African American Folktales

by Roger Abrahams

  6. Melville and Frances Herskovits, Suriname Folk-Lore (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), 195.

  7. Walter M. Brasch, Black English and the Mass Media (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981), 42.

  8. See Roger D. Abrahams and John Szwed, eds., After Africa (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 40–47, 77–107; Roger D. Abrahams, The Man-of-Words in the West Indies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 21–39.

  9. W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: Vintage Books, 1941), 95.

  10. Reprinted by Ben A. Botkin in A Treasury of Southern Folklore (New York: Crown, 1949), 69–70; from a newspaper report of 1859.

  11. William Bascom, “African Folktales in America”: VIII Deer’s Hoof and Ear,” Research in African Literatures 2 (1980): 175–78.

  12. Also the subject of an article by William Bascom, “African Folktales in America: The Talking Skull Refuses to Talk,” Research in African Literatures 8 (1977): 226–97. For the snake version, see 282.

  13. William A. Owens, “Folklore of Southern Negroes,” Lippincott’s Magazine 20 (1877): 748–55; reprinted in The Negro and His Folklore in Nineteenth Century Periodicals, ed. Bruce Jackson (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), 144–56.

  14. Matthew Gregory Lewis, Journal of a West Indian Proprietor (1834; reprint ed., Westport, Conn.: Negro Universities Press, 1974), 290–96.

  15. Lawrence W. Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).

  16. Ibid., 112–13.

  17. The story, under the title “The Singing Bones,” is surveyed worldwide in Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale (Helsinki: Finnish Scientific Academy, 1961), where it is given the number-type 780.

  18. Such a pattern was discerned by Alice Werner as early as 1907, in her introduction to Walter Jeckyll’s Jamaican Song and Story (London: David Nutt, 1907), xxxv. She relates this to African forms of story.

  19. For a Vincentian localized rendering, see Abrahams, The Man-of-Words in the West Indies, 184–86.

  20. Daniel C. Crowley, I Could Talk Old-Story Good (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 17.

  21. Arthur Huff Fauset, “Negro Folktales from the South: Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana,” Journal of American Folklore 40 (1927): 302.

  22. Daryl Cumber Dance, Shuckin’ and Jivin’: Folklore from Contemporary Black Americans (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 260–61.

  23. Charles Rampini, Letters from Jamaica (London, 1877), 116.

  24. Crowley, I Could Talk Old Story Good, 23.

  25. Elsie Clews Parsons, Folklore of the Antilles, French and English (New York: G. E. Stechert, 1936), 2:35.

  26. I use communitas in the sense developed by Victor W. Turner in his series of studies of rituals and celebrations; see his The Ritual Process (Chicago: Aldine, 1969) and his introduction to Celebrations (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Press, 1982), 11–30.

  27. Roger D. Abrahams, Positively Black (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 51–52.

  INTRODUCTION

  Stories of the earliest times establish how and why matters came to be the way they are today. Afro-American folktales reveal a different vision of just how life is ordered and given value from the “Once upon a time … happily ever after” kind. To a certain extent this difference lies in the small part of the repertoire given over to plotted success about villainy or sinfulness and its punishment. Instead, the Afro-American “In the beginning” stories underscore the value of accommodating yourself to the way things are (and always will be). The characters find themselves almost in perpetual opposition; we watch how the antagonists throw themselves, enthusiastically and playfully, into the eternal dramas pitting humans against animals, men against women, master against slave, even God against the Devil.

  In a few rare stories, such as “Bringing Men and Women Together,” a trick is pulled off by Anansi, to resolve the oppositions at least temporarily. More commonly, a resolution occurs because one or another of the opposed parties is able to persuade God (or some other judge) of the virtue of their position. Even more frequently, the figure making the judgment gets annoyed at what he has done and works out a counter-measure to reinstate the original opposition in different terms. For instance, in “Getting Common Sense,” the achievement of Anansi in gathering together all wisdom is balanced against his dropping of the calabash in which he is carrying his collection, thereby allowing others back in on the storehouse of common sense.

  The first anecdote, “Never Seen His Equal,” suggested by Genesis, demonstrates this point nicely. In it we see, in spite of the statement of the all-powerfulness of God, that the Devil sets himself up in opposition to his Maker, and is able to translate this opposition to the relationship between men and women, work and leisure, and by extension, life and death. This tale, and similar ones, are jocular stories; both God and the Devil (in his many forms) are humanized, indeed given playful personalities. In “The Man Makes and the Woman Takes,” for instance, God is portrayed as someone who can be persuaded to do something if you know how to address him effectively through grandiloquent speeches in praise. But he can also be easily angered by bickering or special pleading, and he will renege on a commitment when he sees it is excessive. This is precisely the situation in “Hankering for a Long Tail” and “Getting Common Sense,” where it becomes evident that the animals making the requests have overstepped themselves.

  These tales tell us, then, how social and natural phenomena came into being, even to the inclusion of a number of charming “Just So” stories. But the way things are involves a good many social inequities, and the storytellers do not hesitate to use the stories of how things came to be that way to underscore the fact that life isn’t usually very fair.

  1

  NEVER SEEN HIS EQUAL

  I have seen something that God has never seen. What is it?”

  “Now that could never be, for God has seen everything. He made the world and everything that’s in it. Now if you call yourself smart, tell me something that God has never seen.”

  “Well, I have seen my equal, and that’s something God has never seen!”

  “You’re right there. There never has been a man who has seen his equal. But there was this one time when the Devil tried to be equal with God, too. The Devil was a chorister, you know, a leader of angels in Heaven, a pretty angel if there ever was one, and God when he created man made the Devil into his Overlord. But Lucifer tried to give the orders himself and had eaten of the Tree of Knowledge. Then Adam and Eve were so ashamed they were naked that they went and pinned fig leaves on themselves. The Devil came to them in the form of a serpent and told Eve when she asked, ‘Oh no, you surely won’t die if you eat now. God knows that the day you eat of this you will know good from evil and be his equal in that way.’

  “So she ate, and God gave her the curse that she should have childbirth and that man would be her boss ever after. And Adam had to eat by the sweat of his brow and till the earth—until he could die and return to the earth.”

  —Michigan

  2

  THE MAN MAKES AND THE WOMAN TAKES

  You see, in the very first days, God made a man and a woman and put them in a house together to live. Back in those days the women were just as strong as the men, and both of them did the same things. They used to get to fussing about who was going to do this and that; and sometimes they’d fight. But they were even balanced and neither one could get the better of the other.

  One day the man said to himself, “I believe I’m going to go see God and ask him for a little more strength so I can make this woman obey me. I’m tired of the way things are.” So he went on up to God. “Good morning, Old Father.” “Howdy, man. What are you doing around my throne so early this morning?” The man said: “I’m troubled in my mind, and nobody can ease my spirit except you.” God said: “Put your plea in the right form and
I’ll hear it and answer.”

  “Old Maker, with the morning stars glittering in your shining crown, with the dust from your footsteps making worlds upon worlds, with the blazing bird we call the sun flying out of your right hand in the morning and consuming all day the flesh and blood of stump-black darkness, and flying home every evening to rest on your left hand, and never once in all your eternal years mistook the left hand for the right, I ask you please to give me more strength than that woman you give me, so I can make her obey me. I know you don’t want to be coming down way past the moon and stars to be straightening her out all the time. So give me a little more strength, Old Maker, and I’ll do it.”

  “All right, man, I’ll give you more strength than the woman.”

  So the man ran all the way down the stairs from Heaven until he reached home. He was so anxious to try his new strength on the woman that he couldn’t take his time. As soon as he got in the house he hollered, “Woman! Here’s your boss. God told me to handle you in whatever way I please. So look at me good and listen well, for from now on I’m your boss.”

  The woman started fighting him right away. She fought him hard, but he beat her. She got her second wind and tried him again, but again he beat her. She got herself together and made the third try on him vigorously, but he beat her every time. He was so proud that he could whip her at last that he just crowed over her and made her do a lot of things she didn’t like. He told her, “As long as you obey me, I’ll be good to you, but every time you disobey, I’m going to put plenty of wood on your back and plenty of water in your eyes.”

  The woman was so mad she went straight to Heaven and stood before the Lord. She didn’t waste any words either. She said, “Lord, I come before you mighty mad today. I want back the strength and power I used to have.”

  “Woman, you got the same power you had since the beginning.”

  “Why is it that the man can beat me now and he used to not be able to do it?”

  “He’s got more strength than he used to have. He came and asked me for it and I gave it to him. I give to them that ask, and you haven’t ever asked me for more power.”

  “Please, sir, God, I’m asking you for it now. Just give me the same as you gave him.”

  God shook his head. “It’s too late now, woman. What I give, I never take back. I gave him more strength than you, and no matter how much I give you, he’ll always have more.”

  The woman was so mad she wheeled around and went on off straight to the Devil and told him what had happened. He said, “Don’t be discouraged, woman. Just listen to me and take those frowns out of your face. Turn around and go right on back to Heaven and ask God to give you that bunch of keys hanging by the mantelpiece. Then you bring them to me and I’ll show you what to do with them.”

  So the woman climbed back up to Heaven again. She was mighty tired, but she was more mad than she was tired. So she climbed all night long and got back up to Heaven again. When she got before the throne, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.

  “O Lord and Master of the rainbow. I know your power. You never make two mountains without putting a valley in between. I know you can hit a straight lick with a crooked stick.”

  “Ask for what you want, woman,” God said.

  “God, please give me that bunch of keys hanging by your mantelpiece, and I won’t ask for anything more.” He laughed and said, “Take them.”

  So the woman took the keys and hurried on back to the Devil with them. There were three keys. The Devil said, “You see these three keys? They have more power in them than all the strength the man can ever get if you handle them right. Now this first big key is to the door of the kitchen, and you know a man always favors his stomach. This second one is the key to the bedroom, and he doesn’t like to be shut out from that either. And this last key is the key to the cradle, and he doesn’t want to be cut off from his generations at all. So now you take these keys and go lock up everything and wait until he comes to you. Then don’t unlock anything until he uses his strength for your benefit and your desires.”

  The woman thanked him and told him, “If it wasn’t for you, Lord knows what us poor women would do.” So she started off, but the Devil stopped her. “Just one more thing: Don’t go home bragging about your keys. Just lock up everything and say nothing until you get asked. And then don’t talk too much.”

  The woman went on home and did like the Devil told her. When the man came home from work she was sitting on the porch singing some song about “Peck on the wood make the bed go good.” And when the man found those doors fastened that used to stand wide open, he swelled up like pine lumber after a rain. First thing he tried to break in because he figured his strength would overcome all obstacles. When he saw he couldn’t do it, he asked the woman, “Who locked this door?” She told him, “Me.” “Where did you get the key from?” “God gave it to me.”

  He ran up to God and said, “God, woman has me locked away from my food, my bed, and my generations, and she said you gave her the keys.” God said, “I did, man, I gave her the keys, but the Devil showed her how to use them.”

  “Well, Old Maker, please give me some keys just like them so she can’t get full control.” “No, man, what I give, I give. Woman has the keys.” “How can I know about my generations?” “Ask the woman.”

  So the man came on back and had to give his respect to the woman. And when he did, she opened the doors. Man is proud, so it took a lot out of him, but he did what he needed to do, and the woman opened the doors.

  After a while he said to the woman, “Let’s divide up. I’ll give you half of my strength if you let me hold the keys in my hands.” The woman was thinking that over when the Devil popped up and told her, “Tell him no. Let him keep his strength, and you keep your keys.”

  So the woman wouldn’t trade with him, and the man had to mortgage his strength to her to live. And that’s why the man makes and the woman takes. You men is still bragging about your strength and the women is sitting on the keys and letting you blow off till she ready to put the bridle on you.

  Stepped on a pin, the pin bent,

  And that’s the way the story went.

  —Florida

  3

  BRINGING MEN

  AND WOMEN TOGETHER

  Long ago, it used to be that women lived in one village and men in another. No man had ever gone to the women’s village and survived, but Anansi the Spider was tempted to try.

  Anansi started out and soon approached the place where the women lived. There, between their village and the river where they got water, a giant tree had fallen across the path. Anansi hollowed out the trunk of the tree and bored a hole through the bark. Then he climbed inside, lay on his back, and stuck his penis (which had, meanwhile, grown to considerable size) up out of the hole. It wasn’t long before a woman came along the path on her way to fetch some water. As she stepped over the tree, she noticed that her buttocks were moving in a peculiar way, and that she felt a strong urge to linger. Later on, she told her sister about the strange sensation she had had and sang a song about the “sweetness” of the wood. Her sister wanted to see this tree for herself; once she had tried it, she could barely be pulled away. “What kind of wood is it that’s sweet the way this wood is sweet?” she wondered aloud.

  Back at the tree, Anansi worked his way through all the women until not a single one remained to be experienced. Time passed, and the first woman to have crossed the hollowed-out tree began to feel peculiar. Her belly hurt and her body didn’t seem well. Then the same thing happened to her sister and, finally, the others felt it too, until every woman was in the same condition. They were bewildered and were sure they would die. Finally, the first woman gave birth to a daughter. She called her sister and said, “Look at this thing I’ve delivered! It’s made just the way we are!” She was frightened at what had happened to her and wanted to kill the thing, but her sister dissuaded her. Soon her sister also gave birth, but to a boy. She noticed that it had something between it
s legs, and terrified of its unnatural form, she wanted to kill it. But her sister persuaded her to wait and see what would happen. Soon all the women in the village had given birth, some to girls and some to boys; not a single one had a (recognized) father. The children grew up; and after a while the ones that were made like the women and the ones that were made differently began noticing each other. Nothing more really need be said about what happened after that; their work was all cut out for them. Anansi was pleased at having broken through the isolation of the two villages.

  And that’s how this way of life began.

  —Saramaka (Surinam)

  One day Cat and Dog found themselves walking along the same way, so while they walked they began to fight as they always do. Of all things, they began to argue about life and death. Cat said, “Man is born to die, and that’s it, he dies, that’s all and never rises again.” Dog argued back, “No, when people die, they can come back.” Well, they went on and on like that.

  Finally, Cat said, “Let’s go and hear what God has to say about all this,” and Dog had to agree to go the next day. But as soon as Cat had gone, Dog began to plan a trick on Cat so he could get to God first. Knowing Cat loved butter, he put a little butter all along the road so that Cat would stop for a while at each place, while he could run on ahead. But Cat was thinking too, and he did he same thing, only with bones for Dog.

  The next morning, they set out early. They came to one of the places where Dog had put some butter, and Cat put his nose in the air, smelled it, and knew about Dog’s trick. So Cat just went on. But when they came to the first bone, Dog stopped; he couldn’t resist a bone to gnaw on. This happened each time Cat smelled the butter, and each time Dog found the bone. So Cat arrived at God’s house long before Dog did.