Arthur Dearness and the Mermaid
and other Orkney Plays
by Bryce Wilson

During the last decades of the 20th century there was a renewed interest in the ancient folklore of Orkney.

The most recent was the publication of Orkney Folklore and Sea Legends, a compilation by Tom Muir of stories gathered and recorded by Walter Traill Dennison.

The artist who provided the illustrations for that collection, Bryce Wilson, has adapted three stories - one from the book and two others - into plays.

The tales are Assiepattle and the Maister Stoorworm (or how Orkney and Shetland came into being), a play in two acts; Thorodale's Revenge (or how the Fin Folk lost Eynhallow) a play in one Act; and Arthur Dearness and the Mermaid, a play in one act with music, song and dance.

All the plays are preceded by notes on the background to the stories and suggestions for props and stage settings. There is great scope for producer and cast to improvise their own methods of providing the action settings and scenery. Lighting effects are paramount for all three plays. To get over the problem caused for producers of providing a narrator the author has cleverly used an old seafaring man in the Stoorworm story and a granny in the other two telling their grandchildren the old tale and by using lighting effects to fade out one scene and fade in another, a quick change can be made from the "narration" scene to scenes of the cast playing the parts depicted in the tale and vice versa. All plays have musical interludes and Arthur Dearness and the Mermaid gives great opportunity for singing voices.

This is a novel way of getting people interested in the old culture of our islands and I am sure school drama groups could use it for both educating pupils in folklore and stagecraft who knows? There may be out there someone with the artistic ability, time and patience to create animated film(s) of the Stoorworm, the Fin Folk and the Mermaids - maybe leading to a cult following of the varied characters of Orkney Folklore.

JOA