Storytelling: Finn McCoul, Irish mythology

I'm starting out my storytelling posts by showing off the stories that I have told in the past.

One of the more interesting ones I've done was for a graduate school class teaching storytime techniques and resources.  The assignment was to perform as a storyteller, but the twist was that there had to be a "something extra" - either an audience participation, a song, a variant language - something that would make it stand out.

I worked with a friend of mine and created a variant of a myth about Finn McCoul, and we told the story in tandem; me in English, and her in American Sign Language.  It was a really fun experience, and I greatly enjoyed the process of developing the story for my personal uses.

The first two stories I told were based strongly on a single book, and that is not really a best practice for storytelling.  In fact, if I re-add either The Little Old Lady or The Fortune-Teller to my repertoire, I will want to go in and do the same things to them that I outline here.  The reasons are varied, but the important ones are protecting the original author's copyright and intellectual rights, and to create an ideal version of the story for an oral tradition (instead of primarily visual in the case of picture books), for my expected audience, and for my personal storytelling style.

All that blather out of the way, here's what I did to create the Story of Finn McCoul and his Brave Wife:

I knew from the start that I wanted the story to be told in English and ASL, and thought that Irish mythology had a lot of interesting stories that would lend themselves well to the oral tradition (having started there) but also to the lovely visual impact of ASL gestures.

I want to keep things secular (personal preference for public library-sponsored work) so all of the beautiful mythos surrounding Saint Patrick was unfortunately out.

I want to keep things simple (the audience was intended to be adults and children) so all the interlocking tales of the fae were right out.

I needed a story with a narrative arc to help hold the audience's attention (I'm not good enough to tell a wandering tale with no structure) so the short folksy anecdotes about leprechaun tricks were also out.

That left the wonder tales that often featured the giant Finn McCoul or his antagonist CuCullain.  I researched the stories that I could find about those characters (reference list is at the bottom of the post) and then synthesized them into a short story based on the tale of Oona (Finn's wife) outwitting CuCullain, who was trying to find and beat up Finn.

Once the actual tale was decided on, then my friend and I altered the narrative as necessary to make the flow of language in English and ASL match up as best as possible, and made a few tonal changes to the story; taking out much of the violence and any mention of death.

It was strange to me how even though the final version was so very personalized and altered, it was still a very close match to the original versions, many of which were more different from each other than my version was from any of them.

Without the constraints of a timed class assignment, and of matching the flow of ASL, I will probably go back and alter the story again before re-adding it to my collection, to make it a bit more complex and longer.

Resource List for Finn McCoul stories:

Tales of Irish Myths:
            The Tale of Cu Chulainn
            The Children of Lir 
            The Tale of Finn Mac Cool
Collected & Re-Told by Benedict Flynn
Read by: Dermot Kerrigan & Marcella Riordan
Naxos Audiobooks, 2000
ISBN: 9781608478514

Finn McCool
Told by: Catherine O’Hara
Music by: Boys of the Lough
Rabbit Ears Productions, 1991
ISBN: 1570990255
Format: VHS Cassette

A Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend, and Folklore
Containing: Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry
            Edited by: W.B. Yeats & Cuchulain of Muirthemne,
            Arranged & Translated by: Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory
This collection Compiled and Edited by: Claire Booss
Avenel Books, 1986
ISBN: 051748904X
Format: Hardback Book – 704 pages.

Finn McCool and the Great Fish
Written by: Eve Bunting
Illustrated by: Zachary Pullen
Sleeping Bear Press, 2010
ISBN: 9781585363667
Format: Picture Book

Mrs. McCool and the Giant Cuhullin: An Irish Tale
Written and Illustrated by: Jessica Souhami
Henry Holt & Co, 2002
ISBN: 080506852X
Format: Picture Book

Fin M’Coul: The Giant of Knockmany Hill
Written and Illustrated by: Tomie de Paola
Holiday House, 1981
ISBN: 082340384X
Format: Picture Book

Finn MacCoul and His Fearless Wife:  A Giant of a Tale from Ireland
Written and Illustrated by: Robert Byrd
Dutton Children’s, 1999
ISBN: 0525459715
Format: Picture Book