THE ART OF STORY-TELLING
THE ART OF
STORY-TELLING
With Nearly Half a Hundred Stories
BY
JULIA DARROW COWLES
Author of “Stories to Tell”
[Illustration]
CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG & CO.
1914
Copyright by
Julia Darrow Cowles
1914
Published March, 1914
W. F. HALL PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO
PREFACE
In preparing this book the author has sought to awaken a keener
perception and a higher appreciation of the artistic and ethical value of
story-telling; to simplify some of its problems; to emphasize the true
delight which the story-teller may share with her hearers; and to present
fresh material which answers to the test of being good in substance as
well as in literary form.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Miss Mabel Bartleson, children’s
librarian, and to Miss Ida May Ferguson, of the children’s department
of the Minneapolis Public Library, for their thoughtful assistance, and
to the authors and publishers of copyrighted stories included in this
volume, for their generous aid. Specific credit is given in connection
with each story.
J. D. C.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PART I
I. STORY-TELLING IN THE HOME 1
II. WHY TELL STORIES IN SCHOOL? 16
III. HOW TO CHOOSE STORIES FOR TELLING 22
IV. THE TELLING OF THE STORY 32
V. USE OF THE STORY IN PRIMARY GRADES 41
VI. JINGLES, FABLES, AND FOLK-LORE 52
VII. MYTH AND HERO TALE 67
VIII. HOLIDAY AND VACATION STORIES 84
IX. BIBLE STORIES 89
X. SYSTEMATIC STORY-TELLING 94
XI. THE JOY OF STORY-TELLING 100
XII. STORY-TELLING AS AN ART 104
PART II
SELECTED STORIES TO TELL 113
INDEX OF SELECTED STORIES 263
TOPICAL INDEX OF STORIES 265
BOOKS FOR THE STORY-TELLER 267
“_The Word Painter is the Greatest Human Artist_”
PART I
THE ART OF STORY-TELLING
CHAPTER I
Story-Telling in the Home
The home, the school, and the library have each a distinct purpose in
story-telling. These purposes may be more or less complex, they may in
some instances coincide, yet the fields are separate, and each has its
own fundamental reason for presenting the oral story to the child.
In the home, the chief object in story-telling is to give content, to
satisfy. The child, becoming tired of his toys or of his games, comes
to his mother and begs for a story. He wants to be taken into her
lap, cuddled within her arms, and entertained. Oh, the wonderful, the
far-reaching opportunities held by the mother in such moments as these!
The child is in a quiet, receptive mood, and the stories told him at such
times will never be forgotten; their influence will follow him as long
as he lives. Nothing that he can learn in school in the after years
will abide and enter into the essence of his being as will the stories
which his mother tells him. Strength of character, purity of life,
truthfulness, unselfishness, obedience, faith—all may be made beautiful
and attractive by means of stories.
Nor is the directly ethical training the greatest good achieved by
story-telling in the home. Nothing else so closely links mother and
child in a sweet fellowship and communion of thought. Nothing else so
intimately binds them together, nor so fully secures the confidence of
the child. When they enter together the enchanted realm of story-land,
mother and child are in a region apart, a region from which others are
excluded. The companionship of story-land belongs only to congenial
souls. And so the mother, by means of stories, becomes the intimate
companion, the loving and wise guide, the dearest confidant of her child.
Not all the stories of the home need be ethical in their teaching, though
all stories worth telling have a foundation of truth. There should be a
wise blending of fairy stories, mythological tales, fables, nonsense
verses, and true nature stories; and the advantage of story-telling
is that it may be carried on in connection with many of the household
duties, with no diminishing of the story’s charm. While the mother sews
or embroiders or mends, while she stirs a cake, or washes dishes, she can
tell a story which will not only entertain or influence the child, but
will carry her own thoughts away from the ofttimes dullness of her task
into realms of beauty and delight. Then, too, many a childish task may
be robbed of its seemingly tedious character by the telling of a story
during its progress, or as a reward when the task is completed.
Let me beg of you, mothers, do not think that you cannot tell stories.
Try; try; keep on trying; and ease in telling is bound to come. Do not
think of yourself in the telling; think of the story and of the child who
listens. Nothing else matters.
It takes time to search out and familiarize oneself with just the stories
that are best worth telling, but surely no mother can find a more
important or more worthy object upon which to expend the time. Librarians
and story-tellers within the past few years have prepared lists which
make such selection, comparatively easy, mid classified lists are
included in the present volume.
The very little child can grasp only the simplest story, but the
essential facts of any story which he can comprehend, can be simply
told. A story for a little child should have few characters, little if
any plot, and a familiarity of action or place. Mother Goose and similar
nursery rhymes naturally come first for little children in the home. The
kindergarten collections of stories contain good material, and these can
be followed by or interspersed with the simplest myths and fairy tales.
Just as children love the companionship of animals, so do they love
stories of animals; and when these animals do the things that children
do, an element of surprise and new delight is added. Children intuitively
want the right to prevail. They love the old tales wherein animals talk,
and the crafty old fox is always beaten by the good little hen.
Bible stories should be told to children day by day. They can be made
very simple in outline, but they should be told over and over, with
a distinction made between them and the fables and folk tales. The
latter may teach a true lesson, but the former teach _The Truth_. And
not only should we tell the Old Testament stories of heroes and of great
wonders, but the story of Christ’s birth, of his life, his death, and his
resurrection, should be made a part of every child’s early teaching in
the form of stories reverently told. They will make a lasting impression;
an impression deeper than the most eloquent sermon heard in maturer years.
A careful choice of the kind of stories told to little children lays not
only a sound moral foundation, but a foundation for good literary taste.
A child brought up from its earliest years on stories from the Bible,
Anderson, Aesop, Stevenson, and Field, will instinctively detect and
reject trash when he begins to read for himself. But the supply of good
literature must be kept at hand, for children _will_ read _something_.
What sweeter bit of verse can a mother repeat to the child she is hushing
to sleep than this:
Sleep, little pigeon, and fold your wings—
Little blue pigeon with velvet eyes;
Sleep to the singing of motherbird swinging—
Swinging her nest where her little one lies.
In through the window a moonbeam comes—
Little gold moonbeam with misty wings;
All silently creeping, it asks: “Is he sleeping—
Sleeping and dreaming while mother sings?”
The stanzas are from “A Japanese Lullaby,” and are selected from a host
of similarly dainty verses in _Lullaby Land_, by Eugene Field (Charles
Scribner’s Sons).
Robert Louis Stevenson’s _Child’s Garden of Verse_ is another storehouse
of treasure for mothers. Some of his rhymes, such as “Good and Bad
Children,” are quite equal to Mother Goose in their good advice
administered in quaintly merry form, while his “Foreign Lands” and “My
Shadow” teach children to idealize the everyday happenings of the home
life.
How could a mother better remind her small boy or girl that it is time to
waken than by repeating his lines:
A birdie with a yellow bill
Hopped upon the window-sill,
Cocked his shining eye and said:
“Ain’t you ’shamed, you sleepy-head!”
When a mother habitually repeats to her child stories and verses of the
character outlined, she is not only forming his taste in literature
along right lines, but she is helping to enlarge his vocabulary.
“What does ‘embark’ mean, Mamma?” is sure to follow the first or second
recital of Stevenson’s “My Bed Is a Boat”:
My bed is like a little boat;
Nurse helps me in when I embark;
She girds me in my sailor coat
And starts me in the dark.
And “gird” will also need interpreting. These words will soon become
a part of his normal vocabulary. He may not use them in his everyday
speech, but he will not need to have them explained to him when he
comes upon them in his later reading. Teachers invariably know when a
child comes from a home of culture and of good literary taste, by the
foundation already laid. The child’s own forms of expression and the
range of his vocabulary are unmistakable evidence of the home influence
and teaching.
A literary sequence which will give the child a knowledge of literature
as a development or a growth—not as a vast accumulation of unrelated
parts—can be carried through his reading and study. This subject is
taken up in the chapter upon “Systematic Story-Telling,” and while it is
essentially the work of a teacher, the foundation for it may be laid by
the wise mother who starts her child along right lines through the medium
of her story-telling.
It has already been said that all stories worth the telling have a
foundation of truth. The story with which this chapter closes is a
beautiful example of a nature story which embodies a higher truth. It is
found in Mrs. Gatty’s _Parables from Nature_ (The Macmillan Company):
A Lesson of Faith[1]
A mild, green caterpillar was one day strolling about on a cabbage leaf,
when there settled beside her a beautiful Butterfly.
The Butterfly fluttered her wings feebly, and seemed very ill.
“I feel very strange and dizzy,” said the Butterfly, addressing the
Caterpillar, “and I am sure that I have but a little while to live. But
I have just laid some butterfly eggs on this cabbage leaf, and if I die
there will be no one to care for my baby butterflies. I must hire a
nurse for them at once, but I cannot go far to seek for one. May I hire
you as nurse, kind Caterpillar? I will pay you with gold dust from my
wings.”
Then, before the surprised Caterpillar could reply, the Butterfly went
on, “Of course you must not feed them on the coarse cabbage leaves which
are your food. Young butterflies must be fed upon early dew and the honey
of flowers. And at first, oh, good Caterpillar, they must not be allowed
to fly far, for their wings will not be strong. It is sad that you cannot
fly yourself. But I am sure you will be kind, and will do the best you
can.”
With that the poor Butterfly drooped her wings and died, and the
Caterpillar had no chance to so much as say “Yes,” or “No.”
“Dear me!” she exclaimed, as she looked at the butterfly eggs beside her,
“what sort of a nurse will I make for a group of gay young butterflies?
Much attention they will pay to the advice of a plain caterpillar like
me. But I shall have to do the best that I can,” she added. And all that
night she walked around and around the butterfly eggs to see that no harm
came to them.
“I wish that I had someone wiser than myself to consult with,” she said
to herself next morning. “I might talk it over with the house dog. But,
no,” she added hastily, “he is kind, but big and rough, and one brush of
his tail would whisk all the eggs off the cabbage leaf.
“There is Tom Cat,” she went on, after thinking a few moments, “but he
is lazy and selfish, and he would not give himself the trouble to think
about butterfly eggs.
“Ah, but there’s the Lark!” she exclaimed at length. “He flies far up
into the heavens and perhaps he knows more than we creatures that live
upon the earth. I’ll ask him.”
So the Caterpillar sent a message to the Lark, who lived in a neighboring
cornfield, and she told him all her troubles.
“And I want to know how I, a poor crawling Caterpillar, am to feed and
care for a family of beautiful young butterflies. Could you find out for
me the next time you fly away up into the blue heavens?”
“Perhaps I can,” said the Lark, and off he flew.
Higher and higher he winged his way until the poor, crawling Caterpillar
could not even hear his song, to say nothing of seeing him.
After a very long time—at least it seemed so to the Caterpillar, who,
in her odd, lumbering way, kept walking around and around the butterfly
eggs—the Lark came back.
First, she could hear his song away up in the heavens. Then it sounded
nearer and nearer, till he alighted close beside her and began to speak.
“I found out many wonderful things,” he said. “But if I tell them to you,
you will not believe me.”
“Oh, yes I will,” answered the Caterpillar hastily, “I believe everything
I am told.”
“Well, then,” said the Lark, “the first thing I found out was that the
butterfly eggs will turn into little green caterpillars, just like
yourself, and that they will eat cabbage leaves just as you do.”
“Wretch!” exclaimed the Caterpillar, bristling with indignation. “Why do
you come and mock me with such a story as that? I thought you would be
kind, and would try to help me.”
“So I would,” answered the Lark, “but I told you, you would not believe
me,” and with that he flew away to the cornfield.
“Dear me,” said the Caterpillar, sorrowfully. “When the Lark flies so
far up into the heavens I should not think he would come back to us poor
creatures with such a silly tale. And I needed help so badly.”
“I would help you if you would only believe me,” said the Lark, flying
down to the cabbage patch once more. “I have wonderful things to tell
you, if you would only have faith in me and trust in what I say.”
“And you are not making fun of me?” asked the Caterpillar.
“Of course not,” answered the Lark.
“But you tell me such impossible things!”
“If you could fly with me and see the wonders that I see, here on earth,
and away up in the blue sky, you would not say that _anything_ was
_impossible_,” replied the Lark.
“But,” said the Caterpillar, “you tell me that these eggs will hatch out
into caterpillars, and I _know_ that their mother was a butterfly, for I
saw her with my own eyes; and so of course they will be butterflies. How
could they be anything else? I am sure I can reason that far, if I cannot
fly.”
“Very well,” answered the Lark, “then I must leave you, though I have
even more wonderful things that I could tell. But what comes to you from
the heavens, you can only receive by faith, as I do. You cannot crawl
around on your cabbage leaf and reason these things out.”
“Oh, I do believe what I am told,” repeated the Caterpillar—although she
had just proved that it was not true—“at least,” she added, “everything
that is _reasonable_ to believe. Pray tell me what else you learned.”
“I learned,” said the Lark, impressively, “that you will be a butterfly,
yourself, some day.”
“Now, indeed, you are making fun of me,” exclaimed the Caterpillar, ready
to cry with vexation and disappointment. But just at that moment she
felt something brush against her side, and, turning her head, she looked
in amazement at the cabbage leaf, for there, just coming out of the
butterfly eggs, were eight or ten little green caterpillars—and they were
no more than out of the eggs before they began eating the juicy leaf.
Oh, how astonished and how ashamed the Caterpillar felt. What the Lark
had said was true!
And then a very wonderful thought came to the poor, green Caterpillar.
“If this part is true, it must all be true, and some day _I_ shall be a
_butterfly_.”
She was so delighted that she began telling all her caterpillar friends
about it—but they did not believe her any more than she had believed the
Lark.
“But I know, I _know_,” she kept saying to herself. And she never tired
of hearing the Lark sing of the wonders of the earth below, and of the
heavens above.
And all the time, the little green caterpillars on the leaf grew and
thrived wonderfully, and the big green Caterpillar watched them and cared
for them carefully every hour.
One day the Caterpillar’s friends gathered around her and said, very
sorrowfully, “It is time for you to spin your chrysalis and die.”
But the Caterpillar replied, “You mean that I shall soon be changed into
a beautiful butterfly. How wonderful it will be.”
And her friends looked at one another sadly and said, “She is quite out
of her mind.”
Then the Caterpillar spun her chrysalis and went to sleep.
And by and by, when she wakened, oh, then she _knew_ that what the Lark
had learned in the heavens was true—for she was a beautiful butterfly,
with gold dust on her wings.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Adapted for telling. By permission of the publishers.