Musing on the Traditional Story

“Bring on the night, I couldn’t stand another hour of daylight”

A line from a song ‘Bring On the Night’, composed and performed by the pop band ‘The Police’ in 1980. Rather than dealing with depression, one can interpret this line uttered by an impatient member of an audience, waiting for the next story to be told. For a traditional storyteller, the night used to be their backdrop in which to recite, spin and weave their tales. The coming of the night marked a different rhythm. What showed in the face of the storyteller, was a readyness to respond to and make articulate, the rhythm of the night.

The storyteller was attuned to this acquiescent rhythm, that took over as a compulsive daily rhythm, fitted to daily tasks, faded. The storyteller was able to draw on a memory replete with often repeated incidents. The good ones had a sense of pattern and prided themselves on knowing and keeping to it. As they had few possessions, visible tangeable usable things were valued. Things remain ‘real’ while mental states become doubtful to us.

Told through generations, the traditional stories projected the deepest wishes of the folk, in the process generalising diverse characters into a few types. Incidents would be selected that would most strikingly illustrate what heroes an heroines, witches, giants, dwarves, fabulous creatures, the haughty, the envious and the unfaithful were capable of. The incidents are marvelous, yet the human situation has to be recognisable. We can think upon them, reflect over them. The people who listened went to the storyteller for release, leaving their daily affairs outside the house door. Elders and the young sat around camp fires or a stove. They had belief in magic, witchcraft, transformation, yet in the stories human behavior is in accordance with a fine ideal.

Wilhelm Grimm was aware of “fragmants of belief dating back to most ancient times, in which the spiritual things are expressed in a figurative manner.” He explained “the mythic element resembles small pieces of a shattered jewel which are lying strewn on the ground all overgrown with grass and flowers, and can only be discovered by the most far-seing eye. Their signification has been lost, but it is still felt and imparts value to the story.”

When I think of ‘light’ and its connotations, my first thoughts are of information, of life, symbolic of joy and hope. Yet in the context of the decline traditional story, it plays a leading role, though not the only part. As technology prolonged light into the night, the rhythm weakened along with traditional stories not longer being viewed as being appropriate. Widespread language over-arched dialects, gradually rendering traditional stories as obscure. Traditions lost their flavour, no longer having a firm hold on the kernel of the thing signified. Young people went to school to read, the newspaper took the place of the traditional storyteller, the master of memories.