Jerry, I presume that you mean "The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus," pub. Houghton Mifflin. An excellent book of some 875 pages, but they left out the Plantation Songs from his first book (1881) of stories. I transcribed these into thread 59230, so if you copy them, you will have all of the material from his volumes. Uncle Remus

I was raised in the southwest, where most of our animal stories came from the Indian tribes. My exposure to Uncle Remus came after WW2, when I married a girl from Georgia who was stationed at the same camp. We went to her home to meet her folks and get settled for a while before we returned to University. She and her sisters were appalled that I didn't know the stories, and they proceeded to educate me. In childhood they had learned the central Georgia black dialect from the African-Americans working on their farm. I learned not only to appreciate the stories, but had to struggle with the dialect to understand them.

Harris was one of the best of the collectors, both the stories and dialect are genuine. I appreciate his contribution to American literature more and more as time goes on. Perhaps in time African-Americans will realize the importance of their past dialects, stories and history, much as the Scots and others prize the good parts of their past.