Speech Communication Practice
Storytelling Uses that
Develop
Tone and Projection
through
Applications of Lessons
taught
In Speech and Song, as
compiled
By Professor Richard
Green
A Farmer’s Horse Ran Off
In a version by Heather Forest
Retold for Voice and Diction Practice
A farmer’s horse ran off! Try as he might, he couldn’t catch him. His neighbor, seeing this, rushed to the
farmer’s side. “Oh! How bad for you! Now you’ve no horse to haul your wood.”
The famer looked
at the dust in the distance and, he said, “I don’t know if it’s bad … or, if it’s
good.”
The next day, the horse came back with a
mate; a new, wild mare it had found in the field. When the neighbor saw two horses in the
farmer’s stall, he rushed to the farmer, and, he said, “Oh! Ho, ho ho! Look!
How good for you! You must be glad!”
The farmer looked at the two horses in the
stall, and, he said, “I don’t know if it’s good … or, if it’s bad.”
The next day, the farmer’s son decided to
try and tame the new, wild mare, but, the horse threw the boy and stepped on
his leg in many places, crushing it. The
farmer ran out into the field, and, as he was lifting his broken child, the
neighbor saw, and, the neighbor rushed to the farmer’s side and, said, “Oh! Oh!
How bad for you! Your sorrow is understood!”
Once again, the farmer looked up at the
neighbor and said, as he carried his boy, ”I don’t
know if it’s bad… or, if it’s good.”
In time, the country went to war, and all
of the able-bodied youths were conscripted, … All,
except the farmer’s crippled son. The
farmer, with his arm around the boy, and the neighbor, stood alongside the
road, and they watched as row upon row of able-bodied youths marched off to the
battlefield. The neighbor wiped tears
from his eyes as he waved goodbye to his two sons. He turned to the farmer, and, he said, “Say
it! How good for you! Your son is home! You must be glad!”
Once again, the farmer said, “I don’t know
if it’s good …
or, if it’s bad.”
This is a story without an end. Take from it what you will, my friend.
(“A Farmer’s Horse Ran
Off,” is a retelling of an ancient Chinese folktale from the Han Dynasty. It has inspired a Chinese proverb: “Sai Wung Shih Ma, Yen Chih Sai Fu,” – “The old man sighed. He lost his horse. But it turned out to be a blessing to him.”
I’ve been told that, in
China, when someone is having great sorrow, a friend might offer comfort with a
reference to the proverb and say, “A man’s horse ran off …” The rest would be understood.)