Stories, Events and the Power of Threes

Education and the Transmission of Traditional Knowledge

Last time I included some ideas about the oral transmission of traditional knowledge and here I'll enlarge that theme and pass on some further examples that may be adapted to suit present needs, particularly in relation to Cantrefi Newydd.

Travelling north from Dolgellau by the old roads, you pass first through the community of Llanfachreth, a village with a church and chapels and several rows of dwellings, an ideal location, south facing on a gentle slope with rich pasture. Next is Hermon, a dozen or so houses, widely scattered and a chapel; the land is much folded and compressed and the grazing rougher. Finally, at the very head of the valley that opens into a huge, broad expanse, Abergeirw,¹ with not two houses together, a community scattered over several square miles, surrounded by the true uplands.

Many years ago the community of Abergeirw applied to the National Eisteddfod Committee for permission to hold their own, local Eisteddfod² but the committee considered Abergeirw to be too small and turned down the request. In typical anarchist spirit, a natural consequence of their once extreme isolation and independence, the community decided to hold one anyway but call it the Cyfarfod³ Bach, or Little Meeting.

The Cyfarfod Bach follows a similar pattern to an eisteddfod, with competitions for solo and group singing, recitation, poetry, literature and the like, together with a wide range of other options, including home produce (jams and cakes for example), craft work (needle work, embroidery, wood and metalwork) and art (painting, collage or models and more latterly, photography), with adults and children classes as well as open, the idea being to offer opportunities to all members of the community, whatever their age, to show skill in some area.

Competitions are arranged as follows. If you, as a member of the community, needing something, such as a new crook or walking stick, a pouch for your shears or whatever, you would ask the Cyfarfod Bach committee to include this as a competition and you would put up the prize money- it used to be of silver money (a sixpence or a shilling- a not inconsiderable sum 100 years ago, though only 2.5p and 5p today!) The committee would then collate and advertise all the competitions in the Cyfarfod Bach programme and make this available locally. Individuals in the community would then choose which competitions they would enter and inform the committee, including their entrance fee for each competition, usually only a few copper coins. Competitors would then have to submit their entries by a set date, using a pseudonym so no one would know whose entry was whose.

There is a much more relaxed feel to the Cyfarfod Bach in Abergeirw than an Eisteddfod, with a lot of humour and playfulness, in contrast to an Eisteddfod which can sometimes be a rather tight lipped, serious affair. On the night of the Cyfarfod Bach, the whole community gathers in the village hall and it is indeed the whole community, from babes in arms upwards. The inclusion of all the children is so important as they learn very early that to stand up in front of people and sing or recite is a perfectly normal thing to do- I've seen toddlers who were too young to formally compete being encouraged to sing something, often standing on a chair so people could see them and having a go, however halting or faltering, much to the delight of everyone. The inclusion of children is vital as it allows for the passing of cultural traditions to the new generation.

On the night, the entries are gathered together and brought out for the judging of each competition, so for a shepherd's crook competition, for example, there might be half a dozen crooks to judge. It is the person who submitted the competition who has to judge each one. They will have examined all the crooks before hand, so will have an idea of what to say. They will take each crook in turn and tell the audience what in particular they like about it; so one may have a nice brass ferule on the end to stop it splitting, another may be of exactly the right length for hooking a ewes back leg (the judge will demonstrate the action), another may have an especially good curve to the crook, making it difficult for a sheep to escape by stepping over it (again, a demonstration). In this way, the judge will find something good to say about each entry and at the same time, convey to everyone, what, in their opinion, constitutes a good crook, how to make one and something about how to use it. Finally they will present the best crook and the now informed audience will be able to see why it is the best crook.

Having reached a decision, the judge announces the winner's pseudonym and calls for individual to make themselves known. After a pause for effect, the winner stands up and receives the applause and recognition of their neighbours and the token prize, which they usually give back to the committee. The Judge gets to keep the winning crook.

Its easy to imagine how other communities, including the new eco-communities or Cantrefi Newydd which will inevitably appear in the future, either by design or necessity, could make use of this simple but far reaching event.

I've talked of encoding knowledge in rhyming verse and song before and here I'll relate a couple of the stories that Bill Mollison told on that seminal Advance permaculture Design Course that I have mentioned before.

Bill described when he was involved in a tree planting project in Australia that used local indigenous labour, mainly young people. Being interested in the existing vegetation, he asked these youngsters about various plants, what were they called, which ones were food, what were their other uses and the like. The youngsters didn't know so Bill got out a book from his Landcruiser and started identifying some of them.

The next day when Bill turned up, the youngsters grabbed him and excitedly pulled him around to many different plants and told him what they called them, where they grew, what they could be used for and various stories connected to them. Bill, surprised, asked how they had learned so much overnight. The youngsters explained that they had already known it but hadn't realised.

They'd gone home the night before and going to their elders had complained bitterly that the white man with his book had told them more about the plants in their environment than they knew and why hadn't the elders ever taught them this knowledge? The elders said that they had- don't they remember that cycle of songs that were sung to them as babes and children? Remembering the songs (we might call them nursery rhymes) they realised that each one in the cycle dealt with a particular plant, describing its form, where it might be found and what were its uses.

Bill told how all the basic knowledge required by a member of the community could be passed on in songs, poems, music and dance, often in combinations, during infancy. Later, when an individual showed an interest in a particular area (plant biology, animal behaviour, astronomy or whatever) usually by asking a question, an elder could then remind the youngster of the relevant song cycle, thus unlocking the knowledge. Transmission of further, deeper levels of knowledge would continue into and throughout adulthood, also in the form of song.

To continue on the theme of storyteller, Bill told another, simpler one; he was sitting on a log talking with an elder of the Koori people in Australia when a young boy walked by carrying a lizard he had killed. The elder paused in the middle of his conversation with Bill, stood up and put a hand on the boys shoulder to stop him. Using no words, the elder then carefully repositioned the boys hands on the lizard; this hand holds the tail like so, the other hand the neck, fingers here. The elder then sat down again and continued his conversation with Bill and the boy went on his way, carrying the lizard much more easily. Here, education, as in the transmission of traditional knowledge, is non-verbal or pre-verbal- beautifully simple!

Bill had began the course by introducing himself, saying that, among other things, he was a storyteller. He went on to explain in some detail, what this role was and how it worked. So he said that a storyteller doesn't tell other people's stories, as in “A person I met told me about working on a tree planting project and...” but rather takes all stories as their own, so you always tell the story as though it happened to you. When I told David Holmgren about Bill's story of the tree planting, he started laughing. “I told him that one,” he said, “and some one else told me!”

above: Bill Mollison and David Holmgren

From the above it should be clear that although I may be a storyteller, I am not in the same vein as Bill Mollison, partly because I like to acknowledge the originators of the stories, or at least, where I heard them first- the true origins of stories often go far back beyond known individuals! I tried to trace the roots of the tree planting story but got nowhere and it may be that it is not true and “just” a good story but if it contains something of value or a truth, does that matter? We should certainly include Storyteller as another way of transmitting knowledge and recognise that it is one of the oldest methods we have and will surely find a place in all Cantrefi Newydd.

above: often our first storyteller but mention should also be made of the vital role of the Grandmothers here.

Bill also said, as an aside, that the youngsters helping with the tree planting were paid per tree planted and as the ground was very hard and hence the holes difficult to dig, they would put two or three trees in the same hole. When they were criticised for this, they said that the trees like to be with friends! Then, on Gardeners Question Time, (Radio 4 2022-08-12) one of the panellists described an oak, a broom and a holly being planted in the same hole; broom as nitrogen fixer to support the oak and holly as protection. Further, when discussing tree planting with David Holmgren, we talked of the trio of trees, namely, the long term tree for the grandchildren, the short term harvest-in-our-own-lifetime tree and the support tree for the first two.

These leads me into the Power of Threes as another oral tradition for transmitting knowledge in a simple, memorable way. The use of threes is so wide ranging in storytelling from many countries (now captured in literature such as fairy stories, folk stories, mythology and legend, for example) to suggest a very ancient origin. From the Celtic perspective, we have some clear examples as at some point, many were written down and are contained in the text known as the Triads of Britain⁴, a collection of wide ranging information, often obscure, to us at least, arranged in threes. Examples include the three awful events in the Isle of Britain, the three primary tribes of the Cambrians and the three disgraceful drunkards, among many others.

One triad that I have found in the Icelandic sagas, Irish mythology and the Welsh Mabinogion goes something like this:

Three things give me in a woman;

Hair as black as the raven,

Skin as white as snow,

Lips as red as blood.

although in the Mabinogion⁵ it is toned down to “Lips as red as the campion”, (the red flower). The Mabinogion itself is likely based on an oral tradition and contains many examples of threes, as in something happening twice and on the third time a conclusion is reached.

above: beautifully illustrated version of the mabinogi, availabel in English and a highly readable modern Cymraeg.

Being easy to remember things in threes I tend to present permaculture design along these lines, as in the following:

Permaculture design has three main aspects- ethics, principles and design tools.

There are three ethics- earthcare, people care, limits to consumption and give away surplus.

Note how the third thing is often a combination of two or adds further details. As “limits to consumption and give away surplus” can be seen as falling to the individual’s responsibility, we can restate the ethics:

There are three ethics- Planet, People and Person.

I sometimes use the Place instead of the Planet, to make it more local. Another one might be as below:

The philosophy of permaculture design has three roots;

observation of nature,

working with nature,

and allowing systems to demonstrate their own evolutions.

I also grouped the 12 principles into four groups of three and then tagged two of these triads together so they formed three sets but I find myself running short of space here, so, another time.

I hope the above has been of interest and that you might have your own examples of the transmission of knowledge, traditional or otherwise, oral or otherwise. Whatever, I would love to hear them, so please feel free to pass them on via comments below and I can include them in later work.

As always, many thanks for reading.

1. Abergeirw- usually Aber is taken to mean the mouth of a river as it joins the sea, as in Aberystwyth (the Afon, or river Ystwyth) for example but it is in fact better translated as a confluence (a joining), for Abergeirw is far from the sea! So in this case it is the confluence of the Afon Geirw with the mawddach. Geirw, pronounced Geir-oo; the oo is short, rather than long. The w is a vowel in Cymraeg.

2. Eisteddfod: I-stedd-vod. The dd as the th in the English the.

3. Cyfarfod: cuv-ar-vod. In Cymraeg, the letter y is a vowel.

4. The Triads of Britain can be found here.

5. Although the Mabinogion (one of the strangest and hence most interesting ancient texts I have ever read) has often been devalued by commentators (usually English) and presented as a somewhat haphazard collection of pieces thrown together by some monk or other, Sioned Davies did some remarkable work of re-interpretation based on a very close examination of the text and demonstrates, I think quite clearly and decisively, that the piece is in fact a remarkably complete rendition of a much earlier oral story. Her work is available in both Cymraeg and English and though it is obviously best read in the Cymraeg, I give the English reference here: Sioned Davies; “The Four Branches of the Mabinogi” 1993 Gomer press.

Note that the title “The Mabinogion” was mistakenly coined by Lady Charlotte Guest, one of the first translators of the work. A Mabinog is usually translated as something like “a tale of a youth” though I would say “a tale of a son” as mab = son. The plural of mabinog is mabonogi, giving “tales of youths”. However, lady Charlotte mistakenly thought mabinogi was a singular word and so added a conventional plural ending, making Mabinogion.