It’s time to pay the Piper

 It’s time to pay the piper. We gather around the old wooden table. No one wants to pay, but it’s time. It’s one thousand o’clock. Everyone is here. The living and the dead. My grandparents, my mother, my father, my sons, my husband, the rabbis, even the president. You are here, too. Your teachers, your neighbors, your long-lost friends. Everyone you know is here. We put what we can on the table. Everyone must add to the pot. My sons leave wildflower seeds, my husband leaves a rose-colored pendulum, the president mutters and leaves ash, the rabbis leave ink marks scattered like sewing needles, my father leaves his stethoscope. I leave this essay. I leave my favorite broom. My grandfather leaves a small black key. My grandmother leaves her radiance. My sister leaves her hair. “I’m not paying,” says my mother. “I’ve paid enough.”

The earliest known version of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” is not a fairy tale, but a stained glass windowpane from a church in Hamelin, Germany, that was destroyed in 1633. Only a shard remains, which my nine-year-old son, Noah, pulls from his pocket and holds up to the light. It’s the piece of glass with the piper’s magical flute. The flute is bronze, and the light catches what’s left of the piper’s hands. Noah adds the shard to what we’ll use to pay the piper.

We miss the old sky. We think if we pay the piper now, the wildfires and the wind and the virus and the floods will swirl back into their wellspring, but the piper is missing. In a large dark sack, we drag our payment through the streets calling the piper’s name. Our heavy debt. Our hands are blistered and hot but we must pay the piper. We look for his red and yellow striped scarf and the pipe that hangs from it. We should’ve paid him long ago, when he emptied our town of rats “who bit the babies in the cradles … and made nests inside men’s Sunday hats, / And even spoiled the women’s chats / By drowning their speaking / With shrieking and squeaking,” as Robert Browning writes. We should have paid him before the sea levels rose and the polar bears thinned. We should have paid him before the first man was shot for the color of his skin, before the first wire barbed. But we didn’t pay the piper, so the piper made a new song for the children that promised “a joyous land … where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew.” We didn’t pay the piper, and so the children merrily followed him into a mountain, and a disappearing door shut fast when the last child was inside. Now there are no more children.

PIED PIPER ILLUSTRATION BY KATE GREENAWAY

Now there are no more children, except for one hobbling boy left behind, who couldn’t dance into the mountain fast enough. There is always one hobbling boy left behind, to describe the song the children followed. He is the poet. And there is always one rat left behind to describe the song the rats followed. The rat is the poet, too.

On Rosh Hashanah we blow the shofar one hundred and one times. The blasts alternate between broken howls and long moans. According to the Talmud, the shofar should be a ram’s horn because it is hollow and recalls Abraham’s near sacrifice of his only son. It recalls Abraham’s blind devotion, which blurred only when an angel showed him a ram whose horns were caught in a nearby thicket. Abraham was ready to overpay the piper, but paid with the terrified ram instead.

The shofar we have is broken. My sons take turns blowing it, but all we can hear is silence. It is a beautiful silence. One day, when there are too many of me, that is the song I will follow into a mountain. We add the broken shofar to the missing piper’s payment.

“Do you ever feel like you’re dreaming while you’re awake?” asks Eli, my seven-year-old. “Sometimes,” I say. “Do you?” “Of course,” says Eli. “We are always dreaming. I am a dream and you are a dream and Papa is a dream and Noah is a dream. 

Our house is a dream and the earth is a dream.” I add Eli’s words to the piper’s payment. Into the sack it goes, instantly doubling its worth.

When the piper arrives in Hamelin he seems to have walked from his “painted tombstone,” like an ancestor rising on the “Trump of Doom” (or Judgment Day) to rid the town of a plague. “There was,” writes Robert Browning, “no guessing his kith or kin.” He is the Godot we barely had to wait for and then when he arrived he was the Godot we didn’t pay. Or is he God, or Guru, or Go? What was his name?

I do not consider myself a follower even though I have followed things up trees, into rivers, and across bridges. I have listened carefully. I have taken notes and memorized. I have followed instructions, and I have been obsessed. I have been indoctrinated as often as I have pulled up roots and left behind a trail of soil. Once, when I was nine, I was about to follow my father into a mountain when my mother held me back. “Your father,” she said, “is brainwashing you.” I had never heard that word before, but it sounded like “bewitched” and I liked it. “Look,” said my mother. And I looked. My father dipped my brain into a bucket, and sloshed it around in lavender suds. The water was cool and fresh, and it felt like heaven. He folded my brain over a clothesline to dry in the motherless sun. Over my father I was gaga. Over my mother I was un-gaga. “See?” said my mother. I didn’t see. Ideology is made out of appetite, and sometimes we are hungry to be famished. For a long time I followed my father’s hum. It never wasn’t love. All over my heart are still-glittering flecks from that song I followed. If the piper ever comes to collect payment, I’ll put the glittering flecks in the sack, too.

Not once have I seen my son Noah walk in a line with his schoolmates without falling behind or straying, without looking up at the clouds or studying the ants. For better or for worse, I remind myself, he is the poet.

How do we choose what to follow? Or what not to follow? How old is this song we’re now following, with its cracked notes and strange ways of stopping and starting? Are we, I wonder, like lemmings to the sea? “That’s a myth,” says my husband. “What is?” I say. “Lemmings to the sea,” he says. “Lemmings don’t march blindly to their deaths.” “But it’s an idiom.” I say. 

“If it’s not like lemmings to the sea than what is it like?” The news is on. The same president who added ash to the piper’s sack is rising in the polls, or pretending to rise in the polls. “Like humans,” says my husband. “Like humans to the sea.”

In 1958 Disney made a documentary called The White Wilderness to prove that lemmings commit mass suicide by jumping off seaside cliffs. But lemmings don’t. The documentary shows hundreds of lemmings jumping into the Arctic Sea, except they are not jumping and this is not the Arctic Sea. The filmmakers purchased lemmings from children, brought them to the Bow River, and placed them on a turntable to create the effect of a frenzied death march. The lemmings are falling but they do not want to fall. What is happening is not what is actually happening. The film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary.

I wonder what it must feel like to be one of those lemmings. I wonder what it feels like to have been caught and brought to a precipice to perform the myth of yourself. Or maybe that’s exactly what we are doing day in and day out. Maybe what we are doing is performing the myth of ourselves on a cliff to the tune of a missing piper’s song.

If you see the piper tell him we have his payment ready. I’ve added the dreams of a lemming and my favorite orange sweater. This sack is getting heavier and heavier. Tell the piper we don’t know how much farther we can carry it while calling for him by a name we’ve never known. It’s now one thousand and one o’clock. It’s now later than we ever thought.

(Source: The Paris Review)

Rapunzel, draft one thousand

I call the Wig Man. He picks up. “My sister,” I say, “was diagnosed …” He interrupts me because he is driving and he is in a rush. “My store,” he says, “was looted last night.” “My sister,” I want to say, “…” He tells me he gathered all the hair that was left on the floor. “Glass everywhere,” he says. “I filled my Toyota Tacoma with all the hair that was left. I am driving home now,” he says. “Is you sister’s hair long?” he asks. It is. It is very long. “Because if it’s long what your sister should do before treatment begins is cut all her hair off and I will sew it, strand by strand, into a soft net. It’s called a halo,” he says. “I want to help your sister,” says the Wig Man. I imagine his Toyota Tacoma so stuffed with wigs that black and brown and blond hairs press up against the windows. Like animals trapped inside their own freedom. He starts to cry. I am certain he is driving across a bridge. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” he says.

“Neither do I,” I don’t say.

Sewing a wig strand by strand is called ventilating. I watch a tutorial. With a needle you draw each strand through a lace net and knot it on itself. The needle goes in and then out like thousands of tiny breaths. Ventilating a wig takes the patience of the dead. Each knotted strand is like a person sewn into a free country. The knot is tight, and the net is manufactured. “Of course my life matters,” says Eli my six-year-old. “Why wouldn’t it matter?”

My sister decides not to cut her hair. Instead she lets it fall out, slowly and then suddenly. She yawns, rises, and climbs up the stairs. She leaves behind a trail of blondish gold thread, like a princess coming undone. I write six different essays on Rapunzel. All of them are terrible. I help my sister into bed, though she prefers I not touch her. On her nightstand are six glittering tiaras. She wears one to chemo. Another to breakfast. “Isn’t it strange,” I say, “that I write about fairy tales and you are a fairy tale princess?” She looks at me hard. “A sick princess,” she says.

Of all the fairy tales, Rapunzel gives me the most difficult time. “It’s because,” says my husband, “you are trying to use her to write about systemic racism, and protest, and cancer, and a global pandemic.” “Should I just take out the racism?” I ask. “No,” he says. 

PHOTO © SABRINA ORAH MARK

“You can’t take out the racism.” “I know,” I say. “That was a stupid question,” I say. “Can I take out my mother?” “Does your mother appear?” he asks. “I don’t remember your mother appearing.” 

“Eventually,” I say, “my mother always appears.”

I am following my husband around the kitchen. “Should I add how after George Floyd was killed you sat on the edge of the bathtub and cried? Remember how you said,” I say, “‘We’ve been here before’? Remember when you said, ‘When will this stop,’ but you said it like an answer not a question?”

“Thugs,” says the Wig Man. “They destroyed my shop,” he says. “Everything is ruined.” I never call the Wig Man back. Instead, my mother buys my sister four wigs made out of strangers’ hair. Two brown ones, and two blond. My sister refuses to try the wigs on so my mother tries them on instead. In the wigs my mother looks sad and incredibly young. I can see my sister’s face gazing out from inside my mother’s, like a girl locked inside a tower.

My husband sits on the edge of the bathtub and cries. “We’ve been here before so many times,” he says. “When will it stop?” he says. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” says the Wig Man. “Of course my life matters,” says Eli, “why wouldn’t it matter?” “Did you know,” says my sister, “that in Disney’s Tangled Rapunzel lives inside a kingdom called Corona?” “That can’t be right,” I say.

I cut off all my hair. A twelve-inch braid long enough for nobody to climb. I throw the braid in the trash and then remove it from the trash. It’s soft and dumb. “I can’t look at it,” says my mother. “Get it away from me,” says my sister. I put it in an envelope and send it to a dear friend’s brother, an artist who makes Torahs and animals and money out of human hair and skin. I mean it as an act of solidarity, but I get the feeling my sister and mother read it as an act of pointless sacrifice. To punish Rapunzel for betraying her captivity, the enchantress winds her braids around her left hand, cuts them off, then takes Rapunzel to a wilderness and leaves her there. “See,” I say to my sister. “It’s not so bad.” She looks at my short hair, and a small forest grows between us.

Other than Disney’s, in no version of Rapunzel is Rapunzel’s hair magical. It can’t bring back the dead, or heal a broken bone, or keep a woman young forever. It can’t light up dark water. It can’t be thrown like a lasso so Rapunzel can glide from mountaintop to mountaintop. It doesn’t, like his hair does for Samson, give her god’s power or the strength to kill a lion with her bare hands. It cannot keep a man from being shot for his blackness. It’s just hair.

“I’m sure Rapunzel is wonderful and not terrible,” emails a friend, “but also there’s something Sisyphean about Rapunzel …” She’s right. I know what she means. Rapunzel’s hair is no more magical than a mountain the enchantress climbs day after day, pushing the burden of her own spell. I know what she means, but now I am imagining rolling boulders up Rapunzel’s back as she bends down to pick the roots and berries she survives on while pregnant in the wilderness. I roll the boulder up Rapunzel’s back, and each time I reach the crest the boulder rolls back down. Rapunzel, the mountain. Rapunzel, my sister. I am using my sister’s cancer to write about the impossible because it’s impossible my sister has cancer. And it’s impossible my sons cannot go to school or play with their friends. And it’s impossible my husband could be shot for being black. And it’s impossible the air is filled with tear gas and viral particles. I have stolen my sister’s tiara to wear. I am covered in sweat and dust, and on my head the tiara is crooked. I stole the most beautiful one. I stole the one embellished with glass stones and little pink stars.

It is late afternoon and my sister is sleeping. In the dining room, my mother has lined up all the wigs on their Styrofoam heads. Like four extra daughters. She keeps walking by them and smoothing their hair with her hand. She puts one to her face and inhales. The afternoon light lengthens her shadow. I don’t know if she notices I am there. The story of Rapunzel begins with a pregnant woman’s insatiability, her hunger for the finest rapunzel (also known as rampion, or the “king’s cure-all”) that results in the barter and entrapment of her daughter. In Giambattista Basile’s “Petrosinella,” one of the earliest versions of the story, a pregnant woman is caught stealing parsley from an ogress’s garden. She apologizes, and explains she had to satisfy her craving. In the sixteenth century, there was a widespread belief that if a pregnant woman’s cravings weren’t satisfied, the shape of whatever she craved would appear on her newborn. Birthmarks are called voglie in Italian, which means longings. My sister and I have identical birthmarks on the right side of our faces. Near our ears. Like a handful of scattered acorns. I am twenty-five years older than my sister. We don’t have the same father, but we do have the same mark of our mother’s longing.

Every two weeks my mother takes my sister to be infused with poison through a hole in her neck so she doesn’t die. My mother looks over at me. I am writing a birthday card with butterflies on it. “I hate butterflies,” says my mother. “It’s a stupid thing to put on a birthday card. They’re barely alive and then they’re dead.” Every mother has the exact same single greatest fear. It’s the boulder we push while praying for no crest.

“Of course my life matters,” says Eli, my seven-year-old. “Why wouldn’t it matter?”

By now the Wig Man must have stopped crying and arrived home. I imagine he is working in the same afternoon light that comes in through my mother’s window. He is bent over as he sews each of us, like strands of hair, into a soft net. Listen, we are breathing. You are breathing. My sons and husband are breathing. The Wig Man sews and sews. One piece of glass is still caught in a strand but he doesn’t notice it yet. My mother is breathing. My sister is breathing. 

We will make a magnificent wig. Rapunzel will wear us in this lost version of her fairy tale. We are not magical, but at least we are alive. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, / Let your hair down.” When she lets us down what will climb up? We have one last chance to answer right. A revolution or the enchantress who keeps us?

(Source: The Paris Review)

Remembering the Khasi singer who immortalised fading folktales and village life

Through his music, Skendrowell Syiemlieh spoke of forgotten myths, folktales, ethics and ways of life.

Born on March 1, 1945, Skendrowell Syiemlieh was the first son of Plentimai Syiemlieh and Romuel Ryntathiang. He grew up in his native village called Umthied Bynther in West Khasi Hills, Meghalaya.

Raiot

At the age of eight, he started to mesmerise the village with the melodious sound of his four-stringed duitara and his soulful singing. In 1967-’68, he was given an opportunity to sing on an All India Radio programme. After that, Syiemlieh became a regular artiste on All India Radio Shillong and his songs were loved by many.

Living old memories

Syiemlieh would begin many of his songs with the words “Ha sngap ho para ngan iathuh khana” (Listen o my brothers and sisters, I will tell you a story). Indeed, his songs were stories. But they were narrated not only to entertain, but more importantly to teach. Like a storyteller of old, he would sing his stories. The duitara, the guitar and the violin were accompaniments as he would retell tales about his people, the Khasis, and in particular, the rural folk.

The origin myths of the Khasis, ancient sacred tales, histories, tragic tales of fallible Khasi heroes and doomed romances were the subjects of his art. In his songs, he repeated the tale of Tirot Sing in prison (Iing Byndi), the awe-inspiring account of the ancestral father of his clan, U Lohryndi, the tragic tale of U Manik Raitong, and the story of Ka Suna.

For Syiemlieh, storytelling and singing were the same. The accompanying musical instruments – such as the duitara, guitar and violin – deepened the union between the stories and his music.

Though his musical creations are tales of yore, they present different perspectives. In Iing Byndi, for instance, he does not sing about the heroism of U Tirot Sing Syiemlieh (a native chief who led the Khasis in their fight against the British during the 1929-1933 Anglo- Khasi War). Rather, he chooses to sing about the anguish in Tirot Sing’s family after his arrest.

In U Lohryndi, he tells us about U Lohryndi the Thawlang (or ancestral father) of the Syiem Sutnga and Syiemlieh clan. While many have sung about the Iawbei (root-ancestress of the clan) Ka Lidohkha, Skendrowell shows us another perspective by making Lohryndi his song’s protagonist.

In Ka Mahadei (Syiem’s Wife), he talks about how the Syiem (traditional Khasi chief) had asked his myntri (nobles) to fetch a poor woman for a wife, especially someone who is a khun khatduh, the lastborn daughter in a poor family. The Syiem hopes to marry a humble and self-sacrificing woman who knows how to keep house and serve him and her family too. There is one such woman, but her elder sister is envious of her. She lies and gets married to the Syiem instead, claiming that she is the khun khatduh who takes care of her parents. The younger sister has no idea about this. She marries a baker. But as justice would have it, the Mahadei (Syiem’s wife) gives birth to deformed children who do not live long. The Syiem understands that there is something the Mahadei is hiding from him. She confesses and the Syiem imprisons her. 

The Syiem then orders his nobles to fetch him another wife. They come back with the Mahadei’s youngest sister whose husband, the baker, dies before fathering any children. They find her to be the best match for him.

Skendrowell sings:

Ko jingpihuin ko jingbishni phin lah shan slem oh katno sngi?

La phi leh bein ha sla pyrthei ia rangli ki juki, 

Ka jinglanot kan wan ha phi, 

Khatduh ym slem kan thad lyngkrang ia phi.

Oh envy, oh jealousy! For how long would you last? 

You may have ill-treated the poor, 

but suffering will come to you and in the end,

you will be shamed and laid bare.

Uniquely, in many songs, he would begin without singing and without music, instead imparting a moral lesson. Once the music started, so would the singing.

Romanticism in songs

Inspiring his songs were the natural beauty and serenity of rural areas. In one song after another he would sing about the four seasons (like in Saw Aiom Ki Por) and his village.

In Ah Moina – “Ah Moina! Ah Moina! Bu chong cha ri bujngei (Oh Mynah! Oh Mynah! That lives in a faraway land”) – and in U Sohkhia, the image of the mynah reappears. The bird is a recurring motif that symbolically suggests a love that is lost and has flown away. In several songs, plants and flowers – like U Tiewlyngksiar, U Tiewlyngskaw, U Tiewdohmaw (all wild orchids) – are nature’s symbolic suggestions of the manners and qualities of human beings.

In Khublei Khublei, Skendrowell uses the imagery of flowers to describe the difference in the way he is treated in his village and in a town. In his village, he is U Tiewlyngksiar (an orchid symbolising an honourable gentleman), but when in town, he is forced to apologise since to the urban elites, he is just U Tiewlyngskaw (a flower symbolising the rustic). Amidst this drama, he mentions how U Tiewdohmaw (a flower symbolising a wise person) would listen to the songs sung by U Tiewlyngksiar, who is but U Tiewlyngskaw to the urban elite.

The rural landscape inspired his singing. In Ah Moina, Skendrowell sings of a life lived in the soothing embrace of nature, a life filled with the simple joys of catching a bird or a mountain rat, when ploughing the field, when playing the duitara and when eating u sohphlang (a white edible tuberous root that has a sweet crunchy flavour).

Singing in the Mawiang dialect (one of the many Khasi dialects spoken in the West Khasi Hills), he begins with the words:

Chi bu duk bu toi

Set synduk ia ka loi loi

We who are poor,

we lock up the nothing we have in a box.

The empty box symbolises poverty as well as the meaninglessness of material possessions. This box, which is seemingly empty to the urban folk, is in fact a treasure box containing the most precious experiences of rural life. In Skendrowell’s eyes, these rural experiences are valuable. They must be carefully locked in a box, a box that the urban rich sees as having nothing or “loi loi”. This is proof of his unwavering belief in the serenity and freedom of rural life, even if it is sometimes hard or poverty-stricken.

Amid a difficult village life, his songs talk about 1. Ka Tip Kur Tip Kha; 2. Ka Tip Briew Tip Blei; and 3. Ka Kamai ia ka Hok (1. To know one’s maternal and paternal relations – the sacred principle that defines family relations; 2. To know man and know God – the sacrosanct value that defines human relations and our relationship with God; 3. To earn righteousness – the ideal and belief that one must work one’s righteousness out).

These are the Khasi ideals, ethics that were ingrained in him since childhood while he would sit around the hearth with his family and other villagers. His love for the rural and the natural, however, is unlike Wordsworth’s pantheistic ideology, unlike Keats’ worship of beauty and it indicates nothing of Shelley’s escapist desire. Like a true son of his village, he sang his songs – a villager singing his songs.

His songs are a magical description of the intoxicating, inspirational and soul-soothing rural life, of which he was a part. He did not wait for a Wordsworth to describe his life. Indeed, Skendrowell’s songs are not poems about a Yarrow Unvisited (a poem of Wordsworth’s) but he was part of his own Yarrow, meaning the Khasi rural landscape.

His love for his village is mirrored in Shnong ba nga ieij (The Village I Love). If WB Yeats could not help but go to Innisfree, where he hoped to find peace, Skendrowell gave in to the call of his village hut – a call made by Mother Nature (Ban khot noh ia nga, Ba phah ka Mei Mariang). Like a true Khasi, he saw nature as a Mother (Mei meaning mother – Mei Mariang or Mother Nature).

His songs, however, are not descriptions of a utopian Khasi world. He was not blind to the loss of values among Khasis and with an honest eye, he saw the moral decadence in his society. In Akor Khasi, he mourns the loss of Khasi manners and values. “Akor Khasi pat la ha niamra (Good Khasi manners and values are now in dark caves).

Raising questions

While entertaining, his songs were also meant to teach and reflect on human nature.

His search for meaning in life starts with questions that dig deep into the deepest pits and chaotic labyrinths of human nature. There are questions aplenty in his songs. Balei (why)?, he would ask. In Balei jinglong briew? (Why is human nature such?), Skendrowell sings,

Balei jinglong briew kum ka sla halor um kaba shu per?

Why is human nature like a leaf that floats on the water surface?   

This suggests his understanding that humans are simply drifters – wavering like leaves on the water surface.

In the same song, he continues:

Balei jinglong briew ka shu lum Dorbar khlem nongbishar?

Why do humans gather a Dorbar when there’s no proper judge or righteousness?  

This suggests corrupt practices in the traditional Khasi Dorbar.

Balei jinglong briew ba shu kwah ban her sha ka ri ki khlem kam tang shyntur suda?

Why do humans want to escape to a land where people don’t work but only talk?  

This suggests tall talk but no action.

Balei jinglong briew ba shu kwah ban her shaba sting u ba met ba khia u stait?

Why do humans want to escape to where the edible part of the rice grain is light and the husk is heavy?

The part of the rice grain that is edible should have been described as being heavy since we toil and labour for our food. 

But Skendrowell turns this upside down. The edible portion is light but the husk, which is unnecessary, is heavy. This suggests a chaotic and absurd world, where there is a total inversion of values as opposed to the world of his village, where the simple joys of life amidst nature are soul-soothing and where everything is in order.

However, like Pablo Neruda in The Book of Questions, Skendrowell does not provide solutions to the human predicament. He sees his people as being caught in a dilemma (Ka Dum Dngiem) and he firmly believes that it is the greed of man and the loss of the old Khasi value of “Ka Kamai ia ka Hok” that the Khasi world is now absurdly chaotic and seemingly irredeemable.

True to roots

His inability to sing in English meant he was never fully embraced by the urban elite. Even the Padma Shri bestowed posthumously in 2009 did not help raise his image among them. They continue to regard his art as a subaltern art belonging to a subaltern rural narrative. They fail to notice his brilliance.

However, he remains “the singing storyteller” for many in the villages and small Khasi towns considered Nongkyndong (a pejorative term used by the Khasi urban elite to paint village folks as village idiots). His courage to sing about himself as a son of the village brought him success when, without inhibition, he sang Ah Moina in the Mawiang dialect.

The Mawiang dialect is associated with the rustic life. Nobody imagined that a song sung in a dialect of West Khasi Hills would be appreciated. But it was. Till date, Ah Moina remains one of the most popular Khasi songs, bringing fame to him but also to West Khasi Hills.

Skendrowell is not purely a folk singer. Though much of his music is fusion music, yet it enhances folktales and it helps our generation – who are more attuned to the sounds of a Western drum or guitar – relate to them. In Skendrowell, the duitara found a companion who could take it to a new generation. With Skendrowell, the oral storytelling tradition became a singing tradition, making our generation connect with our roots. Ancient folktales were given a new life and they are now sung to our generation.

The old has given way to the new, but folktales are part of our cultural memory and Skendrowell’s songs have contributed much to their retelling. By immortalising memories, he has immortalised himself. Thanks to Skendrowell Syiemlieh, many Khasi folktales have become flesh and blood. Let us all tell our own stories in songs and maybe we too will live forever.

(Source: Scroll)

David Olney: American folk singer dies on stage aged 71

The American singer-songwriter David Olney has died on stage during a performance at a festival in Florida.

The 71-year-old was mid-song when he apologised, closed his eyes and fell silent, two musicians who were performing alongside him said.

He suffered an apparent heart attack during the show in Santa Rosa Beach on Saturday night, a statement said.

Olney was a key member of Nashville's music scene and his songs were recorded by a number of country and folk stars.

David Olney released more than 20 albums during his solo career

In the early 1980s, he formed a rock band called The X-Rays before embarking on a solo career and releasing more than 20 albums.

"Olney was in the middle of his third song when he stopped, apologised and shut his eyes," Amy Rigby, a musician who was sitting next to him, wrote in a Facebook post.

"He was very still, sitting upright with his guitar on, wearing the coolest hat and a beautiful rust suede jacket," she added.

Scott Miller, who was also on stage with Olney, said he had attempted to revive the singer.

"David paused, said, 'I'm sorry' and put his chin to his chest," he wrote. "It was as easy and gentle as he was."

"We got him down and tried our best to revive him until the EMTs [emergency medical technicians] arrived. The world lost a good one last night but we still have his work. And it still inspires."

In a statement posted on Olney's website, Emmylou Harris, a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, paid tribute to the singer's ability to tell "marvellous stories with characters who cling to the hope of enduring love".

(Source: BBC)

Some fairy tales may be 6000 years old

When it comes to the origin of Western fairy tales, the 19th century Brothers Grimm get a lot of the credit. Few scholars believe the Grimms were actually responsible for creating the tales, but academics probably didn’t realize how old many of these stories really are. A new study, which treats these fables like an evolving species, finds that some may have originated as long as 6000 years ago.

The basis for the new study, published in Royal Society Open Science, is a massive online repository of more than 2000 distinct tales from different Indo-European cultures known as the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index, which was compiled in 2004. Although not all researchers agree on the specifics, all modern Indo-European cultures (encompassing all of Europe and much of Asia) descended from the Proto-Indo-European people who lived during the Neolithic Period (10,200 B.C.E.–2000 B.C.E.) in Eastern Europe. Much of the world’s modern language is thought to have evolved from them.

An illustration of Beauty and the Beast from 1913. WARWICK GOBLE

To conduct the study, Jamshid Tehrani, an anthropologist at Durham University in the United Kingdom, and colleagues scanned the repository. They limited their analysis to tales that contained magic and supernatural elements because this category contained nearly all the famous tales people are familiar with. This narrowed the sample size to 275 stories, including classics such as Hansel and Gretel and Beauty and the Beast.

But tracing these tales back through time is no easy task. There are scant historical records, and many of the fables began as oral stories that left no written versions. So the researchers used statistical methods similar to those employed by biologists to trace species lineages back through the branching tree of evolution based only on modern DNA sequences.

Here’s how it worked: Fairy tales are transmitted through language, and the shoots and branches of the Indo-European language tree are well-defined, so the scientists could trace a tale’s history back up the tree—and thus back in time. If both Slavic languages and Celtic languages had a version of Jack and the Beanstalk (and the analysis revealed they might), for example, chances are the story can be traced back to the “last common ancestor.” That would be the Proto-Western-Indo-Europeans from whom both lineages split at least 6800 years ago. The approach mirrors how an evolutionary biologist might conclude that two species came from a common ancestor if their genes both contain the same mutation not found in other modern animals.

But it’s not quite so simple. Unlike genes, which are almost exclusively transmitted “vertically”—from parent to offspring—fairy tales can also spread horizontally when one culture intermingles with another. Accordingly, much of the authors’ study focuses on recognizing and removing tales that seem to have spread horizontally. When the pruning was done, the team was left with a total of 76 fairy tales.

This approach allowed the researchers to trace certain tales, such as The Smith and the Devil, which tells the story of a blacksmith who makes a deal with the devil in exchange for unmatched smithing prowess, back thousands of years—all the way to the Proto-Indo-European people. If the analysis is correct, it would mean the oldest fairy tales still in circulation today are between 2500 and 6000 years old. Other stories seem to be much younger, appearing for the first time in more modern branches of the language tree.

The authors have done “as good a job as possible,” with the data they have, says Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom.

In a new dispatch, published this month in Current Biology, he ruminates on what allows these stories to stand the test of time. “What really interests me is why these cultural forms exist. Why is it that fairy tales, art, songs, poems, why do these things seem to have such longevity?”

Tehrani says that the successful fairy tales may persist because they’re “minimally counterintuitive narratives.” That means they all contain some cognitively dissonant elements—like fantastic creatures or magic—but are mostly easy to comprehend. Beauty and the Beast, for example, contains a man who has been magically transformed into a hideous creature, but it also tells a simple story about family, romance, and not judging people based on appearance. The fantasy makes these tales stand out, but the ordinary elements make them easy to understand and remember. This combination of strange, but not too strange, Tehrani says, may be the key to their persistence across millennia.

“This is of course something we now need to test more rigorously,” he says. “That’s the next phase of this research.”

(Source: Science Mag)

Why do majority of Indian writers remain obsessed with myth?

The mythic past, not the future, has captured Indians’ political and literary imagination. So, we re-imagine it, time and again. writes Samhita Arni, the author of The Mahabharata — A Child’s View, Sita’s Ramayana, The Missing Queen and The Prince, in The Hindu. Read on: 

Walk into any bookstore, and a battalion of books inspired by or based on books dominate the shelves and vie for space. A legion of authors produce bestselling work inspired by myth: Ashok Banker, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Amish, Krishna Udayasankar. You’ll also come across the perennially bestselling Amar Chitra Katha titles, and Amruta Patil’s delicate, gorgeous graphic novels based on the Mahabharata. I live in hope that among all these dazzling books and titles, you may also stumble across my retellings of the Mahabharata and Ramayana: The Mahabharata — A Child’s View, Sita’s Ramayana, a graphic novel produced in collaboration with Patua artist Moyna Chitrakar, and The Missing Queen. (Forgive me for the unabashed plug — I’m nowhere as commercially successful as many of the writers I’ve named above.) I now have a fourth book, The Prince. Unlike my earlier books, this is not precisely a retelling of an epic, but it explores and imagines the life of the writer of an epic — Ilango Adigal, the author of Silappatikaram. But as I’ve been writing this book, I’ve often wondered: why are authors, and (fortunately for us) audiences, so obsessed with myth?

Let me confess: I yearn to write something else. A romantic comedy. Science fiction. A detective novel. But, each time, I find myself pulled back to myth. It's a force I cannot resist. I’ve struggled to understand the fascination that myth holds for me. I’ve devoured the work of C.G. Jung and Joseph Campbell, both of whom suggest that the great power and resonance of myth helps us understand our own psyche, the yearnings of our spirits and souls. That the emotional resonances of myth help us understand our emotional and psychological selves.

That is part of the answer.

But not all of it.

Rana Daggubati in Baahubali.  

Quo vadis?
A couple of years ago I was having lunch with a friend, Nitin Pai, who heads a public policy think-tank, the Takshashila Institution, in Bengaluru. Nitin related an anecdote about American journalist Fareed Zakaria. Zakaria, when he came to India, said in an interview that the difference between Indians and Americans could be explained simply: Americans will ask, ‘Where are you going?’ Indians will ask, ‘Where are you coming from?’

I wondered then if it was possible to extend Zakaria's observation into the realm of literature; if so, it may answer some of my questions. Let me give you an example. I loved the books of Isaac Asimov as a teenager. In his Foundation series, Asimov portrays a society (the Foundation) desiring and struggling to be a utopia. Through the novels and characters of the books, he explores ideas of good governance, and projects a political idea onto the future. In conceiving of the series, Asimov was influenced by Edward Gibbon’s seminal work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And yet at the same time, Asimov was influenced by his own time and the history of his country, in particular the concept of 'manifest destiny’, the American belief that there is something unique to the American character, a special destiny for the country, and a belief that this destiny is irresistible; you can hear echoes of this in the “Make America Great Again” slogan.

Asimov’s vision of the future — of the Foundation — is deeply influenced by the time he lived in. (For those who are familiar with the series, compare the circumstances of the Cold War with the relationship between Trantor and the Foundation.) His other novels as well betray an interest in politics and philosophy — both The Naked Sun and The Caves of Steel reference, in their titles, the Allegory of the Cave, found in Plato’s Republic. The Foundation, psychohistory, Philosopher-King robots like Giskard, that’s where Asimov wants us to go, and that’s his answer to Zakaria’s question.

It’s not just Asimov. The writer Ursula K. Le Guin famously stated, in the introduction to her pioneering work of feminist science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness, that: “Science fiction is not predictive, it is descriptive.” In other words science fiction is not truly about the future; instead, it tells us more about our present. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin creates and explores the idea of a world without gender, and the impact of gender on culture, society, politics and even language. The wintry planet of Gethen, with its androgynous people, their complex cultural customs and social organisation, thus offers a way to look back at our own selves and realise how our perceptions of gender are culturally and socially constructed — and how these perceptions, in turn, construct us.

Le Guin was writing at the time of the second wave of feminism, and her novel projects these concerns onto an imagined future. The Netflix series based on Margaret Atwood’s science fiction novel The Handmaid’s Tale has resonated with many viewers in the light of Trump’s coming to power.

Caught in the past
We Indian writers, with a few exceptions, haven’t been quite as successful as the West in producing science fiction, though we have fared better with fantasy. The majority of writers and readers remain obsessed with myth. Why can’t we imagine the future? Why are we stuck instead re-imagining the past?

The answer is simple, it is not the future that has captured our political imagination and our dreams for society. We map, we project our ideas of utopias, of good governance, onto our myths — and not onto the future. To return to the anecdote concerning Zakaria, we are more interested in where have come from than in where we are headed to. We often re-imagine a golden age, an ideal time. So we map our present onto the literature of the past.

The Ramayana is often employed with conjuring ideas of a utopia — but many recent works (my own included) reflect an unease with this sort of utopia, particularly as it is regarded as a prescription for the present. Nonetheless, we look back to the mythic past as a place of great imaginative power, that can shape our political fantasies and destinies.

In contrast, I would suggest, science fiction writers map the present onto the future, creating utopias and dystopias that reflect either their ease or unease with the present. That’s where Americans are going to. But both science fiction and the epics that we keep returning to share many themes, and both genres share a concern with the issues of governance, power, justice; the themes of the ideal society and ruler, as well as the relationships between gender and society, justice, the ideal ruler and so on. Where Americans are going to and where Indians are coming from are bizarrely similar — both the imagined past and imagined future reflect one thing: our hopes and fears in the present.

Still from the 2004 film adaptation of Asimov’s I, Robot.

Men and women
Our major epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata have spawned innumerable retellings and re-imaginings. For me, there is a similarity between the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana — these are all epics that centre on men, specifically princes and kings, and wars.

The Tamil epics, such as Silappatikaram and Manimekalai, do feature princes and kings, and are pre-occupied with themes of governance, power, justice — but these epics are different. As a writer who is a woman and a feminist, I find both empowering, for they feature women in the central roles. These women are ordinary non-royal women, and these epics focus on the possibility of social change and transformation. And there’s no war that spurs the plot of these narratives.

Whereas the Ramayana in many ways could be considered utopic, featuring an ideal man and king, the Tamil epics are not — both depict corrupt kings and princes who fail to administer justice, whose integrity is compromised. These are epics of protest, of social justice. Fascinatingly, both Silappatikaram and Manimekalai are written by men. And Silappatikaram, for all its criticism of kings, is written by ‘Ilango Adigal’, the Prince Ascetic. We know he is a Chera prince, brother of King Shenguttuvan, who appears in the epilogue. The legends surrounding the epic offer us a dramatic story of this ascetic prince — he was the subject of a prophecy that claimed he would be a great king, but much like Bhishma of the Mahabharata, he renounced his claim to the throne. Instead, he donned the robes of a Jain monk and wrote an epic that is heavy with eroticism, that focuses on women. A man of paradox, then: a royal who becomes an ascetic, a monk who writes erotic poetry, a man who writes about the anger of women.

For me, there is much that his epic offers us. Anger is the emotion that moves Kannagi — and yet as a woman, I found this character surprising. For so many years I felt distanced from my own anger, and like many other women struggle with cultural conditioning that insists that anger is not feminine. Anger is masculine, whereas grief is feminine — and hence we are uncomfortable with men who cry. Ilango Adigal’s epic provoked the realisation that anger is necessary to claim justice, anger is the fuel for social change and transformation.

That, in fact, anger might be necessary for us to imagine a different future. I think it is time for us to broaden our political imagination: to look for our fantasies and desires for the present, and for the reflection of our hopes and dreams in other epics and literatures, to go beyond what the Mahabharata and the Ramayana offer, and to perhaps find these not just in texts such as Silappatikaram and Manimekalai. But to find these in other texts — can the poems of Lal Ded, for example, help us rethink gender and gender roles? Can, for example, Krishnadevaraya’s Amuktamalyada, or the plays of Mahendravarman Pallava understand the relationship between kings and society, men and women, the relationship between power and patronage?

An Indian musical instrument with a rich history is on the cusp of extinction

The kinnera, which originated in 4th century CE, has only a dozen practitioners left, most in Telangana.

Four years ago, Dakkali Balamma sat on the ground outside her thatched hut in Mambapur village in Telangana, bent intently over her kinnera. As the 86-year-old strummed the instrument, it produced a melodious and sharp sound. Her voice was slightly hoarse with age, but her grasp on shruti, the measure of pitch, and laya, or beat, was firm. After a few minutes, she looked up at her audience and awaited their response. The rich applause didn’t disappoint her.

When Balamma was younger, the residents of her village said, she would ride around on a horse, much to the awe of her Dakkali tribe. Her voice, at the time, was more powerful, and her impressive performances with the kinnera in the district’s villages were rewarded with money, food and clothes by the Madigas, the patron class. Fortunes changed with time. By the time Balamma died in December 2018, she was penniless. The villagers had to pool in money for her last rites.

Balamma was among the dozen or so people in India still playing the instrument. The kinnera is a stringed instrument native to the nomadic tribes in the Deccan plateau, such as the Dakkali and the Chenchu. A kinnera performance involves vocals and music, and the ballads are sung primarily in rustic Telugu. But today, it is an all but forgotten practice.

Dakkali Balamma. Photo credit: Jayadhir Thirumala Rao.

Origin story
Scholar and poet Jayadhir Thirumala Rao says that the origins of the kinnera can be traced back to “around the 4th century AD, in and around the Deccan plateau”. “The Chenchu tribe [also known as Chenchus or Chenchulu], who were part of the Nallamalla forest, used to play the instrument while singing and narrating ballads or stories of heroes,” said Rao. “The Dakkali tribe of Mahbubnagar district in Telangana [in the area near the Nallamalla forest] was performing it at least from the 12th century. The Dakkalis are a sub-caste of the Madiga caste, once considered outcastes.”

The kinnera has several variations – it comes with seven, nine, 12 or 13 frets. The larger-sized ones have three resonators, while the smaller ones have only two. Much like the Saraswati veena, the instrument is made with organic materials. Its neck is crafted of bamboo, and the resonators from sun-dried and hollowed-out bottle gourds. Pangolin scales are used for the frets, and honey wax for binding. The strings were once fashioned out of women’s hair, horse-tail hair and even animal nerves, but have long been replaced with thin metallic strings.

The ballads accompanying the music are usually drawn from historical incidents, the lives of local heroes, and sometimes songs from the Jamba Puranam. The Jamba Puranam is one of around 40 Puranas in Telugu that differ from the Sanskrit Puranas, in that their content is specific to a local community. The ballads are often interspersed with simple and short, often dramatic, monologues. The tone of voice, facial expressions and body language change with the song’s mood.

A kinnera. Photo credit: Shilpaka Venkatadri.

Declining patronage
Researchers say that apart from the last surviving kinnera performers in Mahabubnagar and Vikarabad districts of Telangana, there are possibly a few more performers in Karnataka, the Adilabad district of Telangana and the Gond tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh.

Darshanam Mogilaiah, who is part of the Dakkali tribe, plays the 12-fret kinnera. He received the state’s highest honours, the Ugadi Puraskaram, in 2015. There is even a chapter on him in a social studies school textbook. Another member of the Dakkali tribe, Pochayya, who hails from the Mahabubnagar district, was honoured by the University of Hyderabad in 2015.

But such honours and awards have failed to make a difference in the lives of these artists. Their performances are few and far between – at the occasional academic meet or art festivals – and remuneration has been dwindling. Most of them are forced to live off the doles from the Madigas.

There are many reasons for this decline. According to Rao, a story popular among the tribals is that a woman was so engrossed in the music of the kinnera that she cut up her baby along with the vegetables she had in front of her. Naturally, the elders of the tribe warned everyone against playing the instrument.

Another, and the likelier reason, is the lack of raw materials. With forest areas shrinking, it has become difficult to obtain the right kind of gourds and pangolins. A third reason is the dwindling patronage for the art form, which in turn discourages the younger generation from playing the kinnera. The non-mainstream nature of the instrument is another factor. Unlike the drums, which are popular in rural areas even today, the kinnera requires special skills – both to make it and play it.

Revival attempts
KV Ramanachary, a cultural advisor to the government of Telangana, says the state has been organising performances and workshops in educational institutions and music colleges in a bid to preserve the art. But he is aware that these initiatives “provide only a temporary fillip and financial gain”. The government wants to appoint a few tribal artists as visiting faculty at a music college or university. “But for this, we need adequate number of students to enrol,” said Ramanachary. “Many people are happy to attend and appreciate these programmes, but no one is coming forward to learn the instrument. Without students, how can we appoint a teacher?”

According to Mamidi Harikrishna, director of Department of Language and Culture, “performances and lecture-demonstrations for artists like Mogilaiah and researcher Dasari Ranga” have been arranged in the recent past, both within and outside the state. A documentary was also made on Mogilaiah. “But this being a narrative art form, the language used – Telugu – limits the extent to which it can be understood and thus promoted outside the state,” he said.

Rao has been working actively to ensure that the art form doesn’t die out. His interest in the kinnera was piqued when he read of a Telangana folk hero named Panduga Sayanna “about whom songs were sung to the accompaniment of the kinnera”. “The mention of an unknown instrument intrigued me, and I set about finding what I could [do] about it,” he said. His efforts were supplemented by those of Guduru Manoja, a professor at Palamuru University in Mahabubnagar.

The two have been lobbying with the government to give the artists more opportunities to perform as well as a pension.

Anirudh A Ashar

In 2015, a team from the Telangana Rachayithala Vedika (or Telangana Writers’ Forum) and the University of Hyderabad, including Rao and Manoja, decided to re-acquaint the Dakkalis with their lost heritage. After securing official permission to travel into remote tribal areas and the Project Tiger zone, they took Pochayya and his seven-fret kinnera to the Appapur village in the Nallamala forests on August 9, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People.

It was a fruitful trip – not only did the tribals recognise the instrument but in a touching and poignant moment, a blind man ran his hands over the kinnera and said: “I would love to play this again. But, it seems to have seven frets only and I am accustomed to the 12-fret version.” A couple of the others held the instrument and played it from memory. We are so touched, they told the visitors – it has been nearly 50 years since we last played the kinnera.

(Source: Scroll)

Unleash the Burryman! Britain's weirdest folk rituals

A fanatical folklorist has spent a lifetime cataloguing Britain’s strangest rites. He picks his five favourites, from blazing barrels and sacred pies to a May Day ceremony bigger than Christmas

Doc Rowe is looking remarkably fresh for a man who has just been for a 10-hour hike around the Lancashire town of Bacup with the Britannia Coconut Dancers. We meet at his archive in Whitby, Yorkshire, where he is surrounded by the fruits of a lifelong obsession. As Britain’s greatest folklorist, Rowe has accumulated files, folders and field notes, not to mention 20,000 books and pamphlets, as well as 7,000 audio cassettes, photographs and films – all chronicling rites and traditions that show Britain at its strangest and most fascinating.

 ‘Nobody really knows the origin – and anyway, who cares?’ … a man runs while carrying a burning barrel soaked in tar during the annual event in Ottery St Mary, Devon. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images

Rowe, now 74, has almost certainly attended and documented more folk rituals than anyone else alive. He maps out his year according to calendar customs: by the time you read this, he’ll be in Padstow for the town’s Obby Oss festival, which takes place on May Day. It’s his 57th visit.

Rowe’s trove is the subject of a new exhibition, Lore and the Living Archive, opening shortly in Rochdale. Three young artists have created work in response to his collection and this will be displayed alongside his own film footage and stills. “People often think of these traditions as being rather twee,” he says. “Little girls in white dancing round maypoles. But they are very far from that.”

Folklorist Doc Rowe. Photograph: Derek Catley

To prove the point, we asked him to describe five of the most memorable …

‘I’ve seen landlords held horizontally over the crowd’
The Haxey Hood (North Lincolnshire, 6 January)

 Moment of triumph … A villager holds aloft the ‘hood’ in 2014. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

Mayhem. There are 200 or more guys crushed together, a bit like a rugby scrum, which is known as “the sway”. The idea is that you try to move the “hood” – a leather cylinder about 2ft long – to whichever of the village pubs you favour. I’ve seen hedges go down and cars moved out of the road by the weight of this mass of humanity. The steam that comes off them is incredible. It’s rough.

The game ends when the hood is touched by one of the landlords while still on his own premises. I’ve known landlords to be held horizontally over the front edge of the sway, with their feet only just touching the lintel of the pub’s doorframe, stretching for the hood. Then it’s hung up in the bar for the year. And we all go and have a free pint.

Haxey Hood is said to go back to the 14th century, when Lady de Mowbray, the wife of the local landowner, was out riding and the wind blew her hood off. Some farm workers chased and caught it and as a reward, she gave them land on the condition that they re-enacted the chase every year.

There’s a threat to the future of the event, in that one of the three remaining pubs – which are the goals – could close and be demolished. This is really worrying. It’s so important that these traditions survive. The whole community comes together – people return home from far and wide.

‘The only protection they have is potato sacks’
The Tar Barrels of Ottery St Mary (Devon, 5 November)

 ‘Quite insane’ … A boy tears through the streets of Ottery St Mary. Photograph: PA

I love this tradition, being a Devon lad – and a bit of a pyromaniac. I have all these scars on my hands from running alongside the burning tar barrels while holding my camera. The heat is intense. The secretary of the committee once told me: “Doc, we don’t mind you running with us – because we know if you got killed, you wouldn’t complain.”

Each barrel has been lined with tar or pitch over the previous year. Next, it is filled with straw. Then they pour in paraffin and set it alight, rolling it backwards and forwards until it’s nicely ablaze – at which point locals pick them up, put them on their shoulders, and run through the streets as flames flicker out the back. The only protection they have is potato sacks, folded over and stitched with wire, worn on their hands.

Nobody knows the origin. There have been fanciful tales of the Spanish Armada being sighted and a local lad using a barrel to light a warning beacon. But we really don’t know – and anyway, who cares? What matters is that it still happens now. It’s a wonderful event. Quite insane.

‘One year he had 23 whiskies before 2pm’
The Burryman (South Queensferry, second Friday of August)

 ‘Nature’s Velcro’ … The Burryman meets residents in 2017. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

This is more extraordinary than anything at the Edinburgh festival, which is on at the same time just a few miles away. I’m sure festivalgoers would love to see the Burryman. If they only knew about him.

I have the honour of dressing him on the morning of Burryman Day. He is completely covered, except for his hands, with thousands of prickly burrs. These are burdock seeds – nature’s Velcro. He’s often scratched and bleeding at the end of the day.

He puts on long johns and a long-sleeved T-shirt, then these burrs are slapped on. Up top, he wears a balaclava-type hood, also covered in burrs, with space left for his eyes so he can see, and his mouth so he can drink whisky through a straw. As a final touch, there’s a bowler hat decorated with a glorious array of flowers. The whole suit is very heavy and covered in little beasties that come crawling out of the burrs.

Photograph: J Chettleburgh/English Folk Dance & Song Society

The Burryman walks around South Queensferry all day with his arms outstretched, helped by two attendants. The story is that if you put a coin in his pot, you have good luck for the rest of the year. It is rather an ordeal for him, though he is offered drink by locals as he walks around. One year, he had 23 whiskies before two in the afternoon. People wonder how does he go for a pee, but we don’t ask.

‘The bloodiest event in England’
Hallaton Hare Pie Scramble and Bottle-Kicking (Leicestershire, Easter Monday)

 ‘There are no clear rules’ … the second round of the bottle kicking gets under way in 2017. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

This is probably the bloodiest event in England. It’s contested between the neighbouring villages of Medbourne and Hallaton. The object is to get a barrel – or “bottle” – over the other village’s boundary. The person who does that gets to drink the beer it contains and share it around.

I’d say there’s about eight pints in each, and it’s the best of three barrels. You can kick them, roll them, run with them – there are no clear rules. People have had their heads split open from a barrel coming down on them. I once photographed a guy with blood pouring out of his mouth and bits of his teeth flying out.

The day begins with a parade through the streets with the three barrels, accompanied by a band and a large hare pie, which the local vicar blesses. Then it’s chopped up in front of the church and thrown to the crowd. I know people who keep that bit of pie – green and mouldy – on their mantelpiece for the whole year, for luck.

Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

On Hare Pie Bank, the barrel is thrown up three times, then it’s anybody’s. People get severely damaged. I remember one lovely sunny day when there were 19 ambulances called to come and pick up the bodies.

It’s a bit like the Cheese Rolling at Cooper’s Hill in Gloucestershire, where the St John Ambulance waits at the bottom to treat those who get injured chasing a nine-pound Double Gloucester rolling at 70mph. One year, when they couldn’t sort out security and safety in time, some local lads decided to hold a scaled-down version. I believe they used a Babybel.

'The day ends as the beasts gather to dance round the maypole’
Padstow Obby Oss (Cornwall, 1 May)

Last year’s Obby Oss festivities. Photograph: Alamy

This is where it all started for me, back in 1963. I’ve only missed one year since. I once said I always went back because I couldn’t believe this was happening in England. And of course the local people replied: “Well, it isn’t. This is Cornwall.”

Padstow’s is one of the few remaining ’obby ’osses, or hobby horses. It’s a communal event to welcome in the summer. But in a sense it’s Padstow people celebrating themselves: it’s more important to them than Christmas, birthdays or New Year.

There is the Old Oss and the Blue Ribbon Oss, ferocious-looking beasts that seem very un-English. Each creature has a man concealed under its enormous frame, his head covered with a heavy mask. They and their followers take separate routes through the town during the day, accompanied by singing, drums and accordions. Later, they come together briefly to dance around the maypole.

Photograph: EFDSS

The words of the May song, the passion and emotion – these are absorbed by the crowd in a way that seems to synchronise the collective heartbeat of the town. It’s overwhelming. I get moved just talking about it – and I’ll keep returning, even if I’m in a wheelchair. I’ve promised some of my ashes to Padstow, although some will have to be scattered in Haxey Hood as well. I’m looking forward to that.

(Source: The Guardian)