by Eric Maddern

My first ever-professional engagement as a storyteller was for English Heritage at Chysauster, a cluster of Romano-Cornish ?courtyard houses? near Penzance. I?d not planned to but when I opened my mouth I began speaking in a Cornish accent. Once started I had to continue through all the stories. It was bizarre but somehow sounded natural. Only later did I realise that from that spot I could see the spire of the church at Madron, dedicated to St Madern and the ancestral home of the Maddern family. Could it be that I was tuning into the spirit of my forefathers who were somehow speaking though me? I told tales that week in the ruins of the chief?s roundhouse, with no roof but walls ten feet thick. It had a powerful atmosphere and I wondered what it was like to live in such a place.

I didn?t wait long to find out. A few weeks later I met Jake Keen who took me to the Ancient Technology Centre to see his re-constructed Roundhouse. It was then I realised it was possible to make one. So next summer, back on my land in North Wales, we began work on the foundations. Jake came to help. It was three years before he was able to come again to crown and complete the thatched roof. Then we discovered that his first roundhouse ? the same dimensions as mine ? had burned down the very day I?d moved to North Wales in 1986, as if the roundhouse seed had flown through the air and landed with me!

In the new Roundhouse I learnt how it felt to be in a dwelling the ancient Britons had lived in for 3000 years B.C. At the core of that experience was sitting round the fire telling and listening to stories.

Since then the Cae Mabon Roundhouse has been the centrepiece for what was at first an encampment and has now grown into an elemental retreat centre, dedicated to healing and inspiration.

From the beginning storytelling has been its central theme. People say the directions to the place read like a story. The tale of how I originally stumbled upon it has become a creation myth. And of course the name itself has a story. Mabon is referred to as the ?Great Son of the Great Mother? in the Mabinogion. The name is also a form of ?Maponus? who some say was the Solar Deity to whom Stonehenge was dedicated. So ?Cae Mabon? could mean the ?Home of the Divine Youth? or the ?Lair of the Ancient British Sun God?! Grandiose pretensions indeed!

On a more earthly plane, for ten years storytelling has homed in on the Cae Mabon Roundhouse. Many of Britain?s storytelling ?greats? have performed there, telling their funny, epic, surreal, moving, poetic and extraordinary tales. At times we?ve squeezed up to eighty people into a space only twenty feet in diameter. More comfortably and more often we?ve had forty or fifty, their faces lit by fire and candlelight. And yes, it does have a magical, timeless atmosphere.

Most commonly I am the resident storyteller, regaling visiting school parties and youth groups, who come from as far afield as Edinburgh, Bolton, Nottingham and London. They stay from a weekend to a week and storytelling is part of a programme, which may include outdoor activities, survival crafts, nature awareness, personal reflection, journeying, music making and ritual. I remember one troubled lad from a ?Leaving Care? scheme sitting down by the Roundhouse fire and saying: ?Being here is like being high on nothing!? Great, except really he was high on the fire, forest, stream, stories and more.

Some of our most memorable days have been when Hugh Lupton and I have brought storytellers here as part of our ?Storytelling in the Mythological Landscape? retreats series at Ty Newydd. In 2001 we had a profoundly moving six hour epic retelling of the Four Branches of the Mabinogion, where each teller told a chunk of the tale from the viewpoint of a particular character. In 2002 our theme was ?The Battle of the Trees?. We spent a perfect autumnal day wandering from tree to tree hearing tales told for sixteen species, from Alder to Yew! Another time we worked with the ?Lost Gods and Goddesses? of Britain. Each person made a shrine to an ancient deity somewhere on the land, then we processed around hearing appropriate tales. Afterwards it seemed that the place had been re-sacralized, that the gods and goddesses had been woken from their sleep.

Since 1998 Alida Gersie has led five special workshops here. What a blessing! She?s astonishingly good at inspiring creativity and gently touching depths. She works with a blend of traditional, fictional and personal tales. One year we explored the Pied Piper of Hamlin, expanding its meaning and feeling far beyond anything I thought possible. This year we all wrote stories, which Alida guided the group to work with in a myriad of creative and moving ways. It?s impossible to do justice to the rich, intricate, stimulating nature of her work in just a few lines. All I can do is highly recommend a workshop with her if you have a chance.

Midsummer 2003 we tried something new. We brought together storytelling with the survival skills of wild food, making string, tracking, shelter building and fire lighting. It was the perfect combination which climaxed in a feast, a procession, chanting to the dead, telling traditional and made up stories, lighting a wheel of fire to symbolize the sun at its zenith, ritual combat between the Oak King and the Holly King, songs and finally a soak in the newly installed hot tub by the river! Bliss!

So, Cae Mabon is well and truly on its way. The burning down and rebuilding of the Roundhouse in 2002 has served only to strengthen it. And given I have been working as a storyteller since it began, I have to conclude that the place has been built on stories!