Folke Tegetthoff, an Austrian writer and teller, wanted to stop this silence, and his method was to found and host an international festival of storytelling. As he came to know the storytelling movement around the world, he was like a man who tastes a rare and exquisitely delicious fruit. Instead of hoarding the flavour, he set about cultivating an orchard for his fellow Austrians to savour. His hosting is itself a brave and unexpected deed in a land where the old have kept too many secrets, and the young are only now learning to tell ghost stories. I thought of this as I strolled through the superb arcades, along the river, and past the perfect façades.
On this particular afternoon, I was basking in the sounds and vistas of the town when I heard something I hadn’t heard before: the sound of children laughing. I continued around a corner and found myself in a little park not far from the river. The park was filled with Turkish children, running, playing, laughing with glee. The scene was more like my multicultural Toronto than the decorous and homogeneous town of Graz. The kids played while their mothers sat on benches nearby wearing what my Jewish grandmothers would have called babushkas. These kids would not have the chance to come to the festival. They probably hadn’t heard such a thing was happening in town that week, and even if they had they wouldn’t have been able to afford it. All of a sudden I had a great storm fool’s desire to tell my stories, not as “Herr Yashinsky,” an honoured guest at one of the world’s greatest storytelling festivals, but just as myself under a tree with these raucous, lovely children.
We dragged milk crates into a semi-circle, I gave a taxi-stopping whistle, and they started to gather from their games. A woman volunteered to translate into German, although the park supervisor pointed out many of them didn’t even speak German, let alone English. When they’d all tumbled into place, I began to tell. The listeners, with dark, intent eyes, shifted between both streams of language, English and German, catching at the suspense of the stories. I told them the classic English folk tale about Lazy Jack, featuring a noodlehead hero who does exactly what his mother tells him. “Jack,” she tells him after he’s dropped his first day’s pay into the river by accident, “you should have carried it in your pocket.” The next day, when he’s paid with a jug of milk, he remembers what his mother told him. The story goes on from there. He does end up marrying the daughter of the richest man in the land, so maybe the moral is “Do what your mother tells you.” I also told “The Gunniwolf.” This story for the very young can be found in many versions in most children’s libraries. A little girl goes out to pick flowers and, despite her mother’s warnings, wanders into the forest. There she encounters the Gunniwolf. Luckily, she knows a beautiful flowerpicking song, which she sings, putting the Gunniwolf to sleep. Then she runs, he wakes up and chases her, she sings again, he sleeps, she runs, he chases and so on. She barely escapes with her life. The moral? If you do find yourself in the forest, it’s a good idea to have a powerful song (the Native people would call it her “medicine song”) in case you run into any gunniwolves. I sang my Turkish children a song or two. I promised to come back the next day with other festival tellers (which I did), and that was it.
They listened well, all the rowdiness and wildness gone while we spun our bilingual yarns. Underneath the unfamiliar languages, they caught the drift of the stories. “Lazy Jack,” a story about a lazy, unregarded lad who finds success in the end—well, aren’t immigrants often considered lazy welfare bums by the fine people driving by in their BMWs? That prejudice unfortunately exists in Canada and I suspect it’s present in Graz as well. And “The Gunniwolf,” which features a little girl who enters the forbidden territory of the forest—what is that but the experience of immigrant children making their way in a strange new culture? The girl in the “Gunniwolf” survives because she sings a good song. These Turkish children, too, needed a strong inner song to protect themselves from the disapproving stares of white burghers. The stories were about them and for them and, at some gut level beneath the words themselves, the children knew it.
That night, onstage in front of a thousand human listeners and a couple of dozen birds, I had another storm-fool moment. We were at the Kasematten, an open-air theatre carved into the side of the mountain in the middle of town. The humans were on seats and the birds perched on the parapets.
I didn’t know there were birds in the audience until I started my story. It’s called “The Bird Colour-of-Time” (you can find the full version on page 266 of this book). In the story a sick princess dreams of the fastest bird in the world, a bird called Colour-of-Time. When she asks her father, the king, to find this dream-bird, he stages a flying contest. The eagle, king of birds, is about to win the race when all of a sudden a little bird who had stowed away in the eagle’s neck-feathers darts ahead and wins the race by the beat of a wing. It is the princess’s bird, of course, the one from her dream. The king her father is outraged that the little bird stole the race, but the princess is delighted.
I came to the line “the birds rose up and raced across the sky in a vast cloud of every colour and hue, each one straining to fly faster and higher than the rest, passing overhead with a great beating of wings and piping of birdcry”—and at that very moment the birds began to sing. All around the theatre the birds warbled and squawked, an avian chorus coming in right on cue. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so surprised by the birds’ response. Ten years earlier, something similar had happened. I was on the very first “Long Night of the Storytellers” tour (the precursor to “Graz Tells”), and we were at the University of Salzburg before our show. I was sitting by a pond on campus playing my “puny tune” (it looks like a sawed-off soprano recorder and has a sweet, clear sound). I closed my eyes while I played, and when I finally looked around, a circle of bullfrogs had gathered, listening silently on their lilypads. When I stopped playing, they began croaking. Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous poem about Orpheus seemed to come true at Tegetthoff’s festival. All of this storytelling had begun to make for frogs and birds (and Turkish children, too) not (in Rilke’s image) a rough Hutte for their listening but rather “a temple deep inside their hearing.”
After the birds’ grand finale the entertainment drew to a close. As tellers and listeners walked down the hillside and decompressed over glasses of good Austrian beer, the birds stayed up on the theatre walls, no doubt talking late into the night about the pleasures of hearing a story in which they were the heroes.
I think one thing that pulls storm fools away from their own hearths and out into the world is the conviction that stories can make a difference in the ongoing struggle for social justice, freedom and equality. They are tools for bringing about social change. In 2002–03, as UNICEF Canada’s first storyteller-in-residence, I had the opportunity to travel through Canada. To prepare for this role, I collected a number of stories that illustrated themes that UNICEF advocates: social justice, children’s rights, the ability to make change (these stories are available at www.unicef.ca). Many traditional fables address these themes, as do a number of folk tales. My aim was to train UNICEF volunteer speakers in storytelling skills, and provide them with a repertoire they could draw on. Here is one traditional riddle about a man who learns the difference between heaven and hell, which was a perfect UNICEF story:
There was once a man who wanted to know the difference between heaven and hell. One night he had a dream. In his dream he visited hell. Hell looked like a big Chinese restaurant, full of round tables and crowded with customers. The tables were piled high with delicious Chinese food: moo shu pork, Shanghai noodles, spring rolls, the works. But the people in hell were starving. They were holding very, very long chopsticks that reached to the middle of the table, and they couldn’t reach the food in front of them. They were screaming with hunger and disappointment.
Then he went to heaven. Heaven looked just like a big Chinese restaurant: round tables covered with wonderful food. Strangely enough, the people in heaven also had very, very long chopsticks, reaching to the middle of the tables. But unli
ke the people in hell, those in heaven were eating happily and laughing together.
The man woke up. He tried to remember his dream. What was the difference between heaven and hell?
When I tell this story I never provide the answer. The group must figure it out. Interestingly, over the years I’ve noticed that groups that are friendly, warm and trusting will always guess the answer right away. Groups that feel unsettled and suspicious take a long time to understand.
As you may know, the answer to the riddle is this: the people in heaven used their long chopsticks to feed their neighbours. The people in hell thought only of feeding themselves.
One day, while telling it, I said to the children, “This story is about you. You raise money here in Canada to help children in Bangladesh or Ghana. Your chopsticks are so long that you can feed children on the other side of the world.” Another time, I was working with a group of UNICEF volunteers in Winnipeg, and I asked the question that ends the story: what is the difference between heaven and hell? To my surprise, a man from Sierra Leone said, with great conviction, “I know the difference. Living here is heaven. Back home is hell.” He explained that the civil war in Sierra Leone had torn apart his family. He had barely escaped being attacked and mutilated. He and his wife had somehow managed to be reunited and they came to Canada. To him, this new land was heaven.
Another story we used was a traditional fable from Cameroon.*
A king was going to throw a feast. He invited everyone from miles around. Everything would be free: the food, the music, the dancing. But he asked that everyone bring a calabash of palm wine. The king had a great earthen jar in the middle of his compound, and after everyone had filled up the jar, the palm wine would be served out to every guest.
One man wanted to go to the king’s feast, but he had no palm wine. His wife suggested he purchase some from a neighbour, but he thought that was a silly idea. “I’ll save my money,” he said. “I’ll fill my calabash with water. Nobody will ever notice one small calabash of water in a big jar full of palm wine.” And so, with his calabash of water, he went to the feast. Hundreds of people were coming down the road towards the king’s great feast. The man took his place in line, emptied his calabash into the king’s jar, and sat down, waiting for the feast to begin. The servants began to dip out the palm wine and bring it around to the guests. When the king appeared, they lifted their bowls in honour. This man was so much looking forward to drinking the refreshing palm wine! He sipped from the bowl. It didn’t taste right. He sipped again. This was not palm wine. It was water. Everyone had thought as he had: someone else will bring the palm wine. Ever since then, they say in Cameroon, “If water is all you bring to the feast, then water is all you’ll have to drink.”
In Canada, children collect coins for UNICEF on Halloween. The connection between this kind of fundraising and the work of UNICEF in distant countries can be hard for the children to understand. The story of the king’s feast lets them feel that the coins are their version of the palm wine calabash. If everyone brings their share, then the feast will be good.
If you’d like to become a storm fool, you need three things: a headful of stories, a willingness to hit the road and the belief that storytelling can change the world. I don’t recommend following the storm fool’s way if you are looking for fortune, glory and fame. That lesson is one I learned early in my career. After just a few gigs, I was invited to the High Park Public Library, in Toronto’s west end. The ambitious children’s librarian had postered Roncesvalles Boulevard with a sign that said, “Come and hear Famous Storyteller!” Unfortunately, despite this enticing ad, nobody came. The undaunted librarian quickly press-ganged several children who were hanging around the library that day. She sent them downstairs to where I was waiting to tell my stories. One eight-year-old girl took a long and dubious look at me, and said, “Hey, mister—what’s so famous about you?”
* Adapted from The King’s Drum and Other African Stories by Harold Courlander, copyright © 1962, 1990 by Harold Courlander. Used by permission of The Emma Courlander Trust.
ANNALS OF HOSTING
Grete chiere made oure Hoost us everichon…
CHAUCER, Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
IF THE ARMENIAN APPLES fell for the teller, the listener and the one who heard, a fourth apple (or better, all three together) should fall from heaven for the one who hosts: the master of ceremonies who comes early, sets out the chairs, makes the coffee, lights the candles, welcomes the tellers, makes the audience feel at ease and generally helps weave the stories into a memorable tapestry. The host is the one who creates a shelter for stories, tellers and listeners. He or she must have patience, a sense of community, curiosity and above all a love of listening. I’ll describe some of my own experiences, both good and bad, as a storytelling host, and hope that you can use these ideas to kindle your own storyfires.
There have been several great storytelling hosts in literature, and we can learn much from our literary ancestors. Chaucer gave us Harry Bailly, the redoubtable Keeper of the Tabard Inn, a popular spot for wayfarers and pilgrims on their way to Canterbury. Besides being “boold of his speche, and wys, and wel ytaught” this spontaneous, irresistible hotelier was also “a myrie man.” When a likelylooking company of pilgrims stopped at his inn, he cajoled and persuaded them to tell each other “tales of best sentence and moost solaas”—of wisdom and solace—on their way to Canterbury, and soon decided, for love of a good story, to go with them:
Ye goon to Caunterbury—God yow speede!
The blisful martir quite yow youre meede!
And wel I woot, as ye goon by the weye,
Ye shapen yow to talen and to pleye;
For trewely, confort ne myrthe is noon
To ride by the weye doumb as a stoon…
In Italy, a little before Chaucer’s time, Boccaccio also wrote of a host who had amazing power to inspire a group of strangers to tell each other stories. His setting was considerably more dangerous than the Canterbury pilgrimage. In the frame-story of The Decameron, Boccaccio describes the ravages of the Black Death in Florence. In the middle of the devastation (at least a third of the population died), a young survivor named Pampinea persuades nine other young people, six women and three men, to accompany her to a villa outside the city. There they tell each other stories with themes like “the tricks which, either in the cause of love or for motives of self-preservation, women have played upon their husbands” or “those who after suffering a series of misfortunes are brought to a state of unexpected happiness.” The plague has devastated their city, broken every bond of civil order, left most of their families dead or dying; yet Pampinea insists that the company tell each other stories, not about death, but about amore. Chaos rages just beyond the gates of the villa, but she knows that stories are more than just entertainment. They carry the seeds of whatever future these young Florentines, if they live, will build together.
But it is King Alkinoos who is perhaps the greatest host in world literature. When a sailor is shipwrecked on the island of Phaiakia, Princess Nausicaa finds him and brings him to the king and queen. They offer him their hospitality, but strangely enough, he doesn’t tell them his true name; just makes up a yarn about a storm, a distant war, a bewitched island, a god-cursed effort to reach his home. When Demodokos, the royal bard, begins to sing of a warrior-king named Odysseus, the guest weeps secretly behind his cloak. Only King Alkinoos, great host that he is, notices those secret tears. After the banquet, there is track and field, then circle-dancing, then back for more barbecue; and now the bard takes requests, and the stranger asks for another tale about that selfsame hero:
Sing only this for me, sing me this well,
and I shall say at once before the world
the grace of heaven has given us a song.
Knowing how hungry freelance storytellers can get, he sends a plate of choice meat to sweeten his request. The bard tunes his lyre and begins to sing; and this time the castaway can no longer hide his
tears. Finally Alkinoos demands to know the truth: “You must not be secretive any longer! Come, in fairness, tell me the name you bore in that far country….” To complete his hospitality, Alkinoos promises his mysterious guest safe passage home on one of his magic ships, vessels that move as swiftly as their navigators’ dreams. The stranger replies, “I am Laertes’ son, Odysseus.”
Halfway through his epic tale—for Odysseus takes over the telling from Demodokos and goes on to tell his own adventures—he stops, afraid his audience may be getting bored. Here Alkinoos, most noble of hosts, shows his true greatness. He reassures the storyteller with words that still encourage all tellers and listeners nearly three thousand years later:
Suddenly They Heard Footsteps Page 5