Gullah Language - Gullah Storytelling

Gullah Storytelling

The Gullah people have a rich storytelling tradition strongly influenced by African oral traditions, but also informed by their historical experience in America. Their stories include animal trickster tales about the antics of "Brer Rabbit", "Brer Fox" and "Brer Bear", "Brer Wolf", etc.; human trickster tales about clever and self-assertive slaves; and morality tales designed to impart moral teaching to children.

Several white American writers collected Gullah stories in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The best collections were made by Charles Colcock Jones, Jr. from Georgia and Albert Henry Stoddard from South Carolina. Jones (a Confederate officer during the Civil War) and Stoddard were both planter-class whites who grew up speaking Gullah with the slaves (and later, freedmen) on their families' plantations. Another collection was made by Abigail Christensen, a Northern woman whose parents came to the Lowcountry after the Civil War to assist the newly freed slaves. Ambrose E. Gonzales, another writer of South Carolina planter-class background, also wrote original stories in 19th-century Gullah, based on Gullah literary forms. Gonzales' works are well remembered in South Carolina today.

The linguistic accuracy of these writings has been questioned because of the authors' social backgrounds. Nonetheless, these works provide the best available information on the Gullah language as it was spoken in its more conservative form during the 19th century.