The strange expression of her eyes

The kapala’s [headman] daughter and a female companion demanded two florins each for telling folklore, whereupon I expressed a wish first to hear what they were able to tell. The companion insisted on the money first, but the kapala’s wife, who was a very nice woman, began to sing, her friend frequently joining in the song. This was the initial prayer, without which there could be no story-telling. She was a blian [shamaness], and her way of relating legends was to delineate stories in song form, she informed me.

As there was nobody to interpret I was reluctantly compelled to dispense with her demonstration, although I had found it interesting to watch the strange expression of her eyes as she sang and the trance-like appearance she maintained. Another noticeable fact was the intense attachment of her dogs, which centred their eyes constantly upon her and accompanied her movement with strange guttural sounds.

Dayak, central Borneo, Carl Lumholtz, Through Central Borneo: An Account of Two Years’ Travel in the Land of the Head-Hunters Between the Years 1913 and 1917, Singapore: Oxford University Press, pp. 137-138

Illustration inspired by a rock art painting of Kimberley, Australia

But we did not go to sleep

I knew all about Coyote and the things he can do, because my father told us the stories about how the world began and how Coyote helped our Creator, Elder Brother, to set things in order. Only some men know these stories, but my father was one of them. On winter nights, when we had finished our gruel or rabbit stew and lay back on our mats, my brothers would say to him. “My father, tell us something.”

My father would lie quietly upon his mat with my mother beside him and the baby between them. At last he would start slowly to tell us about how the world began. This is a story that can be told only in winter when there are not snakes about, for if the snakes heard they would crawl in and bite you. But in winter when snakes are asleep, we tell these things. Our story about the world is full of songs, and when the neighbors heard my father singing they would open our door and step in over the high threshold. Family by family they came, and we made a big fire and kept the door shut against the cold night. When my father finished a sentence we would all say the last word after him. if anyone went to sleep he would stop. He would not speak any more. But we did not go to sleep.

R. M. Underhill, Papago Woman, Long Grove, Ill.: Waveland Press, p. 50

Illustration inspired by the art of the people Klickitat the northwest coast of America

Gwydion was the best teller of tales in the world

There was a court of Pryderi’s there, and in the guise of bards they came inside. They made them welcome. Gwydion was placed at Pryderi’s one hand that night.

«Why,» said Pryderi, «gladly would we have a tale from some of the young men yonder.»

«Lord,» said Gwydion, «it is a custom with us that the first night after one comes to a great man, the chief bard shall have the say. I will tell a tale gladly.»

Gwydion was the best teller of tales in the world. And that night he entertained the court with pleasant tales and story-telling till he was praised by every one in the court, and it was pleasure for Pryderi to converse with him.

From “Math son of Mathonwy”, the fourth branch of the Maginogi, in The Mabinogion, translated by Gwyn Jones and Thomas Jones, London: J. M. Dent & Sons, revised edition, 1989, pp. 56-57

Illustration inspired by a rock painting from the Eastern Cape, South Africa

Tales to daylight

In my native place, Pool Ewe, Ross shire, when I was a boy, it was the custom for the young to assemble together on the long winter nights to hear the old people recite the tales or sgeulachd, which they had learned from their fathers before them. In these days tailors and shoemakers went from house to house, making our clothes and shoes. When one of them came to the village we were greatly delighted, whilst getting new kilts at the same time.

I knew an old tailor who used to tell a new tale every night during his stay in the village; and another, an old shoemaker, who, with his large stock of stories about ghosts and fairies, used to frighten us so much that we scarcely dared pass the neighbouring churchyard on our way home.

It was also the custom when an aoidh, or stranger, celebrated for his store of tales, came on a visit to the village, for us, young and old, to make a rush to the house where he passed the night, and choose our seats, some on beds, some on forms, and others on three legged stools, etc., and listen in silence to the new tales; just as I have myself seen since, when a far famed actor came to perform in the Glasgow theatre. The goodman of the house usually opened with the tale of Famhair Mor (great giant) or some other favourite tale, and then the stranger carried on after that. It was a common saying, ‘The first tale by the goodman, and tales to daylight by the aoidh,’ or guest. It was also the custom to put riddles, in the solving of which all in the house had to tax their ingenuity. If one of the party put a riddle which was not solved that night, he went home with the title of King of Riddles.

Besides this, there was usually in such gatherings a discussion about the Fein, which comes from Fiantaidh, giant; the Fiantaidh were a body of men who volunteered to defend their country from the invasions and inroads of the Danes and Norwegians, or Lochlinnich. Fiunn, who was always called King of the Fein, was the strongest man amongst them, and no person was admitted into the company who was less in height than he, however much taller. I remember the old black shoemaker telling us one night that Fiunn had a tooth which he consulted as an oracle upon all important occasions. He had but to touch this tooth, and whatever he wanted to know was at once revealed to him.

From a letter by Hector Urquhart to John Francis Campbell, dated March 1860; John Francis Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands, Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1860, vol. I, págs. vi-vii

Illustration inspired by a japanese netsuke

The spoken word acquired unique clarity at night

For preindustrial peoples, obscurity suited storytelling. In both Western and non-Western cultures, the recitation of myths and folktales long enjoyed the aura of a sacred ritual, traditionally reserved for night’s depths. Darkness insulated hearts and minds from the profane demands of ordinary life. Any “sacred function,” averred Daniello Bartoli in La recreazione del Savio [1659], “requires darkness and silence.”

Within early modern households, ill-lit rooms gave added force to the resonant tales of storytellers. These men in much of Ireland bore the title of seanchaidhthe, and in Wales, cyfarwydd.

The spoken word, in the absence of competing distractions, acquired unique clarity at night. Darkness encouraged listening as well as flights of fancy. Words, not gestures, shaped the mind’s dominant images. What’s more, sound tends to unify any disparate body of listeners. Not only is sound difficult to ignore, but it promotes cohesion by drawing persons closer together, literally as well as metaphorically. Coupled with the dim light of a lamp or hearth, the act of storytelling created an unusually intimate milieu. And too, nighttime lent a dramatic backdrop to local tales, many of which dwelled on the supernatural.  

A. Roger Ekirch, At Day’s Close: A History of Nighttime, London: Phoenix, 2006, pp. 179-180 

Illustration inspired by a drawing found on a Greek pottery

To avoid intrusions from the unseen world

A ritual more commonly found among [Malay professional] story-tellers is the opening ceremony which precedes a performance […]. Thus [several of the story-tellers] interviewed commence performance with a simple ceremony, the common elements of which are the preparation of a dish of offerings, usually consisting of betel leaf and areca nut etc. and sometimes including a small amount of money, known as a perekas [literally, hardener of the vital essence][…]. With most story-tellers, an opening ceremony is held to ensure harmony during the performance and to avoid intrusions from the unseen world. 

Amin Sweeney, “Professional Malay Story-Telling: Some Questions of Style and Presentation”, Ann Arbor: Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies, The University of Michigan, Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia, no 8, 1974, pp. 60-61 

Illustration inspired by a buddhist image

No strands of unsolved mystery left hanging

The conclusion [of the story] describes restored harmony, with a closure such as am o wa’i hug ‘that’s the end’ or am o wa’i at hoabdag ‘that’s the center of the basket’. The latter is a figure for the return to harmony necessary for a story to be considered complete, suggesting that all details woven into the story have been treated and no strands of unsolved mystery left hanging. 

Dean and Lucille Saxton, O’othham Hoho’ok A’agitha. Legends and Lore of the Papago and Pima Indians, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, second printing, 1978, p. 371 

Illustration inspired by a tradicional Latvian drawing

All spit into the fire

[By evening] [t]he women have eaten their evening meal informally round the fires and are just chatting. In a hut three girls are sitting by candlelight, one of them, who has been to school, writing a love-letter for her friend to her lover in town.  […] In another hut some children have persuaded Mamujaji, an elderly woman, to tell them tales. She begins,

‘Ngano-Ngano (a story, a story).’

They reply, ‘Ngano.’

‘Once upon a time,’ she continues, but before she gets further they again interject,

‘Ngano.’ Then she goes on,

‘There lived a boy who had sores all over his body.’

‘Ngano,’ they repeat whenever the speaker hesitates or takes breath.

‘One day when the girls went to fetch grass…’

This is the beginning of a story about a bird who gives away the girls who kill the boy. A marked characteristic is the frequent occurrence of a song and refrain, during the telling of the tale, in this case, ‘Phogu, Phogu ya Vorwa, &c.’ (‘Bird, bird of the south’), so that what with the interjections and singing of the chorus of the refrain, the listeners appear to take as active a part in the story as the narrator herself. At the end of each tale there is a long-drawn-out ‘Ngaaano’ and all spit into the fire.

    In the small villages of today storytelling has almost completely died out. Where there are only one or two present a story loses most of its charm, and there are many young men and women who know practically no stories, more particularly among Christians, whose parents prefer them to learn their lessons rather than tell them stories.

E. J. Kriege and J. D. Kriege, The Realm of a Rain-Queen: A Study of the Pattern of Lovedu Society, London, New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1943, p. 29

Illustration inspired by a petroglyph of the Pueblo Indians of North America

Everyone has to listen and to narrate

Everybody tells stories [among the Akamba], but there are degrees of skill and ability in the art. Similarly, everyone listens to stories, although children have to be present when a story is being told. Adults do not tell stories among themselves.

The time must be after sunset, for the Akamba say that ngewa ityi muyo muthenka (“stories are not interesting during the day-time”), o kuyananiwaa muthenya (“stories are not narrated during the day-time). People are no longer working in the fields or herding in the plains. Families are together after the day’s work, and when the exchange of news is over and the pots are bubbling, when the mills are silent and cattle are no longer mooing after being milked, then it is time to tell stories. The people are sitting round the fire; the children stop playing, and wait expectantly. If one child has to go to another house to fetch something, the story-teller waits until the child comes back and is ready to listen. Grown-ups must refrain from unnecessary interruptions.

Grandparents usually have more stories to tell than other people, and next to them are the  parents, and the older brothers and sister of the children. But younger members of the family have also to learn to narrate, which they do by repeating some of the stories after a few months, or by relating them to other youngsters when they go to visit relatives. If a person does not know stories and how to tell them, other people laugh at him. So everyone has to listen and to narrate. […]  

The narrator puts life into the story to make it appeal. If there is a moral to be learned, a good story-teller does not labour it: the story will lend itself to that purpose, if it is properly told. […] The narrator never mentions [the] lessons [to be learnt from a story]. He simply tells the story which dramatizes the lessons.

John S. Mbiti, Akamba Stories, Oxford: Clarendon  Press, 1966, pp. 23-25

Illustration inspired by the drawing of a shaman’s drum

Sand stories

The areas of bare sand characteristic of central Australia provide a natural drawing board permanently at hand. Since any continuous conversation is generally carried on by persons sitting on the ground, marking the sand readily becomes a supplement to verbal expression.

Walbiri often contrast their own mode of life with that of the white Australian’s by remarking with pride, “We Walbiri live on the ground” […]. They regard sand drawing as part of this valued mode of life, and as a characteristic aspect of their style of expression and communication. To accompany one’s speech with explanatory sand markings is to “talk” in the Walbiri manner.

[…]

Both men and women draw similar graphic elements on the ground during storytelling or general discourse, but women formalize this narrative usage in a distinctive genre that I shall call a sand story. A space of about one to two feet in diameter is smoothed in the sand; the stubble is removed and small stones plucked out. The process of narration consists of the rhythmic interplay of a continuous running graphic notation with gesture signs and singsong verbal patter. The vocal accompaniment may sometimes drop to a minimum; the basic meaning is then carried by the combination of gestural and graphic signs. The gesture signs are intricate and specific and can substitute on occasion for a fuller verbalization.

Walbiri call stories told by women in this fashion by the term for any traditional story about ancestral times, djugurba. They point out that only women tell stories in this manner, although all Walbiri are familiar with the method. While the technique is elaborated most systematically in narrations of events ascribed to ancestral times, women also use it in a more fragmentary way to convey personal experiences or current gossip. As a mode of communication it can be activated in narration generally, irrespective of whether the content is supposed to refer to ancestral times or the present. A “proper” djugurba, however, is thought to refer to ancestral events.

The social context of storytelling is the casual, informal life of the camp, unhedged by secrecy or ritual sanctions. The women’s camps are a common location. […] Even in the hottest weather the women tend to sit close together; without changing her position or making any special announcement, a woman may begin to tell a story. Occasionally an older woman can be seen wordlessly intoning a story to herself as she gestures and marks the sand, but ordinarily a few individuals in the group will cluster around the narrator, leaving whenever they wish regardless of whether the story is finished or not. At any time the narrator herself may break off the story and go on to perform some chore, or evengo to sleep in the process of narration.

[…] Each woman had a fund of stories that she may have learned from any female kin or from her husband. When asked, women sometimes suggested that tales should be transmitted from mother to daughter, but in fact there are no specific rights over these stories; as women said, “everybody” teaches them these tales.

Walbiri children do not tell sand stories as a pastime, but at the age of about five or six they can make and identify the basic graphic forms used in narration. […] A small child or baby may sit on its mother’s lap while she tells a sand story; the observation of sand drawing is thus part of early perceptual experience. Sand drawing is not systematically taught, and learning is largely by observation.

At the age of about eight or nine, a child can quite readily tell narratives of his or her own invention. As a girl grows older, she becomes increasingly fluent in storytelling and may use the sand story technique (largely without gesture signs according to my observation) to communicate narratives about personal experiences or that she has herself invented. She may occasionally tell such tales to other girls or younger children. Older boys are more reluctant to use the technique since it is identified with feminine role behavior.

Nancy D. Munn, Walbiri Iconography: Graphic Representation and Cultural Symbolism in a Central Australian Society, Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1986, pp. 58-64

Illlustration inspired by Bushman rock paintings in the Cederberg, South Africa