The present taste and preferences of the Jamaican negroes may perhaps be gauged by the similarities and differences in the first bars of Songs [LXIII.], [LXIV.], and [LXXVIII.], by the similarity of Songs [I.] and [VIII.], [XV.] and [XXVII.], and of the bobbins in [LIV.] and [LXVIII.]
But it is not my intention to make a detailed analysis of the songs of the present volume. My object has been rather to emphasize our present ignorance of African music, and to indicate the lines along which a more intimate acquaintance with African and Jamaican songs may be expected to lead to conclusions as to their relation to one another.
C.S. Myers.
B. English Airs and Motifs in Jamaica.
By far the greater part of these Jamaican tunes and song-words seem to be reminiscences, or imitations, of European sailors' "chanties" of the modern class; or of trivial British nursery-jingles adapted, as all such jingles become adapted.
Except in the cases specified below, I have not found one Jamaican tune which is entirely like any one English or European tune that I happen to know. But unrecorded folk-tunes are essentially fluid, and pass through endless transformations. In all countries any one traditional ballad may be sung to dozens of distinct traditional tunes, each of these again having variants. It is therefore quite possible that versions of some of the older-sounding Jamaican airs are being sung unrecorded at this moment in the British Islands or elsewhere.
I note below such instances of modal tunes as occur in this collection. I should perhaps explain that by "Modes" are meant those ancient scales (other than our major and minor scales) which amongst European composers fell into disuse at the beginning of the 17th century, but which survive still in the ancient Church Music (popularly called "Gregorian"), and in the Folk Music of most European countries, and notably that of the British Isles.
Cf. the old ballads "May Colvin" and "Young Hunting." In the latter the parrot reveals a murder. In both ballads the lady makes the same promises to the bird (see Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads).