Negro Folk Rymes- Wise and Otherwise-
by Thomas W. Talley- 1922
[There is a 1991 expanded edition by Charles Wolfe (recommended- see a review of Wolfe's edition at the very bottom of thos page-below). This is the 1922 edition which has the same songs and texts. I've divided the book up. Part 1 is divided up into eleven rhyme section pages as indicated by Talley; Part 2 is one long page.
PART I- NEGRO FOLK RHYMES
I. Dance Rhyme Section p. 1-13
Jonah's Band Party
Love Is just A Thing Of Fancy
Stillwater Creek
'Possum Up A Gum Stump
Joe and Melinda Jane
Walk Talk Chicken
Tails
Captain Dime
Crossing The River
T-U-Turkey
Chicken in the Bread Tray
Molly Cottontail or Graveyard Rabbit
Juba
On Top of the Pot
Stand Back Black Man
Negroes Never Die
Jawbone
Indian Flea
As I Went To Shiloh
Jump Jim Crow
II. Dance Rhyme Song Section p. 14-72
Jaybird
Off from Richmond
He Is my Horse
Judge Buzzard
Sheep and the Goat
Jackson, Put That Kettle On
Dinah's Dinner Horn
My Mule
Bullfrog Put on the Soldier's Clothes
Sail Away Ladies
The Banjo Picking
Old Molly Hare
An Opposum Hunt (tune)
An Opposum Hunt
Devilish Pigs
Promises of Freedom
When My Wife Dies
Baa, Baa Black Sheep (Tune)
Baa, Baa Black Sheep
He Will Get Mister Coon
Bring On Your Hot Corn
The Little Rooster
Sugar in Coffee
The Turtle's Song
Raccon and Possum Fight
Cotton Eyed Joe
Rabbit Soup
Old Gray Mink
Run, Nigger, Run
Shake The Persimmons Down
The Cow Needs A Tail in Fly Time
Jaybird Died With The Whooping Chough
Wanted! Cornbread and Coon
Little Red Hen
Ration Day
My Fiddle
Die in the Pig-Pen Fighting
Master is Six Feet One Way
Fox and Geese
Gooseberry Wine
I'd Rather Be A Negro Than A Poor White Man
The Hunting Camp
The Ark
Gray and Black Horses
Rattler
Brother Ben and Sister Sal
Simon Slick's Mule
Nobody Looking
Hoecake
I Went Down the Road
The Old Cackled Hen
I Love Somebody
We Are "All the Go"
Aunt Dinal Drunk
The Old Woman in the Hills
A Sick Wife
My Wonderful Travel
I Wouldn't Marry A Black Girl
Havest Song
The Year of Jubilee
Sheep Shell Corn
Plaster
Uncle Ned
The Master's "Stolen" Coat
I Wouldn't Marry A Yellow or a White Negro Girl
Don't Ask Me Questions
The Old Section Boss
The Negro and the Policeman
Ham Beats All Meat
Suze Ann
Walk Tom Wilson
Chiken Pie
I Am Not Going to Hobo Any More
Forty-Four
III. Play Rhyme Section p. 73-92
Blindfold Play Chant
Fox and Geese Play
Hawk and Chickens Play
Caught by the Witch Play
Goose-Gander Play Rhyme
Hawk and Buzzard
Likes and Dislikes
Susie Girl
Susan Jane
Peep Squirrel
Did You Feed My Cow?
A Budget
The Old Black Gnats
Sugar Loaf Tea
Green Oak Tree Rocky'O
Kissing Song
Kneel on This Carpet
Salt Rising Bread
Precious Things
He Loves Sugar and Tea
Here Comes A Young Man Courting
Anchor Line
Sallie
Song to the Runaway Slave
Down in the Lonesome Garden
Little Sister, Won't You Marry me?
Raise A Rucus To-Night
Sweet Pinks and Roses
IV. Pastime Rhyme Section p. 93-126
V. Love Rhyme Section p.127-134
VI. Courtship Rhyme Section p. 135-142
VII. Marriage & Married Life Rhyme Section p. 143-148
VIII. Nursery Rhyme Section p. 149-203
IX. Blessings p. 204-206
X. Wise Sayings p. 207-215
XI. Foreign Rhyme Section p. 216-227
Part II- A STUDY IN NEGRO FOLK RHYMES p.228-326
This page has Front Page; Introduction; Index. ]
FRONT PAGE
NEGRO FOLK RHYMES
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS
ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
NEGRO FOLK RHYMES
_Wise and Otherwise_
WITH A STUDY
BY
THOMAS W. TALLEY,
OF FISK UNIVERSITY
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Copyright, 1922,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
* * *
Set up and printed. Published January, 1922.
Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U.S.A.
INTRODUCTION
Of the making of books by individual authors there is no end; but a cultivated literary taste among the exceptional few has rendered almost impossible the production of genuine folk-songs. The spectacle, therefore, of a homogeneous throng of partly civilized people dancing to the music of crude instruments and evolving out of dance-rhythm a lyrical or narrative utterance in poetic form is sufficiently rare in the nineteenth century to challenge immediate attention. In "Negro Folk Rhymes" is to be found no inconsiderable part of the musical and poetic life-records of a people; the compiler presents an arresting volume which, in addition to being a pioneer and practically unique in its field, is as nearly exhaustive as a sympathetic understanding of the Negro mind, careful research, and labor of love can make it. Professor Talley of Fisk University has spared himself no pains in collecting and piecing together every attainable scrap and fragment of secular rhyme which might help in adequately interpreting the inner life of his own people.
Being the expression of a race in, or just emerging from bondage, these songs may at first seem to some readers trivial and almost wholly devoid of literary merit. In phraseology they may appear crude, lacking in that elegance and finish ordinarily associated with poetic excellence; in imagery they are at times exceedingly winter-starved, mediocre, common, drab, scarcely ever rising above the unhappy environment of the singers.
The outlook upon life and nature is, for the most part, one of imaginative simplicity and child-like naivete; superstitions crowd in upon a worldly wisdom that is elementary, practical, and obvious; and a warped and crooked human nature, developed and fostered by circumstances, shows frequently through the lines. What else might be expected?
At the time when these rhymes were in process of being created the conditions under which the American Negro lived and labored were not calculated to inspire him with a desire for the highest artistic expression. Restricted, cramped, bound in unwilling servitude, he looked about him in his miserable little world to see whatever of the beautiful or happy he might find; that which he discovered is pathetically slight, but, such as it is, it served to keep alive his stunted artist-soul under the most adverse circumstances. He saw the sweet pinks under a blue sky, or observed the fading violets and the roses that fall, as he passed to a tryst under the oak trees of a forest, and wrought these things into his songs of love and tenderness. Friendless and otherwise without companionship he lived in imagination with the beasts and birds of the great out-of-doors; he knew personally Mr. Coon, Brother Rabbit, Mr. 'Possum and their associates of the wild; Judge Buzzard and Sister Turkey appealed to his fancy as offering material for what he supposed to be poetic treatment. Wherever he might find anything in his lowly position which seemed to him truly useful or beautiful, he seized upon it and wove about it the sweetest song he could sing. The result is not so much poetry of a high order as a valuable illustration of the persistence of artist-impulses even in slavery.
In some of these folk-songs, however, may be found certain qualities which give them dignity and worth. They are, when properly presented, rhythmical to the point of perfection. I myself have heard many of them
chanted with and without the accompaniment of clapping hands, stamping feet, and swaying bodies. Unfortunately a large part of their liquid melody and flexibility of movement is lost through confinement in cold
print; but when they are heard from a distance on quiet summer nights or clear Southern mornings, even the most fastidious ear is satisfied with the rhythmic pulse of them. That pathos of the Negro character which can never be quite adequately caught in words or transcribed in music is then augmented and intensified by the peculiar quality of the Negro voice, rich in overtones, quavering, weird, cadenced, throbbing with the sufferings of a race. Or perhaps that well-developed sense of humor which has, for more than a century, made ancestral sorrows bearable finds fuller expression in the lilting turn of a note than in the flashes of wit which abundantly enliven the pages of this volume. There is one lyric in particular which, in evident sincerity of feeling, simple and unaffected grace, and regularity of form, appeals to me as having intrinsic literary value:
She hug' me, an' she kiss' me,
She wrung my han' an' cried.
She said I wus de sweetes' thing
Dat ever lived or died.
She hug' me an' she kiss' me.
Oh Heaben! De touch o' her han'!
She said I wus de puttiest thing
In de shape o' mortal man.
I told her dat I love' her,
Dat my love wus bed-cord strong;
Den I axed her w'en she'd have me,
An' she jes' say, "Go 'long!"
There is also a dramatic quality about many of these rhymes which must not be overlooked. It has long been my observation that the Negro is possessed by nature of considerable, though not as yet highly developed,
histrionic ability; he takes delight in acting out in pantomime whatever he may be relating in song or story. It is not surprising, then, to find that the play-rhymes, originating from the "call" and "response," are really little dramas when presented in their proper settings. "Caught By The Witch" would not be ineffective if, on a dark night, it were acted in the vicinity of a graveyard! And one ballad--if I may be permitted to dignify it by that name--called "Promises of Freedom" is characterized by an unadorned narrative style and a dramatic ending which are associated with the best English folk-ballads. The singer tells simply and, one feels, with a grim impersonality of how his mistress promised to set him free; it seemed as if she would never die--but "she's somehow gone"! His master likewise made promises,
Yes, my ole Mosser promise' me;
But "his papers" didn't leave me free.
A dose of pizen he'pped 'im along.
May de Devil preach 'is funner'l song.
The manner of this conclusion is strikingly like that of the Scottish ballad, "Edward,"
The curse of hell frae me sall ye beir,
Mither, Mither,
The curse of hell frae me sall ye beir,
Sic counseils ye gave to me O.
In both a story of cruelty is suggested in a single artistic line and ended with startling, dramatic abruptness.
In fact, these two songs probably had their ultimate origin in not widely dissimilar types of illiterate, unsophisticated human society. Professor Talley's "Study in Negro Folk Rhymes," appended to this volume
of songs, is illuminating. One may not be disposed to accept without considerable modification his theories entire; still his account from personal, first-hand knowledge of the beginnings and possible evolution of certain rhymes in this collection is apparently authentic. Here we have again, in the nineteenth century, the record of a singing, dancing people creating by a process approximating communal authorship a mass
of verse embodying tribal memories, ancestral superstitions, and racial wisdom handed down from generation to generation through oral tradition. These are genuine folk-songs--lyrics, ballads, rhymes--in which are
crystallized the thought and feeling, the universally shared lore of a folk. Recent theorizers on poetic origins who would insist upon individual as opposed to community authorship of certain types of song-narrative might do well to consider Professor Talley's characteristic study. And students of comparative literature who love to
recreate the life of a tribe or nation from its song and story will discover in this collection a mine of interesting material.
Fisk University, the center of Negro culture in America, is to be congratulated upon having initiated the gathering and preservation of these relics, a valuable heritage from the past. Just how important for literature this heritage may prove to be will not appear until this institution--and others with like purposes--has fully developed by cultivation, training, and careful fostering the artistic impulses so abundantly a part of the Negro character. A race which has produced, under the most disheartening conditions, a mass of folk-poetry such as "Negro Folk Rhymes" may be expected to create with unlimited opportunities for self-development, a literature and a distinctive music of superior quality.
WALTER CLYDE CURRY
Vanderbilt University,
September 30, 1921.
GENERAL INDEX (p. 327)
PART I
PAGE
A. B. C., 154
Alabama Way, The, 164
Anchor Line, 87
Animal Attire, 158
Animal Fair, 159
Animal Persecutors, 205
Antebellum Courtship Inquiry, 135
Antebellum Marriage Proposal, 137
Are You Careful, 203
Ark, The, 44
As I Went to Shiloh, 13
Aspiration, 159
Aunt Dinah Drunk, 53
Aunt Jemima, 107
Awful Harbingers, 149
Baa! Baa! Black Sheep, 27
Baby Wants Cherries, 181
Bad Features, 100
Banjo Picking, The, 21
Bat! Bat! 202
Bedbug, 96
Bitter Lovers' Quarrel, A, 127
Black-eyed Peas For Luck, 200
Blessings, 204
Blindfold Play Chant, 73
Bob-White's Song, 155
Bought Me a Wife, 145
Brag and Boast, 213
Bridle up a Rat, 157
Bring on your Hot Corn, 29
Brother Ben and Sister Sal, 46
Buck and Berry, 172
Buck-eyed Rabbit! Whoopee!, 175
Budget, A, 79
Bull Frog Put on the Soldier Clothes, 20
Butterfly, 182
Captain Coon, 176
Captain Dime, 5
Care in Bread-making, 112
Caught by the Witch Play, 74
Chicken in the Bread Tray, 7
Chicken Pie, 69
Children's Seating Rhyme, 179
Christmas Turkey, 98
Chuck Will's Widow Song, 156
Clandestine Letter, A, 136
Coffee Grows on White Folks' Trees, 107
College Ox, The, 112
Cooking Dinner, 156
Cotton-eyed Joe, 32
Courting Boy, The, 141
Courtship, 138
Cow Needs a Tail in Fly-time, The, 35
Crooked Nose Jane, 99
Crossing a Foot-Log, 109
Crossing the River, 6
Day's Happiness, A, 125
Deedle, Dumpling, 171
Destinies of Good and Bad Children, 200
Destitute Former Slave Owners, 97
Devilish Pigs, 24
Did You Feed My Cow? 78
Die in the Pig-Pen Fighting, 39
Dinah's Dinner Horn, 18
Do I Love You? 129
Does Money Talk?, 113
Don't Ask Me Questions, 63
Don't Sing before Breakfast, 186
Don't Tell All You Know, 214
Doodle-Bug, 174
Down in the Lonesome Garden, 89
Drinking Razor Soup, 211
Elephant, The, 116
End of Ten Little Negroes, The, 163
Fattening Frogs for Snakes, 97
Fed From the Tree of Knowledge, 212
Few Negroes by States, A, 117
Fine Plaster, A, 124
Fishing Simon, 177
Flap-jacks, 196
Forty-four, 71
Four Runaway Negroes; Whence They Came, 205
Fox and Geese, 40
Fox and Geese Play, 73
Fox and Rabbit Drinking Propositions, 111
Frightened Away from a Chicken-Roost, 95
Frog in a Mill (Guinea or Ebo Rhyme), 167
Frog Went a-Courting, 190
From Slavery, 162
Full Pocketbook, A, 99
Getting Ten Negro Boys Together, 184
Go to Bed, 175
Going To Be Good Slaves, 101
Good-by, Ring, 171
Good-by, Wife!, 148
Gooseberry Wine, 41
Goosie-Gander Play Rhyme, 75
Grasshopper Sense, 169
Grasshopper Sitting on a Sweet Potato Vine, 173
Gray and Black Horses, 45
Great Owl's Song, The, 151
Green Oak Tree! Rocky-o!, 81
Guinea Gall, 176
Half Way Doings, 120
Ham Beats all Meat, 67
Harvest Song, 57
Hated Blackbird and Crow, The, 183
Hawk and Buzzard, 75
Hawk and Chickens, 185
Hawk and Chickens Play, 74
He Is My Horse, 16
He Loves Sugar and Tea, 84
He Paid Me Seven (Parody), 122
He Will Get Mr. Coon, 28
Hear-say, 114
Here Comes a Young Man Courting, 85
Here I Stand, 153
Hoecake, 49
How to Get to Glory Land, 96
How to Keep or Kill The Devil, 104
How to Make it Rain, 101
How to Plant and Cultivate Seeds, 208
How to Please a Preacher, 117
Hunting Camp, The, 43
I am not Going to Hobo Any More, 70
I Love Somebody, 51
I Walked the Roads, 139
I Went down the Road, 50
I Wish I Was an Apple, 133
I Would not Marry a Black Girl, 56
I Would not Marry A Yellow Or A White Negro Girl, 63
I'd rather Be a Negro than a Poor White Man, 42
I'll Eat When I'm Hungry, 114
I'll Get You, Rabbit!, 116
I'll Wear Me a Cotton Dress, 118
I'm a "Round-Town" Gentleman, 108
If You Frown, 137
In '76, 178
In a Mulberry Tree, 158
In a Rush, 183
Independent, 209
Indian Flea, 12
Invited to Take the Escort's Arm, 135
It Is Hard to Love, 132
Jack and Dinah Want Freedom, 215
Jackson, Put that Kettle On!, 17
Jawbone, 12
Jaybird, 14
Jaybird Died with the Whooping Cough, 36
Joe and Malinda Jane, 4
John Henry, 105
Johnny Bigfoot, 93
Jonah's Band Party, 1
Juba, 9
Judge Buzzard, 16
Jump Jim Crow, 13
Kept Busy, 109
Kissing Song, 82
Kneel on This Carpet, 82
Last of Jack, The, 149
Learn to Count, 207
"Let's Marry" Courtship, 138
Likes and Dislikes, 76
Little Boy Who Couldn't Count Seven, 160
Little Dogs, 150
Little Negro Fly, The, 199
Little Pickaninny, A, 186
Little Red Hen, 37
Little Rooster, The, 29
Little Sister, Won't You Marry Me? 90
Little Sleeping Negroes, 187
Looking for a Fight, 118
Love Is Just a Thing of Fancy, 2
Lovers' Good-night, 129
Mamma's Darling, 188
Man of Words, A, 208
Master is Six Feet One Way, 40
Master Killed a Big Bull, 126
Master's "Stolen" Coat, The, 62
Me and my Lover, 132
Miss Blodger, 199
Miss Slippy Sloppy, 100
Miss Terrapin and Miss Toad, 162
Molly Cottontail, 8
Mother Says I am Six Years Old, 164
Mourning Slave Fiancees, 129
Mud-Log Pond, 185
Mule's Kick, The, 98
Mule's Nature, The, 108
My Baby, 180
My Dog, Cuff, 150
My Fiddle, 39
My First and my Second Wife, 147
My Folks and your Folks, 187
My Little Pig, 157
My Mule, 19
My Speckled Hen, 170
My Wonderful Travel, 55
Mysterious Face Washing, 174
Nashville Ladies, The, 106
Negro and the Policeman, The, 66
Negro Baker Man, 154
Negro Soldier's Civil War Chant, 115
Negroes Never Die, 11
Nesting, 180
Newly Weds, The, 144
No Room to Poke Fun, 99
Nobody Looking, 48
Off from Richmond, 15
Old Aunt Kate, 179
Old Black Gnats, The, 80
Old Gray Mink, 33
Old Hen Cackled, The, 50
Old Man Know-all, 211
Old Molly Hare, 22
Old Section Boss, The, 64
Old Woman in the Hills, The, 54
On Top of the Pot, 10
Opossum Hunt, An, 23
Origin of the Snake, The, 165
Our Old Mule, 112
Outrunning the Devil, 103
Page's Geese, 102
Parody--He Paid Me Seven, 122
Parody on "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep", 115
Parody on "Reign, Master Jesus! Reign!", 122
Paying Debts with Kicks, 184
Peep Squirrel, 78
Periwinkle, 201
Pig Tail, 153
Plaster, 60
'Possum up the Gum Stump, 3
Precious Things, 84
Presenting a Hat to Phoebe, 140
Pretty Little Girl, 172
Pretty Little Pink, 127
Pretty Pair of Chickens, A, 181
Pretty Polly Ann, 142
Promises of Freedom, 25
Rabbit Hash, 203
Rabbit Soup, 33
Raccoon and Opossum Fight, 31
Race-starter's Rhyme, A, 180
Raise a "Rucus" To-night, 90
Randsome Tantsome, 202
Rascal, The, 106
Ration Day, 38
Rattler, 46
Raw Head and Bloody Bones, 174
Redhead Woodpecker, 178
Rejected by Eliza Jane, 134
Request to Sell, A, 123
Roses Red, 128
Run, Nigger, Run!, 34
Sail Away, Ladies!, 20
Sallie, 87
Salt-rising Bread, 83
Sam Is a Clever Fellow, 151
Satan, 93
Self-control, 213
Sex Laugh, 102
Shake the Persimmons Down, 34
She Hugged Me and Kissed Me, 131
Sheep and Goat, 17
Sheep Shell Corn, 59
Shoo! Shoo!, 196
Short Letter, A, 113
Sick Wife, A, 55
Simon Slick's Mule, 47
Slave Marriage Ceremony Supplement, 143
Snail's Reply, The, 170
Song to the Runaway Slave, 88
Sparking or Courting, 136
Speak Softly, 214
Stand Back, Black Man, 10
Stealing a Ride, 188
Stick-a-ma-stew, 155
Still Water Creek, 2
Still Water Runs Deep, 214
Strange Brood, A, 166
Strange Family, A, 171
Strange Old Woman, A, 178
Strong Hands, 167
Sugar in Coffee, 30
Sugar Loaf Tea, 81
Susan Jane, 77
Susie Girl, 76
Suze Ann, 68
Sweet Pinks and Roses, 92
Tails, 5
Taking a Walk, 183
Teaching Table Manners, 197
Temperance Rhyme, 209
That Hypocrite, 210
"They Steal" Gossip, 110
This Sun is Hot, 108
Thrifty Slave, The, 94
To Win a Yellow Girl, 102
Tongue, The, 212
Too Much Watermelon, 182
Town Bird and the Country Bird, The, 166
Training the Boy, 201
Tree Frogs (Guinea or Ebo Rhyme), 168
Turkey Funeral, A, 111
T-U-Turkey, 6
Turtle's Song, The, 30
Two Sick Negro Boys, 173
Two Times One, 121
Uncle Jerry Fants, 109
Uncle Ned, 61
Vinie, 130
Walk, Talk, Chicken with your Head Pecked, 4
Walk, Tom Wilson, 68
Wanted: Cornbread and Coon, 37
War is On, The, 207
Washing Mamma's Dishes, 189
Watermelon Preferred, 110
We Are "All the Go", 52
We'll Stick to the Hoe, 123
What Will We Do for Bacon?, 185
When I Go to Marry, 144
When I Was a Little Boy, 168
When I Was a Roustabout, 145
When My Wife Dies, 26
Why Look at Me, 113
Why the Woodpecker's Head Is Red, 203
Wild Hog Hunt, 165
Wild Negro Bill, 94
Willie Wee, 189
Wind Bag, A, 101
Wooing, 140
Year of Jubilee, 58
You Had Better Mind Master, 126
You Have Made Me Weep, 128
You Love your Girl, 95
Young Master and Old Master, 169
FOREIGN SECTION INDEX
_African Rhymes_
Byanswahn-Byanswahn, 219
Near Waldo Teedo o mah nah mejai, 216
Sai Boddeoh Sumpun Komo, 218
The Frogs, 220
The Owl, 217
The Turkey Buzzard, 220
Tuba Blay, 217
_A Philippine Island Rhyme_, 227
_Trinidad Rhymes_
A Tom Cat, 226
Un Belle Marie Coolie, 225
_Jamaica Rhyme_
Buscher Garden, 222
_Venezuelan Rhymes_
A "Would Be" Immigrant, 224
Game Contestants' Song, 223
PART II
A Study in Negro Folk Rhymes, 228
COMPARATIVE STUDY INDEX
_Love Songs_
Bitter Lovers' Quarrel; One Side, 127
Courting Boy, The, 141
It Is Hard to Love, 132
I Wish I Was an Apple, 133
Lovers' Good-night, 129
Me and my Lover, 132
Mourning Slave Fiancees, 129
Pretty Polly Ann, 142
Rejected by Eliza Jane, 134
Roses Red, 128
She Hugged Me and She Kissed Me, 131
Vinie, 130
Wooing, 140
You Have Made Me Weep, 128
You Love your Girl, 95
_Dance Songs_
Ark, The, 44
Aunt Dinah Drunk, 53
Baa! Baa! Black Sheep, 27
Banjo Picking, 21
Brother Ben and Sister Sal, 46
Bull Frog Put on the Soldier Clothes, 20
Chicken Pie, 69
Cotton-eyed Joe, 32
Cow Needs a Tail in Fly-time, The, 35
Devilish Pigs, 24
Die in the Pig-Pen Fighting, 39
Dinah's Dinner Horn, 18
Don't Ask Me Questions, 63
Forty-four, 71
Fox and Geese, 40
Gooseberry Wine, 41
Gray and Black Horses, 45
Ham Beats All Meat, 67
He Is my Horse, 16
Hoecake, 49
I am not Going to Hobo Any More, 70
I Love Somebody, 51
I Went down the Road, 50
I Would not Marry a Black Girl, 56
I Would not Marry a Yellow or a White Negro Girl, 63
I'd rather Be a Negro than a Poor White Man, 42
Jack and Dinah Want Freedom, 215
Jaybird, 14
Jaybird Died with the Whooping Cough, 36
Little Red Hen, 37
Little Rooster, The, 29
Master is Six Feet One Way, 40
Master's "Stolen Coat," The, 62
My Fiddle, 39
My Mule, 19
My Wonderful Travel, 55
Negro and the Policeman, The, 66
Nobody Looking, 48
Off from Richmond, 15
Old Gray Mink, 33
Old Hen Cackled, The, 50
Old Molly Hare, 22
Old Section Boss, The, 64
Old Woman in the Hills, The, 54
Opossum Hunt, An, 23
Plaster, 60
'Possum up the Gum Stump, 3
Promises of Freedom, 25
Rabbit Soup, 33
Raccoon and Opossum Fight, 31
Ration Day, 38
Rattler, 46
Run, Nigger, Run! 34
Sail Away, Ladies! 20
Shake the Persimmons Down, 34
Sheep and Goat, 17
Sheep Shell Corn, 59
Sick Wife, A, 55
Simon Slick's Mule, 47
Sugar in Coffee, 30
Suze Ann, 68
Uncle Ned, 61
Walk, Tom Wilson, 68
Wanted: Cornbread and Coon, 37
We Are "All the Go", 52
When My Wife Dies, 26
Year of Jubilee, 58
_Animal and Nature Lore_
Animal Attire, 158
Animal Fair, 159
Animal Persecutors, 205
Awful Harbingers, 149
Bob-White's Song, 155
Bridle Up a Rat, 157
Buck and Berry, 172
Buck-eyed Rabbit! Whoopee! 175
Chuck Will's Widow Song, 156
Frog in a Mill, 167
Frog Went a-Courting, 190
Full Pocketbook, A, 99
Great Owl's Song, 151
Jaybird, 14
Judge Buzzard, 16
Last of Jack, The, 149
Little Dogs, 150
Man of Words, A, 208
Miss Terrapin and Miss Toad, 162
Molly Cottontail, 8
My Dog, Cuff, 150
My Speckled Hen, 170
Old Molly Hare, 22
Origin of the Snake, The, 165
Snail's Reply, The, 170
Strange Brood, A, 166
Tails, 5
Town Bird and the Country Bird, The, 166
Turtle's Song, The, 30
Why the Woodpecker's Head is Red, 203
_Nursery Rhymes_
A. B. C., 154
Alabama Way, The, 164
Animal Fair, 159
Are You Careful?, 203
Aspiration, 159
Awful Harbingers, 149
Baby Wants Cherries, 181
Bat! Bat!, 202
Black-eyed Peas for Luck, 200
Blessings, 204
Bob-White's Song, 155
Buck-eyed Rabbit! Whoopee!, 175
Butterfly, 182
Captain Coon, 176
Children's Seating Rhyme, 179
Chuck Will's Widow Song, 156
Cooking Dinner, 156
Crossing the River, 6
Deedle, Dumpling, 171
Destinies of Good and Bad Children, 200
Did You Feed My Cow?, 78
Don't Sing before Breakfast, 186
Doodle-Bug, 174
End of Ten Little Negroes, The, 163
Fishing Simon, 177
Flap-jacks, 196
Four Runaway Negroes; Whence They Came, 205
Frog Went a-Courting, 190
From Slavery, 162
Getting Ten Negro Boys Together, 184
Go to Bed, 175
Good-by, Ring, 171
Grasshopper Sitting on a Sweet Potato Vine, 173
Grasshopper-Sense, 169
Great Owl's Song, The, 151
Guinea Gall, 176
Hated Blackbird and Crow, The, 183
Hawk and Chickens, 185
Here I Stand, 153
In '76, 178
In a Mulberry Tree, 158
In a Rush, 183
Judge Buzzard, 16
Little Boy Who Couldn't Count Seven, 160
Little Dogs, 150
Little Negro Fly, The, 199
Little Pickaninny, A, 186
Little Sleeping Negroes, 187
Mamma's Darling, 188
Miss Blodger, 199
Miss Terrapin and Miss Toad, 162
Mother Says I am Six Years Old, 164
Mud-Log Pond, 185
My Baby, 180
My Dog, Cuff, 150
My Folks and your Folks, 187
My Little Pig, 157
My Speckled Hen, 170
Mysterious Face Washing, 174
Negro Baker Man, 154
Nesting, 180
Old Aunt Kate, 179
Origin of the Snake, The, 165
Paying Debts with Kicks, 184
Periwinkle, 201
Pig Tail, 153
'Possum up the Gum Stump, 3
Pretty Little Girl, 172
Pretty Pair of Chickens, A, 181
Rabbit Hash, 203
Rabbit Soup, 33
Race-Starter's Rhyme, A, 180
Randsome Tantsome, 202
Raw Head and Bloody Bones, 174
Redhead Woodpecker, 178
Sam is a Clever Fellow, 151
Shoo! Shoo!, 196
Stealing a Ride, 188
Stick-a-ma-stew, 155
Strange Family, A, 171
Strange Old Woman, A, 178
Strong Hands, 167
Tails, 5
Taking a Walk, 183
Teaching Table Manners, 197
Too Much Watermelon, 182
Training the Boy, 201
Tree Frogs, 168
Turtle's Song, The, 30
Two Sick Negro Boys, 173
Washing Mamma's Dishes, 189
What Will We Do for Bacon?, 185
Wild Hog Hunt, 165
Willie Wee, 189
You Had Better Mind Master, 126
Young Master and Old Master, 169
_Charms and Superstitions_
Bat! Bat!, 202
Black-eyed Peas for Luck, 200
Don't Sing before Breakfast, 186
How to Make it Rain, 101
Jaybird, 14
Molly Cottontail, or Graveyard Rabbit, 8
My Speckled Hen, 170
Periwinkle, 201
Speak Softly, 214
_Hunting Songs_
Fox and Geese, 40
He will Get Mr. Coon, 28
Hunting Camp, The, 43
Miss Slippy Sloppy, 100
Opossum Hunt, An, 23
Rattler, 46
_Drinking Songs_
Aunt Dinah Drunk, 53
Bring on your Hot Corn, 29
Little Red Hen, 37
_Wise and Gnomic Sayings_
Brag and Boast, 213
Don't Tell All You Know, 214
Drinking Razor Soup, 211
Fed from the Tree of Knowledge, 212
How to Plant and Cultivate Seeds, 208
Independent, 209
Learn to Count, 207
Man of Words, A, 208
Old Man Know-all, 211
Self-control, 213
Speak Softly, 214
Still Water Runs Deep, 214
Temperance Rhyme, 209
That Hypocrite, 210
Tongue, The, 212
War is On, The, 207
_Harvest Songs_
Harvest Song, 57
_Biblical and Religious Themes_
Ark, The, 44
How to Keep or Kill the Devil, 104
Jawbone, 12
Jonah's Band, 1
Satan, 93
_Play Songs_
Anchor Line, 87
Budget, A, 79
Did You Feed my Cow?, 78
Down in the Lonesome Garden, 89
Green Oak Tree! Rocky-o!, 81
Hawk and Buzzard, 75
He Loves Sugar and Tea, 84
Here Comes a Young Man Courting, 85
Kissing Song, 82
Kneel on This Carpet, 82
Likes and Dislikes, 76
Little Sister, Won't You Marry Me?, 90
Old Black Gnats, The, 80
Peep Squirrel, 78
Precious Things, 84
Raise a "Rucus" To-night, 90
Sallie, 87
Salt-rising Bread, 83
Song to the Runaway Slave, 88
Sugar Loaf Tea, 81
Susan Jane, 77
Susie Girl, 76
Sweet Pinks and Roses, 92
_Miscellaneous_
Antebellum Courtship Inquiry, 135
Antebellum Marriage Proposal, 137
As I Went to Shiloh, 13
Aunt Jemima, 107
Bad Features, 100
Bedbug, 96
Blindfold Play Chant, 73
Bought Me a Wife, 145
Captain Dime, 5
Care in Bread-making, 112
Caught by the Witch Play, 74
Christmas Turkey, 98
Clandestine Letter, A, 136
Coffee Grows on White Folks' Trees, 107
College Ox, The, 112
Courtship, 138
Crooked Nose Jane, 99
Crossing a Foot-Log, 109
Day's Happiness, A, 125
Destitute Former Slave Owners, 97
Do I Love You?, 129
Does Money Talk?, 113
Elephant, The, 116
Fattening Frogs for Snakes, 97
Few Negroes by States, A, 117
Fine Plaster, A, 124
Fox and Geese Play, 73
Fox and Rabbit Drinking Proposition, 111
Frightened Away from a Chicken-Roost, 95
Going to be Good Slaves, 101
Good-by, Wife!, 148
Goosie-Gander Play Rhyme, 75
Half Way Doings, 120
Hawk and Chickens Play, 74
He Paid Me Seven (Parody), 122
Hear-say, 114
How to Get to Glory Land, 96
How to Please a Preacher, 117
I Walked the Road, 139
I'll Eat when I'm Hungry, 114
I'll Get You, Rabbit!, 116
I'll Wear Me a Cotton Dress, 118
I'm a "Round-Town" Gentleman, 108
If You Frown, 137
Indian Flea, 12
Invited to Take the Escort's Arm, 135
Joe and Malinda Jane, 4
John Henry, 105
Johnny Bigfoot, 93
Juba, 9
Jump Jim Crow, 13
Kept Busy, 109
Let's Marry Courtship, 138
Looking for a Fight, 118
Love is Just a Thing of Fancy, 2
Mule's Kick, The, 98
Mule's Nature, The, 108
Negro Soldier's Civil War Chant, 115
Negroes Never Die, 11
Newly Weds, The, 144
No Room to Poke Fun, 99
On Top of the Pot, 10
Our Old Mule, 112
Outrunning the Devil, 103
Page's Geese, 102
Parody--He Paid Me Seven, 122
Parody on "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep", 115
Parody on "Reign, Master Jesus! Reign!", 122
Presenting a Hat to Phoebe, 140
Pretty Little Pink, 127
Rascal, The, 106
Request to Sell, A, 123
Sex Laugh, 102
Short Letter, A, 113
Slave Marriage Ceremony Supplement, 143
Sparking or Courting, 136
Stand Back, Black Man, 10
Still Water Creek, 2
"They Steal" Gossip, 110
This Sun is Hot, 108
Thrifty Slave, The, 94
To Win a Yellow Girl, 102
Turkey Funeral, 111
T-U-Turkey, 6
Two Times One, 121
Uncle Jerry Fants, 109
Walk, Talk, Chicken With your Head Pecked, 4
We'll Stick to the Hoe, 123
When I Go to Marry, 144
When I Was a Roustabout, 145
Why Look at Me?, 113
Wild Negro Bill, 94
Wind Bag, A, 101
----------------------------------
Review: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Winter, 1993), pp. 127-130
by Paul F. Wells
Thomas W. Talley's Negro Folk Rhymes: A New, Expanded Edition, with Music. Edited, with an introduction and notes, by CHARLES WOLFE. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991. xxxvii, 318 pp., music, bibliography, indexes. $34.95.
First published in 1922, Negro Folk Rhymes was the first substantial collection of secular black folk music. Compiled by Thomas W. Talley, a chemistry professor at Fisk University, the book is relatively little known to
present-day scholars. Because there is currently considerable interest in forms of black folk music other than blues, especially those forms which premusic predate blues, a simple reprint of the original edition of Talley's book would have been quite welcome. The fact that this edition contains considerable material not found in the original makes it doubly important. While searching in the Fisk archives for information about Talley and his work, Charles Wolfe happened upon a real treasure. Among the uncatalogued papers of Talley were texts of some fifty songs and, of even greater interest to ethnomusicologists, a manuscript of 106 melodies, "about fifty of which correspond to texts appearing in the printed volume" (p. ix).
In his introduction, Wolfe discusses the first appearance of Negro Folk Rhymes, gives a brief but excellent biography of Talley, discusses Talley's importance to American folk music scholarship, and cites the role of the material in Negro Folk Rhymes by demonstrating a link between white and black musical traditions in the rural South. It is this last point that may well prove to be the means through which Talley's work finally gains the recognition that has thus far eluded it. Much of the academic and popular interest in American folk music has proceeded along lines delimited both by race and by genre. People have been interested in either white traditions often string bands or some other aspect of "hillbilly"m usic-or black, which usually has meant blues. As knowledge of music within these areas of focus has increased, scholars have come to realize that we are dealing not only with tracks that run parallel, but that they also intersect time and again.
Viewed in this light, Talley's book was perhaps ahead of its time. Talley worked in the same area of Middle Tennessee that also was home to many white musicians who performed on the early Grand Ole Opry and/or who made early commercial recordings. As Wolfe puts it, Talley's collection "suggests that there might have been a common repertoire shared by both rural whites and blacks in nineteenth-century rural Tennessee" (p. xxv). And further: ". . . in an age before 'blues' and 'hillbilly' music segregated it, the rural music of the upland South might have had much more in common than in difference. Talley's may well be one of our best, and earliest, glimpses of this phenomenon" (p. xxvi). Specifically, Wolfe notes that more than eighty-five items included in Negro Folk Rhymes also turn up "in the repertoires (i.e., in early commercial recordings or artists' songbooks) of early country artists of the period 1925-1935" (p. xxv). The repertoire of Uncle Dave Macon (from Rutherford County, adjacent to Talley's Bedford County) was, according to Wolfe, especially rich in songs that Talley collected.
Wolfe contributes headnotes to many of the songs in the collection. The fact that more items still appear without notes than with is a comment not on Wolfe's work, but rather on the uniqueness of Talley's collection; few other scholars, black or white, chose to tread the same ground as Talley. Nevertheless, numerous additions can be made to the headnotes, mostly in the area of melodic concordances, and most of which further underscore the link between white and black traditions.
The melody to #32, "Old Molly Hare," is Nathaniel Gow's "Fairy Dance," first published in Scotland in 1809. Variants of the two musical strains printed with #37, "Baa! Baa! Black Sheep" are among the strains played by Nathan Frazier and Frank Patterson, a black banjo-fiddle duo from Middle Tennessee, as "Po' Black Sheep," recorded by John Work III for the Library of Congress in 1942 and issued in 1989 on Altamont: Black Stringband Music from the Library of Congress (Rounder 0238). The low strain of both version is, in turn, a cognate of the low strain of the widely-known fiddle tune "Sally Goodin." The melody to #47, "Run, Nigger, Run"-a fiddle tune widely known in white tradition-is clearly related to (derived from?) the common blackface minstrel piece, "Jim Along Josey." "JaybirdD ied with the Whooping Cough,"i tem #50, is "The Girl I Left
Behind Me." "Jenny Lind Polka," traceable in sheet music form to 1846 (prior to the "Swedish Nightingale's" first visit to these shores in 1850), and sometimes played by white fiddlers as "Heel and Toe Polka," turns up as the melody to Talley's item #59, "I Would Rather Be a Negro Than A Poor White Man." The last verse to #64, "Brother Ben and Sister Sal," comes from the minstrel piece, "The Old Gray Goose," which in turn lends its melody to #74, "A Sick Wife." Additional Scottish melodies turn up in #70, "I Love Somebody" ("My Love She's But a Lassie Yet," a remarkably ubiquitous tune in the U.S.), #400, "Hop Light Ladies" ("Mrs. MacLeod of Raasay's Reel"), and #409, "Young Ladies Go A-Courting" (a variant of "Wha'll Be King But Charlie"). The low strain of "Arkansas Traveler" shows up as the melody for #79, "Sheep Shell Corn." Both lyrics and music of "Temperance Rhyme," #324, are of the vast "Rye Whiskey"/"My Horses Ain't Hungry" family. Finally, the fiddle tune "Forked Deer" provides the melody for #335, "Jack and Dinah Want Freedom."
Some points in the introduction need to be corrected. In discussing Talley's awareness of the difficulty of using standard Western notation to transcribe black folk music, Wolfe states that Talley "was decades ahead of [his] time. Only now are musicologists and historians widely accepting this view" (p. xv). In fact, this difficulty was realized by the first people who attempted to notate spirituals. Lucy McKim Garrison, in the preface to Slave Songs of the United States commented: "It is difficult to express the entire character of these Negro ballads by mere musical notes and signs" (1867:vi). Henry Krehbiel devoted a chapter to the problem and included quotes from Garrison and other early writers who grappled with it (1914:70-82).
While discussing the first publication of Negro Folk Rhymes in the context of other American folk song collections, Wolfe notes that at the time Talley's book appeared in 1922, Cecil Sharp's English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians was "ten years away from publication" (p. xxi). The first, one-volume, edition of Sharp's work actually appeared in 1917. 130 Ethnomusicology, Winter 1993 In compiling and publishing Negro FolkRhymesThomas W. Talley made a major contribution to our knowledge of black folk music in the early twentieth century. In producing this new edition, Charles Wolfe has not only made Talley's work accessible to the current generation of scholars, but he has in the process made his own substantial contribution to scholarship.
Paul F. Wells
The Center for Popular Music Middle Tennessee State University
References
Allen, William Francis, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison
1867 Slave Songs of the United States. New York: A. Simpson & Co.
Krehbiel, Henry Edward
1914 Afro-American Folksongs: A Study in Racial and National Music. New York: G.
Schirmer, Inc.