CHENNAI: It isn't often that a seven-year-old meets a storyteller named Helmut from the land of fairy tales - Austria. This is where the infamous Grimm Brothers were from. The event, a session on 'European Fairytales - their history, meaning and ways in which they serve as moral inspiration to our lives’, was organised by the World Storytelling Institute in the city.
Accompanying Helmut Wittman was Franz Bernegger, who played the Bohemian 'Bock', an old Central European form of the bagpipe. Franz also provided a musical history lesson of sorts for those interested in its origins.
"Its also called the goat flute, and its been around for the past 850 years,” informed Franz Attired in short pants, knee-length socks and his instrument of yore, one was certainly transported down the ages.
Helmut's trademark style usually begins a story with "Long, long ago. Maybe it happened yesterday. Maybe it happened today..." He got the audience warmed up with a particularly odd story of three trees, a blue cow that baked bread with his yellow goat assistant.
There was another tale of a 'wizened farmer' who exchanged his troublesome cow for a pocket full of 'chicken poo'. Unexpectedly, the moral of this one did turn out to have a happy ending and a handsome reward, as well. For children and adults alike, it was a fun evening, with twists in the tales, strains of a bagpipe and a few laughs over simple tales passed down through generations.