The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales

When Tappin says, “Bakon coleh / Bakon cawbey / Bakon cawhubo lebe lebe” (22), food appears in the dipper. The magic spell functions as a rule, and the rule creates predictable results—it establishes order. When Bruh Rabbit doesn’t know the rules for Sword and says, “Go-ee-tell” (32), he loses order, and Sword leaves him with nothing. Minus rules, destruction ensues.

In Part 2, when Anton says the spell that will turn him into any one of the four creatures, he’s exploiting a rule, a foreseeable outcome, that enables him to kill the girl in the moon tower’s father and marry the girl. Manuel uses the rules about riddles and the rabbits to get the king’s fortune, and Wiley and his mother seize the rules for Hairy Man to banish him. Wiley’s mother tells him, “Old Hairy Man won’t hurt you ever again. Because we did surely fool him three times” (103).

As in Part 1, when a character breaks a rule in Part 2, peril arrives. Little Daughter breaks her father’s rules about leaving the house and meets a wolf. Once she’s back behind the gate, the rules apply, and order and safety return.

In Part 3, characters bend or break the rules.