than it was to my prime.
But it would be no mystery at all if this new edition were to be
more popular than the old one. Do you know why? Because you
have taken it under your hand and made it yours. Because you have
breathed the breath of life into these amiable brethren of wood
and field. Because, by a stroke here and a touch there, you have
conveyed into their quaint antics the illumination of your own
inimitable humor, which is as true to our sun and soil as it is
to the spirit and essence of the matter set forth.
The book was mine, but now you have made it yours, both sap and
pith. Take it, therefore, my dear Frost, and believe me,
faithfully yours,
Joel Chandler Harris
INTRODUCTION
I am advised by my publishers that this book is to be included in
their catalogue of humorous publications, and this friendly
warning gives me an opportunity to say that however humorous it
may be in effect, its intention is perfectly serious; and, even
if it were otherwise, it seems to me that a volume written wholly
in dialect must have its solemn, not to say melancholy, features.
With respect to the Folk-Lore scenes, my purpose has been to
preserve the legends themselves in their original simplicity, and
to wed them permanently to the quaint dialect--if, indeed, it can
be called a dialect--through the medium of which they have become
a part of the domestic history of every Southern family; and I
have endeavored to give to the whole a genuine flavor of the old
plantation.
Each legend has its variants, but in every instance I have
retained that particular version which seemed to me to be the
most characteristic, and have given it without embellishment and
without exaggeration.
The dialect, it will be observed, is wholly different from that
of the Hon. Pompey Smash and his literary descendants, and
different also from the intolerable misrepresentations of the
minstrel stage, but it is at least phonetically genuine.
Nevertheless, if the language of Uncle Remus fails to give vivid
hints of the really poetic imagination of the negro; if it fails
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