05/12/2024
The Summer edition of The Historical Review will be in members' mailboxes in about a month.
In the meantime, here's a story about a rather unusual group that existed in Berks County more than a century ago....the Reading Storytelling League.
It is perhaps best read late at night under subdued lighting, and with a fertile imagination.
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Tellers of Tales
Col. Henry W. Shoemaker, historian, folklorist, and at that time publisher of the Altoona Tribune newspaper, introduced the main speaker at a meeting of the Reading Storytelling League on May 6, 1923, and praised him as “a genius of outstanding abilities whose researches are always clothed in an atmosphere of rare charm and mysticism.”
That speaker was Dr. Walker L. Stephen, a Berks County pharmacist, physician, historian and writer.
In his introduction of Dr. Stephen, Col. Shoemaker continued, “Your speaker has spent some of the happiest hours of his life delving along the borderland of Berks County romance, first as a publisher and later as a member of the committee of the Berks County Historical Society.
“It seemed from the start this lode-star ever carried him toward the Blue Mountains, and he always viewed the great, long level line of those mountains standing bold against the horizon with the most peculiar feeling of awe and mystery.”
In Dr. Stephen’s opening remarks to the Storytelling League, he urged members to consider expanding their scope.
“It would seem a good plan if a chapter of the Pennsylvania Alpine Club could be organized within this league, the object being to take monthly hikes to the more remote regions of Berks County for the purpose of collecting true stories. These could be taken down in the quaint style of mannerism of those relating them, and recited that way, word for word, gesture for gesture, and form a mass of local storytelling that would be of priceless value in the years to come.”
Perhaps most interesting in Dr. Stephens’ speech were these declarations:
“It has been said that the Celtic revival in Dublin of 20 years ago saved the Irish language and literature from oblivion and awakened a national spirit.”
He could have been alluding to such publication as W.B. Yeats’ 1893 classic “The Celtic Twilight,” which captured traditional and treasured folk and fairy tales from across Ireland and reintroduced ancient stories to new readers.
Twenty-first century readers would be wise to consider these suggestions made in 1923.
“Berks County must not look far afield for its stories,” Dr. Stephen said. “Its folklore and its ballads, when all are here in countless number and form and of easy access.
“The Storytelling League can fill a broader scope by collecting as well as telling stories. The coming generation will be more deeply thrilled by tales of Indian warriors, ghosts, witches, and goblins who really lived, than ones that are confessedly figments of imagination. It is no harder to tell a true story from a made-up one.
“There have been enough hexes in Berks County to make the tales of New England witchcraft pale in comparison. And as for haunted houses, Berks ought to become the national capital for Sir Conan Doyle’s spirit land.
“It seems to be the thing to do just now to poke fun at the creator of Sherlock Holmes and his ghostly associates, but it is hard to believe that a mind so keenly analytical that could have evolved the ‘Speckled Band’ can be a dupe.
“Ghosts are real, but unfashionable denizens of the world, and we try to exterminate them with the same ruthless spirit as government hunters go after wolves.
“A quiet, dispassioned investigation into Berks County ghosts would make one realize that the unseen world is not so very far away. Yet, your speaker has never himself encountered a trustworthy medium, but has had direct experiences with the hidden forces. This is merely mentioned to encourage ghost story hunters, among the members of the League, who might otherwise feel that if true stories were desired, ghost tales could not be part of them.
“The mountains seem to be the last stand of primitive life, simple faith, forests, game, and old traditions–their aloofness holding tighter the threads which bind the modern complex existence with a kindlier, far-off day.
“Whenever we gaze off at the dim inscrutable line of our beloved ‘Blauen Barriken,’ as the old Dutch people call the Blue Mountains, let us feel that they are in the might heart a vast save deposit vault of stories and legends of beliefs, and hopes, and fears.”
