The Salt Lake herald-Republican. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1909-1918, 1910-03-06
Folklore Of The Old South
Tales Miss Lucille Finch Learned From Black Nanny

, length fell, and started eff down the road,
on fishing bent.
But alas! who for y reckon Simon
Peter meet face to face? De Lawdy
hisse'fi De LaWdy wuz all dress up fun
head to foot in his white duck pan ses an
a stoVepipe hat on top his haid."
The story teller hardly takes time to
explain, and indeed her manner of mar
ration makes the above description con-
tain nothing but reverence. The child
like spirit that could conceive only in
terms of it's own limited, worldly expe-
rience and clothed its Deity with as gor-
geous attributes as it knew, should need
no explanation; nor should the thought
Lawdy's heavn'' to the more comfortable
rocking chairs while the mere angels had
TO content themselves with ordinary
chairs OF the split bottom variety.
Miss Lucine Finch is a nanny baby
herself, and her entire purpose and
pleasure is to recreate the vanished epoch
OF a simple, primitive people, among a
few last representatives of which she was
reared. Her tales have never been pub
llshed. never written, and Miss Finch
doubts whether she herself could write
them down verbatim as she tells them
They are of the primitive type of folk
lore which does not know written Ian
guage, but passes from lip to lip, chang
ing as it passes.
Such was the inspiration of Miss
Finch, for the tales have all been told
her by her old nanny, a negro woman
OF royal blood, stolen away in girlhood
from her African home, and caring for
three generations of children in Miss
Einch's family on a Louisiana planta-
ton. So this nanny baby" grew up
on the weird old tales, "'ligeous stories
and all, and her retelling of them is
much more than a mimicry. The tales
have become a part of her, too.
AT times, IN a break between stories
the story teller bursts into a gush of
typically wild, eerie negro melody. There
is no semblance of the artificial ragtime.
Without accompaniment, rhythmically
tuneful, ii carries itself along with the
aid of ridiculously incongruous words. The
listener closes his eyes and in fancy re-
places the singer with the veritable old
time nanny or plantation negro.
Always on the alert for any additional
bit to add to her precious store OF old
negro lore and belief and custom, and
the bits are becoming scarce and more
scarce. Miss Finch made a most pre-
cious find from an extraordinary source
last winter while visiting her southern
home.
Hearing strains Of wonderful harmony,
embodying the inevitable rhythmic beat,
beat, beat, at regular intervals of the
Negroes music, she rushed to the window.
There she discovered that the wonderful
harmony was the vocal accompaniment
or the work OF a chain gang on the
street-a chain gang composed of the
towns worst law breakers. The essence
of their characteristic music was stin in
them and they raised their voices in
beautlful Improvisation, regulating its ca
dence and rhythm to the downward stroke
of the pick.
Miss Finch does not pretend to laud
the existing race. She but does rever-
ence to the simple, childlike spirit of
a people literally vanished Especially
she does reverence to the memory of her
own nanny, the self-asserted "alabaster
princess" who, she declares, embodied,
every trait of simple royalty.
Miss Finch has published a series Of
sketches in the American Magazine and
the Century, sketches from life of mann
my and others of the old type negroes
the slaves who stayed" when freedom
was proclaimed. Her unpublished negro
stories have gained a wide reputation
as an Interpretation of a vanished people
and she is kept busy going from place
to place. and Informally telling and re-
telling them to audiences who cannot
hear enough Of them. She steadfasflv
refuses offers to print them; they are
part OF herself and so they continue n
be unpublished stories-New York sun.