Jack Zipes has reinvigorated storytelling as a successful and engaging tool for teachers and professional storytellers. Encouraging storytellers, librarians, and schoolteachers to be active in this magical process, Zipes proposes an interactive storytelling that creates and strengthens a sense of community for students, teachers and parents while extolling storytelling as animation, subversion, and self-discovery.
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The focus in this session is on different kinds of animal tales, with an emphasis on the fable as a distinct genre but one that is related to the fairy tale, as all the short narrative forms such as the legend, myth, and anecdote are related to one another. To create transition, I generally tell the wonderful tale How Six Made Their Way through the World. Once again there are many different versions of this tale, and I shall discuss it at length when I talk about creative dramatics and the fairy tale.
In brief, the Grimms' story is about a soldier who is discharged from service with three pennies and vows to get revenge on the king if he can find the right people. He travels into the forest and meets and recruits: 1) a strong man carrying a bunch of trees; 2) a sharpshooter who can hit a target two miles away; 3) a man blowing windmills with his breath two miles away; 4) a runner who can run faster than any bird can fly; 5) a man who wears a cap that freezes everything if it is worn straight. These five men help the soldier defeat the king's daughter in a foot race. But the treacherous king and his daughter want to cheat and kill the soldier and his helpers, who are, however, too clever for these deceitful people. In the end, the soldier and his five helpers leave with the king's treasury, which they share with one another, and the soldier does not marry the princess.
Now this tale bears a great resemblance to the popular Bremen Town Musicians, which I want to record here in its entirety because it is pivotal in this session.
The Bremen Town Musicians
A man had a donkey who had diligently carried sacks of grain to the mill for many years. However, the donkey's strength was reaching its end, and he was less and less fit for the work. His master thought it was time to dispense with him and save on food, but the donkey got wind of what was in store for him. So he ran away and set out for Bremen, where he thought he could become a town musician. After traveling some distance he came across a hunting dog lying on the roadside, panting as if he had run himself ragged.
“Why are you panting so hard, you old hound dog?” asked the donkey.
“Ah,” the dog said, “because I'm old and getting weaker every day. Now I can't even hunt anymore, and my master wanted to kill me. Naturally, I cleared out, but how am I going to earn a living now?”
“You know what,” said the donkey, “I'm going to Bremen to become a town musician, and you can come with me and also join the town band. I'll play the lute, and you, the drums.”
The dog agreed, and they continued on their way. Soon after, they encountered a cat sitting on the roadside, making a long and sorry face.
“Well, what's gone wrong with you, old whiskers?” asked the donkey.
“How can I be cheerful when my neck's in danger?” the cat replied. “My mistress wanted to drown me because I'm getting on in years. Moreover, my teeth are dull, and I'd rather sit behind the stove and spin than chase after mice. Anyway, I managed to escape, but now I don't know what to do or where to go.”
“Why don't you come along with us to Bremen? You know a great deal about night serenades, and you can become a town musician.”
The cat thought that was a good idea and went along. Then the three refugees passed a farmyard where a rooster was perched on the gate, crowing with all his might.
“You're crowing gives me the chills,” said the donkey. “Why are you screaming like this?”
“I've predicted good weather for today,” said the rooster, “because it's the day my mistress does her washing. Still, she has no mercy. Tomorrow's Sunday, and guests are coming. So she told the cook to cut off my head tonight because she wants to eat me in the soup tomorrow. Now you know why I'm screaming my lungs out, while there's still time to scream.”
“That's foolish, redhead!” said the donkey. “You'd be smarter if you came along with us. We're off to Bremen where there are better things than death. You've got a good voice, and if we make music together, it's sure to be a good thing.”
The rooster liked the proposal, and all four of them continued the journey together. However, they could not reach the town of Bremen in one day, and by evening they came to a forest, where they decided to spend the night. The donkey and the dog lay down under a big tree, while the cat and the rooster climbed up and settled down in the branches.To be on the safe side, the rooster flew to the top. Before he went to sleep, he looked around in all directions, and it seemed to him he saw a light burning in the distance. He called to his companions and told them there must be a house nearby, since he could see something shining.
“Well, this place is not all that comfortable, so let's get moving,” said the donkey.
The dog thought some bones and meat would be just right for him, and they all set out toward the light. Soon it began to grow brighter, and it got even more so once they reached a brightly lit robber's den. Since the donkey was the tallest, he went up to the window and looked inside.
“What do you see, gray steed?” the rooster asked.
“What do I see?” replied the donkey. “I see a table covered with wonderful food and drinks and some robbers sitting there and enjoying themselves.”
“That would be just the thing for us!” said the rooster.
“You're right,” said the donkey. “If only we could get in!”
Then the animals discussed what they would have to do to drive the robbers away. Finally they hit upon a plan. The donkey was to stand upright and place his forefeet on the window sill. The dog was to jump on the donkey's back, and the cat was to climb upon the dog. When that was done, the rooster was to fly up and perch on the cat's head. After they put their plan into action, the signal was given, and they all started to make music together: the donkey brayed, the dog barked, the cat meowed, and the rooster crowed. Then they crashed into the room, shattering the window. Startled by the horrible cries, the robbers were convinced that a ghost had burst into the room, and they fled in great fright into the forest. Then the four companions sat down at the table, gathered up the leftovers with delight, and ate as if there were no tomorrow.
When the four minstrels were finished, they put out the light and looked for a place to sleep, each according to his nature and custom. The donkey lay down on the dung heap in the yard, the dog behind the door, the cat on the hearth near the warm ashes, and the rooster on the beam of the roof. Since they were tired from their long journey, they soon fell asleep.
When it was past midnight and the robbers saw from the distance that there was no light in the house and everything seemed peaceful, the leader of the band said, “We shouldn't have let ourselves be scared out of our wits.”
He ordered one of the robbers to return and check out the house. When this man found everything quiet, he went into the kitchen to light a candle and mistook the cat's glowing fiery eyes for live coals. So he held a match to them to light a fire, but the cat did not appreciate the joke. He jumped into the robber's face, spitting and scratching, and the robber was so terribly frightened that he ran out the back door. However, the dog was lying there and bit him in the leg. When the robber raced across the yard, he passed the dung heap, and here the donkey gave him a solid kick with his hind foot. AH this noise woke the rooster from his sleep, and he became lively again and crowed “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” from his beam.
The robber ran back to the leader as fast as he could and said, “There's a gruesome witch in the house! She spat on me and scratched my face with her long claws. At the door there's a man with a knife, and he stabbed my leg. In the yard there's a black monster who beat me with a wooden club. And on top of the roof the judge was sitting and screaming,'Bring me the rascal!' So I got out of there as fast as I could!”
Since that time the robbers have never dared to return to the house, but the four Bremen Town musicians liked the place so much that they stayed on forever.
In using How Six Made Their Way through the World and The Bremen Town Musicians, I try to bring out the nature of collective heroism and solidarity. Both tales concern individuals who work hard and serve a master, only to be treated in a dishonorable way. As individuals, they are weak and cannot attain justice. However, they learn that, when they pool their talents, they are strong, and they employ their skills and strength not to kill their adversaries, but to satisfy their notions of justice and establish the lives they want to lead.
It is obvious to the children that The Bremen Town Musicians is filled primarily with animals as heroes, animals who talk and think. They are accustomed to talking animals from many other stories and films in their childhood, and they rarely pose the question, how can animals talk? Nor do they think about the fable or other types of animal tales such as the trickster tales and pourquoi tales as genres, and rarely do they discuss the symbolic nature of the animals and their actions. This is why I try to stimulate them to think about the different meanings of the animals in the tales. In this case, I suggest at one point that we can look at the animals as old people, and I try to reveal how the tale concerns “ageism,” or the manner in which we discard old people when they are no longer of use to us. Or, I talk about the animals as common workers who do not have an organization like a union to help them when they are forced to retire or are fired. Finally, I also suggest that the tale can be understood on a “literal” level, and I discuss the special attributes of animals and how we perceive or do not perceive the rights of animals in our society.
As animal tale—and there are many other genres that use animals—the fable has a history that goes back thousands of years, and the most important collection, even today, is Aesop's Fables. It has been said that Aesop was a freed slave who told his fables in a coded language using animals as symbols to conceal his subversive messages. The fact is, however, that we are not certain who Aesop was and exactly why he told his tales. He never printed them, nor did he leave a clear record of his life behind him. His fables were spread by word of mouth and were only transcribed hundreds of years after his death. Though Aesop remains a “mysterious figure,” the tendency of the fables collected under his name is clear: they are a repository of social knowledge that assumes the form of proverbial wisdom, and that employs animals (as well as humans) in familiar social situations to give practical advice about how to survive and be successful in the face of stupidity and arbitrary power. The proverbial wisdom of the traditional fable, emanating from the historical repository of everyday knowledge, cannot be fully separated from religious teachings. However, the morality or morals in the fables are not bound systematically to one religious or ethical code. The fable does not convey ethical instructions or commands but practical knowledge about the way the world is, works, and operates, and how to survive or get through life. Depending on who the fabulist might be—and every society has produced great writers of fables like Phaedrus, La Fontaine, Roger L'Estrange, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Joel Harris, Leo Tolstoy, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Saroyan, and James Thurber—she or he will depict a typical everyday occurrence as a problem, along with a way to solve the problem. An exe...
