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A special thanks to Red Rocker for sending this post to me!

Humans developed complex language somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago. It might have happened gradually – or very quickly. Shortly thereafter, the first storyteller entertained the tribe around the fire by telling stories about the day’s hunt. Or maybe the first storyteller was a traveler, bringing news about the tribe who lived on the other side of the mountain.  The oldest such story we know about is the epic of Gilgamesh, a king of Sumeria who lived almost 3,000 years ago.  The epic tells of the friendship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, of the death of Enkidu,  of the grief of Gilgamesh, and his subsequent quest for the secret of eternal life.

This is how Gilgamesh weeps for his friend, Enkidu:

“How can I rest, how can I be at peace? Despair is in my heart. What my brother is now, that shall I be when I am dead. Because I am afraid of death I will go as best I can to find Utnapishtim whom they call the Faraway, for he has entered the assembly of the gods.’

And this is the answer he hears:

“Gilgamesh, what you seek you will never find. For when the Gods created Man they let death be his lot, eternal life they withheld”.

Sound familiar at all?

Storytelling never went out of style. But with the advent of paper and the printing press and mass literacy, storytellers were not in as much demand. Nowadays, we also have newspapers, the radio, the movies, television, not to mention the internet and ipods and e-books and the latest of all, the Tablet. Ironic that, given how Gilgamesh also came to us on a set of tablets – ones made of clay.  But the fascination of listening to the storyteller has never gone out of style. At bedtime, in a classroom, in a pub, around the campfire, we still perk up our ears when we hear the words “Here is a story.”

In recognition of the tradition of oral storytelling, the Swedes came up with something they called Alla berättares dag (All storytellers day), a national day for storytelling. The idea took hold in other countries, so that nowadays each year the March Equinox,  March 20^th,  is known as World Storytelling Day. According to Wikipedia:

On World Storytelling Day, as many people as possible tell and listen to stories in as many languagesand at as many places as possible, during the same day and night.

My thought was, we here at the Hog’s Head are united by our love of  one story in particular, and of stories in general. Why not celebrate Storytelling Day at our virtual pub by telling each other stories? In other words, why not have our own storytelling marathon?

Of course our stories would be in electronic text form because we can’t talk to one another (at least, not yet). But except for that, they should parallel the intent of Storytelling day as much as possible. They should be stories we’ve heard, not read about. They should be stories we’ve heard from real people – not the television, or movies. Audiobooks are  tempting, but for this event, let’s exclude them. We want to try to recreate the oral tradition, as much as possible.

Timing is crucial. We’ll set up the post for the marathon on March 19^th. As soon as the clock strikes midnight on March 20^th in your time zone, you’re free to start telling us a story. As long as it’s still March 20^th in  your time zone, you can keep adding stories. The more of us join in, the more fun it will be.

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