COLLECTING FOLKTALES

by Julie Della Torre

It is often said that the late 18th and early 19th centuries was the ‘Golden Age’ of collecting folk and fairy tales. As seen in the previous post, the Grimm brothers popularized the gathering of oral folk literature, and the immediacy of this type of collecting continued and the study of folklore and society became a part of academia.

Harold Courlander, a noted collector of folktales from the world, worked in the following era.  I happened on a biography of Courlander written by Nina Jaffe, A Voice for the People: The Life and Work of Harold Courlander,1997.  It was extremely interesting to discover the similarities and the differences between the stories, the collecting and the rational for preserving stories between Courlander and the Grimms. 

Jaffe is a prominent storyteller and compiler of folklore. Her works include, Patakin: World Tales of Drums and Drummers and The Cow of No Color. A Voice for the People was gleaned from Courlander’s writings and interviews Jaffe held with the man himself.  Because the book is written for children, the writing is not as smooth as Paradiz (see previous post). The language is sometimes stilted and the ‘lessons’ Jaffe wants us to leave us with can be blatant. 

Both Courlander and the Grimms were influenced by the country and the times in which they lived. But, where the Grimms wanted to build and preserve German nationality, language and cultural identity, Courlander had a different view. He never romanticized the past or the stories. He grew up in Detroit between WW I and WW II. He was surrounded by immigrants speaking different languages, eating different foods and telling different stories. Detroit was a destination during the Great Migration of African Americans from the South.  All the adults worked together and the children went to school together. To Courlander this diversity was America and was to be celebrated.

Harold Courlander

Right after college Courlander went to Haiti. He lived among the people there and began to gather songs, rhythms and musical instruments. With these came stories.  Folk music was his first work, just as it was for the Grimm brothers. By this time a number of developments changed the way of collecting folklore. For one, technology made it possible to audio record musical and storytelling sessions. Another was the many fields of academic study that became interested. Anthropology, ethnography, philology, musicology, all had criteria for collecting from social settings in cultures. Courlander was curios, a good listener, and patient. He learned to ask questions to better understand the setting of the story/song, the teller/singer, the occasion for the story or song.  He noted all of this and these notes can be found in his collections of stories and his collections of folk music. (He worked for Folkway Records and has many recordings on Ethnic Folkways Library.) One area of interest for Courlander was the similarity of stories and the idea that stories from the Afro-American culture might have direct roots to those stories of Africa. Like the Grimm brothers, he edited the folktales for language and ease of understanding for modern readers.

Like many of you, I rely on Courlander’s many books. I trust his scholarly research, though he never worked at a university. His Treasury of African Folklore: The Oral Literature, Traditions, Myths, Legends, Epics, Recollections, Wisdom Sayings, and Humor of Africa. (1995.) and Treasury of Afro-American Folklore: The Oral Literature, Traditions, Reflections, Legends, Tales, Songs, Religious Beliefs, Customs, Sayings and Humor of Peo0ple of African Descent in the Americas. (1995) have been fundamental in helping me put programs together and to tell these stories with a deeper understanding. His list of books is too long to include here, but other well-known titles include: The Cow Tail Switch, The Piece of Fire Terrapin’s Pot of Sense and People of the Short Blue Corn. He spent years traveling; gaining the trust of people in the society he was studying and learning the ways and culture of that community.

Uncomfortable issues can arise while reading biographies. Just as issues of German nationalism and the lack of attribution to the female sources brought up in Paradiz’s book, so too, thoughts came to mind while reading this biography. Harold Courlander was a white man collecting stories in African countries, in African American communities of the Caribbean and the Deep South and on Hopi reservations. Unlike the Grimms, he credits all of the help he received in each of these communities, in background knowledge, stories and songs. However, it was noticeable how Jaffe goes out of her way to frequently mention and quote letters from prominent black writers and scholars who were Courlander’s contemporaries, friends and admirers.  Henry Louis Gates Jr. , in his new book,  The Annotated African American Folktales, (2018) notes that The Folklore Society of America had begun in the late 1800s and had already established a branch to gather African American folklore and explore the connection of these tales to those of countries in Africa. Nora Zeale Hurston was collecting stories and she and Courlander met in Haiti. Though I do believe that Courlander was able to gain the trust of the musicians and storytellers in these diverse cultures, I wonder how different it would have been had he been an American black scholar.

Another issue that arose for me was the fact that Courlander was male. Of course, the whole time I was reading this book I was thinking of Diane Wolkstein. She also went to Haiti with a tape recorder to gather stories. She also went to the storytelling sessions on site, recorded, took notes and published her work. (The Magic Orange Tree and Other Haitian Folktales. 978).  Somewhere there is an interview Wolkstein did with Courlander. How interesting that would be to hear two scholars talk about their work and the stories they heard. I have no answers, and I’m sure it wasn’t discussed in their conversation, but I wonder how different it is for a white woman to be traveling, living and learning about a black culture and where, when and how stories are told.  Would a woman collector be included or excluded in different kinds of ceremonies? Would women in the culture have different obligations and tell different stories? Would a female collector ask different questions, be interested in different aspects of society, in different stories? How did such life work impact the families of the male/female collectors?

Due to new technologies, few cultures or societies have not been touched by modernity. New collections of world folktales are being published every day. Are these compilations of previously printed tales or stories newly collected? Personally, I will pay more attention to who compiled/collected the tales and how and even why these new collections came to be.

Clever Maids

by Julie Della Torre

I came across a pile of books I have always meant to read and have moved from one spot to another for years. This summer I decided to start at the top and work my way down. The first book I picked up was Clever Maids: The Secret History of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Valerie Pradiz, 2004. 

Reading the title closely, I should have known what the book was a bout, but, I opened the book expecting an analysis of Grimm’s stories featuring clever maids. Not this book! This was more of a biography of the Grimm’s brothers and their world of collecting. The clever maids referred to in the title are the clever young women from whom they collected their stories. The book also paints a historical and social picture of the Germanic world at this time.

AUTHOR

Valerie Paradiz is a German feminist, activist and author. Her scholarly research of the historical and social culture of the time and her analysis of the tales allows for some interesting connections between the life lived by the Grimm brothers and the tales they collected.

FAMILY

The Grimm’s family (5 boys and one girl) lived a good, middle-class life until the father died, the children still quite young. The mother suffered from what was called melancholia, became dependent on her father and then on offerings from her own siblings. Paradiz portrays the dire straits for women of the time, both monetarily and socially.  She sites tales that feature such women setting the collecting into the social climate and women’s place in it.

HISTORY

The Grimm brothers lived a significant part of their lives during the Napoleonic Wars. Germany had never known a nationalistic unity like France and England due to the many nation states that made up Germany.  The brothers chaffed under the rule of the French in their city and never lost their zeal for furthering the German language, literature, cultural identity and national pride.

COLLECTING

It was the beginning of the Romantic period.  In philosophy and literature there was longing for simplicity, of nature and natural feelings. The brothers yearned for a simpler time, a time of their young childhood in the German countryside. They built the romantic illusion that they collected these old fairy tales from peasant women throughout the German countryside. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The brothers fondly remembered their aunt telling them stories when they were young, but they began their collecting by compiling and cataloguing folk songs for their benefactor/mentor, Brentano.  This collecting grew dissatisfying, for it entailed gathering from written sources. It wasn’t long before the brothers began collecting stories in a new and different way. Their sister, Lotte befriended a family in the neighborhood, a family of six sisters. The Wild family was a middle class family and the girls well educated.  The girls knew many stories and delighted each other in the telling of them. Soon weekly gatherings occurred in which stories were told round; the brothers jotting down the stories as they were told. Soon they began soliciting these stories. The girls would write them down and send them to Jacob and Wilhelm. Some of the stories the girls had heard, some they made up and some were a combination of the two. 

The brothers collected from these girls for many years. When the girls married and moved off Wilhelm discovered a new source of stories, the girls in the Hassenphlug family. Like the first, this family consisted of well educated, middle class girls who delighted in stories, were well-read and had leisure time.  The Brothers Grimm found a number of such families, gathering and soliciting from these young women. Many of these women went on to become the first well-known German female authors. Later the two brothers happened on their ‘ideal’ source. Dorothy Viehamann, an older, illiterate German woman 

The Grimm brothers offered only one story from their childhood for their collected edition Children’s and Household Fairy Tales. All of the other stories came from these ‘clever maids’. The brothers collected the stories, selected the ones they liked, chose and consolidated the most salient parts of similar stories and edited them all.  The Brothers Grimm were surrounded by and influenced by women all their lives. The women who lived their stories and the clever maids who told them were never given any credit by the two brothers. This book strives to right that wrong. 

Finding Folklore in Russia

by Jack McKeon

          

  We’re back after two weeks in Russia, five days in St.Petersburg, five days cruising through reservoirs, canals and a small part of the Volga, and four days in Moscow. The trip was fascinating in many respects. Insight into Russian folklore wasn’t, in general, one of them.

            I had anticipated catching some feeling for the forests and wildness that fed Russian folklore and fantasy, but we were too far west for it.  On the cruise part of the trip we often floated past banks of birch and pine forest, dense enough to present the illusion of what I was looking for, but I think that was mostly a wish projection.

            The overt appearances of folklore were inevitably commercial. On the boat there was a lecture billed as Russian Fairy Tales which I attended with a notebook and pen.  It was given, however, by the young woman in charge of the gift shop who had brought with her relevant merchandise.  She read (my heart sank) three tales, “King Frost”, a truncated and unadorned version of “The Firebird, the Princess Vasilissa, and the Horse of Power”, and an audience participation version (with funny hats) of “The Turnip”, all stories I have told.  The audience loved it but it lacked any real information and really needed a storyteller.

           

 In the merchandise stalls in the various stops, amongst the Matryoshka nesting dolls, I could sometimes find stuffed cloth representations of Baba Yaga.  She was presented as clearly a witch with the big hooked nose and pointed chin, but she was dressed like a babushka in the kitchen, nice friendly clothes, no black cape and pointed hat.  She was comforting rather than frightening.  To my disappointment, however, every doll carried the stereotypical broom.  At one stop, in a shop selling “registered, authentic” lacquered boxes, one very elaborate box was in the form of Baba Yaga’s shack on its chicken feet, covered with beautiful scenes from the stories.  It was impressive and tempting but too expensive for a tchotchke.  I settled for a smaller box with a painting of Baba Yaga, Vasilissa, skulls and, maybe, Koshkei the Deathless, looking very much like a devil, lurking in the background.  I bought it, though Baba Yaga is still riding the damn broom, not a mortar and pestle to be found anywhere.  I also bought a nice book of Russian Fairy Tales illustrated in a similar fashion.  Since I already own a similar book of Pushkin’s tales (on sale at the same stall), I think I now have a complete set.

            There were, however, unexpected parts of the trip that did deepen my feeling for Russian tales and fairy tales in general. In place after place, Catherine’s Palace, the Hermitage, the Tretyakov museum and the Armory in the Kremlin there was on display a jaw-dropping abundance of wealth. The onion domes on the cathedrals are often surfaced in gold.  Rooms were decorated with it.  Gold and silver appeared on and in everything.  Carriages, furniture, gowns, fur crowns and Tsars’ robes were encrusted with rubies, emeralds, diamonds and pearls. I can’t even get into the Faberge eggs made for Tsar Nicholas. I’ve been accustomed to take the descriptions of the wealth of kings in tales as gross exaggeration for effect.  Here I discovered that they are true.  When the Tsar in “The Firebird” receives the golden feather and demands the whole bird, I now understand that lust and entitlement. When the soldier goes in search of Vasilissa, the Tsar’s intended fiancee, and finds her in a golden boat with silver oars and invites her to his silver tent with golden decoration, it no longer seems like a fantasy.  The vastness of the luxury of the Tsars is mind-boggling.  No wonder there was a revolution.

            Finally, in one painting in the Tretyakov museum of three guardsmen, I could see in the animals what might have been referred to as a “horse of power.”  They were astonishing, heroic creatures, shaggy and beautiful.

            Perhaps I expected too much.  Russian folklore was there, alright, but it wasn’t for sale.

Storytelling and S.T.E.A.M.

by Gerald Fierst

Gerald Fierst and Friends

 Having worked as an artist in education for four decades, I have been dismayed, over the last decade, at the attack that arts education has experienced within the call for standardization.  Since creativity is an individualized experience, standardization has been the excuse that schools have used to reduce the “frills” and save money. Thankfully the pendulum is starting to slowly swing back, as parents and local districts realize the failure of standardization as a true measure of a good education.  At first, the call was for instruction in STEM - Science, Engineering, Technology, Mathematics;  the rationale being to prepare our children to get jobs in the 21st Century. The United States ranks far down the scoring list in these field. Now, however, enlightened and progressive school districts are realizing that simple mechanical skill in these fields does not give an advantage in a global economy. Creativity is necessary to apply STEM to discovery and innovation. Therefore, Stem is being replaced by STEAM- Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Mathematics.

I first encountered this 21st Century thinking while working as a storyteller for the library system in Singapore. The government had brought me to work there to perform and run workshops in the schools. They explained to me the although Singapore ranks highest on standardized testing, they realized that their school system was merely preparing the students to do what is already there, and that to succeed, one must look at what is there and see what not one else has seen: to realize what can become.  During that same period, officials from the military also approached me, asking if I could teach senior officers to tell stories. They explained that their officers did not tell stories of failure and that the same mistakes were made over and over again because no one ever questioned the patterns they had been taught. The hero’s story that inevitably includes tests and failure which lead to  transformation and discovery was the skill that they wanted to practice and respect; and which they believed would inevitably lead their country to a better life and global leadership.

With Storytelling Arts, I am working on two extraordinary projects that incorporate this same educational philosophy. At Passaic Valley High School, Dr. Joanne Cardillo, the superintendent of Schools, has Paula Davidoff and me in a three-year residency, mentoring a team of teachers to use storytelling in the classroom.  She has also introduced us to the Little Falls Middle School with the hopes of starting a similar project with 5-8 grade teachers. Thus, students will eventually enter the high school with a storytelling culture incorporated into their academic sensibility. I find this a visionary ambition. The whole school district will be using storytelling as an educational tool to support abstract thinking and syncretic association. This is an ambition to build a creative community.

In Montclair, at Glenfield Middle School, the STEAM science teacher, Delia Maloy Furer, also operates a 78 seat fully equipped planetarium. Last year, I published Imagine the Moon, a book targeted for use in STEAM classrooms. Delia, puppeteer and sound designer Terry Burnett, and I have collaborated on a planetarium installation using performance, music, and the stars to teach myth, astrophysics, science, and history. We hope to offer this show to other districts as well as Montclair. The objective is to teach and also to inspire.

All of this used to be called good teaching. Great teachers are artists. Preachers, teachers, and storytellers, are all of a pattern, creating a moment of inspiration when possibility becomes connected to the practical. Stories aren’t just entertainment, or they wouldn’t have been passed down for millennia. The process of storytelling is the pathway to discovery. Genius is the Genie which the process of storytelling liberates from the imprisonment of assumption. When the A is placed into the STEM program, the formula is complete and magic happens.

Deep Learning Through the Arts

by Maria LoBiondo

Getting together with teaching artists of various genres to discuss our work not only helps give perspective, it also gives inspiration. That was the case when Luray Gross and I attended the New Jersey Arts Education Collective workshop “Building More Inclusive and Equitable Practices in Arts Education” this month.

Especially impressive was work described by Colleen Sears, an associate professor and coordinator of music education at the College of New Jersey. Sears founded the Institute for Social Justice in the Arts at TCNJ and walked us through several projects involving middle or high school band classes that went beyond making music to engaging with the ideas that inspired it — and explored empathy both for those the music commemorated and for fellow students.

In one effort, high schoolers learned to play “Walking into History,” a composition created in honor of the Clinton 12 who led the integration of a Tennessee school. The project, Sears said, challenged “the safety of history” and asked, “What does civil rights mean now?”

The project’s initial objectives focused on working with the band teacher to plan what the students would play, then on building trust and rapport with the group as they learned to play the piece and discussed the motivation behind its creation.

In subsequent sessions, Sears said the discussions grew more personal and related to the individual experiences of the students themselves and the stereotypes with which some of them wrestled.

As Sears described the project’s progress, similarities with Storytelling Arts programs came to mind. When Storytelling Arts residencies begin, a meeting between teachers and tellers establishes expectations and once in the classroom, tellers also spend important time building trust and rapport there. 

Where the band students learn a specific musical composition, storytelling residencies explore folk and fairy tales and may include students learning to tell stories themselves. And in Storytelling Arts residencies discussions, writing exercises, movement activities and other explorations delve deeper into the tales so connections can be made, both on the stories and personally.

Sears asked questions at the end of another project that can be made applicable for any art making that seeks to go beyond entertainment: How has music been a refuge or a light for someone you know? What song has been a light or refuge for you?

In these meaningful interactions a community is formed. In the safety of that community understanding of varied points of view can be shared, explored — and deep learning can take place.

Old Mother Goose Goes To Kindergarten

by Julie Della Torre

 Old Mother Goose

When she wanted to wander,

Would fly through the air

On a very fine gander.

SAI was approached by a Kindergarten teacher. “Could we teach her Kindergarteners to tell stories?”. We met, professional teacher and professional storyteller and collaboratively and came up with a plan.

Personally, I have taught many students to tell stories, both children and adults and decided to follow the same format using many of the same exercises I use for everyone. Together, the teacher and I decided to use Mother Goose rhymes as the stories the Kindergarteners would learn.

Why Mother Goose?

I once heard Iona Opie say that nursery rhymes are the child’s first narrative. I have always remembered that. Peter and Iona Opie were collectors and scholars of childhood rhymes of England. Another academic, Halliwell, was one of the first to study nursery rhymes as literature. “The nursery rhyme is the novel and light reading of the infant.” (preface to The Nursery Rhymes of England) And Delmar in her Mother Goose From Nursery to Literaturewrites, “Here in Mother Goose literature is the world. Her works run the gamut from sense to nonsense. There’s simple truth humanity- good and bad, fact and fantasy... Children who have been exposed to Mother Goose have learned not only the basics of life, but have had their minds stretched to outer limits.” What’s more, these rhymes are fun and catchy and there are many beautifully illustrated collections to pore over.

The Project

Working in a five day residency meant that the project would be focused and concise. The teachers were an integral part of this project. Four classes of Kindergarteners would choose rhymes, learn rhymes and share them with an audience for a great celebration.

Teacher Workshop

The structure of the residency was explained and rhymes explored. The teachers’ main job was to help students choose appropriate poems. They decided to have Mother Goose rhymes be their reading workshop for the following two weeks. Students would read many rhymes at home and at school and at the end of the first week choose the one poem they wanted to learn. The teachers would read Mother Goose rhymes to their classes and follow up after the model lessons and most importantly find time for students to practice.

First Workshop

I told stories. Only one teacher had heard storytelling. None of the other teachers and none of the students had participated in a storytelling session previously. We discussed what they noticed: facial expression, voice, gestures and more.  They would try to incorporate these techniques into their own storytelling. They would tell their poems, not read them. They would start looking for the rhyme they wanted to learn.

Second workshop (one week later)

Every story takes place somewhere. We worked on the setting of their rhyme. I told a story with vivid setting and we visualized the setting, using our imaginations. I used one rhyme to model for the rest of the sessions.  I worked with ‘The North Wing Doth Blow.’ We made tableaus of their poems and then they drew the setting of their rhyme in their reading journals.

Third Workshop

Characters and character traits came to the forefront. Using my poem as a model we discovered that poor robin was the main character and that she was cold and worried. Everyone found their own character and tried to describe them and make a statue of them. That day pictures of their characters where drawn in their reading journals.

Fourth Workshop

Gestures make a story come alive. Everyone tried to find a gesture to add to their telling. We spent the majority of this session practicing knee-to-knee. The students were a bit shocked to learn that they couldn’t look at their papers. This is the same reaction I get from teachers when they learn to tell stories.

Fifth Workshop

The Celebration! Buddies from older grades were invited to be the audience. The Kindergarteners were in groups of four with their buddies as listeners. The rhymes were so short that groups got to shift two or three times.  As I went around and listened, I saw the Kindergarteners grow as storytellers with each telling. They became more confident, their voices stronger and their tellings smoother.

This residency was a true collaboration of teachers and storyteller. The teachers were the ones who scheduled and organized everything... even down to the cookies. Quickly grasping the concepts of storytelling they helped and guided their students to success.

I had such fun living with Mother Goose rhymes in the weeks leading up to this residency.  I had stacks of collections around the house and compared illustrations. Two invaluable resources are listed below.

Delmar, Gloria. Mother Goose From Nursery to Literature

Thistle, Louise. Dramatizing Mother Goose.

Flying Across Languages with Story

by Luray Gross

Illustration by Arthur Rackham

All the rainbows were finished, with rows of crunched-up tissue paper glued in arcs on the paper plates we’d handed out.  Our small team of volunteers had at least ten more minutes to spend with this class of third graders, and it seemed a shame to waste them.  But with all but one of us unable to converse with the students and their teacher, it seemed we were out of options. 

Of course that’s when having a story in your proverbial back pocket (and a bilingual companion), comes in handy.

“We can tell a story,” I said to Francis.  “I’ll tell “Tortoise Flies” in English, and you tell it in Spanish.”  I’d known Francis only since we’d met on our way to the airport  three days earlier, but I’d immediately been taken with her energy and her background. Although she lives in Philly, not so far from me, her mother is from Puerto Rico and her Dad is a professional musician from Cuba.  Spanish is her mother and father language, and English the language of her day-to-day life in the world.

“Tell a story!  I can’t do that.  I’ve never done that,” was her immediate reaction, but it didn’t take long to convince her to give it a try.  As new friends and roommates on this service trip to Costa Rica, it seemed to me we were well equipped for the effort.  After all, I’d told that version of the Aesop’s fable many times, and Francis, although she had no teaching experience, seemed to be enjoying our work with the children.

So we began:  “One morning Tortoise woke up early.  It was a beautiful sunny day, a good day for a walk.” 

   “Un dia, la Tortuga . . . .”

Tortoise was on her way to her beg a flying lesson from Eagle, and we were on our way as a telling team.  By the time Tortoise was riding on Eagle’s back, Francis was flapping her arms and winging through the rows of seats.  I can be a fairly animated teller, but Francis had me beat. She had become a storyteller, a lively one, in a magical blink of an eye.  I’d never seen and heard the story told with as much verve.

At least that was true until last week when I was working in the Spanish-only room during a poetry residency with second graders. Two of the groups are in a dual-language program. The way it works in this school, kids in the program alternate day-by-day: one day in the English-only room with that teacher and then in the Spanish only, and so forth.  Usually the benefactor (and once in a while the victim), of my tendency to say “Yes” to any teaching challenge, I’d agreed to do one session a day in Spanish.  It was relatively easy to find enough catalyst poems and not too hard to muster my limited facility with the language.  I knew the teacher would be a great help, and of course she was, providing vocabulary and helping me with verb tenses.  

With second graders, I often introduce poetry-writing activities by telling a traditional story. I was doing so again, but only in the two other classrooms.  I knew: no way I had enough Spanish to tell a story, so I let the idea go.  That is, until Action Poem day when flying came up, and once more I drafted a translator partner so this group of children would not miss out on.  Best of all, the teacher and I were a true team. 

Once more, a story came to life in a way I alone could not accomplish.

Turtle flew, at least she thought she did, and the story flew across languages, from one teller through another, into the minds and hearts of the listeners.