Published in 1922, Thomas Washington Talley’s Negro Folk Rhymes is a pioneering collection of African American oral verse — proverbs, animal rhymes, children’s songs, and folk wisdom gathered from Black communities across the American South. Talley’s accompanying scholarly study places the rhymes in their cultural and historical context.
An important document of African American folk culture and oral poetry tradition, the collection preserves verse that was at serious risk of being lost. The free EPUB is cleanly formatted throughout.