EVOLUTION IN FOLK LORE. 51 



fill up,' en bless you soul ! de place fill up slio' miff, en de tree 

 look des 'zackly like nobody ain't bin a-cuttin' on it." 



This occurs three times, when, just at the critical moment, as 

 his eggs are all exhausted, his mother sees that the water in the 

 pan has turned to blood and that the willow twig is shaking, so 

 she releases the dogs. The little boy hears them coming, and 

 calls out : " Come on, my good dogs ! here, dogs, here ! ' ; 



The dogs come in the nick of time, and kill the panthers, who 

 are unable to escape, since they have not time to change their 

 axes back into tails. Here the story wanders off to the finding of 

 the small boy's sister, who is rescued from the clutches of " Brer 

 Bar." 



There is, I think, no question but that these two stories have 

 a common origin ; the resemblance is so strong that it hardly 

 seems necessary to mention it in detail. 



The hunter, changed to a little boy in the version of Mr. Har- 

 ris ; who is possessed of two dogs which he rashly leaves at home ; 

 who is attacked by wild beasts in human guise who chop with 

 axes the tree into which he climbs to escape them ; the miracu- 

 lous restoration of the trees, and the rescue by the dogs, appear in 

 each narrative. 



As I have before stated, nearly a hundred years must have in- 

 tervened between the telling of the two legends, and the variation 

 in the second is plainly due to the change of scene and of environ- 

 ment which befell the people who preserved and told the story. 



It is only the artist who can successfully set a narrative in a 

 scene with which he is not familiar, and make the environment 

 seem real. Folk lore, however, is no artist's tale ; it is told by a 

 child of the soil, who unconsciously clothes his narration with 

 the scenes and incidents with which he is best acquainted. The 

 gentleman to whom the story was told in the early part of the 

 century received it from a native African, who had heard it in 

 her own country ; while Mr. Harris must have obtained his from 

 a Georgia negro, who had grown up in exile and slavery. The 

 local coloring was, of course, totally different. 



The hero in what, if I may be permitted, I shall call the un- 

 adulterated version of the story, is a hunter ; and this is very 

 natural, for hunting must have been one of the chief occupations 

 among the uncivilized negro tribes of Africa. In Mr. Harris's 

 version he becomes a little boy ; but this is perhaps the author's 

 regulation little boy, who figures so often in the "Uncle Remus" 

 stories. In the same way another change, which at, first would 

 seem to be due to local environment, can be shown to be produced 

 by other causes. I refer to the substitution in the later story of 

 panthers for white cows. In portions of Africa cows can not 

 exist, and, whether this was the case in the region occupied by 



