Dedication
IN MEMORY
OF
MONTE VIDEO PLANTATION,
AND OF THE
FAMILY SERVANTS
WHOSE FIDELITY AND AFFECTION CONTRIBUTED SO
MATERIALLY TO ITS COMFORT AND HAPPINESS.
Prefatory Note
Mr. Joel Chandler Harris has, in an admirable way, commended to public notice the dialect and folk-lore in vogue among the Negroes of Middle Georgia. With fidelity and cleverness has he perpetuated the legends and songs once current among these peoples, and now fast lapsing into oblivion. There is, however, a field, largely untrodden, in which may be found ample opportunity for the exhibition of kindred inquiry and humor. We refer to the swamp region of Georgia and the Carolinas, where the lingo of the rice-field and the sea-island negroes is sui generis, and where myths and fanciful stories, often repeated before the war, and now seldom heard save during the gayer moods of the old plantation darkies, materially differ from those narrated by the sable dwellers in the interior.
In confirmation of this suggestion we record the following Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast.
Augusta, Georgia, March, 1888.