Stori Canthrig Bwt
“The dominating authoritarianism in the western world demands people are disconnected from the land…
The lore is in the land …
Leave those who are pecking over the carcass of the earth to their dying beliefs and the rest of us can get on with rebuilding relationships, stories, knowledge and place. Quietly and with people"
- Tyson Yunkaporta
As part of Crone Cast and Stori’r Tir I started to wonder what might it be like to re-imagine legends/stories of women, especially those which seem to have lost something over the years… how might these stories be relevant today? Can reimaginging these stories really help us think about change differently, perhaps?
Above is the beginning of trying to do that, in collaboration with Wanda Zyborska. Canthrig Bwt is ‘originally’ a terrible (and classic) story of an old witch/giant/hag who lived beneath a cromlech stone and ate the children of Nant Peris. Has this story (and equivalents across the world) lost its deeper or more nuanced meaning?
I wrote the story in a flow of consciousness. it just kind of developed, from looking at the land around me. It is striking how writing this story connected me with the details of place, and now I see Canthrig Bwt’s influence everywhere in the landscape, changing the way I feel about past, present and future. She has become very real to me! Maybe this is what ‘real’ authors experience as they create and write about characters?
A friend and author, Seran Dolma has also reimagined the story, in a much more sophisticated fersiwn cymraeg. And she has suggested we might invite many (maybe 100?) other versions… Already Siân Barlow and Pip Owen have started bringing Canthrig Bwt to life through images, and Ellen Davies, Ed Straw and A Gent Orange have been putting her story to sound.
Canthrig Bwt gan Siân Barlow, 2024
Me reading Stori Canthrig Bwt (6.10.24) with Ellen Davies creating live sound, and Pip Owen’s response!
We are starting with an event to explore all the legends of the land here in Dyffryn Peris: Warm welcome to all!
