The Art of the Story-Teller | Page 5

accurate original
form.
While traveling in America, I was provided with a delightful appendix
to this story. I had been telling Miss Longfellow and her sister the little
girl's version of the Siege of Troy, and Mrs. Thorpe made the following
comment, with the American humor the dryness of which adds so much
to its value:
"I never realized before," she said, "how glad the Greeks must have
been to sit down even inside a horse, when they had been standing for
eleven years."
3. The danger of introducing unfamiliar words is the very opposite
danger of the one to which I have just alluded; it is the taking for
granted that children are acquainted with the meaning of certain words
upon which turns some important point in the story. We must not
introduce, without at least a passing explanation, words which, if not
rightly understood, would entirely alter the picture we wish to present.
I had once promised to tell stories to an audience of Irish peasants, and
I should like to state here that, though my travels have brought me in
touch with almost every kind of audience, I have never found one where
the atmosphere is so "self-prepared" as in that of a group of Irish

peasants. To speak to them, especially on the subject of fairy- tales, is
like playing on a delicate harp: the response is so quick and the
sympathy so keen. Of course, the subject of fairy-tales is one which is
completely familiar to them and comes into their everyday life. They
have a feeling of awe with regard to fairies, which is very deep in some
parts of Ireland.
On this particular occasion I had been warned by an artist friend who
had kindly promised to sing songs between the stories, that my
audience would be of varying age and almost entirely illiterate. Many
of the older men and women, who could neither read nor write, had
never been beyond their native village. I was warned to be very simple
in my language and to explain any difficult words which might occur in
the particular Indian story I had chosen for that night, namely, "The
Tiger, the Jackal and the Brahman."[3]--at a proper distance, however,
lest the audience should class him with the wild animals. I then went on
with my story, in the course of which I mentioned a buffalo. In spite of
the warning I had received, I found it impossible not to believe that the
name of this animal would be familiar to any audience. I, therefore,
went on with the sentence containing this word, and ended it thus: "And
then the Brahman went a little further and met an old buffalo turning a
wheel."
The next day, while walking down the village street, I entered into
conversation with a thirteen-year-old girl who had been in my audience
the night before and who began at once to repeat in her own words the
Indian story in questions. When she came to the particular sentence I
have just quoted, I was greatly startled to hear her version, which ran
thus: "And the priest went on a little further, and he met another old
gentleman pushing a wheelbarrow." I stopped her at once, and not
being able to identify the sentence as part of the story I had told, I
questioned her a little more closely. I found that the word "buffalo,"
had evidently conveyed to her mind an old "buffer" whose name was
"Lo," probably taken to be an Indian form of appellation, to be treated
with tolerance though it might not be Irish in sound. Then, not knowing
of any wheel more familiarly than that attached to a barrow, the young
narrator completed the picture in her own mind--but which, one must

admit, had lost something of the Indian atmosphere which I had
intended to gather about.
4. The danger of claiming cooperation of the class by means of
questions is more serious for the teacher than the child, who rather
enjoys the process and displays a fatal readiness to give any sort of
answer if only he can play a part in the conversation. If we could in any
way depend on the children giving the kind of answer we expect, all
might go well and the danger would be lessened; but children have a
perpetual way of frustrating our hopes in this direction, and of landing
us in unexpected bypaths from which it is not always easy to return to
the main road without a very violent reaction. As illustrative of this, I
quote from the "The Madness of Philip," by Josephine Daskam Bacon,
a truly delightful essay on child psychology in the guise of the lightest
of stories.
The scene takes place in a kindergarten, where a bold