“Your ethnicity: mixed”, the man at the desk states confidently. Tania nods, but wonders which box she would have ticked herself. Her father’s ancestors were African and her mother’s ancestors were Indian. But she usually thinks of herself as Surinamese. What does that actually mean, to be Surinamese? Tania ponders over this question while the man continues ticking boxes that supposedly confirm Tania’s identities. Am I Surinamese because I live in Suriname? Half of the Surinamese population lives in the Netherlands. Is it about my passport? There are Surinamese with Dutch passports (rarely the other way around: a colonial legacy of inequality?) Is it about where I am at home, where I belong? Or perhaps it is about how others identify me? Ticking boxes may inform others about who they think I am, where they think my home is, or where they think I belong. But is that how I see myself? The man has finished his administrative duties. Tania leaves the building, greeted by the scorching hot subtropical sun and hungry mosquitoes – that’s my Suriname, my home. Perhaps self-identification is about the spaces we call home?

My friend Tania’s mixed African-Indian heritage coupled with her Surinamese self-identification stems from the colonial history of the transatlantic slave trade and mass migration to plantation work in the Caribbean and wider Americas. Across the Atlantic in Europe and Africa, mass movement of people has perhaps been more gradual, but questions of ethnicity and national belonging have also been complicated and open to dispute if not outright war – as the experiences of people in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 1990s and at present the Ukraine painfully show.

Closer to ‘home’, Scotland has been concerned with self-determination for centuries. Scotland’s history remains important in the hearts of many Scots, and national recognition is particularly urgent now in light of the upcoming referendum. Regardless of the result in September, everyone living in Scotland is at the moment confronted with their self-identification. Are we Scottish? Are we British? European? Does it matter that some of us are foreign nationals, and that most of us are probably ethnically mixed in some way or another? As a Dutch national with a Scottish husband, a daughter born in Suriname and a son in Edinburgh, these are large questions.

Battles for and against independence are never fought over economic issues alone. They are also about a sense of home, of where we belong, the places and people we identify with. And about what and whom we do not want to be identified with. 

To me, a sense of home is imbued with the stories we connect to. Stories that give us a feeling of being there, of being part of it all. Stories of heroic historical as well as contemporary figures. Stories of people, of landscapes, objects and places. Stories give meaning to things that might be inexplicable otherwise. Stories offer an option of relatedness and shared understanding. A personal story can grow into a communal feeling of belonging when other people are able to transfer this story to their own personal context. Stories, thus conceived, shape to a large extent who we are.

As Dr. Williams so rightly pointed out during his storytelling workshops, stories belong to those who listen to them. Perhaps some of you will listen to Tania’s story, and make her questions ours. Are we ever challenged to question who we are, until we are seen as or reminded of being different?


Iris Marchand (Academia.edu)

Coins, shells, strips of cloth, family photos, notes, memorial cards and a host of other items are found around Irish holy wells. These collections are part devotion, commemoration and prayer. The leaving of votive offerings, as an intention or request, is an ongoing tradition at these sites. It is a practice that mixes Celtic customs, folk traditions and Catholic theology. Each of these items has a story; each of these items is a story. Part of my research is to attempt to tell the story of this practice and these objects.     

Holy wells are spread across Ireland and Britain, especially in formerly Celtic lands. Some of these springs have been the site of religious-spiritual activities since the pagan era, but were adapted to Christian worship. As a result, in Ireland, these sites are currently mostly associated with the miraculous deeds of Celtic saints. Prayer rituals and religious services are held at the wells in honour of the spiritual patron linked to the site. People take away the well water for blessings, protection and supplementary medicine.

I am researching holy wells as sites of contemporary pilgrimage, where people travel to seek reflection or for a particular intention. As a geographer, I look at the importance of these places that give solace, comfort, hope and space for contemplation. The leaving of votive offerings is one of the clearest examples of how holy wells have strong meanings and powerful attachments for people. Each token represents a visit, the actions of someone whose belief brought this person here for a reason that is personally significant.

Initial fascination with these objects is replaced by speculation on their purpose. While some of the intentions appear obvious, the meanings behind other items are shrouded from everyone except the believer, and the saint or spirit of the place. This is a rich cultural practice, but it is also people’s lives. Contained in these objects are dreams, despairs, anxieties, losses and a host of deeply intimate motives.

Each item is emotionally charged telling a story in its own way. Memorial cards of departed loved ones display long lives of parents and grandparents, while those showing young people hint at tragedy. Short notes contain messages for the saints or spirits: giving thanks, calling for intercessions or just expressing feelings, which may otherwise go unarticulated. The reasons behind certain tokens are clouded, their story obscure.

Stories are embedded in objects. Monuments tell national histories, souvenirs evoke hidden memories and childhood items are kept for prosperity. My research is concerned with the stories of the offerings left at holy wells. In my writing, I tell the stories of these objects in a general sense, but I am also deeply aware that each of these objects is a story, a story I do not know and cannot tell.     

                                                                                                                                                     
Richard Scriven (@CorkGeog)

Photo Caption: A collection of votive offerings at St Gobnait’s Well, Cork, Ireland. 

Storytelling is a constant contradiction; it is an artefact where it should merely be artifice. It carries morals, communal history and vast socio-anthropological value; it is imaginative teller-tailored fiction free from the constraints of reality. Yet, it is perhaps the most constant and poignant signifier of “nation” and “tradition”, not least for Scotland.

​Regardless of how far you carry your nationalism, this common understanding will always be intensely problematic. While storytelling is often seen as a point of origin for conceptions of cultural and national “self”, it is a malleable property, and one that has travelled globally. It is not tied to particular geography or nationalities. Storytelling itself has not confused this issue but rather it is us who have essentialised and misappropratied it in our attempts to champion the craft as valid.

​For instance, two quick yet important examples: in the 18th century, Walter Scott fell gladly into correspondence with the Grimm brothers after they contacted him to comment on how Scottish folk tales he had edited and published were almost identical to ones that had been passed down to them from German antiquity. Around the same period, James MacPherson was embroiled in the Ossian scandal, claiming ownership of poems of Scottish antiquity, with one half of a freshly post-union Britain happy to celebrate it, while the other half keen to challenge and dismiss. But of course, Ossian (and Fingal) are Celtic characters more rooted into Irish folk history. However, both Scott and MacPherson proved to reshape Scottish history and a downhearted nation’s sense of self. The hangover for this can be seenin every shortbread tin or clan tartan to line a window in the capital.

​The point I am trying to make is that whereas their successes and controversies highlighted an issue in authenticity or exposed the conceptual folly and fallacy of “tradition”, storytelling itself continued on regardless. This is because it is the form itself that is important, the relationship and interaction that it encourages. The form is comfortable being bent and twisted, modified and remade. As such, it is perfectly able to exist as contradiction.It is the fundamental values of storytelling that should be promoted and not merely their historical or cultural value.

​In this regard, our critical methodology needs to adapt to mirror the forms that it examines. We should attempt to move the focus from celebrating “authenticity”, and instead merely celebrate contribution. New emerging talents should find fertile soil freshly toiled by the progress and gains of the many Scottish folk revivals. These will prove most healthy when those rising stars the folk purists champion are mixed unceremoniously with voices that academia have no awareness of. There should be no guidelines; these contributors may work in different genres, arts or forms entirely, carrying not a tradition itself, but rather the spirit of the craft that moulded such a powerfully resonant idea in the first place. The stigmatising andessentialising nature of sentimentalised national tradition must be abandoned to allow new contributors to truly create afresh. New talent cannot, and must not, be haunted by old ghosts.

​Through establishments such as the School of Scottish Studies and the Scottish Storytelling Centre, the vast wealth of tales carried by the Scottish travellers and the revivalefforts of people like Hamish Henderson (and those in the centuries before), we have re-established the foundations to our indigenous arts and culture. Only, we have found that these are less indigenous than we may have hoped. We simply need to allow ourselves to accept this to build upon the foundations regardless. We must do all we can to ensure that we do not block the flow of progress in anxious attempts to preserve; but instead, learn, observe and create. Interaction must not be expected to necessitate ‘recreation.’

​It is essential for a Scotland, independent or otherwise, that this never be the case. The fluid and organic interactions of our arts, cultures and national identities must flow together to ensure this very fact. In the terminology of Hamish Henderson and his many followers, we must “carry stream.”

Greg Whelan

Muslims in Britain have a serious image problem. Always angry, isolationist and threatening, constantly thinking about ‘Islam’.

As one myself, I must confess it’s exhausting to be ‘Muslim’ like that all the time. Like everyone else we have other, more mundane, and private, aspects to our lives – worrying about our quality of life and the economy, getting our kids into good schools and, in the Scottish context, figuring out how we’re going to vote in the upcoming independence referendum! As such, whatever the media and others might have us believe, we simply cannot be – are not – 'angry' all the time. 
              
Hunkering down and getting on with it, however, is rarely an option. So contested and crowded is the discourse on Islam and Muslims that it is well nigh impossible to engage in it without being forced to take a side or to be pigeon-holed into one - 'good' Muslim vs 'bad' Muslim, moderate vs
extremist, Salafi vs Sufi and, of course, Sunni vs Shi'i. Willingly or unwillingly, consciously and unconsciously, Muslims and non-Muslims, people of faith, some faith, and no faith, are everyday confronted with images of a 'self' and an 'other' that is both somewhat alien and strangely familiar, like a bereaved relative you feel for but don't quite know how to reach out to. 
             
Take this music video of Happy British Muslims in April 2014, a memic homage to Pharrell Williams. On the one hand, it's a masterly response to David Cameron's 2011 assessment of "the doctrine of state multiculturalism" as being a failure. But it has had its academic critics and strident counter-video-responses. Clearly, these run the gamut from thoughtful reflection to ridiculous assertions that are downright offensive.

What is also clear is that these negative responses haven't stopped other Muslims in Muslim-majority countries from participating in the meme (see www.wearehappyfrom.com, which is compiling a running list of cities to map "the geographical spread of happiness"), which includes Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Turkey  and Iran. 
             
The Iranian case is particularly interesting not only because the happy teens were found and detained within hours of the video being put up on YouTube and subjected to a public ‘confession’ on state TV, but also because the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, also appeared to wade into the debate by tweeting "#Happiness is our people's right. We shouldn't be too hard on behaviours caused by joy."  All of the teens have since been released.

As this single issue on angry/happy Muslims exemplifies, there are competing responses to the
questions,  “What is Islam?” and “Who is a Muslim?” There is more than one Muslim story. And more than just two sides to even a single one. Indeed, storytelling in all its complexity is an integral part of the history of Muslim civilisations, from narratives in the Qur'an about Joseph (Yusuf) and Potiphar's wife (Zulaikha)  to Scheherazade and the Tales from the 1001 Nights. 

Some are the stuff of nightmares. Others, however, stories about mystical journeys, love, and art, and music, and wine, and poetry, evoking the likes of Farid al-Din Attar,  Jalal al-Din Rumi  (here’s an amazing operatic rendition with puppets), Omar Khayyam,  and so very many contemporary artists, poets, musicians, authors and filmmakers, inspire and manifest a radically different way of being Muslim, one that engages faith with intellect, addresses adversity with courage and grace, and relieves difficulty by accompanying it with humour. Let us create the space to hear them.

By Fayaz S Alibhai, @fayazalibhai