when you do your own story-telling sessions, how far around the literature - oral or written - do you range?

I'm actually a bit of a traddy in that respect; whilst I might improvise wildly by way of musical underpinning, my narratives are all classic Indo-European folk tales as this is where my interests lie. Exceptions to this are my wee one man shows at Morpeth Gathering where I've done the miracle stories of Saint Cuthbert (there's a wee YouTube clip of this here filmed by an audience member; there is an official CD-R of this) and Saint Robert. Both of these are canted from printed sheets (shock, horror!) to keep to the sense of the original language. Once again the music is entirely improvised, although I'll weave in traditional songs along the way; so not quite storytelling - I would never use printed texts in a pure storytelling performance which is a much more spontaneous affair altogether. I see these more by way of meditations, for whilst I'm not in the least bit religious myself, there is a potency in such material which lives & breathes by way of a common spiritual heritage.      

This year, by way of contrast, I'll be doing The Long Pack - a Northumbrian tale re-told by Joseph Crawhall & others, in prose & in verse, which looks like being a lot of fun...

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It cannot be doubted that there have been oral traditions.

Both the Darwinist & the Creationist believe in giraffes, Richard - where they differ is how they came into being. What I'm saying is the Oral Tradition is the consequence of supremely gifted creative individuals inventing within the disciplines of their given cultural idiom. Once we see it in terms of its actual individuality rather than its romanticised collectivity then its nature changes - in other words, just as all music is Folk Music by default, the oral tradition is no different from any other creative idiom.

If you don't have anything constructive to add to this, Richard - please refrain from the embittered inventive; it really is rather tiresome & hardly engenders constructive debate.