Special Method in Primary Reading and Oral Work with Stories

by Charles A. McMurry

The foresters of Robin Hood's band were lovers of forest and glade; the song of the bird and fragrance of wild flowers were sweet to them. In Pyle's introductory chapter is this description of their retreat under the Greenwood. "So turning their backs upon the stream, they plunged into the forest once more, through which they traced their steps till they reached the spot where they dwelt in the depths of the woodland. There had they built huts of bark and branches of trees, and made couches of sweet rushes spread over with skins of fallow deer. Here stood a great oak tree with branches spreading broadly around, beneath which was a seat of green moss where Robin Hood was wont to sit at feast and at merrymaking, with his stout men about him. Here they found the rest of the band, some of whom had come in with a brace of fat does. Then they built great fires, and after the feast was ready they all sat down, but Robin Hood placed Little John at his right hand, for he was henceforth to be the second in the band."

Little John's bout with the tanner of Blyth is introduced thus:—

"One fine day, not long after Little John had left abiding with the Sheriff and had come back to the merry Greenwood, Robin Hood and a few chosen fellows of his band lay upon the soft sward beneath the Greenwood Tree where they dwelt. The day was warm and sultry, so that whilst most of the band were scattered through the forest upon this mission and upon that, these few stout fellows lay lazily beneath the shade of the tree, in the soft afternoon, passing jests among themselves and telling merry stories, with laughter and mirth.

"All the air was laden with the bitter fragrance of the May, and all the bosky shades of the woodlands beyond rang with the sweet song of birds,—the throstle-cock, the cuckoo, and the wood-pigeon,—and with the song of birds mingled the cool sound of the gurgling brook that leaped out of the forest shades, and ran fretting amid its rough gray stones across the sunlit open glade before the trysting-tree."

This delight in the beauty and music of all nature about them is a sort of atmosphere which gives tone to all the stories of this group.

The language in which the stories are narrated is rich in the quaint and vigorous phrases of Old English, reminding one of the times of Shakespeare and before. One could hardly give the children a better introduction to the riches of our mother tongue.

The description of English customs, the popular festivities, the booths of the market town, the parade of feudal lords and retainers, the constraints placed upon hunting by kings and lords, and the hardships of the poor are touched upon in significant ways. The stories give an insight into the English character, their love of rude sports, their ballad literature, and their respect for honesty and courage and shrewdness.

The ballads associated with the Robin Hood legends are often beautiful and striking expressions of the English spirit, and have a special charm for children. They should be read in connection with the later reading of the stories in the third and fourth school years.

The bearing of these tales upon early feudal history and the general literature of that age is of importance. This is well illustrated in "Ivanhoe" in the use by Richard of Robin Hood and his archers in the attack upon Torquilstone, and in various exploits of the men of the Greenwood when brought in contact with knights on horseback. There is also a kinship in these narratives with some of the best stories and novels of early English history, as Scott's "Tales of a Grandfather," Kingsley's "Hereward the Wake," Jane Andrew's "Gilbert the Page," and a number of Scott's novels.

In the oral treatment of the stories in the third or fourth school year, the teacher will find her powers of presentation taxed in a peculiar way. The quaint language and humorous tone, the occasional witty conceits, will need to be appreciated and enjoyed, and the mode of presentation suited to the thought. Let the teacher first of all thoroughly enjoy the stories and in rendering them to children in the classroom lose herself in the tone and spirit of the account. It requires great freedom and flexibility of body and mind to do this well, but that is what a teacher most of all needs. The humorous part, especially, will require a certain unbending of the stiff manners of a teacher, but no harm is done in this.