An Evening of Traditional Tales, Solt, Huddersfield (Almondbury), 24/04/26

Another first for me, a “hometown gig” in the village where I grew up, Almondbury, near Huddersfield, at the Sôlt bar and restaurant, where I generally go for a rather splendid breakfast whenever I’m “back home”.

The show was a rather intimate one — to family and friends, in the most part, though not exclusively — but still a good night and with lots of things to learn from: ticket pricing, more lead time on the advertising (note to self — send flyer printing order to the correct email address!), and better placement of it, and a better title. One of the tales I told was a local Luddite tale, and I probably should have made more of that in the title…

Other tales told included the Wish Ring, because I often tell that first in a new venue to an audience new to storytelling, the Knight of York/Fish and the Ring, with a bit of added Hand of Glory, not least because those were both collected in the the 1860s by Sabine Baring Gould whilst a curate at Horbury, and then published as as part of an appendix to Henderson’s Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.