Kentucky Folktales

by Mary Hamilton

  From my previous telling of “Sody Sallaraytus” I’ve kept the same characters, I’ve retained the swallowing gesture and audible gulp, and I’ve kept the jumping from tree to tree ending segment. From Lena Day’s version I used “five pounds of meat,” to which I added “and an ice cream treat” because it completes a rhyme and adds humor. I’m sending characters to the store for bread and milk, selected from Billy Jo Lewis’s version, because bread and milk are the items people commonly make a quick stop at a store for today. I also loved Lewis’s use of “Whoopdee, doopdee,” but I discovered I simply could not say “Whoopdee, doopdee,” so I shortened it to “Whoop-de-doo.” Then, through repeated tellings I discovered the squirrel could rhyme, “Whoop-de-doo, I’m out too.” Lewis was also the inspiration for the high-pitched voice I use for the squirrel. I added the progression of big, huge, enormous for its audience participation potential.

  The song I’ve included came about through trial and error. I knew I wanted the characters to sing because I enjoyed that aspect of telling “Sody Sallaraytus.” From June to September 2010, I played around with the song enough that a melody and rhythm settled. I have fun, and my audiences readily join in on the fun, as we sing the song with a slightly different sound for each character. Here is the melody I use:

  When I reflect on how “Sody Sallaraytus” became part of my telling repertoire, I recall that I first encountered it as a told story, not a written story. I’m not sure who I first heard tell it. Perhaps I heard Barbara Freeman of The Folktellers,7 the storytelling duo of Barbara and her cousin Connie Regan-Blake, who I first heard in 1979 or 1980? Or, maybe it was Ed Stivender,8 a storyteller from Philadelphia, who I first heard tell this tale about that same time? What I do know is that after hearing both of these folks tell the story, then reading it in Richard Chase’s Grandfather Tales,9 I began retelling it in programs I was presenting when I worked as a children’s librarian in Grand Rapids, Michigan—a job I held from 1979 to 1983. So, why would I have found those versions compelling enough to want to retell the story, but not have been attracted by the Roberts-collected versions I read, even though I had a desire to enhance my repertoire with Kentucky-collected tales?

  One reason may relate to what was actually being published in the written versions I read. In his notes to Grandfather Tales Richard Chase states that he created the tales he published from multiple retellings of the stories.10 Although he includes a frame story of sorts that places the tale in the mouth of a specific storyteller, and he attributes this tale to a single person,11 the tale is not actually a transcript of a single telling. Chase created a retelling to be read and admits, “For me, the writing down of these tales has often been a difficult and tedious process.”12

  On the other hand, Leonard Roberts published specific told versions, each collected from a single individual in a specific place and time, not a new version created to be read after being changed by many oral retellings. Like Chase, Roberts also told stories; but unlike Chase, Leonard Roberts approached his story collections as a folklorist—working to capture a single storytelling event, so his published tales range from exact to nearly exact transcripts of the audio recordings he made while listening to the storytellers.

  An even more compelling reason why “Sody Sallaraytus” captured my attention when the Roberts-collected published variants did not hinges on the nature of the art of storytelling itself. Donald Davis, a North Carolina–based storyteller, writes about the five languages of storytelling: gesture (not hands alone, but facial expression and all nonverbal body language), sound, attitude, feedback, and words.13 My first encounters with “Sody Sallaraytus” had been encounters with all five languages in use. Both Freeman and Stivender made use of gesture and sound in a variety of ways (vocal inflection and pacing changes for different characters, sound effects, and much, much more). I had been present in the audience, not listening to sound recordings, so I was also able to absorb their positive attitudes toward the story and toward the opportunity to tell it to the particular audience at hand. Both had enjoyed the feedback from the audience and had engaged us in playfully joining in on singing the “sody, sody, sody sallaraytus” song each character sang on the way to the store. And yes, they had used words. I vividly imagined the tale as I listened to Freeman and Stivender because they made full and delightful use of all five languages of storytelling. With my reading of Chase following shortly after hearing Freeman and Stivender, I suspect I was able to bring memory of their tellings to that reading as well.

  Through my Appalachian Sound Archives research, I was able to enjoy the Roberts-collected stories through not just words, but with the language of sound restored. Occasionally, I could even enjoy a glimmer of audience feedback because I could hear Roberts laughing as he listened to some of the tellers. Hearing them told finally brought these Kentucky-collected versions to life for me.

  This folktale tends to die on the page—it is so very repetitious—but it thrives when told in person. Each character has a distinctive way of speaking. When I tell it, the little boy sounds capable, confident, and somewhat serious about his task. The little girl is a bit higher pitched than the boy, just as capable but a bit more carefree in her attitude. The grandpa’s voice is older, deeper, and he is not happy about making the trip. The grandma’s voice is also older, but higher pitched than grandpa’s and she is annoyed that she has to perform a task so simple any of the others could have done it, if they had just taken it seriously. The bear has a deep, huge voice. He brags as he talks about what he has eaten, and he shows no pity on any of the other characters. The squirrel has the highest pitched voice—somewhat surprisingly so to many listeners, who first look surprised when the squirrel talks, then amused at the sound of his voice (inspired by Billy Jo Lewis’s squirrel voice). When the squirrel interrupts his song with “Uh-oh,” it is not necessary for me to even tell them he saw the bear—they know.

  In my retelling here, I have compensated a bit, but only a bit, with words to make up for the loss of other languages. In an in-person telling, I don’t need to tell my audience the bear is walking toward the other characters while growling. They can see through my body language that the bear is moving toward the other character, and they can hear that he is growling. Only when the little boy meets the bear do I actually need to tell my audience that the traveling character sees a bear.

  Through body language, I show my audience the specific character as the character sings on the way to the store, and each character’s stance and facial expression varies just as the sound of their voices vary. My audience sees each character stop abruptly when they encounter the bear and they know right away what the character is seeing. In a recent small audience, a child actually gasped, then said, “That bear’s still there!” when the little girl stopped singing.

  In this same audience, the children joined in so much I soon did not need to say each character’s “no, that bear is . . .” as they changed their perception of the bear’s size. Instead the audience chimed in with every “no” and again on the size words “huge” and “enormous,” said with a drawn out sound, making the saying of the word enormous too.

  I don’t need to use phrases like “the little girl thought” in the telling. Instead, a character’s thoughts can be spoken aloud with only a very slight change from the sound of actual speech to convey that these are the inner musings of this character.

  Once I establish that the bear has eaten the little boy, I don’t need to announce that the bear has successfully eaten each additional character. The audience knows this is what happened.

  There is a rhythm in the interplay of sound and gesture in the bear’s chant that works well in the telling, and is nearly impossible to show with words alone, but I’ll attempt an explanation here. The bear’s last line is always, “And I’m gonna eat you!” Chomp. Gulp! The telling works like this: “And I’m gonna eat (pause) you!” On “you” the bear grabs the victim. This is followed by a gesture in which the bear lifts the victim to his op
en mouth, which then closes over the victim with a “haaawm” (biting without the click of teeth?) “Chomp” sound. That sound is followed by a loud, single gulp. So “Chomp. Gulp!” in the text is onomatopoeia doing the best it can for a printed word to replace the actual sound. In telling, the timing is more like, “And I’m gonna eat (pause) you!” (pause) clap, clap, with “haaawm/Chomp” on the first clap and “Gulp!” on the second clap.

  When the bear follows the squirrel out the small limb of the tree, the words I’ve written hardly begin to show what happens in the face-to-face telling. Instead, once the bear heads out the limb, I just keep the bear moving, one step at a time. Meanwhile I watch my listeners because I know someone is going to begin shaking a head no, or saying, “uh-uh” or “uh-oh” or “It’s gonna break” or “He’s going to fall.” Someone in the audience will be unable to resist revealing they know what’s going to happen, and then the conversation is on! I can respond to their comments by repeating their comments and asking why? Then listeners (sometimes one in a small group; often many at once in a larger group) will call out the reason why the bear will fall. Sometimes listeners go straight to “He’s too heavy.” Other times they will call out “the limb broke!” Then I have the chance to call back, “the limb broke! Why?” Eventually my listeners are orally connecting the breaking of the limb with the heaviness of the bear, so I can call out, “You’re right! That limb did break. The bear came crashing to the ground, and when he hit . . .” and we are off and running with the ending of the story.

  Storytelling is an ephemeral face-to-face art. No two tellings of any story will be exactly the same, and each different audience changes the telling too. With some stories, like this one, the audience impact is readily observable; with others the audience impact is more subtle. Yet all stories thrive in the telling when all five languages of storytelling are in action. Because “The Enormous Bear” dies a bit on the page, especially when I’ve chosen to capture a telling in words, without adding many, many more words to offset the loss of the other four languages of storytelling, I hope you will let your imagination go to work on it, and bring it to life again using all five languages of storytelling.

  THE FARMER’S SMART DAUGHTER

  One morning a king stood in his doorway. He looked out on all the land he owned, and he had but one thought: “I want more.”

  The land next door to the king’s land was owned by a farmer. So the king sent for the farmer and said, “Well sir, I have decided to increase my land holdings, and your farm is the land I’m going to increase my holdings by. Now, I am the king, so I could just take your land, but I believe in being fair. I am going to ask you three questions, riddles you might call them. If you can come back here in the morning with three real fine answers to these questions, you can keep your land. If you don’t come back with three real fine answers, your land becomes part of my land.

  “Here are your three questions: First, what is it that’s fastest in all the world? Second, what is it that’s richest in all the world? Third, what is it that’s sweetest in all the word? Now, go on home. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  The farmer went home. He could not believe what had happened. He sat at his kitchen table, head in his hands, moaning, “I should have seen this coming. I should have seen this coming.” You see, at one time there had been several farms between the farmer’s farm and the king’s land. But one by one, each of those other farms had become part of the king’s land. “This must be how it happened. This must be how it happened.” There the farmer sat, feeling miserable, when his oldest daughter walked in.

  “Daddy, you look awful! What’s wrong?”

  The farmer told his daughter all about the king wanting the land and the king’s three questions. The farmer’s daughter thought a bit. Then she said, “Daddy, I can give you answers to those questions. Tomorrow morning, you go tell the king the fastest thing in all the world is nothing but the light from the sun itself. There isn’t anything moves faster than that, Daddy.

  And as for the richest thing? Well, that would have to be the earth itself. And if the king doesn’t believe you, tell him I could come up there and prove it to him. Why, there isn’t a single thing the king owns that if we ask the questions: What’s that made of? Where did that come from? And what’s that made of? And where did that come from? Anything he owns, Daddy, if we ask those two questions and follow it back, we’ll get back to the earth itself. And if everything comes from the earth, the earth must be the richest thing in all the world.

  As for the sweetest thing? Well, Daddy, he is a king, and kings have to make a lot of decisions. I’ll bet there are times when those decisions just weigh on his mind and trouble his sleep. Oh, even a king would have to agree there is nothing sweeter than a peaceful night’s rest when your mind is troubled. Go tell him that, Daddy. See what he has to say.”

  The next morning the farmer went to see the king. He told the king those answers his daughter had given him. “My,” said the king, “those are real fine answers. I was pretty sure you were not going to come up with answers as fine as that. Tell me, did you have help figuring out your answers?”

  The farmer admitted his daughter had helped him. “Ah ha!” crowed the king, “I may be able to have your land yet. I did not say you were allowed to have help!” Then the king thought a bit, and he had to admit, “Of course, I did not say you were not allowed to have help either. Here’s what we’ll do. Since that daughter of yours is the one who gave you the answers, you tell her it’s now going to be her job to save your land. You tell her I want her to show up here tomorrow morning, and I want her to be not riding and not walking either. You tell her I want her to be not dressed,” and when he saw the farmer’s face, he quickly added, “but don’t you worry, I don’t want your daughter to be going around naked either. And I want her to bring me a present that won’t be a present.” The king thought about what he had said, smiled, and then he sent the farmer on his way with, “Remember, tomorrow morning, not riding and not walking, not dressed and not naked, and bringing a present that won’t be a present. Let’s see what that smart girl of yours has to say about that!”

  The farmer went home. Again he could hardly believe what was happening. He sat at his kitchen table, head in his hands, and that’s where his daughter found him. “Daddy, what’s wrong? Didn’t the king like the answers I gave you?”

  “Oh, he liked them, but you won’t believe what he’s decided you have to do now.”

  When the daughter heard the king’s commands, she smiled and said, “Oh Daddy, I have always wanted to meet the king, and this sounds like a perfect opportunity.”

  The next morning the farmer’s daughter woke up early. She took a bird cage, went out to where she knew a quail’s nest was, caught a quail, and put it inside the cage. Then she took that cage and an old quilt out to the barn. In the barn she took off all her clothes and wrapped herself up in the old quilt. Then she picked up the bird cage and walked over to the goat. She threw one leg up over the goat’s back, and with her other foot hopping along on the ground, she started off for the king’s house.

  The king woke up early too. He was real eager to learn what the farmer’s daughter would come up with. There he was standing in his doorway, looking off down his lane, when he saw the farmer’s daughter approaching. With one foot over the back of the goat, and her other foot hopping along on the ground, she wasn’t walking and she wasn’t exactly riding either. He could see her bare legs dangling out below the quilt, and he thought: “She’s not dressed, but wrapped up in that quilt, she can’t properly be called naked either. But I just know she can’t bring me a present that won’t be a present. I know I got her on that one.”

  When the farmer’s daughter reached the king’s house, she stepped from the goat and said, “Good morning, King, I brought you a present.” She opened the bird cage, reached in, and pulled out the quail. As she handed the quail to the king, she opened her hand, saying, “Here’s your present.” And the quail flutte
red off.

  The king shook his head in amazement, smiling to himself, and then he said, “Young woman, you have saved your daddy’s land. But now, I have something else I’d like to talk with you about. You see, I have never married. Now, the reason I never married is because I always promised myself I was not going to marry unless I could marry a woman who was real smart. You have got to be the smartest young woman I have ever met. How would you like to marry me?”

  She set the bird cage down and glared at the king, “Are you going to leave my daddy’s land alone?”

  “Marry me, or don’t marry me, I will never touch your daddy’s land. You have already seen to that.”

  “In that case, Your Majesty, if there is one thing I’ve always known about myself, it’s that I would be a fine queen. Sure, let’s get married.”

  Wedding plans were made. All the friends and relatives were invited. A preacher was called up. But just before he said his I do, the king looked at her and said, “One more thing. I cannot tolerate a wife who goes butting into my business. You’ve got to promise me you won’t ever go butting into my business.”

  She looked at him, smiled, then said, “We’ll have to see about that.”

  He liked her smile so much, he went ahead and said his I do anyway.

  Those two were lucky. They got married after knowing each other just a teeny-tiny bit of time, but she fell absolutely in love with him, and he fell absolutely in love with her. Most of the time they agreed on things. But no matter how much two people love each other, no two human beings are going to agree on everything 100 percent of the time. But when these two disagreed, they were able to talk and listen, listen and talk, talk and listen, listen and talk, until they could find that part of their disagreement that they could indeed agree upon. They were having a wonderful marriage.