Oral Tradition – Plus Let Me Tell You Another Story…

A little mouse told me?  Well, not exactly…but somebody did!

[This is longer than my other A-Z posts…the musings plus the story…grab a cuppa maybe?!]

By definition, personal stories (that is, first-person personal-experience narratives) are not transmitted to the teller through an oral tradition: they happened to the teller.

So, as we compare & contrast story slams and traditional storytelling this month, this may be one of the differences (see Descriptions / Definitions post).

But…do most storytellers who tell traditional tales receive them by oral transmission?

While most storytellers who concentrate primarily or entirely on folktales, myths, and other “traditional stories” are very aware of and cherish and celebrate the “oral tradition”…I’d wager that most of us, in the US anyway, get most of our stories from books. Not all of us, nor all of our stories, of course…but I’d wager on most, yep.

And in my experience the vast majority of storytellers love books! Cherish books! Celebrate books! And read, read, read!

Storytellers…

• treasure the 398.2 shelves in libraries,
• eagerly seek out the bookstores and bookstalls when we’re at festivals and conferences,
• many storytellers write books – how-to’s as well as story collections and folktale re-tellings –
• we “go on a read” when searching for that next good story we want to learn,
• we celebrate our colleagues’ publishing accomplishments
• and perhaps pursue our own…
• and more!

In 21st-century America, I’m pretty sure that more storytellers access new tales through printed/written/digital materials than we do through the oral tradition.

Of course there are exceptions to this, and there are storytellers who do draw primarily on the oral tradition – I’m thinking of tellers from Native cultures, or from the South, especially Appalachia, and others here and there who learn local lore such as ghost stories to pass on.

Most of my own repertoire I certainly received in print form – either by coming across stories I liked while reading, or perhaps having heard another storyteller’s tale and then researching and finding (written) variants to read and work with to develop my own version.

I do tell a few stories that came to me purely through oral tradition.

Here’s the story of how one did…

It was 1988. I had discovered storytelling as an art form, discerned that I was a storyteller, and had thrown myself into doing it – learning and listening and telling and reading and absorbing and creating what I could (all while being a single mom of the world’s two greatest boys!).

I was also in a 2-year tenure as Director of the Elementary Spanish Program in Boulder, CO – a before-and-after-school Spanish language program for 2nd-5th graders. Among other responsibilities, I hired teachers for the program, and traveled around to the schools throughout the district to visit and observe their classes.

One day I was having lunch with one of the teachers after having visited her class, and she told me a joke she had heard on the playground growing up in Mexico. It was funny and surprising, it taught a lesson I valued – and I thought, “Hey, that would make a great little story!”

I was eager to grow my repertoire, and especially with stories that leant themselves to being told bilingually (Spanish-English), as that was both an interest/ability of mine, and, well, there was a market for it!

So I took that little joke I had been told, spun it out just a bit, explored how I wanted to weave Spanish and English together, and crafted a satisfying little 2-minute story that I started telling…and 27 years later it’s still one of my favorites and a real crowd-pleaser!

Along the way, Denver storyteller Opalanga Pugh (may she rest in peace) told me that she knew and told a version of it. Cool! I heard hers, and it was so fun and so different from mine – we laughed with delight!  Later I learned that others had versions, or had heard others tell it…

…it was a wonderful experiential learning for me about the oral tradition!

• A story/joke that I had heard from a friend from Mexico,
• that I liked and so started telling,
• turns out it had a widespread cross-cultural presence…
• and passed among storytellers orally.  

Lovely!

It became something of a signature story for me, people asking for it as I traveled and re-visited locales and venues throughout the 1990s.  Loads of fun!

I call it “Los Ratoncitos (The Little Mice)”.

You might know of it as The Barking Mouse, storyteller Antonio Sacre‘s 2003 book that has come to be known and loved by many.

Picture books that re-tell folk and other traditional tales are not “oral,” of course, but are wonderful.

There are many on my bookshelves – I love reading them to my grandkids…or just to myself!  I sometimes find new-to-me stories or versions, and then do that fun and valuable thing storytellers do, and take the printed story back into the oral storytelling experience.

A wonderful cycle!

Speaking of cycle:

…A story I received orally, which circulates culturally wide-and-far, versions of which are captured in print, some learn the story from the book(s) – and now I’ve just digitally-written you a little (first-person, personal-experience -!) story about my own receiving of the story via oral tradition, and passing it on…

A little dizzying, maybe – but ain’t it great?!

So…Just a little exploration today of an aspect of traditional storytelling that is rather foreign to the story slam experience: Oral Tradition.

Yep, I love it all.

What stories have YOU learned orally? I’d love to know.

If you’ve made it all the way to here – Whew!  Thanks for reading – Pam

 

[Unless otherwise noted, all images are my own: either a photo I took, or a graphic I’ve purchased and am licensed to use. Contact me with any questions you may have. / Women talking image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]