The Stories We Tell: Oral Tradition

Before the development of writing systems, storytelling was one of the only methods of communicating the wonder of the world.  Storytellers would regale the gathered people with tales about gods, about successful or unsuccessful hunts, about their history. Someone in the next generation would memorize the stories so he could take the storyteller's place around the fire someday.

The tradition continued around the world even after the invention of writing, with the Gaelic shanachie, family stories at holiday gatherings, sermons in churches all over the world. Even social gatherings have their share of swapped stories.

I grew up in a family with a rich oral tradition. My father's side, a mix of Welsh, French Canadian, and Ojibwe, told stories about their lifestyle, which centered around the North Woods and hunting, reckless adventures growing up poor in Milwaukee, and a certain amount of bravado and subsequent error.  My mother's family told stories with word play and puns, with my grandmother serving as the straight man.



A hunting story on my father's side:

Grandpa had decided to teach his sons how to hunt pheasant. "Boys," he said, "What we do is line up in this field here, and spread out aways from each other. The dog'll flush up a pheasant, then each of us has a try to shoot the pheasant flying by.

"Unless it's a hen pheasant -- they're the brown ones. You're not supposed to shoot hen pheasants. So if you see a hen, shout down the line so that nobody else tries at it. Got it?"

All three boys nod.

It was a bad day hunting -- the hunting dog stayed listless and quiet. The spirits of the hunters drooped, because the pheasant was to be their dinner.

Suddenly the dog yipped, running toward a tussock. A pheasant burst out of the grass.

The youngest, my Uncle Larry, who was no more than four and wasn't even armed, yelled "Hen" in a quavering voice.

The middle son, my Uncle Ron, at 7, again not armed, yelled "Hen!" miserably.

My father, age 9, kept his shotgun down and sighed, "Hen!"

Grandpa thought for just a moment, raised his gun and shot --

"Hen! Heh heh heh."

The family had supper that night.



A story from Mom's side of the family:

Seventeen-year-old Aunt Marie approaches Grandma with a proclamation: "I'm going to marry Wayne."

"I forbid it," Grandma snapped.

"Then I'll elope," Aunt Marie countered.

"You can't elope!"

"You watermelon!"

(If you don't get this, read it aloud.)




I have changed these stories by writing them down. I have tried to use the language of the people involved, but my writing techniques have crept in.  In the spoken story, I could merely use tone of voice and gesture and not provided cues to emotion. However, these changes would have happened even in the transmission of the stories from generation to generation. For example, a Native American cautionary tale about white animals being sacred, one passed down in my family, has morphed into a story about a hunter shooting a white deer and being arrested by Wisconsin Conservation.

I have changed these stories by writing them down in a way that freezes them in time and place. When you read a written story like these, you read an "official" version of the story, and you will go back and read this again to get the story right. It has no way to adapt to the needs of the generations to come -- a change in the settings, a change in the consequences.  Grandpa will always be the one to shoot the hen. The elopement story will always be between a mother and daughter.

This is why, when someone suggests I collect my family stories and save them so others can read them, I am reluctant to do so.