Welcome to this collection of oral tales frozen in print. Frozen? Do I mean lifeless? Absolutely not! As you read these stories you will bring them to life in your imagination much as you would if I were standing before you telling them. And when you read them a second time, you might imagine them differently even though the text remains unchanged—frozen. Even if we were face to face and I told you these stories, the words I spoke would not be an exact match for the text you can read here. And if you heard me tell one of these stories a second time, those words would not be an exact match for the first telling.
Storytelling is an interactive and ephemeral art composed of three essential elements—story, teller, and audience. No two tellings of a story are alike, even if the same teller tells the same story to the same audience. Think about it. When someone tells you a tale for the second time and they know you’ve heard it before, much background information can be left out because the teller knows you already know. The wise teller will skip some sections because your nod (especially if your nod is an impatient nod) says, “Move along now. I know this already. I want to hear my favorite part again.” And the way your expression turns to delight when your favorite part of the story is reached tells the teller, “Ah, linger here. I want to savor this.” We—teller and audience—cannot influence one another on these pages the way we could in person.
The stories in this book are all stories I’ve told to audiences. Some of them I’ve told for well over twenty years; others I’ve told for just under one year. I’m a professional storyteller. I tell stories, usually to audiences of people who have gathered for the specific purpose of hearing stories. Sometimes there are people I know among the listeners. Most of the time the listeners are people I’ve not met before, but we come together through the shared pleasure of hearing stories. I also teach others about the art of storytelling and the related arts of reading aloud and writing.
In this book I’ve written stories down close to the way I currently tell them. You may be thinking: close to? The stories I tell are not memorized word-for-word, like a script. I learn the story, not the words. No two tellings are identical. The words change. The situation or context for the telling changes. The listeners change. I change. And all that changing, coupled with our influence on each other, makes storytelling an interactive and ephemeral art.
Most of the stories in this book are folktales—stories that did not originate in my imagination or in my memory. Most of them are also Kentucky folktales, stories told by other Kentuckians long before the stories reached me. I’ve included source notes for every story so you can learn how I found them, and because I want to acknowledge those folks who are responsible for making it possible for me to come across these tales. Those who told them before me shaped them for telling, usually to people they knew, which is the typical audience for traditional storytelling in Kentucky. Like tellers before me, I have also shaped the stories for telling. My story shaping has been influenced by my imagination, by research, by marketing ideas, by my colleagues in story coaching sessions, and by audience after audience. I’ve also included anecdotes on how those influences molded my retellings. I’ve even included some true Hamilton family stories to both acknowledge the type of storytelling common in my family and to encourage you to treasure those casual, everyday tales your family probably tells too.
So welcome. Enjoy! Read the stories to yourself. Imagine them. Then daydream them later, thawing out the print and giving the tales life. Read them aloud to others. Let the sound of your voice coupled with the reactions of your listeners enliven them even more.
Okay, so you made it this far, and you’re probably wondering, “Where are the stories?” If you picked up this book primarily for the stories, just skip the rest of the introduction. If you are the sort of person who wants to know who is this Mary Hamilton who tells the stories in this book, and how did she come to call herself a storyteller? Stay here. This section is for you.
My relatives are not at all surprised that I became a storyteller. They look at each other and say, “Of course she’s a storyteller. Look at her daddy.” My daddy is one of those fabulous kitchen table storytellers.1 He is the kind of storyteller that when he starts telling about an event you sit there, you listen, and you can’t help but almost wish you hadn’t been there yourself. That way your memory of it wouldn’t be quite so at odds with what he’s telling. Oh, it’s sure enough the same event, and he is telling the truth, but now it’s story.
You might read the above and say to yourself: Oh, the author is a traditional storyteller who learned how to tell stories from her father while she was growing up on a Kentucky farm, and now she is passing along her father’s stories to her readers. Wrong! Well, the Kentucky farm part is correct, but the traditional storytelling part is not so true. If my storytelling repertoire consisted only of the stories I retell that I heard from my daddy, it would be a slim repertoire indeed. (Should you want to jump straight to those stories, skip ahead to the Family Tales and Personal Narratives section.) While I no doubt did absorb some storytelling technique from my father, my work is not that of a folk and traditional artist, as described by the National Endowment for the Arts.2 Although there is a tradition of retelling events in my family, my repertoire is not bound by the stories I’ve heard within my family setting. Nor is the manner in which I tell stories a match for how my father tells them; however, I do suspect I began learning how to tell stories at a fairly early age.
I am a child of the 1950s, born in 1952. While I cannot recall exactly where a television was located in the house we lived in before I turned seven, I feel confident a television was there. I don’t recall being read to by family members. My mother tells me my father read to me. My youngest aunts are just three and four years older than I am, so they may have read to me as well. The only person I recall reading aloud to me was Captain Kangaroo, who read to me from our television. I can clearly remember him reading Virginia Lee Burton’s books The Little House and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, as well as Esphyr Slobodkina’s Caps for Sale. I loved those stories and can easily picture them today.3
I do not remember learning to read, but I have vivid memory of the tension in first grade as I read ahead to find out what happened in stories, while simultaneously keeping track of exactly what portion of the text was being read aloud by various classmates. If called upon I knew I had to be prepared to read aloud from the proper place or face punishment.
I also have equally vivid memory of telling a story in the third grade. We were expected to take turns telling what we had done over the weekend. I remember standing in front of my classmates on the day it was my turn. I was sure I had not done anything worth telling. I had simply worked on our family farm on Saturday and gone to church on Sunday, just like most of my classmates. And yet, there they were, all my classmates seated before me waiting for me to speak.
So I told them, “This weekend I went horseback riding.” (We did not own a horse; Daddy claimed horses “ate money” so we did not have one.) “When I went to the barn, I couldn’t find my horse’s saddle, so I rode my horse bareback. My horse started going really, really fast and I started sliding off.” (I remember using my hands, making a downward curving motion to show them how I started sliding off.) “But I wasn’t worried. I just grabbed the long hairs of my horse’s tail” (I used my hands to show my classmates how I did this) “and pulled myself back onto my horse. Then I inched my way up to my horse’s mane” (hands demonstrating again) “and held on” (hands again as I made fists to show them how firmly I held the mane) “and I finished my ride. That’s what I did this weekend.”
I still remember how my classmates enjoyed my adventure, and how my teacher tried in vain to make me admit what I had told was not what really happened. But I couldn’t let my listeners down, and besides, I knew lying was a sin, and sins were punishable offenses. I also knew my teacher owned a paddle, and she used it. So, even though she asked repeatedly, I steadfastly replied, “Yes, Ma’am, that’s what I did this weekend,” while nodding and maintaining the most wide-eyed, innocent, and honest look I could muster. Finally, she gave up.
Not long after that, report cards went home. Mine had a note on it. I wish I could tell you it read, “Wow! Your little girl sure is a wonderful storyteller!” Instead I remember it reading, “Mary June seems to have difficulty understanding what is and is not true.”4 My parents were neither amused nor impressed. “You’d better not be telling stories at school,” they warned.
For the longest time I tried to break my storytelling habit, dutifully reporting each transgression in the church confessional. Indeed, where I grew up “storytelling” was considered a moral failing a child needed to overcome, not an artistic skill ripe for development. I was a graduate school student before I ever encountered “storytelling” as an activity to be both practiced and encouraged in others.
After third grade I either succeeded in avoiding storytelling or succeeded in entirely blocking out memories of engaging in it. Instead of telling stories, I read and read and read story after story after story. I loved plot, including predictable plots. I devoured the folktale and fairy tale books in my school library, reading my favorites again and again. I read every school reader available on the shelves in the back of my various classrooms. When school was closed, I read the lives of the saints from our tiny church library. I became, and still am, an avid reader.
In sixth grade I was called upon to read aloud—every day. Yep, every day I stood in front of my class after lunch and read aloud. Sometimes I read stories, but more often I read from our social studies textbook or from Junior Scholastic magazine. Every day? I know—I’m willing to concede my memory could be exaggerating, because surely the same student did not read aloud every day, but that is how I recall sixth grade. And whether I really read aloud every day, or just many days, I developed the vocal skills of reading aloud effectively—projection, articulation, fluency, vocal expression in synch with meaning—all skills still serving me well in my storytelling.
In high school I remember that we all were expected to stand up front and talk in our English classes. I will never forget the time one of my classmates stood before us in Junior English and delivered a how-to speech on growing tobacco. He started with a cigarette and worked backward from there, step by careful step, ending up with the burning of the ground to prepare the plant bed. It was clever, daring, and I still remember how we laughed and applauded his creativity and speaking skill. I remain grateful to have been taught by teachers who expected us to learn to speak in front of others and to be a responsive audience.5 In high school, I was a cheerleader at a time when cheerleading required primarily the skill of clearly leading pep club members and other fans chanting in unison, not gymnastics. I remember making up cheers, and to this day, when I give workshops on crafting and telling audience participation stories, I encourage participants to “embrace your inner cheerleader” as a means of smoothly facilitating audience participation.
After college I became a high school English teacher. I wish I could tell you I was one of those very smart teachers who understood how to incorporate storytelling into her classroom instruction and consciously utilized storytelling to great effect, but I wasn’t. I did require my students to speak in front of the class, and have received a belated thank you or two because of that requirement. I also remember deriving much more pleasure from teaching literature than teaching grammar. Again, a love of story.
Finally, as an adult studying for a master’s degree in library science at the University of Kentucky, I took a course taught by Anne McConnell titled Creative Library Programs for Children, and I encountered the activity called storytelling. Later I moved from Kentucky to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to accept a job as a public library children’s librarian. My duties included presenting both book-based reading aloud programs and storytelling programs. (These are different skills—I mention both because I want to be clear that I am not using “reading aloud” and “storytelling” as synonyms.) In late 1979 or early 1980 I attended a conference for children’s librarians where, for the first time, I heard professional storytellers, The Folktellers.6 My reactions to their work included: (1) a realization that the quality of the storytelling I was offering in my library programs needed to improve, and (2) an intense desire to hear more storytelling.
I began seeking out opportunities to hear professional storytelling and take storytelling workshops. My storytelling abilities steadily improved, and my repertoire expanded rapidly. After all, when I heard professional storytellers say, “Go retell these stories,” I took them at their word. I not only retold the stories I had heard them tell, but I did my darndest to retell them just like I heard them, too. I was also fortunate to be working in a library with an extensive 398.2 collection, so I had lots of folktales available. I began to search out easily retellable tales in various folktale collections, adding them to my repertoire. By 1982, I had become so enamored of storytelling I started saving my money, dreaming of the day I would start my own business by joining the ranks of professional storytellers I had so come to admire. I was pretty sure that as soon as I had a solid financial cushion saved, I was ready to make the transition. I had the needed storytelling skills—I could remember and retell stories I had heard, and I could retell stories from books. People even began to contact me wanting me to tell stories on my days off and evenings off from my job at the library. I was a storyteller, and I was quite sure I was a pretty good one too!
Then I heard Laura Simms tell stories in Grand Haven, Michigan. She told a folktale I had especially enjoyed, and she cited the source where she had found it. When I returned to the library and read the story in the book, I was astonished. While the plot was the same, the words were far different. In the book the story was not readily tellable. It was literary, very literary. The words did not flow off the tongue and sail into the ear creating images the way her telling of the story had. I knew I had a great deal to learn about this activity called storytelling. When I heard that Laura was offering a storytelling residency in late June 1983, I secured permission from my library director to attend.7
Then my job left me. Those were recession days, and I was laid off, effective July 1, 1983. But I already knew how I hoped to be able to earn a living someday, and lucky for me I had some savings to rely on. Equally fortunately, I did not understand how difficult building a business could be, nor did I really understand what it meant to embrace the profession of storyteller, or I might have been afraid to try.
Nevertheless, jobless days in sight, I forged ahead with plans to attend Laura’s storytelling residency. As part of the preparation she asked each participant to write her a letter on the role of storytelling in our lives, and for the first time, in the act of writing that letter, I became consciously aware of having grown up with storytelling. My people, especially my father, talked in story all the time. I had been exposed to the art of storytelling all my life but had never really noticed.
Since then, I’ve been steadily learning about this activity and art called storytelling. I’ve paid more attention to the storytelling in my family, noticing both technique and content. I’ve studied with Laura Simms and with many other fine storytellers, and I’ve learned from them all. Yes, I have learned that “go retell these stories” is said to encourage parents and children to retell them at home, teachers to retell them in their classrooms, and librarians to retell them to their library patrons, not to encourage colleagues to add the stories they’ve just heard to their professional storytelling repertoires. Like I said, I had a lot to learn. But I knew I had found my calling.
My early years as a professional storyteller were spent in Michigan. Over and over again, I had conversations with folks who, when they learned I had grown up in Kentucky, said, “Well no wonder you’re a storyteller. You’re from Kentucky.” Such comments mystified me since I had not grown up hearing folktales retold, and these were the sort of stories I was drawn to tell. By 1986 I was traveling more and more for my work. In the spring of 1986 my mother became seriously ill, and I realized that even when I was at home in my Grand Rapids apartment, I was still over eight hours away from my home home. So, in the summer of 1987 I returned to Kentucky. For my storytelling business, it was starting over. In Michigan my reputation for storytelling had grown enough that people I had never told about my work had started calling me, wanting to hire me to come tell them stories. In Kentucky, no one called. Nevertheless, I was home.
Reactions to “I’m a professional storyteller” have surprised me. On two different occasions, at parties in Michigan, that statement was greeted with a look of wonder, followed by, “You mean, if I want to call in sick to work, I call you, and you’ll call my boss . . .?” Did I possess the necessary skill to pull that off? Probably, but that was not what professional storytelling meant. In Kentucky, on multiple occasions, I heard, “Professional storyteller? You mean people actually pay you to tell them stories?” Hmm, maybe this is what people in Michigan had meant when they had connected Kentucky with storytelling? Although I had not grown up hearing folktales, perhaps other Kentuckians had? Perhaps telling the sort of stories I felt drawn to tell was a common everyday activity, just not in my family?
Many years have passed, and I’ve learned a great deal more about storytelling in my home state of Kentucky. It was, and is, more prevalent than I had realized from my childhood experiences. It is not at all unusual for me to tell Kentucky folktales at a public library only to have someone in the audience come up afterward and tell me their father or mother used to tell a story they’ve just heard me tell. Unfortunately, when I ask if they’ve retold the stories to the next generation, their answer is usually no, and “they don’t care about that sort of thing like we did.” Fortunately, I can follow up by asking if the person noticed how well the next generation just listened when I was telling, and use that observation to encourage them to try telling those remembered stories again.
For over thirty years now I’ve been enjoying storytellers, telling stories, and marveling at how storytelling works. I can’t imagine spending my life any other way. If you want to know more about how I explore storytelling, visit my website, www.maryhamilton.info. This book represents one more step in bringing told stories to audiences. It may be able to go places where I can’t. It may serve to remind people of stories that were once told in their families. Or it may serve to encourage people to value the storytelling still happening in their families. After all, our society does tend to take more seriously what is in a book over what is on the tongue, even though the book version is frozen and the tongue version alive. So, go ahead, turn the page, read the stories frozen in print; then thaw them out and bring them to life again.