PREFACE
In a continent but recently settled, many parts of which have as yet
little historical or cultural background, the material for this volume
has been gathered from a section that was one of the first to be
colonized. Here the Frenchman, Spaniard, and Englishman all passed,
leaving each his legend; and a brilliant and more or less feudal
civilization with its aristocracy and slaves has departed with the
economic system upon which it rested.
From this medley of early colonial discovery and romance, from the
memories of war and reconstruction, it has been as difficult to choose
coherently as to maintain restraint in selection among the many
grotesque negro legends and superstitions so rich in imagery and music.
Coupled with this there has been another task; that of keeping these
legends and stories in their natural matrix, the semi-tropical landscape
of the _Low Country_, which somehow lends them all a pensively
melancholy yet fitting background. Not to have so portrayed them, would
have been to sacrifice their essentially local tang.
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