The Best Storytellers are Southern

The South produces the best storytellers this side of the Atlantic. What makes Southerners the best storytellers though? What is the magic sauce that makes this a real and important thing? I started thinking about this after watching the movie Big Fish. This is a Southern Gothic film, based on a book of the same name, and written by Daniel Wallace (who is from Alabama). I will point out why we are great storytellers – it is culturally distinct to the South and part of our everyday life.

One of the things that influences Southern storytelling is our Irish heritage (much to the chagrin of the Southern Anglos). The Irish people are known as the world’s best storytellers. The Irish have the Blarney Stone – with one kiss and you receive the gift of gab. There is also the exalted position of a seanchaí: this is the historian and storyteller that chieftains relied upon for remembering laws and genealogy. Rarely is there a time when you are around an Irishman and there is awkward silence. This is a cultural cornerstone of Southern storytelling. The strong Scottish and Irish ties in the South really are one of the major building blocks of our culture.

Another reason is simply the Bible. As Christians, we are typically told the stories of the Bible through the oral tradition and when we are children. The Bible is full of parables – this Christian heritage is also what makes us great storytellers. We are inundated with stories from the time we are born until when we can read (at minimum). The sermon in church is an explanation of an historical story, explaining the different elements, and why things were said the way they were. This teaches us the intricacies of stories and, very importantly, how to build them on our own. This is part of the fabric that helps us to spin a good yarn when necessary.

There is not a single event in history that we, as Southerners, do not know of someone that has already faced it. Someone could mention a boulder falling on the person next to them. Our initial response would be,” You ‘member Aunt Sally’s third cousin’s boy, same thing happened to him two years ago. What an awful tragedy, I’m sorry you went through that.”  

Life in the South is well lived. It is part of the culture to enjoy the things around us. To take a moment to sip some sweet tea and ponder the day’s events, or even tomorrow’s. Unlike other parts of the country, where the end of one task is just the beginning of another one, we take the small moments to relish what we have accomplished: to enjoy the first sunset from our newly built deck or to take the moment in with our loved ones. Even those of us that are not grandiloquent, will sit back in our chair and watch the sun settle in for the night and comment on the beauty of it.

This part brings me to the South: a land that is simply filled with a great and natural beauty. You have the mountains of Appalachia, with its superb mountains and valleys – Chattanooga’s Lookout Mountain always comes to mind. There are numerous coastal beaches, each with their own beautiful traits, watching waves crash onto the beach or watching storms loom just off the edge. The trees laden with Spanish moss, that creates a mythical paradise, look to the areas it touches during the day and has a spooky ambience at night.  These are simply a couple of examples. There are dozens more that easily come to mind. Not to mention the architecture in many of the older cities. With all this beauty and inspiration, how can one not either invent a story (or learn a story) that they would love to pass on to the next generation?

Summing this up, I look back at the film Big Fish. The son, in the last moments of his father’s life, begins to tell a wonderful story of how his father died, instead of him dying in a hospital bed. What the son learns at the end of the film is that most of his father’s grandiose tales are true, but with a slight bit of imaginative embellishment. At the end of the movie, all the people his father talked about were there for his funeral and they all had stories of great things his father had done for them. The small embellishments, or minor memory lapses, were the parts that kept the story interesting and exciting.

All of our heritage and life experiences combine to allow for truth and imagination to form into a truly lovely story for us. The Southerners that really have the gift of gab revel in this spirit and culture of Dixie, and always entertain us with tales that we cannot wait to hear again (even if we have heard them numerous times before).