The Gift of A Story

I love the story of The Man Without A Story. For one thing, it's fun---the fairy glen, the big wind, the black-haired woman---and mysterious. The man goes to the fairy glen, the edge between the familiar and the unknown where anything can happen. This is always an invitation to adventure, although that's not his conscious motivation. What the man gains is a story, and more then that, a new view of himself. Who knew that he was a priest, a fiddler, a surgeon, (and ultimately a storyteller), in addition to basket weaver?

We tend to privilege myths and big epics over fairy and folktales when we get serious about meaning, but these relatively small tales, concocted by tellers whose names are long forgotten and passed down, mouth to heart to mouth to heart beside countless hearth fires over the centuries, may be the stories that tell us the most about common human experience and longing. The plot may be simple, even formulaic, but there is always more than one way to receive them, more then one message. We came up with quite a few at the myth round table where this story was recently told. What I take from this tale today is twofold: the connection between a good (life)story and a satisfying sense of one's capacities, and the mysterious means by which we are gifted with such a story. I get tired of all the positive thinking, self-made individual rhetoric that ignores the obvious and beautiful fact (to me anyway) that we live in relationship to the unknown and unknowable. I hate the dogmatic certainty about what's true and false, real and imagined, that makes the world so small.

The Man Without A Story is an Irish tale. According to the Irish fairy tradition, this time of year, as we approach the winter solstice (December 21st), the veil between the worlds gets thin. It's a particularly good time to pack your bundle and go in search of rods in the fairy glen. Look for the twinkling lights in the distance and tell us a story when you return.

The image is by Arthur Rackham. Other lovely images and stories can be found at The Journal of Mythic Arts at Endicott Studio.