Story-telling also played an important part in esoteric and religious traditions, the
simplicity, wisdom and depth of stories providing a form of teaching as important for the
adult on the peaks of spiritual search as for the child on the foothills of knowledge.
Buddha, Mohammed, Christ and other great religious teachers spoke in the form of
stories. Preachers of all kinds have maintained their example. In the West, Sunday
school is one of the few venues where the telling of stories survived even in the period of
its general decline. In some religious traditions, such as Sufism, the pithy wit of the
teaching stories has attracted non-believers; in others, as with Hasidic Jews, stories are
specifically not to be shared with outsiders.
Celebration and accord are the keynotes of community story-telling. In Ireland, the
ceilidh is the time for music, dancing and stories. For the Xhosa in South Africa, intsomi
is the term for the well-loved tales told on such occasions. In West Africa, dilemma tales
are a speciality, a way of communally sorting out complex issues of psychology, ethics
and imagination. Wherever the venue—Indian verandah, Maori marae or Scottish
traveller’s tent—stories have traditionally been central in marking the community’s
seasonal life.
Although children were typically present until they went to sleep, community story-
telling occasions were rarely specifically for them. They had other times, especially
bedtime, with grandmothers playing a vital role in many different cultures. However,
domestic story-telling encompasses more than children. The Egyptian writer, Huda
Shaarawi, describes the flower-water seller’s visits to the women’s household as
especially enjoyed: the flower-water seller was a story-teller (46). In other cultures,
spinning and dress making were aspects of women’s lives closely linked with story-
telling. The figure of Mother Goose, now best-known in connection with children’s
rhymes, probably derived from the elderly women who ruled the kitchens of the
European past and told the servant-girls stories.
The Variety of StoryMagic is a universal ingredient of different oral traditions, a central representation of the
transformative power which stories and story-telling possess. However, different
traditions also reflect the distinctive ways of life of the peoples who created them.
Special characters and types of story emerge, often much loved by children. The Arabic
world of the Middle East has Nasruddin Hodja, the wise man often regarded as a fool by
others. Ghana has Ananse, half-man, half-spider, whose stories travelled with slavery to
the Caribbean. America has Brer Rabbit. England has Jack. Russia has Baba Yaga, the
witch both loved and feared. Almost everywhere, animals are important: taking on
different aspects of human personality, they are also reminders of the mythical time,
where stories often begin, when humans could talk to animals and animals could talk to
each other.
Such bodies of story could scarcely have emerged without long passage of time and
anonymity. Anonymity is particularly important. From Homer onwards, oral stories
coming into written literature acquired tellers who became closely associated with them.
Hans Christian Andersen, well-known in his own circle as a brilliant story-teller,
especially with children, drew deeply on Scandinavian oral traditions in producing his
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