Tall Tale - American Tall Tale

American Tall Tale

The tall tale is a fundamental element of American folk literature. The tall tale's origins are seen in the bragging contests that often occurred when the rough men of the American frontier gathered. The tales of legendary figures of the Old West, some listed below, owe much to the style of tall tales.

The bi-annual speech contests optionally held by Toastmasters International public speaking clubs may include a Tall Tales contest. Each participating speaker is given three to five minutes to give a short speech of a tall tale nature, and is then judged according to several factors. The winner and runner-up proceed to the next level of competition. The contest does not proceed beyond any participating district in the organization to the International level.

The comic strip Non Sequitur sometimes features tall tales told by the character Captain Eddie; it is left up to the reader to decide if he is telling the truth, exaggerating a real event, or just telling a whopper.

With "§" indicating legendary figures who are known to be based on actual historical individuals, other subjects of American tall tales include:

  • Johnny Appleseed – A friendly folk-hero who traveled the West planting apple trees because he felt his guardian angel told him to §
  • Tony Beaver – A West Virginia lumberjack and cousin of Paul Bunyan
  • Pecos Bill – legendary cowboy who "tamed the wild west"
  • Cordwood Pete – Younger brother to lumberjack Paul Bunyan
  • Daniel Boone – Blazed a trail across Cumberland Gap to found the first English-speaking colonies west of the Appalachian Mountains §
  • Aylett C. "Strap" Buckner – An Indian-fighter of colonial Texas §
  • Paul Bunyan – huge lumberjack who eats 50 pancakes in one minute
  • Davy Crockett – A pioneer and U.S. Congressman from Tennessee who later died at the Battle of the Alamo §
  • Febold Feboldson – A Nebraska farmer who could fight a drought
  • Mike Fink – The toughest boatman on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and a rival of Davy Crockett. Also known as the King of the Mississippi River Keelboatmen §
  • John Henry – A mighty steel-driving African American§
  • Calamity Jane – A tough Wild West woman §
  • Casey Jones – A brave and gritty railroad engineer §
  • Johnny Kaw, a fictional Kansan whose mythological status itself was in one sense a figment, in that it was created recently, in 1955. Adherents of this assessment deem such stories fakelore
  • Nat Love, also known as "Deadwood Dick", was born a slave in Tennessee in 1854. Tales of his adventures after emancipation, as a cowboy and and a Pullman porter, gained such fantastical elements as to be considered tall tales §
  • Joe Magarac – A Pittsburgh steelworker made of steel
  • Molly Pitcher – A heroine of the American Revolutionary War §
  • Alfred Bulltop Stormalong – An immense sailor whose ship was so big it scraped the moon

Read more about this topic:  Tall Tale

Famous quotes containing the words tall tale, american, tall and/or tale:

    “Lincoln, six feet one in his stocking feet,
    The lank man, knotty and tough as a hickory rail,
    Whose hands were always too big for white-kid gloves,
    Whose wit was a coonskin sack of dry, tall tales,
    Whose weathered face was homely as a plowed field.”
    —Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943)

    “The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self- service populace, and all our specious comforts—the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria—are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.”
    —Edward Dahlberg (1900–1977)

    “The sounding cataract
    Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
    The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
    Their colours and their forms, were then to me
    An appetite: a feeling and a love,
    That had no need of a remoter charm,
    By thought supplied, or any interest
    Unborrowed from the eye.—”
    —William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

    “Like a tale of little meaning though the words are strong;
    Chanted from an ill-used race of men that cleave the soil,
    Sow the seed, and reap the harvest with enduring toil,
    Storing yearly little dues of wheat, and wine and oil;
    Till they perish and they suffer—some, ‘tis
    whispered—down in hell”
    —Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)