Trying to be true to both Public Domain limits and Black History month unfortunately means stories gathered by white folklorists. Joel Chandler Harris is the best known of these for his seven volumes of Uncle Remus stories. Frankly the folkloristic attempt at using a Black dialect is probably one of the biggest problems at using such stories.
Alcee Fortier gets around that by publishing both a dialect version and then re-tells it in his Louisiana Folk-tales as explained by the book's subtitle, "In French dialect and English translation." Because of this I find his collection may at times be similar to the trickster stories of Harris, but they are far more readable. He calls them Creole stories, but his Preface points to their African and "Negro" origin. The story of the Tortoise certainly has such origins.
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| Photo by David Cadenas on Unsplash |
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This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, “Keeping the Public in Public Domain.” The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated. I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20th century. My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them. I hope you enjoy discovering them.
At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience. Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week. This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here. (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.) Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.
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