Game Of Thrones and Lord Of The Rings are proof of the enduring popularity of myths and legends ... and in the digital age the telling of old-fashioned tales matters more than ever. Let  me share a special moment with you.

I was in the Scottish Storytelling Centre with a group of primary school children who were taking part in a competition called Telling Tales. One by one, the children stood on the stage and told their tales, holding their peers spellbound. But as one young lad walked up to take his turn, I felt a wave of anxiety.

I knew he would find this difficult. His teachers had told me he never speaks out in class, and often refuses to engage in activities. During our classroom story-making sessions he had listened but hadn't told a tale or asked any questions. Now he stood in front of dozens of children who were waiting to be entertained.

He began hesitantly but grew in confidence as his story emerged. He called his tale My Precious. It was about a magic ring that made people invisible when worn. I heard him with electricity in my veins as the audience listened, enthralled, for a full five minutes. When the story ended he received an enthusiastic round of applause.

As the boy walked back to his seat, he smiled. It was the first time I had seen his face light up like that. It was a smile of triumph, of achievement. And I will admit I had to choke back the emotion. I had felt the power of this moment in that young lad's life. The air was filled with real magic: the magic of transformation that is cast by storytelling.

His tale had been based on a storyline from the film version of Lord Of The Rings. In conducting young storyteller sessions in schools, I've discovered that movies are a common source for story ideas, usually the film the youngster has most recently seen, or their favourite one.

Themes from The Hobbit and Brave are common. But on one occasion a young lad interrupted me as I told the tale of the Scottish wizard, Michael Scott: "I ken where you got this story from," he said. "It's from a computer game."

Movies, TV series and even computer games all draw heavily on traditional legends and folklore traditions. Tales of ancient worlds, dragons and mythical creatures, epic battles with warrior queens and brave heroes, wizards both good and bad, supernatural beings, magic cups and rings, journeys of great adventure: we all love them, don't we?

And we love it even in this digital age because despite our gadgets and technology, there is no special effect or computer-generated image like our own imaginations. Every year, more than a million people make the pilgrimage to Loch Ness, drawn by the legend of the monster. When asked, most visitors say they don't really believe in the monster, yet they nevertheless want to be in a place of legend. We haven't lost our ancestors' sense of wonder and fascination at things we don't understand or know. We want to believe, even for a moment. That is why legends and myths will never go out of fashion.

The current series Game Of Thrones on satellite TV is a good illustration of how movie-makers constantly embed themes and images from legend into their narrative and then remake and rebrand them in digital splendor. Adapted from the fantasy novels of George RR Martin and inspired by 15th-century dynastic struggles in England, it mixes dragons and the undead with identifiable characters from history to create a visual feast of landscape and legends.

Likewise, movies such as Lord Of The Rings, The Hobbit, Harry Potter and the Narnia trilogy all contain powerful images from folklore tradition. Gandalf, for example, means magic elf in old Norse, which hints at Tolkien's use of old Norse sagas for inspiration. Here is a character who resembles Odin, a powerful figure who uses his magic to combat evil.

Tolkien also drew on Anglo-Saxon legend. The brutal epic Beowulf, with its violent struggle with a dragon, has reflections in the Hobbit. Harry Potter author JK Rowling has admitted that she freely took her pick of ideas from British folklore and mythology and changed them or added her own twist.

There is nothing wrong with this, indeed it is part of the tradition. Even old original tales are themselves a product of generations of retellings and adaptation. Ever since early humans used language to convey an account of the day's hunting, stories have been retold, changed and transformed, as each teller added or altered the tale to suit their purpose.

So the digital age brings the images and narrative of legend and myth to a mass audience like never before, and as the young storyteller workshops revealed, young people are deeply influenced by these films and the tales and characters they contain.

But there is a dichotomy here. Blockbuster productions such as Game Of Thrones and Lord Of The Rings may represent a continuum of storytelling in another form, but it is a form which turns us and our children into passive consumers of stories, rather than participants and creators of them. We are being resold our own inheritance with one vital ingredient missing: our own active engagement with it.

Oral storytelling provides that ingredient. It opens a personal relationship with a story or legend. It stimulates imagination and wonder. Instead of gazing at a screen, the listener is connected eye to eye, mind to mind, and heart to heart with the teller, and they walk together in the story.

And for the teller, the tale becomes their creation. In the moment of telling, they become the source of an imagined world. They are the director, producer, make-up artist, special effects and stunt expert all rolled into one. They can create any landscape or creature, go on any adventure, invent any quest. They become creators rather than consumers.

This is the magic that all storytellers know is real, and it is a lasting magic, not just ephemeral. Research has shown that children will remember the details and meaning of a story if it is told rather than read to them. Does this surprise you? Think of a sermon or lecture that is read from notes, compared to a passionate speech from the heart directly addressed to an audience.

The difference is in the human connection: the eye contact, the spontaneity of expression, the living emotion, the feeling of the words and the body language. When a story is told, there is no barrier between teller and listener, they walk together in the tale. Films, even more so, quickly fade from memory, no matter how thrilling, because we absorb them passively. But storytelling entwines a tale into the imagination, and can become a lifetime inheritance, especially for the teller of tales.

Thus in this age of the internet, the traditional art of oral storytelling has become more relevant than ever. It takes our screen-addicted children back into their own imaginations and creativity. It also encourages human sociability by emphasising the importance of personal contact and face-to-face communication, which in the digital age is under real threat.

But there is also another vital element. Storytelling weaves identity and community in ways no other form of media can do. Every child should be told the local legends or stories that are rooted in their area. In my home town of Prestonpans, there is a large rock by the sea called Johnny Moat. It is a glacial erratic, but according to legend, as long as it remains in place the town will flourish. I have told the tale to many local children and I once came across a youngster who was showing the stone to his parents. The pride that child felt was palpable, both in knowing the tale and the fact it was from his town. Every community has a story that can elicit that pride and sense of belonging, and root folklore in people's everyday lives.

Family tales are also a major part of the storytelling tradition, since they put the teller and his or her family centre-stage. Tales of mythical queens and pet dragons are great entertainment, but stories from your own grandmother about how she met your granddad and what their lives were like will fascinate children far more, and they will tell them to their children so they become the inheritance of later generations. And the gift of this storytelling can be its spontaneity.

If your children are bored during a car journey or fed up on a rainy day, why not tell them of a time when you were a naughty child or what happened to g randdad when he was down the mine, or an embarrassing moment their mother had? My children never met my father because he died long before they were born, but they know him almost better that I ever did because of the stories I have told them about him. And I have heard them tell these stories as if they were there at the time of the events, and they had known him personally.

So the challenge now is to bring the transformative magic of storytelling to every child in the land, especially those who face extra obstacles because of poverty or marginalisation. Scottish Storytelling Centre's Telling Tales Competition has been organised to meet this challenge. The long-term aim is to involve young people across Scotland, but initially, selected schools are holding interactive workshops in which young people are helped to become storytellers. It is an especially powerful way of engaging young people who are struggling with literacy. For many of these youngsters, films and computer games are initially their main inspiration for stories, rather than books. But the sessions have shown that active involvement in storytelling develops literary skills and confidence.

The Young Storyteller sessions link in with the fantastic work being done by teachers, whose feedback indicates that young people previously struggling with engagement have crafted stories and developed their telling skills. The Telling Tales Competition, now in its second year, will be compared by last year's winners, Ava Barnaby, 11, and Morvern Graham, 15.

Ava, who now holds the title Young Storyteller of Scotland, has become a confident and engaging teller of tales and a keen reader, who particularly likes detective stories. Asked recently why she thinks storytelling is important she replied thoughtfully that stories "contain information about life and how we cope with things, a bit like the messages you get in fortune cookies".

Of course, children can be nervous about competing, and the school visits to the Storytelling Centre were designed to help familiarise them with the theatre. I have watched in amazement as children who were initially cynical or reluctant were transformed into skilled storytellers.

The young lad who told his own version of My Precious was a case in point. The film version of Lord Of The Rings may have been his initial inspiration, but it was the transformative power of oral storytelling which wove the magic that afternoon. He didn't just describe what had happened in the film, he made his own story based on ideas from it. It was a story of a golden ring which a boy found in a castle during a school trip. He discovered it made him invisible when he wore it, as well as powerful. But one day ... no, I won't tell you any more. He might tell his tale at the competition, so you will have to get your ticket to find out what happens.

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Tim Porteus is a professional storyteller and columnist, who runs Young Storytellers of Scotland

Connect: 

timporteus@hotmail.com

twitter @timstoryteller

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