Wednesday, April 9, 1986
Campus/Area
University Daily Kansan
7
Irish folklorist tells classic tales
By Tom Farmer
Staff writer
In his lyrical Irish accent, the folklorist explained to his audience that the amber-colored drink in front of him was medicine, a mixture of honey and only a drop of whiskey, for his alluring throat.
"I believe I didn't find out until today that Kansas has strange liquor laws," said Edmund Lenhan, a folklorist and storyteller. "Of course I don't drink myself."
Lenihan told several classic Irish tales in the style of old Irish storytellers to a packed audience in the Big Eight Room of the Kansas Union last night.
According to Ted Wilson, director of the Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Center for the Humanities, which sponsored his visit, Lenihan is on a tour of 15 U.S. cities in about many days.
There has long been the belief that Ireland is full
storytellers, Lenihan said, but actually there is only a handful of good Irish folkers.
"I think most people have said of Irish people that they are good storytellers," he said. "Really, they're just good talkers."
During his performance, Lenihan jumped about the platform, letting his body act out his rapid-fire words, while the audience reacted with laughter.
He told one tale of a gravestone on which two nigs were engraved.
Legend has it that a man was forced to take his two pigs to the market for money to pay his landlord, Lemlah said. The man, unable to find a place to hide in the valley, put the pigs in the back, when his horse came to a stop.
The man fell into the cart with the pigs, who promptly ate him — leaving only the stumps of his legs in his boots.
and neighbors looked for him until they finally found the bloody boots and pigs in the cart.
The man's wife and neighbors, when deciding how he should be properly buried, determined the pigs should be placed in the casket with the boots.
When the cart returned without the man, his wife
"You can go there today and see the gravestone with two pigs on it," Lenihan said. "And that's how it came to be there."
Lenihan's first book of stories, titled "Long Ago by Shannonside," was published in 1982. He also has made three records of his stories.
Unfortunately, television has not taken advantage of storytellers, who would tell stories for free, Lenhan said.
Bill to cut scholarships passes Senate
By Mark Siebert
Staff writer
TOPEKA — A bill that would cut the number of state medical scholarships in half passed the Kansas Senate yesterday after it was amended to include harsher penalties for defaulting on scholarship agreements.
The bill cuts the number of scholarships available to students from 50 to 25 after July 1, but loops some of the requirements for students to participate.
The proposal, which passed 40-10 in the Senate, now goes to the House for consideration.
The scholarship program, set up in 1978, required students to serve for a reasonable amount of time as a physician in a medically underserved area of Kansas. It was intended to reduce the short-
tage of doctors in rural areas of the state.
The new bill would allow doctors to establish a practice in a city with no medical shortage, as long as they agreed to practice part time in an underserved county.
Under the current law, students who decide not to practice in an underserved area can pay back the scholarship at a 15 percent interest rate over 10 years.
State Sen. Wint Winter Jr., R-Lawrence, suggested an amendment that would require students who defaulted on their loans to pay them back, plus interest, within 90 days of graduation.
"I don't know why the taxpayers should subsidize them over a 10-year period of time," Winter said.
He said his amendment was an effort to make
sure the program was not used as a general scholarship measure.
The amendment does not affect those students now in the program, he said.
The bill's sponsor, State Sen. Jack Walker, R-Overland Park, said he supported the amendment.
"If the purpose is to send them to Western Kansas, we had better make it tough to buy out," he said.
More than half of the students buy out their scholarships each year and work in the area of their choice. Walker said.
Originally, the bill would have eliminated all scholarships after the fall of 1987, but that provision was eliminated by the Senate Ways and Means Committee last week.
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