Join a Tellers, Tales, Tradition weekend in Scottish Highlands. This will be a cosy community event, by the River Spey, in the home of Nana, one of Shonaleigh’s students. The telling will start at 7.30pm on Friday evening and finish at noon on Sunday.
It will take place within a relaxed atmosphere with plenty of cushions and sofas and tea, coffee and cake/biscuits provided at regular intervals. You can join us for the full weekend, or for the Saturday night only at the local community hall.
You are invited to a unique, immersive weekend of storytelling for adults with Shonaleigh, the world-renowned tradition bearer and storyteller. This is a rare chance to hear these ancient tales in the light and on the tongue, stories untold for two generations and barely spoken of for decades.
The Petal Demon belongs to the Cycle of Hillel, which is the first of twelve epic, latticed, interlinked cycles of stories passed down through generations of Jewish women.
It’s the story of a woman who is pursued by a mage, and how she’s helped by Lilith to create a maze of flowers, that traps the mage and becomes a sanctuary for her. This woman becomes known as the Petal Demon, and through her wanderings she leaves legends behind her. To men she’s a demoness; to women she’s a heroine.
Shonaleigh is the only known Drut’syla and the weekend will be a revival of a culture almost lost. Shonaleigh carries on a living unbroken oral tradition passed down from grandmother to granddaughter. She knows around 4,000 tales that she can recall on request, using the lost art of ‘stories within stories’.
This is an unmissable opportunity for anyone interested in stories or in oral and lost cultures to come and help document and archive this tradition through listening, requesting stories, and asking questions.
Suitable for adults and 14+ only.