The story of a story . . .

Heartsfelled, a man of many guises

Those of you who've visited this blog before will be pretty familiar with our character, Heartsfelled.  
You'll know about him being a storyteller as old as time. And, you maybe know that in the upcoming film, Heartsfelled is telling a story called The Identity Stealer.

However, some folk are not so sure about the story of the Identity Stealer, so settle back and I'll explain:

The story actually began as a lengthy poem that I created when I was a performance poet.  

Patrisha, the Poet

The poem is called The Fyrdwhaet Saga and because I was feeling adventurous, it a few lines in Anglo-Saxon English.  
Based on someone I knew, it's a set of verses about a charismatic warrior who absorbs people's time and attention so much that I call him  Fyrdhwaet, The Identity Stealer.  
Being an academic myself,  but not being at all an expert or knowledgeable about Anglo-Saxon English, I took the poem to some learned experts to verify that I had written them well enough.  To be honest, I expected them to laugh and pat me on the head and that would be the end of that little project ...  so you can imagine how happy I was to be told to think of it as the beginning of a full-length saga and to keep on writing it.  And so it developed!

Patrisha, the scholar

In that first set of verses,  “Fyrdhwæt, The Identity Stealer” (his name meaning brave or warlike), we are told that his mother who bore him and all of his friends, his family, even his wife, find that in his presence their sense of self and identity become thwarted and sucked away.  So people turn away from him.

I spend happy hours researching Anglo-Saxon words and syntax to the best of my capability.

It's tricky, not least because our knowledge of this long-ago language is restricted to the few sagas and documents we have in the original (such as the wonderful Beowulf), but there's Bosworth and Toller's Dictionary and by the time I was writing this there was becoming some pretty good help on the internet too.

Coming back to the story itself, what we find in the tale of Fyrdhwaet is that he is brave and good at heart. So, when I extended his story to build the Saga it seemed right and proper that he become the slayer of his people's demons.

The Green Man is gone!

I thought hard about olde Englyshe customs and mythology and about how peoples seemed to 'worship' many gods and goddesses, each of which had a role to play in daily life such as bringing forth good crops, clean water or good weather or rain as and when needed. Similarly, the people's demons were creatures of nature, or rather of disturbed nature. So I designed my demons to be the bringers of bad times such as crop failure, drought, or scary darkness (eclipse).

Naturally, the people begin to starve and would have died out (apathy seems prevalent) if it weren't for one small, lone voice who manages to call upon Fyrdhwæt.  The sun won't shine so Fyrdhwæt slays the monster in the dark, alone and unrecognized.

In the second set of verses:  “Bealltain” and “The Silken Tretraw”  we are introduced to the first of three demons, the Tretraw. It is a beast which arrives at the beginning of spring, during the spring festival procession, and it commences to eat up all the trees and green growth, positing stones and rock in the place of sacred woods and vital agriculture.

In the third set of verses:  “Alban Heruin” and “The Thirsty Higghorþ” (a demon drank up the oxygen)

This Thirsty Higghorþ [pronounced High-hoarth . . . with a silent 'p' before the 'th' if you can manage it]  makes its living by drinking all the oxygen and goodness from the air. Once again a small, lone voice manages to call our hero Fyrdhwæt.  The sun won't shine on the battle so our hero struggles until he has slain the monster and saved the people.

In the final set of verses: “Samhain” and “The Miserable Maghmaugh” [pron:maw-maw] we witness our hero as he slays his third and final demon.  This one is a dwimor or ghost which dries out all the water supplies and sacred wells by turning the waters to rosin.

Having written all this, and performed it a couple of times, I set the poem aside to gather dust on a shelf somewhere and almost forgot all about it while tide and times shaped and reshaped my days.
. . . Then, during the Christmas break of 2017 while I was idle and supposed to be resting,

Patricia watches Zak of
Zak Wylde Productions

Julia Gant, Costumier and actress
Nigel Gant - Heartsfelled

I suddenly had the idea of taking the Saga to some new friends who just happened to be first class historians, re-enactors, experimental archaeologists and filmmakers . . !  I even discovered that Nigel Gant, who will play Heartsfelled, has actually studied Anglo-Saxon English. There's not so much of it in the film as we wanted the tale to be accessible to everybody, and lovely Nigel has made it perfect! 

Director and special action actor Pete
Holland of Zak Wylde Productions

As a production team, we've talked and we've worked and we've had a great time bringing this project together. 

At time of writing, we've got the opening sequence under our belts and are looking forward to a long summer of filming the three battle sequences as well as Heartsfelled himself in his Museum of Stories.






For the purposes of telling the story well, we have designed and represented the demons in animal

Amy - the beautiful side of the cunning
Miserable Maghmaugh!

form.  I felt this would be close to Anglo-Saxon thinking.    
The Silken Tretraw is a wolf, the  Higghorþ is a wild boar and the Miserable Maghmaugh is a deer.

. . . Oh, and Tretraw,  Higghorþ and Maghmaugh are names I made up! I hope that answers for you. Thanks again for your interest.

If you would like to pre-order your copy of the film, film and book or if you would like to have a special Heartsfelled T-shirt or sweatshirt or even a mug, or perhaps you'd like to come visit us on-set in Lincolnshire . . . then why not show your support and visit  https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/heartsfelled

Thanks
PB