Tuesday 15 April 2008

Foolish Jack

Newfoundland has a great tradition of Jack stories, and I've been telling a lot of Jack tales to my storytelling students in grades 4-6 at Holy Cross Elementary in St. John's. This is a story recorded live with one of my classes on Friday, 11 April 2005.

"Foolish Jack" is a Jack tale from Appalachia, and while I had heard many versions of the story, I had never considered telling it until I heard it told by storyteller Elinor Benjamin last November when we told stories together at a few schools in Conception Bay as part of the St. John's Storytelling Festival school outreach program. For more information on the origins of the story, and for references to other versions, visit:
http://www.ferrum.edu/applit/bibs/tales/FoolishJack.htm.

You can listen to the recorded version by clicking here, if you have the sense you were born with!