And so on, the performers lamenting the duty which lies upon them of scrubbing their floors, baking their bread, etc.
Louisiana.
This pretty dance, with its idiomatic English, which comes to us from the extreme South, is obviously not modern. The chorus refers, not to the place of the labor, but to the locality of the dance: it may have been originally in my lady's garden. Our informant remembers the game as danced by negro children, their scanty garments flying as the ring spun about the trunk of some large tree; but (though the naive appeal to pity may seem characteristic of Southern indolence) this is evidently no negro song.
No. 25.
When I Was a Shoemaker.
A ROUND.
When I was a shoemaker,
And a shoemaker was I,
This way,[76] and this way,
And this way went I.
When I was a gentleman,
And a gentleman was I,
This way, and this way,
And this way went I.
When I was a lady,
And a lady was I,
This way, and this way,
And this way went I.