A St. Albert resident takes pride in telling tales.
When Kerry McPhail-Hayden’s son Mitchell was born prematurely, it took an hour to nurse him. While she held Mitchell, McPhail-Hayden’s preschool daughter Stephanie would sit at her feet listening to her mother’s improvised yarns.
The habit of telling imaginative stories caught up with the former Sir George Simpson drama teacher. She landed a spot on The Alberta League Encouraging Storytelling (T.A.L.E.S.) latest CD. The 12-track T.A.L.E.S. in the Wind receives its Edmonton release at Greenwoods Books on Wednesday, June 24 at 7:30 p.m., and McPhail-Hayden plans to be there dipping into her well of anecdotes.
“Oral storytelling harkens back to ancient times when parents couldn’t put kids in front of the TV and people had to sit around and entertain themselves by telling stories,” McPhail-Hayden says.
She is one of the disc’s 13 Alberta contributors eager to raise the profile of oral storytelling; a tradition that often defined a society’s culture and passed on its history.
“Telling oral folk tales, histories and personal stories gives us a glimpse into another time and place. We tell those stories to entertain and the story teaches us about culture and it helps us discover ideas. They instruct us on what it means to be human,” says past-president Mary Hays and project organizer.
As part of T.A.L.E.S. in the Wind, Hays acquaints listeners with the Blackfoot legend, A Girl Who Married the Morning Star told in tandem with aboriginal teller Louis Soop. Recorded in both languages, the fable’s energetic pulse is heightened with singing and a drum track.
Like her peers, McPhail-Hayden thrives on the dynamic and fluid feel of oral traditions. “There’s an immediacy and an old-fashioned connection you don’t get with the written word.”
Her contribution is Princess Pickypants, a 10-minute folk tale about a princess that is so finicky her parents don’t know what to do with her. “Then one day, they get sucked up by a wind and she goes to save them.”
Blackman Productions recorded T.A.L.E.S in the Wind over a relaxed weekend at Sylvan Lake in October 2008. “It was a little crispy,” laughs McPhail-Hayden.
Each of the tellers arrived with a memorized story about the wind and stepped in front of the mike on cue. McPhail-Hayden’s was the only original story. All the others were borrowed from the world’s four corners.
There’s the Icelandic folk tale Cormorant and Eider Duck, the Grimm Brothers Gallant Tailor, the Persian Treasure in the Sky and the Central Asian The Tiger and the Frog to name a few.
The two-disc family set is $20 and is available through the T.A.L.E.S. website at www.talesstorytelling.com.
