Story: Playing Godfather
Book: Folktales of Andros Island, Bahamas
Author(s): Elsie Clews Parsons
Storyteller: Alfred Oliver (Mastic Point, Andros)
Published: 1918
Internet Archive link.

Notes: Lightly edited for paragraphing and removal of eye-dialect. Parsons explains that the storyteller Alfred Oliver got his story from Old Sib of Andros who got the story from his father, an immigrant to Andros from Florida during the Civil war.

Bo Rabby, Bo Boukee and the Butter

Once was a time, a very good time,
Monkey chew tobacco and spit white lime.

Once Boukee and Rabby went on the bay and pick up a key of butter, and they carried the butter home. and Bo Rabby say, “Now, Bo Boukee, we cut field together.” Say, “You’ll help me today, and I’ll help you tomorrow.” So they went to start to cut the field.

Directly Bo Rabbit holler out, “Say!”

Boukee say, “Rabby, who call you?”

“Them people might call me; they can’t name chillun theyself. I ain’t going noway.”

Bo Boukee say, “Go along, ’cause only you here could name chillum.”

Say, “All right, I going this time, but if they call again, I ain’t going no more.” He went and he opened the keg of butter, and he started to eat. and when he went back, Bo Boukee ask him, “What the child name?”

Say, “I give him name Begin-um.'”

Directly he holler again, “Say!” Then, “I ain’t going noway.”

Boukee say, “No mind, you’re only one here could name chillun.”

So he went, and when he come back Boukee ask him what the child name. Say, “Quarter-um.”

Rabby call out, “Say!” and he went and he come back. Boukee ask him what the child name. Say he name him “Half-um.”

He sing out again, “Say!” He went, and when he come back, Boukee ask him what the child name. Tell him, “Done-um.” So Rabby eat up the keg, fill up with dirt, smear a little bit of butter back where it been.

After they work, Boukee want taste of that butter bad. Say, “Rabby, let’s open that butter for get some for the dinner.” So when he open the butter, Boukee started to dip, was only dirt in the keg.

So Rabby says to Boukee, says, “You eat that butter.”

So Boukee says, “No, you left me in the field all day.” Says, “It’s you.”

Rabby say, “All right, to prove it let me lie down in the sun, and the one you see the butter melt out, that’s the one eat the butter.”

So Rabby went and lay down, and Boukee fell asleep, and Bo Rabby git up and grease Boukee all over with the butter. And he wake him, and he say, “Look at the butter running out you now. You eat that butter.”

And they start to fight, and Bo Boukee kicked one kick at Bo Rabby, and strike me in the head, and pitched me right here to tell you that story.

Butter Tub by Eugene C. Miller, https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.21213.html