On May 12, 11:50*pm, Lars Eighner wrote:
In our last episode,
, the
lovely and talented Jerry Friedman broadcast on alt.usage.english:



On May 11, 7:34*pm, wrote:
On May 11, 7:50*pm, Jerry Friedman wrote:

Here are some stories.

http://www.angelfire.com/co4/raggbagg/BrerTales.htm

Here are "The Wonderful Tar-Baby" and "How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp
For Mr. Fox", the two most famous stories (and the only ones I know
anything about).

http://www.mythfolklore.net/3043myth...s/pages/01.htm

(Hitting the arrow takes you to the same thing in Harris's original,
and hitting it again continues the "modernized" story.)

These are from a 1999 version. *The one I read as a little boy,
probably in the '60s, had more AAVE, I vaguely remember.

As I recall, one reason for "modernizing" these stories was that the
originals got some condescending laughs out of AAVE, and perpetuated
stereotypes of black people who said ""How duz yo' sym'tums seem ter
segashuate?" *Now that singers and rappers are selling millions of
disks in AAVE to slightly older children, I think we can admit that
some African Americans speak AAVE at least some of the time. *There
may still be no need for "segashuate", though.

--
Jerry Friedman

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
and search for 'uncleremus' in the title field
Thanks, but all I found there was the originals. *DC was looking for
versions with less dialect.

I'm coming in late, so someone may have mentioned this. *The tar baby story
can be found in many collections of West African folk tales.

I may have to look for that, so thanks for the interesting
information.

I cannot now
locate the title of the Oxford anthology in which I read it in the '70s, but
google pops up a number of very promising new compilations. *The problem
with the original is that it is probably too sexual for American school
boards and Spider, the original trickster character from whom Brer Rabbit is
derived, is rather more naughty and morally ambiguous than might be desired.
(Translation for geeks: he's neutral chaotic.)
....

I'd say Brer Rabbit is pretty chaotic neutral too.

--
Jerry Friedman