Golden Links in the Chains of Oral History – 60-Year Intervals
I knew a guy, who knew a guy, who….
An old man tells a teenager a story. Roughly 60 years later, when the teenaged listener is an old man, he passes on the story. These 60-year internals are key to maintaining the oral traditions of families and nations.
In a recent post about Memorial Day celebrations, I wrote about meeting a veteran of the Spanish American War when I was a teenager. I spoke with this veteran about his experiences in the war and his survival of malaria when so many of his fellow soldiers died. The Spanish American War ended in 1878. That remembered event, from the oral history of an old soldier, now dates back roughly 125 years.
A valued reader of Greene’s Thoughts wrote to say that she had a similar experience relating to the American Civil War. Also growing up in Connecticut, she vividly remembers meeting a woman who had been born into slavery. If we estimate the amount of time from the childhood memory of the woman to the current remembrance of my friend, it is about 120 years. She said that in her childhood, family stories about experiences in the Civil War were not uncommon.
I have fond memories of my great grandfather. As a child, I would sit on his lap, a dense cloud of fragrant, Holiday brand pipe tobacco smoke enveloping both of us (it was a different era), and he would tell me stories about growing up in the Alsace region of France and how the family had emigrated to America in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war. Most of this oral history is of the same 125-year timeframe, but some of his stories dated back even longer – the Franco-Prussian war ended in 1870.
The preservation of these memories and oral traditions requires storytelling, remembering, and passing on the story from the old to the young, again and again. A teenager, say age 15, experiences an important event. At age 75, she still remembers the event and tells the story to a young person; a reminiscence of 60 years. This young person hearing the story at say, age 10, remembers it through his lifetime and passes it on when he is in his 70s. Through these intervals, and the simple act of telling a story, the experiences of our ancestors are preserved.
King Philip’s War ended in Southern New England in 1675, but there are still families that can refer to the experience of a relative from that time. Using a conservative interval of 60 years, how many people would it take to keep a recollection from King Philip’s War alive up to the current time? Only six. And with a slightly longer time interval, as few as five.
Taking the interval of 60-year storytelling to the extreme, it would only take about 33 people to pass on the experience of having seen Jesus. I have no doubt that somewhere in the Middle East, there is a family able to do exactly that.
Love this ode to the beauty and longevity of stories, Drake. This is the time version of 6-degrees of separation.
"The preservation of these memories and oral traditions requires storytelling, remembering, and passing on the story from the old to the young, again and again." So true Drake. Looking forward to more stories from your great grandfather. Good to preserve them for the next generation.