How to Tell Stories to Children, And Some Stories to Tell Part 24

And everybody worked with all his might,--not a sound could you hear but the scratching of pens on the "France: Alsace."

Even the little ones bent over their up and down strokes with their tongues stuck out to help them work.

After the writing came the reading lesson, and the little ones sang their _ba_, _be_, _bi_, _bo_, _bu_.

Right in the midst of it, Franz heard a curious sound, a big deep voice mingling with the children's voices. He turned round, and there, on the bench in the back of the room, the old blacksmith sat with a big ABC book open on his knees. It was his voice Franz had heard. He was saying the sounds with the little children,--_ba_, _be_, _bi_, _bo_, _bu_. His voice sounded so odd, with the little voices,--so very odd,--it made little Franz feel queer. It seemed so funny that he thought he would laugh; then he thought he wouldn't laugh, he felt--he felt very queer.

So it went on with the lessons; they had them all. And then, suddenly, the town clock struck noon. And at the same time they heard the tramp of the Prussians' feet, coming back from drill.

It was time to close school.

The master stood up. He was very pale. Little Franz had never seen him look so tall. He said:--

"My children--my children"--but something choked him; he could not go on.

Instead he turned and went to the blackboard and took up a piece of chalk.

And then he wrote, high up, in big white letters, "Vive la France!"

And he made a little sign to them with his head, "That is all; go away."

THE STORY OF CHRISTMAS

There was once a nation which was very powerful, very fortunate, and very proud. Its lands were fruitful; its armies were victorious in battle; and it had strong kings, wise lawgivers, and great poets. But after a great many years, everything changed. The nation had no more strong kings, no more wise lawgivers; its armies were beaten in battle, and neighbouring tribes conquered the country and took the fruitful lands; there were no more poets except a few who made songs of lamentation. The people had become a captive and humiliated people; and the bitterest part of all its sadness was the memory of past greatness.

But in all the years of failure and humiliation, there was one thing which kept this people from despair; one hope lived in their hearts and kept them from utter misery. It was a hope which came from something one of the great poets of the past had said, in prophecy. This prophecy was whispered in the homes of the poor, taught in the churches, repeated from father to son among the rich; it was like a deep, hidden well of comfort in a desert of suffering. The prophecy said that some time a deliverer should be born for the nation, a new king even stronger than the old ones, mighty enough to conquer its enemies, set it free, and bring back the splendid days of old. This was the hope and expectation all the people looked for; they waited through the years for the prophecy to come true.

In this nation, in a little country town, lived a man and a woman whose names were Joseph and Mary. And it happened, one year, that they had to take a little journey up to the town which was the nearest tax-centre, to have their names put on the census list; because that was the custom in that country.

But when they got to the town, so many others were there for the same thing, and it was such a small town, that every place was crowded. There was no room for them at the inn. Finally, the innkeeper said they might sleep in the stable, on the straw. So they went there for the night.

And while they were there, in the stable, their first child was born to them, a little son. And because there was no cradle to put Him in, the mother made a little warm nest of the hay in the big wooden manger where the oxen had eaten, and wrapped the baby in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in the manger, for a bed!

That same night, on the hills outside the town, there were shepherds, keeping their flocks through the darkness. They were tired with watching over the sheep, and they stood or sat about, drowsily, talking and watching the stars. And as they watched, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared unto them! And the glory of the Lord shone round about them! And they were sore afraid. But the angel said unto them, "Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. _For unto you is born, this day, in the city of David, a saviour,--which is Christ the Lord._ And this shall be a sign unto you: ye shall find the babe, wrapped in swaddling clothes, _lying in a manger_."

And suddenly there was with the angel a mult.i.tude of the heavenly host, praising G.o.d, and saying, "Glory to G.o.d in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

When the angels were gone up from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pa.s.s, which the Lord hath made known unto us." And they came, with haste, and they found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. And when they saw Him in the manger, they knew that the wonderful thing the angel said had really happened, and that the great deliverer was born at last.

THE CHILD-MIND; AND HOW TO SATISFY IT

"It is the grown people who make the nursery stories," wrote Stevenson, "all the children do is jealously to preserve the text." And the grown person, whether he makes his stories with pen or with tongue, should bring two qualities at least to the work--simplicity of language and a serious sincerity. The reason for the simplicity is obvious, for no one, child or otherwise, can thoroughly enjoy a story clouded by words which convey no meaning to him.

The second quality is less obvious but equally necessary. No absence of fun is intended by the words "serious sincerity," but they mean that the story-teller should bring to the child an equal interest in what is about to be told; an honest acceptance, for the time being, of the fairies, or the heroes, or the children, or the animals who talk, with which the tale is concerned. The child deserves this equality of standpoint, and without it there can be no entire success.

As for the stories themselves, the difficulty lies with the material, not with the _child_. Styles may be varied generously, but the matter must be quarried for. Out of a hundred children's books it is more than likely that ninety-nine will be useless; yet perhaps out of one autobiography may be gleaned an anecdote, or a reminiscence which can be amplified into an absorbing tale. Almost every story-teller will find that the open eye and ear will serve him better than much arduous searching. No one book will yield him the increase to his repertoire which will come to him by listening, by browsing in chance volumes and magazines, and even newspapers, by observing everyday life, and in all remembering his own youth, and his youthful, waiting audience.

And that youthful audience? A rather too common mistake is made in allowing overmuch for the creative imagination of the normal child. It is not creative imagination which the normal child possesses so much as an enormous credulity and no limitations. If we consider for a moment we see that there has been little or nothing to limit things for him, therefore anything is possible. It is the years of our life as they come which narrow our fancies and set a bound to our beliefs; for experience has taught us that for the most part a certain cause will produce a certain effect. The child, on the contrary, has but little knowledge of causes, and as yet but an imperfect realisation of effects. If we, for instance, go into the midst of a savage country, we know that there is the chance of our meeting a savage. But to the young child it is quite as possible to meet a Red Indian coming round the bend of the brook at the bottom of the orchard, as it is to meet him in his own wigwam.

The child is an adept at make-believe, but his make-believes are, as a rule, practical and serious. It is credulity rather than imagination which helps him. He takes the tales he has been _told_, the facts he has observed, and for the most part reproduces them to the best of his ability. And "nothing," as Stevenson says, "can stagger a child's faith; he accepts the clumsiest subst.i.tutes and can swallow the most staring incongruities. The chair he has just been besieging as a castle is taken away for the accommodation of a morning visitor and he is nothing abashed; he can skirmish by the hour with a stationary coal-scuttle; in the midst of the enchanted pleasuance he can see, without sensible shock, the gardener soberly digging potatoes for the day's dinner."

The child, in fact, is neither undeveloped "grown-up" nor unspoiled angel.

Perhaps he has a dash of both, but most of all he is akin to the grown person who dreams. With the dreamer and with the child there is that unquestioning acceptance of circ.u.mstances as they arise, however unusual and disconcerting they may be. In dreams the wildest, most improbable and fantastic things happen, but they are not so to the dreamer. The veriest cynic amongst us must take his dreams seriously and without a sneer, whether he is forced to leap from the edge of a precipice, whether he finds himself utterly incapable of packing his trunk in time for the train, whether in spite of his distress at the impropriety, he finds himself at a dinner-party minus his collar, or whether the riches of El Dorado are laid at his feet. For him at the time it is all quite real and hara.s.singly or splendidly important.

To the child and to the dreamer all things are possible; frogs may talk, bears may be turned into princes, gallant tailors may overcome giants, fir-trees may be filled with ambitions. A chair may become a horse, a chest of drawers a coach and six, a hearthrug a battlefield, a newspaper a crown of gold. And these are facts which the story-teller must realise, and choose and shape the stories accordingly.

Many an old book, which to a modern grown person may seem prim and over-rigid, will be to the child a delight; for him the primness and the severity slip away, the story remains. Such a book as Mrs Sherwood's _Fairchild Family_ is an example of this. To a grown person reading it for the first time, the loafing propensities of the immaculate Mrs Fairchild, who never does a hand's turn of good work for anyone from cover to cover, the hard piety, the sn.o.bbishness, the brutality of taking the children to the old gallows and seating them before the dangling remains of a murderer, while the lesson of brotherly love is impressed are shocking when they are not amusing; but to the child the doings of the naughty and repentant little Fairchilds are engrossing; and experience proves to us that the twentieth-century child is as eager for the book as were ever his nineteenth-century grandfather and grandmother.

Good Mrs Timmin's _History of the Robins_, too, is a continuous delight; and from its pompous and high-sounding dialogue a skilful adapter may glean not only one story, but one story with two versions; for the infant of eighteen months can follow the narrative of the joys and troubles, errors and kindnesses of Robin, d.i.c.ky, Flopsy and Pecksy; while the child of five or ten or even more will be keenly interested in a fuller account of the birds' adventures and the development of their several characters and those of their human friends and enemies.

From these two books, from Miss Edgeworth's wonderful _Moral Tales_; from Miss Wetherell's delightful volume _Mr Rutherford's Children_; from Jane and Ann Taylor's _Original Poems_; from Thomas Day's _Sandford and Merton_; from Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ and Lamb's _Tales from Shakespeare_, and from many another old friend, stories may be gathered, but the story-teller will find that in almost all cases adaptation is a necessity. The joy of the hunt, however, is a real joy, and with a field which stretches from the myths of Greece to _Uncle Remus_, from _Le Morte d'Arthur_ to the _Jungle Books_, there need be no more lack of pleasure for the seeker than for the receiver of the spoil.

The following is a list of valuable sources for the story-teller, all yielding either good original material for adaptation, or stories which need only a slight alteration in the telling.[1]

[Footnote 1: Readers may be interested in _A History of Story-telling_, by Arthur Ransome. (Jack.)]

THE BIBLE.

MOTHER GOOSE'S MELODY. (Bullen.) THE STORY HOUR, by _Kate Douglas Wiggin_. (Gay & Hanc.o.c.k.) STORIES FOR KINDERGARTEN. (Ginn.) ST NICHOLAS MAGAZINE, bound volumes. (Warne.) LITTLE FOLKS, bound volumes. (Ca.s.sell.) FABLES AND NURSERY TALES, edited by _Prof. Charles Eliot Norton_. (Heath.) STORIES TO TELL THE LITTLEST ONES, by _Sara Gone Bryant_. (Harrap.) MOTHER STORIES, by _Maud Lindsay_. (Harrap.) MORE MOTHER STORIES, by _Maud Lindsay_. (Harrap.) aeSOP'S FABLES.

STORIES TO TELL TO CHILDREN, by _Sara Cone Bryant_. (Harrap.) THE BOOK OF STORIES FOR THE STORY-TELLER, by _f.a.n.n.y Coe_. (Harrap.) SONGS AND STORIES FOR THE LITTLE ONES, by _Gordon Browne_. (Harrap.) CHARACTER TRAINING (stories with an ethical bearing), by _E.L. Cabot_ and _E. Eyles_. (Harrap.) STORIES FOR THE STORY HOUR, by _Ada M. Marzials_. (Harrap.) STORIES FOR THE HISTORY HOUR, by _Nannie Niemeyer_. (Harrap.) STORIES FOR THE BIBLE HOUR, by _R. Brimley Johnson_. (Harrap.) NATURE STORIES TO TELL TO CHILDREN, by _H. Waddingham Seers_. (Harrap.) OLD TIME TALES, by _Florence Dugdale_. (Collins.) THE MABINOGION. (Dent.) PERCY'S RELIQUES. (Warne.)

TOLD THROUGH THE AGES SERIES. (Harrap.) LEGENDS OF GREECE AND ROME, by _G.H. Kupfer, M.A._ FAVOURITE GREEK MYTHS, by _L.S. Hyde_.

STORIES OF ROBIN HOOD, by _J.W. McSpadden_.

STORIES OF KING ARTHUR, by _U.W. Cutler._ STORIES FROM GREEK HISTORY, by _H.L. Havell, B.A._ STORIES FROM WAGNER, by _J.W. McSpadden_.

BRITAIN LONG AGO (stories from old English and Celtic sources), by _E.M. Wilmot-Buxton, F.R.Hist.S._ STORIES FROM SCOTTISH HISTORY (selected from "Tales of a Grandfather"), by _Madalen Edgar, M.A._ STORIES FROM GREEK TRAGEDY, by _H.L. Havell, B.A._ STORIES FROM THE EARTHLY PARADISE, by _Madalen Edgar, M.A._ STORIES FROM CHAUCER, by _J.W. McSpadden_.

STORIES FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT, by _Mrs S. Platt_.

TOLD BY THE NORTHMEN (stories from the Norse eddas and sagas), by _E.M. Wilmot-Buxton, F.R.Hist.S_.

STORIES FROM DON QUIXOTE, by _H.L. Havell, B.A._ THE STORY OF ROLAND AND THE PEERS OF CHARLEMAGNE, by _James Baldwin_.

(Teachers in need of good stories should keep themselves acquainted with the development of this series, as fresh volumes are constantly added.

The material is precisely the right kind for the story-teller, since the stories have come to us from distant days when, as the national inheritance of this race or that, they were told in homely cabins by parents to their children, or sung by bards to festive companies.)

STORIES OF THE ENGLISH, by _F_. (Blackwood.) OLD GREEK FOLK STORIES, by _Josephine Peabody_. (Harrap.) RED CAP TALES, by _S.R. Crockett_. (Black.) A CHILD'S BOOK OF SAINTS, by _Wm. Canton_. (Dent.) CUCHULAIN, THE HOUND OF ULSTER, by _Eleanor Hull_. (Harrap.) THE HIGH DEEDS OF FINN, by _T.W. Rolleston, M.A._ (Harrap.) THE BOOK OF THE EPIC, by _H.A. Guerber_. (Harrap.) THE MYTHS OF GREECE AND ROME, by _H.A. Guerber_. (Harrap.) MYTHS OF THE NORs.e.m.e.n, by _H.A. Guerber_. (Harrap.) MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE MIDDLE AGES, by _H.A. Guerber_. (Harrap.) HERO-MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE BRITISH RACE, by _M.I. Ebb.u.t.t, M.A._ (Harrap.) THE MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER.

GLEANINGS IN BUDDHA-FIELDS, by _Lafcadio Hearn_. (Kegan Paul.) THE GOLDEN WINDOWS, by _Laura E. Richards_. (Allenson.) HANS ANDERSEN'S FAIRY TALES.

GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES.

ENGLISH FAIRY TALES, by _Joseph Jacobs_. (Nutt.) FOLK-TALES FROM MANY LANDS, by _Lilian Gask_. (Harrap.) CELTIC FAIRY TALES, by _Joseph Jacobs_. (Nutt.) INDIAN FAIRY TALES, by _Joseph Jacobs_. (Nutt.) WEST AFRICAN FOLK-TALES, by _W.H. Barker_ and _C. Sinclair_. (Harrap.) RUSSIAN FAIRY TALES, by _R. Nisbet Bain_. (Harrap.) COSSACK FAIRY TALES, by _R. Nisbet Bain_. (Harrap.) THE HAPPY PRINCE, by _Oscar Wilde_. (Nutt.) DONEGAL FAIRY TALES, by _Seumas McMa.n.u.s_.

IN CHIMNEY CORNERS, by _Seumas McMa.n.u.s_.

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS.

THE BLUE FAIRY BOOK (and others), by _Andrew Lang_. (Longmans.) FAIRY STORIES, by _John Finnemore_. (S.S. Union.) THE j.a.pANESE FAIRY BOOK. (Constable.) FAIRY TALES FROM FAR j.a.pAN, translated by _Susan Bollard_.

(Religious Tract Society.) IN THE CHILD'S WORLD. (Philip.) LEGENDS FROM FAIRYLAND, by _Holme Lee_. (Warne.) THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER, by _John Ruskin_. (Grant Allen.) THE WELSH FAIRY BOOK, by _Jenkyn Thomas_. (Unwin.) AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND, by _George Macdonald_. (Blackie.) TELL-ME-WHY STORIES ABOUT ANIMALS, by _C.H. Claudy_. (Harrap.) TELL-ME-WHY STORIES ABOUT GREAT DISCOVERIES, by _C.H. Claudy_. (Harrap.) UNCLE REMUS, by _Joel Chandler Harris_. (Routledge.) MACAULAY'S LAYS OF ANCIENT ROME.

LE MORTE D'ARTHUR, by _Sir Thomas Malory_. (Macmillan.) THE BOY'S FROISSART, by _Henry Newbolt_. (Macmillan.) STORIES FROM DANTE, by _Susan Cunnington_. (Harrap.) THE JUNGLE BOOKS, by _Rudyard Kipling_. (Macmillan.) JUST SO STORIES, by _Rudyard Kipling_. (Macmillan.) WOOD MAGIC, by _Richard Jefferies_. (Longmans.) AMONG THE FARMYARD PEOPLE, by _Clara D. Pierson_. (Murray.) AMONG THE NIGHT PEOPLE, by _Clara D. Pierson_. (Murray.) AMONG THE MEADOW PEOPLE, by _Clara D. Pierson_. (Murray.) THE ANIMAL STORY BOOK, by _Andrew Lang_. (Longmans.) WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN, by _Ernest Thompson Seton_. (Nutt.) A BOOK OF NATURE MYTHS, by _Florence Holbrook_. (Harrap.) MORE NATURE MYTHS, by _F.V. Farmer_. (Harrap.) PARABLES FROM NATURE, by _Mrs A. Gatty_. (Bell.) NORTHERN TRAILS, by _W.J. Long_. (Ginn.) THE KINDRED OF THE WILD, by _Chas. G.D. Roberts_. (Duckworth.) RAB AND HIS FRIENDS, by _Dr John Brown_.

A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES, by _R.L. Stevenson_. (Longmans.) A TREASURY OF VERSE FOR LITTLE CHILDREN, compiled by _Madalen Edgar, M.A._ (Harrap.) A TREASURY OF VERSE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS, compiled by _Madalen Edgar, M.A._ (Harrap.) A TREASURY OF BALLADS, compiled by _Madalen Edgar, M.A._ (Harrap.) BIMBI, by _Ouida_. (Chatto.) STORIES FROM SHAKESPEARE, by _Dr Thomas Carter_. (Harrap.) STORIES FROM THE FAERIE QUEENE, by _Laurence H. Dawson_. (Harrap.) MORAL TALES, by _Maria Edgeworth_. (Macmillan.)