and
Other Gullah Folktales
from Brookgreen Gardens in the
South Carolina Lowcountry
Selections from
Tales from Brookgreen
Folklore, Ghost Stories, and Gullah Folktales
in the South Carolina Lowcountry
by
Lynn Michelsohn
Author of
In the Galapagos Islands with Herman Melville
and
Roswell, Your Travel Guide to the UFO Capital of the World!
Published by Cleanan Press, Inc.
Roswell, New Mexico USA
Copyright 2009 Lynn Michelsohn
Smashwords Edition
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Gullah Language
Chapter 2. Brother Gator and His Friends
About the Storytellers: The Hostesses of Brookgreen
A Selection from Lowcountry Ghosts
A Selection from Gullah Ghosts
A Selection from Billy the Kid’s Jail
A Selection from Galapagos Islands Landscapes
Preface
These are some of the stories told by Miss Genevieve and Cousin Corrie, two charming Hostesses at Brookgreen Gardens in the South Carolina Lowcountry during the middle of the Twentieth Century (described in the chapter, About the Storytellers: The Hostesses of Brookgreen Gardens). The stories come from the Gullah culture that once flourished among the African-American inhabitants along the South Carolina coast. All come from my longer work, Tales from Brookgreen: Folklore, Ghost Stories, and Gullah Folktales from the South Carolina Lowcountry. I hope you enjoy them.
Lynn Michelsohn
Introduction: The Gullah Language
Miss Genevieve explained the development of the Gullah language spoken by descendents of slaves in the South Carolina Lowcountry like this . . .
Nobody can tell you for sure how the Gullah language developed but people who have studied it do have some idea about its history and this is how they explain it.
Slaves brought to South Carolina came from different parts of West Africa. Each African area and tribal group had its own language and customs. When slaves arrived on Lowcountry plantations, communication was a big challenge. Slaves and planters spoke different languages and often fellow slaves even spoke different languages yet all had to understand each other well enough to live and work together.
A pidgin language developed that contained words and grammatical structures from English and from various African languages. Planters and overseers kept speaking English and slaves kept speaking their own various languages but each also learned to speak the pidgin language, called Gullah, to communicate with each other. People who study languages tell me that at this stage Gullah was a pidgin language because no one spoke it as his native language but those speaking different languages used it to communicate with each other. Some people think the name Gullah came from the word Angola, which was the homeland of many of the slaves.
As new generations of slaves were born in the Lowcountry, these children grew up speaking Gullah as their native language. Gullah became a creole language, which is one whose words and grammar are a combination of different languages but one which is now the native language of a group of people, in this case, the descendants of the slaves brought from Africa.
Planters and other whites continued to speak English, of course, but also spoke Gullah to communicate with their workers. Planters and their families often learned Gullah as children from nurses and other household servants who helped raise them.