What do you think?
Rate this book
The Mythteller trilogy #3
Scatterlings: Getting Claimed in the Age of Amnesia
In Scatterlings Martin Shaw walks the myth-lines of seven stories based in and around his homeland of Dartmoor, England. Rather than the commentaries on such tales being primarily balanced against other literary sources, Shaw uses what actually occurs on these walks as the main source of information on the tales. The swoop of raven, the swamp, the thinking that moves through him, all form a knot of relationship between the land and the story. As he walks he tells the story of the place back to itself.
This is a highly unusual move for a mythologist, an aspiration to use speech as form of animistic relationship, of binding, of praise to a place. In a time of rapid migrations and climatic movement, Shaw how could we be not just from a place but of a place? When did we trade shelter for comfort? what was the cost of that trade? What are the stories the west tells itself in private?
Scatterlings also takes us on a wonder through the wild edges of British culture, a story of secret from the ancient storytelling of the bardic schools to medieval dream poetry, from the cunning man to animal call words, to Arabian and steppe Iranian influence on English dialect. Through its astonishing journey, Shaw reveals to us that when you gaze deep enough into the local you find the nomad, and when you look deep enough into the nomad you find the local. Scatterlings is a rebel keen, a rising up, to bend your head to the stories and place that claim you.
This is a highly unusual move for a mythologist, an aspiration to use speech as form of animistic relationship, of binding, of praise to a place. In a time of rapid migrations and climatic movement, Shaw how could we be not just from a place but of a place? When did we trade shelter for comfort? what was the cost of that trade? What are the stories the west tells itself in private?
Scatterlings also takes us on a wonder through the wild edges of British culture, a story of secret from the ancient storytelling of the bardic schools to medieval dream poetry, from the cunning man to animal call words, to Arabian and steppe Iranian influence on English dialect. Through its astonishing journey, Shaw reveals to us that when you gaze deep enough into the local you find the nomad, and when you look deep enough into the nomad you find the local. Scatterlings is a rebel keen, a rising up, to bend your head to the stories and place that claim you.
296 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 25, 2017
59 people are currently reading
691 people want to read
About the author
Martin Shaw
22 books388 followersDr Martin Shaw is an acclaimed teacher of myth. Author of the award-winning Mythteller trilogy (A Branch from the Lightning Tree, Snowy Tower, Scatterlings), he founded the Oral Tradition and Mythic Life courses at Stanford University, whilst being director of the Westcountry School of Myth in the UK.
He has introduced thousands of people to mythology and how it penetrates modern life. For twenty years Shaw has been a wilderness rites of passage guide, working with at-risk youth, the sick, returning veterans and many women and men seeking a deeper life.
His translations of Gaelic poetry and folklore (with Tony Hoagland) have been published in Orion Magazine, Poetry International, Kenyon Review, Poetry Magazine and the Mississippi Review.
Shaw’s most recent books include The Night Wages, Cinderbiter, Wolf Milk, Courting the Wild Twin, All Those Barbarians, Wolferland and his Lorca translations, Courting the Dawn (with Stephan Harding). His essay and conversation with Ai Weiwei on myth and migration was released by the Marciano Arts foundation.
For more on Martin Shaw’s work:
cistamystica.com | drmartinshaw.com | schoolofmyth.com | martinshaw.substack.com
He has introduced thousands of people to mythology and how it penetrates modern life. For twenty years Shaw has been a wilderness rites of passage guide, working with at-risk youth, the sick, returning veterans and many women and men seeking a deeper life.
His translations of Gaelic poetry and folklore (with Tony Hoagland) have been published in Orion Magazine, Poetry International, Kenyon Review, Poetry Magazine and the Mississippi Review.
Shaw’s most recent books include The Night Wages, Cinderbiter, Wolf Milk, Courting the Wild Twin, All Those Barbarians, Wolferland and his Lorca translations, Courting the Dawn (with Stephan Harding). His essay and conversation with Ai Weiwei on myth and migration was released by the Marciano Arts foundation.
For more on Martin Shaw’s work:
cistamystica.com | drmartinshaw.com | schoolofmyth.com | martinshaw.substack.com
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 28, 2018
In Scatterlings Shaw takes some Devon folktales and situates them in the Devon landscape. This is a book populated by local fauna, the characters from Shaw's childhood. These stories are wrapped in place names and criss-crossed with long walks over the hills. It is not really a book of stories - more on that later - but a book about this particular storyteller's relationship with the place he calls home, and the how the relationship between teller and tale is deepened and nourished by both having roots in a particular small corner of the Earth.
I'm a big fan of Shaw's trilogy. We started with "A Branch from The Lightning Tree", sojourned in "The Snowy Tower" and now conclude with "Scatterlings." Though, I have to say, there's no great energy of conclusion or completion here - but perhaps questions about what trilogies actually are can wait for another day. "Scatterlings" is great, and this book feels like a maturing of Shaw as a writer. Once more we're treated to robust, juicy prose. Listen:
"Archaeologists can drink. I mean really. The table is gleaming with pint glasses settled with chewy, warm, resolutely flat beer. A pile of paper plates, foil tins and the remains of a curry slump on the far end, still issuing their come-hither scent of spice, salt and grease. We're in a small coastal town in the north of Dorset. Globs of late October rain boom-patter the window."
It's all like that, and either you're going to love it or not.
But I think the real triumph of "Scatterlings" concerns the way Shaw treats the oral material. It is very hard to capture an oral story, the energy of live telling, and condense it down on the page. (I'm reminded of the Taoist saying. "This thing is like the pinning of a butterfly. The form is captured, but the flying is lost.") And so in "Scatterlings", Shaw doesn't really bother. In one chapter, we may get a literary re-working of a traditional tale. In another, nothing more than hints and allusions to the substance of the story, set within an ongoing dialogue with a raven. It works very well.
I'll list three negatives that I feel contribute to keeping this book just away from a 5th star. This is a book that, in spite of a purposeful energy, does meander around and sometimes that gives it a patchwork feel. Some sections felt like blog-posts or essays grafted into the text because Shaw had some interesting ideas and wanted to include them. This left me feeling like the energy of the text was being dispersed, caught up in eddies rather than all moving in one direction.
My second reaction, and this one very personal, is that as a storyteller I do not ever expect to be so rooted in place or have such a sense of belonging as Shaw clearly feels for his native Devon. (At one point, he basically says that a person doesn't belong somewhere unless they have ancestors buried in the soil.) I am one of the eponymous Scatterlings, a person adrift on middle class life-style, lacking a meaningful connection to either specific land or place, certainly not to any rural landscape. And because of this, there are patches where Shaw's passion come across as preachy and exclusive.
And the third, related point, is that this book, with its idealisation of deep-relationship between being a part of a place and the stories from that place, seems to highlight an apparent hypocrisy when compared to Shaw's other work. "A Branch from the Lightning Tree" is full of stories gathered from around the world - stories that Shaw captures and re-tells because of the psycho-spiritual energy of adolescence. There's no reflection on this evolution of approach from book 1 to 3, so while I could detect a sense of maturation, of distilling technique, it felt a lot like something I was projecting on to the series.
Where does that leave us? This cycle of books has come to an end. I've loved them. In many ways, "Scatterlings" is the best - gorgeous prose, a glorious handling of the difficult task of writing about oral storytelling, a profound book by a bard sharing years of insight into his own experience of belonging. It was not perfect but I'll be very sad if Shaw doesn't write more in the years to come!
I'm a big fan of Shaw's trilogy. We started with "A Branch from The Lightning Tree", sojourned in "The Snowy Tower" and now conclude with "Scatterlings." Though, I have to say, there's no great energy of conclusion or completion here - but perhaps questions about what trilogies actually are can wait for another day. "Scatterlings" is great, and this book feels like a maturing of Shaw as a writer. Once more we're treated to robust, juicy prose. Listen:
"Archaeologists can drink. I mean really. The table is gleaming with pint glasses settled with chewy, warm, resolutely flat beer. A pile of paper plates, foil tins and the remains of a curry slump on the far end, still issuing their come-hither scent of spice, salt and grease. We're in a small coastal town in the north of Dorset. Globs of late October rain boom-patter the window."
It's all like that, and either you're going to love it or not.
But I think the real triumph of "Scatterlings" concerns the way Shaw treats the oral material. It is very hard to capture an oral story, the energy of live telling, and condense it down on the page. (I'm reminded of the Taoist saying. "This thing is like the pinning of a butterfly. The form is captured, but the flying is lost.") And so in "Scatterlings", Shaw doesn't really bother. In one chapter, we may get a literary re-working of a traditional tale. In another, nothing more than hints and allusions to the substance of the story, set within an ongoing dialogue with a raven. It works very well.
I'll list three negatives that I feel contribute to keeping this book just away from a 5th star. This is a book that, in spite of a purposeful energy, does meander around and sometimes that gives it a patchwork feel. Some sections felt like blog-posts or essays grafted into the text because Shaw had some interesting ideas and wanted to include them. This left me feeling like the energy of the text was being dispersed, caught up in eddies rather than all moving in one direction.
My second reaction, and this one very personal, is that as a storyteller I do not ever expect to be so rooted in place or have such a sense of belonging as Shaw clearly feels for his native Devon. (At one point, he basically says that a person doesn't belong somewhere unless they have ancestors buried in the soil.) I am one of the eponymous Scatterlings, a person adrift on middle class life-style, lacking a meaningful connection to either specific land or place, certainly not to any rural landscape. And because of this, there are patches where Shaw's passion come across as preachy and exclusive.
And the third, related point, is that this book, with its idealisation of deep-relationship between being a part of a place and the stories from that place, seems to highlight an apparent hypocrisy when compared to Shaw's other work. "A Branch from the Lightning Tree" is full of stories gathered from around the world - stories that Shaw captures and re-tells because of the psycho-spiritual energy of adolescence. There's no reflection on this evolution of approach from book 1 to 3, so while I could detect a sense of maturation, of distilling technique, it felt a lot like something I was projecting on to the series.
Where does that leave us? This cycle of books has come to an end. I've loved them. In many ways, "Scatterlings" is the best - gorgeous prose, a glorious handling of the difficult task of writing about oral storytelling, a profound book by a bard sharing years of insight into his own experience of belonging. It was not perfect but I'll be very sad if Shaw doesn't write more in the years to come!
November 1, 2022
I really tried very hard with this book as I enjoy Martin Shaw's work and thought process. But I got lost in the quagmire of too many clever words, parables, poetic ramblings; musings that took far too long to get to the point. Was there a point? Sometimes I think there was. But I gave up halfway through. It is a shame because the book cost a bomb.
July 31, 2018
This was the most moving, best book I remember reading! So incredibly inspiring!
March 20, 2018
I've been making my way through Martin Shaw's books for the past few months now - it's a beautiful way to echo some deep thinking and mythic feelings relating to old stories, the land we live in and on, and the progress of our human lives. He brings up the primal in connection with the current conditions, and at the same time gives us a fresh look at the old Britons and earlier forces that created much of what is now the Western world. He often writes as a storyteller, with rich metaphor, and opens himself to include his own life in the tales.... Very highly recommended. (But I was disappointed in the layout and editorial of the book itself - could have used a final edit and polish.)
July 10, 2020
I have never been to Devon, nor have I ever left my country of birth, but still, there is something deeply touching about the tales in this book and how the are weaved within the landscape. They touched a part of me that has been sleeping, lost or both especially in these difficult times and for that I am grateful.
April 17, 2021
This is a book that challenges, both the anthropocentric worldview we inherit as well as eat, drink and breathe in the developed world (along with the sense of human entitlement that goes with it) and the identification of self as individual, separate - possibly sealed off from - the wider than human world. If we allow it, this set of stories, nestled right back into the Devonian soil from which they arose - or into which they had rooted in the case of immigrant narratives - places us humans without compromise completely in the mesh of the natural world which gives us life and can so easily take it away. It is a refreshing offering of humility and a mythic place to stand that does not presume that we have a right to anything we see, but rather offers a set of lessons in the etiquette of co-existence.
As with all things Martin Shaw, it is best to take the reading slowly and allow time for the richness to soak in.
As with all things Martin Shaw, it is best to take the reading slowly and allow time for the richness to soak in.
May 4, 2020
A sort of initiation in a book, a meandering dreamlike contemplation of traditional stories, the land (not nation, land) they come from, the hearing and telling of stories of the land, Martin Shaw takes the reader on a journey deep into the soul of story and place. Any storyteller or folklorist with a love for the kernel of truth in the heart of story will find much to ponder. This is a book to sink into but also to dip in and out of and, most of all, to apply to one's own finding and telling of tales. This is about storytelling as transformation, not only of self but of the world.
Book Pairings:
Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
Anthropological and Folkloric studies of Indigenous storytellers such as Julie Cruikshank's Life Lived Like a Story.
David Abram's Becoming Animal.
Book Pairings:
Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
Anthropological and Folkloric studies of Indigenous storytellers such as Julie Cruikshank's Life Lived Like a Story.
David Abram's Becoming Animal.
December 11, 2017
One of the best books I've read in a very long while.
December 22, 2021
So much mythical wisdom!
February 6, 2025
Another Master Class in the art of storytelling from a premiere mythteller.
March 11, 2017
This book will change your life.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews