Negro Folk Rhymes Part 43

The lore of the American Negro is rich in story, in song, and in Folk rhymes. These stories and songs have been partially recorded, but so far as I know there is no collection of the American Negro Folk Rhymes. The collection in Part I is a compilation of American Negro Folk Rhymes, and this study primarily concerns them; but it was necessary to have a Foreign Section of Rhymes in order to make our study complete. I have therefore inserted a little Foreign Section of African, Venezuelan, Jamaican, Trinidad, and Philippine Negro Rhymes; and along with them have placed the names of the contributors to whom we are under great obligations, as well as to the many others who have given valuable a.s.sistance and suggestions in the matter of the American Negro Rhymes recorded.

When critically measured by the laws and usages governing the best English poetry, Negro Folk Rhymes will probably remind readers of the story of the good brother, who arose solemnly in a Christian praise meeting, and thanked G.o.d that he had broken all the Commandments, but had kept his religion.

Though decent rhyme is often wanting, and in the case of the "Song to the Runaway Slave," there is no rhyme at all, the rhythm is found almost perfect in all of them.

A few of the Rhymes bear the mark of a somewhat recent date in composition. The majority of them, however, were sung by Negro fathers and mothers in the dark days of American slavery to their children who listened with eyes as large as saucers and drank them down with mouths wide open. The little songs were similar in structure to the Jubilee Songs, also of Negro Folk origin.

If one will but examine the recorded Jubilee songs, he will find that it is common for stanzas, which are apparently most distantly related in structure, to sing along in perfect rhythm in the same tune that carefully counts from measure to measure one, two; or one, two, three, four. Here is an example of two stanzas taken from the Jubilee song, "Wasn't That a Wide River?"

1. "Old Satan's just like a snake in the gra.s.s, He's a-watching for to bite you as you pa.s.s.

2. Shout! Shout! Satan's about.

Just shut your door, and keep him out."

An examination of stanzas in various Jubilee songs will show in the same song large variations in poetic feet, etc., not only from stanza to stanza; but very often from line to line, and even from phrase to phrase. Notwithstanding all this variation, a well trained band of singers will render the songs with such perfect rhythm that one scarcely realizes that the structure of any one stanza differs materially from that of another.

A stanza, as it appears in Negro Folk Rhymes, is of the same construction as that found in the Jubilee Songs. A perfect rhythm is there. If while reading them you miss it, read yet once again; you will find it in due season if you "faint not" too early.

As a rule, Negro Folk verse is so written that it fits into measures of music written 4/4 or 2/4 time. You can therefore read Negro Folk Rhymes silently counting: one, two; or, one, two, three, four; and the stanzas fit directly into the imaginary music measures if you are reading in harmony with the intended rhythm. I know of only three Jubilee Songs whose stanzas are transcribed as exceptions. They are--

(1) "I'm Going to Live with Jesus," 6/8 time, (2) "Gabriel's Trumpet's Going to Blow," 3/4 time, and (3) "Lord Make Me More Patient," 6/8 time. It is interesting to note along with these that the "Song of the Great Owl," the "Negro Soldier's Civil War Chant," and "Dest.i.tute Former Slave Owners," are seemingly the only ones in our Folk Rhyme collection which would call for a 3/4 or 6/8 measure. Such a measure is rare in all literary Negro Folk productions.

The Negro, then, repeated or sang his Folk Rhymes, and danced them to 4/4 and 2/4 measures. Thus Negro Folk Rhymes, with very few exceptions, are poetry where a music measure is the unit of measurement for the words rather than the poetic foot. This is true whether the Rhyme is, or is not, sung. _Imaginary measures either of two or four beats, with a given number of words to a beat, a number that can be varied limitedly at will, seems to be the philosophy underlying all Negro slave rhyme construction._

As has just been casually mentioned, the Negro Folk Rhyme was used for the dance. There are Negro Folk Rhyme Dance Songs and Negro Folk Dance Rhymes. An example of the former is found in "The Banjo Picking," and of the latter, "Juba," both found in this collection. The reader may wonder how a Rhyme simply repeated was used in the dance. The procedure was as follows: Usually one or two individuals "star" danced at time. The others of the crowd (which was usually large) formed a circle about this one or two who were to take their prominent turn at dancing. I use the terms "star" danced and "prominent turn" because in the latter part of our study we shall find that all those present engaged sometimes at intervals in the dance. But those forming the circle, for most of the time, repeated the Rhyme, clapping their hands together, and patting their feet in rhythmic time with the words of the Rhyme being repeated.

It was the task of the dancers in the middle of the circle to execute some graceful dance in such a manner that their feet would beat a tattoo upon the ground answering to every word, and sometimes to every syllable of the Rhyme being repeated by those in the circle. There were many such Rhymes. "'Possum Up the Gum Stump," and "Jawbone" are good examples. The stanzas to these Rhymes were not usually limited to two or three, as is generally the case with those recorded in our collection. Each selection usually had many stanzas. Thus as there came variation in the words from stanza to stanza, the skill of the dancers was taxed to its utmost, in order to keep up the graceful dance and to beat a changed tattoo upon the ground corresponding to the changed words. If any find fault with the limited number of stanzas recorded in our treatise, I can in apology only sing the words of a certain little encore song each of whose two little stanzas ends with the words, "Please don't call us back, because we don't know any more."

There is a variety of Dance Rhyme to which it is fitting to call attention. This variety is ill.u.s.trated in our collection by "Jump Jim Crow," and "Juba." In such dances as these, the dancers were required to give such movements of body as would act the sentiment expressed by the words while keeping up the common requirements of beating these same words in a tattoo upon the ground with the feet and executing simultaneously a graceful dance.

It is of interest also to note that the antebellum Negro while repeating his Rhymes which had no connection with the dance usually accompanied the repeating with the patting of his foot upon the ground. Among other things he was counting off the invisible measures and bars of his Rhymes, things largely unseen by the world but very real to him. Every one who has listened to a well sung Negro Jubilee Song knows that it is almost impossible to hear one sung and not pat the foot. I have seen the feet of the coldest blooded Caucasians pat right along while Jubilee melodies were being sung.

All Negro Folk productions, including the Negro Folk Rhymes, seem to call for this patting of the foot. The explanation which follows is offered for consideration. The orchestras of the Native African were made up largely of crudely constructed drums of one sort or another.

Their war songs and so forth were sung to the accompaniment of these drum orchestras. When the Negroes were transported to America, and began to sing songs and to chant words in another tongue, they still sang strains calling, through inheritance, for the accompaniment of their ancestral drum. The Negro's drum having fallen from him as he entered civilization, he unwittingly called into service his foot to take its place. This subst.i.tution finds a parallelism in the highly cultivated La France rose, which being without stamens and pistils must be propagated by cuttings or graftings instead of by seeds. The rose, purposeless, emits its sweet perfume to the breezes and thus it attracts insects for cross fertilization simply because its staminate and pistillate ancestors thus called the insect world for that purpose. The rattle of the crude drum of the Native African was loud by inheritance in the hearts of his early American descendants and its unseen ghost walks in the midst of all their poetry.

Many Negro Folk Rhymes were used as banjo and fiddle (violin) songs. It ought to be borne in mind, however, that even these were quite often repeated without singing or playing. It was common in the early days of the public schools of the South to hear Negro children use them as declamations. The connection, however, of Negro Folk Rhymes with their secular music productions is well worthy of notice.

I have often heard those who liked to think and discuss things musical, wonder why little or no music of a secular kind worth while seemed to be found among Negroes while their religious music, the Jubilee Songs, have challenged the admiration of the world. The songs of most native peoples seem to strike "high water mark" in the secular form. Probably numbers of us have heard the explanation: "You see, the Negro is deeply emotional; religion appealed to him as did nothing else. The Negro therefore spent his time singing and shouting praises to G.o.d, who alone could whisper in his heart and stir up these emotions." There is perhaps much truth in this explanation. It is also such a delicate and high compliment to the Negro race, that I hesitate to touch it. One of the very few gratifying things that has come to Negroes is the unreserved recognition of their highly religious character. There is a truth, however, about the relation between the Negro Folk Rhyme and the Negro's banjo and fiddle music which ought to be told even though some older, nicer viewpoints might be a little shifted.

There were quite a few Rhymes sung where the banjo and fiddle formed what is termed in music a simple accompaniment. Examples of these are found in "Run, n.i.g.g.e.r, Run," and "I'll Wear Me a Cotton Dress." In such cases the music consisted of simple short tunes unquestionably "born to die."

There was another cla.s.s of Rhymes like "Devilish Pigs," that were used with the banjo and fiddle in quite another way. It was the banjo and fiddle productions of this kind of Rhyme that made the "old time" Negro banjo picker and fiddler famous. It has caused quite a few, who heard them, to declare that, saint or sinner, it was impossible to keep your feet still while they played. The compositions were comparatively long.

From one to four lines of a Negro Folk Rhyme were sung to the opening measures of the instrumental composition; then followed the larger and remaining part of the composition, instruments alone. In the Rhyme "Devilish Pigs" four lines were used at a time. Each time that the music theme of the composition was repeated, another set of Rhyme lines was repeated; and the variations in the music theme were played in each repeat which recalled the newly repeated words of the Rhyme. The ideal in composition from an instrumental viewpoint might quite well remind one of the ideal in piano compositions, which consists of a theme with variations. The first movement of Beethoven's Sonata, Opus 26, ill.u.s.trates the music ideal in composition to which I refer.

So far as I know no Caucasian instrumental music composer has ever ordered the performers under his direction to sing a few of the first measures of his composition while the string division of the orchestra played its opening chords. Only the ignorant Negro composer has done this. Some white composers have made little approaches to it. A fair sample of an approach is found in the Idylls of Edward McDowell, for piano, where every exquisite little tone picture is headed by some gem in verse, reading which the less musically gifted may gain a deeper insight into the philosophical tone discourse set forth in the notes and chords of the composition.

The Negro Folk Rhyme, then, furnished the ideas about which the "old time" Negro banjo picker and fiddler cl.u.s.tered his best instrumental music thoughts. It is too bad that this music pa.s.sed away unrecorded save by the hearts of men. Paul Laurence Dunbar depicts its telling effects upon the hearer in his poem "The Party":

"Cripple Joe, de ole rheumatic, danced dat flo' frum side to middle.

Throwed away his crutch an' hopped it, what's rheumatics 'gainst a fiddle?

Eldah Thompson got so tickled dat he lak to los' his grace, Had to take bofe feet an' hold 'em, so's to keep 'em in deir place.

An' de Christuns an' de sinnahs got so mixed up on dat flo', Dat I don't see how dey's pahted ef de trump had chonced to blow."

Perhaps a new school of orchestral music might be built on the Negro idea that some of the performers sing a sentence or so here and there, both to a.s.sist the hearers to a clearer musical understanding and to heighten the general artistic finish. The old Negro performers generally sang lines of the Folk Rhymes at the opening but occasionally in the midst of their instrumental compositions. I do not recall any case where lines were sung to the closing measures of the compositions.

It might seem odd to some that the grotesque Folk Rhyme should have given rise to comparatively long instrumental music compositions. I think the explanation is probably very simple. The African on his native heath had his crude ancestral drum as his leading musical instrument. He sang or shouted his war songs consisting of a few words, and of a few notes, then followed them up with the beating of his drum, perhaps for many minutes, or even for hours. In civilization, the banjo, fiddle, "quills," and "triangle" largely took the place of his drum. Thus the singing of opening strains and following them with the main body of the instrumental composition, is in keeping with the Negro's inherited law for instrumental compositions from his days of savagery. The rattling, distinct tones of the banjo, recalling unconsciously his inherited love for the rattle of the African ancestral drum, is probably the thing which caused that instrument to become a favorite among Negro slaves.

I would next consider the relation of the Folk Rhymes to Negro child life. They were instilled into children as warnings. In the years closely following our Civil War, it was common for a young Negro child, about to engage in a doubtful venture, to hear his mother call out to him the Negro Rhyme recorded by Joel Chandler Harris, in the Negro story, "The End of Mr. Bear":

"Tree stan' high, but honey mighty sweet-- Watch dem bees wid stingers on der feet."

These lines commonly served to recall the whole story, it being the Rabbit's song in that story, and the child stopped whatever he was doing. Other and better examples of such Rhymes are "Young Master and Old Master," "The Alabama Way," and "You Had Better Mind Master," found in our collection.

The warnings were commonly such as would help the slave to escape more successfully the lash, and to live more comfortably under slave conditions. I would not for once intimate that I entertain the thought that the ignorant slave carefully and philosophically studied his surroundings, reasoned it to be a fine method to warn children through poetry, composed verse, and like a wise man proceeded to use it. Of course thinking preceded the making of the Rhyme, but a conscious system of making verses for the purpose did not exist. I have often watched with interest a chicken hen lead forth her brood of young for the first time. While the scratching and feeding are going on, all of a sudden the hen utters a loud shriek, and flaps her wings. The little chicks, although they have never seen a hawk, scurry hither and thither, and so prostrate their little brown and ashen bodies upon the ground as almost to conceal themselves. The Negro Folk Rhymes of warning must be looked upon a little in this same light. They are but the strains of terror given by the promptings of a mother instinct full enough of love to give up life itself for its defenseless own.

Many Rhymes were used to convey to children the common sense truths of life, hidden beneath their comic, crudely cut coats. Good examples are "Old Man Know-All," "Learn to Count," and "Shake the Persimmons Down."

All through the Rhymes will be found here and there many stanzas full of common uncommon sense, worthwhile for children.

Many Negro Folk Rhymes repeated or sung to children on their parents'

knees were enlarged and told to them as stories, when they became older.

The Rhyme in our collection on "Judge Buzzard" is one of this kind. In the Negro version of the race between the hare and the tortoise ("rabbit and terrapin"), the tortoise wins not through the hare's going to sleep, but through a gross deception of all concerned, including even the buzzard who acted as Judge. The Rhyme is a laugh on "Jedge Buzzard."

It was commonly repeated to Negro children in olden days when they pa.s.sed erroneous judgments. "Buckeyed rabbit! Whoopee!" in our volume belongs with the Negro story recorded by Joel Chandler Harris under the t.i.tle, "How Mr. Rabbit Lost His Fine Bushy Tail," though for some reason Mr. Harris failed to weave it into the story as was the Negro custom.

"The Turtle's Song," in our collection, is another, which belongs with the story, "Mr. Terrapin Shows His Strength"; a Negro story given to the world by the same author, though the Rhyme was not recorded by him. It might be of interest to know that the Negroes, when themselves telling the Folk stories, usually sang the Folk Rhyme portions to little "catchy" Negro tunes. I would not under any circ.u.mstances intimate that Mr. Harris carelessly left them out. He recorded many little stanzas in the midst of the stories. Examples are:

(a) "We'll stay at home when you're away 'Cause no gold won't pay toll."

(b) "Big bird catch, little bird sing.

Bug bee zoom, little bee sting.

Little man lead, and the big horse follow, Can you tell what's good for a head in a hollow?"

These and many others are fragmentarily recorded among Mr. Harris' Negro stories in "Nights With Uncle Remus."

Folk Rhymes also formed in many cases the words of Negro Play Songs.

"Susie Girl," and "Peep Squirrel," found in our collection, are good ill.u.s.trations of the Rhymes used in this way. The words and the music of such Rhymes were usually of poor quality. When, however, they were sung by children with the proper accompanying body movements, they might quite well remind one of the "Folk Dances" used in the present best up-to-date Primary Schools. They were the little rays of sunshine in the dark dreary monotonous lives of black slave children.

Possibly the thing which will impress the reader most in reading Negro Folk Rhymes is their good-natured drollery and sparkling nonsense. I believe this is very important. Many have recounted in our hearing, the descriptions of "backwoods" Negro picnics. I have witnessed some of them where the good-natured vender of lemonade and cakes cried out:

"Here's yo' col' ice lemonade, It's made in de shade, It's stirred wid a spade.

Come buy my col' ice lemonade.

It's made in de shade An' sol' in de sun.

Ef you hain't got no money, You cain't git none.

One gla.s.s fer a nickel, An' two fer a dime, Ef you hain't got de c.h.i.n.k, You cain't git mine.

Come right dis way, Fer it sho' will pay To git candy fer de ladies An' cakes fer de babies."

"Did these venders sell?" Well, all agree that they did. The same principle applied, with much of the nonsense eliminated, will probably make of the Negro a great merchant, as caste gives way enough to allow him a common man's business chance. Of all the races of men, the Negro alone has demonstrated his ability to come into contact with the white man and neither move on nor be annihilated. I believe this is largely due to his power to muster wit and humor on all occasions, and even to laugh in the face of adversity. He refused during the days of slavery to take the advice of Job's wife, and to "Curse G.o.d and die." He repeated and sang his comic Folk Rhymes, danced, lived, and came out of the Night of Bondage comparatively strong.

The compiler of the Rhymes was quite interested to find that as a rule the country-reared Negro had a larger acquaintance with Folk Rhymes than one brought up in the city. The human mind craves occasional recreation, entertainment, and amus.e.m.e.nt. In cities where there is an almost continuous pa.s.sing along the crowded thoroughfares of much that contributes to these ends, the slave Negro needed only to keep his eyes open, his ears attentive, and laugh. He directed his life accordingly.

But, in the country districts there was only the monotony of quiet woods and waving fields of cotton. The rural scenes, though beautiful in themselves, refuse to amuse or entertain those who will not hold communion with them. The country Negro longing for amus.e.m.e.nt communed in his crude way, and Nature gave him Folk Rhymes for entertainment. Among those found to be clearly of this kind may be mentioned "The Great Owl's Song," "Tails," "Redhead Woodp.e.c.k.e.r," "The Snail's Reply," "Bob-white's Song," "Chuck Will's Widow Song," and many others.