Me an’ my buddy jes’ come,
Me an’ my buddy jes’ come here.
Lawd, Lawd, wanta go home.
Again and again the Negro wanderer portrays home, parents, brothers and sisters, friends, as the most highly esteemed of life’s values—striking paradox to the realism of his practice. Idealism in song and dreams, in workaday songs as well as spirituals, alongside sordidness in living conditions and physical surroundings, appear logical and direct developments from the type of habitation which the Negro common man has ever known.
The Negro “bad man” who sings sorrowfully of his mother’s admonitions and his own mistakes, glories also in the motor-imaged refrain:
In come a nigger named Billy Go-helf,
Coon wus so mean wus skeered uf hisself;
Loaded wid razors an’ guns, so they say,
’Cause he killed a coon most every day.
A [later chapter] is devoted to this notable character, the “bad man,” whose varied pictures represent a separate Negro contribution. Here are new and worthy Negro exhibits to add to the American galaxy of folk portraits: Railroad Bill alongside Jesse James, the Negro “bad man” beside the Western frontiersman, and John Henry by Paul Bunyan. For from the millions of Negroes of yesterday and as many more today, with their oft-changing and widely varying economic and social conditions, has come a rare and varied heritage of folk tradition, folk character, and folk personality. Much of this might remain forever unknown and unsung were it not for the treasure-house of Negro song, the product of a happy facility for linking up the realities of actual life with wishful thinking and imaginative story.