Society for Storytelling

Time: 4pm

Date(s): 09/02/2009

Price: Various

Venue: Upper Norwood Library

Town: London

County: London

Post Code: SE19 1TJ

Storyteller(s): Drew Colby

Contact details: 020 8670 2551

Website: http://www.objectsdart.info/news.html

Its amazing what you can do with your hands! You can take the fleece of a sheep and turn it into wool! You can knit wool into scarves and gloves! You can even use your hands to tell a story where luggage trolleys become spinning wheels, wheels become pies and pegs are crowns!
This silly Suffolk story of a greedy girl who ends up marrying the King because her mum doesn’t want anybody to know how greedy she is is told with great charm and ingenuity. The show features well known songs that are connected with wool spinning (for example “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Wind the Bobbin Up") in addition to specially written music, traditional storytelling, object puppets and shadow puppetry.
The story, an English version of Rumplestiltskin, was contributed by Mrs A. Walter Thomas to the Ipswich Journal (number 15) in 1878. She had heard the story from her old west Suffolk nurse. Talking about Tom Tit Tot in his book English Fairy Tales, Joseph Jacobs noted: ‘One of the best folk-tales that has ever been collected, far superior to any of the Continental variants of this tale with which I am acquainted.’