The Taileypo
BY RICHARD T. WYCHE
The Taileypo story was told to me by the Rev. George Washington Neale, a student friend of mine, years ago, in Chicago University. Mr. Neale said that he had heard the story many times in his childhood, from the lips of the old negro story tellers in Tennessee. This story has its variant in the story of “The Golden Arm,” which was written by Mark Twain, Joseph Jacobs and also in a collection by S. Baring-Gould.
It is a story that loses much in the writing, as it is impossible to give voice modulation in cold print. After hearing Mr. Neale tell it a number of years ago, in Chicago, I took it up and began to tell it, and found many people in the South, who had heard the old negroes tell it.
In January 1905, I was in Atlanta, Ga., and went with Joel Chandler Harris, the author of “Uncle Remus,” to the West End School, where I told a number of Uncle Remus stories to the children. Beginning in the first grade, where Mr. Harris’s little grandson was then a pupil and ending in the higher grades, where I told The Taileypo story. When the story was done, Mr. Harris said it was one of the best negro stories he had heard, but that I did not have all of the story. There was, he said, another piece of the story that should be linked with this to make it complete, and I said to Mr. Harris: “Find the other piece, and write the story complete.”
One year after that Harris published the story in the Metropolitan Magazine, New York, January 1906. Harris gave it a setting and artistic atmosphere, bringing in Brer’ Rabbit and Mister Man. He put it in the mouth of Uncle Remus, and had the old negro, as in his other books, tell the story to the little boy. That was a demonstration to me as to how Harris took many of the negro stories in the raw, and passing them through the magic of his imagination made them into art.
We are frequently puzzled to find humorous stories for the boys and girls,—they must have humor. This story has universally amused them wherever it has been told. In it reverberates the barbaric ages from whence the race came, and it is a spontaneous expression of life from the primitive standpoint. To find a story that the boys and girls think humorous, and to laugh together with them, is decidedly refreshing and healthful to the teacher, who has dwelt so much on grammatical forms which are not fundamental in a child’s interest. As Joseph Jacobs, says, “The children know the happenings in the story are make-believe just as much as the spectators of a tragedy. Every one who has enjoyed the blessing of a romantic imagination has been trained upon such tales of wonder.”
However, if one’s imagination and sense of humor is undeveloped, and the story is taken seriously rather than humorously, it loses its value and should not be told. For that reason the story teller or teacher must study his auditors.