When anyone argues that the art of oral storytelling is dead in Maryland, I hasten to direct him to any of a number of places in the State where people of different folk groups gather to pass their time. One place I am particularly familiar with is Crisfield, a small town on the lower Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake where some 5000 souls live perched together at the edge of the Bay. Most of them sustain themselves on the seafood the Bay provides, crabs in the summer, oysters in the winter. And their spiritual sustenance stems from an ironbound Methodism.

On a given day in the summer, the patterned beat of Crisfield life holds pretty much the