ll under the heading commonly denominated
"Nature Rhymes." By actual count more than a hundred and fifty recorded
by the writer have something in their stanzas concerning some animal. I
do not think the makers of these Rhymes were makers of Nature Rhymes in
the ordinary sense of the term. It would really be more to the point to
call them "Animal Rhymes" instead of "Nature Rhymes." With the exception
of about a half dozen Rhymes which mention some kind of tree or plant,
all the other Rhymes with Nature allusions pertain to animals. The Uncle
Remus stories recorded by Joel Chandler Harris are practically all
animal stories. I have said in my foregoing discussion that the Negro
communed with Nature and she gave him Rhymes for amusement. This is
true, but when we say "communed" we simply express a vague intangible
something the existence of which lives somewhere in a kind of mental
fiction.

Though I was brought up with the Rhymes I make no pretensions that I
really know why so many of them were made concerning the animal world. I
have heard no Negro tradition on this point. I have thought much on it
and I now beg the reader to walk with me over the peculiar paths along
which my mind has swept in its search for the truth of this mystery of
Animal Rhyme.

Before the great American Civil War the Negro slave preachers could
not, as a class, read and they were taught their Bible texts by white
men, commonly their owners. The texts taught them embraced most of the
central truths of our Bible. The subjects upon which the antebellum
Negro preached, however, were comparatively few. Of course a very few
antebellum Negro preachers could read. In case of these individuals
their texts and subjects were scarcely limited by the "lids" of the
Bible. I heard scores of these men preach in my childhood days.

The following subjects embrace about all those known to the average of
these slave preachers. 1. Joshua. 2. Samson. 3. The Ark. 4. Jacob. 5.
Pharaoh and Moses. 6. Daniel. 7. Ezekiel--vision of the valley of dry
bones. 8. Judgment Day. 9. Paul and Silas in jail. 10. Peter. 11. John's
vision on the Isle of Patmos. 12. Jesus Christ--his love and his
miracles. 13. "Servants, obey your Masters."

Now it is strange enough that the ignorant slave, while adopting his
Master's religious topics, refused to adopt his hymns and proceeded to
make his own songs and to cluster all these songs in thought around the
Bible subjects with which he was