Published: October 25, 2009 04:47 am      

Storytelling a great gift to preserve in our society

Storytelling is a gift.

It is a gift that we give our children, whether we snuggle up with an illustrated book, tell a story from our childhood or repeat a tale passed down through the generations.

Dr. Ruth Ann Musick, who compiled many of the old stories told by families, purposefully came to Fairmont from her Missouri home. It was an “unmined” area, and her deep interest in folklore brought her to the hills of West Virginia. She sat in parlors and around the dinner tables of Marion County and asked the families to tell their stories.

Her most popular collections of stories, “Coffin Hollow” and “The Telltale Lilac Bush,” are supernatural tales with ghosts returning from beyond to settle scores, help others or wander about as if they were still living. Spine-tingling? No. These aren’t the CGI ghosts who walk through walls and horrify movie-goers.

No, these stories require some audience participation. The stories are very basic — someone does someone wrong. Someone dies. The guilty party is haunted by the spirit of the deceased. They are almost morality tales. But they all require the readers to use their imagination to fill in all of the details.

Musick collected these stories from her students, through newspaper columns — one which ran in our predecessor, The Fairmont Times — and from people she met from time to time. They were stories passed down from 100 years or more. They were stories that gave us goosebumps and also told us about our past and history here.

“To know your past is to know where you are going,” said Judy Byers, the director of the Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center at Fairmont State. “If you have appreciation of culture, you have a deeper understanding of the beauty of diversity around you. You understand people by understanding their culture.”

And that’s what many of these “ghost” stories are — reflections of the lives of our forefathers.

We don’t tell stories anymore — the kind that make you laugh, the kind that give you a bit of a fright. We don’t even tell jokes anymore, it seems, unless it is one of those forwarded e-mails. The tales collected in Musick’s work were the sole source of entertainment of our ancestors, who didn’t have the Internet to forward jokes, prime-time television or movie theaters to waste away the hours between sunset and sunrise.

As we progress into a more digital and disposable society, we cannot forget to pass down our stories. While the written record is very important, we must also take time to tell our stories.

Some of the efforts made by the folklife center are dedicated to the identification, preservation and perpetuation of the region’s rich cultural heritage through academic studies, educational programs, festivals, performances and publications. The ninth annual Frank and Jane Gabor West Virginia Folklife Center Gala, which will will take place Saturday, Oct. 31, at Fairmont State University, will feature some of that in action. Stories will be shared in the effort to keep the art alive.

While Musick and others made every effort to document our region’s rich oral tradition, our generation must be ready to keep the oral tradition active in our society.