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For all those before us who kept these stories alive by listening to the voices of others:
Talk got us here.
Henry Louis Gates Jr. dedicates this volume to Eleanor Margaret Gates-Hatley
“L’dor va’dor!”
Maria Tatar dedicates this volume to Lauren Blum, Daniel Schuker, Jason Blum, Giselle Barcia, and Roxy Blum
This interlinking of the New World and all countries and ages, by the golden net-work of oral tradition, may supply the moral of our collection.
—WILLIAM WELLS NEWELL,
Games and Songs of American Children
Mouse goes everywhere. She prowls through the houses of the rich, and she visits the poor as well. At night, with her bright little eyes, she watches the doing of secret things, and no treasure chamber is so safe but she can tunnel through and see what is hidden there.
In olden days she wove a story-child from everything she saw, and to each of these she gave a gown of a different color—white, red, blue, or black. The stories became her children and lived in her house and served her because she had no children of her own.
—Nigerian folktale
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Foreword: The Politics of “Negro Folklore” by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Introduction: Recovering a Cultural Tradition by Maria Tatar
AFRICAN TALES
IMAKING SENSE OF THE WORLD WITH ANANSI: STORIES, WISDOM, AND CONTRADICTION
How the Sky God’s Stories Came to Be Known as Spider Stories
Rabbit Wants More Sense
How Wisdom Came into the World
The Two Friends
How It Came About That Children Were (First) Whipped
How Contradiction Came to the Ashanti
IIFIGURING IT OUT: FACING COMPLICATIONS WITH DILEMMA TALES
Who Should Marry the Girl?
Trackwell, Divewell, Breavewell
A Vital Decision
The Story of the Four Fools
IIIADDING ENCHANTMENT TO WISDOM: FAIRY TALES WORK THEIR MAGIC
The Story of Demane and Demazana
The Tail of the Princess Elephant
The Maiden, the Frog, and the Chief’s Son
Adzanumee and Her Mother
The Story of the Cannibal Mother and Her Children
Tsélané and the Marimo
IVTELLING TALES TODAY: ORAL NARRATIVES FROM AFRICA
The Filial Son
Men Deceive Women
Know Your Relatives or Else You’ll Be Mistaken for a Slave
Which of the Three Men Was the Most Powerful?
AFRICAN AMERICAN TALES
IDEFIANCE AND DESIRE: FLYING AFRICANS AND MAGICAL INSTRUMENTS
FLYING AFRICANS
The Flying Man
All God’s Chillen Had Wings
All God’s Chillun Got Wings
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
Now Let Me Fly
Little Black Sambo from Guinea
Flying Africans
MAGIC INSTRUMENTS
How The Hoe Came to Ashanti
The Do-All Ax
TESTIMONIALS ABOUT FLYING AFRICANS
IIFEARS AND PHOBIAS: WITCHES, HANTS, AND SPOOKS
WITCHES
Skinny, Skinny, Don’t You Know Me?
Skin Don’t You Know Me?
The Cat-Witch
Witches Who Ride
Out of Her Skin
HANTS AND SPOOKS
The Headless Hant
In the Name of the Lord
The Girl and the Plat-Eye
The Jack-o’-My-Lantern
IIISPEECH AND SILENCE: TALKING SKULLS AND SINGING TORTOISES
The Talking Skull
The Skull That Talked Back
Dividing Souls
Talking Bones
Talks Too Much
The Hunter and the Tortoise
What the Frog Said
Pierre Jean’s Tortoise
The Talking Turtle
John and the Blacksnake
Farmer Mybrow and the Fairies
IVSILENCE AND PASSIVE RESISTANCE: THE TAR-BABY STORY
Spider and the Farmer
Tale of Ntrekuma
Tar Baby
De Wolf, De Rabbit, and De Tar Baby
The Story of Buh Rabbit and the Tar Baby
The Wonderful Tar-Baby
How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox
Tar Baby
Tar Baby
Anansi and the Tar Baby
The Rabbit and the Tar Wolf
The Rabbit and the Tar Wolf (Second Version)
Buh Wolf, Buh Rabbit, and de Tar Baby
VKINDNESS AND TREACHERY: SLIPPING THE TRAP
Gratitude
An Example of Ingratitude
The Boy and the Crocodile
Mr. Snake and the Farmer
The Tortoise and the Toad
VIJOEL CHANDLER HARRIS AND THE UNCLE REMUS TALES
Uncle Remus Initiates the Little Boy
The Sad Fate of Mr. Fox
How Spider and Kawku Tse Killed the King’s Cows and Took His Wives (Africa)
Mr. Rabbit Grossly Deceives Mr. Fox
Rabbit Makes Wolf His Horse (South Sea Islands)
Brother Rabbit’s Love-Charm
Brother Rabbit’s Laughing-Place
Brother Rabbit Doesn’t Go to See Aunt Nancy
The Adventures of Simon and Susanna
VIIFOLKLORE FROM THE SOUTHERN WORKMAN AND THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE
Brer Rabbit’s Box, with Apologies to Joel Chandler Harris
The Donkey, the Dog, the Cat and the Rooster
Jack and the King
Plantation Courtship
Echoes from a Plantation Party
Hags and Their Ways / The Conquest of a Hag
Why the Clay Is Red
Fish Stories
Two Ghost Stories
Haunted House, Buried Treasure, The Six Witches
The Witch Cats
The Boy and the Ghost
Mr. Claytor’s Story and Mrs. Spennie’s Story
Playing Godfather, Flower of Dew, and Soul or Sole
VIIIFOLKTALES FROM THE BROWNIES’ BOOK
The Story of “Creasus”
The Twin Heroes
Chronicles of Br’er Rabbit
Br’er Rabbit Wins the Reward
Br’er Rabbit Learns What Trouble Is
How Mr. Crocodile Got His Rough Back
How Br’er Possum Learned to Play Dead
Yada: A True African Story
IXZORA NEALE HURSTON COLLECTS AFRICAN AMERICAN FOLKLORE
Franz Boas, Preface to Mules and Men
From Zora Neale Hurston, Works-in-Progress for The Florida Negro
From Zora Neale Hurston, “Negro Folklore”
From Zora Neale Hurston, “Culture Heroes”
From Zora Neale Hurston, “Research”
How the Cat Got Nine Lives
“Blood Is Thicker Than Water” and Butterflies
When God First Put Folks on Earth and Why Women Always Take Advantage of Men
Why de Porpoise’s Tail Is On Crosswise and Rockefeller and Ford
Anansi and the Frog
The Orphan Boy and Girl and the Witches
Jack and the Devil
King of the World
XLESSONS IN LAUGHTER: TALES ABOUT JOHN AND OLD MASTER
John de First Colored Man
“ ’Member Youse a Nigger!”
Catching John
The Mojo
How?
John Outwits Mr. Berkeley
Old Boss and John at the Praying Tree
Old Master and Okra
A Laugh That Meant Freedom
How Buck Won His Freedom
Voices in the Graveyard
Swapping Dreams
How John Stopped His Boss-Man from Dreaming
John and the Constable
Old John and the Master
XIHOW IN THE WORLD? POURQUOI TALES
Why We See Ants Carrying Bundles as Big as Themselves
Why the Hare Runs Away
Tortoise and the Yams
What Makes Brer Wasp Have a Short Patience
De Reason Why de ’Gator Stan’ So
Why the Nigger Is So Messed Up
Two Bundles
Compair Lapin and Madame Carencro
XIIBALLADS: HEROES, OUTLAWS, AND MONKEY BUSINESS
John Henry
Annie Christmas
Stagolee
Frankie and Johnny
Railroad Bill
The Titanic
The Signifying Monkey
XIIIARTISTS, PRO AND CON: PREACHER TALES
How the Brother Was Called to Preach
The Farmer and the G.P.C.
Jump on Mama’s Lap
Deacon Jones’ Boys and the Greedy Preacher
Poppa Stole the Deacon’s Bull
The Haunted Church and the Sermon on Tithing
Old Brother Tries to Enter Heaven
XIVFOLKLORIC COUSINS ABROAD: TALES FROM CARIBBEAN AND LATIN AMERICAN CULTURES
The Oranges
The President Wants No More of Anansi
The Night Beauty
Man-Crow
Words Without End
Why People Do Not Live Again After Death
The Man Who Took a Water Mother for His Bride
The Girl Made of Butter
Tiger Softens His Voice
A Boarhog for a Husband
XVSOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING BLUE: FAIRY TALES
Cinderella
Mr. Bluebeard
The Chosen Suitor: The Forbidden Room
The Chosen Suitor: The Forbidden Room (Second Version)
The Singing Bones
The Singing Bones (Second Version)
The Murderous Mother
The Stolen Voice
The Mermaid
The Big Worm
The Talking Eggs
Ramstampeldam
King Peacock
PREFACES TO COLLECTIONS AND MANIFESTOS ABOUT COLLECTING AFRICAN AMERICAN LORE
William Owens, “Folklore of the Southern Negroes”
Joel Chandler Harris, Introduction to Nights with Uncle Remus (1883)
Anonymous, “Word Shadows”
Alice Mabel Bacon, “Folk-Lore and Ethnology Circular Letter” and Letters in Response to the Call
William Wells Newell, “The Importance and Utility of the Collection of Negro Folk-Lore,” and Anna J. Cooper, “Paper”
Zora Neale Hurston, “High John de Conquer”
Sterling A. Brown, “Negro Folk Expression”
POETS AND PHILOSOPHERS REMEMBER STORIES: MEDITATIONS ON AFRICAN AMERICAN LORE
IMAGE GALLERY A: TALE-TELLING SITES: AT HOME AND IN COMMON SPACES
IMAGE GALLERY B: TALE-TELLING SITES: PLACES OF LABOR
IMAGE GALLERY C: ILLUSTRATED POEMS BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
IMAGE GALLERY D: JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS AND THE UNCLE REMUS TALES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
FOREWORD
The Politics of “Negro Folklore”
by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
The Negroes have a wonderfull Art of communicating Intelligence among themselves. It will run severall hundreds of Miles in a Week or Fortnight.
—John Adams’s Diary, September 24, 1775
The American Negroes are rising so rapidly from the condition of ignorance and poverty in which slavery left them, to a position among the cultivated and civilized people of the earth, that the time seems not far distant when they shall have cast off their past entirely, and stand an anomaly among civilized races, as a people having no distinct traditions, beliefs or ideas from which a history of their growth may be traced. If within the next few years care is not taken to collect and preserve all traditions and customs peculiar to the Negroes there will be little to reward the search of the future historian who would trace the history of the African continent through the years of slavery to the position which they will hold a few generations hence.
—ALICE BACON, Editorial, Southern Workman, December 1893
The black man is readily assimilated to his surroundings and the original simple and distinct type is in danger of being lost or outgrown. To my mind, the worst possibility yet is that the so-called educated Negro, under the shadow of this over powering Anglo-Saxon civilization, may become ashamed of his own distinctive features and aspire only to be an imitator of that which can not but impress him as the climax of human greatness, and so all originality, all sincerity, all self-assertion would be lost to him. What he needs is the inspiration of knowing that his racial inheritance is of interest to others and that when they come to seek his homely songs and sayings and doings, it is not to scoff and sneer, but to study reverently, as an original type of the Creator’s handiwork.
—ANNA JULIA COOPER, Letter to the Editor, Southern Workman, January 1894
I am speaking then, not with regards to the past, but the future, when I say that it is of consequence for the American Negro to retain the recollection of his African origin, and of his American servitude. For the sake of the honor of his race, he should have a clear picture of the mental condition out of which he has emerged: this picture is not now complete, nor will be made so without a record of song, tales, beliefs, which belongs to the stage of culture through which he has passed.
—WILLIAM WELLS NEWELL, “The Importance and Utility of the Collection of Negro Folk-Lore,” Southern Workman, July 1894
The field of folklore in general is known to be a battle area, and the Negro front is one of the hottest sectors. One sharply contested point is the problem of the definition of the folk; another that of origins. Allies are known to have fallen out and skirmished behind the lines over such minor matters as identifying John Hardy with John Henry.
—STERLING A. BROWN, “Negro Folk Expression,” Phylon, 1950
Surely a most interesting volume could be gathered of the traditions, proverbs, sayings, superstitions and folk-lore of the American Negro, and as you suggest, unless this is done immediately—i.e. before the present generation of Negroes pass from the stage, the opportunity will be lost forever. Whatever is done, then, must be done quickly.
—REVEREND WILLIAM V. TUNNELL, King Hall, Washington, D.C., Letter to the Editor, Southern Workman, December 1893
In July, 1894, the Southern Workman magazine published transcripts of two remarkable, indeed historic, speeches delivered on Friday evening, May 25, “at the Hampton Normal School [now Hampton University] under the auspices of the Hampton Folk-Lore Society.”1 The Southern Workman was a monthly magazine founded in 1872 by Gen. Samuel Chapman Armstrong, Booker T. Washington’s mentor and inspiration, and the founder and first principal of Hampton. It would cease publication in 1939. Though they were delivered second on the program that evening, let’s first examine the remarks of Anna Julia Cooper, the pioneering black feminist who had published her powerful manifesto A Voice from the South two years earlier, in 1892, and who in the Southern Workman was identified as a member of “the Washington Negro Folk-Lore Society.” Cooper’s argument was, perhaps, the first made by a black feminist intellectual for the importance of Negro folklore, and her remarks proved prescient in defining the terms of the debate about the nature and function of this body of oral lore and its relation to the social progress and political status of an emergent people just twenty-nine years “up from slavery.”
Cooper cleverly cast the heart of her ar
gument for preserving Negro folklore in terms of “originality”:
Emancipation from the model is what is needed. Servile copying foredooms mediocrity: it cuts the nerve of soul expression. The American Negro cannot produce an original utterance until he realizes the sanctity of his homely inheritance. It is the simple, common, everyday things of man that God has cleansed. And it is the untaught, spontaneous lispings of the child heart that are fullest of poetry and mystery. . . . [Correggio] felt the quickening of his own self consciousness as he gazed on the marvelous canvasses of the masters. “I too am a painter,” he cried and the world has vindicated the assertion. Now it is just such a quickening as this that must come to the black man in America, to stimulate his original activities. The creative instinct must be aroused by a wholesome respect for the thoughts that lie nearest. And this to my mind is the vital importance for him of the study of his own folklore. His songs, superstitions, customs, tales, are the legacy left from the imagery of the past. These must catch and hold and work up into the pictures he paints. . . . The Negro too is a painter. And he who can turn his camera on the last receding views of this people and catch their simple truth and their sympathetic meaning before it is all too late will no less deserve the credit of having revealed a characteristic page in history and of having made an interesting study.2
Rarely could a bolder argument for the nature and function of African American folklore have been made, and Cooper was making this argument just less than a year after the appearance of what would become, after its debut in the December 1893 number, a regular column on “Folklore and Ethnology” in the pages of the magazine. Just that November, the first Negro folklore society had been formed at Hampton, under the direction of a far-seeing white administrator there, Alice M. Bacon, as a branch of the American Folklore Society, which itself had launched in 1888. Students and alumni were asked to contribute examples of traditional Negro folklore to the journal, which encouraged them to transcribe tales they remembered or encountered. According to folklorist Alan Dundes, “Not only were students enrolled at Hampton asked to report folklore, but through the notices periodically placed in the Southern Workman, past graduates were asked to help the cause.”3 Consequently, the Southern Workman, at the turn of the century and well into the twentieth, became a living archive or laboratory of Negro folklore, and its readers became its informants, its documentarians. The collection of black cultural artifacts on a more or less systematic basis had never been attempted before, and we believe that this effort remains unique to this day. In 1983, the historian Donald J. Waters would publish the best of this material in a volume titled Strange Ways and Sweet Dreams: Afro-American Folklore from the Hampton Institute, some selections from which we have included in our anthology.