Juba Dis- Eggleston 1901
The Transit of Civilization from England to America in the Seventeenth Century
By Edward Eggleston 1901
The following nonsensical verse was remembered by my father as sung by the Virginia slaves in his boyhood—that is to say, in the first quarter of the nineteenth century:
Juba dis an' juba dat,
An' juba roun' de kittle o' fat;
Juba heah, an' juba dah,
An' juba, juba ebry whah.
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Joseph Scott: In the 1890s, for years, there was a society for studying black folk secular and religious music, the Hampton Folk-Lore Society. The membership was mostly black, and made a point of collecting actual black folk music as opposed to so-called Ethiopian minstrelsy. The society had collected the following by 1894, and it's interesting because it is a Bunyanesque narrative, a cohesive narrative relative to the fragments of songs like this that were collected from (and sometimes barely remembered by?) e.g. elderly black banjoists in the 1970s. Spelling and punctuation standardized by me. Imo this version explains what "Juba this and Juba that" means: it means everyone was always talking about all the grand things Juba did. (Cf. "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!")
"JUBA.
Master had a yellow man
Tallest nigger in the land
Juba was that fellow's name
The way he strutted was a shame
Juba, Juba, Juba, Juba (repeat several times)
Oh, 'twas Juba this and Juba that
Juba killed the yellow cat
To make his wife a Sunday hat
Juba
'Twas Juba this and Juba that
His wife was yellow, tall, and fat
He killed old missus' yellow cat
To make his wife a Sunday hat
Juba!
Master had a yellow steer
Old as the mountain to a year
I tells you this, for all of that
He'd run away at the drop of your hat
Whoa Mark
See him coming up the road
Pulling on a monstrous load
Get out'n the way mighty spry
Or he'll throw you to the sky
Whoa Mark
Juba drive that old steer
For five and twenty year
Through the rain and through the snow
Juba and the steer would go
Whoa Mark, Juba
When the sun was shining bright
If 'twas day, if 'twas night
Hear him holler loud and strong
Mark, why don't you get along
Golong, whoa Mark, Juba
By and by that old ox died
Juba, he just cried and cried
'Til one day he ups and die
I 'spect he's driving in the sky
Golong, whoa Mark, Juba"