Tuesday, May 24, 2016

C028. Baer (p. 53). The End of Mr. Bear

This is Chase028.

Types ATU0049 Bear and Honey
Motifs K1023 Bear and Honey
K0714.3 dupe tricked into entering hollow tree

Notes
Gerber has analogy with Sudanese tale about jackal and hyena where Hyena gets his foot in a bee-hold and is stung to death.

Baer writes against Parsons' indictment of Harris using a written outline as his source because the outline is dated 1881, and the story was published in 1880. Parsons "is further ignoring Harris's own assertions that his requests for outlines were made in order that he might verify the tale either as a jog to his memory of a tale he had heard on the plantation in the 1860s or as an entry to local negro storytellers."

Thompson has a Basuto parallel, and Mofokeng has several South African versions: jackal and wolf, tortoise and baboon, etc.

Baer concludes "this could be called an Indo-African-European tale, which the African slaves would have known in Africa and brouther with them to the New World."

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