Some Current Folk-Songs of the Negro

SOME CURRENT FOLK-SONGS OF THE NEGRO
BY W. H. THOMAS, College Station, Texas
Read before the Folk-Lore Society of Texas, 1912
PUBLISHED BY THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY OF TEXAS

WILL THOMAS AND THE TEXAS FOLK-LORE SOCIETY
Now that this brochure is being reprinted by the Texas Folk-Lore Society, I take the opportunity to say a word concerning its author and its history.
Although not a numbered publication, Some Current Folk-Songs of the Negro (1912) was the first item produced by the Texas Folk-Lore Society. At the time dues to the Society were two-bits a year—not enough to allow a very extensive publication. Number I (now reprinted under the title of Round the Levee ) was not issued until 1916; then it was seven more years before another volume was issued, since which time, 1923, the Society has sent out a book annually to its members. The credit for initiating the Society’s policy of recording the lore of Texas and the Southwest belongs to Will H. Thomas.
At the time his pamphlet was issued, he was president of the organization, to which office he was elected again in 1923. His idea was that people who work with folk-lore should not only collect it but interpret it and also enjoy it. This view is expressed in his delightful essay on “The Decline and Decadence of Folk Metaphor,” in Publications Number II ( Coffee in the Gourd ) of the Society.
The view is thoroughly representative of the man, for Will Thomas was a vigorous, sane man with a vigorous, sane mind. He had a sense of humor and, therefore, a sense of the fitness of things. For nearly thirty years he taught English in the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, and I have often wished that more professors of English in the colleges and universities over the country saw into the shams and futilities and sheer nonsense that passes for “scholarship” as thoroughly as he saw into them. Yet he was tolerant. He was a salt-of-the-earth kind of man.
He was born of the best of old-time Texas stock on a farm in Fayette County, January 11, 1880; he got his collegiate training at Austin College, Sherman, and the University of Texas and then took his Master’s degree at Columbia University. He was co-editor, with Stewart Morgan, of two volumes of essays designed for collegians. He died March 1, 1935. Gates Thomas, Professor of English in Southwestern State Teachers College at San Marcos, who has done notable work in Negro folk songs and who is one of the nestors and pillars of the Texas Folk-Lore Society, is his brother.