Splendidly dramatic is the tale of Roland and Oliver, which every boy loves, of Ogier the Dane, and of some of the other heroes of the time of Charlemagne. Children listen spellbound to the account of the first meeting and disagreement of the two lads whose friendship makes such a sweet and colorful story, and of Charles the Great in council with his peers and knights, and delight in the swinging lines of the old ballad:
The emperor sits in an orchard wide,
Roland and Oliver by his side:
With them many a gallant lance,
Full fifteen thousand of gentle France.
Upon a throne of beaten gold
The lord of ample France behold:
White his hair and beard were seen,
Fair of body and proud of mien.
The story of Bayard is an admirable one for this period, as well as that of the Spanish hero, the Cid; and “St. George and the Dragon” is always a favorite.
I plead, too, that more of the narrator’s time be devoted to the telling of our own American epic of Hiawatha. The answer comes, “That is read in school.” To be sure it is, and one reason why it is read so badly and appreciated so little is that it was not given in story form first. The German child uses the Nibelungenlied as a classroom text, but before he studies the epic he knows its tales. Gunther, Hagen, Siegfried, and Dankwart are familiar characters to him, and consequently he enjoys the poem.
The same principle applies to Hiawatha. If boys and girls are acquainted with Hiawatha himself, if they know Nokomis and Chibiabos and Kwasind and Iagoo before they are given the poem to study, it means something to them that it cannot mean otherwise. Perhaps one reason why Longfellow’s masterpiece has been so little used by story-tellers is that the work of putting it into story form is a task with which the non-professional is unable to cope. Now, however, an excellent retold work is on the market—Winston’s Story of Hiawatha—which makes it possible for every narrator to have her children know the American epic as well as German young people know the Nibelungenlied.
In considering stories for the heroic period of childhood, let us not forget the biographical and historical narratives that fulfill every requirement of hero tales. Boys and girls love the epical stories because they are true in spirit, but they love also those that are true in fact. It is a mistake to think that biography is dull and uninteresting to them, because stories of the boyhood of great men, great rulers, great discoverers and path-finders, great lawgivers, painters, musicians, and writers, are hero tales of the highest type. Many of them have been told admirably for young people, and the narrator does no more valuable work than when he uses them freely. Sir Walter Raleigh, De Soto, Coronado, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Garibaldi, Solyman the Magnificent, Robert the Bruce, Kosciusko, William Wallace, William Tell, and dozens of others are as fascinating as Beowulf or Hercules and have an influence even more powerful, because children know that these heroes have actually lived. Never mind what some authorities say about the man of Switzerland being a mythical personage. Let American young people know him as those of the Alpine land know him, as the defender of his ancient rights and native mountains, the embodiment of the spirit of Helvetia. They will be finer men and women because of it, and that, more than anything else, concerns the story-teller.
Then, too, there are history tales, hundreds of them, from every age and every land. There are brave deeds done by children that every child should know. The little girl on the St. Lawrence, holding the blockhouse of Vercheres against the Iroquois, the boy whose courage and presence of mind saved Lucerne, the event through which William of Orange came to be known as William the Silent, and many other similar narratives are intensely interesting to boys and girls. Some of the Old Testament tales belong in this period; for a detailed account of them see Chapter Twelve, on “Bible Stories.”
At this age, when the adventure spirit runs high, when pathfinding and Indian fighting are desired above all other things, how are we to keep boys and girls from running away to lead such lives themselves? One way is by letting them live the lives of the heroes who thrill them—in other words, by dramatizing. It is the hunger for experience that causes boys to turn vagabond, and juvenile-court records show that many of the ten- and twelve-year-olds who are lured by the call of adventure come from homes that offer nothing to feed the adventure craving, whereas those who have some of the desired experiences at home are less likely to start out seeking them. It is a wise mother who encourages her boys to make pirate caves in their own back yards, to be youthful Crusoes, Kit Carsons, Daniel Boones, and Robin Hoods for a Saturday morning, and the school or public playground that provides for much out-of-door acting is doing something that will prevent many evils. In some children this desire is so strong that it is almost a fever, and if not satisfied in a wholesome manner is likely to lead to lamentable ends. I remember how much it meant to me in my own childhood, when I burned to lead the lives of some of the heroes of whom I had read or heard, to be permitted to participate in the Indian warfare of the neighborhood boys and be the maiden who was carried away into captivity. It was such a blissful experience that I joyfully contributed my small allowance to buy red ink for war paint and to help costume the braves, and when a Sioux band came to town, I ecstatically trudged after the wagon and lived for a day in a realm far removed from my accustomed one. The boys had feeling to even a greater degree, and who knows but that without this Indian play some of them might have gone forth in search of adventure and become criminals, whereas every one is now a law-abiding, useful citizen.
Sources of Story Material for the Heroic Period
Anderson, Rasmus Björn: The Younger Edda.
Baldwin, James: The Story of Roland; American Book of Golden Deeds.
Bolton, Sarah K.: Poor Boys Who Became Famous.
Bradish, Sarah P.: Old Norse Stories.
Brooks, Elbridge S.: Historic Girls.
Church, Alfred J.: Stories from the Iliad; Stories from the Odyssey.
Coe, Fannie E.: Heroes of Everyday Life.
Farmer, Florence V.: Boy and Girl Heroes.
Foa, Madame Eugénie: Boy Life of Napoleon.
Grierson, E. W.: Tales from Scottish Ballads.
Kingsley, Charles: Greek Heroes.
Lang, Jeanie: The Story of Robert the Bruce; The Story of General Gordon.
Lanier, Sidney: The Boy’s Mabinogion.