There are innumerable spinning songs of all nationalities, and shepherds’ songs,—you probably know the French Il etait une Bergère.
In Africa, we hear that the workers when cleaning rice were led by singers, who clapped their hands and stamped their feet to accompany the song. One man reports that he heard the negro women singing a national song in chorus, while pounding wheat always in time with the music.
Charles Peabody tells of a leader in a band of slaves in America who was besought by his companions not to sing a certain song because it made them work too hard!
The difference between the negro songs and the labor songs of other peoples and places is, that the negroes had no special labor songs but sang their religious songs, which they adapted to all purposes and occasions, while the true labor song was composed to fit the occasion.
In old England we hear of the “Labor-lilts” which were all work songs of spinners, milk-maids and shepherds. And we must not neglect the old night-watchman whom we meet in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger. Neither can we let go by unnoticed the “town-crier” who told the news, good and bad. The street calls and cries of the Middle Ages were labor songs, later, in England and in France made into real compositions.
We, in America, have the old Cow-boy songs, the Mining songs of California, and the Lumberjack songs of Maine. These are not exactly labor songs but are first cousins to them.
The stage coach postillons with their fascinating horn calls are really music of trades or occupations, too. Isn’t it too bad that the inartistic jangle of the tram-car and the “honk-honk” of the automobile tear our ears instead of the tuneful hunting horns and postillon horns which are still occasionally heard in European forests!
The world’s workers sing to make work slip along easily, so you see song is a great lubricant.
(6) Drinking Songs
In the great dining halls of the Middle Ages, when hunting parties gathered, and guests were received from near and far, or at Christmas time, when in old Britain the Wassail-bowl flowed freely, drinking songs were an important part of the banquet. At the splendid feasts in Rome, drinking songs were popular. In fact, all over the world there are thousands of this kind of folk song.