The Annotated African American Folktales

by Henry Louis Gates

  Freud tells us in Totem and Taboo that we mourn the dead yet also harbor, along with feelings of tenderness, hostility toward them. Those unconscious feelings of hostility manifest themselves in the form of demons, beings projected into the outside world who rejoice in our misfortune and try to murder us. “The Talking Skull” engages with questions of mourning, burial, and coming to terms with the dead, who can haunt us beyond the grave as they seek to coerce the living into joining them.

  A variant of “The Talking Skull,” but with a vibrantly alive speaker, “The Hunter and the Tortoise” also shows some kinship with folktales about selkies, mermaids, swan maidens, and all those animal brides who leave their natural habitats to live with humans and move from nature to culture. “The Hunter and the Tortoise” is less about ancestors and burial rites than about human indiscretion and lack of reverence for natural beauty.

  THE TALKING SKULL

  A hunter goes into the bush. He finds an old human skull. The hunter says: “What brought you here?” The skull answers: “Talking brought me here.” The hunter runs off. He runs to the king. He tells the king: “I found a dry human skull in the bush. It asks you how its mother and father are.”

  The king says: “Never since my mother bore me have I heard that a dead skull can speak.” The king summons the Alkali, the Saba, and the Degi and asks them if they have ever heard the like. None of the wise men has heard the like, and they decide to send a guard out with the hunter into the bush to find out if his story is true and, if so, to learn the reason for it. The guard accompanies the hunter into the bush with the order to kill him on the spot should he have lied. The guard and the hunter come to the skull. The hunter addresses the skull: “Skull, speak.” The skull is silent. The hunter asks as before, “What brought you here?” The skull does not answer. All day long the hunter begs the skull to speak, but it does not answer. In the evening the guard tells the hunter to make the skull speak and when he cannot, they kill him in accordance with the king’s command.

  After the guard leaves, the skull opens its jaws and asks the dead hunter’s head: “What brought you here?” The dead hunter replies: “Talking brought me here.”

  SOURCE: Leo Frobenius, African Genesis, 161–62.

  The German archaeologist and ethnologist Leo Frobenius felt it his duty to establish a “science of culture” by exploring zones unknown to Europeans and gathering images and stories to map out the many contact areas among civilizations. He was determined to establish broad networks of knowledge that would establish connections rather than make distinctions. In the version of “The Talking Skull” recorded by him, we can see the remnants of an emphasis on remembering ancestors. The skull is purported to ask the king about its own parents, a reminder to remember the dead.

  THE SKULL THAT TALKED BACK

  This was uh man. His name was High Walker.1 He walked into a bone yard with skull-heads and other bones. So he would call them, “Rise up bloody bones2 and shake yo’self.” And de bones would rise up and come together, and shake theirselves and part and lay back down. Then he would say to hisself, “High Walker,” and de bones would say, “Be walkin’.”

  When he’d git off a little way, he’d look back over his shoulder and shake hisself and say, “High Walker and bloody bones,” and de bones would shake theirselves. Therefore he knowed he had power.

  So uh man sold hisself to de high chief devil. He give ’im his whole soul and body tuh do ez he pleased wid it. He went out in uh drift uh woods and laid down flat on his back beyond all dese skull heads and bloody bones and said, “Go ’way Lawd, and come here Devil and do as you please wid me. Cause Ah want tuh do everything in de world dats wrong and never do nothing right.”

  And he dried up and died away on doin’ wrong. His meat all left his bones and de bones all wuz separated.

  And at dat time High Walker walked upon his skull head and kicked and kicked it on ahead of him a many and a many times and said tuh it, “Rise up and shake yo’self. High Walker is here.”

  Ole skull head wouldn’t say nothin’. He looked back over his shoulder cause he heard some noises behind him and said, “Bloody bones you won’t say nothin’ yet. Rise tuh de power in de flesh.”

  Den de skull head said, “My mouf brought me here and if you don’t mind, you’n will bring you here.”

  High Walker went on back to his white folks and told de white man dat a dry skull head wuz talkin’ in de drift today. White man say he didn’t believe it.

  “Well, if you don’ believe it, come go wid me and Ah’ll prove it. And if it don’t speak, you kin chop mah head off right where it at.”

  So de white man and High Walker went back in de drift tuh find dis ole skull head. So when he walked up tuh it, he begin tuh kick and kick de ole skull head, but it wouldn’t say nothin’. High Walker looked at de white man and seen ’im whettin’ his knife. Whettin’ it hard and de sound of it said rick-de-rick, rick-de-rick, rick-de-rick! So High Walker kicked and kicked dat ol skull head and called it many and many uh time, but it never said nothin’. So de white man cut off High Walker’s head.

  And de ole dry skull head said, “See dat now! Ah told you dat mouf brought me here and if you didn’t mind out it’d bring you here.”

  So de bloody bones riz up and shook they selves seben times and de white man got skeered and said, “What you mean by dis?”

  De bloody bones say, “We got High Walker and we all bloody bones now in de drift together.”

  SOURCE: Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men, 173–75.

  Hurston’s inclusion of the tale in her anthology reflects a sense of respect for ancestors and their resting places. That she herself was buried in an unmarked grave is particularly ironic, especially since she wrote to W. E. B. Du Bois in 1945 about a plan to set up a “cemetery for the illustrious Negro dead.” “We must assume the responsibility of their graves being known and honored,” she added, “since the lack of such a tangible thing allows our people to forget, and their spirits to evaporate” (Kaplan 2002, 18). For her, death rites and reverence for sacred ground enabled the living to carry on and draw sustenance from the lives of ancestors.

  “The Skull That Talked Back,” from Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men. Copyright 1935 by Zora Neale Hurston; renewed ©1963 by John C. Hurston and Joel Hurston. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

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  1 High Walker: The name is telling in that it points to the mobility of the chief character and contrasts him to the dead, with their bones resting in or on the ground. And “high” of course hints at the arrogance that he puts on display in his encounters with the dead, for whom he fails to display proper reverence.

  2 bloody bones: “Rawhead and Bloody-Bones” is the name of a bogeyman used to frighten children. The figure can be traced back to England (the earliest mention of the monster in print dates to 1550), from where he migrated to North America, and especially to the U.S. South.

  DIVIDING SOULS

  During the period of slavery time Old Marster always kept one slave that would keep him posted on the others, so that he would know how to deal with them when they got unruly. So this slave was walking around in the moonlight one night. And he heard a noise coming from the cemetery. And it was two slaves counting apples, which they had stole from Old Master’s orchard. They couldn’t count, so they were exchanging ’em.

  “You take dis un and I’ll take dat un. Dis un’s yours and dat un’s mine.”

  So this slave hear them, and he listened, and he ran back to Old Marster. And running he fell over a skeleton head, and he spoke to the skeleton’s head, “What you doing here?”

  And the skeleton head said, “Same thing got me here will get you here.”

  So he told Old Marster when he got to the house that the Devil and the Good Lord was in the cemetery counting out souls. “Dis un’s yours and dat un’s mine, dis un’s yours and dat un’s mine.”

  Old Marster didn’t
believe him, but he went with him to the cemetery. And Old Marster told him, said, “Now if the Devil and the Good Lord ain’t counting out souls, I’m going to cut your head off.”

  Sure enough the slaves had gone and Old Marster didn’t hear anything, and he cut John’s head off. Then John’s head fell beside the skeleton head. Then the head turned over and said, “I told you something that got me here would get you here. You talk too much.”

  (That’s one my daddy would tell us when we were talking too much.)

  SOURCE: Richard M. Dorson, ed., American Negro Folktales, 146–47.

  A. J. King and Beulah Tate told this tale and “Talking Bones” to the American folklorist Richard Dorson. The first combines a frequently told tale about a man who thinks he hears God and the Devil dividing up souls in a graveyard (usually thieves dividing up loot) with the tale of the talking skull. Both accounts paradoxically use “talk” to warn others about keeping your mouth shut.

  TALKING BONES

  They used to carry the slaves out in the woods and leave them there. If they killed them—just like dead animals. There wasn’t any burying then. It used to be a secret, between one plantation and another, when they beat up their hands and carried them off.

  So John was walking out in the woods and seed a skeleton. He says: “This looks like a human. I wonder what he’s doing out here.” And the skeleton said, “Tongue is the cause of my being here.” So John ran back to old Marster and said, “The skeleton at the edge of the woods is talking.” Old Marster didn’t believe him and went to see. And a great many people came too. They said “Make the bones talk.” But the skeleton wouldn’t talk. So they beat John to death, and left him there. And then the bones talked. They said, “Tongue brought us here, and tongue brought you here.”

  SOURCE: Richard M. Dorson, ed., American Negro Folktales, 147–48.

  This tale gives us the backstory to the appearance of a skull in the woods. An African tale about a talking skull is repurposed here as a means of communicating information about plantation practices and as a cautionary tale.

  TALKS TOO MUCH

  Man goin’ along found skeleton of a man’s head. “Ol’ Head, how come you here?” – “Mouth brought me here. Mouth’s goin’ to bring you here.” He goes up to de town an’ tellin’ about de ol’ head. A great crowd of people went with him down there. They called on this head to talk to them. The head never said nothin’. They fell on this feller an’ beat him. The ol’ Head turned an’ said, “Didn’t I tell you Mouth was goin’ to bring you here?”

  Elsie Clews Parsons described the tale below as a “second version” of the first.

  In slave’y time colored man travellin’ ’long came to where dere was a terrapin. Terrapin spoke to him. Said, “One day you shall be free.” He done him so much good, he jus’ couldn’ keep it. Goes up to his master’s house, an’ says, “A Terrapin spoke to me this mornin’.” An’ his master say, “What did he say?”—“One day you shall be free.”—“I’m goin’ down here, an’ if this terrapin don’t talk to me, I’m goin’ to whip you to death.” So he called upon de terrapin, an’ he went back in his house. He commence whippin’ dis colored feller. He near by whipped him to death. So de ol’ terrapin raised up on his legs an’ says, “It’s bad to talk too much.”

  SOURCE: Elsie Clews Parsons, “Tales from Guilford County, North Carolina,” Journal of American Folklore 30 (1917), 176–77.

  The two tales were told to the folklorist Elsie Clews Parsons by Sam Cruse, a thirty-year-old African American man who had spent time in Ohio and was living in North Carolina. The stories reveal just how closely connected “The Talking Skull” is with “The Hunter and the Tortoise.”

  THE HUNTER AND THE TORTOISE

  A village hunter had one day gone farther afield than usual. Coming to a part of the forest with which he was unacquainted, he was astonished to hear an unfamiliar voice singing. He listened; this was the song:

  It is man who forces himself on things,

  Not things which force themselves on him.

  The singing was accompanied by sweet music—which entirely charmed the hunter’s heart.

  When the little song was finished, the hunter peeped through the branches to see who the singer could be. Imagine his amazement when he found it was none other than a tortoise, with a tiny harp slung in front of her. Never had he seen such a marvelous thing.

  Time after time he returned to the same place in order to listen to this wonderful creature. At last he persuaded her to let him carry her back to his hut, that he might enjoy her singing daily in comfort. This she permitted, only on the understanding that she sang to him alone.

  The hunter did not remain content with this arrangement, however. Soon he began to wish that he could show this wonderful tortoise off to all the world, and thereby thought he would gain great honor. He told the secret, first to one, then to another, until finally it reached the ears of the chief himself. The hunter was ordered to come and tell his tale before the Assembly. When he described the tortoise who sang and played on the harp, the people shouted in scorn. They refused to believe him.

  At last he said, “If I do not speak truth, I give you leave to kill me. Tomorrow I will bring the tortoise to this place and you may all hear her. If she cannot do as I say, I am willing to die.” “Good,” replied the people, “and if the tortoise can do as you say, we give you leave to punish us in any way you choose.”

  The matter being then settled, the hunter returned home, well pleased with the prospect. As soon as the morrow dawned, he carried tortoise and harp down to the Assembly Place—where a table had been placed ready for her. Everyone gathered round to listen. But no song came. The people were very patient, and quite willing to give both tortoise and hunter a chance. Hours went by, and, to the hunter’s dismay and shame, the tortoise remained mute. He tried every means in his power to coax her to sing, but in vain. The people at first whispered, then spoke outright, in scorn of the boaster and his claims.

  Night came on and brought with it the hunter’s doom. As the last ray of the setting sun faded, he was beheaded. The instant this had happened the tortoise spoke. The people looked at one another in troubled wonder: “Our brother spoke truth, then, and we have killed him.” The tortoise, however, went on to explain. “He brought his punishment on himself. I led a happy life in the forest, singing my little song. He was not content to come and listen to me. He had to tell my secret (which did not at all concern him) to all the world. Had he not tried to make a show of me this would never have happened.”

  It is man who forces himself on things,

  Not things which force themselves on him.

  SOURCE: William Henry Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, West African Folk-Tales, 119–21.

  This story was recorded in Accra, Ghana, in the early part of the twentieth century.

  WHAT THE FROG SAID

  Uncle Mooney was a dreamer. Not far from the big house was a tank, or reservoir. He liked to sit beside the tank and think. He hoped some day to be a free man. Some one had told him that animals used to talk, and Uncle Mooney thought that some day some animal might talk to him and tell him how to get his freedom.

  Finally, one day while he was seated near the edge of the tank, he saw a big bullfrog at the edge of the water. Uncle Mooney picked up a pebble and threw it at the frog, striking him in the side. As the stone struck the frog, the frog said, “Don’ do dat. Le’s be frien’s.”

  Uncle Mooney was almost struck dumb when the frog spoke to him, but every morning after that he passed the tank on his way to the field, and the frog would say, “Good mawnin’,” and ask Uncle Mooney how he felt. Uncle Mooney always wanted to talk longer, but the frog would only say, “Good mawnin’,” and ask how he felt.

  One day the thought occurred to Uncle Mooney that a good way to gain his freedom would be to introduce his master to this wonderful talking frog down at the tank. So that evening he called his master and said, “Massa, dere’s uh frog down to de tank dat ta
lks.”

  “Oh, no,” said the master, “you know that is not true. If it is, I will give you your freedom, but if it is not true, I am going to give you the worst beating you ever had.”

  “Aw right, Massa, aw right,” said Uncle Mooney, “yuh jes’ lemme show yuh.”

  The next morning the master went with Uncle Mooney to the tank, and, sure enough, there was the frog waiting as usual. “Good mawnin’,” said Uncle Mooney to the frog. The frog did not answer. Uncle Mooney, disappointed, spoke again, “Good mawnin’.” The frog did not answer. The master then ordered Uncle Mooney back to the house and there gave him a severe whipping.

  The next morning Uncle Mooney stopped by the tank again. The frog was waiting for him as usual. “Good mawnin’,” said Uncle Mooney.

  “Good mawnin’,” said the frog.

  “How cum yuh didn’ say nuffin’ yistiddy?” asked Uncle Mooney.

  “ ’Case,” said the frog. “Ah tol’ yuh de othah day, niggah, yuh talk too much.”

  ADDENDUM TO “WHAT THE FROG SAID”

  “Not long ago,” writes Mrs. Seb F. Caldwell, of Mt. Pleasant, Texas, to the editor, “I was with a fishing party on Sulphur River. While there we talked with an old Negro man who owns a farm near the river on which he has lived for more than thirty years. He was full of lore about the woods, the river, and animals, and along with other matters he told us of a visionary boy who once upon a time was fishing in the very hole where we were fishing.