Appendix 1

Ethnopoetic System

ANY TRANSCRIPTION IS ALWAYS A COMPROMISE. Something is inevitably lost: in moving from oral to written, nuances of voice are difficult to denote; we lose, for example, Alice’s representations of the speakers in her stories, and her singing the fairies’ tune (though we include it as a musical transcription). But something is also gained: oral texts may be inaccessible to many hearers because of the teller’s accent, as could be the case with Pius’s stories. Here we have chosen ethnopoetic rather than prose transcription because we feel it best represents these oral stories in a readily comprehensible mode. We have sought to get as close as we can to what was actually said by each teller throughout each tale, while also bearing in mind readability and our concern to recognize his or her artistry.

That being said, we know that not everything that happens in every telling is part of its aesthetic. For example, pauses in speech often mark phrase transitions, which we give as new lines in the ethnopoetic transcription. But since speakers need to breathe, a pause may have a more mundane purpose than a transitional one.

For these tales, we have the benefit of an oral telling; we’re not limited to others’ transcriptions. (The initial transcriptions of Alice’s stories from video recordings were done by Martin, of Pius’s stories from audio recordings by Anita.) Thus, as Pauline did in her work on oral narratives from the Creighton collection (1985), our ethnopoetic transcriptions combine the analytical perspectives of two anthropologists who worked with very different sources. Dell Hymes (1981), based on word-for-word prose transcriptions of First Nations narratives, used speech particles, repetitions, parallelisms, and other verbal phenomena as performance markers. Dennis Tedlock (1972), in contrast, used pauses in speech evident on audio recordings as indications of poetic lines.

Our transcriptions, then, began with the audio, using new poetic lines to indicate pauses in speech. Then we worked with the verbal structures, rendering the aesthetic more apparent. One of our initial realizations was that the two speakers did not use identical artistic systems in telling, and we have thus worked to represent each one in their individuality.

Alice Lannon

We note the literary versions retold by Alice and her brother Michael McCarthy (1991) at the end of each tale found therein. We encourage readers to seek out this book and to examine how radically different its versions are from the (oral) ethnopoetic versions.

Quoted speech is marked by the context and the teller’s “he/she said,” not by quotation marks, primarily because the tellers clearly indicate them without the use of such strictly linear and written-format pointers.

Metacommentary—including laughter, verbal interjections about the story, comments from collectors and others present, and information about sound—is in brackets:

• [singing]
• [laughs] = teller laughs
• [laughter] = teller and audience laugh

A scene change is indicated by a full line space, often marked by transitional phrase markers at the beginning of a scene:

• So
• And one day
• Anyway

Not all such words mark a scene change for Alice; scene changes might also have a time indicator (“One day,” “When nightfall came”) or a conjunctive adverb (“Anyhow,” “Anyway”).

The start of new phrase is indicated by a new line, sometimes marked by end phrase indicators in the phrase before, like repeated “she said,” or beginning a line with “So” or “Now”; we mark new phrases after repeated and/or consciously poetic speech, for example:

Parallelism is marked by indented new lines, often indicated by “and”; additional indentations signal a modifying phrase before, often marked by “and” or “but”:

An apparent false start is indicated by —; with Alice this often appears at particularly dramatic moments.

A pause within a phrase is indicated by . . .

Loud speech is indicated by small capitals.

Emphasized words are indicated by underline.

Pius Power

Quoted speech is marked by the context and the teller’s “he/she saids,” not by quotation marks, primarily because the tellers clearly indicate them without the use of such strictly linear and written-format pointers. Change of speaker is usually indicated by transitional phrase markers:

Note the greater clarity and clearer demonstration of parallel/poetic structure in:

versus:

And Johnson said, “I don’t care, ’cause,” he said, “I don’t know what to say.” “Well now,” he said, “I’ll tell ye,” he said, “if you don’t know.”

In “Well he said, Jack said,” “well” is a speech marker and not the same as scene change “Well.”

Metacommentary, including laughter, verbal interjections about the story, comments from collectors and others present, and information about sound is in brackets.

• [I’m astray now]
• [laughs] = teller laughs; [laughter] = teller and audience laugh

Parentheses are used to explain terms: e.g., childer (children).

Either in’ (less formal) or ing (more formal) is used, based on what Anita, who transcribed, heard, e.g., tellin’ (less formal); telling (more formal).

A scene change is indicated by a full line space, often marked by transitional phrase markers—e.g., “Well” at the beginning of a scene. Pius uses more of these when he gets to exciting/crucial/final repetition parts: e.g., concluding phrases like “So that was alright.” These often signify movement to a new location or a time change in the story. Note that in “Well he said, Jack said,” “well” is a speech marker, distinct from the scene change “Well.” “So anyway” is a transitional phrase marker.

The start of new phrase is indicated by a new line, sometimes marked by end phrase indicators in the phrase before, like repeated “he said” all one line:

Parallelism is marked by indented new line marks, often indicated by “and”; additional indentations signal a modifying phrase before, often marked by “and” or “but”:

“Occasionally,” “and,” “but,” or “now” (flush left) marks a new speaker.

An apparent false start is indicated by —.

A pause within a phrase is indicated by . . .

Loud speech is indicated by small capitals.

Emphasized words are indicated by underline.