Way-ee Sally, Sally Brown!
Oh, Sally Brown to th’ sea she druv me—
Way-ee ’ll spen’ mah money for Sally Brown.
“Oh, Sally Brown, would you b’lieve me—
Way-ee Sally, Sally Brown!
For a ’Badoes nigger she do leave me—
Way-ee ’ll spen’ mah money for Sally Brown.”
And as the echoes of the applause that followed died away I wondered if the buccaneers themselves had sung this ancient chantey. To every sailorman, [[90]]from time immemorial, it has been known, in one version or another. In the spicy isles of the South Seas the Kanakas chant it as they labor. Its tune and words ring through the forest-hemmed lumber-camps of the Northern woods. Many a tired, footsore, struggling musher in far-off Alaska has found new courage and inspiration in the song. In the frigid Antarctic wastes it has aroused the drowsing sea-elephants on desolate isles. And up and down the Antilles the sweating negroes work in unison to the tune as they pull their huge drougher boats or snake the great logs of hardwood timbers from the mountain jungles. Up and down and round the world it has traveled, from pole to pole, and if buccaneer and pirate did not bellow it, then they were no true sailormen.
But now another voice is singing—not Sam’s this time, but a higher if no less mellow voice which I recognize as Joe’s. And though the air is familiar, the words with which the West Indians have fitted it are astounding, for, according to my cook’s version, “John Brown’s donkey had a red Morocco tail”! With all the seriousness of a great artist Joseph sings his ridiculous ditty to the end, to be rewarded with deafening applause but no laughter, for the West Indian can see nothing comical in a red Morocco tail on John Brown’s donkey; he [[91]]believes firmly that donkeys of the United States do possess such colorful caudal appendages, for does the verse not say so? To his mind, anything is possible in “New York,” as the West Indian invariably calls the States.
This belief of the West Indian negroes that New York and the United States are synonymous is very amusing. Even Joe, who was far above his fellows, in education and intelligence, seriously confided to me on one occasion that he had seen New York. Expressing surprise at this revelation, I asked for further particulars, and was told that when he was serving as cook on a schooner bound for Matamoros, Mexico, the mate had pointed out a low-lying coast-line and had told Joe it was New York. My explanations were absolutely futile. To Joe, New York embodied all of our country. With his own eyes he had gazed upon the promised land, and to his dying day—unless by some chance he visits the States—he will boast to his less fortunate fellows that he has seen New York.