Brer Coon Origin Joel Chandler
Harris Uncle Remus
- How Brer Coon Gets His Meat Origin
"How Brer Coon Gets His Meat" is based on a short story called
"Crazy Sue's Story" collected by famed Georgia author, folklorist
and journalist Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908).
"Crazy Sue's Story" appeared in a collection of stories entitled
Daddy Jake the Runaway and Short Stories Told After Dark, published
in 1889.Harris is best known, of course, for the Uncle Remus tales featuring Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and other famous animal characters. Like the Uncle Remus tales, the stories found in Daddy Jake were African-American myth-legends that Harris heard from slaves while he was working on a plantation near his birthplace in Eatonton, Georgia. Harris had an extraordinarily sensitive ear and accurate memory, and wrote the stories as closely to the spoken versions as he could.
The cultural origins of the Daddy Jake stories are hard to trace. Folklorists argue that similar stories can be found in European and Native American cultures. Since these groups interacted with African-Americans during the United States's early history, a sharing of these stories is entirely possible.
"Crazy Sue's Story" is told by a fictional character named Crazy Sue, a runaway slave, to two white children named Lucien and Lillian Gaston. The Gaston children have left their father's plantation to search for another runaway slave named Daddy Jake. As the story begins, the two children have found Daddy Jake sitting around a campfire with his friends, laughing and telling stories. The children are thrilled to find him, and fully expect him to return with them to the Gaston plantation.
While sitting around the fire, Lillian asks why the frogs in the swamp are making so much noise. The following is Crazy Sue's response (dialect and text taken from the original story):
"I speck it's kaze dey er mad wid Mr. Rabbit," said Crazy Sue. "Dey er tryin' der best ter drive 'im out'n de swamp."
"What are they mad with the Rabbit for?" asked Lucien, thinking there might be a story in the explanation.
"Hit's one er dem ole-time fusses," said Crazy Sue. "Hit's most too ole ter talk about."
"Don't you know what the fuss is about?" asked Lucien.
And so, the story begins...
To learn more about Joel Chandler Harris and his writings, follow these links:
Uncle Remus - Web site with information on Harris and his Uncle Remus tales.
The Internet Movie Database - To learn more about Song of the South, Walt Disney's take on the Uncle Remus tales, look it up in this essential film database.
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Photos courtesy of The Wren's Nest, Atlanta, Georgia |
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