Hiya SO'P
Irish Traveller storytellers had both songs and tales, though there tended to be an imbalance towards one or the other. Mikeen McCarthy gave us 50(ish) songs (full and fragmentary), but 160 odd stories (a few, but not many long ones). His main source of material, his father was a renowned singer, storyteller and musician (piper, fiddler and whistleplayer) with a large repertoire of all.
With the Irish ones certainly, and also the few Scots ones we talked to, it was the love of a good story that caught their interest - hence the repertoires of big ballads.
Duncan is a bit difficult to judge - we recorded him twice (not counting concert performances). It needs to be remembered that he was also a 'collector', in the sense that, having found out that there was an interest in the songs and stories, he began to acquire them from other travellers and, in some cases, remake them. It was a bit difficult to separate which were those he had grown up with and which he had acquired later. I have to say that this was not definite, just the impression we got - sometimes he appeared to have difficulty remembering which was which himself.
Among the settled people we met, Pat MacNamara of north Clare probably had the largest repertoire of big stories, and an equal number of songs.
The most fascinating man we met, a (then) 70-odd-year-old fiddle player who, once we expressed an interest, began to dig out stories which, each time we re-recorded them, became longer and longer as he remembered them. Junior was a concertina and fiddle player, a storyteller, a singer (and dancer at one time) and an endless source of folklore.
The father of one storyteller we met was reputed to start a story on Monday night, break off at an appropriate point, start it again the following night, and continue it for a total of five nights.
Never met anybody with only one story - though there is a tale about a man with no story!
Nuff said
Jim Carroll