Many a boy has seen a darky, but few have ever watched one with a gourd fiddle, the primitive African violin.
New England Doby did not approve of slavery. He had been taught that it was a dreadful thing. So it gave him something of a surprise to see what he had supposed would be a miserable, downtrodden captive having such a very good time.
Tuning his fiddle and swinging his bow, the negro began to play and to dance and to sing, drawing round him a dozen or so of other black boys who joined the dance and the song, giving themselves up to such utter enjoyment as Doby had never seen among any white people.
At first his Northern ears could not make out the words of the song. When he had guessed at them, he listened with his attention so divided between the syllables and the melody and the negroes' appearance and actions, that their full meaning did not come to him until long afterward.
Night wind in the trees, peeper frogs in the sedges, bare feet thumping on the turf, and the sweet obligato of the gourd strings accompanied the lyric tenor, who sang:
"Dar am a b'ar,
A big, la'ge b'ar,
He wave hes tail so high,
He wave hes tail,
Hes big, la'ge tail