Process
Status Items Highlights Done See section below Claims None Questions None Output None
Highlights
Location 294
In his seventeenth-century retelling, Perrault gave Cinderella a fairy godmother and a midnight warning, two things which up to that time she did not possess. And then—history draws a scrim over the actual events and we can only guess—someone, Perrault or perhaps the English translator of his Histoires ou contes du temps passé, made a brilliant mistake. The heroine’s fur (vair) slipper was misread as glass (verre). Thus in Story all mistakes are made true by the telling.
✏️ Nothing sacred.. we held it so true that it’s always been a glass slipper, but it was just a freaking translation error. How could anything be held as black or white? How could any text or human creation be held to such a glaring light when we know that anything is possible, anything is at a whim? 🔗 Location 294
Location 401
The Irish poet-tellers studied their art for 15 years, and had to be wise in philosophy, astronomy, magic, and conversant with 250 prime tales and a hundred subsidiary ones. The shanachies, who told the historical tales, were entrusted with 178 prime stories. The Greek storytellers learned not only to tell a great body of work, but also to perform on the kithara, which distinguished them from the amateurs who used the lyre. The Navajo singer recited creation stories that lasted two to three days. Other long prayers and tales to do with the Blessingway ceremonies were in his repertory. Some 30 major ceremonies, each containing hundreds of songs and tales, were committed to memory. The skalds of the North not only learned scores of tales and songs, but as a vassal to a noble lord, a skald might fight by his master’s side and then either recount his lord’s great battle deeds or sing his master’s death song, adding either—or both—to an already large body of memorized work. Medieval troubadors were expected to know the current court and countryside favorite tales as well as recite the latest in court scandals, play two instruments well, and further, to be able to repeat the noteworthy theses from the universities. Irish ollahms and shanachies, African griots, Norse skalds, German minnesingers, French troubadors, Anglo-Saxon gleemen, Norman minstrels—these were but some of the professionals in the world of Story. They told long, complex traditional tales to great gatherings and were repaid for their efforts by a particular place in society, money, gifts, property, wives or husbands, supper, ale, or the high king’s favor.
Location 423
Still, storytelling exists around the world: the Japanese picture showman who holds up illustrations as he talks; the shadow-puppet players in Java; the Brazilian clothesline teller who, like the string tellers among the Lega of Zaire, attaches objects matching each tale in his repertory to the line; the Maître Conte in Haiti who announces a tale with the interrogatory Cric? and will not begin unless the audience shouts back Crac!; the women of the Walberi in Australia who trace pictures illustrating their stories in the sand; the Inuit who “storyknife,” drawing pictures in the snow in winter and the mud in summer with a whalebone knife to accompany their tales.