Except for the beast fables, which are anciently derived from the world's multi-racial heritage, American Negro humor is rooted in... social oppression. And--again excepting the animal fables--it differs from classical Western and white American humor in another respect. It is totally devoid of those myth-making and myth-transmuting elements and symbols that appeal so deeply to the American mind in the works of the tall-tale tellers such as Davy Crockett, Seba Smith, Mike Fink, and Mark Twain. There are no Rip Van Winkles, Johnny Appleseeds, Paul Bunyans, or Calamity Janes--and none bearing the faintest resemblance to them--in Negro American humor. The myth-making figures in the literature of black Americans are the blues-haunted characters. They are Stagolee, John Henry, and Big Boy; they are Mary Lou, Frankie, and Sister Caroline. And they are not funny, least of all to the nameless hundreds of folk-Negroes who created them and the still-living thousands who love them and perpetuate them in song and story.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But yet that holden this tale a folly, As of a fox, or of a cock and hen,... Taketh the morality, good men. For Saint Paul saith that all that written is, To our doctrine it is y-writ, ywis; Taketh the fruit, and let the chaff be still.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
My tale is of a cock, as ye may hear, That took his counsel of his wife, with sorrow,... To walken in the yard upon that morrow That he had met the dream that I you told. Womenes counsels been full ofte cold;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When we our betters see bearing our woes, We scarcely think our miseries our foes.... Who alone suffers, suffers most i' the mind, Leaving free things and happy shows behind. But then the mind much sufferance doth o'er skip, When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hermione. Pray you sit by us, And tell's a tale.... Mamillius. Merry or sad shall't be? Hermione. As merry as you will. Mamillius. A sad tale's best for winter. I have one Of sprites and goblins.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Listen. The minstrels sing In the departed villages. The nightingale,... Dust in the buried wood, flies on the grains of her wings And spells on the winds of the dead his winter's tale.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of ...a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humili...ty and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »