Daisy Black in Univ’s Main Quad

Daisy Black: Medieval Storytelling Performance of Yde and Olive: A Medieval Lesbian Romance

Write up by Dr Laura Varnam, Lecturer in Old and Middle English at Univ, who organised the event.

On Wednesday 7 March, academic and storyteller Daisy Black visited Univ to perform her brilliant version of the remarkable thirteenth-century tale of Yde, who dresses herself as a knight and cuts her own paths to freedom.

Staged in the University College chapel, Daisy’s performance wove together medieval narrative with modern folk song, taking the audience from birthing chambers to military barracks, through moonlit country lanes and woods stained with slaughter, and from chapels to court chambers crackling with gossip. The audience – of current Univ staff, students, Old Members and medievalists from across the wider university – were enthralled and enraptured by Daisy’s tale of disguise adventure, gender fluidity, straight-talking angels, and the power of queer love.

Daisy Black performing Yde and Olive in the University College Chapel

First year Univ English students Ava, Will, and Stephen described the performance as follows: “Daisy Black’s lively and engaging rendition began to feel like a real revival of this ancient oral tradition, and a breath of life back into Yde and Olive.” “Daisy Black put our learned theory into stunning practice. It was brilliant to see that oral culture, since lost to time, revived before our eyes.” “Daisy has a real way of allowing you to understand the craft of storytelling by involving the audience in the process.”

Ava and Stephen also attended Daisy’s storytelling workshop for undergraduate and graduate students in the afternoon before the performance. Stephen reflected: “as someone who typically views storytelling from a lens of writing rather than oral speech, it was intriguing to see how Daisy constructed stories actively.”

I also took part in the workshop and found Daisy’s techniques – identifying the “bones” of a story, storytelling through the senses, accessing emotional perspectives, injecting humour – to be very generative and exciting. They will certainly inform my approach to my Beowulf poetry project and I’m looking forward to working with Daisy again in the summer when we present our research together at the Middle Ages in the Modern World conference on a co-organised panel about honouring medieval women’s stories in the modern world.

For more information about Daisy’s work and the Yde and Olive tour, visit: https://daisyblack.uk/storytelling/
To read a modern English translation of the medieval source text, see Mounawar Abbouchi, “Yde and Olive,” Medieval Feminist Forum, subsidia series, vol 8 (2018), Medieval Texts in Translation: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/mff/vol53/iss4/1/

The performance was generously supported by Univ’s Overbrook Fund for Research.

Laura Varnam, March 2025

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Published: 28 March 2025