The How and Why of Storytelling

From an early age, Williamson collected stories from anyone who told them. He has a vivid memory of each person from whom he learned a tale. One memorable storyteller was his grandmother Bella MacDonald, who shared the Williamsons’ tent and who used to tell the children stories in exchange for their getting her a bit of tobacco. Two other masterful taletellers were Johnny MacDonald and Johnny Townsley, older Travellers from whom Duncan picked up tales while on the road. All these stories were educational, especially animal tales and Jack tales. Duncan tells how he visualizes the tales clearly, and when he retells them in the schools, he asks children to illustrate them. The use of dialect figures importantly in his storytelling, as does gesture. Each story is shaped to its particular audience and occasion, as is exemplified here by a bedtime story, “The Skeletons and the Tinker.”