1 Fools and Frauds: a Character Study in Cajun

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FOOLS AND FRAUDS:

A CHARACTER STUDY IN CAJUN AND CREOLE FOLKLORE

A Senior Project

Presented to the

University Scholars Committee

The University of Tennessee at Martin

In Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirements for the

University Scholar Designation

Erin Leigh Coates

May, 2011

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For scholarly, research, or personal use.

To the University Scholars Committee:

I am submitting herewith a Senior Project written by Erin Coates entitled “Fools and Frauds: A Character Study in Cajun and Creole Folklore.” I recommend that it be accepted for three hours credit in partial fulfillment of the requirements for designation as a University Scholar.

______

Dr. Chris Hill

______

Professor Dave McBeth

______

Dr. Beth Powell

Accepted for the Honors Council:

______

Dr. Lionel Crews

Director, Honors Programs

Acknowledgements

First and foremost I would like to thank Dr. Daniel McDonough, without you I would not be a scholar. You helped me realize something monumental before I even stepped foot on campus at the University of Tennessee at Martin. You helped me realize that my secret weapon is simply being myself.

Second, I would like to thank Dr. Chris Hill. You watched over me and loyally guided me during my time here at Martin and I cannot ever express the deep gratitude I feel towards you for doing so. You’re right; it is going to be okay. Why? Because that is how we roll.

Finally, I would like to thank all of my lovely friends and family who helped me stay sane through the process of researching and writing this project. A very special shout-out to my dear friend Matt Culp, who faithfully read every single word I wrote, erased, and wrote again during the final weeks of revision.

I dedicate this project to my father, Christopher Eason Coates, who raised me listening to his enchanting stories and folk songs played on guitar. You have taught me so much more than how to build a fire or how to drive a manual. You have taught me how to live my life simply, purely, and beautifully.

Abstract

To produce a study the two main character archetypes, the fool and the fraud, in Cajun and Creole folklore, first an operational definition of folklore must be produced. After determining ethnology to be the most appropriate approach to folklore, an explanation of folklore in the United States is provided. With the focus on two cultures in southern Louisiana, first the history of the state, then the history of the Cajuns and Creoles is provided to establish an understanding of the people producing the folklore. An analysis of the fools and frauds and how they display the attitudes of the Cajuns and Creoles is provided. Finally, five original creative works are included based on my understanding of what constitutes folklore.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………………………4

Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………………..5

Research:

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………8

What is Folklore? …………………………………………………………………….….13

American Folklore ………………………………………………………………………17

Louisiana History ……………………………………………………………………..…31

Cajun and Creole Culture ………………………….…………………………………….37

Cajun and Creole Folklore ……………………………………………………………....46

Character Analysis of Fools and Frauds ………………………………………………...58

Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………78

Fabulae:

Introduction …………………………………………………………………….……….79

Luke Sprague’s Story ………………………………………………………….…….…..83

Lionel Crews’ Story ………………………………………………………….…….……87

Raymond Merle’s Story ……………………………………………...…….……..……..92

Rhonda Wright’s Story ………………………..……………………………….…..……98

The Ragdoll’s Story ……………………………………………….………….………..103

Bibliography …………………………………….…………………………….……………….109

Introduction

As long as I can remember I have been listening to my father and grandfather tell stories.

Stories about the numerous army bases my father explored and conquered in his wild and rambunctious youth. Stories about charming French cafés my mother visited as a twenty year old, and the even more charming artist who was so inspired by her beauty he sketched her face on a napkin and begged for her address so he could find her when he moved to the states. Stories about the long summer nights my best friend spent hiking the mountains in New Mexico praying for rain. These stories and so many more about the intersecting and parallel lives of the people surrounding me have left fingerprints on my soul, sometimes intentionally but more likely without knowing the impact they have made.

There is something inspiring and spiritual about the memories I have of sitting on the front porch of my grandfather’s mobile home, holding a glass of watered down tea, and swatting sweat flies away from my knobby twelve year old knees while listening to him tell tales about the old farmhouse he grew up in and the early morning chores that occupied the hours before sunrise. Nothing seemed more beautifully honest than the long pauses between his sentences; those pauses were full of the details of the stories he either did not or could not recall. Nothing seemed more realistic than the tall tales he told about the wrecking ball sized tomatoes and world’s hottest peppers he grew a couple of seasons back. Nothing seemed more historic than his accounts of the mischievous shenanigans engaged in by our McCoys in neighborly war against the Hatfields. In these stories I found my roots as a member of the family and a southerner. More importantly I found my roots as an unwitting collector of these stories. Listening had become my hobby and I turned into a silent observer at family reunions and campfire gatherings, synthesizing my own humble assortment of tales.

Initially in this project I sought to determine what the purpose of folklore could possibly be in the United States. The term “folklore” was first coined in Great Britain during the industrial revolution and was used to describe the voice of the general population of people in protest to the subservient conditions they were forced to live in. According to Henry Glassie, author of The

Spirit of Folklore Art, folklore served as an early form of democracy for these people in a country where the only form of government was the monarchy. The common people needed a voice to express their concerns and needs and the least offensive way to have their voice heard was through stories that presented controversial policy or leaders as villains or obstacles to be overcome by the hero, typically a common man such as the hardworking farmer or the simple minded country boy. The telling of these tales helped to inconspicuously spread ideas and opinions among the villages under the pretense of innocent fireside entertainment.

Knowing this I became curious about how folklore made the transition from being a form of political rhetoric to being an oral art form in the United States, I began attempting to trace its evolution. What I would come to understand is that folklore is the tales of a people, fantastic but honest. Folklore is the intricate weaving of culture, dialect, and tradition to form a near photographic representation of a memory in time of unique characters that have helped shape the morals, beliefs, and minds of the speakers and listeners. Folklore is the spiritual history of a region providing insight into the thoughts, dreams, and fears of its people past and present.

The purpose of folklore still remains the same as when it began in Great Britain: to express the ideas and beliefs of a group of people. The goal of this expression is the only thing that has shown any true difference between its birth in Europe and its maturation in the United

States. The goal of the folklore spread in Great Britain was to share the unpopular and dangerous political opinions of an underrepresented and oppressed group of common men and women.

While this goal can be seen in the folklore among African American slaves in the pre-Civil War times as well as through the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, the primary goal of

American folklore is to provide a sense of identity in a hugely diverse nation.

Instead of establishing any tangible timeline of how this shift in the focus of lore occurred I chose to attempt following the patterns and pathways of how folklore was shared in a young and spread out nation such as the United States. Harbors and waterways seemed to be the most fertile regions for the telling and retelling of folklore that would eventually travel with those men and women who moved further up the Mississippi River or sprawled out along the

East Coast and eventually those men and women who pushed the boundaries farther out west.

The Mississippi River served as a strong artery of stories because it also served as one of the most reliable forms of transportation, trade, military strategy, and economy in the young and far flung communities of the developing nation.

Following this major water way led me to narrow down from the vast body of American folklore the exact type of folklore I wanted to study. Throughout the United States there exist multiple subgroups of folklore based on geographic region and varying cultural presence. I wanted to study European American as well as Native American folklore found across the country before I realized how onerous a task that would actually be. The themes, language, and utilization of folklore and folk life varied from region to region and even in some cases from state to state. In fact, Native American folklore varied from tribe to tribe and even in some cases generation to generation. Immediately recognizing the overwhelming and impossible task of categorizing, summarizing, and analyzing the massive collection of Native American folklore in addition to the folklore of the rest of the country I determined to narrow my focus to one specific region. My focus naturally fell on the lore of the southern states, as I grew up listening to and

10 participating in much of the lore the south has to offer. Forsaking the heroic tales of Paul Bunyan or Johnny Appleseed or the blatantly fantastic lore of pirates and buried treasure, I was drawn to the south and its interesting yarns of the shameless trickster, the perpetual traveler, and the mischievous moods and spirits that guide us as common human beings.

Even after choosing the folklore of the southern region of the United States I was met with the complication of yet again narrowing my focus in order to accommodate writing a comprehensive two year project. Folklore of the Mississippi River, folklore of the African

American slaves, folklore of the Ozark Mountains, and folklore of West Tennessee were just some of the many options to choose from when determining what region I wanted to focus on.

Ultimately I chose the abundant and unique lore of southern Louisiana, further narrowing my focus to two specific cultures with prevalent presence among the extremely diverse population of that part of the state: the Cajuns and Creoles. Finally I began reading lore of these two groups to determine what themes and motifs made the lore of these particular cultural groups different from the lore of other groups in the United States as well as the lore of the country as a whole.

Over the course of the last year the focus of my senior project has narrowed from the wide-ranging topic of folklore of the United States and the Native American tribes to folklore of

Cajuns and Creoles in southern Louisiana. The path of narrowing my focus was littered with obstacles of understanding the history of folklore, the evolution of folklore, the question of the composition of folklore, and finally turning to the current purpose of the project, the themes and commonalities found in the rich folklore of the Cajuns and Creoles.

Through my studies I have discovered the various schools of thought on what constitutes folklore and how it should be studied. For my purposes I have chosen to take the ethnologist’s

11 approach in focusing on the impact of cultures of the content of the tales. After determining my approach I also studied the body of American folklore as a whole and how the diversity of the young nation distinguishes it from older bodies of European folklore. Narrowing my focus in

American folklore down to the state of Louisiana, an account of the state’s history as well as the history of two most widely recognized cultures of the state, the Cajuns and Creoles, is provided.

Next, a categorization of Cajun and Creole folktales shows the primary focus on entertainment in the lore of the cultures. Finally, an analysis of two of the major character archetypes, the fool and the fraud, reveals how the Cajuns and Creoles weaved their beliefs and attitudes into the actions and relationships of the characters in their folklore.

What is Folklore?

Folklore has never had an easily explained definition or a very narrow focus concerning categorization within literature as a body. People have been telling one another tales for centuries without recording them for any historic or literary purpose. Some of the stories told among the common folk were told to those who, because of illiteracy, could not record them even if they had any desire to record them.

Tales were passed on by word of mouth to serve as an oral history of families, communities, and regions.

For the sake of organization and the pursuit of determining authenticity, folklorists have seen fit to attempt the creation of what is considered a “grand theory” of folklore. In seeking this grand theory folklorists have struggled with the argument over what should or should not constitute folklore, an act that is called “boundary work” in scholarly communities.

Charles L. Briggs is a professor of folklore in the department of anthropology of the University of

California, Berkeley. He is the author of “Stories in the Time of Cholera: Racial Profiling During a

Medical Nightmare” and “Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality.”

Briggs presents two different schools of thought concerning academic folklore. The first is the idea that academia should focus of something referred to as ‘boundary work,’ meaning some sort of definition and scientific methodology should be used to determine what is or is not folklore. In doing so the proponents of this camp hope to create some scholarly authority and validity in the study of folklore and its importance in academia. The other camp that emerged was the camp of the ethnography of speaking and performance-centered approaches in folklore. The primary focus of this second camp would be linking folkloristics to ethnography, linguistics, and anthropology to provide a better contextual understanding of what folklore is. Focusing on the first camp will present the most hotly debated method for determining what constitutes folklore.

Boundary work is defined as a rhetorical style that constructs social boundaries used to determine what intellectual activities are categorized as science, non-science, and pseudoscience. It is typically used

13 to “enlarge the material and symbolic resources of scientists or to defend professional autonomy” (Briggs

93). It creates a sense of individuality in study while at the same time drawing from other resources and professions that can bring it credibility and authority. In an attempt to make separate the practice and study of folklore, one must be able to form it into a distinctive object with distinctive methods with a professional body of those who practice these methods who call themselves folklorists. In the process one must point out the fakers and must attack amateurs, popularizers, the mass media, and academic interlopers.

During the Cold War Era efforts were made by scholars and critics to quantify the humanities and fine arts and provide standards by which works could be judged and categorized. Writing was no longer viewed as an inspired work and less value was placed on creativity. In stark contrast with the political uncertainty of the era the once equation-free studies of literature and art were now being placed under a microscope for dissection and observation in an effort to better understand what each was made of.

‘Folkloristics’ was the product of this attempt. While this new theory applied to regions of the world where cultures have been around and have remained relatively static, it did not readily apply to the immigrant nation of the United States. Fitting the history, ethnicity, geography, and beliefs into the equation of ‘folkloristics’ is easier for a country with less variety than our own. Briggs argues that this was the closest thing to grand theory in folklore that has ever existed and today it is widely regarded as only a part of the history of folklore rather than the practice.

Instead, academics have turned to treating folklore the same way they treat the study of history: not based on what it tells us about the chronology of a group of people, but based on the similarities in how historians and folklorists collect the information on their subjects. However, not every academic is comfortable with the two disciplines being considered bedfellows. In his book The Science of Folklore, published in 1930, Alexander Krappe describes folklore as “the study of the unrecorded traditions of the people as they appear in popular fiction, custom and belief, magic and ritual” (xv). He argues that the main purpose of folklore is to create a spiritual history of men and women in a culture based on the voices

14 of the less educated masses. Instead of relying on the literature and philosophy presented at a particular point in time in a particular region to gain an understanding of the beliefs of the people, calling upon the collection of stories told to one another on the front porches of general stores should provide a more accurate account of how things really were. He also argues that folklore is a historical science because it both provides a record of a group’s past while at the same time drawing conclusions about its subject inductively through the process of collecting stories and then constructing a theory on the culture in question. However, this description of folklore as a science has raised many a skeptical eyebrow in the historian community.

According to Krappe, the main objection historians have to considering folklore a historical science is the idea that history bases its conclusions on the study of historical documents and their significance and order. In folklore often times there are no definitive answers to when a story began or why it would be important in a specific temporal setting. Another point of contention for historians when considering the assertion that folklore is a type of history is the ordered antiquity of history. With folklore the term antiquated can only be used to describe a tale after the actual documentation of the tale. Often times the subject matter of such stories is the beliefs and biases of a group of people, so the subject matter is continually changing in conjunction with the people. Therefore, the stories that are documented are typically replaced by more relevant stories before they have the chance to attain a respectable level of antiquity. Any objection against considering folklore as a historic science, provided by historians, is usually met with indifference in the academic community. This indifference is fueled by an overwhelming sense of uncertainty about where folklore should fall in scholarly studies. Is it history? Is it ethnology? Is it rhetoric? Is it literature? The question is no longer ‘Why should anyone be concerned with the topic of folklore as a separate study?’ but has become, ‘What academic qualifications are needed to study this topic of folklore?’

The problem with this transformation in the question of what qualifies one for the study of folklore is that no one knows how to answer it. In fact, the most common answer seems to be that there

15 are no exact qualifications for the study of folklore other than the ability to listen. Of course learning of the cultural roots and norms of the person telling the story and understanding the history of the region in which the person has lived and how they relate to that geography is important. Discovering the purpose behind telling the story and what obligation the reader feels in telling the story are important as well.

However, these talents are not the sort of talents one can hone in a university classroom or training seminar. Techniques for analyzing underlying themes and character traits can be taught, researching the background can be taught, preservation practices can be taught, but these are not required to be a collector of folklore, only to be considered an academic folklorist.

Ultimately it seems as though the most common definition of folklore is the definition the word initially implied: the word of the common people. Put in more poetic terms, folklore is as much the legends of a small town hermit and his curious way of life as it is the well-known and heroic tales of Paul

Bunyan. It is the intricate weaving of culture, dialect, and tradition to form a near photographic representation of a memory in time of very unique characters that have helped shape the morals, beliefs, and minds of the speakers and listeners. Folklore is the spiritual history of a region providing insight into the thoughts, dreams, and fears of its people past and present. Folklore is not a chemical equation to be balanced or even a poem with syllabic guidelines to be followed. It is the gossipy rebel of the literary world that tells it like it is without putting on airs or hiding behind polite society. Folklore is the straight story, spoken aloud on the front porches of general stores and in the lobbies of churches during potluck

Sunday on what a group of people truly feels about the world around them. In other words, the operational definition of folklore I have chosen to focus on is the second definition provided by Briggs; folklore is the oral presentation of a combination of contextual influences including anthropology, linguistics, and ethnology. Determining how this definition fits into the American concept of folklore will provide more insight into how it will be treated for the remainder of this study.

American Folklore

“A folklorist who attempts to treat American folklore as an entity is bold indeed” (Coffin and Cohen, XVII). No other sentence has rung more true during the course of this research project. Finding a definition for folklore was challenging all by itself; finding a definition for

American folklore is even more of a challenge. This pursuit is a challenge not because American folklore does not exist; it certainly does and in abundance. However, determining the difference between American folklore theory and American folklore method, and why the latter is more preferred in the current focus of American folklore studies, has consistently been a hot topic of debate. Understanding the three categories of folklore present in a nation so culturally rich as the

United States and distinguishing between American folklore as a whole and then as a body of regional folklore is the next step in determining how to define American folklore. Yet another obstacle to understanding this country’s lore is determining what stories and characters fall into the broad category of what is recognized as American folklore and why they are chosen over their lesser known counterparts. Many folklorists have contributed to what resembles an

American theory in folklore, and despite their differences share the main goal of the preservation and promotion of folklore as an essential part of the preservation and promotion of the unique cultures found in this diverse country.

In Lee Haring’s article, “America’s Antitheoretical Folklorisitics,” he describes how

American folklore studies shifted its focus from a theory of construction to the methods of collection and presentation. Instead of following in step with their European predecessors,

American folklorists have pushed aside the idea of using a “grand theory” in the collection, study, and analysis of their own country’s folklore. Modern day American folklorists respectfully reject the often times constricting and outdated theoretical practices of Franz Boas and William

Wells Newell. Boas, first and foremost a physicist, attempted to apply the scientific method to the study and promotion of folklore as a scholarly pursuit. In the late 1890s and through to the early 1900s he attempted to intertwine the disciplines of anthropology and linguistics to produce proper research and collection methods for the study of folklore. He believed that without the proper scientific approach and analysis, folkloristics would dissolve as a discipline, falling to the responsibility of other fields of study such as ethnography, anthropology, history, and linguistics.

William Wells Newell, the founder of the American Folklore Society, also valued the scientific method approach to the collection and study of American folklore. He created the American

Folklore Society for the purpose of collecting and analyzing the folklore of the Native and

African American populations in the United States. He also wanted to help the discipline gain respect by creating an organized community of scholars and works to provide an infrastructure of evidence supporting the discipline as an entity independent from its contributing disciplines.

While the efforts of two of the earliest American folklorists were essential to the founding of folklore as an academic pursuit, that is where most of their influence ends. Current day folklorists concentrate less on the theory behind the linguistic influences in folklore and more on the impression left by the distinct cultures producing the lore.

Uncomfortable with the idea of a restrictive grand theory, American folklorists prefer to focus on striking a balance between theory and method, leaning towards placing importance on method. Dell Hymes describes this focus on method and states that folklorists must “start from community definitions of situation, activity, purpose, genre, and (then) discover validly the ways in which communicative means are organized” (Haring 5). Hymes was a famous linguist and anthropologist and arguably the first ever sociolinguist who focused on the connection between speech and how humans relate to one another and their world. Modern folklorists chose to work

18 according to his assertion that American folklore studies should focus first and foremost on the specific community of people producing the lore. Instead of spending time attempting to categorize the different components of language and story structure, the bread and butter of

European folkloristics, American folkloristics spends time focusing on the cultural, historic, and geographic context in which the lore is produced. The United States is a melting pot of a wide variety of culture specific and region specific ideas and beliefs. However, there is still an overarching sense of nationalism that blends these separate cultures and regions together in place to provide a sense of unity as a nation. The distinction between America’s national folklore and regional folklore will be explained after the categories of American folklore are discussed. At this point it may sound as though American folklore is more of a community art project than a scholastic pursuit, but modern American folklorists recognize and accept that the definition of categories and boundaries are key to any academic discipline. Without this definition and categorization, folklore as an academic pursuit would dissolve. Now understanding that

American folklore focuses on the study of the context of the tale rather than the construction of the tale, three traditions of folklore emerge.

Three traditions of folklore flourish in a culture rich country like the United States: literary tradition, popular tradition, and oral tradition. Literary tradition is material that is written or read with scholarly or academic intentions. Schools and colleges are the most common environments in which this tradition is studied and for the most part a standard set of literature provides the generations with what the cultural beliefs, ideals, and standards are. These are the works that have been analyzed, critiqued, and picked apart not for their own content but to teach young minds how to analyze, critique, and pick apart literature. Some examples from current high school summer reading lists include Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird or Mark Twain’s

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The tales provide characters embodying some of the most stereotypical values of Americans. Atticus Finch represents the spirit of honesty and steadfastness as he endures abuse from his community and peers for defending an African

American. Huckleberry Finn exhibits the stereotypical American sense of adventure and self- reliance. While much deeper analysis and commentary can be provided for both of these characters and their respective novels, they are most often treated at face value as a part of the literary tradition of folklore in the United States.

Next, the tradition of most interest to this study is presented: the oral tradition. Oral tradition is made up of material that is passed on through the generations by word of mouth either because those telling the stories cannot or will not write them down. In more primitive groups of people oral tradition is the only kind of literary tradition that exists. However, in our modern society heavily consumed by impersonal technology only a small and specific group encompasses what is considered oral tradition. This category includes the school yard songs, campfire tales, games, riddles, nursery rhymes, blonde jokes, fortune cookie proverbs, and superstitions that make up a sense of community among groups of people large and small.

Typically these kinds of stories are transmitted from grandparents and parents to children and grandchildren who in turn share what their elders have taught them with their peers and vice versa. According to Tristram P. Coffin and Hennig Cohen in their book, Folklore in America;

Tales, Songs, Superstitions, Proverbs, Riddles, Games, Folk Drama and Folk Festivals,

“folklore” is distinguishable from other types of literature based on the reliance on oral communication for it to flourish. Without the human-to-human contact and communication within a group of people there would be no folklore of this type. This is perhaps the most genuine of the three types of lore because it is the most connected to the people who produce it,

20 and consequently it is as ever changing as those people. Out of the three categories, this is also the most difficult category to provide definition for.

Providing a framework for what constitutes this kind of folklore is difficult because oral folklore does not fit into a set mold or form. It is dependent upon the changing beliefs of the people producing it and thus must rely on a few flexible boundaries in order to distinguish itself from other categories of folklore. It is a continually changing account in a constant state of development because it is based on the memories and creative abilities of the continually changing and developing storytellers. Oral variation provides distinguishing factor in folklore that separates it from other types of cultural literature. Some folklorists argue that the only way to place folklore into this category is to trace its oral circulation and determine whether or not it has remained an active part of the cultures’ folklore repertoire. Coffin and Cohen assent that,

“when it [folklore] is halted by printing or recording, folklore enters a state of suspended animation. It comes alive again only when it flows back into oral circulation” (XIV). Later in the discussion on Cajun and Creole folklore Barry Jean Ancelet refers to the ‘active repertoire’ of folklore, an idea borrowed from this concept of the key point that defines oral folklore. The distinction between literary tradition and oral tradition is easy to understand. Literary tradition is written down and typically identified by a singular author. Oral tradition is when the tale is transmitted through personal contact and is typically anonymous because it is the product of ever changing storytellers. Popular tradition is the most challenging of all three forms of literature to understand.

Popular tradition is present if literary tradition is present. In modern America popular tradition can be found in radio, television, internet, and other broad categories of mass media.

This category also includes the bands and singers who intentionally imitate folk-art because they

21 find profit in it. Contemporary examples of this include Mumford and Sons, Allison Krauss, and other talented artists who try to squeeze into the folk genre. This is prevalent in the promotion of fictional characters such as Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. It escapes the realm of literature and spreads into the sale of vintage clothing, roadside ‘Wild West’ attractions, and log cabin chic interior design. In Hardy, Arkansas an entire real estate and community development named

Cherokee Village exists complete with wooden Indians outside every gas station and flea markets selling ‘authentic’ arrowheads though that region of Arkansas was never home to a single Cherokee Native American tribe. While the Cherokee tribe certainly existed and contribute their own culture and folklore to the body of American folklore as a whole, in this case they are a product of the profit focus of popular lore. All of these moneymaking industries have the same thing in common: They seek to sell products or ideas with someone else’s story attached to them. More importantly, that someone else must have a story with perceived importance. While this description of popular lore seems to taint the validity of any stories or characters that fall into its reach, another branch of popular lore with goals similar to the literary tradition exists. This branch focuses on popular lore used to teach children and adults alike the moral values of the United States.

Stories designed to teach moral behavior are stories like George Washington and his unfaltering honesty in the story of the Cherry Tree. Another example is the diligence in the face of adversity exhibited by Abraham Lincoln as he learned to read by candlelight. These stories about the outstanding positive characteristics of some of the most readily recognizable political leaders in the United States are meant to inspire fellow Americans to follow in their footsteps.

The body of Wild West folklore and films provides examples of characters exhibiting the rugged independence so deeply valued in American culture. We also see this pattern in Aesop’s Fables

22 in which every single tale has a life lesson to be learned, almost as though a collection of these stories should create a moral handbook by which every child should guide their growth. While the tales are thinly framed as animal stories, it is blatantly obvious that the main purpose for their existence is not entertainment, but education. These ‘moral of the story’ tales are a part of popular lore because they are told and retold with vigor in order to produce a national sense of ethics and values. However, there is some argument about whether or not these sorts of widely known and predominantly yet active stories should fall into this category instead of the category of oral tradition.

The problem that arises when distinguishing popular literary tradition from oral tradition is where to draw the line. The Paul Bunyan and Blackbeard the Pirate stories are so well known and widely publicized that people argue that those types of stories constitute oral folklore.

However, in asking the actual people from the birthplaces of these stories about where they acquired their knowledge of these folk heroes one would find that they learned about them the same way most other Americans the rest of the United States learned about them: through books, movies, cartoons, and other media far removed from the mouths of the original storytellers.

When referring to regional lore versus national lore in America, this category would encompass national lore.

For example, the origins of the Johnny Appleseed story are disputable, but for the most part folklorists agree that he indeed did exist. According to an article in The New England

Quarterly, he was a real man named John Chapman who was born in the New England area during the late 1700s and spent his life travelling across the United States planting apple trees

(454). His tale traveled faster and farther than he could and he became a part of American legend and history with his journey becoming more and more fantastic in each repeated telling. His

23 story is identified as an essential part of American folk culture and history taught in elementary school classrooms to this day. However, for every widespread story like that of Johnny

Appleseed or Pecos Bill there are hundreds of others that never leave the small towns and groups that bore them into existence. Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett are known for being two of the greatest frontiersmen of all time, but certainly they did not tame the wild young United States all on their own. Other stories of other American heroes exist, but are not as heavily promoted and well known as these because the stories of these unbelievable characters sell better than that of the more human and fallible men and women working alongside these titans of the young country.

Americans are obsessed with folklore as a big business. Year to year thousands of books, songs, and plays are produced in attempts to provide Americans with carefully constructed sense of national heritage that their older brother and sister countries have naturally on principle of a longer history. Attention is not paid to the distinct academic differences between folklore and popular lore in the frenzy to promote all things commercial Americana. After all, the educated masses have been willing to accept this “fakelore” as genuine folklore because in the push for a sense of nationalism it seemed permissible to ignore the finer details of distinction between the two because for the majority of people this distinction is of no importance. American folklore and pseudo folklore disguised as history provides an account for the actions of the masses, loyalty to an identity, and national pride of a country seeking to present an identity to the rest of the world that is expressive of the heroes and heroines of their moral and political stories.

This pseudo-lore is more readily accepted by the general public in the United States than its European brothers because it serves the purpose of providing identity and typically creates a moral backdrop on which children are taught to play. The popular lore exists because there was a

24 literary or identity need to be filled by the creation of a specific tale, not because it is tying a group of people together based on region, ethnicity, or occupation. Political symbols like

Thomas Jefferson and legendary martyrs like Casey Jones are more important to the literate masses in the United States than the tales about the common fool or the devilish trickster who goes unpunished. Symbols and legends such as Davy Crockett or Abraham Lincoln provide a sense of national identity and give people a banner of commonality under which to assemble as they compete with the older and more well defined cultures of their brother and sister nations.

Popular lore is what folklorists consider the national folklore of the United States while oral folklore is what folklorists consider regional folklore in the United States. These categories and designations may seem like they provide the framework for an American theory in folklore, but are not used more as a method for collection and organization than a theory.

However, continued strides have been made to create an outline of an American theory based on method even though the boundaries of American folklore are still being debated. Some of the most influential American folklorists weigh in on why American folklore differs from other types of folklore and what should be done to help better define it as a cohesive body.

Alexander Krappe, folklorist, author, and first translator into English of the folktales collected by the Brothers Grimm, argues that the folklore in America differs greatly from the folklore of any other country because of the nature of the people. America is an immigrant nation and falls short by the standard European definition of folklore because American folklore is not just from one specific colony of people who have inhabited a specific region for hundreds of years. B.A.

Botkin seeks to create a concrete redefinition of what folklore means to an American people and the result is a book entitled A Treasury of American Folklore: Stories, Ballads, and Traditions of the People (1944). He saw the traditions of the everyday American as “intense expressions of

25 people’s experiences and relations to their environments” (M’Closkey, 138). Botkins’ text became very popular very quickly and fed a sense of nationalism in World War Two-era United

States.

Karen Beardslee, author of the article “Literary Legacies, folklore foundations: Selfhood and Cultural Tradition in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century American Literature” chooses to not to treat folklore in an academic arena, but instead treats folklore as a body of fiction. She is a professor at the department of language and literature at Burlington county college in Pemberton,

NJ and she has published works in the Encyclopedia of Folklore and Literature, as well as the

Zora Neale Hurston Forum. She says that folk legacies are wellsprings of knowledge and inspiration for the readers who seek understanding about selfhood. Instead of focusing on what does or does not provide the mechanics for the creation of folklore, she instead focuses on the characters within the lore and what they reveal about the writer and community producing said lore. She pays attention to the reader’s reaction to specific lore which produces in them a strong sense of self or tradition.

Beardslee focuses on how characters live through the folklore they produce and in doing so she helps blaze the trail between folklore and literature. She argues that the achievement of

“self” is a matter of community and that community is created by folkways, or various means of creating a sense of folk life. She states that “history as recorded and history as lived are actually dependent upon each other, for somewhere lost in the facts is the existence of the essential living subject and his or her own historical and personal truths. By speaking, by telling the story, we give meaning to the facts and timeless life to the subject. We give ourselves, ourselves” (142).

Beardslee argues that the main importance of folklore is to help a community of people develop

26 a sense of self that they can teach not only their children but also other communities through the sharing of their folklore and folk life.

No matter the methodological, theoretical, or categorization of a folklorist’s work, a common agreement on the need to preserve folklore in order to better understand the opinions, beliefs and history of the various cultures in America has been met, and efforts have been and still are being made to do so. Recognition and support of folklore from the government came in

1976 with the Congressional passage of Public Law 94-201. This act established the American

Folklife Center in the Library of Congress, forever ending any arguments against the importance of folklore as a valid academic pursuit. Other organizations that support the study and preservation of folklore include the Smithsonian Institution, the National Endowment for the

Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and even the National Park Service. The

Smithsonian hosts the Folk Life Festival every summer to celebrate cultural diversity. The mere presence of so many government-funded agencies that seek to study the definition of folklore provides evidence that there is importance in sustaining an American folk identity based on the diversity of cultures and peoples. The government sponsorship and categorization of folklore does not change the content or nature of the lore, it merely helps preserve it.

The primary private organization formed for the study, documentation, and education on folklore in the United States is the American Folklore Society, founded in Boston in 1888 by

Francis James Child, William Wells Newell, Daniel Garrison Brinton, and Franz Boas. Child was a Harvard professor or rhetoric and oratory who devoted his time to preserving English and

Scottish ballads. He saw folk ballads as the “true voice” of the people who produced them.

Newell was a schoolteacher and a faculty member in the philosophy department at Harvard and was fascinated enough by the games and songs of the school children he taught to write a book

27 on them. Brinton was an archaeologist and ethnologist who studied religions and literature in

Native American tribes. Boas is widely considered to be the father of American anthropology and among his many other studies and works researched the languages of Native American tribes. In the pursuit of scientific collection, preservation and promotion of the folktales and folk life of the Native Americans and African Americans present in the United States, these five men saw fit to create the society and extend membership to those who sought the same goals.

The founders sought to separate American folklore into four different categories: relics of

British lore, Negro lore, American Indian lore, and lore of recent ethnic groups. Again, even within the above-described ethnic groups there are still occupational and regional subcategories to be found. Folk groups within the ethnic groups are still further shaped by their socioeconomic status, levels of education, religious preferences, and finally their exposure to and in mass media.

Other more complex factors that impact these groups include what they choose to accept and reject as a body of people, what their local roots are, and how heavily they rely on the practices of their elders. Determining how people feel about certain national practices and whether or not they choose to rise against them based on their faith in their own tried and true practices, how emotionally attached they are to their homes and geographic location and the sense of localism that attachment produces, and how deeply they believe in the wisdom of their parents, grandparents and great grandparents are key factors in determining how tightly knit and distinct they are as a culture.

The organization has moved from separating its members into categories based on how and why the manner in and purpose for which they collect the lore to providing a forum for anyone with a scholarly interest in folklore in the United States. Initially literary and anthropological folklorists were separated in the same manner that folklorists working in

28 academic settings were separated from folklorists who worked in less professional settings.

However, today the society claims to attempt bridging all gaps between these categories with a revised goal of preserving not just the oral literary lore of the two original cultures and ethnic groups but of a much wider range of folklore and life.

The society meets annually and over the course of five days covers nearly thirty different sections of folklore in American including folk genres, folk groups, and professional issues that folklorists confront in the industry. The folk genre category is broken down further into categories such as music, food, art, dance, beliefs, and narrative while the folk group category is also further broken down into African, American Indian, Baltic, British, Catholic, children, gay and lesbian, Italian, Jewish, Latino, occupational, and women. The American Folklore Society has made every effort to turn the study of folklore and folk life in American into a scholarly and academic pursuit; an effort that has produced the quarterly Journal of American Folklore, a journal in publication since the organization’s inception, which in turn has produced a endless body of research on the very unique corners of the folklore world in the United States. The society seeks to continue the pursuit of a definition of American folklore method and theory while recognizing the cultural significance of focusing on the content and context of the lore itself.

As though discussing the definition of national American folklore wasn’t challenging enough, the concept of providing a definition of regional American folklore creates an even greater challenge. The people and cultures of the United States developed quickly and are considered infants compared to Great Britain and other elder countries. It would be premature to assume that there exists a national culture in a country with a past and present of strong immigration and colonization. Looking at my primary focus of southern Louisiana alone there

29 are countless cultures and subcultures as a result of the mixing and intermingling of peoples who immigrated here from other countries and islands. What is present in national American folklore is a popular lore, as discussed earlier. It is known and retold by people all across the country not because of any origination in the oral tradition, but rather the commercialization of it through magazines, newspapers, television, movies and Internet sources. Very seldom do people learn about Johnny Appleseed through the organic oral tradition. Typically it is through this form of retelling, the tradition of popular folklore. However, as mentioned before, there is a vast body of oral folklore that exists within the regions and communities of the country displaying a strong and loyal cultural presence.

American folk groups among which an oral tradition might arise have typically formed themselves around occupational, regional, or ethnic identities. In America, the best way to discover genuine oral tradition is to look where there is a group of people who are isolated among occupational, regional, or ethnic lines. Figuring out which cultures have attempted to hold strong to their identity despite efforts to dissolve them into a wider category ruled by the majority is the most logical path to take when determining what culture practices genuine folklore tradition in the oral sense. In finding this genuine lore among an isolated people, it is also common to find a particular indifference to America as a nation as well. Rather than discussing this body of folklore as “American” it would be wiser to discuss it in terms of the three main categories discussed above: occupational, regional, and ethnic. Two cultures that are excellent examples of this sort of determination to remain loyal to their roots are the two main cultures of focus in this paper, the Cajuns and Creoles. However, before we can discuss these two cultures we must first discuss the region in which they have developed and flourished, southern Louisiana.

History of Louisiana

The history and cultures of Louisiana provide the United States with some of the most unique and diverse flavors the country has to offer. Travelers claim that it is in fact so very different from all other states in the union that it feels as though a passport is needed to cross the state line. Looking at the early history of the region, considered desirable for centuries due to its trade and transportation potential as well as its value in military strategy, is like watching a heated tennis match with ownership bouncing back and forth between the ambitious countries seeking to lay claim to the many benefits Louisiana has to offer. Accounting for the vast number of immigrants who traveled to the state whether by their own choice or by the choice of others is almost impossible and the cultures resulting from this influx of various peoples are different from cultures found elsewhere in the country. Understanding the two primary cultures of southern Louisiana requires and understanding of the history of the state they proudly inhabit.

In his book, The Cajuns: Essays on Their History and Culture (1978), Glenn R. Conrad, historian of south Louisiana cultures, details the history of Louisiana beginning with the earliest attempts at colonization. The colonization of Louisiana began in the late seventeenth century when France sought to establish a foothold on the Mississippi River for economic and strategic gains. Their initial goal was to create a French nation that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to Canada. In 1682 Robert Cavelier de La Salle laid claim to the region and named it

Louisiana in honor of King Louis the XIV. The first official settlement was established in 1699 by Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville and was located near current day Biloxi, Mississippi. Included in this vast French territory with wholly undefined and theoretical boundaries were current day

Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois,

Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North and South Dakota. In 1714 another

31 settlement was created in order to establish trade with the Spanish in present day Texas as well as lay claim to the region being eyed by Spain. In 1722 New Orleans was established as the capital of Louisiana due to the Mississippi River being crucial to trade and military strategy.

Between 1718 and 1750 thousands of Africans were transported to Louisiana to become slaves for agricultural and industrial concerns. Two thirds of these slaves were from a region in Africa known as Senegambia, a similarity that would later help produce a sense of cohesion among the

Creole culture.

During the French and Indian War most of France’s Louisiana to the east of the

Mississippi river was lost with the exceptions of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. The rest of the colony fell under Spanish rule after the Seven Years war and the Treaty of Paris in 1763.

During this time an influx of Acadians, soon to be called Cajuns, began pouring into southern

Louisiana where they would flourish under their new Spanish rulers. Political control again shifted back to France in 1800 when Napoleon Bonaparte reacquired the area from Spain in the

Treaty of San Ildefonso. However, distracted by uprisings and conquering Haiti, Bonaparte was required to spend France’s time and energy elsewhere, eventually choosing to sell the Louisiana

Territory to the United States.

Right before Bonaparte chose to sell the territory in 1803, he was preoccupied by a revolution in Haiti, a territory he sought control over. Pouring his energies and resources into

Haiti, Bonaparte quickly forgot about the Louisiana territory, and this had unforeseen effects.

The Haitian revolution sent a wave of refugee immigration to New Orleans, where the Haitians integrated with the Creoles and thereby further increased the community of French speakers. It also increased the community of people prepared to continue the settlement and development of the region. During the immigration of people from Haiti, Bonaparte realized that he could no

32 longer spare any time for the territory in Louisiana. In 1803 the United States purchased the territory from Bonaparte for fifteen million dollars in what is considered one of the best real estate deals in the history of the country. The purchase doubled the size of the United States and served as the catalyst for forceful westward expansion.

Quickly the United States realized what a boon their purchase was as the state matured in the early 1800s and became the major trade and shipping hub for the United States. Connected to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers as well as the Gulf of Mexico, the state provided a main causeway for the travel of people and goods drawing some of the most adventurous and in some cases most devious crowds of people to be found in the young country. The city of New Orleans grew and attracted more and more immigrants interested in finding riches in either the agricultural or slave trade industries. New Orleans had the largest slave market in the entirety of the United States by 1840 and at that point in time was also the third largest city in the nation as well as one of the wealthiest. With the economy mainly reliant on plantations, slave labor was an essential part of keeping the economy growing.

While it may seem contradictory, even during this time of oppression Louisiana boasted the largest free African American population in the United States totaling nearly nineteen thousand people in 1860. However, nearly half of the state’s total population was enslaved, which meant that the enormous wealth of the young state was only enjoyed by the small, rich, white population rather than the African American slaves who produced the wealth. To ensure that this wealth remained, privileged whites put pressure on their state politicians and in 1861 the state seceded and became a part of the Confederate States of America. Louisiana’s participation in the Civil War did not last much longer than a year as the Union leaders recognized the importance of capturing New Orleans, a city known for its value in military strategy. Union

33 forces quickly captured New Orleans in 1862 and used the state to transport goods and people throughout the rest of the confederate states. Under the rule of former Union military leaders and under the watchful eye of the Fifth Military District the state began undergoing reconstruction.

However, it would not be until the end of the Civil War in 1865 that the majority of the slave population of the state would find freedom.

The emancipation of the African Americans who were forced into slavery made a huge impact on the social and political structure of the state. With nearly half of the state’s population being former slaves work was done to provide huge advances in education and jobs to the now free African American citizens. They were now a part of society just like their white counterparts and they were in the position of attempting to rebuild their lifestyles for themselves rather than the lifestyles they helped provide for their former owners. Though freedom was a reality, harsh discrimination still remained prevalent well through the 1880s and extended well into 1889 when they were denied the voting rights that came with their freedom.

Strict and unfair voter registration laws based on literacy or familial ties effectively disenfranchised much of the black voting population. In 1900 the state’s nearly six hundred and fifty three thousand person population was nearly half African American but by 1910 only seven hundred and thirty African Americans were registered to vote. Early in the 1900s a migration of thousands of African Americans from Louisiana to industrial cities farther north created a hole in the agricultural workforce and damaged the economy once so reliant on slave and indentured servant labor. Other much smaller migrations of this sort would take place over the early decades of the 1900s, a silent protest against the continued discrimination experienced by the African

American population in the state.

As the country entered the Great Depression the state endured the corrupt and self- interested rule of Huey Long who served as the states’ governor from 1928 to 1932 and then as a

U.S. Senator for the state from 1932 until he was assassinated in the Louisiana capitol in 1935.

World War II had a much larger impact on the state’s economy and job market and created a record number of desperately needed jobs, but still many of the African Americans who remained behind after the first Great Migration decided to leave for better jobs in California between the 1940s and 1960s in what would come to be called the Second Great Migration.

Segregation and disenfranchisement were still largely a part of the culture and politics of

Louisiana and it would not be until the 1960s that anything would be done about the Jim Crow patterns governing the state.

Not only impacting Louisiana for the better, but the entire country for the better, the

Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 led to the beginning of the path towards equality for the entire population of African Americans in the United States, including the thirty percent of African Americans remaining a part of Louisiana’s population. The oppression of the Cajuns and Creole, the two cultures more widely impacted by the harsh discrimination and segregation imposed by the elite white society became more than reprehensible, it became illegal. For the first time in the history of those two cultures, their backgrounds were considered equal to those of their governing forces. The vast history of the state of Louisiana does not end with this decision and included many other things than the highlights included above. However, to point out the nature of the oppression felt by the cultural groups described below, special attention was paid to the treatment of African Americans as well as the other immigrants considered lower class by the more privileged cultures in the state. What follows is a more detailed account of the Cajun and Creole cultures. There is no current-day

35 country from which either of the groups originated, even though arguably the Cajuns are representative of modern day Nova Scotia. Instead, these two cultures originated from the influence and mixing of nearly five other cultural groups. While this means that their beliefs and traditions are not wholly original, it is important to realize how quickly the two cultures added their own beliefs and traditions and structure to make their groups original. The origins of the

Cajuns and Creoles as cultural groups will help explain why they and their folklore are so distinctive.

Cajun and Creole Culture

No two cultures are more widely recognized in southern Louisiana than the Cajuns and

Creoles. While the two cultures have very different historic and ethnic origins, they share the same burdens of spending parts of their histories being governed by oppressive strangers and a mystical swampy landscape ripe for the birth of voodoo legends and spooky tales. Often times the unlearned visitor mistakes them for one another because there are few physical indicators of their separate uniqueness. Instead they uphold seemingly self-imposed boundaries, the Cajuns too proud of their culture to blend with anyone else, and the Creoles too proud of their rumored pedigree to mingle with rootless immigrants such as the Cajuns. While the matter of ‘Cajun versus Creole’ is of little importance anymore in today’s highly commercialized southern

Louisiana where a bottle of hot sauce will sell no matter the cultural origin, it bears weight to those who consider themselves members of these two competing groups.

Cajuns and Creoles view themselves as similar in some of their beliefs and some of their religious practices and even in some of their traditions, but the two groups have much stronger senses of pride in their respective cultural roots. While the origins of the Cajuns are clear and distinct, the origins of the Creoles is to this day a matter of dispute among those who specifically identify as Creoles. While this is a dispute most Americans cannot sympathize with, it is a dispute that helps define both of the cultures as separate as well as a larger group of the people of southern Louisiana. Discovering where the Cajuns and Creoles originated from and how their culture has persevered and survived will provide insight into how their beliefs and opinions shape the folklore produced in southern Louisiana.

The biggest discernible differences between modern day Cajuns and Creoles are their origins as cultures. Cajuns have historically travelled and lived as a group so cohesive that even after being exiled from their colony and spread out along the eastern coast of the United States they still managed to find one another and reorganize in Louisiana. On the other hand, Creoles are not so cohesive and actually stand as unique among other American cultures due to their mixed racial, cultural, ethnic, and religious heritage. With the knowledge of one culture being extremely loyal to their own people and another culture being extremely loyal to their history, determining which cultural group lays claim to Louisiana is often times more dependent on which group more aggressively self-promotes as the premier culture of the state.

Between Cajuns and Creoles, the Cajuns are the most culturally distinct group found in southern Louisiana and are more readily recognized by the general population in the United

States as the inhabitants of the region. This distinctiveness is a result of the uneasy political and social climate the Cajuns were forced to develop a more consistent sense of identity in.

Beginning in the late 1500s, French Colonists who were weary of famine, plague, and religious wars between Catholics and Protestants in their home country began settling along the Bay of

Fundy, near present day New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. This exodus of more than ten thousand French people was to what would be known as the colony of “La Cadie”, Acadia, officially founded by Samuel Champlain in 1604.

As described by ethnologist William Faulkner Rushton in his book The Cajuns: From

Acadia to Louisiana (1979), the history of the Cajun presence in Louisiana resembles something similar to a grand family reunion. It is considered a reunion because the Cajuns were once considered Acadians from a French owned colony named Acadia. It was one of the very first

European colonies in North America and had prosperous beginnings with the Acadians learning

38 how to navigate and survive their new home from the Americans Indians. The geography encompassed what we know as modern day Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and small parts of Maine. Occupied by war with England in the early and mid seventeenth century, France often overlooked communicating with the colony, communicating instead with a more valuable asset at the time, New France. New France was a territory extending all the way from Newfoundland in current day eastern Canada down to the Rocky Mountains and from

Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The Acadians were not offended in the least at this neglect, and in fact were renouncing their French heritage for some time before their motherland cut them out of the will.

Rushton provides a detailed account of the various changes in power the Acadians underwent during the colony’s younger decades. In 1647 Great Britain captured Acadia only to lose it back to France in 1670 and then regain it in the 1690s. During each change of power the

Acadians would begrudgingly attempt to adapt to the new politics while still maintaining a self reliance and independence as well as an overarching sense of continuity as a group of people despite the lack of continuity in their ever changing governing bodies. Under the more permanent British rule beginning in the 1713 after the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht, the

British government attempted to squash out the distinct culture of the Acadians in order to realign the people with British thought and doctrine. Though the war between Britain and France was over a new battle was beginning as Britain attempted to impose their language and traditions on the former French colony. Tensions rose to a fever pitch and broke when the Acadians began refusing to pay inflated taxes on certain goods and products unfairly imposed because of their cultural identity.

Revolution was in the air when the British government presented to the Acadians an ultimatum. They were told to either pledge allegiance to the King George II of England or be exiled from Acadia. For the first time in decades the Acadians saw fit to pledge their allegiance to their motherland France. In doing so they hoped to show direct opposition to their British rulers, the King of whom strongly opposed France and openly persecuted Catholics, the primary faith of the Acadians. The natural response to the uprising became known as “Le Grand

Derangement” or The Expulsion of 1755. The British government expelled the Acadians from the colony of Acadia and with no regard to familial ties sent some of them back to France while the majority were dispersed throughout other European colonies along the east coast of North

America.

Hundreds of Acadians were packed into the cargo holds of ships where colds and smallpox claimed a large number. Previous to The Expulsion nearly fifteen thousand Acadians existed; after the expulsion the population dwindled to around seven thousand Acadians separated into small pockets throughout England, France, the Caribbean, parts of modern day

New England, Connecticut, the Carolinas, and Georgia. It would not be until the promise of a

French speaking, Catholic safe haven in southern Louisiana that the Acadians would find themselves recreating their beloved Acadia.

Over time and through word of mouth, as the case seems to be with the Acadian culture, nearly twenty four hundred people migrated to New Orleans to reform their beloved Acadia. The

French Creoles of Louisiana had no protest as they saw the Acadians as a group who would be able to settle the wild interior of Louisiana where Native Americans held fast to their territories and met invasion with deadly hostility. In fact, after Spain took control of Louisiana in the mid-

1760s Acadian exiles who were sent back to France offered their assistance and allegiance to the

Spanish government, who were eager to tame the native people as well as the environment of the territory.

Sixteen hundred more Acadians made their way to Louisiana and found themselves producing for their Spanish rulers the necessary services and goods for life in a colony setting: tools, food, weapons. Yet another wave of Acadians found their way to Louisiana nearly two decades after Spain took control. For the next few decades the Acadians made their way further up the Mississippi river and began settling in the swamplands and more inhabitable bayous, bog- like flatlands, throughout the state. Accustomed to surviving harsh conditions with little to no assistance and favoring a way of life out of reach of interfering government, the Acadians thrived. It seemed as though their beloved Acadia was reformed, at least in spirit if not in name.

While expressing their individuality as a cultural group and calling themselves “Acadians,” or

“Cadiens,” their French accents were misunderstood and the term became the Anglicized

“Cajun” in southern Louisiana.

In 1803 the Louisiana territory became a part of the United States and between then and the early 1900s the Cajuns found themselves under the rule of American born descendants of

Scotch-Irishmen who made a concerted effort to assimilate the rough and tumble culture into their own seemingly civilized culture. In an interview Leonard Deutsch, an Appalachian folklorist, discusses the near death of the Cajun culture. Brought to light in the interview is a law that once outlawed the use of Cajun French in the school systems on the basis that it was considered an illiterate language. While there was no form of written Cajun language at the time due to the fact that no one had attempted to write it down, the language was still widely spoken.

Language and communication are two of the most important keys to a culture and when children who were raised speaking Cajun were punished by their teachers for doing something that their

41 parents and their parents’ parents were doing, in effect they were being asked to deny their culture, the basis of who they are.

This law from the 1920s did exactly what it was set in place to do and over the span of just one generation an entire language was quite nearly wiped off of the face of the earth. Parents who were punished for speaking what was considered an illiterate and ignorant language did not pass the language on to their children. It seemed as though the language would share the same fate as the multiple Native American languages that went unrecorded over the course of the

Americanization of their culture. However in the 1970s a man named James Domengeaux founded the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana in order to help preserve the

Cajun culture as a whole. His goal was to make every school aged child in Louisiana bilingual by teaching them Cajun French. However, most of the French that was taught was standard due to the absence of an actual text that taught the Cajun French needed to preserve a culture on the verge of extinction.

Eventually a Cajun grammar book was compiled by James Faulk, a teacher who was dismayed at the comment of one of his students during his French class. The student, proficient in standard French, commented that he still couldn’t talk to his grandparents, who spoke the

Cajun French outlawed nearly half a century earlier. As the teacher began teaching the outlawed language more and more students wanted to learn it so that they could reconnect with their ancestors and ultimately save the roots of their Cajun culture and folk life.

While not as easily and immediately recognized or associated with southern Louisiana and arising from far more ambiguous origins, Creoles are also a large contributor to the rich body of folk stories studied in the state. The origins of the Creole culture is discussed in detail in

Barry Jean Ancelet’s book, Cajun and Creole Folktales (1994), as well as in the collection of

Louisiana folktales entitled Gumbo Ya-Ya (1945), compiled by Lyle Saxon, Edward Dreyer and

Robert Tallant, all of whom are folklorists interested in the culture and tales of southern

Louisiana. Creoles are considered unique from the majority of cultural groups in the United

States because their origins are not from a singular native country. Instead they are a group of people with origins in multiple countries who came to self-identify based on ethnicity and location. The term “Creole” derives from the Portuguese word “crioulo” which means a slave born in a master’s household. During the sixteenth century this term was used to describe the descendants of French, Spanish, or Portuguese settlers in the West Indies and in Latin America and in Louisiana the term is used to identify the French-speaking populations of those of French or Spanish descent. Creoles claim that their ancestors were the upper-class white plantation owners and officials of Louisiana during the French and Spanish occupation of the region.

However, some argument has begun about the use of the term as descendants of free mulattos and free African Americans also identify themselves as “creoles” in Louisiana. The argument over the presence or absence of African ancestry still prevails in discussions over the definition of the cultural group. Other Creoles are descendants of the French colonists who fled from Haiti during the slave revolt in 1791.

At first the term “Creole” was used to describe children born in the colony of Louisiana rather than their native Spain or France. Eventually the term “Creole” was used to refer to the children of African American or racially mixed parents as well as the children of French and

Spanish descent with no evidence of racial mixing. In order to separate themselves from the

Angles who moved to Louisiana immediately after the Louisiana Purchase, people of French and

Spanish descent began referring to themselves as Creole as well. Creoles of color began

43 distinguishing themselves from others who claimed to be Creole and in the 1800s became a sort of elite society as they emerged as leaders in their communities and economies as well as slaveholders themselves. The first recorded description of a “Creole” is the death record of a man from 1745. The identity of Creole culture is essentially voluntary; however, basic criteria for identifying with the vast amorphous group includes the usage of the French language and social customs, specifically food, regardless of any racial makeup.

However, because many African Americans who capable of self identifying as Creoles are under pressure to identify as proud African Americans and because many Caucasians also capable of self identifying as creoles want to avoid the stigma of being from mixed racial background, fewer and fewer people are considering themselves Creoles. The term “Creole” is so widely used to refer to so many different groups of people of differing ethnic backgrounds that the only true way to determine who can claim genuine Creole culture is to take their word for it and rely on evidence of French culture. To attempt to separate and categorize the multiple factions of who is considered Creole could easily end up becoming an entirely separate study all on its own and is more detail than needed in a simple explanation of the impact Creole culture has on the unique body of folklore from southern Louisiana.

The fascinating history of Louisiana both as a territory and then as a state has helped produce the unique flavors so many people are entranced by when visiting the southern state.

The geography of the state has impacted the diversity of the population, producing what seems to be one of the largest melting pots of cultures in the country alongside few other states known for their vast immigrant populations. The impact of this sort of immigration has in turn produced cultures unlike any others found in the United States. The Cajuns and Creoles were groups of people who grew closer together under the oppressive rule of foreigners and in their efforts to

44 remain whole as a people developed into cultures with their own systems of beliefs and traditions. Since the wave of Americanization and nationalism that swept the nation during the first World War and more prevalently the second World War culture lines between the two have become less important as they found themselves blending together as the collective culture identified with southern Louisiana.

Cajun and Creole Folklore

The unique origins and history of the Cajun and Creole cultures in southern Louisiana have produced an equally unique body of folklore as compared to the folklore of the United

States as a whole. While the entire country is considered an immigrant nation, port towns like

New Orleans and Baton Rouge are hot spots for more diverse immigrant populations and the spread of their beliefs and cultures. While the members of the Cajun and Creole cultures have typically considered themselves separate from one another, they receive similar treatment in modern day collections of their folktales. In earlier collections a distinction was made between the two based on the origin of the cultures, however those sorts of distinctions no longer contribute to an enhanced understanding of the background of the folktales. Instead, it is more beneficial to treat the cultures as a cohesive group from which many of the same kinds of stories have emerged.

Research on Cajun and Creole folklore has come a long way from early and simple documentation of tales beginning in the late 1800s. Initially, more attention was paid to the popular animal tales and the countries that the Cajuns and Creoles found roots in. The French and African influence on the tales seemed the only real focus of scholars and tales were collected according to this interest. For the most part scholars sought specific kinds of tales rather than taking into account various others that did not fit the mold they were trying to fill. The typical scholar sought out the animal tales with their roots in African culture because they were easy to compare to other animal tales from other folk traditions. It would not be until Ancelet’s most productive years in the 1970s that all types of tales were taken into consideration and that the

Cajun and Creole cultures were considered separate from their ancestor countries. While Fortier started the academic treatment of folklore in southern Louisiana, Ancelet brought a new

46 understanding of a much broader variety of lore when he wrote what is now considered the most comprehensive collection and explanation of Cajun and Creole folklore.

The first attempt at collecting lore in the Louisiana French oral tradition was made by a man named Alcee Fortier, a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans during late nineteenth century. He focused mainly on the black Creole culture present around him in the city. His first book Louisiana Folk-Tales, published in 1895, focused on African Caribbean style animal tales and premiered a new method of transcription that sought to render the Louisiana

Creole dialect in hybrid of linguistics and literature. Fortier founded the New Orleans Folklore

Society, which later became the Louisiana Folklore Society, and in 1894 served as the President of the American Folklore Society.

Following Fortier the next notable scholar of Louisiana French oral tradition is a woman named Corinne Saucier. She began her work in the late 1920s after pursuing her master’s degree at the George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee. She then travelled to

Quebec to study the Louisiana French at the Universite’ Laval. She completed her dissertation on the history and tradition of French Louisiana in 1949, an excerpt from which was a collection of folktales that was later translated into English and published in 1972 as Folk Tales from French

Louisiana. Calvin Claudel, a contemporary of Saucier, also completed his dissertation at the

University of North Carolina on the folktales of the Avoyelles parish. He was more active as a folklorist than Saucier and focused on producing a number of articles for the Journal of

American Folklore.

The studies on the linguistic and oral traditions continued to prevail over the studies of the actual tales themselves well into the mid 1900s. According to Ancelet, during the 1940s a

47 group of professors from Louisiana State University directed research projects among their graduate students who sought to collect and record folk songs and stories for use in their studies on Louisiana’s French dialects. Those studies were concerned not with the content and characters of the tales themselves but with the linguistic characteristics of the tales. The students also concerned themselves more with the comparison of the African and French tales to other widely recognized and promoted European folktales. The tales of the Grimm brothers in Germany provided a body of work by which the students hoped to compare the themes and characters in tales they were collecting. Easily recognizable were the commonalities found between the tales in Louisiana and their African and European origins, and for the most part that is where the research ended for those students. Figuring out what impact the parent countries had on the linguistic and literary habits and traditions of their immigrant children seemed to be enough for the breadth of their work.

However, in the late 1950s students studying French at the University of Southwestern

Louisiana chose to make culture a part of their education by collecting stories, songs, games, and proverbs of those who still knew how to speak Cajun French. Enticed much more by the content of the tales than the construction of the Cajun and Creole French languages, their linguistic studies fell by the wayside as they sought to collect more and more tales to feed their interest in the traditions and beliefs of the cultures that communicated so much more than the quirks they brought to the French language and dialects. This was the first formal foray into what is now understood to be the primary academic pursuit of folklore studies, and the most famous of all authorities on Cajun and Creole folktales is a man named Barry Jean Ancelet.

Ancelet is known among folklorists as first and foremost the primary interpreter of Cajun musical traditions. A Cajun himself, he prides himself first on his role as a leading figure in the

Cajun musical renaissance and efforts to preserve and promote the old traditions of this type of music. He co-founded and directs the Tribute to Cajun Music in 1974, which has evolved into a two-day celebration of Cajun culture held every September in southern Louisiana. He also helped establish and to this day emcees Rendez-Vous des Acadians, a weekly live broadcast of

Cajun music narrated in Cajun French. He is widely recognized as a champion for Cajun musicians as well as the Cajun cultural revival.

Despite his love for Cajun tunes, Ancelet’s interest in Cajun and Creole culture does not end with the music he studies and promotes. In fact, in relation to his book Cajun and Creole

Folktales, published in 1994, he states, “Most people don’t know it, but I love the stories as much as the music” (IX). Ancelet began collecting stories in 1973 and since then has published numerous individual tales in journals and books as well as conducting specific studies on Cajun humor, historical accounts, jokes about Cajuns, violence in Cajun and Creole folk narrative, and a contextual analysis of Cajun tall tale telling in communities.

In Cajun and Creole Folktales, which is considered the most comprehensive work on

Cajun and Creole oral traditions in publication to this date, he turns away from the stereotypes by which Cajun and Creole folklore was once categorized in early scholarly research. Former treatments of Louisiana French folktales compartmentalized the lore by focusing only on the tales of black creoles or white Cajuns, while Ancelet seeks to create a continuum between the two groups to provide evidence of strong connections between the tales of the two cultural groups. Former treatments also only dealt with one focus or another rather than looking at a wide range of motifs found within the lore.

Instead of honing in on just animal tales or magic tales, Ancelet provides examples of a wider range of tales and describes each in turn. Former folklore studies also focused solely on the tales that survived from the Old World France instead of focusing on the tales that were unique to the culture of French Louisiana. Cajun and Creole folk traditions do not focus solely on their origins in their original colonies; instead they are a mixture of the African, African

American, British American, Native American, and Spanish American populations that took up residence in the immigrant rich southern state. In order to demonstrate that there was something specific to separate Louisiana folktales from that of their French originals, Ancelet sought to examine patterns and parallels between the Cajun and Creole lore as well as the French

American and French Canadian lore in addition to the lore of the five cultural groups listed above.

Early studies in the oral tradition of French Louisiana were mainly concerned with tracing French and African origins of the traditional tales. The collection of folklore in the

United States was focused primarily on competing with the lore of Europe, where the tales of the

Grimms were already widely recognized and known by virtue of simply being recorded and promoted as the cultural history of the northern European Germanic peoples long before

American even though to record the tales passed down through the generations. The animal tales of Africa were also popular during the beginning of the collection of Cajun and Creole folklore and emphasis was placed on collecting those specific kinds of tales and connecting them to their homeland. Essentially the early scholars in this tradition only found the folklore they were looking for in order to present what was popular to the general public as opposed to collecting the more genuine types of lore with roots in the two distinct cultures of southern Louisiana.

The Louisiana French body of stories can be separated into three categories of tales. One category is based on remnants of other stories, one is based on stories within the popular tradition, and one is based on stories from historical experience. The first category includes a large volume of animal tales and fairy tales that are typically are not the kinds of stories storytellers actively tell because they have no real personal attachment to them. Rather, the tales that fall into these sorts of categories are the stories that are well known without being sensational. According to Ancelet, the storytellers who tell these sorts of tales are considered bearers of tradition and are given respect for the background tales they bear.

Tall tales and jokes are a part of the second category of popular tradition. These are the most often recounted and those who recount them are not always revered as storytellers. They are considered common, often taken for granted and in some cases even discouraged in the realm of folklore. These sorts of stories are considered nonsense and the tellers are comparable to town jesters, bearers of ridiculous bits of entertainment rather than purveyors of pieces of a cultures oral literary tradition. Through the humor they use in telling certain jokes and spinning specific tall tales they reflect the attitudes of their changing identity as a culture. These sorts of stories organically appear out of simple observation and aim to please instead of educate or cajole. The final category includes legends and historical tales of a specific community or region and often times serve as the keys to a culture’s past, creating a sense of guardianship in the tellers.

Ancelet argues that the following standard categories can be used to describe the large repertoire of Cajun and Creole folklore: animal tales, magic tales, jokes, tall tales, legends and historical tales. Some stories share aspects from different categories and thus serve as a bridge between the two, however most fit easily into a singular category without any trouble. A determinant of how to categorize a specific tale often times depends on “the apparent feeling of

51 the storyteller for the kind of story he or she was relating” (XXIX). If someone intends for a tale to be taken in a humorous tone, the listener will be able to pick up on that and know that the tale belongs in the jokes category. If storyteller intends for a tale to be a tall tale instead of a historical tale, the listener should be able to pick up on the less authoritative and more performative tone of the teller. The speaker sets the tone and often times the presentation of the tale determines what category it falls under. There is no real written formula on the lines that separate the categories of the tales above because the categorization does depend so heavily on the tone of the speaker. However, there are certain aspects that are common enough to provide the framework for the categories described below.

Animal tales are the most common tale among folklore as a whole and are some of the oldest tales present in the Cajun and Creole body of folklore. They are often times very short and the plot and character development are uncomplicated and accessible to listeners of all ages, making animal tales very popular as moral teaching tales. Certain assumptions are made in the telling of animal tales such as the personification of animals, allowing them to talk, weep, and think like humans. In some cases animals become the embodiment of a personality trait such as cleverness as seen with the fox or ignorance as seen with the hyena. The use of animals in storytelling especially among the servant and oppressed classes allowed them to provide opposition to their rulers and keepers without blatantly creating an uprising and show of dissatisfaction.

This tradition of animal tales results from a combination of French and African tradition in which two categories of tales can be found. First there are the characters from the French tradition such as the clever fox and the foolish bear. Then there are the characters from the

African traditions, such as the trickster rabbit, Lapin, and the dimwitted hyena, Bouki. In fact the

52 tradition of the amoral hare and the ignorant hyena is found most prevalently in West African tradition. Other tales borrowed from European tradition and retold with Creole or Cajun flair can be found in this category of lore as well. One such example would be the tale of the lazy cricket and the hardworking ant.

Between Cajun and Creole cultures the hare and hyena characters are commonly found and popularly promoted. The two characters were often times spoken of as though they were human neighbors instead of fictional personified animals. Instead of considering them a part of a stagnant past tale that grows older with time, they are often times considered capable of overcoming the decades to find themselves in new conflicts depending on how their community within the culture has changed. As opposed to treating them as simply stories, Ancelet argues that they be treated as legends. Their characters and personalities are larger than the tales they are a part of. They have even emerged in the daily vernacular as nicknames given to people who exhibit some of their traits. Clever and occasionally immoral people are accused of being as smart as Lapin, while clumsy and foolish people are accused of being as dull as Bouqui.

Animal tales were once the foundation for Cajun and Creole lore in southern Louisiana but are fading from the immediate canon of folklore that is present in the minds of storytellers.

However, if a specific request is made for an animal tale either by a folklorist or a grandchild those who are still well versed in the tales will oblige. Animal tales are not lost; they are simply of less interest and use than the other tales present in the active repertoire of folklore.

Magic tales are more complex and typically longer than animal tales because of the weaving plots and amount background information needed to understand many of them require much explanation either prior to the tale or within the body of the tale. Long oral narratives are

53 not as of much use for entertainment in the technologically inundated world in which we live. In pre-radio, pre-television, and pre-internet days these extensive tales were needed to fill time not spent doing work or household chores. Even more rarely told than an animal tale the current audiences for these sorts of stories are folklorists who again hunt them down and take the time to listen to someone who has taken the time to tell them.

The language of these tales is more formal than the other categories of Cajun and Creole lore and a tone of antiquity is taken when telling these sorts of stories. Even the sorts of objects referred to in these tales show the age of them in comparison to the contemporary world. While the use of such words is preserved, certain measures are taken to bring the stories into a more applicable light. For example, in tales concerning kings and princesses, typically the kings are described as millionaires and the princesses are described as the daughters of the millionaires.

Even with these sorts of efforts, the tales have still fallen out of the active body of folklore due to their length and detail as well as the main means of transmission for the lore itself. Typically this sort of tale would be passed from parents to children, and then those children to their own children. However, during attempts to Americanize southern Louisiana the speaking of Cajun French was discouraged and any other culture specific practices went along with the ban on the language. In an attempt to keep their children from getting in trouble parents stopped speaking and teaching Cajun French and also stopped telling their children magic tales so closely tied into their culture under attack.

Out of all the genres of Cajun and Creole folklore, the joke is the most popular oral tradition. This is not such a surprise because this is the case with most of the western world to begin with. Joke telling is a form of entertainment that has not suffered from mass media the way

54 other story telling has because it also hold the distinction of being the briefest form of lore.

While on the surface it may not seem as though much could be ascertained about a culture based on a simple joke memorized and retold, jokes can uncover the deeper psychological currents and attitudes of a group of people. However in most cases jokes are used to show the humor in day to day life through observation and exaggeration. Unlike the animal tales and the magic tales it seems as though jokes are in no danger of disappearing due to change in the Cajun and Creole cultures or the changes made in technology and entertainment. Jokes will remain in the active body of folklore not only in the cultures of southern Louisiana but in the large and amorphous body of American folklore due to the contextual flexibility of this type of lore.

Tall tales, commonly referred to as lies, are separated into two separate categories in southern Louisiana. The first category is referred to as the menteries, lies told to entertain, and the second category is referred to as mensonges, lies told to trick. Storytellers are often considered liars because of the unbelievable nature of the stories they tell with such earnest. This does not mean that they are attempting to mislead their listeners with malice. Tall tales are most often told to strangers as a test of how gullible they may be as listeners and unlike the more moral driven animal tales and more complex magic tales, they have a sense of originality about them because for most storytellers it is easy to come up with an amusing deception. These tales are more spontaneous and have the tendency to emerge in everyday conversation with unsuspecting victim listeners. The dynamic of teller and listener is key to any category of folklore, but in this category an ironic level of trust must be established between the two for the full impact of the tall tale to be made. Listeners must choose between blindly believing the teller and reluctantly following along for the sake of the story. A common motif in these sorts of tales is that of two liars attempting to outdo one another with lie after extraordinary lie as well as the

55 liar who is repeatedly confronted about his own yarns so that until the end of the story the truth is not revealed.

Legendary tales are often times presented as though they were true rather than the obviously fictional animal, magic, jokes, and tall tales presented thus far. Whether or not there is any validity to the characters and plots, they are still told and often received as though real people participated in the events taking place. These types of tales walk the thin line between reality and the fantastic, leaning further towards reality in order to maintain the willing suspension of disbelief of the audiences. Legends find their way into the repertoire of Cajun and

Creole folklore through the practice of reference. More often than not a reference to a legend or legendary character will be made in conversation without actually going into detail on the nature or background of the legend. The tale itself is typically only produced upon request because the stories are so deeply rooted in the common knowledge of the culture that no explanation is needed after such a reference. An example of such a legend would be one of the many buried treasure tales present among the Cajun and Creole folk tradition. The mixture of the factual common practice of burying one’s money during and immediately after the Civil war and the equally common superstitious belief in spirits produces the motif of eager treasure hunters being cut short by mysterious circumstances.

Historical tales are based loosely on the facts of time and location, but more strongly on the psychological perception of the storyteller of a specific event or series of events. The storyteller is primarily concerned with entertaining their audience but must make the tale believable enough that it fits into the oral history of their culture. Historic tales are the sorts of tales that listeners request over and over again and eventually take on a fluid form that is capable of fitting into various situations and environments to serve the proper entertainment purpose at

56 hand. Within this category, the insistence that the tale being told is not fictional is prevalent and the tellers incorporate just enough fact mixed the just enough fantasy to keep the tale both believable and imaginatively compelling.

The tellers may attempt to establish believability by stating that they bear witness to the events or that they personally know the characters involved in the tale so that any utterance of disbelief instantly becomes offensive to the storyteller and potentially rude for the listener to portray. Exaggeration about the attributes of characters and their behaviors is common among historic tales. While the person may have actually existed, certain parts of that person’s character or accounts of that person’s actions are often times blow out of proportion in order to produce a more entertaining and compelling story. Again, more important than the content of the tale itself, is the tone in which the tale is told, revealing the great importance of the oral element in Cajun and Creole folklore. If the storyteller sounds believable, then the listener will take every word to be the truth while if the storyteller sounds as though he’s spinning a yarn, the listener will know better than to trust any attempts at establishing believability.

These categories of folktales are not exclusive only to Cajun and Creole folklore, however they are the most prevalent categories found in the repertoire of the two cultures.

Making jokes is as much a part of the way these two cultures communicate within themselves as and the rest of the world as passing along legends is a part of how they record their triumphs and failures as a loyal and close knit community. As there are certain tale categories that appear prevalent in these two cultures, there are also character types that appear prevalent in Cajun and

Creole folklore. Two of these make their presence well known not just among the communities in southern Louisiana, but among folk characters known nationwide, and they are the fool and the fraud.

Character Analysis of Fools and Frauds

Southern Louisiana folklore, specifically Cajun and Creole folklore, provides listeners with a wide array of fascinating characters to befriend, shun, judge, or relate to. There are witchdoctors, voodoo queens, lazy slaves, and errant preachers playing parts in tales of wonder and woe in the swamps and bayous of the state. Animal tales providing explanation of how a bat received his wings or about the alligator with a peach tree growing fused with its skull are also prevalent in this body of folklore. The combination of French, African, Haitian, and Spanish influence in the storytelling of the Cajuns and Creoles provides for a wild variety of themes and characters.

Spanish influence in the area provides a strong body of tales based on orthodox catholic religious beliefs and on what happens to Catholics who stray and forget to go to confession for more than six months. Haitian tales provide mystical accounts and in some cases legends of the power of voodoo, another strong vein of religious influence in southern Louisiana, and those men and women who dare practice the dark and ancient art. The influence of French tales provides a sense of old world antiquity and a darker tone and spirit to the stories in which the

Creoles, which were more often current or former slaves, so often find themselves sympathizing with. The tradition of personified animals talking and behaving as human neighbors towards one another is a vestige of the African traditions that traveled to the area with slave trade and immigration. All of these cultures that make up the background of the Cajuns and Creoles are still visible in the attitudes of the characters in the tales. Arguably, this unique mixture and intersection of so many fundamentally different cultures is what sets the tales apart from the other regions and cultures in the United States.

Out of all the character types present in Cajun and Creole folklore, two types are most

58 prevalent: the fool and the fraud. These character types can be found in the stories of many other cultures and certainly in many more venues than simply folklore. Every village has its own idiot, and every western settlement has its own snake oil salesman. The unique thing about the fool and fraud characters in the southern Louisiana cultures is the storytellers’ and listeners’ treatment of the two. While in other regions, listeners intently take notes on how to avoid being considered a fool, Creole fools seem to come out on top of the dog pile regardless of their blundering mistakes. The aforementioned snake oil salesmen are normally presented as scourges of society and typically meet their just end in some ironic twist of fate. In Cajun lore these frauds are regarded with no more respect or disrespect than their foolish counterparts and even at times their questionable behavior exhibits a desirable trait: cleverness.

By the tone and the presentation of the tale the listeners begin to feel compassion and pity for the fools who are so often taken advantage of by their false friends, the frauds. Through the storyteller’s casual and unbiased treatment of the characters and their actions, the same listeners are also led into displaying a sort of tolerance if not indifference to the questionable morals of the fraud and trickster who so often exploits the good nature and ignorance of the fool. It seems as though the fool can stand on his own two clumsy feet as a main character, while the fraud typically requires a victim in order to be discovered a fraud. These two types of characters are found throughout every culture’s short story repertoire especially in the entertaining stories passed on from generation to generation as folklore.

Defining what constitutes a fool and what constitutes a fraud somewhat depends on the context of the story, but typically they are easy to spot. A fool is a character who is either considered dimwitted by his own virtue or is easily tricked and taken advantage of by a more savvy and clever character. Fools can either be pointed out or their foolishness can be implied by

59 their actions and by how they compare to other non-fool characters in the story. The fool is usually a male, and usually at the mercy of a caregiver of some sort, whether benevolent or manipulative. Foolish John, or Jean Sot, tales are the most common fool tales in the Cajun and

Creole repertoire.

Jean Sot is usually so witless and incompetent that he is ignorant of his own deficiencies as compared to those around him. The plot of a common Jean Sot story begins with a friend or relative entrusting a menial errand or tedious task to the witless hero. The Jean Sot then somehow figures out how to unintentionally fumble his responsibilities, much to the chagrin of his literary straight man who usually acts as his guardian or guide. This straight man manifests as a mother figure, a friend, a wise stranger, or even (as will be discussed in detail later) a trickster.

The purpose of the existence of this foil character is to provide a comparison and caregiver for the foolish John character, providing the listener with someone who is “normal” to compare the foolish John’s behavior with as well as revealing a relationship of responsibility between the two. Essentially the foil is present to show both how useless but loveable the foolish John is.

This main character’s stupidity is never blatantly stated or pointed out; rather, the audience is left to determine the level of ignorance they feel proper to be assigned him. Jean Sot tales can be found in the categories of jokes, allowing storytellers to poke fun at the senseless acts occasionally observed among human interactions without directly stating the ignorance of a single person or a group of people. While Cajuns and Creoles are known for loving a good joke and sparing no expense when it comes to making jokes about their own, they are not cruel and certainly do not aim to insult with their jokes. Jean Sot tales can also fall into the category of legend. He spans both Cajun and Creole cultures as well as the African and French cultures contributing to the two primary cultures of southern Louisiana listed above. It almost seems as

60 though a man named John who had a bad habit of finding himself in over his head actually existed. This, of course, is improbable but certainly not impossible. However, Jean Sot exists for the primary purpose of entertainment, not the preservation of any person or belief system. The foolish John character is a mirror for reflecting those situations in life people are forced to laugh about for their sheer inherent ridiculous nature.

Jean Sot stories are abundant in Cajun and Creole folklore. In one common tale Jean Sot receives instruction from his mother to do some simple chores while she makes a trip into town.

She asks him to ‘shoot’, milk, the cow. Then she asks him to “hit”, rock, his little sister on the chair to put her to sleep. The last task she entrusts him with is putting onions and parsley in the gumbo. Taking every task entirely too literally, Jean shoots the cow with a shotgun, hits his little sister across the rocking chair, and places his two unfortunately named dogs, Parsley and Onions, in the boiling gumbo pot. Upon his mother’s return he answers all of her questions concerning his chores in the affirmative receiving her praise and thanks until she discovers his errors. In another tale Jean somehow manages to marry the prettiest and richest girl in town. He hears word that there’s a fancy pickup truck nearby unloading giant trees. In an effort to quell his curiosity he finds the truck and the ‘giant trees’ which in reality are telephone poles. He observes the workers stringing wire between two of the poles and assumes that they must be building a fence for giant cows. He runs back home and tells his wife they must move to avoid the giant cows and has her convinced and packed up before she can question it. On their way out of town the workers scratch their heads over how strange country folk seem.

Included below is another example of a Jean Sot tale collected and retold by S.E.

Schlosser, author of the twenty volume folklore collection, Spooky Series and creator and webmaster of the award winning folklore database Americanfolklore.net. This tale was listed as

61 a Louisiana tall tale in her book, Spooky South.

Jean Sot Guards the Door, A Louisiana Tall Tale, retold by S. E. Schlosser

“One day, Jean Sot's mother wanted to go to town.

‘Now Jean,’ she said, ‘I want you to guard the door.’

‘Yes, Mama,’ Jean Sot agreed.

Jean's mother left for town. Jean waited and waited for her to get back.

But she was gone a very long time. Jean got worried, and decided to look for her.

But he remembered he had promised to guard the door. So Jean took the door off

of its hinges and carried it on his back when he went to look for his mother.

Along the way, Jean Sot saw some robbers coming along the path,

carrying a heavy sack of money. Jean Sot was frightened. He adjusted the door on

his back as best as he could and climbed up a nearby tree to wait for the robbers

to go by. But the robbers stopped underneath the tree! They sat down and began

to count their money. The chief robber counted out the money for each man,

saying: ‘This is for you, and this is for you, and this is for you.’

‘And that one's for me,’ Jean Sot cried. The robbers were startled. They

looked around, but couldn't see anyone. The chief robber began counting again:

‘This is for you, and this is for you, and this is for you."’

Again, Jean Sot said: ‘That one's for me!’

‘Who is that?’ called the chief robber. ‘I will wring his fool neck!’

Jean Sot was so scared he began to shake, and the door fell off his back

and down onto the robbers.

‘The Devil is throwing doors at us!’ shouted one of the robbers. They were

so frightened that all the robbers ran away without their money. So Jean Sot

climbed down the tree, picked up the money and the door and took them home to

his mother.”

Immediately the listener is introduced to the foil character in this Jean Sot tale, his mother. Typically a family member is used in this role because traditionally family members display a sense of loyalty and unconditional love for one another even despite the shortcomings and quirks of their siblings, parents, or in this case children. This provides the fool with a foil that will not fail in their loyalty and provide the audience with a comparison character to show how ignorant the fool actually is.

While Jean’s mother prepares to go into town she asks him to “guard the door,” a seemingly simple task that would require no intellectual prowess or complex problem solving.

Jean quickly agrees to do the task he is entrusted with and shows the listener how loyal he is to not only his caretaker but to the task itself. Like a bulldog in a bite, Jean will unfailingly fulfill the duty he was given even to the point of making a mess of things. The story moves along and shows that Jean becomes concerned with his mother’s extended absence and, overcome by his worries, quite nearly leaves his post with the door. This shows how deeply he cares for his mother, his caretaker, the character providing unconditional love and regard for him. In an act he no doubt viewed as quite clever, Jean removes the door from its hinges and takes it with him to look for his mother. This is the point at which it should be apparent to the listener that Jean Sot is

63 a fool.

While anyone with any common sense knows that “guard the door” means look out for anyone who is up to no good, or at least ill wishing of the household the door belongs to, Jean thinks that there is some inherent value in the door itself that his mother is concerned with.

Taking her command very literally he does more than misunderstand her. He assumes that the way he understood her command was the only way the command could be understood. So consumed with the task at hand he spends no time questioning why his mother would be so attached to a plain old door. Instead he takes the door on the road and runs into the very kind of people his mother was concerned about: robbers.

Frightened by the robbers, Jean takes refuge in a nearby tree under which the robbers decide to divide up a bag of money they had just stolen. As the robbers begin to divvy out their spoils, Jean is so distracted by the sight of so much money he accidentally joins in the main criminal’s cycle of splitting up the money by saying “And that one’s for me!” His attraction to the riches is an innocent and foolish attraction that he seemingly cannot overcome to literally save his life. The main robber is surprised by the disembodied voice and calls for it to identify itself. Jean is aware enough to realize the danger he has found himself in and falls silent again until the robber again engages in splitting up the money. A second time Jean is hypnotized by this act and cries out in his favor, again attracting the attention of the robber who threatens to

“wring his fool neck”. The robbers are the stereotypical villains who have stolen someone else’s money and are willing to threaten the life of another person to ensure that the stolen money remains in their possession. The robber characters simply provide an unarguable evil for the main character to unwittingly overcome.

After the second calling out Jean realizes the danger he is in and shakes so from his fear that the door falls off of his back and down on top of the robbers who assume the devil threw a door at them. This reveals that the robbers themselves are slightly foolish but mostly superstitious to believe that the devil is hiding in the trees waiting to attack them. It also reveals that they are not without conscience, realizing that they have done something worthy of reproach even from the devil himself. Their fear of the devil overcomes any greed and the robbers run away from the tree leaving their spoils to Jean who takes them and the door home to his mother.

Jean’s motivation for taking the door home is obvious; he is still charged with the well being of his mother’s prized passageway. However, his motivation for taking the money back home to his mother is questionable. While the answer may seem simple in that money makes people happy and he wanted to make his mother happy, other reasons may be at work.

Remembering how entranced Jean was by the sack of money to begin with indicates that he is easily distracted from both the task at hand (guarding the door), as well as the apparent danger (the cutthroat robbers) by the allure of money. Whether this is a greed of sorts or a childish preoccupation is not clear. If it were greed he would be taking the money home to his mother for the simple belief that he views money as the most important thing in life to possess and cherish. If it were a childish preoccupation, it would seem as though he were bringing his mother something he did not see the actual value in, but rather saw his assigned value in it. It would be no different if he were bringing his mother home a mud pie. He assigns his own kind of value to the mud pie, and in this case the money, with no real conception of what the mud pie or money is worth. It is more likely that Jean does not recognize the true value of the money and is presenting to his mother as though it is a bouquet of roadside flowers. This assumption is easier for the audience to make about such an innocent character. To believe that Jean took the money

65 out of greed would mean he is capable of displaying more menacing traits not at all befitting his simple nature.

Cajuns and creoles tell and retell the stories of Jean Sot purely for entertainment purposes. Cajuns are specifically making fun of the stereotype that they are all ignorant, inbred, swamp people concerned with simple pleasures and incapable of complex problem solving. This was a common stereotype during the history of the culture when the Louisiana state politicians and educators were attempting to squash out the Cajun French language and influence. Again, during the 1920s the state of Louisiana passed a law outlawing the use of Cajun French in the school systems on the basis that it was considered the language of an illiterate people. Officials did not want their schoolchildren engaging in such an ignorant language and culture and the easiest way to ensure that they did not participate was to punish them for going anywhere near it.

This stereotype of Cajuns being uneducated, bumbling people is still a small part of the social climate in southern Louisiana, but for the most part this stereotype receives the most fuel from mass media and product placement in the United States as a whole. While the Jean Sot character type may no longer be representative of any part of the modern day Cajuns, it is still a stereotype used in the joke stories by the Cajun and Creole storytellers.

While the fool character type is present as a main character in many tales, he is also present as a partner in crime in many other tales. The character combination of fool and fraud, funny man and straight man, grunt and mastermind is a familiar character combination found in folklore circles as well as in storytelling as a whole. However, in Cajun and creole folklore it seems as though their actions are more subtle and their relationship to one another more defined and purposeful. Typically the fool needs the fraud to rely on in order to survive or at the very least navigate the more complex trials of life. The fraud can serve the fool in the character foil

66 capacity. Likewise, the fraud needs the fool in order to have someone to control and exploit for his own personal gain. The fraud always needs the fool to be revealed as a fraud. Otherwise the fraud would be considered a villain. The reason the fraud is accepted by the listeners and his actions are not considered reproachable is because of his human relationship to the fool character.

Without the fool, the fraud would not have anyone to take advantage of the act of which is him presenting himself to the audience as a fraud to begin with. He would be a normal every day person capable of malice, greed, and manipulation, but with enough self-control to avoid ever acting on such impulses. The fraud character serves more as a supporting character and catalyst for the main character, the fool in most of the stories involving both of them. Fools are everywhere and are more willing to present themselves because of their innocent nature and socially permissible state. Fools as standalone characters are at least entertaining even when they’re being annoying or mussing something up. Fools can muster up a sense of pity and empathy in their audiences that are quick to categorize the actions of the character as endearing.

On the other hand, frauds would not be able to stand on their own and justify their actions. Even if frauds found another fool to dupe who was not fulfilling the main or supporting role in a tale, his actions would not be acceptable to the listeners because there would not be the bumbling idiot by his side to balance out his less loveable personage. The fraud would be perceived as mean spirited and despicable instead of the loveable other half of the fool. The fact that he is the caretaker of the fool brings upon an odd sense of pity from the listener and even in some cases understanding when the fraud does take advantage of the fool, almost as though the fraud earned the right to do so simply from putting up with the fool’s antics.

The most common combination of a fool and a fraud within Cajun and Creole folklore

67 are the tales of Bouki and Lapin, the dimwitted hyena and the clever rabbit. These characters have their roots in West African tales as has been stated, which explains the Bouki’s identity as a hyena, a creature obviously not present in southern Louisiana. For the sake of simplicity, Bouki has often times been changed into a wolf or other such similar wolf like creature indigenous to the United States to produce a better sense of local flavor. However, Lapin has always remained a hare, or more commonly, a rabbit. The relationship between the two creatures is a challenge to define. In some stories it seems as though they are friends or neighbors, in other stories they are simply co-workers. In any of the many relationships they have with one another Lapin is forever taking advantage of Bouki’s innocence and foolishness in a manner so nonchalant it seems normal. Occasionally Bouki will benefit from his ignorance and the tricks Lapin had in mind for him will backfire and he will be the victor of whatever spoils are to be had. Most of the time though the two end up sharing in whatever fate befalls them, ever the mistakenly loyal duo.

The tales of Bouki and Lapin can fall into multiple categories within Cajun and Creole folklore. The first category is obviously animal tales because Bouki is a wolf and Lapin is a rabbit. Depending on the length and simplicity of the tales’ plot they may occasionally fall into the category of jokes. Depending on how well known the Bouki and Lapin tale is and how often it is told and retold determines whether or not the characters reach legendary status as household names, thus making the tale a legend itself. For the sake of simplicity, most tales described below are treated as animal tales.

In what is considered the most famous of all Bouki and Lapin tales, Bouki discovers that

Lapin has been eating vegetables out of his garden. In an attempt to trap Lapin in the act, Bouki makes a tar-baby to place in the garden and await Lapin’s arrival. Sure enough, Lapin shows up late in the night to steal food and sees the tar-baby. When Lapin asks it questions and receives no

68 answer he grows frustrated and slaps it. He gets stuck and no matter how much he fights he finds himself more trapped by the tar-baby. Bouki finds him in the morning and threatens to throw him in the fire. Clever Lapin agrees with this fate but begs Bouki not to throw him in the briar patch, which is actually Lapin’s home. Seeing Lapin’s distress concerning the briar patch, Bouki assumes that it would be a worse fate than the fire and unwittingly throws Lapin exactly where he wanted to go. Another example of how Lapin outsmarts Bouki is a tale about bird eggs. Bouki smells Lapin cooking eggs and asks him where he got them. Lapin says they came from a bird nest nearby but that they could only take one at a time because the birds did not mind one or two going missing. However, after a quick visit to the nest Lapin takes all of the eggs, despite what he told Bouki. The birds become angry and come looking for the person that ate all of their eggs.

Foolishly, Bouki speaks up thinking that he only took his allotted amount and Lapin watches as

Bouki is pecked to pieces, taking the fall for Lapin’s dishonesty.

The tale I have chosen to analyze was collected by Barry Jean Ancelet and recorded in his book, Cajun and Creole Folktales.

The Big Barrel of Butter (Page 3-5)

“Now when they worked together like that, Lapin posed as a priest, you

see? He baptized children. But they had bought a barrel of butter, a big barrel of

butter.”

“So they were hoeing in the field. Every now and then, Lapin says to

Bouki, he says, ‘Hup! Somebody’s calling me’.”

“So Bouki says, ‘Ah! Go!’ (He thought he was getting paid, you see?)”

“He would go. He’d come back. ‘What did they call it, Lapin?’”

“‘Started,’ he’d say. (But he had started eating in the butter barrel, you

know)”

“So, a little later, they were hoeing a little, a little later, ‘Hup! Bouki,

somebody’s calling me again.’”

“‘Well go Lapin.’”

“Lapin would go, he’d eat a little butter. And then he’d come back”

“‘What did they call it, Lapin?’”

“‘Quarter,’ he says.”

“‘Well those sure are funny names! Oh well.’ Hoe a little more.”

“A little later, ‘Another one’s calling me, Bouki!’”

“So, Bouki says, ‘Go Lapin.’ So, he leaves.”

“He comes back. ‘What did they call it Lapin?’”

“‘Half.’ He had eaten half the barrel of butter.”

“So, they hoed a little more. ‘Hup! Bouki, there’s another one calling

me.’”

“‘Go, Lapin.’ He left.”

“He comes back. ‘What did they call it, eh?’”

“‘Three quarters,’ he says.”

“So they hoed a little more. They called him again.”

“Bouki says, ‘Go, Lapin.’ He leaves. He goes.”

“He comes back. He says, ‘What did they call it Lapin?’”

“He says, ‘Finished. And that’s the last time,’ he says, ‘there’s no more

butter.’ He had eaten all the butter.”

The opening line provides evidence of the nature of the relationship between Bouki and

Lapin. “Now when they work together like that” indicates that the kind of work the two characters are doing in this tale is different than the traditional definition of work. It implies that they work together towards something other than the natural product of work, profit proportional to the amount and quality of work. Right at the beginning the listener learns that these two characters may not be the most honest in the labor that is most profitable to them. Also within the first few lines we learn that Lapin is the more dishonest of the two as he is described as

“posing” as a priest and baptizing children to earn money.

The listener then learns about the main source of conflict in the tale, the large barrel of butter the two rascals purchased together with their collective monies. Bouki and Lapin are engaged in an honest day’s work as they are described hoeing a field, so they are presented in a less despicable light. The purpose of putting the two characters in this setting serves to show the difference in the two characters. While Bouki spends the entire length of the story toiling away in the field, Lapin spends the entire length of the story darting between avoiding working in the field and indulging in the butter. The difference in the two characters now is much like the

71 difference in an outright malicious lie and a little white lie. Both lies are told to protect the liar from some unwanted consequence. However, a malicious lie is usually told with the purpose of hurting the listener and little white lie is told with the purpose of avoiding hurting the listener.

While both characters are scoundrels for helping one another make money off of people they have tricked into believing that Lapin is a priest, Lapin is the worse of the two because he cannot withstand actually completing an entire day’s worth of honest labor. Bouki is the better of the two because though he dishonest, he redeems himself by also attempting to earn a living with honest work.

The problem of the two characters being engaged in deceiving others for pay still exists, but is quickly brushed over by the storyteller and consequently the listeners. The first time Lapin is “called away” Bouki insists he leave the work at hand immediately to earn the easy money.

Bouki reveals a few things about his character in allowing Lapin to leave. First he reveals that he trusts his companion enough to take his word on being called though he never indicates he himself hears the calls. He also trusts his companion enough to allow him to go alone. Second he reveals that he cares for Lapin’s industry in his deceptive actions whether for Lapin’s sake or his own sake as it seems the two share the spoils. Finally he reveals how loyal he is to Lapin by remaining in the field and never doubting Lapin’s motives even in the face of dubious information.

Every time Lapin returns Bouki asks what the child being baptized was named, and each time Lapin would reply with how much butter was left in their barrel. “Well those sure are funny names!” replied Bouki to Lapin’s second explanation of the status of the butter, showing his trust, loyalty, and mostly foolishness in having faith in his partner in crime’s account of where he was going and doing. More importantly, it shows how clever Lapin is in choosing such a foolish

72 character to befriend and abuse. A more clever creature would have seen straight through

Lapin’s actions and would have known better than to let him leave more than once.

At the end of the story Lapin returns for the final time, stating quite plainly that, “there’s no more butter” to his partner, the reaction of which is not recorded. Lapin’s casual treatment of the unsavory truth shows how much regard he has for his foolish friend. Lapin cares not that he skipped out on almost an entire’s day work to consume the entire barrel of butter that he and

Bouki purchased, and cares even less whether or not Bouki knows. His confession is not one of guilt, but one of pride in outsmarting his vulnerable companion. There is no retort from Bouki, indicating that he is either used to this sort of underhanded treatment from his friend, or that he still doesn’t know what exactly just happened. In either case, it’s a near guarantee that Bouki and

Lapin will continue to go about tricking people into giving them money, and ever the con artist through and through Lapin will continue to trick Bouki out of his fair share of the dirty money.

This attitude of turning a blind eye to the questionable actions of others at the expense of the fools is actually indicative of the social beliefs of a group of former slave creoles and free creoles of African American descent. While it is again with a joking nature that the culture approaches a potentially touchy subject and conflict within their society, the joke is more on an external eternity that it was with the Cajuns and Jean Sot. Bouki may be interpreted as a representation of the hopelessly oppressed slaves and still yet discriminated against free African

American Creoles who were manipulated and exploited into feeding their former slave owners or wealthy white social and professional superiors.

Continually the disenfranchised population would find themselves being foolishly grateful for the dredges of wealth that majority society handed them to live on because they were

73 given no other option, just as Bouki was foolishly grateful for Lapin’s leadership, as corrupt as it was. The actions of the elite white society were seen as questionable, but were widely accepted because society felt as though they were doing the poor ignorant African Americans, who at the time were considered mentally and socially inferior beings, favors by keeping them as slaves, indentured servants, or in any other menial job. As long as the poor wretches were given something to do, the abuse and inhumanity were overlooked. The behaviors of both characters are strongly indicative of the attitudes of the oppressed African Americans and their white oppressors towards one another.

In the beginning of the tale the listener becomes aware that the two characters are engaged in work that is morally questionable as the work that a slave did for his slave owner is certainly morally questionable. More interestingly the dishonest work that Lapin is engaged in is baptisms, arguably God’s work. A common belief among slave owners was that by keeping slaves they were doing God’s work of taking care of the ignorant animal like populations of the earth.

Though the arrangement was very obviously damaging to the other party, the slave owners continued to purchase and imprison human beings on the basis that they felt it was their

Christian duty. In Bouki’s case, he continues to work honestly and unfaltering in the field while at the same time being engaged in a dishonest business agreement with Lapin. The slaves and later the oppressed African Americans were tricked into believing that such an uneven business arrangement was all that they were worth and all they deserved. Under the impression that their

“partners” were taking care of them, they continued to engage in the morally impermissible partnership because they were made ignorant of their equal value as human beings. The position

74 of fool was imposed upon the slave population by the fraudulent white population and would not be lifted in its entirety until well into the mid-1900s during the Civil Rights Era.

The trust Bouki has in Lapin is indicative of the results of brainwashing and manipulation the privileged white population took place in to ensure that the uneducated working class population comprised mainly of African Americans. Bouki questions the actions of Lapin, but always takes for the truth the answers given him. Slaves questioned the actions of their owners, but were usually met with the answer that they were lucky to have such generous owners and pleasant accommodations, though that was never the case. Slave owners tricked their slaves into believing that they were subhuman and so foolish they would not be able to take care of themselves even if they tried. The owners also tricked one another into believing that, again, they were doing a form of charitable work in providing their slaves with tasks to perform and meager homes to live in. The trust that Bouki has in Lapin is eerily similar to the trust that slaves had no choice but to have in their owners.

The barrel of butter that both Bouki and Lapin worked for is representative of the physical and financial products of the hard labor slaves performed for their masters. Lapin’s unfair consumption of the butter is indicative of the uneven distribution of the products of the slaves’ labor. Recalling that the majority population of the state of Louisiana was comprised of slaves previous to the civil war and after the civil war the majority population was comprised of free African Americans, it can be concluded that the vast majority of the work it took to develop the region came from this population. However, they did not benefit from any of the fruits of their labor; instead their owners and oppressors consumed their own share as well as the share of those they were taking advantage of. More interestingly, the nonchalant attitude of Lapin after he consumes the entire barrel of butter is similar to the attitude of slave owners to their slaves.

With no sign of remorse and quite nearly a sense of entitlement, the priveledged white people took for themselves the product of primarily another’s work.

Finally, the lack of response from Bouki at the end of the tale speaks louder than any other words the storyteller could have chosen for the characters. The lack of response to Lapin’s confession that he had eaten of the butter indicates that either Bouki did not care, but more likely that any response from Bouki would ultimately be pointless. Any protest made by the slaves was largely ignored and they were kept in a state of ignorance by their owners. Any protest from the oppressed African American population went largely ignored until the country was forced to face the ugly truth of racism and discrimination during the Civil Rights Movement. In silence, Bouki represents the silence in which the majority of the early population of southern Louisiana suffered for so long.

While in stories of Bouki and Lapin, the oppressed population is typically represented by the abused fool, the tables are turned in other tales that specifically focus on the relationship between the master and the slave. In these stories the relationship between the slave and his master swap and they find themselves in plots where the slave typically outwits the master whether through the slave’s own cleverness or by the sheer foolishness of the slave owner. The owner is typically revealed to be greedy and arrogant while the slave is presented as tolerant of his owner’s ignorance of the things going on around him. The storyteller is more forthcoming about expressing how mistreated the slave is by his master and also how little the slave actually seems to be able to do about the mistreatment. However, most of the stories involve a twist at the end in which the slave is vindicated and the master is punished, humiliated, or outwitted.

A few of the slave and master tales even give accounts for how the slaves won their freedom from their masters in a match of wits or talents. These sorts of tales provide evidence for how slaves and oppressed populations attempted to cope with their assigned status in society. It also reveals that they were not fully brainwashed by their masters’ attempts at dehumanizing them. These tales reveal different levels of comfort within the Creole community. While the

Bouki and Lapin tales are presented as mere animal tales for entertainment with undertones about the mistreatment of the culture, the slave and master tales blatantly express some of the attitudes towards the struggles the culture engages in.

Between the Cajun and Creole cultures the characters of the fool and fraud are presented to entertain as well as represent the struggles the cultures faced as the products of oppression and discrimination. The Jean Sot character shows the Cajun sense of humor about the stereotype of ignorance they have been facing since their arrival in the state. Bouki and Lapin show the relationship between the slaves who were treated as ignorant animals and exploited by their masters who were as carelessly morally inept as the worst fraud to be found. The slave and master stories show how the Creoles really wanted their story to be told. The belief that the masters were abusive fools outwitted by the clever slaves is more openly expressed in these tales.

In any of the three cases the Cajun and Creole storytellers are using the characters and their interactions in their folktales to share a belief, point out a stereotype, or express a desire to their audience.

Conclusion

Over the course of two years I have discovered and researched just a few of the many ways in which folklore is defined as a literature. I have also learned how the diverse immigrant background of the United States aids in setting apart this country’s folklore from that of

European countries. Discovering that American folklore can also be categorized I have learned the difference between a national folklore in the United States and a regional folklore dependent on subcultures. In choosing to take the ethnologist’s approach to the study of a specific lore within America I have studied the history of two distinct cultural groups as well as the history of the state they inhabit. After quickly learning how vast a body of lore the Cajuns and Creoles are responsible for I have provided a common system of categorization of the types of stories most prevalent among the two groups. Finally, I have provided an analysis of two of the most famous character archetypes within Cajun and Creole folklore: the fool and the fraud. In essence I have shown how the Cajuns and Creoles, two historically oppressed groups of people have created an oral history of themselves in order to preserve their beliefs and attitudes separate from the bias of history books and the accounts of strangers. What follows this study is a collection of my own folklore; an account of the stories that provide insight into who I am and the people around me who have left a lasting impact on a history of my own.

Creative Works

At the end of my first year as a University Scholar, I knew I wanted to do something creative as my Scholars Project. The concept of what a senior project actually entailed was still very vague, but I knew that other people had written their own original novels and poems to accompany the more research based side of their work. In fact, during the spring of that same year I came up with the first story included in this brief collection. Little did I know that a funny observation and creative explanation would become the inspiration for my two year project.

As I lay awake one night swapping gossip across the darkness with my roommate, I expressed my frustration with one of my peer scholars, Luke Sprague. “He drives me crazy! I swear, Teresa, he would argue with a brick wall. Who does he think he is anyway? What makes him think he’s right about everything? He’s not! He just wants to think he is! Let’s be real about scholars for a second, we are indeed fifteen of the smartest freshmen on campus. But it’s UTM, not Yale! Geez! Luke is such a jerk!”

It was at that moment that in a flash the thought crossed my mind. Luke digs holes when he argues, and wouldn’t it be nice if he dug one of those holes so deep no one could find him anymore? Wouldn’t it be nice if he dug a hole all the way to China where he couldn’t argue with anyone even if he tried? Wouldn’t that cure him of his incessant prideful prattle and provide the ears of the rest of us with much needed rest? A giggled escaped me as I thought of how ridiculous my logic was and Teresa asked me to explain what tickled me. She loved the story so much she passed it on to her friends. They loved it so much they passed it on to their friends.

Eventually, the story made it back to Luke, who, thankfully, was flattered that I had come up with a creative writing based on how angry he made me. From that point on I began paying more

79 attention to the people around me who exhibited outstanding traits, or produced in me outstanding emotional responses. Instead of attempting to falsify folklore by writing about spirits or places I’ve never seen, I would use the world around me and its most familiar inhabitants as my inspiration and subjects in the tales that were to follow.

Struggling to find an overarching theme and the voice of a narrator for my collection of short stories occupied my efforts for some time. I read other collections of lore and stories and even a few novels that presented the importance of storytelling and expression through orally presented literature and found time and again that the ideas I had about how to present the art were already in use by many much more accomplished authors than I. I had the idea of presenting folklore as a type of water like substance that was the lifeblood of the world and all of its beings only to discover that stories are represented as water by quite a few authors. I wanted to utilize an omniscient narrator who took no part in the action of the stories other than the quiet observer. Ever obsessed with originality I sought other ways to express the crucial nature of storytelling to the survival of humans besides relying on the over used water metaphor.

I quickly came to realize that I was trying too hard and focusing too much on minute details when I should be looking at the larger picture of what I hoped to accomplish with my creative writing. For nearly a year I struggled with attempting to write stories that were one of a kind and genuine but sounded as though they had been around for decades marinating in moonshine of the old south. I started with the outlines for nearly seventeen different stories, five of which fit any of the above criteria. Looking for inspiration I turned to books such as Mark

Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as well as Fred Chappell’s I am One of You Forever, a book assigned to me in my English Comp class my freshman year in college. I also dove into

Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and my favorite book to date, Harper

Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, in order to see how I could find my own writing voice that led readers to believe they were sitting on my front porch listening to me tell a story passed down from my great grandmother. I watched films like O Brother Where Art Thou, Big Fish, The

Green Mile, and Forrest Gump hoping they might provide me with the spark I needed to dive into my creative writing. No amount of listening to The Avett Brothers, Allison Krauss, or Iron and Wine was going to get me the results I needed. It was time to take drastic measures. It was time to go to Cadillac’s.

While I can’t pretend as though my motivation for going to hear Crooked Creek play at the local bar was directly related to any ideas I had of seeking inspiration for my project, it certainly made an impact. It was the first time I had ever stepped foot in the place and within an hour I was two stepping like the best of them and talking with a guilty by association southern accent so thick Dolly Parton would be proud. I played pool with some of the local regulars and listened to them talk about their days and the shenanigans they participated in when they were my age. While they were shooting the breeze I was listening intently, naturally intrigued by their stories and unwittingly soaking up exactly what I needed to sit down the next morning and write the story their collective voice told in my head. Finally my writing was genuine and natural; no longer did I worry about adhering to the traditions of what I thought folklore was supposed to be.

I was under the impression my folklore had to be carefully constructed and follow a set of guidelines that I myself came up with based on the folklore I was reading. I assumed that all folklore had to be two pages or less, involve a complex and specific dialect, include a few key phrases such as “I tell you the truth,” or “Come now, listen close,” and describe some religious or social context unfamiliar to the majority of readers. Realizing the fallacy in the last word of the previous sentence liberated me from writer’s block. Folklore as a body may widely exhibit

81 the majority of the above characteristics, but first and foremost folklore involves the component of oral expression. Folklore is told first and read second. True folklore is the result of a group of people with common interest sitting down and listening to one another toy with imagination and metaphor, theatre and literature, and most importantly what it means to be a part of their own culture and community. Folklore is first and foremost about the people by whom and about which it is told.

With this newfound knowledge in mind I wrote my first complete story, the story about

Luke Sprague’s argumentative nature digging his way to China. The second story about how

Lionel Crews got too big for his britches and finally reached the stars came next. I then ventured into more dangerous and graphic territory when I wrote about Rhonda Wright discovering that home is where the heart is and if she broke her heart enough times she would eventually never leave home. My grandfather’s utilitarian treatment of animals produced his story about the cat catching his tongue as he grew older and less aggressive and drew closer to him his family and friends. Finally, I wrote my own personal story about my struggle to understand my personal religious beliefs and my experiences in meeting my maker.

I hope to add to my collection of stories as I find more people in my life that through their actions and traits tell me their tale. The only common thread among the stories included here and the stories still floating around in my head is the relationship the main characters have to me. Following what I believe is the cardinal rule of writing, I have chosen to write about what

I know best: people. More specifically I have chosen to write about the people who have captivated my attention or admiration for their own unique reasons. With no real preface other than the explanation included here, no omniscient narrator, and no goal other than entertainment

I present to you a small collection of my own original folklore, Fabulae.

Luke Sprague’s Story

This guy named Luke used to live around here. He was of average height, thin, and had a hard workin' look about him. But you know how that whole thing goes with looks being deceivin' and all. Turns out the only hard work he had to his name was the hard work he did to keep his tail from gettin' whooped by the folks he crossed. One could argue that he didn't know any better, but there wouldn't be too much truth in that statement on account of he knew what he was doin' and he liked what he was doin'. Worse of all, there was no man made or divinely given law against what he did. You see, Luke liked to argue. It didn't matter what about or who with, he always had something to say, and it wasn't very often that he offered any tid bits in agreement with ya. Everyone knew that anytime Luke was around he would cause voices to raise and hearts to race, and not for the good reasons neither. People would get tired of him, but just like everything else they get tired of they'd rather deal with it than change it, so Luke stayed around arguing with folks for years before it finally happened. He finally ended up in China.

You see, one of the things that parents warn their young ones about is arguing. Well it seems as though Luke either didn't have parents, or didn't have parents who knew enough to warn him about the important things in life, so he didn't learn that lesson soon enough. It was only a matter of time and around here time moves the way it wants no matter what you or I have to say about it. Time had decided to move pretty quickly with Luke towards the end of all things.

To begin at the beginning is the only right way to do these sorts of things, so that is where we will begin.

Luke set out to town one day and got to talkin' about something you're not supposed to talk about: politics. He was full of opinion and had some decent fact to back up some of his

83 opinion but most of the time he would just say something to see how red he could make the faces of anyone within listening range. In the middle of barkin' about how foolish the current presidential candidate was he even made one of the ladies listening snort she was in such a quick breathing fit about what he had to say. When Luke had exhausted all the possibilities with that particular subject, he moved on to one even more dangerous. That man started talkin' about that sort of thing you only talk about in church, hospital, or family reunion. He started talkin' about sex. Now, because this is polite society I won't go into any messy details but between you and I it honestly wasn't even enough to make a strawberry blush. Even Luke had enough home trainin' to realize that gettin' too graphic when arguing and talkin' about such isn't a safe practice to get any good at. Unless you're in church, the hospital, or at a family reunion.

Things went on for a bit less than with the politicking on account of Luke realizing that he needed to move on to something else in order to keep his listeners listening and his arguers arguing. The last possible topic of interest of course completed the trivecta of topics of interest you aren't sposed to talk about, listen to, and worse of all argue about. He started in on religion.

Now, no matter where you're from, who raised you, what you believe in, or how you say your prayers or not say your prayers, we're all God's children. Let's get that straight right from the get go. Problem is, not everyone recognizes this fact . So when Luke got into arguing about what he had beliefs in he started offending folks left and right even more than before because if there is one thing that's offensive in polite society more so than politics or sex, it's God. People started getting mad, and not just that sort of mad people get whenever they stub their toe or burn dinner. They were getting flat tire on the side of the road in the middle of a monsoon of a thunderstorm with a crying toddler in the backseat and "Oh, look I don't have a spare tire. Guess

I should get to walking to that gas station I saw 'bout thirty miles back and hope it's still open"

84 mad. If you've never experienced that before, you just don't know what mad is.

Anyways, folks were gettin' there and Luke wasn't stopping. He argued with darn near everything that looked at him sideways and eventually everyone left. So he stood there for days and days just arguing out loud for any passerbys to hear. He was soapboxing, if you will, 'cept there wasn't anyone around who cared to hear all his soapboxing. It got to the point that he was a bit of a nuisance and there was no stopping him. God's been around for eternity, so it's easy to talk about Him for 'bout the same amount of time.

Turns out there was someone passing through town who had dealt with this sort of thing before. He was a quiet man no one had ever seen before, or so it seemed. He could have been living in town for years, shopping at the same grocery and going to the same post office as your or I and neither of us would have recognized him anyways. Regardless of where he was from or what he was doing here, he knew the cure for the arguing ailment that had a hold on Luke. So one day, the man approached Luke while he was barking on and on about religion and handed him a shovel.

See now, this is when you've got to work hard to remember those things that your ma and pa warned you about, those things that Luke never heard. You ever heard about diggin' yourself a hole when you're arguing with someone? Well, that's exactly what that quiet man had in mind for Luke, and that's exactly what happened. As soon as the shovel was in his hand he automatically began shoving it into the soft earth beneath his feet. It was as if he didn't know that he was doing it. He kept on diggin' that hole and attracting quite a bit of attention to himself.

This only encouraged him to keep arguing, which somehow kept him shoveling dirt over his shoulder. It was as though the two actions went hand in hand. The people gathered around

85 realized the relationship and began to argue with Luke more and more in order to keep him diggin' so that he got so deep in his hole they couldn't hear a thing he was sayin'. Soon enough the only sound they heard was the soft sound of dirt hitting the ground around the mouth of that deep dark abyss, and that's the way folks liked it.

You figure he would eventually stop arguin’ in all the silence that surrounded him way down in the middle of the planet and eventually quit diggin' but he's never been one to give up a fight and he didn't quite have the sort of quiet he needed to realize no one was listening. You see, as he argued his voice bounced off the walls of the hole he was diggin' and made it sound like someone else was there with him. So, he kept on straight through the hot melty core of the earth on to the other side of the world. Luke dug such a deep hole with his arguing that he found himself in China.

Turns out no one over there speaks the language we speak, and they certainly don't talk about politics, sex, or religion. They also think that all we do over here is bicker amongst ourselves. I don't know about all that, but I do know what Luke never did make it back home. He couldn't dig another hole. What's the point in arguing if the person you're arguing with don't understand what you're talkin' about? It wouldn't make no sense at all.

Lionel Crews’ Story

There was this fellow who grew up around these parts named Lionel who was always a bit of a curiosity to everyone. Nothin’ was wrong with him, no. He just sorta didn’t fit in too easy and not many folks knew just how to take him. He was bout thin as a floorboard and had eyes that never quit lookin’. For what, it doesn’t take anyone very long to learn. You see, Lionel wasn’t shy about what he loved and what he loved was the stars.

Lionel was always on and on about those stars like if he didn’t sing enough of their praises they would decide no one wanted them anymore and up and leave the night sky full of black emptiness. When he wasn’t flappin’ his gums about stars he was flappin’ ‘em about the planets and moons and asteroids that were all up there supposedly flyin’ around with the earth in a frantic sort of twirl that must have a rhythm and rhyme to it. Otherwise folks down here on the ground would be in a heap of trouble.

See if you think bout it, dust enough to fill a feed sack gets knocked up in a hot game of marbles. Imagine what sorta dust would get knocked up if planets started runnin’ into each other.

You think about that a spell and then come round here tellin’ that there isn’t someone bigger en all of us who put this whole thing together to make it run as smooth like it does. But bigger someones isn’t what we’re here to discuss. No sir, we’re here to talk about how Lionel got to be the way he is: tall.

Now, we won’t go too far into that part of the story just yet because that would be startin’ in a funny sort of way and starting in funny sorts of ways always ruin good stories like taking cakes out of the oven too soon or stitching up a quilt before you got the chance to put in the stuffin’. It won’t start well, it won’t end well and you’ll have to go on back and do it all over ‘gin

87 cause it just won’t feel right and it just won’t be right. So let us begin at the beginning like any story worth tellin’ begins.

When Lionel still lived round here he would look up into that night sky you see every time the sun disappears into the ground and he would image himself reaching out and feeling the fuzzy edge of one of those stars. He thought about how twirling a ring of Saturn around his pinky finger would work. He wanted to know what diggin’ his feet into the mud of Mars would feel like. Mostly, Lionel wanted to be somewhere he could learn somethin’. He was the brightest boy in his kindergarten class and that never changed no matter what class he found himself in.

Mathematics, science, writing, and readin’ came easier than pie to him, and it was like the harder the classes got the better he got at ‘em. Sorta like the more a barrel of fruit rots the stronger the alcohol hits ya. Sometimes things gotta get worse ‘fore they get any better.

Through the years Lionel took so many classes folks saw fit to start givin’ him pieces of fancy paper sayin’ he learned something and his teachers were well pleased with ‘im. Papers like that stacked up higher and higher and it seemed like he knew just about anythin’ there was to learn about anythin’ ‘cept for the one thing he wanted to know most ‘bout. The one thing he talked, thought, wrote, and dreamt most ‘bout. Lionel wanted to learn about those stars.

It was like he wasn’t born to be content with the simple wonders of this world. Wonders like grand ol’ riverboats, magnolia tree blossoms, ice cold sweet tea, or a sad blues song. You know, all the sorta stuff other folks accuse us folks of romanticizin’ and fussin’ over. That sorta stuff that keeps the most of us content and well pleased wasn’t good enough for Lionel. Not cause he didn’t like any of it, no he liked it all just fine. Those sorts of things weren’t good enough for Lionel because he was in love with an entirely different world made up of darkness

88 and forever, and when someone’s in love you can’t tell ‘em nothin’. Not so lucky for him, that different world was far out of his reach and there wasn’t too much he could do about it. Or at least that’s how he had reckoned it until one night when his desire to learn about what he hadn’t learned about yet overtook him like buzzards overtake fresh remains.

That night Lionel decided to find out for himself what the heavens were made of. He went out into the middle of an empty field behind his house and with one hell of a running start he jumped up at the moon. As soon as his bare feet left the grass covered in midnight dew he realized it was going to take a couple more jumps than just one. So he tried. He jumped and jumped and jump jump jumped ‘til he was so covered in sweat and strain it looked like he’d taken a right quick dip in the creek. After hours of this toil and trouble Lionel reckoned he just wasn’t gonna make it to the stars. He figgered he’d go back inside, shut his eyes, and forget that he ever even tried.

Now, you and I know better than to believe that eye shuttin’ can make you forget. To forget somethin’ you gotta either don’t care much about it to begin with or you gotta work extra hard to cut the nets your brain makes to hold on to those things you do care an awful lot about.

Forgettin’ is done very much so on purpose and with the kind of pushin’ away feelin’ you get when you fight with someone you don’t like one little bit at all. So of course he woke up the next mornin’ thinking of nothin’ else but trying again.

Night after night he returned to that field to perform what stared lookin’ like some sorta jumpin’, reachin’, stretchin’, and failin’ ritual. He was attracting attention which can either be real good or real bad dependin’ on who you’re askin’. On a few occasions folks from town would all go out and watch his routine. At the beginnin’ they were all rootin’ for him and wishin’

89 him the best of luck. Some even offered him advice on how to get a tad bit further in the night sky. It seemed like there was some sorta hope that came over everyone that was catchin’ like fire. Better than the best sermon preached down at church, Lionel was inspirin’ people to reach out for things they didn’t think they could ever get. To be fair and honest with ya, most of the time those folks didn’t ever get those things they didn’t think they could reach, but it sure was nice to hope.

Well, eventually as the case is with most fleetin’ feelings like hope, as time wore on and

Lionel kept failin’ people quit payin’ him any attention and went back to keepin’ their heads clear of any ambition of any sort. Seemed as though things were never going to change for

Lionel, the man with all that fancy paper, so why would things change for anyone else? I s’pose this is the part of story durin’ which you get to hear the things that other folks didn’t realize at the time. That’s one of the funnest things about stories that get told to ya, you know exactly what’s gonna happen next. The thing that folks didn’t realize at the time was that Lionel was growin’ taller than he ever was before. Lionel was gettin’ too big for his britches.

See now, every night after Lionel wouldn’t reach the stars he would wake up the next mornin’ and have trouble with understandin’ why his pajama pants were so much shorter than the night before. At first he figgered all the sweatin’ he did worked to shrink them in his sleep but over months of nights he started realizin’ that his pants weren’t shrinkin’ atall. Lionel’s legs were growin’. Soon enough it got to the point that he was knockin’ his head on the top of doorframes and quicker than he could realize what was goin’ on he had plum outgrown his house, which suited him just fine. No roof to sleep under meant he could spend more time out underneath that night sky he loved so much.

Lionel kept getting’ bigger and bigger and kept goin’ through new britches like children go through their clean dress clothes. Livin’ in the same field he jumped in and relyin’ on the good will and in most cases outright fright of the locals who saw fit to make sure he stayed fed, he grew to the point of bumpin’ into what he called the atmo-sphere. From what I understand of it all, the atmo-sphere is a sorta circular layer of heavy air that surrounds our Earth and keeps us in where we belong and safe from anything outer the ordinary that space has to offer. No one really knew what happened when ya passed through the atmo-sphere and that’s part of the reason why Lionel was prepared to climb right on top of it and finally be up there where the stars are.

So one last night after all his travel arrangements had been made and he had said thank you very much to all the folks who fed him and still believed in him no matter how many times he failed, Lionel stood in the middle of his field and looked up at the night sky. With a backard glance that didn’t say much but the simple ‘goodbye’ that most backards glances say, Lionel took one final jump that gave the town a good shakin’ and disappeared into that big great blackness above us.

No one is real sure where he went or if he has any plans of ever comin’ back down to tell anyone what he’s found out about the stars. Some say they occasionally see his face reflectin’ on the surface of the moon, and some folks say they’ve seen a star or two he’s picked up and thrown as far as he can. To be honest I can’t say I believe anythin’ of what those some folks say. What I do believe is that if you love the stars enough and you’re willin’ to give up your house and do enough growin’ to go through an awful lot of britches you’ll eventually figger out what to believe in. Then you’ll go out and get it.

Raymond Merle’s Story

An older man named Merle has a farm nearby where he grows watermelons and banana peppers and tomatoes. He’s what folks called a master gardener and everyone respects him pretty well for his talents in growin’ things out of the stubborn earth of his land. Not too many times before has that ground sprung forth with life before he got to it. That’s how come it stayed empty for so long. No one wanted foolin’ with it because it wasn’t worth foolin’ with. So the land stayed empty and barren until Merle came around and dug deep and hard into it, tillin’ it to productivity instead of waitin’ on it to decide whether or not it wanted to grow a bean sprout or two. “No” was not a word Merle was accustomed to hearin’ and he certainly wasn’t gonna take

“no” as an answer from a bunch of dirt and worms. But, growin’ blue ribbon winnin’ melons and tomatoes isn’t the only thing Merle spends his time doin’. He also works on what becomes award winning antique cars after he gets done with ‘em.

Like an archaeologist lookin’ out for prize dino-saur bones, he travels from junkyard to junkyard in search of his next project. Merle finds some rust covered atrocity and for the next few weeks engages in nothin’ more than wakin’ up, payin’ his respects to his own personal savior, and goin’ to the shop to work. This work is made up of beatin’ and pullin’ and smashin’ back to proper shape the body of the car. Merle is more than good at this and watchin’ him do so is like watchin’ a magician pull a fast one right underneath your nose. You can’t quite believe what you’re seein’ but you like watchin’ all the same. Yes indeed, he’s good at what he does and folks like him pretty well. Not a man or woman round these parts has anythin’ bad to say about

‘im or his watermelons. Course it wasn’t always that way. Useta be folks had plenty bad to say about Merle and his ways.

See, Merle has some fire in his blood that useta make him sorta hot-tempered from time to time. You could blame it on years of service in the military. You could blame it on his Irish grandpappy. You could blame it on his wife bein’ a cantankerous fool of a woman, but you prolly shouldn’t blame it on anythin’ on account of Merle might just hear ya. Whatever it was that made his bright blue eyes turn gray as thunderstorm clouds was as much a part of him as the burnt freckles on the bridge of his crooked nose. He could rant and rave like the best of ‘em, makin’ folks feel ashamed of even breathin’ at him funny.

Sometimes he would have good reason to make a stink like when the neighborhood hooligans would let their boredom get the best of ‘em and muss up his car shop. Most of the time though it wouldn’t be nothin’ more than a case of wakin’ up with a crick in his neck and decidin’ to take out all his frustrations on everyone but the pillow that gave him the crick. He’d start out with somethin’ subtle. Insults that was kinda vague and lazy enough to keep from offendin’ you too bad. Then he’d sneak in somethin’ more sharp and bitin’ before he’d come down hard enough to make you feel as low as a catfish in the Mississippi. As you can imagine, these sorts of episodes didn’t make him anyone’s favorite person, and to be frank he never really gave it much thought. Merle and his hot mean temper were inseparable and that was the way he liked it.

Fore you go jumpin’ at any sort of conclusions, hear this one through. It’s the only way to really get a good understandin’ of what’s goin’ on. See, Merle lived out there on his farm alone for the most part. He paid his wife to stay in a house more than two hours away from him, and he refused to install a telephone anywhere on his property. He didn’t even give his address out to anyone but the people he owed money to or the people who owed money to ‘im. After spendin’ near sixty years breakin’ his back for other folks he felt necessary to live the rest of his days for hisself. He had nothin’ on his mind or agenda but fishin’ in his lake, huntin’ in his woods,

93 plantin’ his garden, and rebuildin’ his cars. Yes indeed, he was livin’ the life he had always dreamt of and keepin’ his tongue sharp enough to drive folks away from him just protected that dream from ever bein’ stolen. That is what he did. He lived in the solitude he built all around him with the mean spirited words he spoke with his tongue sharper than his guttin’ knife.

Fore we go any further, somethin’ else needs explainin’ that oft times goes all together ignored. One of those things that people don’t realize about mean spirited folks and their sharp tongues is that those tongues don’t get sharp all on their own. No, you gotta take it out of your mouth and whittle it down nice and fine ‘til you can get it to cut the way you want. Jus’ like when older folk take out their teeth at night, mean spirited folks take their tongues out and have them soak in vinegar to soften ‘em up, gettin’ em ready for whittlin’ the next mornin’ before they put ‘em back in their mouths. You can pretend all you want that it ain’t true, but next time you get around someone bein’ ugly to other folks try to get near enough to smell their breath and just watch what happens. In most experiences with people like that, you won’t get closer than arms length, and that’s not near close enough to ‘em to figger out whether or not they’re soakin’ their tongue in vinegar. I tell ya the truth now if you ever got close enough to Merle you’d say he smelled like a whole gallon jar of pickles.

He went on and on with his daily routine of workin’ for himself and cussin’ everything else until early one mornin’ when the air was still cool and the stars were still makin’ their best attempts at shinin’. He went out to uncover his bass boat gettin’ ready for a day on the lake when he heard somethin’ he wasn’t used to hearin’. It was sorta a scufflin’ and high pitched whinin’ that wound down like a toy car. More annoyed than curious he tore back the crumblin’ blue tarp and found a litter of kittens with a momma no where in sight. Not sure of what to do with all that

94 fur and all those tiny claws, he replaced the tarp and retreated to the rockin’ chair on the front porch to do some deep thinkin’.

The farm Merle grew up on woulda had him drown the entire mess of ‘em on a count of they would just be another buncha mouths to feed. He grew up in some of the poorest times of this town and it wasn’t that folks didn’t like cats or kittens, they just liked bein’ able to buy their own food more. Merle started thinkin’ about where he could find some rope and a burlap sack big enough to do the job when he felt somethin’ pullin’ at his pants leg. He looked down and low and behold, climbin’ up his jeans leg was one of those flea bitten balls of fluff. It climbed all the way up his leg and sat in his lap, plum wore out from the journey, to take a well-earned quick nap. It coulda been the way that kitten purred or it coulda been the fact that Merle didn’t have a crick in his neck this mornin’. In either case all thoughts of rope and burlap sacks left his mind and he got to work takin’ care of somethin’ other than himself.

The momma cat never did come back, which left Merle with the predicament of givin’ away the kittens to folks down at the gas station. Most people there are just passin’ through, so they didn’t know any better about his sharp tongue and thanked him just like any other person when he handed them their new kitten and a bag of chow. After about a day of this business he was left with one small, orange colored orphan; the same one that crawled up his leg the day he found ‘em all in his boat. With reluctance he scooped it up and put it on the front seat of his truck to take back to the farm. Upon arrivin’, he got out of the truck and went into the house to get some food and water for the kitten. He didn’t want to starve the thing to death after goin’ to all the trouble of not drownin’ it.

Merle added to his routine everyday feedin’ and waterin’ the kitten that quick as you can blink turned into a big handsome tomcat. He did his very best to make sure that cat stayed outdoors, where all animals should stay in his opinion. The cat would do its very best to follow

Merle around from the house to the fields to the car shop to the lake, never once askin’ for anythin’ that was unreasonable, ‘cept wantin’ to get in the house. That seems to be the way of cats, doin’ what you don’t want them to do in as tricky a way as possible. Knowin’ this about

Merle’s new livin’ arrangements explains how things were real different after the cat got his tongue.

See, one night after Merle had headed off to bed, after he had taken his sharp tongue out to soak it in a cup of vinegar he kept by the kitchen sink that tomcat found a way to get inside.

He tore through the livin’ room, ripped the curtains in the bathroom, knocked books off of shelves and finally found himself sittin’ by the kitchen sink to survey his work. All seemed well

‘til somethin’ caught that cat’s eye that was too fascinatin’ to ignore. With his natural curiosity reachin’ new heights that cat watched Merle’s tongue bobbin’ up and down in the cup full of vinegar. Without knowin’ exactly what he was doin’ the cat knocked the cup over, picked that tongue up in his mouth like a mouse from the barn and carried it outdoors to bury it next to the trash burnin’ pile.

The next mornin’ was full of more trouble and torment than the night before it. In an effort to find his missin’ tongue Merle make his house look like a tornado tore straight through it, splittin’ it in two halves. He searched anywhere and everywhere stray tongues get to with no success. Frustrated he threw the front door open and stormed out onto the front porch to yell at no one when he realized that he couldn’t make a sound. He tried again in vain, surrounded by silence that should have been a few choice cussin’ words. At the point of boilin’ over, Merle

96 decided to retreat to his rockin’ chair and with the questionable innocence of a trouble makin’ child, that tomcat jumped up on Merle’s lap and purred itself to a well content sleep.

Since Merle lost his tongue he hasn’t had much to say in the way of bein’ mean to folks.

He hasn’t had much to say atall to be honest, and from what I understand that made folks like him even more ‘en more. Ain’t it fascinatin’ that folks would rather you say a whole lot of nothin’ to ‘em rather than any sort of somethin’ that smells of a whole gallon jar of pickles? In any case, that’s how come Merle’s got two stories. One from the parents of the town and one from their children. ‘Cept the parents took those old stories to the grave with ‘em and all that’s left is the good. As it oughta be all along.

Rhonda Wright’s Story

Her name was Rhonda and she told stories. Now, I don't mean that sort of story children tell their parents when they don't wanna fess up to who tied fire crackers to the cat's tail. I mean the good kind of story. The kind you tell around the hot bonfire on a cool summer night or the kind you tell when you don't quite want to talk about with the most exact words what's on your mind for fear of offendin' the folks your telling the story to. This is especially the case if those folks are a part of the story you're tellin', and that's often the case isn't it? Rhonda told stories that were fanstastic and full of things you won't believe without some hard convincin'. She told stories that made your stomach flip flop and your toes wiggle. She told stories that were meant to be good for you and she told stories that were meant to let you know what's good for you. She had a way about her that just made you trust her without thinkin’ twice about it and I spose that's what made her so good. That's what made people listen to her.

There’s no tellin’ when she’s gonna show up and there ain’t really no telllin’ when she’s gonna leave. She sorta floats in and out of town not answerin’ to too many folks about hardly anythin’ at all. Rumor has it she doesn’t make a habit of answerin’ to anyone no matter where she goes. See, Rhonda travelled an awful lot to places all over the world. One day she would be down in Mexico explorin’ a cave and the next she would be runnin’ the Buffalo in her boat. She could go from climbin’ a rockface in Colorado to fly-fishin’ in the South Fork. She had tabs with no one and didn’t lay claim to anythin’ but what she could carry on her back. No one could keep up with her goin’ ons and most people just assumed that she was more spirit than body. Bodies tend to keep ya tethered down to somethin’ where spirits sorta just float around the air grabbin’ any gust of wind they can to take ‘em somewhere new. That’s the way it was with Rhonda. The only way folks knew where she was goin’ tomorrow was figgerin’ out where she was yesterday.

Just like with the spirits in the wind, it was a guarantee the two would never be the same.

On the occasions she has shown up here in town you could recognize her by the long salt and pepper braid that hung down her back and the wrinkles on her face that showed ya her skin was loosin’ the battle with gravity. She wasn’t too terribly hard to spot to begin with on account of everyone knowin’ everyone around these parts. But in case there ever was any real question about who she was, her most tellin’ feature everyone recognized was her crooked smile. You could always tell what she really thought about ya dependin’ on how many teeth ya saw when she grinned. No teeth meant she was either only slightly tickeld with you or that she was deep in thought and the motion of gears turning in her head was bringin’ her much needed relaxation.

Just a few of the teeth on the right side of her mouth showin’ meant she was smilin’ about somethin’ she would never tell you bout. Finally, all her teeth showin’ meant she was lyin’.

Whether about how she was feelin’ or how she felt about you, all her teeth showin’ never really meant anything good. Sorta the other way around with most people if you think about it. Course, a lot of what Rhonda did was sorta the other way around with most people.

This basic fact wasn’t somethin’ that ever really bothered Rhonda and it wasn’t somethin’ other folks openly accused her of. There was sorta an understandin’ about her visits that everyone got used to pretty quick. She would show up in a town, tell her stories, smile all her different smiles, and leave. For a while everyone who came into contact with her would be under a sorta trance like they’d undergone a religious conversion of sorts, but just like with religious conversions it would wear off pretty quick like. It wasn’t that she was an easily forgotten kind of person, no. Just the opposite really. You don’t easily forget someone who has seen and done the amazin’ sorts of things Rhonda has. She was just hard to place because no one knew where she was from, who her kin were, or what her livin’ room looked like. That’s how

99 most folks figger one another out. You can tell a lot about a person dependin’ on whether they’re from a small town or big city, whether they’ve got two or nineteen aunts and uncles, and whether or not they prefer the look of wallpaper or drywall. Without bein’ able to use these sorta tricks to associate with a person you quickly forget anythin’ there is to know about ‘em. That’s why folks forgot Rhonda so often, her roots were as shallow as the roots of a strawberry vine.

When she did show back up though people could remember her just fine, and when she did show back up they listened to every word she had to say. Gatherin’ folks around her like light bulbs gather gnats she would sit down and begin one of her stories with a laugh and a deep rattlin’ breath. It was like the laugh kickstarted her words and the deep breath got the motor purrin’ just right so she could tell the perfect tale. In those few seconds she would have the entire group of listeners hangin’ on to her every word and ready to believe anythin’ she told ‘em. In those few seconds it was like Rhonda was ancient as the dirt beneath your feet and there wasn’t a thing alive or dead that she didn’t know about. Those few seconds hooked ya enough to keep you wantin’ to hear more. Unfortunate for us, after a round of stories she would disappear off into the night not to be heard from for weeks or months at a time. No one questioned where she had been when she finally made it back. They were mostly just happy as can be she was back.

‘Cept no one really ever asked Rhonda whether or not it made her happy. No, that never did cross anyone’s mind. I can tell ya though, she wasn’t. In those smiles she smiled and those laughs she laughed there was something wantin’ that normal folk don’t notice and even if they did couldn’t put their finger on anyhow. Only those who have travelled the way Rhonda has can understand that sort of want. It’s that sort of hunger in your heart that burns deep and slow and only gets the best of ya on the darkest of dark nights and in the middle of the most bitin’ gusts of

100 cold wind. That sort of want is the want you have when you realize one of the most troublin’ things you will ever notice in your lifetime. Rhonda realized that she was homeless.

Bein’ the sorta problem solvin’ person she’s always been, she didn’t lose much sleep over this revelation. Instead she approached it the same way she did every other problem she’s ever had, with a solution. She sat down and thought, riflin’ through all the stories she’s collected over the years and across the state lines to find the best answer to the question of what she should do about a home. Settlin’ down wasn’t particularly the sort of thing she was interested in, so that was out of the question from the get go. Carryin’ a whole house around with ‘er also seemed like a bit of a hassle considerin’ she needed enough room in her pack for more important things like food, water, and extra socks. Rhonda thought and thought for hours, recallin’ all that she’s learned from those stories she tells and she finally came to the most logical conclusion. Rhonda decided it was time to break her heart.

See, think back to all those funny little signs you see above the front door of folk’s homes. Those cross-stitched pillows and framed paintin’s that always say the same sorta thing about puttin’ roots down. You may not have seen them, but everyone here in town and any other town round these parts is familiar with exactly what those pillows say. They say that home is where the heart is. Rhonda recalled this and got to work breaking her heart into enough pieces that no matter where she went she would always be at home. At first it brought her an awful lot of pain seein’ as how she travelled so much, but eventually she got used to the feelin’ and even got good at it. The first few pieces were pretty big, but eventually she realized that she had to make ‘em small enough so she’d have enough heart to leave around the places she visited. Don’t you know it, as soon as she started leavin’ her heart behind, folks started recallin’ her easier.

They were under the impression that she belonged to them then because she was settin’ up a

101 home with ‘em. She never felt the need to correct ‘em or nothin’. She just smiled that smile where just a few of the teeth on the right side of her mouth were showin’ and quietly moved on to the next town. Rhonda quietly moved on to her next home.

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The Ragdoll’s Story

Now what you have there in your hand is a ragdoll that’s seen some troubling times. See how her yarn hair tatters at the ends and her dress has holes? Her eyes aren’t even straight anymore; they’re all catawampus from years of wear and tear. You can barely see the smile that was painted on her face some time ago. She showed up one day on the front porch in the mouth of one of the hounds. They’re always picking up things that don’t belong to them like socks fallen off the line or chess pieces left out in the yard under a tree. That’s how she came to me, in a sad state indeed. With that kind of care and abandon I have strong suspicions that doll was left behind somewhere by a child. Children are odd like that. They chase after something with heavy want for a few days at a time before they figger out something else that they want even heavier than the previous something. Like they’re never gonna be happy with what they’ve got right in front of ‘em. Come to think of it, I spose adults are odd like that too. In any case the child that owned that ragdoll musta found something else because that doll was left behind.

Maybe on purpose. Maybe a little less on purpose. Maybe that child has long since grown up and that’s the main reason behind all the old dirt and grit you see on that doll’s face. Maybe she didn’t belong to a child atall. Maybe she belonged to a King or maybe she was a part of a collection of dolls just like her that travelled round the country to have folks look at ‘em. Or maybe that doll showed up here just to have us talk about her for a spell and before we know itshe’ll be catchin’ a ride in the mouth of another hound to get along to the next porch full of folks willing to pay her attention and talk about her a while. That seems to be the funny way of human women, and I reckon it’s about the same with doll women too.

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Maybe no one knows where that doll came from and maybe no one ever will. To be fair, I ain’t never been one for maybes so perhaps we ought to stop that sorta thing before we get too far into it. I’m not too good at it and after all, maybes never end at just one you know. They grow and spread killin’ your thoughts just like kudzu climbs and smothers the trees fool enough to welcome it into a hug. We’d be sittin’ here for weeks wearin’ our heads and jaws out thinkin’ and talkin’ of all the sorts of maybes we could come up with for that doll. For the sake of time and for the sake of bein’ simple about it, we’ll put all those maybes, perhaps, and could bes aside. We’ll just say that doll belonged to a child of some sort. And that doll has seen some troubling times.

‘Fore you go gettin’ all teary eyed and feelin’ pity for that ragdoll you just remember something worth your rememberin’. She wouldn’t a seen any of those troublin’ times if she wouldn’t a been built for em. Think on that a bit and then decide whether or not you wanna waste your cryin’ on her. The same way you don’t build a boat to sit on the land, and you don’t build a barrel to be empty. That doll was made to face the ugly things in life and if she didn’t she’d be useless to us all. People and things that don’t fulfill their purposes are not worth their weight in tin cans and bottlecaps. Only thing is, no one ever asks the boat if they want to be a boat, or the barrel if they want to be a barrel, and absolutely no one tells a boat or barrel how they’re supposed to float or hold. Followin the tradition of not askin’ or tellin’, no one asked the ragdoll if she wanted to be a ragdoll and once she couldn’t do anything about what she was, no one told her how to be a ragdoll. She couldn’t remember who made her, and from what I understand of her that’s always bothered her a bit.

Then again, folks don’t pay too much attention to the worries and wants of ragdolls, so her maker might not even hear her at all even if she were right in front of him hollerin’ and

104 screamin’. She’s spent long sunsets sittin’ on the side of hills wonderin’ if she would ever figger out what her purpose was in bein’ the one to come face to face with all the bad things in the world. What went into this decision makin’ and why wasn’t she consulted? Would she even had a choice in the matter if she had been asked? Or would it be another one of those situations where folks were talkin’ about what they thought would be best for her when she was sittin’ right in the middle of em all. Was it like that when the ragdoll was given the hard job of dealin’ with the sadness that creeps like the cold and flows like rivers into our hearts and homes? Ain’t no real way of knowin’ less you ask the one who made her, and while I’ve seen dolls like her made a time or two before, I haven’t seen em made like her much more than that.

You see, one of my old friends used to dabble in this sort of thing and he always made good and sure that each doll he made was just as unique as the one before it. From the kind of yarn he used in their hair to the color of the paint he used on their eyes he wanted every single thread to be different from the doll before. That way they could be bout tellin’ one another apart instead of him havin’ to assign each of ‘em a name to represent who they were. No one could figure out why that doll maker, who treated his creations with the sorta care and kindness like he would any child of his own, refused to name his dolls. That’s the thing that confused most folks into a fit when it came to him. See, people like assignin’ names to things they wanna keep round for a while and they’re real good about jumpin’ to namin’ things quick, especially when it comes to things they feel as strong about as they do children.

That’s something I never quite understood myself. We all hesitate and make fusses over what to name our pups and fillies and we go and figure out what exactly we should be naming them accordin’ to how their way is. Folks choose names right and fittin’ for their animals, but not with their own young. As soon as a child is born people already know what they plan on

105 naming it based on some pre disposed notion of who they want that child to grow into bein’.

Ain’t that funny? Folks’ll treat their critters with more respect and independence to be what they were born to be than their very own young.

I spose that’s just one of those foolish traditions we learnt many a hundred years ago and despite our better judgment just never gave up, ‘long with elaborate weddings and fancy shoes you’re not allowed to get dirt on. Well for the fellow who made dolls, he felt like it wasn’t worth namin’ them if he didn’t yet know what they were gonna be like. He got a few funny looks and more than his fair share of sideways stares, but he was jus’ fine with that. He knows better than to worry with the opinions of other folks. He knows an awful lot else outside of how to ignore people and their judgments, and I figgered out of anyone else within my short reach he’d be able to explain that doll’s rips and tears well enough to help her find her story and some peace concernin’ her ragged condition. It’s a bothersome thing havin’ her around so long and not knowin’ how to help her in any way.

I took that doll to his shack out in the woods where he spent most of his time doin’ whatever he felt like doin’ and I asked, “Where you reckon this doll came from?” After lookin’ her over with his squinty eyes and holdin’ her up to the sunlight for better inspection, he said he reckons he hasn’t just seen a ragdoll like her before, but that he’s made one like her before. In fact, he says he gets this naggin’ feelin’ deep down in the pit of his gut that he did make that ragdoll; he just can’t recognize ‘er well enough to make any bindin’ promises about that. You see, in his peak he made nearly a hundred dolls a day and knowin’ that, there ain’t no way you can blame him for forgettin’ one or two of em. He went on for a bit about the different quality of thread and cloth a good sorta ragdoll is made of. He showed me all the colors of paint he used for

106 eyes and mouths and the various kinds of stuffin’ he had based on what the doll was to be used for. These are things I did not know.

Softer, gentler stuffin’ is used in dolls for real little children while thicker more durable stuffin’ is used in dolls for school aged children. He told me the stuffin’ in my rag doll was stuffin’ folks didn’t typically use anymore. Not cause anythin’ was wrong with it; it was just too hard to find these days. That doll’s stuffin’ had a soft texture to it, but was tough enough for the most rambunctious of child. Those sorts of insides are rare and my friend didn’t know of many folks who knew how to get it. That’s why he reckons he was the one who sewed that little ragdoll together, and in that newfound feelin’ of obligation he sat down with a sharp needle and big knot of stray thread.

After pickin’ through that knot and choosin’ the color that made the most sense in matchin her face he picked up that doll who was nearly all swallered up by his massive hands covered in grease and dirt and with the tenderness of a mother holdin’ her newborn, plunged the needle into the doll’s fabric skin. This went on for some time and with a constant swappin’ out of thread and hardly a word in my direction my old friend pulled that ragdoll back together. Stitches covered her arms and face in a pattern that reminded ya of cobwebs in the moonlight, but they were strong stitches and if you sorta crossed your eyes, she looked good as new. Like nothin’ ever touched her, like she wasn’t made to face those ugly things in life atall. Though this particular ragdoll had seen those hard times and faced beatin’s, breakin’s, and bein’ tossed aside she was stitched all up so no one would ever be the wiser. Gently he handed her back to me and went about his business of tellin’ me all the different ways to plant taters.

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Visits with my old friend typically go this sort of way. While he makes attempts at learnin me something new, I listen to the best of my ability and the time passes away like sunlight on a warm summer evening: quickly and makin’ you wish you had more of it. I can’t pretend like I remember much of what he learns me, but I will remember that day full of that sorta silence that means more than any of the big words the smartest folk can think of or say. I thanked him and I left him there in his shack full of curious things that give folks plenty to gossip about and disapprove of, but he was jus’ fine with that. He knows better than to worry with the opinions of other folks.

I s’pose there ain’t no way of knowin’ that doll’s story for sure, but I will tell ya that the different colored stitches that are holdin’ her skin together and the dirt spots and grease stains that smudge her useta be rosy cheeks tell ya more of her story than anyone or anything else could. Bein’ that’s all we’ve got to work with, I s’pose that’ll be where we’re always gonna have to start and end with ‘er. Seems like that visit to my old friend cleared up most of the questions she had for why she was made a ragdoll instead of a barrel or boat. I reckon the stichin’ he did for her fixed enough of somethin’ to keep her from sittin’ on hillsides and wonderin’ why she was made to suffer. I felt like she knew she was made to bear the burdens of others cause no one else was made to bear the burdens quite like herself. Now like I said, I don’t recall much of what he learns me and there are things that I do not know, but it seems to me like those stitches helped that little ragdoll. I believe those stitches helped her meet her maker.

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