In our age of CD ROMs and entertainment escapism we have forgotten what our ancestors know to their bones: stories are vitamins for the soul; they have the power to bless and heal. Stories transmit culture and values, they open new worlds to the listeners, as well as pass on valuable traditions. Knowing these uses for narrative, being initiated into their inner meaning and having a vast repertory of such stories, is what qualified an individual as a true Story Teller to our ancestors.

In more ancient Celtic times it was the learned poet or master poet who fit this job description. They were likewise the storytellers, historians, and genealogists of the clan. The training of a learned poet took twelve years. In the first 2 years of their training, before ever composing a line of poetry, they were required to memorize a repertoire of 250 main and 100 secondary stories. These were not necessarily short stories. One learned poet Forgoll was said to be able to recite a story every night throughout a whole winter "from Samain to Beltaine" (November to May-210 nights). Some eighteenth and nineteenth century story tellers in Scotland and Ireland were said to be able to continue a single story night after night for weeks.

At some point the education of story tellers in our Celtic society became of a less rigorous and formal nature. However, it has no doubt survived up to our modern times, mainly through apprenticeships and specific family traditions. In later centuries the storyteller's home was typically the Ceildh house.

"Stories are not the only traditional forms which came to life at these gatherings; there were rhymes, riddles, songs. Folk prayers, proverbs, genealogical lore and local traditions."

How can we recognize a traditional story or a traditional storyteller when we hear em? The biggest tip to "its high antiquity, is the use made of stereotyped descriptive passages or rhetorical runs."

I recently heard the following ancient, mysterious, and haunting rhetorical run from the opening of a story told by a modern Irish storyteller. It is a good illustration of the above.

Please note the implications inherent in this run concerning time and space, the embedded blessing, and the storyteller's ability to make the old story new in some sort of timeless moment.

There were specific prohibitions which surrounded the telling of these traditional stories; They could not be told during the summer or daylight hours, perhaps because the best time for otherworldly contact or travel was considered to be after twilight. A man could not tell them in the presence of his father or elder brother, perhaps because they should be allowed to do their own storytelling, out of deference and respect.

There were stories for every occasion. There were stories for weddings, for childbirth, for death, for trials and difficult times, etc. because there is no greater healing than to be told a story that answers our present condition on predicament. " Each of us has a story to which we can respond wholeheartedly and which will teach wisdom. The repetition and giving of that story may provide us with clues about the purpose and direction of our own life, as well as imparting initiatory teachings to others."

Even though most of our birthright of traditional stories has been misplaced, even though there are too few initiated story tellers in our experience, still a rag-tag of surviving stories have held us together as a clan into these modern times; the story of our origins, or struggles, the life of Rob Roy etc.

In our own clan we are privileged to have more then just a few later-day inheritors and transmitters of the ageless tradition. Still even they, I think would admit the incompleteness of their own knowledge and our general need to recover more of what we have lost culturally.

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