Episode 9: How Come Brer Bear Sleeps in the Winter

Welcome to Episode 9 of Public Domain Radio: Mythology and Folklore.  Today I am reading a story from "Animal Tales from North Carolina" by Emma Backus, an article published in the Journal of American Folklore in 1898, which puts it in the public domain in the United States. You can find the article online at the Internet Archive.

The story I will be reading is called How Come Brer Bear Sleeps in the Winter. The story was written down in African American English, but I've told the story in literary English here; you can read the dialect version online.

You can listen to the embedded audio file below, or with this audio link.

Laura Gibbs · Public Domain Radio Episode 9. How Come Brer Bear Sleeps In The Winter

How Come Brer Bear Sleeps in the Winter

When the animals were young, Brer Bear, he never slept in the winter, no more than the rest. The way it was in those days, old man Bear was parading around more so than the other creatures, and he was the meanest one in the lot. And, because he was the biggest, he got in his mind that he was king of the country, and the way he bossed the other animals around was scandalous, that it was.

Well, they were all crossways with the old man a long time, but they were bound to step up when he told them to step up. You can see in these times that old Brer Bear isn't a powerful man; he's just ornery, but he was a powerful man in the old times.

So they talked it over amongst themselves many and many a day, talking about how they were going to take down Mr. Bear. They knew he was mighty inclined to sleep in the dark, and one day Brer Rabbit allowed that they should stop the old man up when he was sleeping in a dark tree. That way, Mr. Bear would take a mighty long nap, and the animals would get a little comfort. So they all watched out, and when the old man was sleeping that night in a hollow tree, they all chipped in and toted rocks and brush, and they stopped up the hole.

And sure enough, when morning came, Brer Bear didn't know it, and he just slept on. When he woke up, he saw it was all dark, and he said, "Day hasn't come yet," and he turned over and went to sleep, and there the old man slept just that way till the leaves turned on the trees, and I expect the old man would be sleeping there to this day, but the animals, they all figured the old man was dead for sure, and they just felt a meddlesomeness to move those rocks.

And when they let the light in, old Brer Bear, he just cracked his eye open and stretched himself and came out, and when he saw the spring had come he said, the old man did, that he sure had enjoyed a mighty comfortable winter, and from that time every year, when the cold comes, old Brer Bear goes to sleep.

THE END

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