Mary Hamilton - Kentucky Folktales: Revealing Stories, Truths, and Outright Lies

Kentucky Folktales

Revealing Stories,
Truths, and
Outright Lies

MARY HAMILTON

Copyright 2012 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

All rights reserved.

Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 405084008
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Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-8131-3600-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8131-3601-1 (pdf)
ISBN 978-0-8131-4030-8 (epub)

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

To the members of the National Storytelling Network,
especially to my storytelling colleagues,
Cynthia Changaris, Carrie Sue Ayvar, Yvonne Healy,
Jeannine Pasini Beekman, and Bobby Norfolk.
Without NSNs recognition of my work,
this book would not exist.

To my husband, Charles Wright,
for your love, your support,
and your incredible story listening.

To my family, for your years of storytelling.

Welcome to this collection of oral tales frozen in print. Frozen? Do I mean lifeless? Absolutely not! As you read these stories you will bring them to life in your imagination much as you would if I were standing before you telling them. And when you read them a second time, you might imagine them differently even though the text remains unchangedfrozen. Even if we were face to face and I told you these stories, the words I spoke would not be an exact match for the text you can read here. And if you heard me tell one of these stories a second time, those words would not be an exact match for the first telling.

Storytelling is an interactive and ephemeral art composed of three essential elementsstory, teller, and audience. No two tellings of a story are alike, even if the same teller tells the same story to the same audience. Think about it. When someone tells you a tale for the second time and they know youve heard it before, much background information can be left out because the teller knows you already know. The wise teller will skip some sections because your nod (especially if your nod is an impatient nod) says, Move along now. I know this already. I want to hear my favorite part again. And the way your expression turns to delight when your favorite part of the story is reached tells the teller, Ah, linger here. I want to savor this. Weteller and audiencecannot influence one another on these pages the way we could in person.

The stories in this book are all stories Ive told to audiences. Some of them Ive told for well over twenty years; others Ive told for just under one year. Im a professional storyteller. I tell stories, usually to audiences of people who have gathered for the specific purpose of hearing stories. Sometimes there are people I know among the listeners. Most of the time the listeners are people Ive not met before, but we come together through the shared pleasure of hearing stories. I also teach others about the art of storytelling and the related arts of reading aloud and writing.

In this book Ive written stories down close to the way I currently tell them. You may be thinking: close to? The stories I tell are not memorized word-for-word, like a script. I learn the story, not the words. No two tellings are identical. The words change. The situation or context for the telling changes. The listeners change. I change. And all that changing, coupled with our influence on each other, makes storytelling an interactive and ephemeral art.

Most of the stories in this book are folktalesstories that did not originate in my imagination or in my memory. Most of them are also Kentucky folktales, stories told by other Kentuckians long before the stories reached me. Ive included source notes for every story so you can learn how I found them, and because I want to acknowledge those folks who are responsible for making it possible for me to come across these tales. Those who told them before me shaped them for telling, usually to people they knew, which is the typical audience for traditional storytelling in Kentucky. Like tellers before me, I have also shaped the stories for telling. My story shaping has been influenced by my imagination, by research, by marketing ideas, by my colleagues in story coaching sessions, and by audience after audience. Ive also included anecdotes on how those influences molded my retellings. Ive even included some true Hamilton family stories to both acknowledge the type of storytelling common in my family and to encourage you to treasure those casual, everyday tales your family probably tells too.

So welcome. Enjoy! Read the stories to yourself. Imagine them. Then daydream them later, thawing out the print and giving the tales life. Read them aloud to others. Let the sound of your voice coupled with the reactions of your listeners enliven them even more.

Okay, so you made it this far, and youre probably wondering, Where are the stories? If you picked up this book primarily for the stories, just skip the rest of the introduction. If you are the sort of person who wants to know who is this Mary Hamilton who tells the stories in this book, and how did she come to call herself a storyteller? Stay here. This section is for you.

My relatives are not at all surprised that I became a storyteller. They look at each other and say, Of course shes a storyteller. Look at her daddy. My daddy is one of those fabulous kitchen table storytellers.been there yourself. That way your memory of it wouldnt be quite so at odds with what hes telling. Oh, its sure enough the same event, and he is telling the truth, but now its story.

You might read the above and say to yourself: Oh, the author is a traditional storyteller who learned how to tell stories from her father while she was growing up on a Kentucky farm, and now she is passing along her fathers stories to her readers. Wrong! Well, the Kentucky farm part is correct, but the traditional storytelling part is not so true. If my storytelling repertoire consisted only of the stories I retell that I heard from my daddy, it would be a slim repertoire indeed. (Should you want to jump straight to those stories, skip ahead to the Family Tales and Personal Narratives section.) While I no doubt did absorb some storytelling technique from my father, my work is not that of a folk and traditional artist, as described by the National Endowment for the Arts. Although there is a tradition of retelling events in my family, my repertoire is not bound by the stories Ive heard within my family setting. Nor is the manner in which I tell stories a match for how my father tells them; however, I do suspect I began learning how to tell stories at a fairly early age.