Hello, everybody! I´m a Dane whom Big Stan taught storytelling when I visited him on Marchburn Drive & around the glens. When I left, he´d say "The laddie´s awa´".
    Since in Denmark we have no surviving tradition for storytelling, I was happy to get Stanley´s blessing as a storyteller. I guess you have lots of material with him, but if you are interersted in more, I have a tape I did for Danish tv, featuring Stanley at a happy ceileadh that we had.
    Stanley taught me how to decrease the self-centeredness of city folk, enabling me to encounter a.o. ghosts like the Black Dog that each night runs to the "Vi" in my city of Viborg; I first glimpsed this spectral hound in a dust-devil at the old holy mount over here, but half an hour later I saw it (almost) entirely: Green light pulsating from its dis- & re-appearing bodyparts, it looked back at me and Sue Grandquist, a second-sighted Asa-priestess from Seattle, through eyes of green fire and a flaming mouth. Stanley taught me how you must respect the denizens of Faërie, too, because they have their own agendas which shouldn´t be crossed by us human folk.
    Just like he was so kind to Brutus, his "monster" dog which I patted, remarking: "He´s very peaceable", to which Stanley replied. "Na, he´s very bitesome" - but there was an inherent understanding between Stanley and other beings, making him remark the moment when Brutus died, from far away ...
    He also told me how one night his soul was carried out of his body by an angel ("It had no body, and angels don´t lie; only a demon from Hell will appear by the lie of a seemingly physical body"), carried down the road and into the Heavens - easily crossing the narrow bridge which spans the chasm between the Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead, he was greeted by Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates. But, just as Stanley was about to drink the Water of Forgetfulness, this gate-keeping saint told him to go back and live once again.
    Wish we still had Big Stan over for a next ceileadh. But I guess he will be waiting for us to finish our chores in this life, before we enter the light beyond the darkness.
    We must all try to carry on, but we are on our own now ... Stanley´s awa´ ...

Sincerely mourning,

Lars Munk Sørensen,
storyteller