Wales Story Archives - Page 2 of 2 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

W.Va. And Welsh Students Swap Audio Diaries

For the past few months, West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia Folkways Project has cultivated a connection between two groups of people thousands of miles away — high schools in Lincoln County, West Virginia and in Merthyr Tydfill, Wales.

Appalachia and Wales have a unique, historical connection through energy extraction, with many Welsh immigrating to the United States to find coal mining jobs beginning in the 19th century. Through this migration many stories, recipes, music and more were swapped, intertwining the cultures of both regions.

Often young people have a unique way of understanding culture and folkways, and sometimes they can help us understand ourselves a bit more. So, we had the students in Wales and West Virginia swap audio diaries. They shared everything from how the declining coal industry has affected their families, to their favorite foods. That included birthday cake, Doritos with salsa, West Virginia-based Tudor’s Biscuit World and “plain pizza.”

The Inside Appalachia team is planning a reporting trip to Wales later this year, although given travel restrictions due to the coronavirus it will likely be postponed. However, we are going to continue this collaboration remotely, much like everything else right now, with the hope to meet some of the students from Wales in the future.

This story is part of our Folklife Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.

This story is part of West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Southern Coalfields Reporting Project which is supported by a grant from the National Coal Heritage Area Authority.

Students Adapt Old Time Appalachian Story Telling Technique

This summer in Morgantown, elementary school students had access to a special summer art camp series almost every week.

Last week, students learned a story telling art form rooted in Appalachian tradition called crankies. Crankies are also sometimes called moving panoramas, as they are a drawing or painting that can be manually moved and is portrayed within a box.

“It has paper wrapped around two scrolls and when you turn the cranks it moves forward and you can draw either different frames or one big picture that you scroll to see,” said 11-year-old Timmy Carlson. “And it moves and it’s like an old form of entertainment before TV.”

At the camp, Carlson is painting a crankie box bright orange.

Eddie Spaghetti helps Timmy Carlson complete the crankie. It is about the song ‘Looking Through a Window’ from the musical ‘Dear Evan Hansen.’

The crankie is thought to have originated in the United Kingdom in the 1800s. It made its way to Appalachia to tell stories and accompany music.

World-renowned storyteller Peter Stevenson is something of a crankie expert. He lives in Wales, but was in West Virginia this spring for an art exhibit which featured some of his handmade crankies.

Stevenson is especially interested in the historical connection of crankies to Appalachia.

“They would sing a song, and old mountain ballad, play music, tell a story, while the picture was moving,” he said. “If you think about it, it’s early animated film. It’s like animation special effects movies, but without electricity. It’s what they did up in the mountains before they had electric, they used these crankies.”

Local artist Eddie Spaghetti also specializes in making crankies. His work was part of the art exhibit, as well, and he is teaching the crankie class. He said they are similar to old timey YouTube videos.

“In a way this crankie idea connects to something that we’re very comfortable and familiar with in our modern age, but bringing back an old thing,” Spaghetti said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohwr1QhxQZ4

One of his students drew a story about Ned Flanders from The Simpson’s. Spaghetti helps interpret the story with a song and ukulele.

Each student illustrates their song on a 10-foot-long paper. They write the song lyrics on it and draw and paint images that represent the song for them.

Dashiel Harms and Zoey Gilliam work on an art project. At the end of the week there were 16 different completed crankies.

Carlo Arthurs chose ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ by Queen.

“Around the mid it says “Don’t stop me now.” So, I did the finger wag, a stop sign, and then me. So it’s “Don’t stop me now,”” Arthurs said.

Once the scrolls are finished, they have to be installed on the wooden spools in a box.

“They’ve been sawing, they’ve been clipping, they’ve been cutting, they’ve been painting,” Spaghetti said.

A completed crankie. Inside the boxes is a 10-foot-long scroll that can be turned with two wood spools.

He helps the kids use a drill to create holes in the box for the spools…so the scroll can be turned.

“Yeah, it’s nice they get to do a little carpentry work too,” Spaghetti said.

On the last day of the camp, the kids present their crankies. The room is filled with wooden boxes that are a little bigger than a piece of printer paper. They are painted in every color.

Zoey Gilliam chose the song ‘Something Just Like This’ by the Chainsmokers and Coldplay.

You can hear the distinct sound of wood turning while she sings…

Carlo Arthurs, the one who chose the Queen song, said learning to make a crankie has revealed his artistic side.

“I’m better than I thought I was at art, and I feel like art is something I will do more often and try to do more often,” he said.

A student presenting his crankie. Each student showed the class their crankie and either sang or read their song.

Art Exhibit Explores Appalachia's Connection to Wales

Across the Atlantic Ocean — 3,586 miles away from West Virginia — you will find Wales, which is part of the United Kingdom. The western side of Wales is lined by two channels from the Celtic Sea. And inland is quite mountainous. Within those mountain towns, you will find similar folk culture to Appalachia.

“The nature of the people and the landscape is very similar. Plus, many people from West Wales came over here. So we’ve got those really strong connections,” said Peter Stevenson, a Welsh artist, writer and storyteller.

These strong connections inspired Peter to host an art exhibit at the Monongalia Arts Center in Morgantown, an expansive art exhibit dedicated to the Wales-Appalachia connection.

History

Many of Appalachian’s ancestors migrated from Wales to Appalachia. There are other strong historical connections between the two regions. For example, both have a long and complicated history with the coal industry, and both have a strong mountain culture – a culture that includes music, art and storytelling.

Some of the Welsh artwork on display. Much of the artwork Peter brought with him on the plane from Wales.

Peter has family who immigrated to West Virginia in the 1960s. So, Peter has listened to many Appalachian folktales, and he has found many similarities to Welsh folklore. Similar characters appear in both traditions, like fairies or little people and granny women – older, eccentric women who either create charm or mischief.

Peter Stevenson and Ro Brooks, executive director of the Monongalia Arts Center.

But the stories differ slightly. Peter thinks the Welsh brought over their folklore when they immigrated to Appalachia hundreds of years ago, but the stories changed slightly over time to become more Appalachian.

“Within these stories which appear to be the same they take on something from the landscape and nature of the people in that landscape and they’re subtly different,” he said.

The Exhibit

Figures and drawings of Welsh ‘Granny Women’ that are part of the MAC exhibit.

Peter organized the art exhibit on display in Morgantown to further explore the connections.

The exhibit is one big story that contains many little stories, it is a bit like a fairytale book come to life at the Monongalia Arts Center, featuring Welsh and Appalachian artists.

There are dolls made to look like witches with a black triangle hat, drawings of mermaids in the Monongahela river and a woman who turned into a swan. There are a lot of bright colors and characters that make one’s imagination run wild.

Peter is a professional storyteller. When he tells a story, one feels spellbound. He tells the crowd a folk story using a cranky – a storytelling device likely familiar to Appalachians.

A cranky is like a picture book except with drawings all on one long scroll. It is contained within a frame with two handles that move the scroll, and it is typically accompanied by a story.

The Story of Beti Grwca

The story Peter told at the exhibit opening is about an old granny woman named Beti Grwca who lived on the west coast of Wales. She often would gaze out her window toward America.

“Thousand wrinkles around the eyes, a single yellow tooth wobbling unnervingly in the breeze from her breath and a single gray hair in the middle of her chin,” Peter said.

Peter turned the cranky as he spoke. The pictures are drawn in a heavy black ink. Beti looks like a kind, but mischievous old woman out of a children’s book.

Peter explained that Beti could make love potions. She would make them for all the town folk. But sometimes she mixed them up, and in Peter’s story, much to the town’s dismay, Beti accidentally made a farm woman and a man of nobility fall in love. But they ended up living happily ever after and having dozens of babies.

A miniature crankie made by Peter. Crankies are often used to tell a story.

Peter turned to the final image on the cranky, and revealed a picture of Beti with a sly smirk pointing to her love potion bottle and a trail of red hearts.

“Old Beti is still there. She’s still there in her little cottage. She’s got even more wrinkles around her eyes, her solitary yellow tooth fell out years ago, but her little gray hair is still there and she twirls it and looks out across the water to America,” Peter said. “And thinks to herself, maybe my love potions would work in West Virginia.”

West Virginian Art

The first floor of the exhibit features the Welsh artists and their interpretation of folktales. The second floor is dedicated to West Virginian artists, such as, Eddie Spaghetti.

He is based in Morgantown and works in many art mediums, including crankies. One of Eddie’s crankies on display is titled ‘Light in the Darkness.’ It is accompanied by a poem that Eddie wrote in tiny print underneath the drawings.

“I put a magnifying glass onto it, that magnifying glass is a real attention-getter – you can’t help but to look at stuff,” he says.

Another of the West Virginian artists featured in the exhibit is accomplished sculptor Jamie Lester. Some of his well-known work includes the Don Knotts and Jerry West statues in Morgantown.

Jamie Lester’s piece representing man’s connection to coal. He is one of many West Virginian artists featured in the exhibit.

Jamie’s piece on display in the Wales-Appalachia gallery reflects man’s connection to coal. Something that is a big part of Appalachian and Welsh history. It’s a sculpture of a man’s body merged with a coal operation, and the coal tipple is connected to his head and shoulder.

“He’s being like fed coal, he is coal, coal is in his blood, he’s being force-fed coal,” Jamie said. “And his arms are tied behind is his back and one of his arms is breaking the structure of the tipple, so you get the feeling he’s being tormented, but there’s the possibility of him breaking away from his tormentor.”

This sculpture and all the many other pieces from Appalachia and Wales are on display at the Monongalia Arts Center in Morgantown. The exhibit will be up through the end of this month, when it will travel to Wales for display.

The second level of the exhibit featuring West Virginian artists. Then entire exhibit tells one big story of the Welsh-Appalachian connection.

November 17, 1766: Pioneer Morgan Morgan Died

Pioneer Morgan Morgan died on November 17, 1766. Generations of schoolchildren grew up being taught that Morgan was the first permanent white settler in present West Virginia. Now, though, we know that others came before him.

A native of Wales, Morgan emigrated in 1712 to Delaware, where he worked as a tailor and a coroner. In 1731, he settled in the Bunker Hill area of present Berkeley County. Four years later, he received a land patent in the region for 1,000 acres. He was an influential member of the Bunker Hill community and helped found Christ Episcopal Church. Today, his grave is part of the church’s cemetery, and a log cabin he built stands nearby.

So, if Morgan Morgan wasn’t West Virginia’s first permanent white resident, then who was? The answer might forever be a mystery. We do know that by the time Morgan arrived in 1731, some white settlers already lived here. One possibility for the earliest settlement is a community known only as Potomoke. Some historians believe that Potomoke, which was settled as early as 1717, could be the site of modern-day Shepherdstown.