Mary Medlicott, Storyteller and Author - Storyworks

Posts Tagged ‘listening place’

Storytelling Starters ~ Bear

Saturday, January 26th, 2013

I’ve got two different topics this week. Bears are first. My thoughts on this subject were inspired by a snow bear which I came across leaning up against a wall in the street next to ours. It must have been there for a couple of days before I saw it, admired it and went back home to fetch my camera. By the time I’d returned barely ten minutes later, part of its face had crumbled off. So I picked the missing bit up from the ground, pressed it back on and took my photos.

Bear Stories

The snow bear reminded me of stories of bears. For instance it brought to mind that North American story of the Boy who went to live with the bears. He was badly in need of care and attention after being cruelly treated in his human world.

Then there’s that old French romance, Valentine and Orson, in which twin babies are born in a forest to the exiled wife of Alexander, Emperor of Constantinople. Minutes after their birth  one, Orson, is carried off by a bear mother into the forest where he grows up wild and rough and strong. When he’s finally caught and brought back into human society, he also proves to have sterling values. He is loyal and honest and true.

Orson became one of the best known of all the wild men of story. In so many ways, he embodies the values that humans have linked with the bears of the natural world. Bears are strong and canny. They are also family-orientated and we see them as cuddly, which probably accounts for the popularity in the Western world of the teddy bear. (more…)