Story: Playing Godfather ~ The Grease Test
Book: “Folklore from Aiken, S.C.” published in the Journal of American Folklore, volume 34
Author(s): Elsie Clews Parsons
Storyteller: Laurel Branch
Published: 1921
Internet Archive link.

Notes: Lightly edited for punctuation and paragraphing, Parsons collected these stories in 1920 from children at the Colored Public School in Aiken, South Carolina. She includes several versions of this widely told folktale about “playing godfather” and “eating the butter.”

When Fox and Rabbit Chopped Cotton

Once upon a time Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit had a butter-house, and they went to chop cotton. And while they were chopping cotton, Brer Rabbit would answer as if some one called him, “What you want? Be there in a minute!” And off he’d go. While he was gone, he’d go to the butter-house and eat some butter.

When Brer Rabbit would come back, he would say, “My wife called me.”

“What did your wife want?” Brer Fox would ask.

“To name a little baby,” answered Brer Rabbit.

“What did you name him?” asked Brer Fox.

“I-Ate-A-Little-Bit.”

Then they’d chop a little more cotton, and Brer Rabbit would answer again, “Be there in a minute!” He’d go then and eat a little more of the butter.

“What did your wife want this time?” asked Brer Fox.

“Wanted me to name another baby.”

“What did you name this one?”

“Half-Gone,” answered Brer Rabbit.

They chopped a little more cotton, and Brer Rabbit stopped as if to listen, and answered, “Be there in a minute!”

Brer Fox asked, “What did she want?”

“To name another baby.”

“What did you name it?”

“All-Gone,” for he had licked up the last crumb of butter.

Dinner-time had come by now, and Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit went to the butter-house to eat their dinner and found all the butter gone.

Brer Rabbit said angrily to Brer Fox, “You ate all the butter while I was gone!” and Brer Fox said, “You ate it!”

“Well,” said Brer Fox, “to find out who ate the butter, we’ll build a fire, and each one lie down by it and let it draw us, and the one who ate it will leave a grease-spot where he was lying.”

They built the fire and lay down by it, and both went to sleep. Brer Rabbit woke up first, and where he’d been lying was greasy, so he moved Brer Fox, who was asleep, over onto his place.

So, when Brer Fox woke up, he found his place greasy and decided he ate the butter.

Fox at Pxhere, https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1188677