morgan schatz blackrose

stories in my life
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Storyteller, Musician, Author and Traveller. www.schatzblackrose.com All stories are copyright of Morgan Schatz Blackrose Available for performances, concerts, workshops worldwide

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the wooden sword

When I am asked to tell a story at a celebration I spend a lot of time in my choice of story. A friend recently turned 40 and her husband asked me to tell a story for the occasion. It presented me with a difficulty in that birthday celebrations are often rowdy affairs and people want to laugh and and dance...quite rightly so. There would be a band and I would have a short time in the bar to tell a tale. So what to choose? A bawdy tale with lots of opportunity for sexual innuendo, which would be enjoyed by all, but was such a tale in keeping with my friend's personality? We had never shared ribald and raunchy adventures together. Our friendship had developed through my annual visits to her school, as a storyteller.  Our conversations revolved around children, education and teaching and I had developed respect not only for her generous spirit, endurance and compassion, but also her resourcefulness as a a teacher and community leader.  I really wanted to honour her with a tale that reflected those qualities. So I forsook  the cheap laughs and focused on allowing the right story to come to me. A story about resilience, resourcefulness and faith. So the following tale seemed most appropriate. 
It is also a tale which I tell to remind myself that when faced with adversity a new direction will emerge, and all will be well.

There was once a King who desired to know the lives of the common people of his land, but he knew that if he was to truly find out he must disguise himself and walk among them. One evening he left his castle dressed in the clothes of a beggar and walked into the city. He wound his way through the narrow streets until he came to a small house and from within he heard to sound of a man singing an accompaniment to the tap, tap, tap of a hammer. The king was perplexed at why anyone working late at night would be happy enough to be singing.
He knocked on the door and it was opened by a cobbler, who took one look at the beggar at his door and ushered him inside. 
'Come friend,' he said, 'a guest is always welcome to share my bread and fire.'
The beggar king sat down at the cobbler's table and saw that he was just finishing resoling a pair of boots.
'I cannot help but wonder why a poor shoe mender like yourself is singing as he works into the night,' he said.
The cobbler smiled and brought a loaf of bread and jug of water to the table.
'Because, my friend, today my work brought me enough money to buy a large loaf of bread for my evening meal, and I can share it with you,' he said, and tore off a large hunk and passed it to the beggar king.
'But what if you have no work tomorrow?' asked the King, 'you won't have anything to sing about then.'
'I have faith,' said the cobbler, 'tomorrow all will be well.' 
After leaving the cobbler's company the King was angry. He could not understand such a naive belief and was determined to challenge it.
The following morning he issued a proclamation that all cobblers must cease work immediately. No shoes were to be repaired or made.
When the cobbler went to get water from the well at dawn, he saw the King's proclamation pasted up on the walls, banning him from work. He waited in line at the well and pondered on what he would do for the day. While standing there an elderly woman slipped with her bucket and spilt the water she had just filled. The cobbler immediately helped her up and then refilled her bucket. She thanked him and handed him a coin. The rest of the day he fetched and carried water for those to old or feeble to do do easily. Many of the people were so grateful they gave him money. That afternoon he had enough coins to buy a loaf of bread and a round of cheese.
The cobbler sang as he prepared to eat his evening meal but was disturbed by a knock at the door. 
Once again the King had disguised himself as a beggar and had come to see how the cobbler fared.
'Come in my friend,' said the cobbler, 'and join me for my evening meal.'
The beggar king looked at the cheese and bread and shook his head. 
'You disobeyed the King's orders and plied your trade,' he stated.
'No, I could not work on my shoes so I carried water all day for people and earnt enough to buy bread and cheese,' he said.
The beggar king frowned.
'What if tomorrow you can't carry water?' he asked, 'you won't have anything to sing about then.'
'I have faith,' said the cobbler, 'tomorrow all will be well.' 
After leaving the cobbler's company that evening the King was angry. He could not understand the naivety of the cobbler and was determined once again to challenge it.
The following morning he issued a proclamation banning water carriers. Everyone must carry their own water from the well.
When the cobbler went to the well at dawn, he saw the King's proclamation pasted up on the walls and pondered on what he would do for the day. While standing there a man staggered towards him,  carrying a load of wood in his arms.
'Let me help you?' said the cobbler. 
And he relieved the wood carter of his burden and carried the wood for him.
The wood carter was impressed with his strength and asked him to help out.  The rest of the day he carted wood and at the end of the day he had earned enough money to buy bread, cheese and wine.
The cobbler sang as he prepared to eat his evening meal, but was disturbed by a knock at the door. 
Once again the King, in the guise of a beggar, had come to see how the cobbler fared.
'Come in my friend,' said the cobbler, 'and join me for my evening meal.'
The beggar king looked at the bread, cheese and jug of wine in astonishment.
'I see you have disobeyed the King's orders,' he said,  and  smiled to himself. 
'No, I could not  carry water so I carted wood all day and earnt enough to buy bread, cheese and wine,' he said.
The beggar king frowned.
'What if tomorrow you can't cart wood?' he asked, 'you won't have anything to sing about then.'
'I have faith,' said the cobbler, 'tomorrow all will be well.' 
After leaving the cobbler's company that evening the King was in a fit of rage. He would challenge the cobbler's faith and win.
The following morning he ordered his soldiers to round up all the wood carters and recruit them for the new palace guard.
When the cobbler went to his wood carting friends at dawn, he found himself hustled to the King's palace, given a uniform and sword and told that he now had the honour of being a palace guard. The rest of the day he spent marching. At the end of the day he was dismissed with a command to return for duty the next day at dawn.
When he asked the captain about payment for his new position, the soldier laughed.
'You will be paid at the end of the month,' he said.
The cobbler walked away and wondered how he could get enough money to buy his evening meal. He touched the hilt of his sword and had an idea.
Next door to the cobblers was the money lender, who upon receiving the cobbler's new sword, gave him enough money to buy food for the next three months.
The cobbler bought bread, cheese and wine and went home. He then took out his carving materials and a length of wood and set about fashioning a wooden sword.
That evening the beggar king returned to the cobblers, certain that he would find him desolate.
But as he knocked on the door, he heard the sound of the cobbler singing, and when it was opened he saw the cobbler had a fine meal set upon the table.
'I was expecting you,' said the cobbler, 'come and join me for I am now a palace guard.'
The beggar king frowned.
'I know the palace guards are paid at the end of each month, how did you come to have money to buy food?' 
The cobbler laid the wooden sword on the table.
'With this,'he said. 'I have exchanged my sword for money and when I am paid at the end of the month I will buy it back, but till then I will have this wooden sword in my scabbard.'
'And what if you are called upon to use your sword? asked the beggar king.
'Then I will have faith that all will be well,' he said.
The beggar king smiled because now he knew he had trapped the cobbler.
He hurried back to the castle, removed his disguise and commanded his captain to remove a prisoner from the palace dungeon.  He was to be publicly executed in the village square the following day at dawn, and the executioner was to be the cobbler who had joined the palace guard.
When the cobbler arrived at the palace the following morning he noticed  a great crowd was gathering at the village square. Word had spread there was to be the execution of a thief.
The captain of the guard commanded the palace guard to march to the village square and there one of them was to be chosen to execute a thief.
The thief knelt upon the ground in front of the palace guard, protesting his innocence.
'Is it a crime to feed your family?' he pleaded, 'what I took was for need not greed. Spare my life, please.'
The captain of the guard looked the cobbler in the eye.
'Remove the thief's head,' he commanded.
The cobbler clutched the hilt of his sword, knowing that if he withdrew it, then his act of substitution would be deemed treasonous and he too would be executed.
For a minute he stood, looking at the prisoner's desperate face. He then averted his eyes, took a deep breath and faced the assembled crowd. 
'If this man be innocent as he claims to be, let my sword be changed into wood,' he declared.
He then withdrew the sword and raised it up high.
There was a gasp from the crowd as the wooden sword appeared like a beacon in the air.
At that moment the King strode forth and addressed the crowd.
'Do you know who I am?' the King asked.
'You are the King,' replied the cobbler.
'I am your guest, having eaten at your table for the past four nights.' 
The cobbler looked closely at the King with a dawning recognition.
'You are always welcome to dine with me,' said the cobbler, 'although I thought a King may have preferred finer fare than what I could offer.'
'What about me?' demanded the prisoner, seizing the opportunity to secure the King's favour.
'Ah yes, the miracle of your innocence,' said the King, and smiled. 'Your freedom is restored,' and he dismissed the prisoner.
As the crowd dispersed the King turned once more to the cobbler.
'I am in need of an adviser,' he said.
The cobbler smiled at him and handed him his wooden sword.
'Have faith. All will be well.'

 Souces for the story:
Doug Lipman provides a number of sources for the story.
Dov Noy's Folktales of Israel, University of Chicago Press, 1963. Another, essentially similar, Jewish version from Afghanistan is in Howard Schwartz's Elijah's Violin, Harper and Row, 1983. This story is sometimes attributed to Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav, 1772 -1810)who retold and interpreted it. The basic plot is also known in Turkey and Uzbekistan, as well as in Finland, Germany, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Greece.
This story has appeared in Best-Loved Tales Told at the National Storytelling Festival and in an anthology by Colin Greer and Herbert Kohl--as well as on my audiotape, Milk from the Bull's Horn: Tales of Nurturing Men by Doug Lipman
I first read the story in Heather Forest's book.
Wisdom tales from around the world by Heather Forest. Publisher August House, 1996

let go!, mixed media on wood panel by Roman W. Schatz
Letgo

Filed under  //  Afganistan   folktale   jewish  
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where do you get your stories from?

A few years ago I heard my Welsh Storytelling friend Eirwen Malin, tell a story at a workshop, where she prefaced it with, 'When people ask me where do I get my stories from, I answer with this story.' And then she told the story. It was a story I immediately fell in love with, but at the time did not ask her the source of it, nor did we talk about it. I always thought of it as 'Eirwen's story' in the way that storytellers do when they hear another storyteller's version of a traditional tale and then contemplate how they would tell it themselves. But I didn't tell it in any public setting.
I thought about it over the years and now realise that it reflects my process of story selection. So now I am ready to share the story with others I wanted to find Eirwen's source, both out of curiosity and ethics. When I spoke with her I encountered one of the problems that can come when you have been storytelling for many years, have a wide repertoire and rely on memory to document sources...the source may not be on the tip of our tongue.
But, as Eirwen said, 'I'm sure it comes from the oral tradition, and if I recall, it is a Jewish tale'. 
I put in the key words of the story into Google but no sources came up. Only when I put in 'Jewish' in combination with those words did the source appear; Jacob ben Wolf Kranz of Dubno, the Dubner Maggid, (circa 1740 - 1804), author of "Ohel Ya'aqob". He adopted the Midrash's method of explanation by telling parables and incidents of daily life. His most famous parable was called 'First I Shoot the Arrow.'  Eirwen's story.
Which brings me to the notion of 'the oral tradition.' Given that Jacob Kranz told this story orally, it can be said it is from the oral tradition but, he also wrote it down. Does that change its status? Since the advent and proliferation of printing, folktales, parables and fables from different cultures and traditions have been written down and are more likely to be read by people themselves than passed on verbally, without any reference to a written text. Does this mean they are leaving the oral tradition? Is reading a text out loud part of the oral tradition by virtue of using the spoken word? 
Although I say that storytelling is like theatre in its diversity and content, my bottom line is that although a written text maybe a source for a story, the story's presentation is not text based. Reader's theatre seems to be a popular way of working with traditional stories in the United States and Canada, and the general public seem familiar with the difference between it and storytelling.
In Australia storytellers and storytelling is still generally understood as literature based ie. reading from a book. I have often joked about having to be tautological and say 'oral storytelling' to differentiate between story reading and storytelling, and in the same context talk about the storyteller as the poor 2nd cousin of the author. 'Telling stories' is a phrase that often denotes untruthfulness and an author is an 'authority' by the very nature of the 'written word having authority.' 
But to return to the storyteller and preacher Jacob ben Wolf Kranz; he did not have his works published until after he died. However, as a preacher he most often told his stories, and his wisdom was passed on orally. Because he was telling in a familiar storytelling genre, parables, even if he created the parables himself, they easily became part of the oral tradition because that was how they were transmitted. In the same way that many of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytales have been thought of as 'folktales', anonymously authored and passed on from one generation to the next.
So what is more important; the story or the storyteller? I love a good story, but I also place importance on the context in which it is told, which means, who told it, who was it told to and why. And as a writer I appreciate the creation as well as interpretation of a story. Eirwen's story was artfully constructed, and I would probably create a silmilar tale for oral presentation but for the purpose of this discussion I will briefly outline Jacob ben Wolf Kranz's telling.

One day a man walking in the woods saw that many trees had targets drawn on them. Each target had an arrow lodged firmly in it's centre. The man came across a young boy with a bow and arrow who, when asked, acknowledged that he had shot all the arrows. When further questioned on his remarkable skill and accuracy he answered the man, 'First I shoot the arrow, then I draw the target'.

book of dreams, mixed media on canvas, Roman W. Schatz
Bookofdreams

Filed under  //  Dubner Maggid   eirwen malin   jacob kranz   jewish   parable  
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