4. When time and circumstance permit, I’ll often talk after programs with audience members I’ve seen chanting along to learn where they heard the rhymes. The jump rope rhyme is known well beyond Kentucky, but the first grade babies rhyme has so far been familiar mostly to women who attended Catholic elementary schools in the Owensboro, Louisville, and Bardstown areas of Kentucky. While I did not attend a Catholic school, I did attend a public school in an overwhelmingly Catholic community and Ursuline nuns were among the teachers at my school. Now, I’m not saying the Ursuline Sisters taught the first grade babies rhyme to children; I’m only saying the common threads I’ve found most prevalent among the women from my audiences who grew up with that rhyme are Kentucky and Catholicism. My observations are far, very far, from a scientific study!
5. The Cherokee Rose Storytelling Festival took place in Carrollton, Georgia. I told there in October 1990 and again in September 1996. I’m not sure which year I met Tersi Bendiburg. Tersi has told stories all her life, and professionally since 1993. You can learn about Tersi’s Cuban background, her storytelling experiences, and her programs at her website: www.tersibendiburg.com.
Mary Helen’s Fiancé
1. Petro recounts her time spent talking with me and my parents (302–317). She titled that chapter “The Farmer’s Smart Daughter” and she intersperses my telling of that tale, also in this book, with her experiences on my parents’ Hidden Spring Farm.
2. In her Storytellers’ Research Guide, Judy Sierra comments, “I believe that people share information with me during a formal interview that they wouldn’t share during a simple conversation. The situation evokes a sense of history that leads people to remember long-forgotten events, and to have new insights” (68). So, perhaps this insight was new to my father during that interview, or perhaps he had long been aware of his intent but never saw the need to mention it before.
3. Zeitlen characterizes these types of family stories as stories of innocents. He compares them to traditional tales and jokes about fools and says they are often told about children, noting, “A child’s solution to a problem often seems comical to us, yet forgivable and charming because it makes perfect sense from the young person’s point of view” (52). He adds, “Sometimes these stories are told to teach a lesson, to tease a child or an absent-minded adult into changing his behavior, and thus resemble moral or cautionary stories. But perhaps more often, the celebrated mistake is so much the product of a child’s stage of life, or an adult’s established way of thinking, that the tales are just playful and forgiving. We don’t laugh at these innocents derisively, but gently. . . . We all do them [the actions told of in the stories], succeeding most of the time, but failure is inevitable” (52–53).
4. Mount Saint Joseph Academy for girls was founded at Maple Mount, near Owensboro, in Daviess County, Kentucky, on August 14, 1874, by the Ursuline Sisters. Postgraduate courses to prepare young women to take the state teachers’ exam began in 1894, and the Mount Saint Joseph Junior College was established in September 1925. By 1929 Mount Saint Joseph Junior College was a member of the American Association of Junior Colleges and the Southern Association of Secondary Schools and Colleges. My great aunts would have attended during the mid- to late 1930s. In 1950 the location of the college was transferred to Owensboro, and the name was changed to Brescia College, now Brescia University.
5. Mama Ham was my great-grandmother, Lena Frances Ritchie Hamilton. My father’s parents, Robert Francis Hamilton Sr. and Alice Elizabeth Bunger Hamilton, raised their family on a farm between both their parents’ farms, near Big Spring in Meade County, Kentucky, so my father had the opportunity to hear family news directly from his grandparents.
6. This came from an April 22, 2011, phone call with my parents, Martha Jane Hager Hamilton and Robert Francis Hamilton Jr., after they read a draft of this chapter.
7. This detail came from a May 23, 2011, phone call with my cousin, Charlie Hamilton. Both Charlie and Dale Hamilton are sons of Lamar Hamilton, an older brother of Mary Helen Hamilton Ferrara. Lamar’s family lived in Jefferson County, Kentucky.
This Is the Story . . .
1. My mother’s mother, Lillian Clara Medley Hager, lived in Meade County, Kentucky. Because I had four grandparents, four great-grandparents, and two great-great-grandmothers when I was born, none of them were known to me by the more common grandma, grandpa, or other grandparent titles. As a result, I grew up knowing the given names of most of my grandparents.
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INDEX
adapting. See family storytelling: shaping for strangers; folktales: adapting for retelling; personal narrative
Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship, 98, 103, 127, 202–3n6
audience: addressing directly during storytelling, 77, 81, 105, 111, 202
age, ho
mogenous vs. mixed, 61–62, 90–91
matching story with, 90–91, 116
participation, 5, 90, 101, 103, 104–5, 114, 162–63
reactions, 31, 50–51, 89, 91, 104, 116, 168, 178–79
reactions changing delivery, 62, 69, 88–89, 104–5, 162, 171–72
reactions changing story, 1, 31, 34, 56, 57, 60–62, 66, 69, 87, 88, 91, 120, 128, 150, 162–63
blending stories, 88
“Blue Light, The,” 52–56
“Blue Light, The” (archival text), 57–58
body language, 61, 71–72, 102–5, 114, 162, 168, 171–72, 176–77
“Bushel of Corn, The,” 68
classroom uses, 17, 172, 207–8
coaching, 34, 56, 87, 195, 198–99n3, 201n8
comic relief. See humor
copyright, 17, 177. See also permission
“Daniel Boone on the Hunt,” 65–66
dialogue. See voice
endings, 56, 60–62, 150, 199n3
“Enormous Bear, The,” 95–98
expression. See body language; voice
facial expression. See body language
family storytelling, 207, 209
context in family, 168, 170–71, 181–83
shaping for strangers 170–72
“Farmer Brown’s Crop,” 67–68
“Farmer’s Smart Daughter, The,” 106–10
“Flannel Mouth,” 45–47
“Flannel Mouth (Lewis),” 49–50
folk arts, 191
folktales: adapting for retelling, 2, 24–26, 31, 34–35, 40–44, 48–49, 56–57, 60, 68–69, 71, 87–90, 101, 103–5, 111–12, 115–16, 127–29, 139, 143–50, 153–54, 161–62
classifying, 154–55, 196n1
comparing versions, 21–22, 29–31, 41–43, 71, 72, 74–75, 99–101, 115–16, 120, 128, 143, 144, 153–54, 199n1, 204n2
“Fortune Teller, The,” 113–14
fourth wall, 202
gesture. See body language
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