Mabel McKay
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Hero Tales: Rites of Passage in Story Form
Transformation is the key to a good hero story. The hero, whether male or female, must be utterly and irrevocably changed by the events narrated in the story. A hero story is the narrative equivalent of a rite of passage. Just as the new adult cannot return to childhood after puberty, the new hero cannot…
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The Steps of the Hero’s Journey
Reference, Background, and Guide to The Adventure of the Hero from The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell with other supporting material © Liz Warren 2009 “The whole sense of the ubiquitous myth of the hero’s passage is that it shall serve as a general pattern for…
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Invoking the Folktale Muse
Would you recognize the folktale muse if you met her on the street, or in your dreams? When I was first becoming a storyteller in the mid-nineties, I went to the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. I was overwhelmed with the range of storytellers and stories that I heard. I heard Elizabeth Ellis for…
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Who’s Your Favorite Folktale Teller?
One of my favorite tellers of folktales is Janet Means, and this is one of my favorite pictures of her from her SMCC Storytelling Institute graduation. I love several things about how Janet tells folktales. First, she has a great talent for selecting stories that are a fit for her. She goes for quirky ones…
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Are You a Tourist or a Resident in Folktale Land?
Where do we find folktales? For most of human history that question would have made no sense. We wouldn’t have found folktales; we would have been immersed in them, and in the broader folk tradition that contained them. Most of us did not grow up in a living story tradition, so we find folktales…
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A Mouse, a Bird, and a Sausage
Folktales are the bedrock of a storyteller’s repertoire. Donald Davis says that he learned to be a storyteller from listening to his grandmother and his uncle tell him stories. He learned the powerful narrative structure of folktales and uses it to this day to create his original stories. Most of us have folktales in our…
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Tell Me Something Good
Hey, Storytellers! How’s your repertoire? Wouldn’t you like to learn some new stories? Wouldn’t you like to see and hear your fellow tellers on a regular basis? Of course you would! So here’s the plan: This year the East Valley Tellers of Tales is sponsoring a year-long, blog-based exploration of genre. The intent of Tell…
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The Busiest Day I Ever Had in Ireland
My busiest day ever in Ireland started late afternoon on Wednesday, June 18th. The next day, June 19th, included a guest storyteller in class, a trip to Portumna to tell stories, Sandy and Dwight Oglesby arriving in Athlone, and the evening concert of the Three Rivers Storytelling Festival. I picked up…
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I Got Lost in Ballinasloe!
We got back from Dublin on Tuesday afternoon, the 17th of June. Wednesday and Thursday were my days to tell stories in the Three Rivers Storytelling Festival. I was expected in Ballinasloe for a 1:30 session at the library on Wednesday. I wanted to be there at 1:00 so I…
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Ballyhoo in Baile Atha Cliath
She is not an Irish town And she is not English, Historic with guns and vermin And the cold renown Of a fragment of Church latin, Of an oratorical phrase. But oh the days are soft, Soft enough to forget The lesson better learnt, The bullet on the wet Streets, the crooked deal, The steel…
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Looking Over Dublin Town
I remember sitting on a roof, looking over Dublin town It still seems so warm A sunny day, the shirts were off with love in the air Oh, we had it captured there We didn’t care too much about the weight of it all (from Dublin Song by T. Noonan ) Dublin got off to…
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Clonmacnoise
I got to go to Clonmacnoise twice this summer. It’s just south of Athlone on the Shannon. It’s one of the most beautiful places in the midlands of Ireland. Since I live in a place where the river is held captive to provide water and electricity, I love to see a river running free. The…