Often biblical words were garbled into mere nonsense. Thus 'Jews crucified him' became 'Jews, screws, defidum,' etc. The personality of the Prince of Darkness assumed a degree of reality which reminds us of the characters of mediæval miracle plays. One of the songs personifies him thus:
'O Satan comes, like a busy ole man,
Hal-ly, O hal-ly, O hal-lelu!
He gets you down at de foot o' de hill,
Hal-ly, O hal-ly, O hal-lelu!'
The so-called spirituals ('sper'chels) hold perhaps the largest place in the negro's sacred repertory. These plantation songs—'spontaneous outbursts of intense religious fervor'—had their origin chiefly in the camp-meetings, the revivals, and other religious exercises. 'They breathe a childlike faith in a personal Father and glow with the hope that the children of bondage will ultimately pass out of the wilderness into the land of freedom.' To them belong such gems as 'You May Bury Me in the Eas',' the plaintive 'Nobody Knows de Trouble I see,' the tender 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,' and many others as rare.
At meetings the spirituals were often accompanied by a most extraordinary form of religious ceremony, namely the so-called 'shouts,' which flourished particularly in South Carolina and south of it during antebellum days.[73] The spirituals sung in this connection were consequently called 'shout songs' or 'running spirituals.' The shouts were veritable religious orgies, or bacchanalia, and no doubt represent a relic of an African custom. Julien Tiersot refers to them as 'dishevelled dances.'[74] A vivid description of a shout is given by a writer in 'The Nation' of May 30, 1867:
'... The "shout" takes place on Sundays, or on "praise" nights throughout the week, and either in the praise-house or in some cabin in which a regular religious meeting has been held. Very likely more than half the population of a plantation is gathered together. Let it be the evening, and a light fire burns red before the door of the house and on the hearth. For sometime one hears, though at a good distance, a vociferous exhortation or prayer of the presiding elder or of the brother who has a gift that way and is not "on the back seat"—a phrase the interpretation of which is "under the censure of the church authorities for bad behavior"—and at regular intervals one hears the elder "deaconing" a hymn-book hymn, which is sung two lines at a time and whose wailing cadences, borne on the night air, are indescribably melancholy.
'But the benches are pushed back to the wall when the formal meeting is over, and old and young, men and women, sprucely dressed young men, grotesquely half-clad field hands—the women generally with gay handkerchiefs twisted about their heads and with short skirts—boys with tattered shirts and men's trousers, young girls barefooted, all stand up in the middle of the floor, and when the "sperichil" is struck up begin first walking and by and by shuffling around, one after the other, in a ring. The foot is hardly taken from the floor, and the progression is mainly due to a jerking, twitching motion which agitates the entire shouter and soon brings out streams of perspiration. Sometimes they dance silently, sometimes as they shuffle they sing the chorus of the spiritual, and sometimes the song itself is sung by the dancers. But more frequently a band, composed of some of the best singers and of tired shouters, stand at the side of the room to "base" the others, singing the body of the song and clapping their hands together on the knees. Song and dance are alike extremely energetic, and often, when the shout lasts into the middle of the night, the monotonous thud, thud of the feet prevents sleep within half a mile of the praise house.'
Closely related to the shout songs are the funeral songs which accompanied the 'wakes' and burials of the negroes. They were sung in a low monotonous croon by those who 'sat up' and are particularly noted for their irregularity in everything except rhythm. The negroes are especially inclined to voice their sorrow in nocturnal song, as their savage ancestors did before them, and likewise they indulged in funeral dances at night. Mrs. Jeanette Robinson Murphy, writing in 'The Independent,' speaks of a custom in which hymns are sung at the deathbed to become messengers to loved ones gone before and which the departing soul is charged to bear to heaven. 'When a woman dies some friend or relative will kneel down and sing to the soul as it takes flight. One of these songs contains endless verses, conveying remembrances to relatives in glory.' Often these funeral songs convey deep emotion in a nobly poetic vein. An example recorded by Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson has the following words:
'I know moonlight, I know starlight,
I lay dis body down.
I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight,
I lay dis body down.
I know de graveyard, I know de graveyard,
When I lay dis body down.
I walk in de graveyard, I walk troo de graveyard,
Fo lay dis body down.
I lay in de grave, and stretch out my arm;
I lay dis body down.
I go to de judgment in de evenin' of de day,
When I lay dis body down,
An' my soul an' your soul will meet in de day
When I lay dis body down.'
'Never, it seems to me,' comments Col. Higginson, 'since man first lived and suffered, was his infinite longing for peace uttered more plaintively than in that line.' There are many other examples of such funeral songs preserved; some of them Mr. Krehbiel has reprinted in his 'Afro-American Folksongs' (pp. 100 ff.).
Few of the secular songs have survived. Even these, it seems, were often made to do service in the religious meeting, on the Wesleyan principle that it would not do to let the devil have all the good tunes. Some songs, on the other hand, were used to accompany rowing as well as 'shouting'—probably because of the similarity of the rhythm in the two motions. In 'Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,' which was a real boat-song, not a human Michael but the archangel himself was meant. Other tunes used for rowing were 'Heav'n Bell a-ring',' 'Jine 'em,' 'Rainfall,' 'No Man,' and 'Can't stay behin'.' Similarly, other spirituals were used as working songs, for their rhythms were hardly ever sluggish. As a good specimen of purely secular songs—'the strange barbaric songs that one hears upon the Western steamboats'—Mr. W. F. Allen points to the following: