Night moves in quietly, the soft blanket of dusk muting wild-flowers in the filed, drawing out the fireflies and crickets. Around a firepit families begin to gather. They lean into a circle enclosed by a ring of boulders as the flames dance against the darkening sky. A voice sings out:
And there were gypsies.
Mother told me that.
But not many of us remember that far back.
The poet's hands dance through the night air. They draw the listeners in as they move with the tale.
"There were gypsies, and they took things like it belonged to them! They came to get grain, they stole small children, their men were handsome as night, or their men were handsome and not to be trusted."
Pulling a worn woven shawl across her shoulders, she steps away from the fire.
On Saturday evenings from the summer solstice until the fall chill sets in, reciters and listeners gather around a bonfire in northern Michigan to share stories, poems, and ballads in a revival of the oral tradition. From California, New York, and down the road, hundreds travel to the Stone Circle in search of history - their own personal links to the past as well as the stories of our shared heritage.
Beyond the circle of stone ancient pines rise to meet the sky, forming a natural amphitheater. Dusk gives way to darkness. A young man in western boots and shirt finishes a monologue about Jesse James and nods to his companion. She rises from her seat atop a boulder to reply with a tale of the meeting between James and Belle Star. A third speaker quietly moves in from the shadows to become Billy the Kid.
Thirty-five thousand years ago Neanderthal people recorded their history, passed on their laws, and educated their children through spoken words and gestures.
Through the centuries people the world over - bards from the Turkish desert, storytellers in the hills of Scotland, soldiers on the Gettysburg battlefield - have continued the tradition. And their words have bound humankind together through ages.
In America the art of the oral tradition was nearly lost. Just in the last decade the words have come alive again - Native American rites of passage, tall tales from the old west, African folk tales, Southern lore, Jesse James and Belle Star, Anansi the spider man, and the princess of the full moon. They may have been temporarily stored in books, in family histories, some in memories. Now they are once again being spoken where people gather and want to listen.
Since the Dark Ages the first full moon
of the fall
Has been called 'The Hunter's Moon.'
Hobo poet Taelen Thomas lowers his walking stick to his side and tips the brim of his
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