Definition of Folklore
This is a blog about folklore. The
tales come from a maritime community on the Chesapeake Bay, your community
probably has some. Searching them out can
be a lot of fun. If you do not know what
folklore is, I will give you a couple of definitions.
folk-lore (fok’lor) n. Definition # 1. The traditions, beliefs,
customs, sayings, stories, etc. preserved among the common people. Definition # 2. You start with a scrap of
truth, and then you improve on it.
Definition # 1 would be what you find if you
look into a dictionary or if you take a class on folklore. Definition # 2 is what you would learn if you
go straight to the storytellers who have carried on the tradition of the area
through their oral history that they pass along to anyone who cares to sit and listen
to their faded recollections and their vivid imaginations.
The author tells these stories the
way he heard them, imitating the way they were told to him at the store by the
head of the creek near where he grew up, the store where the local Chesapeake
watermen gathered at night to relate their experiences of the day and to
entertain each other.
This is a book of stories about a
way of life that once was, but is no more, and will never be again. Right now, this way of life exists only in
museums, and between the covers of a few books and in the memories of old men who
lived during that time. The old men are
dying off, so I will race to record my memories before I go to join my friends.
Be warned before you begin to read
these stories. I won’t sacrifice my
memories of that way of life, or the passion of the people who told these
stories, merely for the rules of good writing or for historical accuracy.
I won’t follow the rules of good
writing, or any rules at all. I’ll just
tell the stories the way those old men would have told them as they sat around
the stove during a cold winter evening.
Don’t become overly concerned about their historical accuracy, either. That did not bother the old men who told them
to me. Anything they did not remember,
they made up. That’s the way folklore
is, and that’s the way I will tell it. A
folklore teller would never allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.
Following many of these stories
will be a short description of the scrap of truth behind the tale. A few of the stories are factual, such as The Turtle Hunter, about a boy who
caught turtles to pay his tuition to college and went on to become president of
a major university, and Wood Made Alive,
about a couple of brothers who gave up crabbing and oystering because they
loved to carve duck decoys, and they went on to become recognized as pioneers
in a major form of art.
I will write those stories, not the
way some folklorist researcher would write them, but rather I will tell them
the way they were told to me by the watermen who knew these men and experienced
the events. I believe you will enjoy them more if I do,
because I have never yet met a folklorist who could tell a good story.
Do not try to tie any of these
stories to any particular person.
Frequently, one of my stories will be made up of several stories I
combined, as frequently happens with folklore.
If you think you see somebody you
know in one of these stories, look at it again, but look at it through the eyes
of somebody sitting on a bench at the store beside a creek, listening to an old
man telling his stories to entertain those around him, stories that are the
combination of many tales he has heard about the men who live and work on the
creek.
These stories are the ‘traditions …
preserved among the common people’ and I hope you enjoy them. They are merely the wandering of my old and
sometimes inaccurate mind. I have no
store by a creek as a place to tell them, so as your read them, pretend
you are on a porch bench at the store, overlooking the water and listening to
an old storyteller carrying on his nonsense about the way life that once
existed on this small, tidal creek surrounded by marshes and pine trees, one of
many on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.
Glenn Lawson
The Storyteller
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