The black border

by Ambrose Elliott Gonzalez

In fact, no Northern writer has ever succeeded even indifferently well in putting Negro thought into Negro dialect. Even Poe, in “the Goldbug,” put into the mouth of a Charleston Negro such vocables as might have been used by a black sailor on an English ship a hundred years ago, or on the minstrel stage, but were never current on the South Carolina coast. To recent Southern writers, therefore, one must turn for intelligent understanding of the Negro character and the recording of his speech, which varies in the different sections of the South.

Thomas Nelson Page, recognized as the outstanding exponent of the Virginia Negro in literature, has yet touched his field lightly, considering chiefly the old family man servant and his relations with his master’s household. Very beautifully and tenderly, because very truthfully, Mr. Page has portrayed the ante-bellum Negro man servant; but as to the younger Negro, Negro life before and since the war, and the relations of Negroes to one another, it is to be regretted that he has contributed little or nothing.

The genius of Joel Chandler Harris, who, with Judge Longstreet and his “Georgia Scenes,” fixed Georgia firmly upon the literary map of the world, embalmed the Negro myths and folk-tales of the South so subtly in the amber of his understanding that “Uncle Remus” is known and loved by the children of half the civilized world. There was little creative work in “Uncle Remus.” Mr. Harris claimed to record the stories only “like hit wer’ gun ter me.” These myths were known and told by Negro nurses to the white children over all the Southern states, and in the West Indian Islands as well, but the artistry of Harris lay in the sympathetic understanding of children prompted by his kindly heart, and the human appeal of the tender relations of “the little boy” and the old Negro family servant was irresistible, not only to the children, but to those happy grown-ups who loved them.

It is interesting to know that in the low-country of South Carolina, instead of “Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox,” it is invariably “Buh Rabbit en’ Buh Wolf.” Strange, too, because wolves must have been found in upper Georgia and Carolina for more than a hundred years after they were exterminated along the coast, within whose forests still abound the grey foxes whose natural prey is the rabbit.

Encouraged by the success of the “Uncle Remus” stories, which greatly surprised this singularly modest man, Mr. Harris wrote novels and other stories of Georgia life among whites and blacks. While these were published successfully, it is upon the animal tales of “Uncle Remus” that his fame has been permanently established.

In the introduction to one of his volumes Mr. Harris has made a rather exhaustive study and analysis of the origin of these Negro myths. That they are of African origin none can doubt, but as on the West Coast of Africa, whence the slaves came to the American continent and the West Indian Islands, there are neither wolves, foxes, nor rabbits, it would be interesting to know what African animals were their legendary prototypes. In Jamaica many of the “Uncle Remus” tales are current and have been told to English children by their black nurses for generations, but there the Anancy Spider, a black, hairy tarantula-like creature, is substituted for the rabbit in the mythical triumph of mind over matter—cunning over physical strength—while the tiger does duty for the outwitted fox. Whence comes the Jamaican tiger? One can only surmise that tales of the strength and ferocity of the Jaguar (“el tigre” to the Spaniards) the great spotted cat of South and Central America, were brought from the mainland to the West Indies by the Indians of the Caribbean Coast or the earlier Negro slaves; but in Jamaica even the saddle-horse story is told complete in all its details, the spider, clapping spurs to the tiger’s flanks and riding him up to the house of the “nyung ladies” (Mis’ Meadows an de gals) hitching him to a post and walking boldly in to love’s conquest. For the “Tar Baby” story, instead of the violated spring, the drinking preserve of fox or wolf, a “tar pole” is set up in a banana grove, and to this sticky lure the pilfering spider is found stuck fast by the lord of the plantation when he makes his morning rounds.

Harry Stillwell Edwards, of Macon, is another Georgian whose charming stories in the up-country or cotton plantation dialect have given pleasure to thousands. With an unusual knowledge of the Negro character—the first consideration, if one would present truthful pictures of Negro life—he combines a charming literary style, and his writings deservedly rank high among Negro stories.

Harris touched the Gullah dialect very lightly and not with authority. In “Nights with Uncle Remus,” a later collection of Negro myths, he puts into the mouth of “Daddy Jack” certain variants of the Uncle Remus stories told in the dialect of the coast, and in his introduction to this volume he acknowledges his obligation to correspondents in Charleston and elsewhere on the Carolina and Georgia Coasts for the Gullah stories. It is almost certain that he lacked first-hand contact with the story-tellers, and thus missed some of the subtleties of their speech as well as the peculiar construction of their sentences, differing entirely, as they do, from those of the up-country Negroes. Mr. Harris also includes in his introduction a brief glossary of Gullah words, and expresses the opinion that this peculiar dialect is more easily read than the Georgia dialect of “Uncle Remus,” an opinion in which, unfortunately for the popularity of “Gullah,” few will concur.

In “Myths of the Georgia Coast,” Col. Charles Colcock Jones, of Georgia (and South Carolina, also, by the way) has given, in generally correct Gullah dialect, the stories current along the coast, many of them variants of those told in “Uncle Remus.” A careful lawyer, Col. Jones has set down, with most meticulous exactness, and without imagination or embellishment, the stories as they were told him on the plantation.

One familiar with Negro speech recognizes that these tales are recorded as they fell from Negro lips, and as such they must be regarded, as far as they go, as the most authentic record of Negro myths on the continent—probably the originals of many of the “Uncle Remus” stories, for the slaves first came from Africa to the coast, bringing with them their myths and legends which gradually infiltrated into the hinterland.