This year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival saw a slightly unusual edition courtesy of St. Andrews students and graduates - the festival’s first-ever zero-waste venue in the form of The Greenhouse. The project was quite literally built from the ground up, as the people behind the Greenhouse not only wrote, produced and performed all the shows but also built the venue themselves from recycled materials.

In the Greenhouse Series, three of the creatives behind the project share a piece of their Fringe experience. The last piece is an extract from playwright Georgia Luckhurst’s ‘The Earth Untold’:

‘The Earth Untold’ – Extract by Georgia Luckhurst

‘The Earth Untold’ was a storytelling cycle that debuted at 2019’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, housed at BoxedIn Theatre’s purpose-built venue, The Greenhouse. There were fifteen stories in total, and each performance featured five prompted by the audience’s selection from a box of corresponding objects. This story, my favourite, was cued by a cowbell.

There once was a king who had become discontent with his life. It felt perverse to admit, but it was true. Although he had everything he could think of to ask for, his soul had grown restless for something uncertain. At first, the king kept his sorrow to himself. He couldn’t see how any good would come of complaining, so he took to distractions instead - elaborate distractions, of huge expense. He had four-hour plays staged each night to accompany his evening meal. He had his groomsmen racehorses for his one-person audience. Before he went to sleep, he asked that fireworks be set off on the palace’s back lawn. He’d watch them from his balcony and wait for the Catherine Wheels and Roman Candles to spark some joy in him as they flamed in green and gold. But they only left him more hollow.

When all of the distractions failed to work, he tried burying himself in the business of being king; obsessing over state matters and holding meeting after meeting. It gave him purpose but it still didn’t make him happy.

One day, as he sat in his offices looking over important papers, the youngest of the palace maids came in. She was short and slight but in spite of her age and size, she was brave - a little dangerously so. This is why, rather than keep her head bowed as she dusted and polished, she dared to address the king.

‘Sir, I’ve noticed that you’ve been unhappy,’ she said. ‘And I think you should hear the nightingale sing.’

The king was affronted at how easily she spoke to him, and for a few seconds, he deliberated over how to respond. But he found that he didn’t have the energy to be angry. If the girl was suggesting a solution to his discontent, he was too tired not to listen.

There was a nightingale, the girl told him, in the forest bordering the palace. She heard it each morning as she walked through the trees to get to work. The nightingale sang so beautifully, she said, that it couldn’t help but delight anyone who heard it. If the king consented, she was happy to go ask it now to come sing for him, though she couldn’t guarantee it would.

The king nodded, and within an hour the girl had returned with the bird.

Over the coming months, the king and his nightingale became inseparable. It sang for him every morning and every night, and everyone around marvelled at how something as small as a songbird had brought about such a fundamental change. The king whistled everywhere he went, in imitation of his beloved bird. And when he thought nobody was looking, he skipped a little as he walked.

One day a dignitary from another country came to visit, and he brought with him a gift. He had heard all about the king’s nightingale and how unshakably happy it had made him. So the dignitary presented the king with a thing of his own invention: a mechanical nightingale, encrusted with rubies.

At first, the king was unconvinced, but when the mechanical bird opened its beak and projected a snippet of the nightingale’s song, he was delighted. He clicked his fingers imperiously and summoned the maid.

‘Your nightingale can go,’ he said. ‘You can return it to the forest. I have no need for it anymore.’

For the next year, the king woke and fell asleep to the sound of his mechanical bird. He loved it; the jerky way it moved, and the jewels that studded its wings. But what he wouldn’t admit to himself was how the song had changed. It sounded different, coming from the mechanical bird. He missed his nightingale.

The king was too stubborn to own up to his mistake. But he was an old man, and within the year he had fallen very ill. As he lay in his bed, nearing his death, the young maid came in to ask him a question.

Before she could open her mouth, the king answered her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Please bring me my bird.’

It was the real nightingale that sang for the rest of his days, though this time its song was unceasing. Hour after hour, it distracted him from his pains and its song danced delicately through the palace.

It’s not always easy to catch a nightingale song. Nightingales are shy, and they prefer to sing for themselves. But there are some songs you can’t miss; songs you’re intended to hear.

In Scandinavia, sometimes a song is the only way to summon a herd. It’s a practice known as kulning, and it’s made of a wordless song - notes strung together in a keen, imploring call. Kulning works because of the mountains; because each note rebounds and echoes on its journey through the valley. It’s a haunting call, but it tells the cows that it’s time to return from the fields. You’ll hear them approaching as the bells around their necks ring.

But as well as calling the cattle, kulning also warns away the wolves and the bears. Since the Middle Ages, women have stood at the bottom of the fields and sung in shards of high-pitched, whistling notes. It’s a ritual; a way of waking up the day, like a nightingale sharing its song at dawn and at dusk.

There are songs that call another creature home and songs that lead us to one. Like in the Aboriginal tradition in Australia, where a path across the land can be navigated by a songline or dreaming track. It’s a song that speaks of the landmarks of a route: the waterholes to look out for, the rocks to dodge. The song is a map, passed down from traveller to traveller.

There are songs that begin the day and songs that conclude it. And there are songs that get us through it, from one path to the next.

Photo Credit: Georgia Luckhurst