Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 41.djvu/59

Rh the dogs, who had at last gnawed their ropes apart, made their appearance and sprang upon the white cows.

First they attacked the queen and tore her to pieces, and then, turning upon the rest of the herd, they killed many and put the others to night, so that the hunter was saved.

Such is the form of the legend as I received it from the gentleman referred to above, whose culture and the position he held in society warrants me in believing him to be an authority on this matter.

He was born in 1805, and must have heard the legend at least as early as 1810. He received it from his negro nurse, a slave, whom his father had bought direct from the coast of Africa. Assuming the woman to be of a responsible age, which she must have been to have had the care of children, it was unquestionably current on the coast of Africa in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and probably for a long antecedent period.

The most unique feature of this tale, and that which made it especially attractive to children, was the hunters musical call of the dogs, and the song of the axes. The narrator sang these, repeating them many times in the course of the story to a curious refrain which I have attempted to reproduce in the music given above.

This, indeed, was the chief charm of the story, and so well was it executed that one could almost hear the ring of the axes as they rebounded from the tree, while the changes of voice in the cries of the hunter represented his increasing anxiety and fear as time went on and no aid came to him. It is difficult to describe the effect thus produced; to appreciate it, it was necessary to hear it.

Nearly a hundred years later this story was current again in Georgia, where it was made public by the facile pen of Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, better known as the author of the Uncle Remus stories. As will be seen on examination, it has changed considerably, but its principal points remain unaltered. I regret that I can not reproduce Mr. Harris's story in full, but a copyright prevents me from doing more than making a few brief quotations.

This story, which Mr. Harris entitles "The Little Boy and his Dogs," appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal, February 18, 1886, and is somewhat as follows:

A little boy lives with his mother in a hut beside a road. He is her only child; but Uncle Remus, who tells the story, informs us that the boy once had a little sister, who had been stolen away—how, it is not related—and whom her brother searches the woods in vain to find. One day, while engaged in this pursuit, he meets two ladies wearing long veils, who come to his mother's