As part of the process on working through the OCR for
Uncle Remus and the Little Boy, I've been doing one story each day from that book, and the story for today was really exciting for me:
The Story of Teenchy-Tiny Duck. This is the most elaborate of the chain tales in the Harris books, and since I spent all last summer working on chain tales, this story is a perfect excuse to bring some of those stories into this project... because Harris very conveniently included Brer Rabbit in this story. It's another one of those Brer Rabbit cameos that is not really part of the main plot, and I sure am glad that Harris wanted Brer Rabbit to make an appearance here! Here's Brer Rabbit giving the Duck some advice (
illustration by Conde):
This type of story is like the wonderful tale of the
two little cats from Tibet, which is no doubt influenced by the storytelling traditions of India. I did a version of the story of the cats for my project in Myth-Folklore last fall in fact:
The Cats and their Friends.
The tale type is
ATU 210 Rooster, Hen, Duck, Pin, and Needle. A good Indian example is
Sparrow's Revenge. There are also the stories about the birds avenging a caged mate:
The Valiant Weaver-Bird and
The Valiant Blackbird. It will be fun picking out which one to share along with Teenchy-Tiny!
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