The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales

One night, a nameless man who lives in a cabin with his dogs cuts off the tail of a mysterious creature. Later, he eats it, and it tastes delicious. The creature returns: It wants its tail back. The man summons his dogs, and they chase the creature away. The creature comes back, and the man calls his dogs again, but the dogs don’t come this time.

In the morning, the man sees the frightful creature near his bed. The man tells him he doesn’t have its tail, but the creature knows he has it, and it attacks the man and tears him to pieces. The cabin falls apart and then disappears, but people say they can still hear the odious creature asking for its tail.

Little Eight John is a rebellious boy. His mother tells him not to step on frogs or toads—it’ll bring bad luck for his family—but he steps on them anyways. The family’s cow produces bad milk, and his baby sister gets horrible stomachaches. The misfortune makes Little Eight John laugh. When he sits in a chair backward, his mom tells him it’ll bring more bad luck, but he continues to sit in a chair backward. As a result, the cornbread burns, and the milk won’t churn.

Little Eight John then climbs a tree on a Sunday, causing his father’s potatoes to perish and the mule to not plow. He counts his white teeth and makes his family sick. He sleeps at the end of the bed and makes his family poor. After Little Eight John moans on Sunday and Monday, Old Raw Head Bloody Bones, a creature made of someone’s dead bones, captures Little Eight John and turns him into a tiny spot, which his mom wipes away, thinking it’s grease.

Jack drinks whiskey all day and treats his family horribly. The Devil appears and tells him that his wife, Abbie, wants to see him. On the way to see the Devil's wife, they stop at a bar. Jack convinces the Devil to turn himself into 10 cents so they can get two drinks. The Devil can then turn back into himself. Jack doesn’t use the 10 cents to buy drinks; instead, he puts it in a change purse and shuts it tight, where the Devil can’t get out.

The Devil promises to leave Jack alone for a year if he lets him out, and Jack agrees. Jack commits to repenting, but then he figures that he only needs to repent for the last month, and the last month becomes the last 10 days. By the final week, Jack drinks so much that he hallucinates. The Devil returns and takes him away.

The Devil and Jack pass an apple tree, and Jack convinces the Devil to climb it to get the fruit. Using a knife, Jack carves a cross into the tree. The Devil can’t climb down, and Jack won’t help until the Devil promises to leave him alone forever. The Devil promises, and Jack lives a long life. He doesn’t care about repenting or behaving well. When he dies, the angels don’t let him into Heaven, and the Devil orders his minions to bar him from Hell. Instead, Jack interminably wanders the dark.

Needing shelter, the God-fearing John enters a haunted plantation home, sits in a broken chair, and makes a fire. A shiny, black cat comes in from the rain and sits in the fire, licking the coal as if it were milk. John says his prayers, but after a cracking sound, another cat the size of a hunting dog appears and asks the normal-sized cat if they’re ready. The regular cat replies that they have to wait for Martin.

John tries to move, but the chair breaks, and he gets stuck in it. He says his prayers as a third cat—bigger than the second cat and blacker than the first two cats—enters the room and sits in the fire. He asks the other two cats what they should do with John. The cats say they have to wait until Martin comes. John dislodges himself from the chair, and he tells the cats that he can’t wait for Martin. John leaves, and he never returns to the county again.