She hug' me, an' she kiss' me,
She wrung my han' an' cried.
She said I wus de sweetes' thing
Dat ever lived or died.
She hug' me an' she kiss' me.
Oh Heaben! De touch o' her han'!
She said I wus de puttiest thing
In de shape o' mortal man.
I told her dat I love' her,
Dat my love wus bed-cord strong;
Den I axed her w'en she'd have me,
An' she jes' say, "Go 'long!"
There is also a dramatic quality about many of these rhymes which must not be overlooked. It has long been my observation that the Negro is possessed by nature of considerable, though not as yet highly developed, histrionic ability; he takes delight in acting out in pantomime whatever he may be relating in song or story. It is not surprising, then, to find that the play-rhymes, originating from the "call" and "response," are really little dramas when presented in their proper settings. "Caught By The Witch" would not be ineffective if, on a dark night, it were acted in the vicinity of a graveyard! And one ballad—if I may be permitted to dignify it by that name—called "Promises of Freedom" is characterized by an unadorned narrative style and a dramatic ending which are associated with the best English folk-ballads. The singer tells simply and, one feels, with a grim impersonality of how his mistress promised to set him free; it seemed as if she would never die—but "she's somehow gone"! His master likewise made promises,
Yes, my ole Mosser promise' me;
But "his papers" didn't leave me free.
A dose of pizen he'pped 'im along.
May de Devil preach 'is fūner'l song.
The manner of this conclusion is strikingly like that of the Scottish ballad, "Edward,"
The curse of hell frae me sall ye beir,
Mither, Mither,
The curse of hell frae me sall ye beir,
Sic counseils ye gave to me O.
In both a story of cruelty is suggested in a single artistic line and ended with startling, dramatic abruptness.
In fact, these two songs probably had their ultimate origin in not widely dissimilar types of illiterate, unsophisticated human society. Professor Talley's "Study in Negro Folk Rhymes," appended to this volume of songs, is illuminating. One may not be disposed to accept without considerable modification his theories entire; still his account from personal, first-hand knowledge of the beginnings and possible evolution of certain rhymes in this collection is apparently authentic. Here we have again, in the nineteenth century, the record of a singing, dancing people creating by a process
approximating communal authorship a mass of verse embodying tribal memories, ancestral superstitions, and racial wisdom handed down from generation to generation through oral tradition. These are genuine folk-songs—lyrics, ballads, rhymes—in which are crystallized the thought and feeling, the universally shared lore of a folk. Recent theorizers on poetic origins who would insist upon individual as opposed to community authorship of certain types of song-narrative might do well to consider Professor Talley's characteristic study. And students of comparative literature who love to recreate the life of a tribe or nation from its song and story will discover in this collection a mine of interesting material.