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Storytelling Index

• The Pirate of Point Chretien (A Word from Louis Darby)


• In Louisiana, 1901 (A Word from Louis Darby)
"Folklorists record or preserve a single variant of a story at a time, with all the lacunae and imperfections of the specific teller, along with many details about the teller that reveal the cultural context and delve into the meaning of the story within that culture.

"Storytellers are more content to collect the story as a body of variants, incorporating them into a single, distilled version of the story that represents the culture that tells it. [emphasis added]"

— Young, Richard & Judy Dockrey, Ozark Ghost Stories, August House Publishers Inc., 1995.


....[T]hat represents the culture that tells it." Thus is stated the critical importance of storytelling. Whereas we may plough through reams of technical histories, genealogical records and — today — millions of pointless blogs, nothing captures and celebrates a specific culture like the stories.

They are the heartbeat of the people.
10/28/06, Oak leaf detail. Photo credit, J. Heston. Lucky13Studios© Archive
"On a cold, windy night, a young man was riding alone on a dark road in the hills. The moon was full, and it was the corn-shockin' moon. As he rode along, the sound of the horse's hooves echoed off the cliff face through the brush to one side of the trail. All of a sudden-like, he saw a young woman standing beside the trail, dressed in a calico dress, but without even a bonnet on to keep her warm...."

— Page 55, The Vanishing Rider, Young, Richard & Judy Dockrey, Ozark Ghost Stories, August House Publishers Inc., 1995.
"The White River area was awash with stories, an oral tradition that had been handed down from generation to generation, draped and layered over by word of mouth, and then set down in books and articles until the legends had been woven into a softly brilliant lamé fabric. It was a fabric of cherished folktales so intermingled with the flickering radiance of real people and actual events that it was difficult to separate the real from the unreal. And Lloyd [Shad Heller] began to feel himself a part of the Shepherd of the Hills country."

— Page 140, Newton, Margaret, 'SHAD' A Biography of Lloyd 'Shad' Heller, Pin Oak Publishing, 1982.