Stories that Resonate Deeply

Illustration by H.J. Ford

I love stories – who doesn’t? It’s why I became a storyteller. And with told stories, I love the time-out-of-time feeling that happens when teller and listeners make the story come alive together. Stories on a page are fine words, but a different magic happens when we make the story appear in our minds’ eyes, when we conjure together what the youngest son looks like, how the smile beams from the kindest daughter, imagine the threatening leer of the monster, and feel the comfort of the old woman who gives advice.

I think of myself as a medium. The old folk tales come through me to share with others. It’s important to me that they are remembered and told; they are the wisdom of many generations before us distilled in a form we can understand, regardless of what age we are when he first hear them. We can hear a story over and over and it still resonates deeply for us because our life experience adds meaning to the story. It enriches our understanding and feelings about life.

Let me give an example. In about the sixth grade I became fascinated with the myths of ancient Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia. I couldn’t say why these stories hooked me, only that they seemed to hold secrets I wanted to understand.

In high school I latched on to a particular myth, “Cupid and Psyche.” You may remember it: Psyche is married to a mysterious husband who comes to her only at night and warns her not to try and look at him. Her jealous sisters urge her to kill what they say is surely a monster, and Psyche determines to see the truth for herself. But the lamp spills oil, burning her husband’s shoulder, as she gazes upon Cupid, the god of love. Cupid flees because love cannot live without trust. In her grief, Psyche searches for her husband and prostrates herself before Cupid’s mother, Venus. Angry Venus gives Psyche seemingly impossible tasks to ruin her, but, with help from surprising sources, Psyche (Greek for “soul”) ultimately is reunited with Love.

This heroine’s journey spoke to the teenage me because I wanted to find love and be worthy of meeting seemingly impossible tasks. 

H.J. Ford, Blue Fairy Book, Andrew Lang, editor

Years later I chose as my first folk tale to learn the Scandinavian classic “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.” As I delved into the characters I recognized the similarities between Psyche and the Scandinavian lass who agrees to go with a Great White Bear to help her family. The lass sees the bear only by day but at night senses a presence with her who disappears by dawn. She begs to visit her family and, although warned by the bear that to listen to her mother could bring doom, on her return she follows her mother’s urging to investigate the night presence—to disastrous effect. Love cannot live without trust, and the enchanted bear, really a prince, must now marry a troll. After a long, arduous search the lass proves her faithfulness and love and trust are restored.

By then I was married with a son and another child on the way. “East of the Sun and West of the Moon” was a favorite of my son, who sat on my lap to listen as I practiced telling it. His favorite stuffed animal was a white bear—for him, the bear turning into a prince was wonderful. For me, the tale of losing and gaining trust spoke volumes about relationships.

You may be thinking that not every story carries such a deep meaning, and you are right. But what I have learned over the years is that it’s not for me to say which stories will resonate deeply with listeners who, with me, make a story come alive.

A few weeks ago, my husband came home from a cigar shop he likes to visit. He was talking with the young man behind the counter, who, it turns out, vividly remembered my telling of a Japanese tale, “The Stonecutter,’’ to his class when he was in elementary school. Now in his 20s, he retold it to my husband: how a poor man cutting stone blocks from a mountain one day wishes to be greater than he is; how the mountain’s spirit transforms him, first into a samurai warrior, then into an emperor, into the sun, a raincloud, and then the mountain itself; how he finally realizes that as a man he had a power he had not understood. And so he once again becomes a stonecutter.

The story had spoken to him—you could say it had spoken to his soul—and he remembered it still.

written by Maria LoBiondo

Teaching By Ear

Written by Luray Gross

“This one,” Sam says, pointing, and I begin:

            Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall….

Rhyme by rhyme, tiny story by tiny story, we proceed through the book Sam has chosen.  A few weeks ago, discomfitted by my 3-year old grandson’s pre-school-induced interest in superheroes, and bored with the wooden prose in the two Super Friend books he owns, I pulled the collection of nursery rhymes from his shelf and began reading, though “reading” is not exactly what I was doing.  Many of the rhymes I sang; in giving voice those I did not sing, I emphasized their rhythm and rhyme.  Of course more than vocal play is involved.  We marched in place for “The Noble Duke of York,” popping up and down as his “ten thousand men” march to the top of the hill, crouching for “when you’re only half-way up, you’re neither up nor down.”

Since then, each time I’ve come, Sam – who decided to be Flash Kid for Halloween ­– has brought me the book and settled in for the entire ride, Humpty Dumpty to the sleep-time poems on the last pages.  

I thought of that last week, as my colleagues Helen and Gerry and I worked on plans for an upcoming residency at Stokes Early Childhood Learning Center in Trenton, NJ.  Our discussion ranged from scheduling complexities to the stories we want to bring to these preschoolers and their teachers.  Stories that involve movement and song are a necessity, for even in adulthood, we humans learn through our bodies.  We often forget how vital physicality is for all learners.

 When I am not telling stories, I visit schools as the resident poet.  In these projects, my aim is to immerse the students in creative expression, both through experiencing poems of others and making their own new poems.  One of my favorite activities is to write out a poem on the board and invite the students (third graders onward), to copy it.  I explain that when you write the poem out with your own hand, it gets into you more deeply than when you read it.  I often teach younger children a short poem “by ear” adding gestures for each line.  These brief poems become part of our shared culture, much in the way that certain texts and songs are part of what binds a group together, be it a Girl Scout troop or a congregation at worship.

Storytellers who have a sustained relationship with a school will tell you how there are certain tales they tell each year, some much more often because the students demand them.  Both teller and listener delight in the “superior” position of knowing how the story goes.  Both are comforted by the familiar music of the story,  that of certain words and phrases, as well as the dependable the shape of the story itself.  The only thing better than hearing a new story is hearing a story again.

I think the reassurance of the familiar is part of what makes the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, Bobby Shaftoe, and Wee Willie Winkie appeal to Sam over and over.   No matter what has happened in Sam’s life that day, the old woman will always put her many children to bed, Bobby Shaftoe will come home to marry the girl and little Jack Horner will pull that plum out of the Christmas pie exclaiming, “What a good boy am I!”  

Revaluing the Ordinary

A group of Storytelling Arts performers including myself just finished a residency at Frelinghuysen Middle School in Morristown.  Our theme was community.  The story goes that first you shoot the arrow, and, then, you draw the bullseye.  So it was that, as I told my stories, I once again realized that the oral tradition by its process is a lesson in community.  Whether to a group of two or two hundred, storytelling follows an alchemical formula that creates not only a shared experience, but an empowering experience, that turns the everyday into gold.  One of my stories was the Great, Big, Smelly, Small Toothed Dog.  My friend Margaret Read MacDonald has published it as a picture book, but the story is far more powerful as an oral tale with the teller and audience using body, voice, and imagination, to be in the midst of the story instead of an observer looking at illustrations.  The dog tests the princess three times before he can reveal his true self.  When, at last, he pulls his smelly fur aside, there is a gasp of aha!, not because we are surprised, but because our community’s values are confirmed-  i.e. A prince hides under every smelly dog skin.  Storytelling is a journey, not only to strange and magical experiences, but to a revaluing of the ordinary that is too often taken for granted.

illustration by Walter Crane

Even with sixth graders (or should I say especially with sixth graders) verbalizing these recognitions is an affirming experience.  When we share the stories of popular culture, television, film, music, we often excuse the experimentation and rebelliousness of preteens and teens as a natural part of growing up.  Too often, we encourage middle schoolers to explain away behavior; but when we tell the old stories, we see that the journey is only complete when it includes wisdom and restoration.  Thus, the final day of my residency was spent telling and retelling Little Red Riding Hood.  This story has been distorted as a warning against strangers.  In fact, it is an investigation of rebellion.  “Don’t go off the path,” Little Red’s mother warns, but Little Red just rolls her eyes.  The class improvised various scenes from Little Red Riding Hood as we discussed the theme and consequences of actions.  One of the most interesting moments came when we personalized the wolf.  I have always wondered why the wolf doesn’t just eat Little Red up.  In this sixth grade, I got my answer.  The wolf became a bully and a self promoter who enjoyed the process of toying and teasing Little Red.  The students recognized this character as everything from the advertising that assaults them everywhere, to the temptations of drugs and alcohol that they hear lie down the way, to the personal actions that individuals choose as a way of defining themselves.  All this came from telling the story and making space for the Aha!

Our final writing project was to write an ode to something or someone we take for granted.  Stories are tools for observation and appreciation.  One girl wrote an Ode to a Door.  Who has passed through you? What feet and hands have left marks and scratches? What cries and sounds have been shut out?  What strangers have been welcomed?  Each question was the seed of a story to ponder and cultivate and develop; for one story is the doorway to another story, which is why, when people gather, one story inevitably leads to another. 

Students often ask where do storytellers learn their stories.  Books and sharing are the obvious answers, but a good storyteller doesn’t’t just repeat a story.  Good storytellers puts themselves into the story, opening the door so that the listener can enter too.

written by Gerald Fierst