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Folklore: Brer' Rabbit
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Subject: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 15 Jul 05 - 12:31 PM After looking for many years, I found a complete of the complete stories of Joel Chandler Harris, written in the dialect he claimed accurately reflected the character of Uncle Remus. I always loved the Brer' Rabbit stories, and they are a permanent part of my vocabulary. When my sons were young, I took them to see Song Of The South and they loved the Brer' Rabbit stories. A few years later, there was a strong negative reaction to the movie, and the stories, and they were taken off the market. To this day, Song Of The South is not available in this country (I found a source to get it on DVD from Canada, if anyone is interested.) Julius Lester rewrote some of the Brer' Rabbit stories a few years ago, and I bought the book. He put the stories in proper English, even giving a little bit of a homeboy spin to the language. I thought it was an interesting, completely unsuccessful excercise. I owned a complete stories book back in the sixties which didn't make it through one of my various moves, over the years. Now, I'm excited to be getting a new copy, written as Joel Chandler Harris wrote it. Which is another angle on the whole issue of writing in dialect. Reading other threads in here, and adding my two cents, I realize how subjective my reaction is to preserving songs and literature in dialect. Not being black, I can't understand the rejection of the Brer' Rabbit stories, as they are clearly African in origin and a rich, wonderful part of ALL of our heritage by this point. The little I've talked about all of this with black friends and family, I realize (not to my surprise) that there are almost as many opinions as people I ask. Some people don't see anything wrong with the Brer' Rabbit stories, and some are very uncomfortable and turned off by the dialect. But man, I LOVE those Brer' Rabbit stories. Being a little kid who had to use his brains and his feet to survive, I really identified with Brer' Rabbit. He always outsmarted the fox and Bear, no matter how bleak his prospects looked. I didn't have nearly as much success. I got caught and pummeled more than Brer' Rabbit, and there was never a briar patch around when I needed it. Any other lovers of Brer' Rabbit in here? Does the dialect bother you? (Would you prefer reading it in "proper" English? Maybe rewrite it as Brer' Jeeves? Brer' Jer |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: GUEST,Leadfingers Date: 15 Jul 05 - 12:57 PM Jerry - I think its another example of Political Correctness being carried to ridiculous extremes . We get the same thing over here with people refusing to sing Hunting Songs that have been in the Tradition for hundreds of years . Crazy !! |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: KT Date: 15 Jul 05 - 12:59 PM Hi Jerry. I too, had access when I was little, to an original copy of Joel Chandler Harris' book. As a very young child, I had a few favorites, but didn't really appreciate his writings until, as an adult, I sought them for my own children. I was able to find a copy at the public library. It's unsettling to me to think that something that I find so rich and so valuable might be offensive to others. My regard for these writings in the original dialect is one of deep respect for the heritage that's represented. I am not familiar with all of the stories, so if the objection is with regard to the content of the stories, I can't comment. But the dialect in which they are written is something for which I have great respect. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 15 Jul 05 - 01:07 PM Now as a little kid, KT, I was an Uncle Wiggly fan. Who could resist characters with names like the Skillery-Skallery Aligator, or Petey Bow-Wow and the Puppy Chaps? That said, Brer' Rabbit was, and always will be Da Rabbit! Bro' Jerry (Contemporary variant on Brer') |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: PoohBear Date: 15 Jul 05 - 06:18 PM I'd forgotten about Uncle Wiggly! I have, somewhere, a few UW books that belonged to my father and his brother when they were little (pre WWII). I love those stories almost as much as I love Winnie Thar Pooh and POGO! PB |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 15 Jul 05 - 08:15 PM 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. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Azizi Date: 15 Jul 05 - 08:57 PM For another perspective and a glimpse as to why many African Americans aren't fond of Uncle Remus' tales: The History of Jim Crow |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 15 Jul 05 - 09:31 PM The article by Davis gives a completely distorted and false picture of Joel Chandler Harris and his stories. Obviously he knows nothing about them. Finding something like this in 'Teacher Resources' is very disturbing. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 15 Jul 05 - 09:34 PM Thanks for the link to the article, Azizi: I understand that the reason why Song Of The South was banned from sale in this country is because of the totally unrealistic depiction of blacks as basically happy, well-cared for and respected workers. Not that movies that have cartoons and music in them are normally expected to be hard-edge, realistic depictions of life on this planet. That said, I could understand someone who is black finding the movie offensive. Other than the Brer' Rabbit segments, I thought the movie was typical Disney schmaltz and wouldn't go back to see anything but the Brer' Rabbit sequences. Julius Lester gets around the dialect issue (which from all accounts that I've read were Harris's most conscientious attempt to "record" the dialect of the ex-slaves who became the composite for Uncle Remus. In the forward to the book, there is no attempt to assign any racist motivation to Harris for his attempt to duplicate the dialect of some ex-slaves at the time. I'm afraid that it's the cumulative years of the bug-eyed broad comic presentation of blacks as ignorant, suspicious fools in movies, advertisements and radio that has understandably turned so many people off on the stories, themselves. Lester's "solution" is to put the stories in presnt day settings... even including a shopping mall. And while he is uncomfortable about the dialect Harris used, he creates a more contemporary "dialect" to make the stories more acceptable to young blacks. I'm with KT on this one. I am truly story for those who are offended at the dialect, or the underlying depiction of post-slavery blacks as happy "darkies." I find the dialect used in the Harris stories a hurdle to overcome, but the stories are just so fine that I'm willing to make the effort. I'd probably prefer that the dialect was greatly diminshed, but I don't like the idea of placing the tales in a contemporary setting. To each his own, I guess. At the same time, I don't believe in telling people that they "shouldn't" be upset or angry. I respect emotions, and believe that they have their own validity. I just hate to see the tarbaby thrown out with the bath water.. Jerry |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 16 Jul 05 - 12:19 AM A brief biography of Harris at this University of Virginia website. Harris Also this at the University of North Carolina site: Joel Chandler Harris |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 16 Jul 05 - 12:27 AM VERY Familiar with the Uncle Remos Said,
YES!!!
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: GUEST Date: 16 Jul 05 - 12:47 AM The "Tar Baby" HAS been already thrown out with the bath-water.
For decade, on decade Compton High School, (Compton, CA 90221) has been known as "The Tar Babes." In the middle of their basketball floor was a cartoon figure of a babe in diapers with a Turkish Semitar in hand. Cute and viscious at the same time.
Unfortunately, local politians could not run a straight ship. Incidents, recorded in the local press, of peeing on sugar-bags in the kitchen warehouse, and a miriade of financial "mistakes" sent the district into "Federal Recievership." The "Feds" took over the district....and with them came P.C....they are now the "Lions" (stealing a local Jr.High's mascot).
The reason why an eventually all minority H.S. came by the name "Tar Babes" is simple...the area once racially mixed Asian, Latino, Black.....and the local Community College mascot is "The Tartars" and because every child in California's schools is expected to advance into college....Baby Tartans...became Tar-Babes. The racial mix on the campus as it moved from white to black...enjoyed the and found frolic in the name. The city moved on....it is now over 50% Hispanic. Tar-Babes are not a happy mascot for the Mex....and so on appeal, after govt. take-over...a 60 year mascot was be-headed under his own scemitar....in the name of P.C.
Sincerely, |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Don(Wyziwyg)T Date: 16 Jul 05 - 11:14 AM From the age of five (or thereabouts) my father used to read to us on a regular basis, and the stories that most enthused myself and my brother were about Brer Rabbit, and Tom Sawyer. We grew up with a great respect for these books, and saw nothing insulting in the content or the dialect. I tried to find copies to read to my own children, and had no trouble with Tom Sawyer, but couldn't get hold of the Brer Rabbit stories at all. I regard this as a great loss. A wonderful series of beautifully written tales has been removed from the literary scene in the name of political correctness. What, I wonder, would be the reaction if we objected to any writings that used the word white as a descriptor for our culture? There would be little left of literature, without the works of Dickens, Swift, and many others whose books have been required educational reading for many years. Even Shakespeare would not survive. Isn't it about time that we stopped seeing insult and denigration where none was intended? Don T. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 16 Jul 05 - 11:44 AM Hey, Don: In the case of Joel Chandler Harris, I don't believe that he was trying to be racist. I don't think, though that's a valid comparison about banning all literature that mentions "white." Song Of The South, the Uncle Remus character and Brer' Rabbit stories haven't been criticized because they use the word "black." I do believe that the word n***** is used in the Joel Chandler Harris book (although I don't know the context in which it was used.) Not that context would excuse the use of the word.. If whites had been sold into slavery and denied basic freedoms for generations as blacks were (and to some extent still are denied freedoms) maybe we'd be protesting a book that used the term "whitey" in it.. Jerry |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: GUEST,gstradtman@juno.com Date: 16 Jul 05 - 01:11 PM I was raised with stories about Br'er Rabbit. Those who attack the them as demeaning African Americans need to think again. This was one of many areas in which black and white came together in common language and cultural heritage; two other areas that come to mind are in the true Southern cuisine (heavily influenced by Africa) and in Delta Blues (invented solely by Blacks, but loved by many of the rest of us as the best expression of what life really is about). Br'er Rabbit has changed character in my imagination through the years. At first I just saw him as a literal representation of my furry friends who always seem to survive, no matter what threats they face. Then came awareness of the allegory of the struggle of Black men and women to survive, and maybe even live with some dignity, when faced with the vanity and cruelty of their persecutors. The dialect is very true for me. My decidedly non-African grandma spoke quite a bit like Br'er Rabbit, which is one factor that will always cause me to view the little guy as a much beloved family member. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: dick greenhaus Date: 16 Jul 05 - 01:42 PM Well, I just finished re-reading Rosten's "The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N, for the n'th time. Funny as hell. And true to life. Dialect, properly used, is invaluable as a literary device. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 17 Jul 05 - 03:39 AM I likewise grewup on Uncle Remus (and Ping the Duck (not a tracerout) and Sambo.
You will find the "n-word" in Chandler's tales - but it would not be true that period of time and the south without it. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/remus/negro.html Will give you the story of "Why the Negro is Black" along with the "n-word." It contains scans of the wonderful etchings I knew.
You can also get the on-line, free, text through Project Gutenberg:
Sincerely, |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Flash Company Date: 17 Jul 05 - 10:24 AM Raised in Mid-Cheshire, UK, I went to a small local school(two mile walk from where I lived) and our Headmistress used to read us the Br'er Rabbit tales on wet days when we couldn't play outside at break-time. Tar Baby and The Laughing Place were my favourites as I recall. FC |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Le Scaramouche Date: 17 Jul 05 - 10:49 AM Joel Chandler Harris is one of the few succesful writers of dialect. Kipling was another, as is George MacDonald Frasier. I had a book with illustrations from the Disney Song of the South, but the stories were all in dialect. Rather fun. One of the reasons I love accents. The Disney movie was pretty Schmaltsy, but the Brer Rabbit scenes were wonderful. it's so silly to ban it as it's really about a boy tried to adjust and find his place in life. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: GUEST,Bob Coltman Date: 17 Jul 05 - 10:52 AM I grew up on the Uncle Remus stories too, and also my beloved Pogo, and both were indispensable influences on my childhood. What Churchy La Femme calls Southern Fried Speech has been part of my speech center for 60 years. Sorry if this offends, but by now it is part of the way I talk. You'll find me inescapably on the side of dialect, if only because my infant ear was imitative and alert for ways people spoke, so I picked it up before I knew better. I couldn't help it; my ear wrestled my voice flat on the mat, and I'm one of the many people who suffer from this. I've had to do my best not to sound like I'm parodying the people I'm with. My head is an echo. It's a flaw I guess but I can't overcome it. I speak in many voices, and they're the voices of people I've loved or who have been influential on me, including blacks. Not that I could necessarily reproduce them accurately or even come close! But they have tinged my talking and singing. And all my life I have needed to hear the dialect in stories and songs I've loved when heard that way. So, in my inept way, I've found myself "sounding like" different regional accents, Scots, Irish, Southern white, Southern black, cowboy, and so on because to me, the sound is built into the song. When I hear someone denature a song by singing it in straight middleclass English, I am grieved and feel half its soul has been taken away. I too am sorry for, and understand, those to whom dialect, particularly black dialect, is a lingering trace of Jim Crow or other forms of discrimination. All I can say is, I think they are taking the shadow for the substance. Real discrimination is not in the voice, not even in the blackface stage. Real discrimination is in belittling, cheating, manipulating, and stunting the lives of target populations. So go look for your tormentors among the politicians, rentiers, commercial interests, vote suppressors, and others who live by racism but never seem to get the blame they so richly deserve. Irishmen, who are among my ancestors, have luckily gotten over their shame and anger at mock-Irish speech. The day will come when blacks feel secure enough to do the same. Meanwhile, it's an uncomfortable fit. I try not to insult anyone if I can help it. But sound IS music and inseparable from songs. Can't stand to sing 'em any other way. And, of course, if I have to avoid singing a certain song in a certain situation because it will be taken as prejudicial, I try to do that, and be sensitive to who's listening, including people who may form a prejudicial opinion, like children and bigots. Bob |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 17 Jul 05 - 09:01 PM I understand what you're saying, Bob: I've been reading the "updated" Adventures of Brer Rabbit, as "told" by Julius Lester, as I await getting my collection of the stories in the original dialect. For me, the Lester re-telling completely destroys the stories. I just read one where Brer' Rabbit lives in a ranch house with a two car garage. Oh please, Brer Fox... you can skin me, or boil me alive, but puhleeeeeeeze don't throw me in my ranch hose with the two car garage.." (I haven't even found the briar patch story in the Lester book.. don't know if it got updated to the point where it made no sense.) Have to see if the tar baby is there. Probably the velcro baby... I think that all of us who love music... particularly from cultures other than our own, have picked up some speach patterns and dialect along the line. I find it much more comfortable if it's become part of someone's everyday conversation.. then hearing it in a song sounds more natural and part of who the person is.. Jerry |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Stilly River Sage Date: 17 Jul 05 - 11:43 PM I tried posting this right after Jerry started the thread, but Mudcat crashed for the rest of the day and I saved it. Better late than never: Actually, those stories are American Indian in origin, most likely Choctaw, to be specific. They made their way into African American folkways, then were appropriated by Chandler. Trickster tales are common, every culture has them. It is entirely likely that the Choctaw stories were blended with African stories to become what they were at the time Chandler heard them. A problem with trickster figures in the Americas is that christianity had real problems with trickster gods, so they worked to demote and demonize them as fast as they could. The didactic power of tricksters ("don't do this!") was entirely lost on those missionary and settler types. In American Indian literature circles, Harris is considered to be an opportunist who didn't give credit where it was due. SRS |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Azizi Date: 18 Jul 05 - 09:33 AM Trickster stories are found among peoples throughout the world, including Native Americans and Africans. Given the interaction between African Americans and Native Americans, it is very possible that both group's stories melding together and resulted in the stories written by Joel Chandler Harris. I recall reading a West African folktale from Nigeria that is exactly like Br'er Rabbit and the tar baby-without the dialect I might add. Unfortunately, I can't find which book or books it is in. However, see this quote from Paul Radin's "African Folktales & Sculpture" {Pantheon Books, 1964;15-16} " Both types [trickster and culture hero type tales] are encountered all over the rest of the aborginal world ; tehy are developed most richly, perhaps where assuredly politial events were more than normally contributory. The existence and prominent of terickster and culture-hero tales among the Bushmen indicates that they must once have been found in other parts of Africa too. Indeed, those Bantu tribes where there is no division into stratified classes, where, in consequence, there is no tendency for the activities of the ahthor-raconteur to become closely identified with the interests of a leader at times exalted to the rank of ruler, these do actually possess a trickster-culture hero, namely the Hare. His creative function has, it is true, disappeared. But this holds for many American Indian tribes as well... -snip- Paul Radin then proceeds to provide an example of Hare hiding in a field to catch the Antelope who was stealing his peas. As an aside, I'd like to mention that, though the signifying Monkey is immortalized in a number of African American folksongs, the most popular trickster in the Caribbean and the USA is the Ghanaian spider man , Kwaku Anansi {"Ananse"; "Anancy" "Aunt Nancy"}. These are hundreds of Anansi trickster stories. And most of these stories originally included a song. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 18 Jul 05 - 09:35 AM Hey, SRS: That's a completely new explanation of the origin of the Brer' Rabbit stories. According to everything that I've read, including the forward to the book by Julius Lester, Chandler rejected any stories that he felt he could verify as African-American in origin, and every tale he collected, he collected from black ex-slaves. There is also a trickster figure in African folk tales (as you point out, it is a common figure in folk tales of many cultures.) I'm curious where you got the basis for claiming that these are all native American tales. I've taught classes on native Americans, and realize that they have similar folk tales, but does similarity with other cultures prove that slaves learned them from Indians, rather than re-telling tales similar to ones in their own culture? I am decidedly NOT an expert on this kind of thing. And in a sense, the tales stand on their own. When Chandler collected them, they were definitely in the African-American tradition. If there was a native American influence, it had been assimilated into the African-American culture, as far as I can see... Not trying to be argumentative. Just wondering on what basis you make your claim.. Jerry |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Le Scaramouche Date: 18 Jul 05 - 10:46 AM The rabbit tales in particular are African in origin. The similarities are striking, practicaly identical. Considering that most of the traffic to the Americas was one way, I find it very hard to believe these are Native American. OTOH, rabbits in English literature are usually working class or criminal. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 18 Jul 05 - 02:40 PM These animal tales appear in literature from many countries, some ancient. Aesop, Androcles, De La Fontaine, even Ambrose Bierce tried his hand. Joel Chandler Harris gave us the tales as told by African-Americans, and enriched our literature. Ugh, Stilly River Sage, you speak false! The American Indian fables did not become known to the world until the 20th c. Cushing and others were collecting in the 1880s, but most publication was after 1900. How could Harris have given credit? I see one of these books on the shelf in front of me; the excellent "Zuni Folk Tales," 1901, F. H. Cushing, reprinted by the University of Arizona Press. He includes one tale from the Italian that entered Zuni oral literature, "The Cock and the Mouse." Undoubtedly some tales from De La Fontaine entered African-American oral literature. Like other peoples, the Indians had their trickster tales; coyote being the trickster in many Navajo tales. There are several books, perhaps the best is by Haile, 1984, "Navajo Coyote Tales," Univ. Nebraska Press, but there are others, some in children's editions. A modern Aesop for the computer age is on line from Univ. Massachusetts: Aesop traditional and contemporary |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 18 Jul 05 - 03:02 PM As it says in the forward to the Joel Chandler Harris book I received today: "Tracing the origin of these tales seems almost impossible. Some are known widely in the old World. For example, the sham sickness of Brer Rabbit when he persuaded Brer Fox to carry him is known in the folktale traditions of Germany, Esthonia, Finland, Lapland, Denmark, Sweden and Russia. In Europe it was the fox, not the rabbit, who was the trickster hero. The Tar-Baby tale, however, seems to be of African origin: Kaffir, Rhodesia, Hottentot." Jerry |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Stilly River Sage Date: 18 Jul 05 - 04:54 PM I'll have to go back and dig through some source material to give you a qualified answer. The origins of many of these Brer Rabbit stories are understood to originate in Faulkner's neck of the woods, with Muskogean speaking tribes, such as Choctaw, Chickasaw, Alabama, Creek, and further east to Seminole. Add to these sources Cherokee stories, according to one reviewer at Amazon. This from the "spotlight" review on The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus:
The American Indian fables did not become known to the world until the 20th c. Cushing and others were collecting in the 1880s, but most publication was after 1900. How could Harris have given credit? Are you somehow suggesting that the stories weren't known to blacks until a white ethnographer came along and documented them? I don't think you're that clueless to the ways that cultures naturally merge and share material, but you haven't given it much thought. Of course the fables were known--to Choctaws, etc. And to the people who lived near or with them, in particular neighboring, and often escaped slaves. This commingling of stories happened over the course of several hundred years. Only in recent times has there been any acknowledgement of the commingling of the black and indian cultures, because it was harder to detect, or people simply chose not to see. There is a conversation between Choctaws in the American Indian novel The Sharpest Sight that addresses this--it was written by a Choctaw/Cherokee friend who wanted to make the point about how the Brer Rabbit stories are mis-attributed. Whether writing novels or fine scholarship, Louis Owens always had things he wanted to teach his readers. He wouldn't have included this in his novel if he didn't have good evidence to back it up. The nature of trickster stories is that they combine observable animal and human characteristics. Rabbits, coyotes, bluejays, squirrels, crows, and other animals, turn up again and again in different cultures. They routinely snatch Defeat from the mouth of Victory because it is in their didactic nature to teach how to get along ("do as I say, not as the trickster does, learn from his mistakes"). I have much of the source material as photocopies in files and books on my shelves. I won't drop what I'm doing to look for it, but I have a couple of good starting places that might provide shortcuts. One that I don't own, but probably have some material from, is John Swanton's Myths and Tales of Southeastern Indians. It originally came out in 1929 as a Bureau of Ethnology volume. Swanton wrote many books, some about discrete nations, others that were regional and more comparative in nature. If you go back and forth between some of these books of his you'll find a treasure trove of stories and citations to primary sources. I found this particular volume via netLibrary, but they've set it up so I can't do any cut and paste or printing of pages, so I can't pluck bits and paste them here. These stories involve rabbits, hares, terrapins, opossums, turkeys, snakes, lizards, coyotes, wolves, hummingbirds, racoons, and panthers, to name only a few. It includes many of the Brer Rabbit and Uncle Remus stories. The story of the Tar Baby (p. 68, from his informant W.O. Tuggle). Another book that provides a good start on tracking down good source material is Swanton's Source Material for the Social and Ceremonial Life of the Choctaw Indians, originally published as the Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 103 (1931). It isn't even a matter of conjecture where the Joel Chandler Harris stories came from, it's clear to anyone who has worked closely with American Indian stories. It's a matter of how long will it take the mainstream culture to catch onto what Harris was doing. The invisibility factor of minority and indigenous peoples has a lot to do with why this has gone un-remarked upon for so long, and it's a shame that they were played off against each other. SRS |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 18 Jul 05 - 06:31 PM The point of my comment is that the contribution to the African-American stories from American Indian sources, and vice versa, is unknown. Not until the collectors and ethnographers made their studies could valid comparisons be made. It is logical to assume that the western Indian nations, because of fewer contacts, had stories that were more indigenous. The Seminoles left in Florida of as of Civil War times were a mixed group, mostly from farther north. The bulk of Seminole culture was moved west in the 1830s. Yes, the Indians that were moved to Indian Territory had contact with black slaves before 1830, and some even took their slaves with them. Absorption of tales probably went both ways. Stories were collected from southeastern groups; Chocktaws, Cherokees and others, but how much these were influenced by tales from their white and black contacts is problematical. The Choctaws were moved to the Territories in the 1830s, among the first to go down the Trail of Tears. By the 1840s, the tribes had schools and written constitutions; white ideas of schooling and literature became a part of their culture. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Fliss Date: 18 Jul 05 - 06:53 PM Im from Shropshire UK and loved Brer' Rabbit stories. I had a set of pictures from a magazine and made a scrap book for my pupils when I taught infants. They loved the stories as did my own kids. My favourite is Mr Dog's New Shoes. I dont think we should be too iffy about books that were written in another era. Books, like other things go out of fashion. I read books in my childhood that my own children found old fashioned. Then, lo and behold they come back into vogue again. fliss |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 18 Jul 05 - 06:55 PM I think I'll leave the theories about the proportion of different cultures that came to be known in the African-American tribes as "theirs" to the experts. Only thing I wonder is, if some "experts" think other "experts" have no idea what they're talking about, then not all "experts" are really "experts." Maybe Brer' Rabbit could sort out the real "experts" from the fake ones, but judging from his experience with the Tar Baby, I'm not so sure. Apparently, some "experts" are scholarly Tar Babys. In the meantime, I'm just enjoying re-reading the stories again.. Brer' Jer |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 18 Jul 05 - 06:56 PM Actually, I think Bobert wrote all of these stories.. Jerry |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: EBarnacle Date: 18 Jul 05 - 07:15 PM SRS, you got there before me. If certain politicos had bothered to read or even listen to the material around them, such as Uncle Remus, and perhaps had thought, they might not have been so quick to get angry over not getting the answer they wanted. In essence, Saddam is Bush's Tar Baby. The nature of parable is as a teaching tool. As has been mentioned, the Brer Rabbit tales are meant to be used, as are the Jack Tales, as are the Coyote and Fox and all the other tales. The important thing is not the language that is used for the tale. It is the fact that the tale is heard and retained. It is important that the material should be available for later thought and retelling. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 18 Jul 05 - 07:37 PM There's dialect, and there's accent, and there's spelling conventions, and they aren't the same thing. Whether you write "de ribber am" or "the river am" the same words are being used, and the same dialect, and people from that end of the country will pronounce it the same way. I think there's a lot to be said for keeping to the common spelling conventions generally, rather than trying to indicate accents by adjusting the way shared words are spelt. Which isn't the same as trying to iron out dialect expressions and ways of using the words. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 18 Jul 05 - 08:00 PM Jerry, in different words, the story's the thing. Read and enjoy. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: dick greenhaus Date: 18 Jul 05 - 08:45 PM Q- Wasn't that the idea behind Classic Comics? I disagree strongly. How it's told can be as important as the tale itself. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 18 Jul 05 - 09:36 PM Dick, I was trying to get away from the arguments about source, and back to the tales themselves. Certainly the telling is important. Some of the stories from the first volume are on line. Mentioned above a couple of times is the "Wonderful Tar Baby Story," one of those in the xroads website: Tar Baby At the end of the story is a link to an analysis, which shows some of the interpretations possible. Personally, I go for Harris's own comment, at the end of the commentary. The analyses of the stories should be read together with the Preface and Letter with which Harris begins his volume. A few other tales are at this website. The complete first volume is on line, by Gutenberg: Uncle Remus Reading the book itself is much more satisfactory. Perhaps it is my generation, but I find it very difficult to read books on line. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Stilly River Sage Date: 18 Jul 05 - 10:46 PM Zora Neale Hurston, known these days for Their Eyes Were Watching God, died broke, having worked as a maid for a number of years, and was buried in a potter's field. Her work was revived by Alice Walker, who has taken the trouble in recent yeras to examine her own Cherokee connections. It's very interesting. Hurston was trained as an ethnographer, and worked with Franz Boas and others. She grew up in Florida in a remarkable black community, that is characterized in the novel (Eatonville). The black critics (Richard Wright, in particular, but there were others) ripped her to shreds for what they thought was the demeaning of blacks of the day (in a world focusing on "uplift") by writing the dialog with all of the accents and idomatic usage one actually encountered there. It takes a little getting used to when reading it if you're not accustomed to the accents, but if you find a good performance of the book, you'll be astonished at how marvelous it sounds. (I'm not talking about the Hallie Berry performance recently. She looked like Janey, but that was all). Time has proved Hurston's choices correct in writing the way she did. The Ebonics of her day, as it were. (For a full discussion of this, see "Zora Neale Hurston's Work: The Black Woman's Search for Identity" by Mary Helen Washington, Black World, Aug. 1972, p. 68-75. I had to get it on microfiche, but by now someone may have scanned it and put it in a serial collection.) Hurston did a lot of research in the South and in the Caribbean. I'd be interested to see what she had on this subject. She published a number of the stories she collected. (Dust Tracks on a Road, Every Tongue Got to Confess, Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings, Mules and Men, etc.) The trick with using ethnographic materials is to look at the work all of the words are doing. Because we understand what someone means doesn't mean we got the entire message. If I tell you to dial the operator for assistance, you know I want you to make a phone call. You may not even notice that I said to "dial" the phone. I've read accounts of close readings of ethnographic materials that look for the word choices, and even before that, look to see the level of competency of the translator if translation was called for, to detect the "purity" of a story. You're never going to find the Ur Tar Baby or Brer Rabbit stories. They are too mixed together--that's the syncretic process. And I didn't want to imply that Q couldn't think of this by himself. Another answer about those stories simply seemed to be overlooked. But in a world where African Americans were second class citizens and had few rights and less voice, American Indians were quite simply invisible. Unless of course they were museum pieces to be photographed by EurAmericans on vacation. Indians scholars today are convinced that Harris knew what he was doing, though others probably aren't. But that is because Indians could see themselves on the fringes and could see their stories being retold and claimed by someone who had a voice (and a publisher). My father collected a lot of books of stories from the South, and I think they contain a lot of clues to the songs he liked to collect. in that same intersection of African and Indian stories were the Old World European stories, encapsulated in those rural mountains. It's a tangle, it's all important, and it's all interesting. SRS |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Billy Weeks Date: 21 Jul 05 - 05:22 AM I don't think anyone in this thread has mentioned the work of Mary Alicia Owen, who collected African American, native American and gipsy folk tales in Missouri. Original copies of her best known book, 'Old Rabbit the Voodoo and other Sorcerers',published in London in 1893 and later the same year in New York as 'Voodoo Tales as told among the negroes of the Southwest', are not easy to find, but there is at least one recent reprint at a modest price. Owens's stories are told in a rather tougher style, richer in dialect than Chandler Harris's and were probably, for that reason, less accessible to white readers at the time and, consequently, less widely read since, but her work deserves at least as much attention as his. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Le Scaramouche Date: 21 Jul 05 - 05:59 AM That sounds worth looking up. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 21 Jul 05 - 11:04 AM Thanks for the suggestion, Billy.. Jerry |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Stilly River Sage Date: 22 Jul 05 - 03:54 PM I've been saving this since the last crash to post. Here is something about her from the Missouri Folklore Society. Here are a few books for sale through ABE. Nice contribution to the thread, thanks, Billy! SRS |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: PoppaGator Date: 22 Jul 05 - 04:48 PM We'll never know very much in detail about the earliest interactions between Native Americans and newly arrived Africans (including escaped slaves), but we do know that some of these people definitely got together with each other. Members of similar tribal cultures, individuals from these two groups met and communicated, but left no written record of whatever transpired. Part of what we do know is that the folklore of both groups always included strikingly similar elements, including "trickster stories" featuring athropomorphic animals. I think that anyone who contends that the Uncle Remus stories are of exclusive African or Native-American origin is simply promoting his/her own personal prejudice. In fact, a case can be made for either theory, but I believe that elements of both must have been included in the late-19th-century versions of these tales. I am generally supportive of the African-American community's consensus feeling regarding any given issue, but I truly believe that their wholesale rejection of the entire history of American popular culture's depiction of black people is a big mistake. The article to which Azizi provided a link is a good example of this militant ignorance ~ let me second Q's assertion much earlier in this thread: "The article by Davis gives a completely distorted and false picture of Joel Chandler Harris and his stories. Obviously he knows nothing about them. Finding something like this in 'Teacher Resources' is very disturbing." Ditto for the rewritten PC tales by Julius Lester, an artist I've always respected who seems to be very much in the wrong this time around. Those who blind themselves to history are doomed to repeat it! I'd be glad see Amos and Andy, too, but I understand why I can't. More to the point, I'd be glad to live in a world where no one had a problem with Amos and Andy. But Harris' presentation of these timeless fables is not only more innocuous than the pop-culture slapstick of "A&A," it's infinitely more authentic and much more serious as literature, too. Let's not forget that there was a time, not too long ago, when educated middle-class black folks were scandalized by and ashamed of the blues. Let's hope that Uncle Remus can someday regain an appropriate level of respect, much like BB King eventually did... |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: voyager Date: 22 Jul 05 - 06:01 PM "Zippedee do-dah, zippedee ay My oh my, what a wonderful day Plenty of sunshine, headed my way Zippedee do-dah, zippedee ay!" Nice lyric, eh? My late uncle, Maurice Rapf, was a blacklisted screenwriter who helped develop this story for Disney in the mid-50's. When I asked about the unavailability of this movie, Maury said - "No problem, I have a tape right here I can copy for you". I thoroughly enjoy watching this film, racial stereo-typing and all. In the history of film, it is one of the earliest examples of live animation overlayed with character actors (look out Roger Rabbit!). As always, I appreciate the Mudcat Forum as and area where controversial topics can be viewed from many angles. voyager FSGW Ghetto Silver Spring, MD. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Azizi Date: 22 Jul 05 - 06:07 PM PoppaGator, I appreciate what you and Q are saying here. However, I respectfully mention that it's not "Uncle Remus" per se, that I {and some other African Americans} have a problem with, it's what "Uncle Remus" has come to symbolize {at least in our view}. For many "educated, middle class African Americans" {to use your descriptors and include myself in that category}, the character "Uncle Remus" represents the submissive, faithful Black slave who is portrayed {we believe} as being inferior to a small White boy. At some other time I would love to enter into a discussion of African American's past & present acceptance & non-acceptance of the Blues. However, I believe that discussion would be too far off-subject here. With regard to the subject of this thread, IMO, it's not a matter of us {African Americans} "re-gaining" respect for Uncle Remus stories", because we never had respect for them in the first place. I have read that people of African descent believe art should not be just for art {aesthetic} sake. Given this philosophy, how the artistic is used {to support sociological and political memes is more important than how well the artistic product is created. See this excerpt of an article on Uncle Remus: Of course, while Joel Chandler Harris and Mark Twain were both quite confident that they were working to improve race relations by doing this kind of writing, modern attitudes have changed. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn has been banned from many schools, and students are often shocked that the Uncle Remus stories are included in this course. Personally, I cannot imagine doing this course without using the Brer Rabbit stories: it is one of the most important collections of American folklore that we possess. We are incredibly lucky to have this collection of hundreds of African-American folktales, which also provide a record of African-American dialect as spoken in the 19th century. Harris had a folkloric interest in these stories, and he notes the connections between the Brer Rabbit stories and African traditions, as well as the diffusion of these stories throughout Native American traditions (you will see many connections if you did the Cherokee readings last week). Admittedly, the way in which Joel Chandler Harris collected and published the stories is bound up with the racism that marked every aspect of life in the society in which he lived. There is a deep contradiction between Harris and the stories that he tells: Brer Rabbit is a vitally important and authentic creation of the African-American experience during slavery, while Uncle Remus is a fictional character spawned by the racist politics of the post-war white South. This Uncle Remus character is used by Harris as a kind of "black-face" in print, something like a literary minstrel show. Harris is white, but he writes as a black man, much like the white singers and comedians who appeared as "black" on the stage. Minstrel shows with white entertainers performing in black-face date back to the 1820's. These shows were already a well-established tradition by the time Harris was born and he would have been exposed to minstrel shows all his life (in fact, minstrel shows continued to be popular well into the 20th century, mostly famously in Amos and Andy). Putting on the Uncle Remus character seems to have come quite naturally to Harris, yet he never agreed to "perform" as Uncle Remus in public. At no time, did Harris do any public reading of the Brer Rabbit stories. Luckily for us, however, the way that Harris "dressed himself up" in writing did not involve the use of black face paint, but instead depended on the heavy use of dialect in his stories. Harris, in fact, prided himself on his use of dialect, and his ability to distinguish between the many different regional dialects of the American South. As a result, you are probably going to find the stories hard to read. In order to understand the stories, you basically have no choice to but to read them out loud, using Harris' odd and abbreviated spelling to recreate the sound of English that was spoken by his African-American sources. Yet at the same time that Harris's motives were - by the standards of his time - extremely sympathetic, there is no denying the taint of the minstrel show in Harris's work.." source: Uncle Remus {Myth-Folklore} Online |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Stilly River Sage Date: 22 Jul 05 - 07:49 PM I think that anyone who contends that the Uncle Remus stories are of exclusive African or Native-American origin is simply promoting his/her own personal prejudice. Or his or her extensive scholarship in the subject. No one said it was exclusively one or the other, but the fact that they have rarely been credited to the people who believe the stories are theirs originally can be attributed to a type of prejudice that has nothing to do with scholarship. SRS |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 22 Jul 05 - 10:47 PM To me, The "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is America's greatest novel; one that should be in the curriculum of every high school student. I know of no better way to gain an understanding of what it meant to live in America in the latter half of the 19th century. Nor is there a better book which looks at 'freedom' and its meaning. Sanford Pinskter, professor and lifelong writer on literature, in the Virginia Quarterly review, sums up his impression of the book by calling it "deeply subversive," "not because it is peppered with the N-word or even because some see racism in what is the most anti-racist book ever written in America, but because it tells the Truth- not 'mainly,' but right down to the core." (It is evident that Huck will never be 'free,' and Jim- ) VA Quart Rev |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Mary in Kentucky Date: 22 Jul 05 - 10:51 PM I read the stories to my children when they were small. I found that I often had to rephrase the wording in order for all of us to understand the story. But the lilt of the dialect was beautiful. So Jerry, I prefer the dialect, but in conveying the story to young children, I found that I had to change some words along the way. Back in the 80's, I knew of a teacher who was severely reprimanded for making the comment "I feel like tar-baby" when sticky notes became unmanageable. |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: Mary in Kentucky Date: 22 Jul 05 - 10:54 PM Q, I read that in Huckleberry Finn there are at least five different dialects. Do you know anything about this? |
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Subject: RE: Folklore: Brer' Rabbit From: GUEST,Guest Member on another computer Date: 22 Jul 05 - 11:04 PM Good thread Jerry. I watched Song of the South as a youngster in the early 50's. I was a white boy that loved Uncle Remus as a kind ole man singin' my favorite song 'Zipadeedodah'. 50 years later I still fondly think of that song and the fine black man singing it. I looked up to him as I would any good, kind man regardless of his skin color. I spent my younger years growin' up in the South and as a 6 year old kid knew that separate drinkin' fountains and restrooms for blacks and whites was not right. I milked cows and did farm labor with some of the poorest back folks in the backwoods of east Texas. I respected them and their families. They were hard working, humble people whom I considered as good as, or in many ways, as better humans than my white brethren or me. I later worked side-by-side with many good black soldiers in the Army. The gentleman that played Uncle Remus was perfect for the part. Man, I miss him and Brer' Rabbit! Bring back 'Song of the South' and those fabulous memories! Cruiser |
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