W i n t e r g u i d e 2 0 1 8 7 1 L’Esprit de L’Escalier library of congress Ça Roule? The culture of storytelling is at once an intimate and global art. By Rhea Côté Robbins a roule? My favorite French-style yogurt brand, Oui, charms with this question on its foil cover. The question bounces back to answer itself: Ça roule! What’s your story, anyway? How’s it rolling? Now, that’s a story! The tradition of storytelling has blown across my life since I was very young. My latest inquiry into the literary landscape reads like a bibliography–a book collection of book collectors used as a cultural inter- preter. I am captivated with Franco-Amer- ican writers dedicated to the stories of their history: Marius Barbeau, Adélard Lambert, Pierre Anctil, Gerard J. Brault–the list goes on. Legend has it Canadian ethnologist Adélard Lambert bought books from Qué- becois immigrants in New Hampshire as they were about to be thrown onto the fire to be used as fuel. Maman would tell me of the racon- teurs she met in the lumber camp where she worked as a “cookie,” serving food to the workers along with her twin and moth- er. There was always one man who excelled at telling les contes in the lumber camp, en- tertaining those around him with his tales. Back home in Wallagrass, down the road, there was another man who would tell sto- ries. My aunt told me his tales always be- gan: “Il était une fois un roi.” Translation: “Once upon a time, there was a king.” My aunt said the storyteller could turn every- day, ordinary objects into something magi- cal. The frost on the road would become di- amonds. I was mesmerized by the idea of an oral storyteller entertaining a crowd. I had my own experience with such an orator in the seventh grade. Mother Stel- la told the class she was an excellent story- teller, and our reward on Friday afternoon would be a story that would last for hours. Her skill at weaving the web of a story that took hours to unravel intrigued me, and I’ve never forgotten the feeling it inspired. Recently, I came across the work of Mar- ius Barbeau, leading Canadian anthropolo- gist, and one of his books, The Golden Phoe- nix and Other French-Canadian Fairy Tales. Barbeau and Michael Hornyansky, a Rhodes Scholar, codified oral stories that were told across the land of the lower St. Lawrence Riv- er. They were stories I recognized, stories my maman and my aunt told me, and that they had once listened to as children. These tales, which were told all across France, originated in long-ago eras in places as far away as Ara- bia, India, and Egypt. These stories can be found all across the globe in one version or another. They traveled to America and be- yond via immigrants, spreading and contrib- uting to the enrichment of the storied land- scape. These stories represent both diversity and the unity that exists through the contin- ued telling of a story that spans generations and geography. n RheaCôtéRobbinsistheauthorof ‘downthePlains,’and editorofHeliotrope–FrenchHeritageWomenCreate.