Just about every English speaker knows that when they hear the words “Once upon a time,” they are about to be transported into the world of make-believe. Considering that storytelling is a universal aspect of humanity, it’s no wonder that every culture has its own version of this phrase.
What’s really fascinating is that the way a tale begins reveals its own mini-story of the culture that created it.
Some begin by bending time
In Japanese, a traditional opening is “Mukashi mukashi,” which translates roughly to “Long, long ago.” It is often followed by “aru tokoro ni,” or “in a certain place,” creating an opening that feels familiar to anyone who grew up with English-language fairy tales.
Korean folklore takes a more mythical (not to mention humorous) approach. One traditional opening translates to “Once, in the old days, when tigers smoked tobacco…” Though, sadly, there are no tigers in Korea anymore, the country’s relationship with the creature runs deep. Sometimes they were highly regarded guardian spirits. Other times, particularly when they had derpy faces, they were tongue-in-cheek jabs at out-of-touch nobles.
Some historians believe this story opening harkens back to a more egalitarian time, when tobacco first entered Korea, and all classes (and species, apparently) could partake. Others think it’s just an absurd, whimsical image to show that the rules of nature need not be adhered to in whatever fictional tale was being told.
Similarly, “This happened in the time when all animals and all things could speak” is a traditional opening formula used by Basque storytellers to begin folk tales and legends from the Pyrenees.
Arabic storytelling opens with a different kind of poetic charm: “There was and there was not…”
That seemingly contradictory phrase acknowledges the slippery relationship between storytelling and reality. The events may have happened. They may not have happened. What matters is that the story is about to begin.
Similar formulas appear in other storytelling traditions, including Farsi, Maltese, and Romani, according to The Guardian.
Some drop you into faraway lands
Eastern European languages, such as Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Lithuanian, often create distance through space rather than time. Their fairy tales can begin by sending the listener somewhere impossibly far away, often using different variations of “beyond seven” to establish just how distant this place is.
“Beyond seven mountains.” “Beyond seven rivers.” “Beyond seven valets.” “Beyond seven lands and seas.”
The exact wording changes from one tradition to another, but the effect is similar. Before the characters even appear, the listener has already traveled across a landscape that feels larger than the ordinary world.
The number seven also carries a long history of symbolic meaning in European folklore, where it can suggest completeness, abundance, or something that extends beyond the familiar. So when a story begins beyond seven mountains or rivers, it isn’t necessarily giving the audience a literal travel itinerary. Rather, it creates a sense of enormous distance, signaling that the tale has crossed a boundary into somewhere extraordinary.
Some connect a story to bygone ancestors
Māori storytelling traditions offer another fascinating approach, as explained in the video below. Rather than simply dropping listeners into an unspecified distant past, traditional narratives can begin with genealogy, tracing connections between the earth, sky, and ancestors before arriving at the person whose story is about to unfold. These rituals are called the “mihimihi” or the “pepeha.”
That idea appears in storytelling traditions around the world, where the beginning of a tale can carry information about family, history, place, and community alongside the promise of an entertaining story.
Some invite the audience to answer back
Finally, some cultures treat storytelling as a collaborative act between storyteller and audience, and therefore begin the story as more of a conversation.
Caribbean storytelling, for example, has traditions featuring call-and-response openings. A storyteller may ask, “E dit kwik?” (“creek”) and the audience answers, “kwak” (“crack”). The exchange signals that everyone is ready and listening.
In Somali, the storyteller announces, “Sheeko, sheeko” (“story, story”) while the audience responds “Sheeki xariir” (“tell us a story”).
That little interaction accomplishes something that a simple “Once upon a time” cannot: It makes the audience part of the opening itself, arguably making the event more dynamic and communal.
Every culture finds its own way in
We might not all speak the same language. Still, we seem to instinctively agree that the best stories transport us, engage our imagination, and connect us to something larger than ourselves, not to mention each other.
Whether we’re smoking with tiger or in a land beyond the seven seas, we all clearly have a deep need to understand ourselves through fantasy, and share that experience with someone sitting beside us.
