The Storyteller

“The Story-Teller” is a humorous short story by British author Hector Hugh Munro, best known by the pen name Saki. The story first appeared in the Morning Post (a London newspaper) and was later collected in the 1914 anthology Beasts and Super-Beasts. Munro is perhaps best known for his short story “The Interlopers,” which is a common entry in high school reading lists and anthologies of British literature. “The Story-Teller” is also a popular and often-anthologized piece.

This guide refers to the version of the story published in Beasts and Super-Beasts, which is in the public domain and available at Project Gutenberg. As the Project Gutenberg version does not include page numbers and the story is brief, all direct quotations are cited with paragraph numbers.

“The Story-Teller” opens on a hot afternoon on a train heading to Templecombe in England. In one of the train cars sit two girls identified as “the bigger of the young girls” and the “smaller of the young girls,” a boy, their aunt, and a bachelor who is not a member of their group (Paragraph 11). The three children are restless, loud, and in constant need of attention and entertainment. The boy, Cyril, asks incessant questions about the sheep he sees from the train window. The smaller girl begins to recite the first line of the song “On the Road to Mandalay”; being the only line she can remember, she repeats it again and again in a “resolute and very audible voice” (Paragraph 11).

Throughout this increasing noise, the bachelor grows more irritated, his frown deepening into a scowl. The aunt concludes that he must be an unsympathetic man. When the bachelor’s patience seems near its end, the aunt calls the children to sit and listen to a story. The children are unenthusiastic about this, indicating that they do not have faith in her storytelling abilities. However, they move to sit by her as she begins her story.

The aunt’s story proves to be “unenterprising and deplorably uninteresting” and is about a good little girl who makes friends with everyone she meets because she is so good (Paragraph 14). She is eventually saved from an angry bull by many people, all because they admire her goodness. When the aunt completes her story, the bigger girl asks if the people would have saved the little girl even if she had not been so good. The bachelor wonders the same thing, though he does not say so. The aunt is forced to admit that the people would indeed have saved her either way, but she insists they would not have come to her rescue so quickly if they had not liked her so much.

One by one, the children insist it is the stupidest story they have ever heard. Then the smaller girl begins again to repeat her single memorized line. When the bachelor tells the aunt that she is not a very good storyteller, she retorts that perhaps he would like to try. The children ask him for a story, and he relents.

When the bachelor begins, as the aunt had, with an extra-good little girl, the children are unimpressed and think all stories must be alike no matter who is telling them. The bachelor gains their interest when he adds that the little girl, Bertha, is not only “good” but “horribly good.” This modifier intrigues the children, who have never heard the word “horrible” associated with goodness before. They feel it has a “ring of truth” that was missing from the aunt’s story (Paragraph 31).

The bachelor continues his story about Bertha, who is so good she has been awarded three shiny medals for goodness, which she wears pinned to her dress. She has medals for obedience, punctuality, and good behavior. She is the only child in her town with so many medals, which proves how good she is. Her reputation spreads so far that the prince learns of her goodness and allows her to walk in his private park once a week. No children have ever been allowed in this park before, and Bertha knows that it is a great honor.

Cyril interrupts to ask if there are any sheep in this park. To forestall further questions, the bachelor explains that there are no sheep because the prince’s mother once had a dream that the prince would be killed either by sheep or by a clock falling him, and he, therefore, did not allow either in his palace or park. The aunt gasps with admiration at this improvisation.

Then, the bachelor continues his story. He tells the children that while there are no sheep, there are pigs in this special park. There are no flowers, however, because the pigs eat them all. Instead, the park has many other beautiful things, such as trees filled with parrots, ponds with gold, blue, and green fish, and hummingbirds that hum popular songs. Bertha thinks that she would never be allowed in this park if she were not so extraordinarily good and believes it is a good reward for her good behavior.

Suddenly, a wolf comes to the park to catch a pig to eat, but it sees Bertha instead. Bertha runs and hides amid thick bushes. She thinks that if she had not been so extraordinarily good, she would not be in the park with a wolf but safe in the town. As she is hiding in the bushes, the wolf cannot find her until her trembling causes her three medals to clink against each other. The sound of the medals alerts the wolf to her location, and it drags her out of the bush and eats her whole.

With that, the bachelor ends his story, and the children are impressed. The smaller girl states that the story started badly but ended beautifully. The bigger girl concludes that it is the “most beautiful story I ever heard,” and Cyril adds that it is the only beautiful story he ever heard (Paragraph 56).

The aunt, however, disagrees, believing the story is improper for children and undermines all her teachings. The bachelor retorts that at least his story kept the children quiet for a few minutes. As the train stops in Templecombe, the bachelor concludes that the children will spend the next six months demanding the aunt tell them more improper stories.