived, now asleep in the Swansea Valley… see the picture at the end of the article if you don’t believe me!).
These kids not only remembered the tales, but now they wanted more. In fact, they had specific demands. I had to tell a tale with a knight, a dragon, AND a giant, all in the same story!
Not one to back down from the insolent challenges set by cocky audiences, I accepted. But I had a demand of my own…
You see, it had been years and years since I had set foot on Aberavon Beach. In fact, I couldn’t recall the last time I had. The view from the sand is quite lovely (provided you don’t turn your head leftwards at the steel works, that is) - you get a sweeping panorama of the rest of Swansea Bay; the cityscape, the picturesque Mumbles Head with Victorian-era Lighthouse, and most memory-jogging of all for me,
Kilvey Hill.
My challenge, which these awesome little dudes accepted, was to listen to a scary story I had about the hill we could see, shrouded in the haze, looming across the wide sweep on the bay. There it stood, silently watching them, daring them to hear about how it came to be.
“Not too scary now”, the youngest asked.
“OK”, I answered.
“But a little bit scary, yes?”, his older sister asked.
“OK”, I repeated. Then I started, pointing at Kilvey Hill with the obligatory ‘Once upon a time…’.
The story was one I heard when I was 5-years old. I heard it once, sitting in the back seat of my aunt’s car, stuck in traffic on the road that snakes around the base of the hill itself. We were on our way to the cinema, myself, my cousins, my little sister, and my aunt. The wait felt like an eternity, an eternity a child can only fill with fussing or imagination. Luckily for my aunt, my eldest cousin was an imagination factory. He invented the best games of make believe you could envisage - hours-long narratives that would span several visits and sleepovers. That’s when he told us the story of how Kilvey Hill came to be.
Here it is, to the best of my recollection:
It was not, in fact, a hill. That bit is important to know. It was once a flat bit of land, quite unremarkable, boring even, covered in scrub and windblown shrubs. The only notable thing ever to happen on this dull place was a battle. A powerful young witch whose name was Kilvey fought in a magical duel with a cruel, powerful wizard whose name has been lost to the mists of time.
She lost the battle did Kilvey, frozen to the spot by a wicked binding spell sent forth by the terrible wizard. Unable to move, the wizard approached to deal a coup de grace. Kilvey spat and snarled that if the wizard took one step closer, she’d unleash a spell so powerful that it would consume them both! The wizard, afraid that she may not be bluffing (she had shown a level of mastery of arcane magic he’d scarce seen beyond his own abilities), he vowed instead to return to finish her off some day. But not soon, he laughed.
Kilvey was left there, glued to the spot in the vast wasteland. Travellers would pass her from time-to-time: some were kind, sharing water and food with her (the only thing that kept her from perishing); others were cruel, posing her like a doll, throwing rotting fruit at her back, dousing her with foul-smelling water drawn from the puddles that formed around her. frozen form.
For twenty long, boring years she stood in that spot, bending and bowing with the inexorable progress of age, painfully wilting from the never-ending discomfort of inaction. Her hair fell out along with most of her teeth. Her eyes grew pale and dim. Her back bent, and a large hump formed behind her now-crooked neck.
“I must actually look like a witch by now”, thought Kilvey, at least once a week.
One day, a finely dressed man rode by on a beautiful brown mare. He wore purple, satin robes, hemmed with silver and stitched with golden thread. Much to her shock, this dapper stranger locked eyes with poor Kilvey, and immediately dismounted. He strode over to her, smiling, twirling his magnificently groomed moustache. Kilvey expected some charity, maybe even an offer to aid her. Some fancy folk were alright, she’d been told. Or maybe he;d kill her.
He was kind. But alas, she thought, not even a gentleman of means such as this could save her. Unless he was a wizard. Alas, she thought again, when he revealed himself to be a simple ultra-wealthy nobleman, and not a magician of any sort.
They spoke a while, a welcome distraction for her to be sure. Then, quite unexpectedly, the nobleman fell to one knee. He stared up at Kilvey and professed his undying love for her, begging her to marry him!
Kilvey could scarcely believe what she was hearing - how cruel could people be? But no, he was sincere. Never before had he enjoyed a conversation as much as the one he’d had with her, he exclaimed. Furthermore, he whispered with a twinkle in his eye, he loved a lady with a good, round hump. Kilvey blushed for the first time in decades.
“You’re having me on, mun!”, she scoffed.
But no, answered the nobleman. He truly was a man who loved a heavy helping of a hump upon a lady, especially if it was on her back. She believed him.
Kilvey tried to explain that, even if she wanted to marry him (and she most certainly did), that she was stuck exactly where she stood, bound by a curse not to move so much as an inch in any direction.
“Then here we shall stay!”, answered the nobleman. He promised to build a palace around her, to decorate it with the finest paintings and tapestries, to staff the place with cooks and servants who would bring Kilvey any luxury she desired.
“Well then… I DO!”, cried the old witch, with tears of joy rolling down her cheeks.
The nobleman was pleased. Before he left to make the arrangements, however, he asked his new fiancée if he could be so bold as to…
“Kiss me? Go on ‘en”, answered Kilvey, presumptively.
But no. That was not what he wanted. He asked, gingerly, with more than a hint of shame, if he could, perhaps, just for a moment…
stroke her hump.
“You what?”, she laughed. The gentleman looked embarrassed. He turned to leave, a single teardrop threatening to fall onto his expertly curled moustache.
“No! Wait, my love!”, called the old witch. “You may… uh… stroke my ‘ump”.
The gentleman laid his hand on the vast protuberance behind Kilvey’s neck. He stroked it gently, as one would a cat - gnetly and tenderly.
To Kilvey’s surprise, it felt quite nice, not unlike a massage. The nobleman stroked her again and again, his pace increasing. It stopped feeling like a massage then: it started to chafe. Then to sting. Then to burn. She called out for him to stop, looking deep into his eyes so he may relent.
She saw a change. His eyes dimmed. His moustache uncurled and fell out onto the scrub, with thick grey whiskers sprouting in its place. More clumping, wiry hairs burst from his ears and nose. His skin sagged around his chin as a long beard erupted downwards to his chest.
It was the wizard. He laughed maniacally as he stroked and stroked poor Kilvey’s hump.
“What are you doing?”, she cried.
“With each stroke your hump does grow, oh wizened old witch!”, he cried. “I told you, did I not, that I would return to finish what I had begun? Well here I am. And here you go!”.
The wizard jumped on the ever expanding hump, climbing up it like a mountain goat. Before long his laughter could not be heard by poor Kilvey.
And neither could her cries - the hump grew so great that it sagged over her body, enveloping her entirely. Up and up it went, scraping the sky, a swelling on the scrublands until.
The wizard disappeared.
Over the years, people forgot what had happened in that once featureless place. They forgot that there’d been a witch. They forgot that there’d been no great hump standing there, alone.
Grass grew, shrubs popped up all over the hump, farmers moved onto the banks and, houses were built. A road came, with street lights and bollards and pavement.
It stands there still, looking very much like a hill ,above a city near the sea.
But, remember the most important thing to know - it is not, in fact, a hill.
I sat in the back of that car.
Agog.
“I told you not to scare him! What will his mam say?”
“No”, I said to my aunt. “That was amazing”.
The two demanding kids my friends brought to Wales thought so too. They also enjoyed the second tale - an amalgamation of Welsh myths designed to fit a dragon and a knight AND a giant in the one tale - but that story from my childhood was the one that stuck.
Why? Surely the more established, ‘real’ tale should have proved the proverbial winner.
I think it was that the hill, or rather to their minds, the Witch’s Hump, was actually there. Just standing at the edge of their vision, rising up through the winter haze.
Just as Ceri had said.
Some tales such as this, those tales that explain the place, are indeed ‘real’ and ancient, and should of course be told if near the place they supposedly took place. Some are like this one, made-up but remembered still.
In a pinch, you could give making your own a try: long car/train/plane journeys would be the perfect time to do this!
Eventually, they rushed over to tell their parents about what they’d heard. “Mummy!”, the littlest boy had said, “THAT is not a hill. It’s a witch hump. Her name is Kill Vee!”. Then he went to find a flat stone each for us to skim on the waves.
Both children had a lovely time. They petted some passing dogs walked by windswept owners. Then they glanced at the hill. They ran around as their dad chased them with a remote control car, skittering off driftwood as though a miniature Evel Kinevel was behind the wheel. Then they glanced at the hill. They picked litter, made bucket-moulded castles before crushing them as though they were giants, proved that you don’t need snow to make angels when you’ve got sand. Then they glanced at the hill.
We all said our goodbyes (except the baby who was mercifully asleep), waving as we turned to go to our respective cars. I glanced back, seeing our friends’ backs as they left. The children, however, looked in my direction. Not at me, or my partner, or at our cute little baby. They were glancing at the hill.
Just in case it moved.