id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentence	flesch	summary	cache	txt
cfr-25083	Baron, Robert	“I Saw Mrs. Saray, Sitting on a Bombalerry”: Ralph Ellison Collects Children's Folklore	2010	29	.pdf	application/pdf	11697	618	64	Much of African American folklore, BARON “I SAW MRS. SARAY, SITTING ON A BOMBALERRY” 45 like many of the children’s traditions Ellison collected, is distinctively African American in character, created and shaped by blacks in the Southern United States and Harlem. In The Craft of Ralph Ellison, O’Meally indicates that Ellison perceived Southern sources “even when the Harlem lore seemed indigenous,” and he would sometimes “recognize a remnant of a saying or rhyme he had heard in the South reduced to a `mumble’ or nonsense phrase in Harlem.” O’Meally discusses Ellison’s contention that these traditions suggested a bridge to the south and to African ancestry, and he cites Ellison as stating that their “tradition goes way back to the South, and some of it goes back to Africa” (1980, 34).	cache/cfr-25083.pdf	txt/cfr-25083.txt