828 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



One of the most amusing stories in " Uncle Remus " is No. II, 

 " The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story " (versions also in " Riverside Maga- 

 zine," 1868, p. 505, and " Lippincott," December, 1877, p. 750), in 

 which the Fox made " a contrapshun wat he call a Tar-Baby," out of 

 tar and turpentine, and put it in the way of the Rabbit, who got stuck 

 to it, and thus fell into the Fox's clutches. In the " South-African 

 Folk-Lore Journal," I, p. 69, there is a curious parallel to the above 

 story. A number of animals build a dam to hold water, and the jackal 

 comes and muddies the water. A baboon is set to guard the dam, but 

 the jackal easily outwits him. Then the tortoise offers to capture the 

 jackal and proposes " that a thick coating of ' bijenwerk ' (a kind of 

 sticky, black substance found on beehives) should be spread all over 

 him, and that he should go and stand at the entrance of the dam, on 

 the water-level, so that the jackal might tread on him, and stick fast." 

 The jackal is caught, but, with his customary craft, escapes. 



In the last of Uncle Remus's stories. No. XXXIV, *' The Sad Fate 

 of Mr. Fox," the Fox and the Rabbit jump down the mouth of a cow 

 and help themselves to meat, the Fox warning the Rabbit not " to cut 

 ' roun ' de haslett." The Rabbit disobeys the injunction, and the cow 

 falls dead. The owner cuts her open to see what was the matter, and 

 the Rabbit betrays the Fox, who was hiding in the " maul," and who 

 is thereupon killed. In Bleek, p. 27, the Elephant and the Tortoise 

 have a dispute, and the former determined to kill the latter, and asked 

 hiin, " Little Tortoise, shall I chew you or swallow you down ? " The 

 little Tortoise said, " Swallow me, if you please ! " and the Elephant 

 swallowed it whole. After the Elephant had swallowed the little Tor- 

 toise, and it had entered his body, it tore off his liver, heart, and kid- 

 neys. The Elephant said, " Little Tortoise, you kill me." So the 

 Elephant died ; but the little Tortoise came out of his dead body and 

 went wherever it liked.* 



More remarkable, however, than the above casual points of resem- 

 blance is the substantial identity of these stories with those of a tribe 

 of South American Indians. In 1870 Professor C. F. Hartt heard, at 

 Santarem on the Amazons, from his guide in the lingua geral, a story, 

 " The Tortoise that outran the Deer," a version of which he afterward 

 published in the " Cornell Era " (January 20, 1871), and which at- 

 tracted the attention of a writer in " The Nation " (February 23, 1871), 

 who gave a variant of the same myth, as found among the negroes of 

 South Carolina (the same story occurring in " Uncle Remus," p. 80). 



* Mr. Harris includes among the animal fables a story which properly does not belong 

 there, and which is nothing but a well-known European tale which Uncle Remus must 

 have heard from the whites, although Mr. Harris, p. 136, note, says, " This story is popu- 

 lar on the coast and among the rice-plantations, and, since the publication of some of the 

 animal-myths in the newspapers, I have received a version of it from a planter in south- 

 west Georgia." The story in question is No. XXXII, " Jacky-my-Lantern," and is nothing 

 but a version of the French story of " Bonhomme Mis^rc," which is of Italian origin. (See 

 Pitre, "Fiabe," Nos. 124, 125; De Giibernatis, " Nov el line di Sto. Stefano," No. 32, etc.) 



