Magic Island Storytelling Theatre: Strange Tales From The Isle Of Arran: Ghost & fairy tales & more.

Here's a little blast from the past. A while back, I posted my version of a traditional folktale which I gave the title A Kiss Of Salt. This was well received - and one of my own favourite pieces - but more recently, my hosts for this podcast did some kind of AI sweep looking for plagiarism among material posted. It turned out that someone had written some song which had nothing to do with my story but which made some reference in its title to a kiss being salty. This also happened with another of my stories Wild Hearts, Warm Hearts - again there was no link between my extended folklore-based story and a reference to hearts in someone's three minute love song but AI, as we all know, is anything but intelligent. As a result both pieces were peremptorily removed from the podcast. I was sent an appeal form but only one form, though two stories had been taken down - and apparently the AI could only process one submission per form. Wild Hearts, Warm Hearts was quickly found "Not Guilty" and restored but not A Kiss Of Salt. Because it was not plagiarised - my source was a public domain folk tale which, in the interest of full disclosure, can be found in Volume 1 of Robert Hunt's 19th century collection Popular Romances Of The West of England or The Drolls, Traditions & Superstitions of Old Cornwall (I was working in Cornwall when I first encountered the story, Hunt's book being the Cornish equivalent of the Brothers Grimm) - I here confidently repost it - but, to save confusion, post it not under my preferred title but under the title Hunt's collection gave it: The Mermaid's Vengeance. That maybe gives more of the game away than i'd like, but I'm proud of the story and performance and my very Arran reinvention of it - so here it is, back again. Enjoy!

Well, here it is - after 4 (not the previously mentioned 3) episodes: the dramatic, fantastical conclusion to this wild, improvised reworking of an old European folk tale. A happy ending? Depends how Gothic and ghoulish your sensibility is, I suppose! Katy has retreated with Lorcan, the living dead man, to a magical underworld - but being alive, she can't quite fit into the land of the dead, so she might still have to go "up above" and settle her score with the venomous hordes of the living....

I think I said, in my intro to the first part of this story, that this was going to be a three-parter. Such is the nature of improvised, unscripted performance (as here) that the imagination can run freer than originally intended, with the effect that this is now the penultimate episode of a FOUR part story. There's a lot to get through, after all - our Katy is set to be executed for witchcraft, but unexpected help comes from someone who might previously have been thought a villain in this little saga. Surprises, dramatic escapades and a descent to a very surreal underworld dominate this second-last episode.

Here's the latest part of this freely improvised story based on an old European folk tale. Our heroine Wild Katy has come upon a skeletal undead with dangerously bad breath doing sinister things in the night in a small Scottish town. She's stolen his shroud so he can't return to his grave, but the Living Dead Man isn't going to take that lying down!

Here's the first part of another of my wild, weyward and very Scottish reinventions of a classic European folk tale, featuring an unapolgetically bold and rebellious heroine, who one night encounters something very strange and unusual rising out of a grave in the kirkyard of a very strait-laced conservative Scottish village....

Sorry it's been a muckle long time since I last posted an episode, but I've had a lot on in both work and life this year. My audio drama for Audible, THE DEAD OF RANNOCH MOOR -- exactly the sort of folk horror tale I perform a lot on the M.I.S.T podcast but done on a far grander scale, with real actors performing it (Chris Reilly & Shirley Henderson) and a wrap-around immersive soundtrack by Joe Richardson and music by my fellow Arranach Electra Perivolaris --was released on the Audible app in October; plus my stage show The Passion Of Tam Shanter was premiered in August, and several other things have been in the works which it's still too early to speak of.But the impulse came to me to put aside momentarily all the grand complications of Big Time Showbiz and record another no-frills, unplugged, improvised performance of a traditional folk tale in the traditional manner. So here we go, with my very Scottish version of what started life as a creepy Bohemian folk tale....

I've written a lot of things over the years, many dramas for the BBC and Wireless Theatre Company, a smattering for Big Finish, and now a whole decades' worth of epic productions for Audible, many of them performed by some of the famous people imaginable - no nonsense movie stars, indeed. But still, such is the nature of my career and my body of work, the piece that means most to me is the one that's found least of an audience. This is my novel Dances Sacred & Profane, my most personal work, which I tentatively published on Kindle but never did much to publicize, most of all because it was so personal, a deeper revelation of the person and the artist that I am, and the more of an audience I drew to it, the more I feared some callous online remark, or cluster of such, that would wound me deeply: in many ways DSP is as personal as a diary - of myself at a certain crucial moment in my life, certainly. But that moment is past and so now I feel the confidence to perform the story myself here and see if it doesn't find a wider audience. It's an unusual story, seeking the more unusual listener: though it's a kind of sequel to a classic vampire story (I won't say which at this stage, as it would give too much away), it's essentially sui generis, by no means a fangs-and-coffin blood-and-thunder shocker, having strong elements of historical novel and romance and plays freely back and forth between these generic levels in a non-generic way. Here's chapter one (this is going to take some time), but if you want to read the whole thing in one go, here's a link to the book itself -https://www.amazon.co.uk/DANCES-SACRED-PROFANE-Gothic-Romance-ebook/dp/B00858QERM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=618EPBGMNR0B&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.sWZuRZQE4S13Q2JvUdAfhg.T8Q93Ja8uUlMxuz2WAUEHKXAMAIbJsQ-xHantlcPOyc&dib_tag=se&keywords=dances+sacred+and+profane+marty+ross&qid=1746793289&s=digital-text&sprefix=dances+sacred+and+profane+marty+ross%2Cdigital-text%2C67&sr=1-1Also, make allowances for my voice - the narrating character is female and should ideally be performed by a female actor, but I couldn't ask such an actor to make the kind of long term unpaid commitment this is going to require, so please make imginative allowances.

And so at last we come to the conclusion of this dramatic, darkly romantic lycanthropic tale inspired by a Swedish follk tale from Upsala, but relocated here to the Isle of Arran. With the curse lifted from Tod and passed instead to Moira, Tod and Fiona seems set for the traditional happy ending. But things are set to be a little more complicated in this unsettling dramatic epilogue, which contains imagery some listeners might find disturbing.

And so we come to the penultimate episode of this dark, dramatic tale inspired by Swedish folklore but relocated here to the Isle of Arran. A ferocious man-beast on the loose, a stepmother sunk in guilty dreams after casting a terrible curse, her stepdaughter striving to do all she can to lift that curse before it claims her own life, a ghostly grey figure hovering in the shadows of the derelict house that is our setting... all is prepared for a very dramatic climax. Though, be warned, this isn't quite the end of our story... one more dramatic episode to go!

So Fiona has found that her jealous stepmother Moira means her no good - and Moira has likewise worked a terrible and magical transformation upon Tod for preferring Fiona to her. Now as Fiona flees into the forests here on Arran, the scene is set for a startling and disturbing encounter in this latest chapter of a very "Arran" reinvention of an old Swedish folk tale. WARNING: this episode contains explicit elements of sexualized lycanthropy which some will find disturbing.

Well, the beast has been unleashed in poor cursed Tod and is now about to wreak bloody havoc - while Fiona follows her stepmother Moira out into the night to find out just what exactly she's up to. Expect strong Gothic horror violence in the most dramatic episode yet....

So Moira, tormented by jealous thoughts of all that might have been going on between her lover Tod and her step-daughter Fiona, has passed on a curse with the cut of an outsized wolf's fang into Tod's spine. What will be the outcome of that? In a story like this, based on a Swedish folk tale, it can only be monstrous and disturbing and potentially deadly for all concerned....

Moira, believing Tod has been unfaithful to her with Fiona, her own step-daughter has performed a pagan rite to give her a little help in getting her own back. All she needs now is the opportunity... in a dramatic episode of this story adapted from a Swedish folk tale, which contains one scene of a sexual nature.

Things are getting intense in this story inspired by a Swedish folk tale but relocated here to the Isle of Arran. A drama of secret jealousy between stepmother Moira, stepdaughter Fiona, and Moira's former lover Tod is about to shift into the mode of the scary and the supernatural in an episode combining pagan magic with one moment of sexual aggression, so more sensitive listeners should be forewarned, with regard to what is evolving into a very dramatic tale indeed....

Continuing this darkly romantic fairy tale. At the end of the previous episode Moira spotted her stepdaughter Fiona having an intimate moment with Moira's former lover Tod, darting silently away in outrage. Now we get that scene from Fiona's point of view....

Continuing here an intense tale derived from a Swedish folk tale but relocated here to the Isle of Arran (which of course has its own Scandinavian Viking connections). Having lost her young lover Tod to faraway lands, schoolteacher Moira has "settled" for a perhaps less exciting life with Angus and his daughter - Moira's former pupil - Fiona. But now, Tod has returned to the island.... Contains one brief scene that some listeners might feel a little squeamish about -- please bear in mind, this is conceived as a very adult "fairy tale".

Here's the first part of what's going to be quite a developed, complex story. It's inspired by a Swedish folktale but, as is my wont, I've relocated the setting here to the Isle of Arran and very much produced my own distinct version: for example the original features the traditional Wicked Stepmother character well known from folk tale, but I rather empathized with that figure and have presented her in a much more complex and human fashion. So here's part one....

And so we come to the final act of this macabre Scots folk tale. It is macabre indeed, so if you have a low tolerance for the creepy, grotesque or the gory... well - as Edward Van Sloan used to say in the days of the old Universal horror movies - "you have been warned...." Morna is on the verge of saving her sisters Clodagh and Rona from the spooky old house and bloodthirsty enthusiasms of the Lady Laird and the husband she brought back from the dead, but those three sisters, quite literally aren't out of the woods yet.

OK, I know I said at the start this was going to be a three parter, but as you'll hear there's so much macabre incident & atmosphere in this episode that I'm going to need an Act 4 to complete the story, but that will follow shortly (sorry for the delay in completing this story - I've been down in London for recording sessions on my latest audio drama epic for Audible - and I came back to Arran with a cold which meant I could hardly speak two sentences without coughing). Meantime, here's the first half of the dramatic climax of this tale culled from JF Campbell's classic Popular Tales Of The West Highlands. Elder sisters Clodagh and Rona have disappeared into the snow - what can youngest sister Morna do but go looking for them, whatever the dangers...?

Here's the second part of my version of a rather macabre folk tale gleaned from the pages of JF Campbell's classic 19th century collection Popular Tales Of The West Highlands. Eldest of three sisters, Clodagh, has set off through the snowy countryside in search of work - and found only mortal danger in a spooky old house. Now younger sister Rona sets out in search of her....