The Tales of Uncle Remus / Сказки дядюшки Римуса. Книга для чтения на английском языке

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My lasting memories of my grandmother are of her telling me stories. I know that she told folktales and fairy tales from many parts of the world. I cried when she told Andersen’s Little Match Girl – it was so beautiful and so sad. But my favorites, and I’m sure they were hers as well, were the Brer Rabbit stories. I howled with laughter when Brer Rabbit asked the Tar Baby “and how does your symptoms segashuate?” My grandmother did not attempt to use the dialect of Joel Chandler Harris because, even though she had been born on a Maryland plantation in 1862, she did not speak the way Harris interpreted slave speech. Her mother had told her the stories and she told them to me with love and affection as she sat in her favorite rocking chair in the middle of a large, old-fashioned kitchen. It was a way for her to entertain me as she watched her cooking.

In 1917 when I was old enough to go to school I still wanted to hear about Brer Rabbit and Miz Meadows and the gals, so I would rush home to be there by “pot-watching” time. “Grandma,” I’d ask, “tell about how Brer Rabbit tricked Brer Fox.” We would get comfortable[1] and start down Brer Rabbit’s road. Small, helpless Brer Rabbit always defeated his adversaries – the large animals – with his wit, humor, and wisdom. In my smallness I related to the clever little hare who could always get out of the most difficult situations through his sharp wit.

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