The Annotated African American Folktales

by Henry Louis Gates

  ———, ed. Nigger to Nigger. New York: Scribner’s, 1928.

  ———, ed. Tales of the Congaree by Edward C. L. Adams. Edited by Robert G. O’Meally. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.

  Addo, Peter Eric Adotey. Ghana Folk Tales. New York: Exposition Press, 1968.

  ———. How the Spider Became Bald: Folktales and Legends from West Africa. Greensboro, NC: Morgan Reynolds, 1993.

  Appiah, Peggy. Ananse the Spider: Tales from an Ashanti Village. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966.

  ———. The Pineapple Child and Other Tales from Ashanti. Illustrated by Mora Dickson. London: Andre Deutsche, 1969.

  ———. Tales of an Ashanti Father. Boston: Beacon Press, 1967.

  Arbousset, T., and F. Daumas. Narrative of an Exploratory Tour to the North-East of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope. Cape Town: C. Struik, 1968.

  Armistead, S. G. “Notes & Queries: Two Brer Rabbit Stories from the Eastern Shore of Maryland.” Journal of American Folklore 84 (1971): 442–44.

  Backus, Emma M. “Animal Tales from North Carolina.” Journal of American Folklore 11 (1898): 284–92.

  ———. “Folk-Tales from Georgia.” Journal of American Folklore 13 (1900): 19–32.

  ———. “Tales of the Rabbit from Georgia Negroes.” Journal of American Folklore 12 (1899): 108–15.

  Backus, Emma M., and Ethel Hatton Leitner. “Negro Tales from Georgia.” Journal of American Folklore 26 (1912): 125–36.

  Baharav, Gene, ed. African Folktales Told in Israel. Haifa: International Training Centre for Community Services, 1963.

  Barker, William Henry, and Cecilia Sinclair. West African Folk-Tales. London: George G. Harrap, 1917.

  Baumann, Margaret. Ajapa the Tortoise: A Book of Nigerian Folk Tales. London: A. & C. Black, 1929.

  Beckwith, Martha Warren. Jamaican Anansi Stories. Vol. 17. New York: Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, 1924.

  ———. Jamaica Folklore. Vol. 21. New York: Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, 1928.

  Beier, Ulli, ed. African Poetry: An Anthology of Traditional African Poems. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1966.

  Bennett, John. The Doctor to the Dead: Grotesque Legends and Folk Tales of Old Charleston. New York: Rinehart, 1946.

  Bennett, Louise. Anancy and Miss Lou. Kingston, Jamaica: Sangster’s Book Store, 1979.

  Black, Clinton, ed. Tales of Old Jamaica. London: Oxford University Press, 1966.

  Bleek, D. F. The Mantis and His Friends. Cape Town: T. Maskew Miller, 1923.

  Botkin, B. A. Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949.

  ———. A Treasury of Mississippi River Folklore: Stories, Ballads, Traditions and Folkways of the Mid-American River Country. New York: Crown, 1955.

  ———. A Treasury of Southern Folklore: Stories, Ballads, Traditions, and Folkways of the People of the South. New York: Crown, 1949.

  Branner, John Casper. How and Why Stories. New York: Henry Holt, 1921.

  Breinburg, Petronella. Legends of Suriname. London: New Beacon Books, 1971.

  Brewer, J. Mason. American Negro Folklore. Illustrated by Richard Lowe. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968.

  ———. “Juneteenth.” In Tone the Bell Easy. Edited by J. Frank Dobie. Publications of the Texas Folklore Society 10 (1932): 9–54.

  ———. Worser Days and Better Times. Edited by Warren E. Roberts. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1965.

  ———, ed. Dog Ghosts and Other Texas Negro Folk Tales. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958.

  ———, ed. Humorous Folk Tales of the South Carolina Negro. Claflin College, Orangeburg: South Carolina Negro Folklore Guild, 1945.

  ———, ed. The Word on the Brazos: Negro Preacher Tales from the Brazos Bottoms of Texas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1953.

  Brown, Sterling A., and Arthur P. Davis, and Ulysses Lee. The Negro Caravan. New York: Arno Press, 1969.

  Browne, Ray B. “Negro Folktales from Alabama.” Southern Folklore Quarterly 18 (1954): 129–34.

  Burrison, John A., ed. Storytellers: Folktales & Legends from the South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989.

  Burton, W. F. P. The Magic Drum: Tales from Central Africa. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1961.

  Cabrera, Lydia. Afro-Cuban Tales. Translated by Alberto Hernández-Chiroldes and Lauren Yoder. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

  Callaway, Canon, ed. Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus, in Their Own Words. London: Trübner, 1868.

  Cardinall, Allan Wolsey, ed. Tales Told in Togoland. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931.

  Chamoiseau, Patrick. Creole Folktales. New York: New Press, 1988.

  Chapman, Abraham. New Black Voices: An Anthology of Contemporary Afro-American Literature. New York: New American Library, 1972.

  Chesnutt, Charles Waddell. Collected Stories. 1899. Edited by William L. Andrews. New York: Mentor, 1992.

  Christensen, A. M. H. Afro-American Folk Lore, Told Round Cabin Fires on the Sea Islands of South Carolina. Boston: J. G. Cupples, 1892.

  Clarke, W. R. E. Some Folk Tales of Sierra Leone. London: Macmillan, 1965.

  Claudel, Calvin, and J.-M. Carrière. “The Tales from the French Folklore of Louisiana.” Journal of American Folklore 56 (1943): 38–44.

  Cocke, Sarah Johnson. Bypaths in Dixie: Folktales of the South. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1911.

  Coffin, Tristram Potter, and Hennig Cohen. Folklore in America: Tales, Songs, Superstitions, Proverbs, Riddles, Games, Folk Drama and Folk Festivals. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966.

  Coggswell, Gladys Canes. Stories from the Heart: Missouri’s African American Heritage Collected and Told by Gladys Canes Coggswell. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009.

  Comhaire-Sylvain, Suzanne. “Creole Tales from Haiti.” Journal of American Folklore 50 (1937): 207–95.

  Congdon, Kristin G. Uncle Monday and Other Florida Tales. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.

  Cotter, Joseph S. Negro Tales. New York: Cosmopolitan Press, 1912.

  Courlander, Harold, ed. The Drum and the Hoe: Life and Lore of the Haitian People. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960.

  ———, ed. The Piece of Fire and Other Haitian Tales. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964.

  ———, ed. Terrapin’s Pot of Sense. New York: Holt and Rinehart, 1957.

  ———, ed. A Treasury of Afro-American Folklore: The Oral Literature, Traditions, Recollections, Legends, Tales, Songs, Religious Beliefs, Customs, Sayings and Humor of People of African Descent in the Americas. New York: Crown, 1976.

  ———, ed. Uncle Bouqi of Haiti. New York: Morrow, 1942.

  Courlander, Harold, and George Herzog. The Cow-Tail Switch and Other West African Stories. New York: Henry Holt, 1947.

  Courlander, Harold, and Wolf Leslau, eds. The Fire on the Mountain and Other Stories from Ethiopia and Eritrea. New York: Henry Holt, 1950.

  Courlander, Harold, and Albert Kofi Prempeh, eds. The Hat-Shaking Dance and other Ashanti Tales from Ghana. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957.

  Crowley, Daniel J. African Folklore in the New World. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977.

  ———. I Could Talk Old-Story Good: Creativity in Bahamian Folklore. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966.

  Curtis, Natalie, ed. Songs and Tales from the Dark Continent. New York: G. Schirmer, 1920.

  Dadié, Bernard Binlin. The Black Cloth: A Collection of African Folktales. Translated by Karen C. Hatch. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1987.

  Dance, Daryl Cumber. Folklore from Contemporary Jamaicans. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985.

  ———. From My People: 400 Years of African American Folklore. New York: W. W. Norton, 2002.

  ———, ed. Shuckin’ and Jivin’. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.

  Davis, Henry C. “Negro Folk-Lore in S
outh Carolina.” Journal of American Folklore 27 (1914): 241–54.

  Dayrell, E. Folk-Stories from Southern Nigeria, West Africa. London: Longmans, Green, 1910.

  Dobie, J. Frank. Tone the Bell Easy: Publications of the Texas Folklore Society. Vol. 10. Austin: Texas Folklore Society, 1932.

  Dorson, Richard M. African Folklore. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972.

  ———. American Negro Folktales. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1967.

  ———. Negro Tales from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Calvin, Michigan. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958.

  ———, ed. Negro Folktales in Michigan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956.

  Edwards, Charles L. Bahama Songs and Stories: A Contribution to Folklore. 1895. New York: G. E. Stechert, 1942.

  Eells, Elsie. Fairy Tales from Brazil. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1917.

  Elliot, Geraldine. Where the Leopard Passes: A Book of African Folk Tales. 1949. New York: Schocken, 1968.

  Ellis, A. B. The Ewe-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa: Their Religion, Manners, Customs, Laws, Languages, etc. London: Chapman and Hall, 1890.

  ———, The Yoruba-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa: Their Religion, Manners, Customs, Laws, Languages, etc. London: Chapman and Hall, 1894.

  Espinosa, Aurelio M. “A New Classification of the Fundamental Elements of the Tar-Baby Story on the Basis of Two Hundred and Sixty-Seven Versions.” Journal of American Folklore 56 (1943): 31–37.

  ———. “Notes on the Origin and History of the Tar-Baby Story.” Journal of American Folk-Lore 43 (1930): 129–209.

  Fair, Ronald L. “Thank God It Snowed.” American Scholar (1970): 105–8.

  Faulkner, William J. The Days When the Animals Talked: Black-American Folktales and How They Came to Be. Illustrated by Troy Howell. Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 1993.

  Fauset, Arthur Huff. Black Gods of the Metropolis: Negro Religious Cults of the Urban North. London: Oxford University Press, 1944.

  ———. Folklore from Nova Scotia. Vol. 24. New York: Memoirs of the American Folklore Society, 1931.

  ———. “Negro Folk Tales from the South (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana).” Journal of American Folklore, 40 (1927): 213–303.

  Fortier, Alcée. Louisiana Folk-Tales, in French Dialect and English Translation. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1895.

  ———. “Louisianan Nursery-Tales,” Journal of American Folklore 1 (1888): 142–45.

  Frazer, James G. “A South African Red Riding-Hood,” Folk-Lore Journal 7 (1889): 167.

  Frobenius, Leo. Atlantis: Volksmärchen und Volksdichtungen Afrikas. 12 vols. Düsseldorf: Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1921.

  Frobenius, Leo, and Douglas C. Fox. African Genesis: The Folk Tales and Legends of the North African Berbers, the Sudanese, and the Southern Rhodesians. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1966.

  Fuja, Abayomi. Fourteen Hundred Cowries: Traditional Stories of the Yoruba. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.

  Georgia Writers’ Project. Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1940.

  Gibbs, Laura, trans. Aesop’s Fables: A New Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/index.

  Gonzales, Ambrose. The Black Border: Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast. Columbia, SC: The State Company, 1922.

  Goss, Lina, and Marian Barnes, eds. Talk That Talk: An Anthology of African-American Storytelling. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989.

  Green, Thomas A., ed. African American Folktales. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2009.

  Hamilton, Virginia. Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales. New York: Blue Sky Press, 1994.

  ———. The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales. Illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. New York: Knopf, 1985.

  ———. A Ring of Tricksters: Animal Tales from America, the West Indies, and Africa. Illustrated by Barry Moser. New York: Blue Sky Press, 1997.

  Haskins, James. The Headless Haunt and Other African-American Ghost Stories. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

  Hendricks, William C., ed. Bundle of Troubles, and Other Tarheel Tales, by Workers of the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of North Carolina. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1943.

  Herskovits, Melville J., and Frances S. Herskovits. Suriname Folk-Lore. New York: Columbia University Press, 1936.

  Hughes, Langston, and Arna Bontemps. The Book of Negro Folklore. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1958.

  Hutchison, Kwesi. Folktales from Ashanti. N.p., 1994.

  Jackson, Bruce. “Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me”: Narrative Poetry from the Black Oral Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974.

  Jacobs, Joseph. Indian Fairy Tales. London: David Nutt, 1892.

  Jekyll, Walter, ed. Jamaican Song and Story: Annancy Stories, Digging Sings, Ring Tunes, and Dancing Tunes. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1966. First published 1907 by the Folk Lore Society.

  Johnson, Guy B. Folk Culture on St. Helena Island, South Carolina. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1930.

  Johnson, James Weldon, and J. Rosamond Johnson. The Book of American Negro Spirituals. New York: Viking, 1954.

  Johnson, John H. “Folk-lore from Antigua, British West Indies.” Journal of American Folklore 34 (1921): 40–88.

  Jones, Charles G. Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast: Told in the Vernacular. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1888.

  Jordan, A. C., trans. Tales from Southern Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.

  Katz, William Loren. Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage. New York: Atheneum, 1986.

  Kennedy, R. Emmet. Gritny People. New York: Dodd Mead, 1927.

  Leeming, David, and Jake Page. Myths, Legends, and Folktales of America: An Anthology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

  Lester, Julius. Black Folktales. New York: Grove Press, 1969.

  Lindahl, Carl, ed. American Folktales from the Collections of the Library of Congress. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.

  Louis, Liliane Nérette. When Night Falls, Kric! Krac!: Haitian Folktales. Edited by Fred J. Hay. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1999.

  Lomax, John A., and Alan Lomax. American Ballads and Folksongs. New York, Macmillan, 1934.

  Lyons, Mary E., ed. Raw Head, Bloody Bones: African-American Tales of the Supernatural. New York: Scribner’s, 1991.

  McCarthy, William Bernard. Cinderella in America: A Book of Folk and Fairy Tales. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2007.

  McDonogh, Gary W., ed. The Florida Negro: A Federal Writers’ Project Legacy. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.

  McPherson, Ethel L. Native Fairy Tales of South Africa. Illustrated by Helen Jacobs. London: Harrap, 1919.

  Mooney, James. Myths of the Cherokee. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1902.

  Mungin, Horace. The Devil Beats His Wife and Other Stories from the Lowcountry. N.p.: n.p., 2004.

  Nassau, Robert H. Where Animals Talk: West African Folk Lore Tales. Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1912.

  Nicholls, David G. Conjuring the Folk: Forms of Modernity in African America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000.

  Nickels, Cameron C. “An Early Version of the ‘Tar Baby’ Story.” Journal of American Folklore 94 (1981): 364–69.

  Odum, Howard W. “Folk-Song and Folk-Poetry as Found in the Secular Songs of the Southern Negroes.” Journal of American Folklore 24 (1911): 255–94.

  ———. “Folk-Song and Folk-Poetry as Found in the Secular Songs of the Southern Negroes (Concluded).” Journal of American Folklore 24 (1911): 351–96.

  Okeke, Uche. Tales of Land of Death: Igbo Folktales. New York: Zenith Books, 1971.

  O’Meally, Robert G. Tales of the Congaree. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.

  Owen, Mary Alicia, ed. Voodoo Tales as Told Among the Negroes of the South
west. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1893.

  Owens, William. “Folk-Lore of the Southern Negroes.” Lippincott’s Magazine of Popular Literature and Science 20 (1877): 748–55.

  Parsons, Elsie Clews. Folk-Lore of the Antilles, French and English. New York: Memoirs of the American Folk-lore Society, 1943.

  ———. Folk-Lore of the Sea Islands, South Carolina. New York: American Folk-lore Society, 1923.

  ———. Folk-Tales of Andros Island, Bahamas. Lancaster, PA: American Folk-Lore Society, 1918.

  Peck, Catherine, ed. A Treasury of North American Folk-Tales. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998.

  Peterkin, Julia. Roll, Jordan, Roll. New York: R. O. Ballou, 1933.

  Petro, Pamela. Sitting Up with the Dead: A Storied Journey through the American South. New York: Flamingo, 2001.

  Radin, Paul. African Folktales. Princeton, NJ: Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press, 1952.

  Randolph, Vance. The Devil’s Pretty Daughter. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955.

  ———. The Talking Turtle and Other Ozark Folk Tales. New York: Columbia University Press, 1957.

  Rattray, R. Sutherland. Akan-Ashanti Folk-Tales. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930.

  ———. Hausa Folk-Lore, Customs, Proverbs, etc. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon 1913.

  Sale, John B. The Tree Named John. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1929.

  Sanfield, Steve. The Adventures of High John the Conqueror. Illustrated by John Ward. New York: Orchard Books, 1989.

  Saxon, Lyle, Edward Dreyer, and Robert Tallant, eds. Gumbo Ya-Ya. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1945.

  Sherlock, Philip M. Anansi the Spider Man: Jamaican Folk Tales Told by Philip M. Sherlock. New York: Thomas Y. Cowell, 1954.

  Sidahome, Joseph E. Stories of the Benin Empire. London: Oxford University Press, 1964.

  Simpson, George Eaton. “Traditional Tales from Northern Haiti.” Journal of American Folklore 56 (1943): 255–65.

  Skinner, Neil. Hausa Tales and Traditions. 3 vols. London: Frank Cass & Co., 1969.

  Smiley, Portia. “Folk-Lore from Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida.” Journal of American Folklore 32 (1919): 357–83.

  Smith, Alexander McCall. The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa. New York: Pantheon, 2004.

  Spears, Richard, ed. West African Folktales. Translated by Jack Berry. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991.