Page:The New Negro.pdf/278

240 from Africa, is an animal cycle, recounting the exploits of various members of the animal world of which “B’rer Rabbit was arch-villain or hero, as you please. As in the case of all true folk tales, the story teller himself was inconsequential; he did not figure at all—a talking machine might serve the pur- pose just as well. As a result the stories take on an impersonal character, more or less lacking in artistic embellishments. The Uncle Remus stories break this tradition, however; instead the story teller plays an important, a too important, rôle. By that very fact, this type of story ceases to be a folk tale; and becomes in reality a product of the imagination of the author. Of course there is such a thing as an intermediate type; there is a place for Hans Andersen, and Brothers Grimm. But Harris, familiar with his material and genuinely loving it, could not be spiritually saturated with it under the circumstances. And this was more a matter of class than race; for human kinships are spiritual after all, but these stories cannot present Negro folk life and feeling seen and felt on its own level. Enough has been said, perhaps, to show, without in any way detracting from the true service and real charm of the Harris stories, that there are enough incongruous elements insinuated into the situation to make it impossible to accept them as a final rendering of American Negro folk lore.

We would not be so much concerned about a “distinction without a difference” if there were actually no difference. Unfortunately the treatment of these stories by Harris resulted in certain developments which are too noteworthy to pass by. The most striking consequence of the fact that Uncle Remus is written all over and interwoven into the stories which bear his name, is that the Harris variety of the Negro folk tale assumes to interpret Negro character instead of simply telling his stories. The result is a composite picture of the ante-bellum Negro that fits exactly into the conception of the type of Negro which so many white people would like to think once existed, or even now exists; whereas in the material in question there is reflected a quite different folk temperament—apart from the question of what is or what isn't the Negro tem-