Oral traditions
Oct. 22nd, 2011 12:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bohemiancoastOr 'all knowledge is not contained on the internet' in fact. When I was a small child my father used to tell me bedtime stories. Some of them were poems. And one of our favourites was this...
"It was a dark and stormy night
The brigands they sat in their cave
The chief of the brigands arose, and he said
"Antonio, tell us a storio!"
And this is what he said.
"It was a dark and stormy night..."
Well, you get the idea. This could go on for some time. It's clearly a fairly widespread meme; the Ahlbergs wrote a book about it, for example.
M has just noticed that Googling for the version I learnt yields no results, though there's an instructive comment thread here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listeners/openinglines.shtml in which various people ascribe it to their fathers or the Scouts.
So. Do you remember this from your childhood? What words did you use? Where were you, geographically, at the time?
I have noted before that despite the work of the Opies, the rhymes remembered and told by children (in playgrounds and around campfires) are not, by and large, well documented as a tradition.
"It was a dark and stormy night
The brigands they sat in their cave
The chief of the brigands arose, and he said
"Antonio, tell us a storio!"
And this is what he said.
"It was a dark and stormy night..."
Well, you get the idea. This could go on for some time. It's clearly a fairly widespread meme; the Ahlbergs wrote a book about it, for example.
M has just noticed that Googling for the version I learnt yields no results, though there's an instructive comment thread here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listeners/openinglines.shtml in which various people ascribe it to their fathers or the Scouts.
So. Do you remember this from your childhood? What words did you use? Where were you, geographically, at the time?
I have noted before that despite the work of the Opies, the rhymes remembered and told by children (in playgrounds and around campfires) are not, by and large, well documented as a tradition.
A meeting of brigands
Date: 2013-06-19 09:15 am (UTC)It was a dark and stormy night...
and three bands of brigands met.
"Tell us a tale!" said the leader of one
and this is the tale they said...
It was a dark and stormy night ... etc
I always had visions of three groups of muttering men with hats and hoods and cloaks and dark expressions and cutlasses (a bit like characters from 'Les Miserables') somehow bumping into each other in the rain at some three-directional crossroads. I remember thinking that the telling of the endless story was the only way in which the situation was kept under control, otherwise a fight could erupt at any time (or perhaps that is the way dad explained it to us).
I have enjoyed passing this story on to our three daughters and I will occasionally drop it into a conversation with them with the introduction "Who would like to hear a story?". There are always groans from the girls when they finally hear what the story is, but I know they secretly enjoy it. The other thing I sometimes do is tell the story through several times, but changing the emphasis on individual words, just to drag it out even longer (and annoy them even more); but also to show them how that device can change the meaning of a sentence. eg 'IT was a dark and stormy night' is different to 'It was a dark and stormy NIGHT' (accompanied by raised eyebrows etc). Let us never forget that it is compulsory for dads to tell bad jokes, especially in a household of girls.
The girls and I Googled this tonight, after I retold the 'tale' at dinner, as we were keen to see where it originated from. We live in Brisbane, Australia but both my parents emigrated from the UK as children after WWII.
I know our girls will pass it on to their children (along with a few dad "jokes").
Thanks for the opportunity to add to the discussion - very interesting to see how far the version we learned has strayed from the 'Antonio' text.