The Art of the Story Teller

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This etext was created by Doug Levy, _literra scripta manet_.

ART OF THE STORY-TELLER, by MARIE L. SHEDLOCK

PREFACE.

Some day we shall have a science of education comparable to the
science of medicine; but even when that day arrives the art of
education will still remain the inspiration and the guide of all
wise teachers. The laws that regulate our physical and mental
development will be reduced to order; but the impulses which lead
each new generation to play its way into possession of all that
is best in life will still have to be interpreted for us by the
artists who, with the wisdom of years, have not lost the direct
vision of children.

Some years ago I heard Miss Shedlock tell stories in England. Her
fine sense of literary and dramatic values, her power in sympathetic
interpretation, always restrained within the limits of the art she was
using, and her understanding of educational values, based on a wide
experience of teaching, all marked her as an artist in story-telling.
She was equally at home in interpreting the subtle blending of wit and
wisdom in Daudet, the folk lore philosophy of Grimm, or the deeper
world philosophy and poignant human appeal of Hans Christian Andersen.

Then she came to America and for two or three years she taught us the
difference between the nightingale that sings in the tree tops and the
artificial bird that goes with a spring. Cities like New York, Boston,
Pittsburgh and Chicago listened and heard, if sometimes indistinctly,
the notes of universal appeal, and children saw the Arabian Nights
come true.

Yielding to the appeals of her friends in America and England, Miss
Shedlock has put together in this little book such observations and
suggestions on story-telling as can be put in words. Those who have
the artist's spirit will find their sense of values quickened by her
words, and they will be led to escape some of the errors into which
even the greatest artists fall. And even those who tell stories with
their minds will find in these papers wise generalizations and
suggestions born of wide experience and extended study which well go
far towards making even an artificial nightingale's song less
mechanical. To those who know, the book is a revelation of the
intimate relation between a child's instincts and the finished art of
dramatic presentation. To those who do not know it will bring echoes
of reality.
Earl Barnes.

CONTENTS.

PART I. THE ART OF STORY-TELLING.

CHAPTER.

I. THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE STORY.
II. THE ESSENTIALS OF THE STORY.
III. THE ARTIFICES OF STORY-TELLING.
IV. ELEMENTS TO AVOID IN SELECTION OF MATERIAL.
V. ELEMENTS TO SEEK IN THE CHOICE OF MATERIAL.
VI. HOW TO OBTAIN AND MAINTAIN THE EFFECT OF THE STORY.
VII. QUESTIONS ASKED BY TEACHERS.

PART II. THE STORIES.

STURLA, THE HISTORIAN.
A SAGA.
THE LEGEND OF ST. CHRISTOPHER.
ARTHUR IN THE CAVE.
HAFIZ, THE STONE-CUTTER.
TO YOUR GOOD HEALTH.
THE PROUD COCK.
SNEGOURKA.
THE WATER NIXIE.
THE BLUE ROSE.
THE TWO FROGS.
THE WISE OLD SHEPHERD.
THE FOLLY OF PANIC.
THE TRUE SPIRIT OF A FESTIVAL DAY.
FILIAL PIETY.

THREE STORIES FROM HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN.
THE SWINEHERD.
THE NIGHTINGALE.
THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA.

PART III. LIST OF STORIES. BOOKS SUGGESTED TO THE STORY-TELLER AND
BOOKS REFERRED TO IN THE LIST OF STORIES.

INTRODUCTION.

Story-telling is almost the oldest art in the world--the first
conscious form of literary communication. In the East it still
survives, and it is not an uncommon thing to see a crowd at a street
corner held by the simple narration of a story. There are signs in
the West of a growing interest in this ancient art, and we may yet
live to see the renaissance of the troubadours and the minstrels whose
appeal will then rival that of the mob orator or itinerant politician.
One of the surest signs of a belief in the educational power of the
story is its introduction into the curriculum of the training-college
and the classes of the elementary and secondary schools. It is just
at the time when the imagination is most keen, the mind being
unhampered by accumulation of facts, that stories appeal most vividly
and are retained for all time.

It is to be hoped that some day stories will be told to school groups
only by experts who have devoted special time and preparation to the
art of telling them. It is a great fallacy to suppose that the
systematic study of story-telling destroys the spontaneity of
narrative. After a long experience, I find the exact converse to be
true, namely, that it is only when one has overcome the mechanical
difficulties that one can "let one's self go" in the dramatic interest
of the story.

By the expert story-teller I do not mean the professional elocutionist.
The name, wrongly enough, has become associated in the mind of the
public with persons who beat their breast, tear their hair, and declaim
blood-curdling episodes. A decade or more ago, the drawing-room reciter
was of this type, and was rapidly becoming the bugbear of social
gatherings. The difference between the stilted reciter and the simple
story-teller is perhaps best illustrated by an episode in Hans Christian
Andersen's immortal "Story of the Nightingale." The real Nightingale
and the artificial Nightingale have been bidden by the Emperor to unite
their forces and to sing a duet at a Court function. The duet turns out
most disastrously, and while the artificial Nightingale is singing his
one solo for the thirty-third time, the real Nightingale flies out of
the window back to the green wood--a true artist, instinctively choosing
his right atmosphere. But the bandmaster--symbol of the pompous
pedagogue--in trying to soothe the outraged feelings of the courtiers,
says, "Because, you see, Ladies and Gentlemen, and above all, Your
Imperial Majesty, with the real nightingale you never can tell what you
will hear, but in the artificial nightingale everything is decided
beforehand. So it is, and so it must remain. It cannot be otherwise."

And as in the case of the two nightingales, so it is with the stilted
reciter and the simple narrator: one is busy displaying the machinery,
showing "how the tunes go"; the other is anxious to conceal the art.
Simplicity should be the keynote of story-telling, but (and her the
comparison with the nightingale breaks down) it is a simplicity which
comes after much training in self-control, and much hard work in
overcoming the difficulties which beset the presentation.

I do not mean that there are not born story-tellers who _could_ hold an
audience without preparation, but they are so rare in number that we can
afford to neglect them in our general consideration, for this work is
dedicated to the average story-tellers anxious to make the best use of
their dramatic ability, and it is to them that I present my plea for
special study and preparation before telling a story to a group of
children--that is, if they wish for the far-reaching effects I shall
speak of later on. Only the preparation must be of a much less
stereotyped nature than that by which the ordinary reciters are trained
for their career.

Some years ago, when I was in America, I was asked to put into the
form of lectures my views as to the educational value of telling
stories. A sudden inspiration seized me. I began to cherish a dream
of long hours to be spent in the British Museum, the Congressional
Library in Washington and the Public Library in Boston--and this
is the only portion of the dream which has been realized. I planned
an elaborate scheme of research work which was to result in a
magnificent (if musty) philological treatise. I thought of trying to
discover by long and patient researches what species of lullaby were
crooned by Egyptian mothers to their babes, and what were the
elementary dramatic poems in vogue among Assyrian nursemaids which
were the prototypes of "Little Jack Horner," "Dickory, Dickory Dock"
and other nursery classics. I intended to follow up the study of
these ancient documents by making an appendix of modern variants,
showing what progress we had made--if any--among modern nations.

But there came to me suddenly one day the remembrance of a scene from
Racine's "Plaideurs," in which the counsel for the defence, eager to
show how fundamental his knowledge, begins his speech: "Before the
Creation of the World"--And the Judge (with a touch of weariness
tempered by humor) suggests:

"Let us pass on to the Deluge."

And thus I, too, have passed on to the Deluge. I have abandoned an
account of the origin and past of stories which at best would only
have displayed a little recently acquired book knowledge. When I
thought of the number of scholars who could treat this part of the
question infinitely better than myself, I realized how much wiser it
would be--though the task is more humdrum--to deal with the present
possibilities of story-telling for our generation of parents
and teachers.

My objects in urging the use of stories in the education of children
are at least fivefold:

First, to give them dramatic joy, for which they have a natural
craving; to develop a sense of humor, which is really a sense of
proportion; to correct certain tendencies by showing the consequences
in the career of the hero in the story [Of this motive the children
must be quite unconscious and there should be no didactic emphasis];
to present by means of example, not precept, such ideals as will
sooner or later be translated into action; and finally, to develop the
imagination, which really includes all the other points.

But the art of story-telling appeals not only to the educational world
and to parents as parents, but also to a wider public interested in
the subject from a purely human point of view.

In contrast to the lofty scheme I had originally proposed to myself, I
now simply place before all those who are interested in the art of
story-telling in any form the practical experiences I have had in my
travels in America and England.

I hope that my readers may profit by my errors, improve on my methods,
and thus help to bring about the revival of an almost lost art.

In Sir Philip Sydney's "Defence of Poesie: we find these words:

"Forsooth he cometh to you with a tale, which holdeth children from
play, and old men from the chimney-corner, and pretending no more,
doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue even as
the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by hiding them
in such other as have a pleasant taste."

MARIE L. SHEDLOCK, LONDON.

PART I. THE ART OF THE STORY-TELLER.

CHAPTER I. THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE STORY.

I propose to deal in this chapter with the difficulties or dangers
which beset the path of the story-teller, because, until we have
overcome these, we cannot hope to bring out the full value of the
story.

The difficulties are many, and yet they ought not to discourage the
would-be narrators, but only show them how all-important is the
preparation for the story, if it is to have the desired effect.

I propose to illustrate by concrete examples, thereby serving a
twofold purpose: one to fix the subject more clearly in the mind of
the student, the other to use the art of story-telling to explain
itself.

I have chosen one or two instances from my own personal experience.
The grave mistakes made in my own case may serve as a warning to
others who will find, however, that experience is the best teacher.
For positive work, in the long run, we generally find out our own
method. On the negative side, however, it is useful to have certain
pitfalls pointed out to us, in order that we may save time by avoiding
them. It is for this reason that I sound a note of warning.

1. There is _the danger of side issues_. An inexperienced story-teller
is exposed to the temptation of breaking off from the main dramatic
interest in a short exciting story in order to introduce a side issue
which is often interesting and helpful but which must be left for a
longer and less dramatic story. If the interest turns on some dramatic
moment, the action must be quick and uninterrupted, or it will lose half
its effect.

I had been telling a class of young children the story of Polyphemus
and Ulysses, and just at the most dramatic moment in the story some
impulse for which I cannot account prompted me to go off on a side
issue to describe the personal appearance of Ulysses.

The children were visibly bored, but with polite indifference they
listened to my elaborate description of the hero. If I had given them
an actual description from Homer, I believe that the strength of the
language would have appealed to their imagination (all the more
strongly because the might not have understood the individual words)
and have lessened their disappointment at the dramatic issue being
postponed; but I trusted to my own lame verbal efforts, and signally
failed. Attention flagged, fidgeting began, the atmosphere was
rapidly becoming spoiled in spit of the patience and toleration still
shown by the children. At last, however, one little girl in the front
row, as spokeswoman for the class, suddenly said: "If you please,
before you go on any further, do you mind telling us whether, after
all, that Poly . . . [slight pause] . . . that . . . [final attempt]
. . . _Polyanthus_ died?"

Now, the remembrance of this question has been of extreme use to me in
my career as a story-teller. I have realized that in a short dramatic
story the mind of the listeners must be set at ease with regard to
the ultimate fate of the special Polyanthus who takes the center of
the stage.

I remember, too, the despair of a little boy at a dramatic
representation of "Little Red Riding-Hood," when that little person
delayed the thrilling catastrophe with the Wolf, by singing a pleasant
song on her way through the wood. "Oh, why," said the little boy,
"does she not get on?" And I quite shared his impatience.

This warning is necessary only in connection with the short dramatic
narrative. There are occasions when we can well afford to offer short
descriptions for the sake of literary style, and for the purpose of
enlarging the vocabulary of the child. I have found, however, in
these cases, it is well to take the children into your confidence,
warning them that they are to expect nothing particularly exciting in
the way of dramatic event. They will then settle down with a freer
mind (though the mood may include a touch of resignation) to the
description you are about to offer them.

2. _Altering the story to suit special occasions_ is done sometimes
from extreme conscientiousness, sometimes from sheer ignorance of the
ways of children. It is the desire to protect them from knowledge which
they already possess and with which they, equally conscientious, are apt
to "turn and rend" the narrator. I remember once when I was telling the
story of the Siege of Troy to very young children, I suddenly felt
anxious lest there should be anything in the story of the rape of Helen
not altogether suitable for the average age of the class, namely, nine
years. I threw, therefore, a domestic coloring over the whole subject
and presented an imaginary conversation between Paris and Helen, in
which Paris tried to persuade Helen that she was strong-minded woman
thrown away on a limited society in Sparta, and that she should come
away and visit some of the institutions of the world with him, which
would doubtless prove a mutually instructive journey.[1] I then gave
the children the view taken by Herodotus that Helen never went to Troy,
but was detained in Egypt. The children were much thrilled by the
story, and responded most eagerly when, in my inexperience, I invited
them to reproduce in writing for the next day the story I had just told
them. A small child presented _me_, as you will see, with the ethical
problem from which I had so laboriously protected _her_. The essay ran:

Once upon a time the King of Troy's son was called Paris. And he
went over to _Greace_ to see what it was like. And here he saw the
beautiful Helen_er,_ and likewise her husband Menela_yus_. And one
day, Menelayus went out hunting, and left Paris and Helener alone,
and Paris said: "Do you not feel _dul_ in this _palis_?"_[2] And
Helener said: "I feel very dull in this _pallice_," and Paris said:
"Come away and see the world with me." So they _sliped_ off together,
and they came to the King of Egypt, and _he_ said: "Who _is_ the
young lady"? So Paris told him. "But," said the King, "it is not
_propper_ for you to go off with other people's _wifes_. So Helener
shall stop here." Paris stamped his foot. When Menelayus got home,
_he_ stamped his foot. And he called round him all his soldiers,
and they stood round Troy for eleven years. At last they thought it
was no use _standing_ any longer, so they built a wooden horse in
memory of Helener and the Trojans and it was taken into the town.

Now, the mistake I made in my presentation was to lay any particular
stress on the reason for elopement by my careful readjustment, which
really called more attention to the episode than was necessary for
the age of my audience; and evidently caused confusion in the minds
of some of the children who knew the story in its more accurate
original form.

While traveling in America, I was provided with a delightful appendix
to this story. I had been telling Miss Longfellow and her sister the
little girl's version of the Siege of Troy, and Mrs. Thorpe made the
following comment, with the American humor the dryness of which adds
so much to its value:

"I never realized before," she said, "how glad the Greeks must have
been to sit down even inside a horse, when they had been standing for
eleven years."

3. _The danger of introducing unfamiliar words_ is the very opposite
danger of the one to which I have just alluded; it is the taking for
granted that children are acquainted with the meaning of certain words
upon which turns some important point in the story. We must not
introduce, without at least a passing explanation, words which, if not
rightly understood, would entirely alter the picture we wish to present.

I had once promised to tell stories to an audience of Irish peasants,
and I should like to state here that, though my travels have brought
me in touch with almost every kind of audience, I have never found one
where the atmosphere is so "self-prepared" as in that of a group of
Irish peasants. To speak to them, especially on the subject of fairy-
tales, is like playing on a delicate harp: the response is so quick
and the sympathy so keen. Of course, the subject of fairy-tales is
one which is completely familiar to them and comes into their everyday
life. They have a feeling of awe with regard to fairies, which is
very deep in some parts of Ireland.

On this particular occasion I had been warned by an artist friend who
had kindly promised to sing songs between the stories, that my
audience would be of varying age and almost entirely illiterate. Many
of the older men and women, who could neither read nor write, had
never been beyond their native village. I was warned to be very
simple in my language and to explain any difficult words which might
occur in the particular Indian story I had chosen for that night,
namely, "The Tiger, the Jackal and the Brahman."[3]--at a proper
distance, however, lest the audience should class him with the wild
animals. I then went on with my story, in the course of which I
mentioned a buffalo. In spite of the warning I had received, I found
it impossible not to believe that the name of this animal would be
familiar to any audience. I, therefore, went on with the sentence
containing this word, and ended it thus: "And then the Brahman went a
little further and met an old buffalo turning a wheel."

The next day, while walking down the village street, I entered into
conversation with a thirteen-year-old girl who had been in my audience
the night before and who began at once to repeat in her own words the
Indian story in questions. When she came to the particular sentence I
have just quoted, I was greatly startled to hear _her_ version, which
ran thus: "And the priest went on a little further, and he met another
old gentleman pushing a wheelbarrow." I stopped her at once, and not
being able to identify the sentence as part of the story I had told, I
questioned her a little more closely. I found that the word "buffalo,"
had evidently conveyed to her mind an old "buffer" whose name was "Lo,"
probably taken to be an Indian form of appellation, to be treated with
tolerance though it might not be Irish in sound. Then, not knowing of
any wheel more familiarly than that attached to a barrow, the young
narrator completed the picture in her own mind--but which, one must
admit, had lost something of the Indian atmosphere which I had
intended to gather about.

4. _The danger of claiming cooperation of the class by means of
questions_ is more serious for the teacher than the child, who
rather enjoys the process and displays a fatal readiness to give any
sort of answer if only he can play a part in the conversation. If we
could in any way depend on the children giving the kind of answer we
expect, all might go well and the danger would be lessened; but
children have a perpetual way of frustrating our hopes in this
direction, and of landing us in unexpected bypaths from which it is
not always easy to return to the main road without a very violent
reaction. As illustrative of this, I quote from the "The Madness of
Philip," by Josephine Daskam Bacon, a truly delightful essay on child
psychology in the guise of the lightest of stories.

The scene takes place in a kindergarten, where a bold and fearless
visitor has undertaken to tell a story on the spur of the moment to a
group of restless children.

She opens thus:

"Yesterday, children, as I came out of my yard, what do you think
I saw?"

The elaborately concealed surprise in store was so obvious that
Marantha rose to the occasion and suggested, "An el'phunt."

"Why, no. Why should I see an elephant in my yard? It was not
_nearly_ so big as that--it was a little thing."

"A fish," ventured Eddy Brown, whose eye fell upon the aquarium in the
corner. The raconteuse smiled patiently.

"Now, how could a fish, a live fish, get into my front yard?"

"A dead fish," says Eddy.

He had never been known to relinquish voluntarily an idea.

"No; it was a little kitten," said the story-teller decidedly. "A
little white kitten. She was standing right near a big puddle of
water. Now, what else do you think I saw?"

"Another kitten," suggests Marantha, conservatively.

"No; it was a big Newfoundland dog. He saw the little kitten near the
water. Now, cats don't like water, do they? What do they like?"

"Mice," said Joseph Zukoffsky abruptly.

"Well, yes, they do; but there were no mice in my yard. I'm sure you
know what I mean. If they don't like _water_, _what_ do they like?"

"Milk," cried Sarah Fuller confidently.

"They like a dry place," said Mrs. R. B. Smith. "Now, what do you
suppose the dog did?"

It may be that successive failures had disheartened the listeners.
Itmay be that the very range of choice presented to them and the
dog alike dazzled their imagination. At all events, they made
no answer.

"Nobody knows what the dog did?" repeated the story-teller
encouragingly. "What would you do if you saw a little kitten
like that?"

And Philip remarked gloomily:

"I'd pull its tail."

"And what do the rest of you think? I hope you are not as cruel as
that little boy."

A jealous desire to share Philip's success prompted the quick response:

"I'd pull it too."

Now, the reason of the total failure of this story was the inability
to draw any real response from the children, partly because of the
hopeless vagueness of the questions, partly because, there being no
time for reflection, children say the first thing that comes into
their heads without any reference to their real thoughts on the subject.

I cannot imagine anything less like the enlightened methods of the
best kindergarten teaching. Had Mrs. R. B. Smith been a real, and not
a fictional, person, it would certainly have been her last appearance
as a raconteuse in this educational institution.

5. _The difficulty of gauging the effect of a story upon the
audience_ rises from lack of observation and experience; it is the
want of these qualities which leads to the adoption of such a method
as I have just presented. We learn in time that want of expression on
the faces of the audience and want of any kind of external response do
not always mean either lack of interest or attention. There is often
real interest deep down, but no power, or perhaps no wish, to display
that interest, which is deliberately concealed at times so as to
protect oneself from questions which may be put.

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