Manuscripts Department
           Library of the University of North Carolina
                         at Chapel Hill

                 SOUTHERN HISTORICAL COLLECTION

                              #4442
                   LAWRENCE GELLERT SCRAPBOOK
                            Inventory

Abstract:      A 191-page typed manuscript called Tales of One
           Time I'shman Told by Southern Negroes, collected by
           Lawrence Gellert, and apparently prepared for
           publication by the Hours Press, New York.  The tales
           were told by African-Americans in the South about
           Irish immigrants to the area.  Included are 36 pen and
           ink illustrations by Gellert.

Online Catalog Terms:
   Afro-Americans--Folklore.
   Folk literature--Southern States.
   Folklore--Southern States.
   Gellert, Lawrence, 1898-1979.
   Irish-Americans--Folklore.
   Tales--Southern States.

Size:  1 item (0.5 linear feet).

Provenance:    Purchased from McBlain Books of Hamden, Conn., in
               April 1986.

Access:        No restrictions.

Related Collection:    Lawrence Gellert correspondence and
                       writings in the Lilly Library, Indiana
                       University.

Copyright: Copyright in all manuscripts left by Gellert is held
           by Bruce Harrah-Conforth of Bloomington, Ind. 
           Publication of all or any part of this material is
           thus prohibited without the permission of Mr.
           Harrah-Conforth.

Table of Contents:
       Biographical Note
       Description
       Shelf List

                        BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

   Very little information on Lawrence Gellert is available.  He
was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 14 September 1898, came to the
United States when he was seven, and grew up in New York City. 
For health reasons, he moved to Tryon, N.C., probably in the late
1920s or early 1930s.

   From 1933 to 1937, Gellert traveled through North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Georgia, collecting folksongs of black
Americans.  He compiled and published two anthologies of these
songs in the 1950s, including "Negro Songs of Protest," which was
re-released on Rounder Records in the late 1980s.

   Gellert, along with his brother Hugo, was a frequent
contributor to the magazine Masses (later New Masses) from 1930
to 1947, writing mainly about traditional black American music.

   Lawrence Gellert died in 1979.

                           DESCRIPTION

   This volume consists of about seventy folk-tales told by
Southern blacks about Irish immigrants, and compiled and
illustrated by Gellert, with an afterword by William Fay.

   Because of the fragile condition of many of the pages, the
tales were removed from the volume.  The pages were numbered in
square brackets and placed in folders in their original order as
shown in the table of contents.  In cases where the captions to
some illustrations could not be removed, photocopies were made
(see Folder 10).

Folder 1   Title page, table of contents, frontispieces.

       2   "Puts His Foot in It" through "Goes Him to Hellish
           Place."

       3   "Gets Him a Bum Steer" through "Sends a Letter to Old
           Countree."

       4   "Answers Some Riddles" through "Gets a Tip on
           Confessions."

       5   "Waits for Man to Whistle" through "Gettin Him Most
           Married."

       6   "I'shman Prove Coat Belong to Him and Nobody Else"
           through "Meets Old Friend He Never Knowed Before."

       7   "Shows His Four Eyesights" through "He Works Farms on
           Shares."

       8   "He Invited to Help Hisself to Groceries" through
           "Yes, Yes, Yes."

       9   "He Do Exactly Like Doctor Ordering" through
           Afterword, "One Time I'shman," by William Fay.

      10   Photocopies.

      11   Dismantled volume.

                           SHELF LIST

   Box 1 (only)