Once upon a time, a grandma, a grandpa, a little girl, and a little boy all lived together in a small house. Next to the house a squirrel lived in a tree. The squirrel enjoyed watching the people and even thought of them as his family.
One day the grandma said to the little boy, “We are all out of bread and milk, so I need you to go down to the store and come back with bread and milk.”
The little boy headed for the store, singing to himself,
Bread and milk, bread and milk
Going to the store for bread and milk
Bread and milk, bread and milk
Going to the store for bread and milk
Bread and milk, bread and milk
Going to the store for bread a—
Up ahead he saw a bear. The little boy thought: “That bear’s big. Nope, that bear’s huge. Nope, that bear is enormous!” He called out, “Hey, Bear, how’d you get so fat?”
The bear walked toward the little boy, and growled,
“I ate five pounds of meat, and an ice cream treat.
“And I’m gonna eat you!” Chomp. Gulp!
The bear swallowed the little boy.
Meanwhile back at the house, Grandma grew tired of waiting on the little boy, so she said to the little girl, “Sugar, go on down to the store. Find that brother of yours, and the two of you come on home with some bread and milk.”
The little girl said, “Yes, ma’am, Grandma!” She headed for the store and she, too, was singing:
Bread and milk, bread and milk
Going to the store for bread and milk.
Bread and milk, bread and milk
Going to the store for bread and milk
Bread and mi—
She met the bear. “Oh,” thought the little girl, “that bear’s big. No, that bear’s huge. No, that bear is enormous!”
She called out, “Hey, Bear, how’d you get so fat?”
The bear walked toward that little girl, growling:
“I ate five pounds of meat, and an ice cream treat,
“A little boy,
“And I’m gonna eat you!” Chomp. Gulp!
The bear swallowed the little girl.
Meanwhile, back at the house, Grandma grew tired of waiting again, so she said to her husband, “Honey, please go down to the store and get some bread and milk. And look for those grandkids. Bring them home with you too.”
Now Grandpa had been out doing his chores. He had just come in and sat down in his favorite chair. He didn’t want to move, but when he saw how tired and worried Grandma looked, he knew he had to go. So, without saying a word, he pushed himself up out of his chair, made his way over to the door, lifted his hat off the hook, set it on his head, and then he stepped outside. As he walked toward the store, he was grumbling:
Bread and milk, bread and milk
Going to the store for bread and milk.
Bread and milk, bread and mi—
He met the bear. Grandpa thought: “Now that bear’s big. No, that’s not right—that bear’s huge. No, that’s not right either—that bear is enormous!”
And Grandpa called, “Hey, Bear, how’d you get so fat?”
The bear walked toward Grandpa, growling:
“I ate five pounds of meat, and an ice cream treat,
“A little boy, a little girl,
“And I’m gonna eat you!” Chomp. Gulp!
Meanwhile, back at the house, Grandma was still waiting on the bread and milk, and she was getting rather annoyed with the rest of her family. “Hmpf!” she said, “Can’t anybody in this family find their way home!”
So Grandma headed for the store, singing:
Bread and milk, bread and milk
Going to the store for bread and milk.
Bread and mi—
She met the bear.
“My goodness,” Grandma thought, “that bear’s big. No, that bear’s huge. No, that bear is enormous!”
Grandma called out, “Hey, Bear, how’d you get so fat?”
The bear walked toward Grandma, growling:
“I ate five pounds of meat, and an ice cream treat,
“A little boy, a little girl, an old man,
“And I’m gonna eat you!” Chomp. Gulp!
Meanwhile, back at the house, the little squirrel had watched all of his people leave their house. And when they didn’t come back he went to look for them. Now, he had heard the song they were singing, so he sang it too:
Bread and milk, bread and milk
Going to the store for bread and mi— Uh-oh!
The squirrel saw the bear and thought, “That bear’s big, Uh-uh, that bear’s huge. Uh-uh, that bear is enormous!”
The squirrel called out, “Hey, Bear, how’d you get so fat?”
The bear walked toward the squirrel, growling:
“I ate five pounds of meat, and an ice cream treat,
“A little boy, a little girl, an old man, an old woman,
“And I’m gonna eat you!”
The bear lunged for the squirrel, but the squirrel ran up a tree. The bear looked up that tree and said, “Huh, if your little feet can take you up that tree, my big feet can take me up that tree.” So the bear climbed up the tree. The squirrel ran way out on a teeny-tiny limb and jumped over to another tree. The bear watched, “Huh! If your teeny-tiny feet can take you all the way out that teeny-tiny limb and over to another tree, my great big feet can take me out that teeny-tiny limb and over to another tree.” So the bear started walking out the teeny-tiny limb. The limb broke. The bear crashed to the ground. And when he hit, he split wide open.
Out jumped Grandma saying, “Whoop-de-doo! I’m out.”
Out jumped Grandpa, “Whoop-de-doo! I’m out.”
Out jumped the little girl, “Whoop-de-doo! I’m out!”
And the little boy, “Whoop-de-doo! I’m out!”
The little squirrel looked at all his people, and he said, “Well, whoop-de-doo! I’m out too, and I was never in!”
For many years, I told “Sody Sallaraytus,”1 a variant of this folktale. Although I had read the Kentucky-collected variants published by Leonard Roberts (“Cheese and Crackers,”2 “The Bad Bear,”3 “The Greedy Fat Man,”4 and “Fat Man, Fat Man”5), they simply were not as appealing to me as the “Sody Sallaraytus” story. Audiences enjoyed “Sody Sallaraytus” and I had fun telling it, so I did not add a Kentucky-collected variant of the tale to my repertoire.
Then I was awarded an Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship from Berea College. During the fellowship, I listened to sound recordings of over three hundred stories Leonard Roberts collected from people ranging in age from young children to the very elderly. At first I was tempted to skip the variants of “Sody Sallaraytus.” After all, I had already read several and knew I had no interest in adding a different version of the story to my telling repertoire. But then I reminded myself that one reason I had applied for the fellowship was to see what I could learn from hearing the stories instead of reading them, so I made myself listen to variations on this tale. The more times I heard different tellers tell it, the more I looked forward to the next opportunity. Over the course of the fellowship I listened to versions from eight different tellers, and I fell in love with the story.6 Table 2 shows some details from the stories I heard.
From my previous telling of “Sody Sallaraytus” I’ve kept the same characters, I’ve retained the swallowing gesture and audible gulp, and I’ve kept the jumping from tree to tree ending segment. From Lena Day’s version I used “five pounds of meat,” to which I added “and an ice cream treat” because it completes a rhyme and adds humor. I’m sending characters to the store for bread and milk, selected from Billy Jo Lewis’s version, because bread and milk are the items people commonly make a quick stop at a store for today. I also loved Lewis’s use of “Whoopdee, doopdee,” but I discovered I simply could not say “Whoopdee, doopdee,” so I shortened it to “Whoop-de-doo.” Then, through repeated tellings I discovered the squirrel could rhyme, “Whoop-de-doo, I’m out too.” Lewis was also the inspiration for the high-pitched voice I use for the squirrel. I added the progression of big, huge, enormous for its audience participation potential.
The song I’ve included came about through trial and error. I knew I wanted the characters to sing because I enjoyed that aspect of telling “Sody Sallaraytus.” From June to September 2010, I played around with the song enough that a melody and rhythm settled. I have fun, and my audiences readily join in on the fun, as we sing the song with a slightly different sound for each character. Here is the melody I use:
When I reflect on how “Sody Sallaraytus” became part of my telling repertoire, I recall that I first encountered it as a told story, not a written story. I’m not sure who I first heard tell it. Perhaps I heard Barbara Freeman of The Folktellers,7 the storytelling duo of Barbara and her cousin Connie Regan-Blake, who I first heard in 1979 or 1980? Or, maybe it was Ed Stivender,8 a storyteller from Philadelphia, who I first heard tell this tale about that same time? What I do know is that after hearing both of these folks tell the story, then reading it in Richard Chase’s Grandfather Tales,9 I began retelling it in programs I was presenting when I worked as a children’s librarian in Grand Rapids, Michigan—a job I held from 1979 to 1983. So, why would I have found those versions compelling enough to want to retell the story, but not have been attracted by the Roberts-collected versions I read, even though I had a desire to enhance my repertoire with Kentucky-collected tales?
One reason may relate to what was actually being published in the written versions I read. In his notes to Grandfather Tales Richard Chase states that he created the tales he published from multiple retellings of the stories.10 Although he includes a frame story of sorts that places the tale in the mouth of a specific storyteller, and he attributes this tale to a single person,11 the tale is not actually a transcript of a single telling. Chase created a retelling to be read and admits, “For me, the writing down of these tales has often been a difficult and tedious process.”12
On the other hand, Leonard Roberts published specific told versions, each collected from a single individual in a specific place and time, not a new version created to be read after being changed by many oral retellings. Like Chase, Roberts also told stories; but unlike Chase, Leonard Roberts approached his story collections as a folklorist—working to capture a single storytelling event, so his published tales range from exact to nearly exact transcripts of the audio recordings he made while listening to the storytellers.
An even more compelling reason why “Sody Sallaraytus” captured my attention when the Roberts-collected published variants did not hinges on the nature of the art of storytelling itself. Donald Davis, a North Carolina–based storyteller, writes about the five languages of storytelling: gesture (not hands alone, but facial expression and all nonverbal body language), sound, attitude, feedback, and words.13 My first encounters with “Sody Sallaraytus” had been encounters with all five languages in use. Both Freeman and Stivender made use of gesture and sound in a variety of ways (vocal inflection and pacing changes for different characters, sound effects, and much, much more). I had been present in the audience, not listening to sound recordings, so I was also able to absorb their positive attitudes toward the story and toward the opportunity to tell it to the particular audience at hand. Both had enjoyed the feedback from the audience and had engaged us in playfully joining in on singing the “sody, sody, sody sallaraytus” song each character sang on the way to the store. And yes, they had used words. I vividly imagined the tale as I listened to Freeman and Stivender because they made full and delightful use of all five languages of storytelling. With my reading of Chase following shortly after hearing Freeman and Stivender, I suspect I was able to bring memory of their tellings to that reading as well.
Through my Appalachian Sound Archives research, I was able to enjoy the Roberts-collected stories through not just words, but with the language of sound restored. Occasionally, I could even enjoy a glimmer of audience feedback because I could hear Roberts laughing as he listened to some of the tellers. Hearing them told finally brought these Kentucky-collected versions to life for me.
This folktale tends to die on the page—it is so very repetitious—but it thrives when told in person. Each character has a distinctive way of speaking. When I tell it, the little boy sounds capable, confident, and somewhat serious about his task. The little girl is a bit higher pitched than the boy, just as capable but a bit more carefree in her attitude. The grandpa’s voice is older, deeper, and he is not happy about making the trip. The grandma’s voice is also older, but higher pitched than grandpa’s and she is annoyed that she has to perform a task so simple any of the others could have done it, if they had just taken it seriously. The bear has a deep, huge voice. He brags as he talks about what he has eaten, and he shows no pity on any of the other characters. The squirrel has the highest pitched voice—somewhat surprisingly so to many listeners, who first look surprised when the squirrel talks, then amused at the sound of his voice (inspired by Billy Jo Lewis’s squirrel voice). When the squirrel interrupts his song with “Uh-oh,” it is not necessary for me to even tell them he saw the bear—they know.
In my retelling here, I have compensated a bit, but only a bit, with words to make up for the loss of other languages. In an in-person telling, I don’t need to tell my audience the bear is walking toward the other characters while growling. They can see through my body language that the bear is moving toward the other character, and they can hear that he is growling. Only when the little boy meets the bear do I actually need to tell my audience that the traveling character sees a bear.
Through body language, I show my audience the specific character as the character sings on the way to the store, and each character’s stance and facial expression varies just as the sound of their voices vary. My audience sees each character stop abruptly when they encounter the bear and they know right away what the character is seeing. In a recent small audience, a child actually gasped, then said, “That bear’s still there!” when the little girl stopped singing.
In this same audience, the children joined in so much I soon did not need to say each character’s “no, that bear is . . .” as they changed their perception of the bear’s size. Instead the audience chimed in with every “no” and again on the size words “huge” and “enormous,” said with a drawn out sound, making the saying of the word enormous too.
I don’t need to use phrases like “the little girl thought” in the telling. Instead, a character’s thoughts can be spoken aloud with only a very slight change from the sound of actual speech to convey that these are the inner musings of this character.
Once I establish that the bear has eaten the little boy, I don’t need to announce that the bear has successfully eaten each additional character. The audience knows this is what happened.
There is a rhythm in the interplay of sound and gesture in the bear’s chant that works well in the telling, and is nearly impossible to show with words alone, but I’ll attempt an explanation here. The bear’s last line is always, “And I’m gonna eat you!” Chomp. Gulp! The telling works like this: “And I’m gonna eat (pause) you!” On “you” the bear grabs the victim. This is followed by a gesture in which the bear lifts the victim to his open mouth, which then closes over the victim with a “haaawm” (biting without the click of teeth?) “Chomp” sound. That sound is followed by a loud, single gulp. So “Chomp. Gulp!” in the text is onomatopoeia doing the best it can for a printed word to replace the actual sound. In telling, the timing is more like, “And I’m gonna eat (pause) you!” (pause) clap, clap, with “haaawm/Chomp” on the first clap and “Gulp!” on the second clap.
When the bear follows the squirrel out the small limb of the tree, the words I’ve written hardly begin to show what happens in the face-to-face telling. Instead, once the bear heads out the limb, I just keep the bear moving, one step at a time. Meanwhile I watch my listeners because I know someone is going to begin shaking a head no, or saying, “uh-uh” or “uh-oh” or “It’s gonna break” or “He’s going to fall.” Someone in the audience will be unable to resist revealing they know what’s going to happen, and then the conversation is on! I can respond to their comments by repeating their comments and asking why? Then listeners (sometimes one in a small group; often many at once in a larger group) will call out the reason why the bear will fall. Sometimes listeners go straight to “He’s too heavy.” Other times they will call out “the limb broke!” Then I have the chance to call back, “the limb broke! Why?” Eventually my listeners are orally connecting the breaking of the limb with the heaviness of the bear, so I can call out, “You’re right! That limb did break. The bear came crashing to the ground, and when he hit . . .” and we are off and running with the ending of the story.
Storytelling is an ephemeral face-to-face art. No two tellings of any story will be exactly the same, and each different audience changes the telling too. With some stories, like this one, the audience impact is readily observable; with others the audience impact is more subtle. Yet all stories thrive in the telling when all five languages of storytelling are in action. Because “The Enormous Bear” dies a bit on the page, especially when I’ve chosen to capture a telling in words, without adding many, many more words to offset the loss of the other four languages of storytelling, I hope you will let your imagination go to work on it, and bring it to life again using all five languages of storytelling.
