ACCLAIMED storyteller Matthew Crampton unites with American folk music legend Jeff Warner in a new show based on Crampton’s book Human Cargo: Songs & Stories of Emigration, Slavery & Transportation.

The pair are playing at Cardigan’s Theatr Mwldan on Wednesday, May 16 and their show gives voice to past exiles – emigrants, slaves, transportees – to shed fresh light on today’s migrations.

Through the accompanying Parallel Lives project, it includes – wherever it performs - local stories of migration and partnership with local refugee and migrant support groups.

In a remarkable evening of story and song, Crampton tells true tales of individuals forced into exile in the 18th and 19th centuries. He weaves these stories through a tapestry of traditional folksong from the time performed by Warner.

As Crampton explains: “History usually tells of the rich, the famous and the lucky. But what of ordinary people? Folksong helps give them a voice.

“Mass migration is a defining dilemma for the world. Giving it an historic perspective can detoxify the debate. Adding local stories helps people find their own place in the story.”

Jeff Warner is one of America’s foremost interpreters of traditional music, well loved for connecting 21st century audiences with the everyday lives of people from past centuries.

Born to one of America’s most eminent families of folksong collectors, Jeff grew up listening to the songs and stories of his father Frank Warner and the traditional singers his parents met during their collecting trips through rural America.

Through the Parallel Lives project, Crampton has formed links with 45 different refugee and migrant support groups.

“There’s an incredible array of local initiatives across Britain – individuals who get together and say, we must help refugees who arrive in our town,” he says.

Crampton will also research and tell local stories at each venue. “I hunt through original passenger lists from 18th and 19th century ships to find people who’ve migrated from that very town. In parallel, I talk of people who’ve come to live there in recent decades.”

Two characters from Cardigan’s past will both be featured.

Elinor James was famous for two reasons. First, she was the only woman transported from Cardigan. In 1822 Elinor was caught stealing clothes from a house in Tremain. It was not seemingly her first crime; her jail report describes her as a thief from infancy.

At the Cardigan Great Sessions in September that year she was sentenced to be transported to Tasmania for seven years. But it was 18 months later when she embarked upon the transport ship Brothers, along with 88 other women prisoners.

Meantime she stayed in London’s Newgate prison, where she also found fame, as she was seen and described by the great prison reformer Elizabeth Fry.

Fry talked of a woman from Cardigan arriving at Newgate with an iron hoop around her ankle. When this was removed, she fainted from the pain. It was replaced with something even worse – an iron hoop around her waist, connected by a chain to two further hoops, one around her thigh, one around her ankle.

At night her hands were fastened to the hoop around her waist. Fry detailed this excessive cruelty, along with the terrible practice of parading women convicts through London on open carts, where they would be showered in filth by onlookers.

Thanks to the example of Elinor James, and others, Fry helped improve conditions for women prisoners and, in time, the abolition of transportation.

Richard Evans was a 23-year-old sergeant in the Cardiganshire Militia. In October, 1833 he had a fight with an excise officer called William Jenkins in a pub in Aberystwyth, in which he cut and maimed the other man.

He appeared before the Cardigan Lent Assizes in March 1834 and 98 local people testified to his good name. This made no difference. He was sentenced to death, commuted to transportation for life.

That June he boarded the transport ship Henry Tanner in chains, arriving in New South Wales four months later. Fifteen years later, he did receive his freedom.

Crampton’s book, Human Cargo, was described by broadcaster Cerys Matthews as “an elegant, vital insight into human suffering and survival”.

The book gathers personal testimonies of those actually aboard slaveships, emigrant boats or transportation vessels. It links these with modern accounts of being trafficked.

The Human Cargo show travels Britain during May/June 2018 in a 16-date tour which leads up to UK Refugee Week (June 18-24). Tickets for the Cardigan show (doors 7.30pm) are £14/£12(concs) and are available from Theatr Mwldan box office on 01239 621200.