enjoyed during your past summer?” Next, “What are your favorite books?”
Through a careful study of the students’ responses to these questions
I gain a knowledge of the literary background and taste of each
individual of whom I shall strive to make a successful story teller.
Discussion of these books which the students know and like leads us
into the field of basic principles of selection in literature. Brief
studies of a few typical short stories, analysis of purpose, structure,
and style follow.
Realizing that the two absolute essentials in a successful story
teller are, on the one hand, a sympathetic knowledge of the best in
literature, and on the other, real understanding of the child, we read
together as much of the best literature about children as time permits.
Our first approach to the story for the child is through a discussion
of favorite fairy tales, remembered from the student’s own childhood.
Comparison shows that there are many common favorites, further study
reveals these same stories as favorites of generations of children.
Re-telling and enjoying these we gradually search out the secret of
their universal appeal and come to formulate a standard embodying the
essential characteristics which all stories for children should contain.
This knowledge of type stories is further developed by a brief study
of Norse Myths and Folk Tales. No other literature gives quite so well
the fundamental characteristics of action, simplicity and embodiment
of ideals as does the Norse. The student who has read Mabie’s Norse
Myths, Dasent’s Popular Tales from the Norse, Stories from Bjornstern
and Selma Lagerlöf, absorbs the essential characteristics of the best
story and can scarcely help telling a story with vigor, simplicity,
directness and imaginative appeal.
Sympathetic attitude toward child and story and basis for selection of
stories in the light of fundamental principles of literature having
been developed, we next formulate the requisites of a good story teller
and methods of story telling. This is done through story telling in
class under criticism and a study of such books as: Voice and Spiritual
Education, by Corson; How to Tell Stories to Children, by Sara Cone
Bryant; Stories and Story Telling, by Porter St. John. We study,
re-tell, adapt, and collect in a manuscript story book such stories as
are particularly suitable for use in the kindergarten.
The demand for story tellers in the schools, in playground and library
work, in social centers and Sunday schools, led to the establishing
of a course in story telling and children’s literature at George
Washington University. This course is credited both in the teacher’s
department and in the English department of the University.
The work consists of lectures, required readings and reports. The
history of the story, its relation to literature, its relation to the
child, the story as a moral force, methods of story telling, including
adaptation, preparation, and presentation are a few of the topics
discussed. Studies of groups of animal stories, folk and fairy tales,
hero tales, Bible stories, Christmas and Thanksgiving stories, spring
stories and humorous stories constitute the content of the course.
Every student of children’s stories not only gains a deeper
appreciation of the best in literature and an added sympathy with and
understanding of the child, but also discovers an inexhaustible source
of usefulness and joy.
Story Telling for Camp Fire Girls
By Ellen Kate Gross
_Chief Guardian, Children’s Playground Association of Baltimore, Md._
Apropos to our conversation at the Richmond Congress in regard to
stories for Camp Fire Girls, the following plea is submitted to your
editorial board with the hope that your splendid magazine will help us
in one phase of our work.
In furthering the development of the Camp Fire Girls, there arises the
necessity for a supply of Indian folk tales well told and embodying the
out-of-door spirit of the Indian and his ideals. Moreover the various
points of the law of the Camp Fire can best be exemplified through
stories which develop the ideal held up. This law is to
“Seek beauty
Give service
Pursue knowledge
Hold on to health
Glorify work
Be happy”
The following suggestive list may illustrate how this method can be
carried out,—the thought and meaning of each precept being developed
through one of the stories named.
_SEEK BEAUTY_
Hawthorne, “The Great Stone Face.”
Kingsley, “Water Babies”—in parts.
_GIVE SERVICE_
Robert Louis Stevenson, “Prince Otto.”
Stockton, “Old Pypes and the Dryad,” in Fanciful Tales.
Biographies and Autobiographies.
Example “Florence Nightingale.”
“Lucretia Mott.”
“The Little Hero of Haarlem”
Emile Poulsson, “Nahum Prince,” in “In the Child’s World.”
_BE TRUSTWORTHY_
“Ruth and Esther,” told in Hamilton Mabie’s “Stories Every Child
Should Know.”
_GLORIFY WORK_
19th Psalm.
Lives of Burbank, Edison and other Inventors.
“The Basket Weaver.”
“Beowulf,” in Hamilton Mabie’s “Legends Every Child Should Know.”
“The Message to Garcia,” by Elbert Hubbard.
_BE HAPPY_
“King Midas.”
“Ugly Duckling.”
“Pine Tree that changed its Leaves.”
King Arthur tales.
If some of these stories or similar ones, and also some Indian legends
could be published in your magazine from time to time, it would be a
great help to those who are working with Camp Fire Girls.
“Wohelo”
“Wohelo,” the musical cry of the Camp Fire Girls was sounded by more
than nine hundred of them at the first Grand Council held in the 69th
Regiment Armory, New York City, recently.
Clad in the picturesque attire of the American Indian, they sat in
a big circle around three lighted candles, representing their three
foundation principles, and groups of lights representing real camp
fires, a Camp Fire ceremonial which is performed to the music of “Burn,
Fire; Burn!”
Under the supervision of the guardian Hiltini, who is Mrs. Luther
H. Gulick, three other guardians, Mrs. Bradley, Mrs. Weber and Miss
McCarthy, representing respectively WORK, HEALTH, LOVE, lighted the
camp fire by the Indian expedient of rubbing two sticks together.
The call of the Camp Fire Girls, “Wohelo,” is formed by the first
syllables of the three foundation words of their organization: WORK,
HEALTH, LOVE.
The Play Spirit in America
Those who have lost the play spirit are beginning to die. These were
the words of Dr. Cabot of the Massachusetts General Hospital of Boston
at the recent Congress of the Playground and Recreation Association
of America, held at Richmond, Va. True recreation is re-creation—to
be made anew from day to day, mind and body. The old saying that all
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy is true of adults as well as
children. It is more important that adults emphasize recreation for
themselves than for the child. It is so much easier for grown people to
forget to play.
The serious person is only half awake. Seriousness often excludes humor
and thus shuts out the play spirit in life. The serious person is not
always thoroughly in earnest. He who excludes humor and play cannot be
in earnest because he does not use all the resources at his command.
Young people are always earnest; play and humor are part of their
program.
The calculating business man sitting in his close office or the hard
taskmaster sitting at a teacher’s desk may be making a living and yet
not living but prematurely dying. Compare such a one with a group of
young people who shout and laugh in joyous play or work outside and ask
yourself which is preferable, which is life? The business man once had
the play spirit but he has lost it, and with it life and its joy. When
he went to school years ago he was not taught to live but to calculate;
not to think but to imitate and accumulate a living, not a life. He has
been true to his teaching. He might be rescued even now if he could be
made to see the necessity for play and feel the rejuvenating effect of
rhythmic games. He must get rid of the idea that it is undignified for
a grown man or woman to play, to join hands in a circle, to shout and
laugh and sing and play games on the green.
The American people must be taught recreation, not only in public
playgrounds but the necessity of using home, lawn and yard for play for
child and adult as well. We must get rid of the idea that people are
made for parks and substitute the idea, parks are made for people.
A one-time city superintendent of schools in a large city and for a
number of years a college president recently spent a year on his farm
and says that as a result his whole feeling and view toward life has
been changed by the year of recreation. To have normal feelings is more
important than abnormal knowledge. Knowledge is sometimes weakness
rather than power.
A child without a playground is the father of a man without a job, says
one of our playground officials, and we might add that a man without
play will soon be a man without a job and without health. It is high
time that school faculties realize their sin in failing themselves to
play. Enthusiastic teachers often study and teach all the winter, then
go to a summer school and pile on more of the same kind of work. We
recognize the evil of this, yet few are brave enough to stop in the
midst of work and play and teach play. Summer schools should send their
students back home rejuvenated, with renewed health and enthusiasm
and with a new feeling for life rather than book-burdened, tired and
nervous.
We have in America a wealth of folk-games, folk-dances, folk-songs,
folk-stories brought hither by the various races of Europe, that would
give us wholesome recreation,—a folk-culture, yet we stand idly by and
let an ignorant commercial schemer run a dance hall and give our young
people dissipation instead of recreation. Churches and homes make a
great mistake when they say “Don’t do this” or that and stop there. We
must be positive and say “Do this, these are the games to play, these
are the songs to sing, these are the stories to tell, come and join
us.” If good people do not give us good recreation, bad people will
give us bad recreation and make us pay for it. A machine can add a
column of figures for us, another person can spell a word for us, but
no one else can recreate or have health, personality and enthusiasm for
us.
R. T. W.
Invocation
Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones
Father, make us glad that we are here, glad in the dear fellowships of
the past, glad in the strong ties that bind us to our tasks, glad of
the tasks. O Thou Burden Giver, lift us above the selfishness of the
ease-seeker.
¶ Father, we come to listen to Thy commissions. Grant us power to go
into the dark places of human lives, the sad places of human hearts,
and in Thy name speak the word that may bring strength, peace,
consolation. Father, help us to realize the opportunities that await
us; gird us anew for the high and holy warfare wherein the weapons are
the instruments of love, the counters of kindness. Help us to forget
the things that hurt, to rise above all discouragements, to dwell with
Thee in deathless places; to rejoice with Thee in the boundless realms
where the petty lines of caste, class and sect, of race and prejudice,
do not obtain, but where Thy children, conscious of Thy Fatherhood,
rejoice in the largeness of the love that includes all races, all
climes, and all ages.
¶ Father, take our hands and touch them with usefulness. Take our feet
that they may be shod with willingness. Take our hearts that they may
glow with kindness. Take our minds and tutor them in the way of truth.
Take our voices and tune them to the universal harmonies, that in
finite time we may sound some notes of thy never-ending song. Amen
What the Leagues are Doing
The closing meeting of the Knickerbocker Story Tellers’ League of New
York City, for the season 1913, was held on Saturday evening, May 17th.
The recent work of the League has been directed along the lines of the
English, Spanish and American Schools of Art. At a previous meeting
the stories of the Florentine, Flemish and Dutch Schools were told and
no actual reading was done throughout the entire evening. Mrs. Estelle
Davis Burt, the President, handled the topic Dutch Art.
* * * * *
The last meeting of the Atlanta Story Tellers’ League is reported by
Mr. George B. Hinman as the most interesting of the year.
Mrs. Goodman gave a very charming and illuminating account of her visit
with Mr. R. T. Wyche to the Knickerbocker Story Tellers’ League in New
York, and Mrs. Stevens told a most interesting original story, which
held her audience spellbound throughout. Miss Ray Klein, who is one of
the friends of the League, told a beautiful fairy story. The attendance
was large and appreciative.
* * * * *
The Story Tellers’ League of Little Rock, Arkansas, held its closing
meeting at the public library in May, when the following officers
were elected: Miss Eliza Hockins, president; Miss Grace Boyce,
vice-president; Miss Johnnie Bledsoe, secretary and treasurer. The
program was excellent. Miss Marguerite English told of “The Hall of
Heroes”; Mrs. L. W. Cherry told an Egyptian legend, adding to the
beautiful story by touches of personal experience in Egypt; Mrs. W. B.
Rawlings told the story of a Syrian mother; Miss Abbie Whitcomb gave
the story of a Parisian boy hero in her usual expressive way.
* * * * *
A conference was held May 27, 1913, at the Sinton Hotel from three to
five, with Dr. Richard Wyche, President of the National Story Tellers’
League of New York, who has started a magazine for the benefit of story
tellers, entitled “The Storytellers’ Magazine.” Dr. Lester Riley, Miss
Pearl Carpenter, Miss Alice Adele Folger, Miss Annie Laws, Miss Marie
Dickore, Miss Josephine Simrall and others of the Cincinnati branch of
the National Story Tellers’ League were present.—_Cincinnati Commercial
Tribune._
From the Editor’s Study
The revival of interest in story telling on the part of educators today
is due perhaps more to scientific men than any other group. The old
conception of the child was that he was born in depravity and therefore
his natural impulses were bad, and he should be repressed. Methods of
suppression resulted; the child had no rights. If the things he was
compelled to study were meaningless and obnoxious to him, well and
good. The things he was interested in were ignored.
But with the coming of the biologist, geologist, and psychologist,
we have seen a world of growth and change, reaching back into the
immeasurable past, and man in this order, not fallen and depraved, but
natural and normal with his face to the morning, ever moving upward
and onward. The students of history, primitive art and folk-literature
have traced for us the path-way along which the soul of the race, ever
growing into self-realization gave expression to its beliefs, its
hopes, its prayers and its religion, in myth, fairy story, folk-lore
and folk epic. As one who travels through low land and forest yet ever
climbing reaches an upland peak and looking back sees path, forest,
field and rim of sea all in the perspective of beauty, so we today
looking back have an infinitely larger and deeper view of life and its
meaning. It is this view that has changed our attitude toward the child
and will result in our setting him, “the last serf of civilization
free.”
This new valuation of the child, respect for his rights and a better
understanding of his needs has brought story telling to the front
again. It is true that the race and the individual of all races have
had stories told them more or less by troubadour and rhapsodist—the old
story tellers, chief among them Homer, but not until modern times have
educators so seriously studied this story as a means of education.
For many centuries literature lived orally and was handed down by the
story tellers; but when printing was invented the teacher began to
busy himself with grammar for young and old alike, until language form
became an end instead of a means.
Man in his development did not invent letters and language with the
hope that he might have something to say, but he had so much to say
he was compelled to invent language in order to express himself. So
with the child, we must feed the springs of imagination and emotion
if we would give him something to express. As a tree puts forth leaf
and blossom in obedience to the laws of life within, so will the child
give back in vital expression the things that nurture his inner life.
Expression is life, suppression is death. It is the recognition of this
truth that has given us the pedagogical basis for the story, whether it
be re-telling, dramatization or illustration of the story; modelling
into clay, carving into wood or motiving in life.
Man becomes like that which he admires, therefore, stories of noble
deed and great heroes are used in school and Sunday-school for
character building in place of memorizing abstract statements.
Young people will read books from which interesting stories have been
told them, therefore many of the public libraries have a story teller
for the children’s room, who by story telling, directs the reading
of the children for a whole community. Story telling is a means
of recreation and pure pleasure, therefore the public playgrounds
throughout the land have their story tellers for the young people.
Parents who tell in their homes the right kind of stories make an
atmosphere in which a soul can grow and bind their off-spring to them
with spiritual ties, the most lasting of all.
Story telling is an alluring subject for study, a means of delightful
social intercourse and reinforcement for life, therefore many have
organized themselves into the National Story Tellers’ League and its
local branches.
It is to deal with this work of story telling in all of its aspects
that the STORYTELLERS’ MAGAZINE is founded. It is our purpose to point
out as far as we can the vital principles that underlie the whole
movement.
The question of what stories to tell is supremely important. We cannot
tell or read one-hundredth part of the good stories. In order to answer
this question, we propose to re-tell in the pages of the magazine some
of the best stories recognized by educators the world over; and by
articles from specialists, point out the stories most worth while from
the standpoint of literature. It is true we shall deal as do the oral
story tellers with much of the old literature but with a creative touch
that will give it the breath of life, making it a living literature and
a new expression of American life and art.
We propose to answer the question of what stories to tell by a study
of the child and his needs in the various periods of his development.
Stories that contribute most to the making of ideal womanhood and
manhood, in the last analysis, are the stories to emphasize.
The ancient story teller who by fireside or in royal court told stories
of their nation heroes like King Arthur, Siegfried or Ulysses had quite
a simple and direct use for the story compared to the situation today.
With the complexity of modern life the use of the story becomes far
more rich and varied. We expect through short articles from authorities
in this work to point out all legitimate uses of the story.
Many a one has a gift for story telling but knows not how to use it. We
shall have an occasional article by those who have made a success of
story telling and can speak from experience.
When we think of the many educational institutions and individual
workers taking up this work of story telling, and when we see the many
young men and women who could, if they but knew how, become evangels
of the fine art of story telling, and when we hear the voices of the
great multitudes of children in neglected country districts as well as
cities, saying “tell us a story” surely there is an opportunity and a
call to service for THE STORYTELLERS’ MAGAZINE.
American thought is in a creative period. Old forms in education, art,
religion and government are assuming new forms to fit new conditions.
The story telling movement is one with this growing life. Let us make
it a true expression of the Nation’s best life. We are still young;
much lies ahead of us. In the spirit of the great heroes of the old
story books let us spread every sail, make for the mid-seas and
discover lands not laid down in any chart.
In this issue of THE STORYTELLERS’ MAGAZINE will be found the initial
number of Miss Martin’s admirable King Arthur Series, composed of
twelve stories, as follows:
1. Merlin and His Prophecies.
2. How Arthur Won His Kingdom.
3. How Arthur won His Sword “Excalibur,” his Bride and his Round
Table.
4. The Adventures of Gareth—the Kitchen Knave.
5. The Adventures of Geraint.
6. The Adventures of Tristram, the Forest Knight.
7. The Adventures of Launcelot of the Lake.
8. The Dolorous Stroke.
9. The Coming of Galahad.
10. The Quest of the Sangreal.
11. The Achieving of the Sangreal.
12. The Passing of Arthur.
At least one story will appear in each succeeding issue of the Magazine
until the series is finished, and should space permit, possibly two
stories will appear in some of the numbers.
The Immortal Stories
They were told long before anybody had learned how to write them out,
though most of the fairy tales which the children feed on now are of
the second crop, to be sure.
Dr. Greville MacDonald, writing in the _Contemporary Review_ of “The
Fairy Tale in Education,” insists as strongly as Ruskin did upon the
vital importance of the fairy story in the right kind of ministering
to children. He regrets the tendency among the science worshipers to
regard the fairy tale as a weed of superstition, to be pulled up and
cast out with all such worn out beliefs. And he goes on:
“The fairy tale is a wild flower. It is native to that pasture of
aboriginal, uncultivated innocence wherein, among the roots of grass
and flowers, the elemental passions dwell....
“Not the least important of these elemental passions is the individual
sense of unity with the world beyond. It is dominant in all unspoiled
peasant folk, and dormant when not dominant in all children. It takes
concrete form in folk-lore, folk-song and folk-dance. It throve
fearlessly in the thirteenth century painters, in the Gothic masons and
glass stainers of the great cathedrals. It is, indeed, the elemental
gift in whose atmosphere and inspiration the true art grows. Hence
comes the child’s fellow feeling with all simple life—his clutching at
the flower, his delight in kitten, bird or butterfly. These are fellow
creatures all, allies in “effort and expectation and desire.”
Dr. MacDonald is not worried by the protest that fairy tales sometimes
have “bad morals.” He finds much popular confusion between the words
“meaning” and “moral” in such complaints. What we do actually and
rightly dislike, he thinks, is a moral label.
This is why the short sighted, the unco guid, or those whose “heads are
filled with science” (to paraphrase a great writer), stupidly object
to the fairy tale; they always want to append a copy book moral. The
bad figures in fairy tales often play tricks successfully upon the good
ones, but the child is not thereby deceived. His unerring instinct,
unwarped by any sophistry of man’s education, pierces all the shams,
and he loves the good and turns away, just as surely, from the bad.
The spiritual sense of what is deeply true is integral in the child’s
imagination, and must be held sacred.—_N. Y. Evening Sun._
From the Book Shelf
“IN OLDEST ENGLAND,” by G. P. Krapp. Price, 75 cents. Longmans, Green
& Co., New York.
Dr. Krapp, a professor of literature in Columbia University, has given
us an interesting and valuable book, for both youth and adult. He
relates in an interesting way the story of England’s history, from the
beginning up to the Norman conquest, using facts, ancient manuscripts,
pictures and early literature to tell the story. He makes an appeal to
the imagination, to re-create those far-off days, that we may fully
realize how our ancestors lived a thousand years ago.