FARMINGTON — When area storytellers share their stories at the Farmington Fair next week, they hope to engage and entertain their audience.

They also want to help keep the art of storytelling alive.

“People aren’t telling their stories,” Jane Woodman, a member of Western Maine Storytellers, said. “The tradition is being lost.”

About four storytellers each day will share stories from 2 to 4 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, Sept. 16 and 18, in the Red Schoolhouse Museum at Farmington Fair.

“We’re always looking for different venues to get people interested in storytelling,” Woodman said. “It’s our maiden voyage at the fair.”

The one-room schoolhouse provides a place for people to come in and sit, a place where they can hear, she said.

Instead of holding a one-day festival this year, the guild is sharing at other events, storyteller Peggy Yocum said. This is their third event this year.

The group meets at 7 p.m. on the third Thursday of the month in Room 123 of the Student Center on the University of Maine at Farmington campus, Woodman said.

During the meetings, some people tell stories. They say whether they want the group to help them or critique their work, she said. The stories are not written. No notes are used but an outline can be, she said.

Some dress in costume, some have props and some don’t.

Storyteller Mike Burns is scheduled to appear at the fair on Thursday, Woodman said. He’s from Ireland and shares Irish tales with a brogue. The Irish close their eyes as they tell a story, she said.

Other local storytellers sharing at the fair include Phyllis Blackstone, Rob Lively, Judy Loeven, Yocum and Woodman, she said. There will be stories of local interest, international tales and Yankee ingenuity.

A Lamoine storyteller, Jude Lamb, tells the story of family members, the first European settlers on Rangeley Lake, on Tuesday.

Presenting in the first person and voice of her great, great, great, great-grandmother, Eunice Lakeman Hoar, Lamb tells the story of the family’s journey from the Avon area to Rangeley in 1817.

Hoar, her husband and children walked over the late-winter snow pulling sleds with all their worldly belongings. She also kept track of nine children, she said.

There were problems along the way, including a missing baby, she said.

The family waited until night for crust to form on the snow to make it easier to pull their belongings. After the sun went down, they struck out walking. It was uphill most of the way, she said.

“It’s a pretty dramatic story I’ve heard at Lamb family reunions since I was a little girl,” she said. “When I started doing storytelling, I thought this would be the perfect thing to do.”

The Hoars had 12 children. Lamb is descended from Hoar’s youngest daughter, Lucinda, who lived into the 1900s. Lucinda wasn’t yet born when the trek was made but spoke with great authority about it, she said.

Other family members have passed it down and written several booklets about it, she said.

The family came from Massachusetts. Soon after the Revolutionary War, they continued traveling north from Maine’s coast.

The Hoars were not young but sought their own piece of land with wood, a scarce commodity in Massachusetts at that time, she said.

“I can only surmise when Hoar crested that mountain and saw the lake and the woods, he must have thought he struck it rich,” she said.

Lamb took a course on storytelling and loved it. Instead of fairy tales or folk tales, she likes taking a true story and bringing it to life, she said.

In a program for schoolchildren, Lamb tries to help students understand what those times were like and what responsibilities and privileges children had then, she said.

More details about Lamb are on her website, www.judelamb.com.

abryant@sunjournal.com

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