【英文读物】Adrift in New York.docx

《【英文读物】Adrift in New York.docx》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《【英文读物】Adrift in New York.docx（114页珍藏版）》请在淘文阁 - 分享文档赚钱的网站上搜索。

1、【英文读物】Adrift in New York I am expected to supply a preface for this new edition of my first bookto advance from behind the curtain, as it were, and make a fresh bow to the public that has dealt with Uncle Remus in so gentle and generous a fashion. For this event the lights are to be rekindled, and I

2、 am expected to respond in some formal way to an encore that marks the fifteenth anniversary of the book. There have been other editionshow many I do not rememberbut this is to be an entirely new one, except as to the matter: new type, new pictures, and new binding. But, as frequently happens on suc

3、h occasions, I am at a loss for a word. I seem to see before me the smiling faces of thousands of childrensome young and fresh, and some wearing the friendly marks of age, but all children at heartand not an unfriendly face among them. And out of the confusion, and while I am trying hard to speak th

4、e right word, I seem to hear a voice lifted above the rest, saying You have made some of us happy. And so I feel my heart fluttering and my lips trembling, and I have to how silently and him away, and hurry back into the obscurity that fits me best. Phantoms! Children of dreams! True, my dear Frost;

5、 but if you could see the thousands of letters that have come to me from far and near, and all fresh from the hearts and hands of children, and from men and women who have not forgotten how to be children, you would not wonder at the dream. And such a dream can do no harm. Insubstantial though it ma

6、y be, I would not at this hour exchange it for all the fame won by my mightier brethren of the penwhom I most humbly salute. Measured by the material developments that have compressed years of experience into the space of a day, thus increasing the possibilities of life, if not its beauty, fifteen y

7、ears constitute the old age of a book. Such a survival might almost be said to be due to a tiny sluice of green sap under the gray bark. where it lies in the matter of this book, or what its source if, indeed, it be really thereis more of a mystery to my middle age than it was to my prime. But it wo

8、uld be no mystery at all if this new edition were to be more popular than the old one. Do you know why? Because you have taken it under your hand and made it yours. Because you have breathed the breath of life into these amiable brethren of wood and field. Because, by a stroke here and a touch there

9、, you have conveyed into their quaint antics the illumination of your own inimitable humor, which is as true to our sun and soil as it is to the spirit and essence of the matter set forth. The book was mine, but now you have made it yours, both sap and pith. Take it, therefore, my dear Frost, and be

10、lieve me, faithfully yours, Joel Chandler HarrisINTRODUCTION I am advised by my publishers that this book is to be included in their catalogue of humorous publications, and this friendly warning gives me an opportunity to say that however humorous it may be in effect, its intention is perfectly seri

11、ous; and, even if it were otherwise, it seems to me that a volume written wholly in dialect must have its solemn, not to say melancholy, features. With respect to the Folk-Lore scenes, my purpose has been to preserve the legends themselves in their original simplicity, and to wed them permanently to

12、 the quaint dialectif, indeed, it can be called a dialectthrough the medium of which they have become a part of the domestic history of every Southern family; and I have endeavored to give to the whole a genuine flavor of the old plantation. Each legend has its variants, but in every instance I have

13、 retained that particular version which seemed to me to be the most characteristic, and have given it without embellishment and without exaggeration. The dialect, it will be observed, is wholly different from that of the Hon. Pompey Smash and his literary descendants, and different also from the int

14、olerable misrepresentations of the minstrel stage, but it is at least phonetically genuine. Nevertheless, if the language of Uncle Remus fails to give vivid hints of the really poetic imagination of the negro; if it fails to embody the quaint and homely humor which was his most prominent characteris

15、tic; if it does not suggest a certain picturesque sensitivenessa curious exaltation of mind and temperament not to be defined by wordsthen I have reproduced the form of the dialect merely, and not the essence, and my attempt may be accounted a failure. At any rate, I trust I have been successful in

16、presenting what must be, at least to a large portion of American readers, a new and by no means unattractive phase of negro charactera phase which may be considered a curiously sympathetic supplement to Mrs. Stowes wonderful defense of slavery as it existed in the South. Mrs. Stowe, let me hasten to

17、 say, attacked the possibilities of slavery with all the eloquence of genius; but the same genius painted the portrait of the Southern slave-owner, and defended him. A number of the plantation legends originally appeared in the columns of a daily newspaperThe Atlanta Constitution and in that shape t

18、hey attracted the attention of various gentlemen who were kind enough to suggest that they would prove to be valuable contributions to myth-literature. It is but fair to say that ethnological considerations formed no part of the undertaking which has resulted in the publication of this volume. Profe

19、ssor J. W. Powell, of the Smithsonian Institution, who is engaged in an investigation of the mythology of the North American Indians, informs me that some of Uncle Remuss stories appear in a number of different languages, and in various modified forms, among the Indians; and he is of the opinion tha

20、t they are borrowed by the negroes from the red-men. But this, to say the least, is extremely doubtful, since another investigator (Mr. Herbert H. Smith, author of Brazil and the Amazons) has met with some of these stories among tribes of South American Indians, and one in particular he has traced t

21、o India, and as far east as Siam. Mr. Smith has been kind enough to send me the proof-sheets of his chapter on The Myths and Folk-Lore of the Amazonian Indians, in which he reproduces some of the stories which he gathered while exploring the Amazons. In the first of his series, a tortoise falls from

22、 a tree upon the head of a jaguar and kills him; in one of Uncle Remuss stories, the terrapin falls from a shelf in Miss Meadowss house and stuns the fox, so that the latter fails to catch the rabbit. In the next, a jaguar catches a tortoise by the hind-leg as he is disappearing in his hole; but the

23、 tortoise convinces him he is holding a root, and so escapes; Uncle Remus tells how the fox endeavored to drown the terrapin, but turned him loose because the terrapin declared his tail to be only a stump-root. Mr. Smith also gives the story of how the tortoise outran the deer, which is identical as

24、 to incident with Uncle Remuss story of how Brer Tarrypin outran Brer Rabbit. Then there is the story of how the tortoise pretended that he was stronger than the tapir. He tells the latter he can drag him into the sea, but the tapir retorts that he will pull the tortoise into the forest and kill him

25、 besides. The tortoise thereupon gets a vine-stem, ties one end around the body of the tapir, and goes to the sea, where he ties the other end to the tail of a whale. He then goes into the wood, midway between them both, and gives the vine a shake as a signal for the pulling to begin. The struggle b

26、etween the whale and tapir goes on until each thinks the tortoise is the strongest of animals. Compare this with the story of the terrapins contest with the bear, in which Miss Meadowss bed-cord is used instead of a vine-stem. One of the most characteristic of Uncle Remuss stories is that in which t

27、he rabbit proves to Miss Meadows and the girls that the fox is his riding-horse. This is almost identical with a story quoted by Mr. Smith, where the jaguar is about to marry the deers daughter. The cotiaa species of rodentis also in love with her, and he tells the deer that he can make a riding-hor

28、se of the jaguar. Well, says the deer, if you can make the jaguar carry you, you shall have my daughter. Thereupon the story proceeds pretty much as Uncle Remus tells it of the fox and rabbit. The cotia finally jumps from the jaguar and takes refuge in a hole, where an owl is set to watch him, but h

29、e flings sand in the owls eyes and escapes. In another story given by Mr. Smith, the cotia is very thirsty, and, seeing a man coming with a jar on his head, lies down in the road in front of him, and repeats this until the man puts down his jar to go back after all the dead cotias he has seen. This

30、is almost identical with Uncle Remuss story of how the rabbit robbed the fox of his game. In a story from Upper Egypt, a fox lies down in the road in front of a man who is carrying fowls to market, and finally succeeds in securing them. This similarity extends to almost every story quoted by Mr. Smi

31、th, and some are so nearly identical as to point unmistakably to a common origin; but when and where? when did the negro or the North American Indian ever come in contact with the tribes of South America? Upon this point the author of Brazil and the Amazons, who is engaged in making a critical and c

32、omparative study of these myth-stories, writes: I am not prepared to form a theory about these stories. There can be no doubt that some of them, found among the negroes and the Indians, had a common origin. The most natural solution would be to suppose that they originated in Africa, and were carrie

33、d to South America by the negro slaves. They are certainly found among the Red Negroes; but, unfortunately for the African theory, it is equally certain that they are told by savage Indians of the Amazons Valley, away up on the Tapajos, Red Negro, and Tapura. These Indians hardly ever see a negro, a

34、nd their languages are very distinct from the broken Portuguese spoken by the slaves. The form of the stories, as recounted in the Tupi and Mundurucu languages, seems to show that they were originally formed in those languages or have long been adopted in them. It is interesting to find a story from

35、 Upper Egypt (that of the fox who pretended to be dead) identical with an Amazonian story, and strongly resembling one found by you among the negroes. Vambagen, the Brazilian historian (now Visconde de Rio Branco), tried to prove a relationship between the ancient Egyptians, or other Turanian stock,

36、 and the Tupi Indians. His theory rested on rather a slender basis, yet it must be confessed that he had one or two strong points. Do the resemblances between old and New World stories point to a similar conclusion? It would be hard to say with the material that we now have. One thing is certain. Th

37、e animal stories told by the negroes in our Southern States and in Brazil were brought by them from Africa. Whether they originated there, or with the Arabs, or Egyptians, or with yet more ancient nations, must still be an open question. Whether the Indians got them from the negroes or from some ear

38、lier source is equally uncertain. We have seen enough to know that a very interesting line of investigation has been opened. Professor Hartt, in his Amazonian Tortoise Myths, quotes a story from the Riverside Magazine of November, 1868, which will be recognized as a variant of one given by Uncle Rem

39、us. I venture to append it here, with some necessary verbal and phonetic alterations, in order to give the reader an idea of the difference between the dialect of the cotton plantations, as used by Uncle Remus, and the lingo in vogue on the rice plantations and Sea Islands of the South Atlantic Stat

40、es: One time Ber Deer an Ber Cooter (Terrapin) was courtin, and de lady did bin lub Ber Deer mo so dan Ber Cooter. She did bin lub Ber Cooter, but she lub Ber Deer de morest. So de young lady say to Ber Deer and Ber Cooter bofe dat dey mus hab a ten-mile race, an de one dat beats, she will go marry

41、him. So Ber Cooter say to Ber Deer: You has got mo longer legs dan I has, but I will run you. You run ten mile on land, and I will run ten mile on de water! So Ber Cooter went an git nine er his famly, an put one at ebery mile-pos, and he hissef, what was to run wid Ber Deer, he was right in front o

42、f de young ladys do, in de broom-grass. Dat mornin at nine oclock, Ber Deer he did met Ber Cooter at de fus mile-pos, wey dey was to start fum. So he call: Well, Ber Cooter, is you ready? Co long! As he git on to de nex mile-pos, he say: Ber Cooter! Ber Cooter say: Hullo! Ber Deer say: You dere? Ber

43、 Cooter say: Yes, Ber Deer, I dere too. Nex mile-pos he jump, Ber Deer say: Hullo, Ber Cooter! Ber Cooter say: Hullo, Ber Deer! you dere too? Ber Deer say: Ki! it look like you gwine fer tie me; it look like we gwine fer de gal tie! Wen he git to de nine-mile pos he tought he git dere fus, cause he

44、mek two jump; so he holler: Ber Cooter! Ber Cooter answer: You dere too? Ber Deer say: It look like you gwine tie me. Ber Cooter say: Go long, Ber Deer. I git dere in due season time, which he does, and wins de race. The story of the Rabbit and the Fox, as told by the Southern negroes, is artistical

45、ly dramatic in this: it progresses in an orderly way from a beginning to a well-defined conclusion, and is full of striking episodes that suggest the culmination. It seems to me to be to a certain extent allegorical, albeit such an interpretation may be unreasonable. At least it is a fable thoroughl

46、y characteristic of the negro; and it needs no scientific investigation to show why he selects as his hero the weakest and most harmless of all animals, and brings him out victorious in contests with the bear, the wolf, and the fox. It is not virtue that triumphs, but helplessness; it is not malice,

47、 but mischievousness. It would be presumptuous in me to offer an opinion as to the origin of these curious myth-stories; but, if ethnologists should discover that they did not originate with the African, the proof to that effect should be accompanied with a good deal of persuasive eloquence. Curious

48、ly enough, I have found few negroes who will acknowledge to a stranger that they know anything of these legends; and yet to relate one of the stories is the surest road to their confidence and esteem. In this way, and in this way only, I have been enabled to collect and verify the folklore included

49、in this volume. There is an anecdote about the Irishman and the rabbit which a number of negroes have told to me with great unction, and which is both funny and characteristic, though I will not undertake to say that it has its origin with the blacks. One day an Irishman who had heard people talking about mares nests was going along the big roadit is always the