Hello, Can You Hear Me?

Hello, Can You Hear Me? was an audio exhibit tour, and live storytelling performance.

The project launched across multiple venues in Wakefield District between August and December 2024. Each launch event began with a show about a storyteller who couldn’t remember the local legends. The storyteller then worked with the audience to solve a series of riddles and release the stories, finally freeing the legends that can be found on the phone!

The phone contained ten lost tales.

Folk simply had to dial a number from the phonebook to find and listen to a local legend. They could also read along as each legend was written in the phonebook.

Click here for the show and exhibit’s tour dates.

Hello, Can You Hear Me? The Audio Playlist

Creating the Stories

Folk stories are tricky things to bring to life today. Most of them have been lost, and others are reduced to single ideas such as the long-ago existence of a well, or that a particular place is said to have been a boggart’s territory or a padfoot’s route. These ideas would have had many stories surrounding them once.

My job in this project has been to find what stories remain, and to use what is left to reconstruct what I can.

In some cases there were clear records surrounding a story, so it was simple to create something in the oral tradition from these. In others, there wasn’t much left. Here, I would like to explain what I’ve done and why, how each story was developed, and where they came from.

A Sweet Story (how liquorice came to Pontefract)

We don’t actually know for certain how liquorice came to Pontefract. It was most likely either the Dominican Monks or crusading knights who brought the root to the town. I have opted for a tale revolving around Dominican Monks because it lends itself more to tale of hope and kindness. And because we know that Edmund De Lacy did build a Friary for the purpose of Dominican Monks in the town.

Stories are rooted in our communities, and none more so than folk tales, so it seemed fitting to tell a tale of root that became something sweet in Pontefract.

Read the tale here.

A Withering Rose (aka The Battle of Wakefield)

This story was fairly simple to develop as there are historical records. However, the records don’t all agree and, often, records from turbulent times such as these are mere propaganda. I have opted to tell the best story that I can from the records, whilst maintaining that these are flawed.

Read the tale here.

Hope in Normanton

This story was a gift given by Peter Kirton when he wrote his biography, Normanton: Grit, Grime and Courage, which I urge you to read.

I’ve taken a few remembered instances form his book and patched them together to weave an idea of life in Normanton between the world wars.

Read the tale here.

Hymel’s Homestead

This was a tricky one. I discovered that Hemsworth gets its name from ‘Hymel’s Enclosure’ or ‘Homestead’. And that’s about all I could find. So I looked at the meaning of ‘Hymel’, which is ‘bear cub’. At this point a story started spinning in my mind.

There are a fair few Yorkshire giants, but we don’t have many named characters in these parts, but I liked the idea of Hymel being part-giant and travelling to Yorkshire to find others like him. Then I gave him great golden bushy hair, and a re-write of Goldilocks and the Three Bears was born.

This is the most made-up tale in the collection, but I have stuck to some storytelling conventions and spun it from the bits of information that I had. It feeds into some of the other stories in the group, and it’s aimed more at younger children so that there’s something in the tales for them too.

Read the tale here.

Isolde’s Garden

This is another story about a giant. I brought a lot of elements together to create this story for Featherstone. The ingredients are as follows:

  • There are stories of giants in Yorkshire (mostly North Yorkshire), and Rombald the giant of Ilkley Moor is said to have married a giant from Yorkshire – I thought, why not a giant from Wakefield?
  • Featherstone is said to have been named for the Four Stones, i.e. four standing stones, possibly a tetralith, which consists of three standing stones and a flat stone atop them all (a bit like a table). There are lots of myths and legends surrounding standing stones. One of these is that they mark the final resting places of giants.
  • Featherstone, like many towns and villages in the area, has a rich coal mining heritage.
  • Coal comes from giant trees (that were more like beanstalks than trees) called Lepidodendron. So my storytelling senses got tingling and thinking about giants and beanstalks and coal.
  • There are stories of tunnels running underneath Featherstone. Tunnels from long before the pits… and there is some evidence to support this, though the stories about tunnels running from Nostell Priory to All Saints is not very likely.

The collection of ten tales didn’t contain a creation myth, and there were so many ideas around Featherstone that an idea for an ancient story really came together here and that’s what Isolde’s Garden is. A collection of lots of ideas to create one epic tale of early times, before humans walked the earth all the way to them mining coal.

Read the tale here.

The Horbury Boggart

This story was a gift. Horbury is quite rich in remembered creatures, which is to say that there are legends of at least three:

  • A boggart
  • A Padfoot
  • A ghost

Upton also has a Padfoot, so that story was taken. The ghost story is great but more recent. The boggart is somewhat forgotten and I felt it was ripe for re-awakening. There are actual reports of the Horbury Boggart, and I worked mostly from these and from the behaviour of boggarts in wider folk stories.

Read the tale here.

The Lonely Hound

This is the Padfoot of Upton. A fearsome creature said to roam the town. Almost all Padfoots are giant black dogs (apart from Horbury’s which is white). They have saucer eyes that glow red and they don’t bark, they roar. Padfoot is the specific name given to giant black dogs in West Yorkshire. There are giant black dogs, or barghest’s, in legends across the world. In the UK they are particularly present in Yorkshire, which suggests that the stories have Viking routes. I’ve played on this idea in The Lonely Hound and refer to lots of other mythological creatures that would have travelled here by boat in the stories that the Vikings told.

Read the tale here.

The Well at Sourbottom

I did a bit a re-construction here. There was a well at Sourbottom in Airedale. It was a natural spring that in relatively recent history was diverted to a beck. But it was used for at least a thousand years by the people of Airedale.

I guarantee you that this well would have had a whole host of stories about it once. And most of them would have involved the local faeries or fae-folk. I feel comfortable guaranteeing this because natural sources of clean water were highly important in communities. Everyone used them and, in folk legend, water is usually associated with faeries. I’m using an unusual spelling for faerie here, because when a folk legend talks about faeries they are not sweet, small flying creatures. They are at best mischievous and otherworldly, at worst scary.

So, we know that there was a well and I know from the wealth of legends that still exist that this well should have had stories. But there weren’t any faerie legends to be found. What I did find is that the well was named St. Ives well, and this was derived from St. Hieu, who was a holy woman. She travelled from Ireland to Northumbria, where she eventually became an Abbess.

The Well at Sourtbottom would have had a name before it was changed to St. Lieu’s / St. Ives Well. What’s more, the well was located not far from a place called Fairy hill.

The Christian church renamed and occupied places that were revered by local people, including all the wells and natural springs in the country. But, when this occupation was unhappy – i.e. when local people resisted, there is usually a story. It often involves the evil faeries/witches etc. being vanquished by the wonderful saint. There are no stories like that about the Well at Sourbottom. This led me to believe that the changeover was peaceful, possibly even welcomed.

At this point I began to imagine Hieu, travelling through Yorkshire on her way from Ireland to Northumbria. And a story formed in my mind that draws upon other legends of water and faeries, in order to create a tale that would fit with what I had been able to discover.

What we’ve ended up with is a solid sort of legend, and it’s the kind of story that may well have once been told around fireplaces in Airedale and roundabout.

Read the tale here.

The Wise Woman of Wakefield

This story was a fully formed gift. It’s about a woman called Jennet Benton and an accusation of witchcraft that was brought against her in the mid 1600s.

There are records from York Court about the accusation made against Jennet, so the story is mostly formed from these. It’s a great tale and she’s a character that I’m sure you’ll love.

Read the tale here.

The Witch and the Haunted Hill

This story is also about an accusation of witchcraft against a woman named Mary Pannal. It was also a gift because not only are there solid records about this event, to this day there are people in Castleford who don’t want to breakdown on Pannal Road!

The events in this story took place in the late 1500s, and I’m afraid it didn’t end well for Mary. It felt important to include a tale alongside The Wise Woman of Wakefield, where the accused woman did not escape. Many women were killed as witches, and some of them would have simply been storytellers like me. So I feel an affinity with them and I believe it’s important that we remember them.

Read the tale here.

Some Closing Thoughts…

I hope that this has given you some insight into why I’ve restored/created these particular tales. I believe that stories belong to us all, and stories that were born in the oral tradition really need to be told over and over. And that, in retelling them, you can play with them. So please, do re-tell these tales. Make them yours. Enjoy them and let them live on your breath.

Sound Effects

Here follows a list of all of the sound-effects in the audio created for Hello, Can You Hear Me?

A Sweet Story

A Withering Rose

Hope in Normanton

Hymel’s Homestead

Isolde’s Garden

The Horbury Boggart

The Lonely Hound

The Well at Sourbottom

The Wise Woman of Wakefield

The Witch and the Haunted Hill

My TEDx on Playful Learning
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