A celebration of cunning men, cunning women, coney catching, and all manner of artful deceit.

There’s a figure on the road. Sometimes in robes, sometimes in rags. Selling pots one day, pardons the next. Potions to pins, prayers to promises.

Everything for sale. Nothing quite true.

Join us for an evening of delicious deceit with Dave Tonge, the Yarnsmith of Norwich, as he conjures the tricksters, rogues, and cunning folk who walked England’s roads and worked their craft upon the foolish, the greedy, and the gullible.

These aren’t gentle stories. They’re sharp-edged and irreverent. The kind of tales that got whispered in alehouses and shared on market days, stories the common folk told about those who lived by their wits when the world offered nothing else.

This is storytelling as it was meant to be: profane, philosophical, and utterly compelling.

What You’ll Experience

Dave Tonge specialises in the tales that rarely make it into polite collections. The stories told by the poorest folk – the ones who had to live by their wits because they had nothing else to trade.

• Coney Catching: the art of parting a fool from his money (and the delicious vocabulary that went with it)
• Cunning Folk: those who walked the line between healer and charlatan, always one step ahead of the law and two steps ahead of their clients
• Disguises and Deceptions: how one trickster wore a hundred faces and sold a thousand lies
• The Philosophy in the Profane: what these irreverent tales reveal about human nature, greed, gullibility, and the gap between wanting and wisdom

This isn’t storytelling from a book. It’s storytelling from the road, the alehouse, the market square – places where stories had to earn their keep by being good enough to remember and sharp enough to repeat.

Dave brings these tales alive with period richness and wit. He knows how they sounded in the mouths of the folk who first told them. He honours their edge, their humour, and their refusal to offer easy comfort.

“It’s a multi-layered tapestry of the profane and philosophical.” – Maria Credali, storyteller, 

Why These Stories Matter

We live in a time of elaborate deceptions. Scams in our inboxes. Lies dressed up as truth. Promises that dissolve when you reach for them.

The trickster tales know all about this. They’ve been teaching the same lessons for centuries: how to spot a con, how to question what we want to believe, how to laugh at our own foolishness instead of drowning in it.

But more than that, they remind us that cunning – the ability to survive by wit alone – was once a necessary art. Not everyone had land or title or trade. Some had only their tongues and their nerve.

These stories honour them. The ones who walked the cunning road because no other road was open.

About Dave Tonge – The Yarnsmith of Norwich

Dave Tonge is a jobbing teller of tales. An itinerant journeyman who performs at festivals, museums, heritage sites and schools, from Lindisfarne Holy Island in the north to Arundel Castle in the south.

He works regularly for English Heritage and national museums like the Ashmolean in Oxford. He’s written three books: Tudor Folk Tales, Norfolk Folk Tales for Children, and Medieval Folk Tales for Children.

But his real expertise is in bringing the past alive through the stories that never got written down in church records or royal chronicles. The bawdy, clever, irreverent tales that common folk told each other when they wanted entertainment that tasted like truth.

Dave can perform in full period costume or ditch the doublet for a fine trilby hat. He’s equally at home on heritage sites and at storytelling festivals, including Taffy Thomas’s Tales in Trust and Festival at the Edge. What sets him apart is this: he doesn’t sanitise. He doesn’t sentimentalise. He tells the stories as they were told – with all their wit, wickedness, and wisdom intact.

Who Should Come

• Lovers of history who want the stories that didn’t make it into the textbooks
• Storytelling enthusiasts hungry for tales with edge and authenticity
• Anyone curious about how ordinary folk survived, schemed, and sometimes thrived
• Those who appreciate wit, wordplay, and the art of a well-told lie
• People who suspect that the sanitized versions of folk tales are missing the best bits

You don’t need to know Tudor history. You just need to enjoy a good story told by someone who knows their craft, and isn’t afraid to let the stories keep their teeth.

Evening Details

Date: Thursday 9th April
Time: 7pm
Location: The Joinery, Settle, or Online 
Investment: £16

“Immense energy and spirit… that’s what gave it the wow factor!” – Marion Leeper, Cambridge Storytelling Club

“Your storytelling skills stand out… you share the stories rather than just tell them.” – Stafford Knott Storytelling Club

“A spellbinding evening… a triumph of memory, mirth and marvellous mischievous story-weavage!” – Oakham Castle