Minstrel might be a more accurate word, but from the 1850’s on, that word has gained a different and less desirable meaning in the U.S.
Long before there were written languages, history was passed orally from place to place, and generation to generation. Stories and news were memorized, often set to rhyme or meter because the tales were so long. Even after languages allowed histories to be written down, the cost of making copies or of transporting original works was so high that traveling tell-tales were still important.
If you read my books or articles – even my blog posts – you’ll note that I spend a lot of time telling stories. Narratives allow the teller to work in facts and statistics, important words and phrases, in specific places and in order. Tales allow the listener/reader to absorb salient points without having said points stick in their mental craw. Or simply: stories help facts go down, like sugar helps medicine go down.
We are programmed to remember stories and rhymes – studies have shown this over and over again. The Bible uses parables or illustrative stories to make moral lessons easier to remember. Easy-to-remember stories are also easy-to-repeat stories.
Some of us, it’s true, are more at home with a roster of facts, figures and statistics. Some of us (including myself) did very well in school because we remembered dates, names and other ephemera and could regurgitate it on command. But narratives – stories with a beginning, middle and end, and having a moral or “point” to them – are easier for most members of our culture to remember. (Oddly, this particular post doesn’t try to tell a story! Hmm. . . ) If you can remember the story, you can apply it’s lessons.
Which is why I spend a lot of time educating via stories.
