This teeming compendium of tales assembles and classifies the abundant lore and storytelling prevalent in the French culture of southern Louisiana. This is the largest, most diverse, and best annotated collection of French-language tales ever published in the United States. Side by side are dual-language retellings--the Cajun French and its English translation--along with insightful commentaries. This volume reveals the long and lively heritage of the Louisiana folktale among French Creoles and Cajuns and shows how tale-telling in Louisiana through the years has remained vigorous and constantly changing. Some of the best storytellers of the present day are highlighted in biographical sketches and are identified by some of their best tales. Their repertory includes animal stories, magic stories, jokes, tall tales, Pascal (improvised) stories, and legendary tales--all of them colorful examples of Louisiana narrative at its best. Though greatly transformed since the French arrived on southern soil, the French oral tradition is alive and flourishing today. It is even more complex and varied than has been shown in previous studies, for revealed here are African influences as well as others that have been filtered from America's multicultural mainstream.

A collection of twenty-six traditional Cajun tales, including animal stories, fairy tales, ghost stories, and humorous tales.

In Folklore Figures of French and Creole Louisiana, Nathan J. Rabalais examines the impact of Louisiana’s remarkably diverse cultural and ethnic groups on folklore characters and motifs during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Establishing connections between Louisiana and France, West Africa, Canada, and the Antilles, Rabalais explores how folk characters, motifs, and morals adapted to their new contexts in Louisiana. By viewing the state’s folklore in the light of its immigration history, he demonstrates how folktales can serve as indicators of sociocultural adaptation as well as contact among cultural communities. In particular, he examines the ways in which collective traumas experienced by Louisiana’s major ethnic groups—slavery, the grand dérangement, linguistic discrimination—resulted in fundamental changes in these folktales in relation to their European and African counterparts. Rabalais points to the development of an altered moral economy in Cajun and Creole folktales. Conventional heroic qualities, such as physical strength, are subverted in Louisiana folklore in favor of wit and cunning. Analyses of Black Creole animal tales like those of Bouki et Lapin and Tortie demonstrate the trickster hero’s ability to overcome both literal and symbolic entrapment through cleverness. Some elements of Louisiana’s folklore tradition, such as the rougarou and cauchemar, remain an integral presence in the state’s cultural landscape, apparent in humor, popular culture, regional branding, and children’s books. Through its adaptive use of folklore, French and Creole Louisiana will continue to retell old stories in innovative ways as well as create new stories for future generations.

Lapin the rabbit tricks Bouki the donkey out of his honey. Includes a glossary and pronunciation guide to ten Creole words or expressions.

The virtual renaissance of all things Cajun and Creole has captivated enthusiasts throughout America and invigorated the culture back home. Who, just fifteen years ago, could have predicted that this regional music would become so astonishingly popular throughout the nation and the world? This new edition of a book first published in 1984 celebrates the music makers in the generation most responsible for the survival of Cajun music and zydeco and showcases many of the young performers who have emerged since them to give the music new spark. More than 100 color photographs, show them in their homes, on their front porches, and in their fields, as well as in performance at local clubs and dance halls and on festival stages. In interviews they speak directly about their lives, their music, and the vital tradition from which their rollicking music springs. Many of the legendary performers featured here--Dewey Balfa, Clifton Chenier, Nathan Abshire, Dennis McGee, Canray Fontenot, Varise Connor, Octa Clark, Lula Landry, and Inez Catalon--are no longer alive. Others from the early days continue to perform--Bois-sec Ardoin, Michael Doucet, D. L. Menard, and Zachary Richard. Their grandeur, humor, and humility are precisely the qualities this book captures. Featured too are young musicians who are taking their place in the dance halls, on festival stages, and on the folk music circuit. Cajun and Creole music makers, both young and old, still play in the old ways, but as young musicians--such as Geno Delafose and the French Rockin' Boogie, and Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys-- experiment and enrich the tradition with new sounds of rock, country, rap, and funk, the music evolves and enlivens a whole new audience. Barry Jean Ancelet, a native French-speaking Cajun, is chair of the Department of Modern Languages and director of the Center for Acadian and Creole Folklore at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Among his many books are Cajun Country and Cajun and Creole Folk Tales (both from the University Press of Mississippi). Elemore Morgan, Jr., is an artist and retired professor of visual art at University of Southwestern Louisiana.

Here are more than two hundred oral tales from some of Louisiana's finest storytellers. In this comprehensive volume of great range are transcriptions of narratives in many genres, from diverse voices, and from all regions of the state. Told in settings ranging from the front porch to the festival stage, these tales proclaim the great vitality and variety of Louisiana's oral narrative traditions. Given special focus are Harold Talbert, Lonnie Gray, Bel Abbey, Ben Guiné, and Enola Matthews—whose wealth of imagination, memory, and artistry demonstrates the depth as well as the breadth of the storyteller's craft. For tales told in Cajun and Creole French, Koasati, and Spanish, the editors have supplied both the original language and English translation. To the volume Maida Owens has contributed an overview of Louisiana's folk culture and a survey of folklife studies of various regions of the state. Car Lindahl's introduction and notes discuss the various genres and styles of storytelling common in Louisiana and link them with the worldwide are of the folktale.