“I Saw Mrs. Saray, Sitting on a Bombalerry”: Ralph Ellison Collects Children's Folklore
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Abstract
Along Harlem streets, in housing projects and on playgrounds, Ralph Ellison employed his formidable gifts for observing and rendering speech play as a collector of children’s folklore. His collecting for the Federal Writer’s Project (FWP) in 1939 represented one dimension of a life long engagement with African American folklore. It extended from traditions acquired in his youth in Oklahoma City through works of fiction employing multiple folkloric genres and essays discussing the centrality of folklore for the African American experience and its indispensable role for cultural resilience. Collecting at a time of heavy African American migration from the South, Ellison researched folklore that embodied both a Southern heritage of largely rural character and traditions adapted to a new urban environment.
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