824 I^HE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



him something of that which we find in a higher degree in naturalists, 

 and which comes to all who can receive it from contact with Nature 

 face to face. Very dreamy, all that ! Very true ; but, if we never 

 dream, there are large regions of thought of which we shall understand 

 nothing, for in them only hypothesis and sympathy can possibly be 

 our guides. Spectator. 



PLANTATION FOLK-LORE.- 



Br Professor T. F. CEANE. 



IN a passage in his recent essay on Hawthorne, which was received 

 with some disfavor by his countrymen, Mr. James enumerated the 

 " items of high civilization which are absent from the texture of Amer- 

 ican life." To these might be added an item of low civilization, but 

 what, for the purpose of the imaginative writer, is of greater utility 

 than the court or Epsom folk-lore. With the exception of a few 

 legends of the Hudson due to the Dutch, and an occasional Indian 

 legend (generally manufactured by the white man), there are no local 

 legends from one end of the land to the other. In minor matters, such 

 as superstitions, the case is no better ; aside from the aversion to Fri- 

 day, and sitting thirteen at table, Ave know of no general superstition. 

 There are, however, two classes of native Americans which must be 

 exempted from the application of the above rule the Indians and the 

 Southern negroes. The superstitions of the latter, chiefly religious, 

 have been darkly hinted at from time to time, and have occasionally 

 afforded slight contributions to fiction ; a few, the reader will remem- 

 ber, are to be found in Mark Twain's amusing book, " Tom Sawyer." 



It was not suspected that the negroes possessed a large fund of one 

 of the most entertaining classes of popular tales animal stories until 

 a number were published in the " Riverside Magazine " (November, 

 1868 ; March, 1869), " taken down from the lips of an old negro in the 

 vicinity of Charleston," variants of which appeared in the New York 

 " Independent " (September 2, 1875), and from time to time in other 

 papers. The first attempt at anything like a full or complete collection 

 of these tales is in the book before us, which is not only a most enter- 

 taining and novel work but a valuable contribution to comparative folk- 

 lore. The volume is divided into " Legends of the Old Plantation " and 

 " Uncle Remus's Songs and Sayings." In addition to these there are 

 some proverbs and " A Story of the War." The true value of the book, 

 however, is in the thirty-four inimitable "Legends of the Old Planta- 

 tion," which are related night after night by An old negro to the little 



* Uncle Remus. His Songs and his Sayings. The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation. 

 By Joel Chandler Harris. New York : D. Appleton & Co., 1881. 



