The English Ballad in Jamaica- Beckwith 1924
[See also Leach and Abraham for other West Indies versions. Barely proofed,
R. Matteson 2015]
The English Ballad in Jamaica: A Note upon the Origin of the Ballad Form
by Martha W. Beckwith
PMLA, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Jun., 1924), pp. 455-483
XXI. THE ENGLISH BALLAD IN JAMAICA: A NOTE UPON THE ORIGIN OF THE BALLAD FORM
In collecting stories and songs from the Jamaica negroes during the summer of 1919 and the winter of 1921, I was constantly on the lookout for traditional English ballads, some of which I hoped to find handed down in their older forms as a result of two hundred and fifty years of English occupation of the island. A fair number of secondary ballads were easily accessible, some of them preserved with an English intonation which proved them to have been memorized from cultivated English singers. Among these were the Wurlean Woman,[1] and the ballad of Adinah sung to the same tune as the New England ballad of Springfield Mountain.[2] But of traditional ballads of the better class, both words and music, I secured only the widespread song of Little Musgrove.[3] Naturally I asked myself what had become of old ballad forms in Jamaica.
Before answering the general question, it is useful to consider how this ballad has fared in transmission. The story was recited to me by a man named Forbes, an unusually intelligent negro of the old type, between seventy and eighty years of age, who lived in the remote hill-country about Maroon Town, called Accompong, in St. Elizabeth parish, where he had formerly been song-leader for his district. Unlike some negro entertainer she was no clown but a genuine enthusiast. He always sang with a shining delight and his feet going in time to the tune; I doubt if he could have remembered the words in any other way. He was, in short, a reliable source for the standards of old-fashioned art. Now when old Forbes first gave me the story of Little Musgrove, he strung the verses upon a connecting thread of prose to carry along the action. Only when confronted with the phonograph did he sing the verses straight through without interruption. That his method was not adopted by chance is proved by the fact that other collectors both in Jamaica and in the Bahamas have taken down ballad stories dictated in the same form,[4] and that I myself secured two other ballads which were recited in this fashion, but unfortunately not under circumstances when it was possible to get a record of the music. The Maid Freed from the Gallows[5] came from another old man in the same region. A Jamaica version of Sweet Riley[6] is interesting because, though clumsily handled, it is worked into the regular cycle of "Anansi" stories which contain the figure of the Spider as trickster. Other ballad stories, like one version I got of the Ram of Darby,[7] are told entirely in prose. But besides the ballad-story of Little Musgrove, I took down a popular song among the Maroon negroes which runs like this:[8]
Be still, my pretty young man
Be still, my pretty young man
Be still, my pretty young man,
As my fader driving his sheep,
All dem making a deal of noise.
Who is dere goes away,
Who is dere goes away
Who is dere goes away,
As my fader driving his sheep,
All dem making a deal of noise.
I am assured that the tune, which has nevertheless a European lilt, bears no relation to that to which old Forbes sang me his version of Little Musgrove; but certainly the words are gathered out of verses from this very ballad, which is thus preserved as an "old song" by more than one negro singer. Moreover, other songs of the same character exist. One from the same region runs,
If I went up to a hill-top
I will go down to Barbaree;
If I went up to a hill-top,
I will go down to Barbaree!
Den madame, madame, come an' hol' dat dog,
Oh, madame, madame, come an' hol' dat dog,
I am gwine down to Barbaree.
If you fight me a golden sword,
I will fight you a silver one,
And if you fight me a silver sword, man,
I will fight you a golden one!
Den madame, madame, come an' hol' dat dog,
Oh, madame, madame, come an' hol' dat dog,
I am gwine down to Barbaree!
Other such ballad fragments woven into song were collected by Miss Roberts from negro singers. Moreover, the same process of selection, repetition and embellishment is going on to-day in adapting Moody and Sankey songs to the folk worship, as Miss Roberts's forthcoming collection will make evident. It is certain, then, that among the negro folk of Jamaica, the continuous narrative song of the old English ballad has either been extended into the part prose, part song rendering of an "Anansi" story proper, or been condensed into the elliptical form of the Jamaica lyric song. And in so doing it has merely followed the fate of all foreign material which is taken into and made a part of a living folk art; it has been adapted to the style of art of which it has become a part.[9] For consecutive story told in song is, so far as can be gathered from collections already made, quite foreign to West African art. It certainly is to that of the Jamaica negro, whose art of song depends rather upon the repetition of a few phrases rearranged to suit the individual tune or taste and expressing the thought in elliptical fashion, this repetition taking the place of rhyme to hold the whole together. On the other hand, among the older story- tellers consecutive prose is also not the rule. The stories contain, or usually turn upon, a song which either belongs to the dialogue or is used as an ejaculation. Often its use becomes more dramatic by putting it into the lips of a fiddler or of a singing bird; but whether so presented or not, it is always there to emphasize an emotional moment and express a wish, call, or magical formula; and its repetition from time to time in the story gives the song the value of a chorus or refrain. During the recitation of such a story, I have heard a group of listeners join in the singing whenever the familiar song occurred. Most of these song-stories turn upon sorcery of one kind or another and seem to belong to a special group of ideas developed in a less sophisticated period than the present; but some of the old reciters introduce a song into the commonly songless animal-stories. Old Forbes ended his rehearsal of the familiar Tiger my fader's Riding-horse.[10] with the breakdown,
See how Anansi tie Tiger,
See how Anansi tie Tiger,
See how Anansi tie Tiger,
Tie him like a hog, Tiger!
Such a conclusion is an invitation to the audience to get up and dance. I heard a bed-ridden old grannie conclude the popular Afoo yam story with a song to which her little grandchild danced, rocking up and down first on one foot and then on the other and raising her arms to the rhythm." There are also stories half acted and half told which end in a dance, and others composed of a medley made up of action-games and stories, which include dancing. Action-games themselves are often merely a march and dance based on some borrowed song, and of old English ring-games like "Little Sally Waters" there are a large number still alive in Jamaica.[12] In fact, everything goes to show that story, song and dance once all formed a part of the story-teller's art in Jamaica, and that the popularity of song and dance influenced the form in which the story itself was told.
The same style of recitation has been noticed by African collectors. Good examples of the use of dialogue-song to carry on the story are to be found in Torrend's recent collection of Bantu Folk-lore[13] because Mr. Torrend collected with a phono- graph and paid attention to the style of the song. But other collections like Chatelaine's from Angola[14] or Junod's from the Ba-Rongal [15] show how the song was bound up in the story. Other American negro collections, like those of Mrs. Parsons and of Mr. Edwards from the Bahamas,[16] illustrate the same practice; Mr. Harris's "Uncle Remus" stories from our Southern states, on the other hand, seem to have lost this element or to substitute, where its place is indicated, a song of a recent and more sophisticated style. Collectors assure us that in parts of Africa the fashion of dialogue song within the prose narrative occurs as a fixed style. Torrend says:"[17] It [the typical old Bantu tale] consists of two distinct parts, one narrated, mostly in the form of dialogue, the other sung. It is melodrama of a kind . . Of the two parts the more important is the one which is sung, so much so that in many tales the narrative is to it no more than a frame to a picture. The part which is sung is not only free to borrow words from any language known to the singer, but is supposed, moreover, to understand and interpret the language of birds, other animals, and nature in general. It is composed of a monologue, or a dialogue, and a chorus. By the natives themselves these tales are generally remembered by the first verse of their principal song. Junod says, of the story-telling of the Ba-Ronga about Delagoa Bay:
L'un des caracteres, les plus frappants du folklore ronga, ce sont ces courtes melodies, tres simples parfois pures cantilRnes, au moyen desquelles on agr6- mente le recit. Le texte de ces petits chants a souvents un cachet archaique marquee et je croirais volontiers qu'ils se transmettent d'un conteur a l'autre avec plus d'exactitude que les autres parties de la narration. Que sait s'ils ne forment pas intentionnellement comme un sorte de canevas, de charpente pour les contes? On en conserve le souvenir, grAce a la melodie meme lorsqu'on serait dispose a oublier l'histoire elle-m6me et celle-ci A peutetre W fraquem- ment sauv6e de la disparition par les refrains qui l'accompagnaient.
Steere finds the same trait among the Swahili story-tellers of Zanzibar.[19] He says: The most curious thing in this collection is the latter part of the tale of "Sultan Majnun," from p. 254, where everyone present joins in singing the verses, if they may be so called, which besides are not in Swahili. But it is a constant characteristic of popular native tales to have a sort of burden, which all join in singing. Frequently the skeleton of the story seems to be contained in these snatches of singing, which the story-teller connects by an extemporized account of the intervening history. The part prose, part song, narrative which I am describing is technically known as cante-fable, but I hesitate to use for these simple popular tales from Jamaica a name identified in all our minds with the literary usage given to the form in mediaeval France. The illustrations which I take from my own collection merely indicate how the style works out in folk material. In one tale, a witch refuses food to her servant unless the girl can discover her name. When the girl secures the aid of a friendly animal, the witch betakes herself to the barn-yard and identifies her betrayer in the following dialogue:
"You cow, you cow, you cow,
Went an' tell the girl me name
Grandy Beard o?"
Cow say, "A ring ding ding, mama,
Ring ding ding.
A ring ding ding, mama,
Ring ding ding, No me tell!"
She jump into horse-pasture now.
"You also, horse, tell the girl
Me name Grandy Beard o!
You also horse tell the girl
Me name Grandy Beard o?"
Horse say, "A ring ding ding, mama,
Ring ding ding!
A ring ding ding, mama,
Ring ding ding! No me tell him!"
She got into bull pasture now.
"You bull, you bull,
Why you tell the girl
Me name Grandy Beard o?"
Bull say, "A ring ding ding, mama,
Ring ding dingl
A ring ding ding, mama,
Damme, me tell 'iml"
A more striking example of the dialogue song occurs in the story of Simon Tootoos, as related to me by an Accompong Maroon named Thomas White and recorded also from the Bahamas. The story is printed in full in my collection of Jamaica stories already cited. It begins as follows: Der was once a woman dat have a child. Him name was Simon Tootoos. De mudder, him was a church woman an' him used to sen' de boy to church. An' after, de mudder come an' die. An' when de mudder die, he take de world upon his head (became irreligious). An' Simon Tootoos make colben (trap) an' set it on Sunday day, an' he go to wood on Sunday go search him colben. An' when he go to catch him bird, he catch a snake in de colben. When he go to raise up de colben an' fin' it was a snake, him leave it. An' de snake answer to him, "Come take me up, come take me up, Simon Tootoos, Lennon boy. Come take me up, oh, Lennon boy, Too-na-too." "It was him dead mudder cause de snake to sing like dat," explained the narrator, and he went on half telling, half singing the story through fourteen stanzas which narrated how the snake compelled the boy to pick it up, carry it home, cook and eat it and then bade the lad prepare for his own death, conclud- ing with the stanza, Come go to you' bed, come go to you' bed, Simon Tootoos, Lennon boy, Come go to you' bed, oh, Lennon boy, Too-na-too. After him go to him bed, him mudder come out of him belly an' dat was de las' of Simon Tootoos. In spite of the African parallels to this story, so to interpret it had I not found the same song employed for another Jamaica story about a stubborn child.[2'] In this story an ogre called "Time-an'-tootoo," carries off a naughty boy named "Lennon boy" who persists in going out late after dark. In the song, the boy calls for rescue to each member of the family, but each rejects his appeal except the brother. The song runs,
(Boy) "Me muma, oh, me muma, oh,
Time-an-tootoo, oh, Lennon boy."
(Mother) "Carry him go long, carry him go long,
Hard ears baby, oh, Lennon boy."
Generally the song-dialogue is much simpler than in these two examples. In the story of the girl who marries the Devil, the warning cry of the cock is answered by the approaching Devil:
Co co ree, com on do,
Co co ree, com on do,
Massa han' some wife gone!
Zin-ge-lay wid dem run come,
Zin-ge-lay wid dem jump come,
Zin-ge-lay wid dem walk fast!
The girl who married a Snake cries for help and is answered by the Snake's swallowing song:
(Girl) "Hunter-man! hunter-man!
Yellow-snake a wi' swallow me!"
So with the story of the witch who is chopping at the tree while the boy in the tree calls his dogs to the rescue:
(Witch) "Chin fallah fallahl chin, fallah fallahl"
(Boy) "Blum-bluml Sin-del Di-dol"
Frequently the song is a mere invocation or magic formula, the more often repeated the better for the audience, who may themselves join in the singing. Specimens of such refrain-like songs are as follows: Come, little timber, follow me. Hurray! me a lay! or, A who a knock a Nana' gate? Bing beng beng! or for a name-song: Santy Moody o! Teppy-teppy deh! Such a song may really carry on the story, or it may consist in a nonsense formula or of a snatch of song familiar in another connection-a game song, for example. It may even preserve the old African speech. A particular song may become a fixed part of the story, but in many stories the song varies with the narrator.[22] Occasionally, as has been shown, the same song is used in two different stories.
These points are not insisted upon at such length because there is anything unusual in the habit of inserting songs into narrative prose in the course of oral story-telling. The old Irish romances and the Scandinavian prose sagas of the lighter type employed this style. The tales of the Arabian Nights are full of examples. Old Hawaiian story-tellers to-day insert songs into their long epic or romantic tales, which sometimes take six hours in the telling. The relief of song dialogue or monologue in the prolix narrative must be grateful to the silent auditors. Examples of such recital also occur in some of the best American Indian records. The style evidently precedes that of continuous narrative song, which the Hawaiian, like the African negro, never developed although other Polynesian groups, for example the Samoan, used the epic successfully. Song-recital gives play to the dramatic rendering of lyric song within the thread of narrative prose, and thus allows variety of form within the continuous tale. Foreign as the form seems to the development of our own literary art, we have but to turn the pages of Grimm's collection to find how familiar it is to European folk-tale. I took down from old Forbes the Jamaica version of our English "Bull of Norroway"[23] which contained the song,
Return to me, King Henry,
My Bull-of-all-the-land!
sung to a very winning old melody. Is it not probable that the old songs have ceased to be sung with the story just as in Jamaica or Hawaii to-day modern narrators leave out the songs when they tell the story? Nevertheless the songs themselves may also have survived. And it seems to me quite reasonable to suppose that to these very dialogue songs, which, as we have tried to show, must once have played so important a part in the art of story-telling, we have actually to look for the original stuff out of which grew our English ballads and the balladry of other northern people."[ ]
The folk-lorist has always insisted upon the close relation between folk-tale and ballad. The weak point in his argument has been that, although folk-tale furnishes that element which Miss Pound justly observes to be the particular and distinctive feature of the ballad,[25] the consecutive tale, it has failed to show cause why song and dance should play so conspicuous a part in the texture of the ballad.[26] This difficulty is at once
obviated if we conceive the folk gathered about a reciter and themselves joining in song and dance from point to point in the recital. Patiently gathered evidence would be necessary fully to prove this transformation from folk-tale in the form of prose and song into ballad composition; it is my purpose here merely to point out those characteristics of the ballad which may be accounted for by such a hypothesis, and to show how they may naturally have come about. Folk art is uninventive; it employs the material already at hand, its genius lying in the fresh realization of that experience. So, for aught we know, the inventions of Paleolithic man still live in tales of the folk. The inventions, but not the culture. That changes with the fresh creative art which handles the matter afresh. If ballad language is simple, inclined to set phrases and stock incidents, so is that of the folk-tale. Both are, in the main, unlocalized, impersonal, completely bent upon making the incidents live in action, not concerned with the narrator's share in it. Names and culture shift, but on the whole, princes and princesses, lords and ladies survive, although their manner of life may vary with the experience of the teller. All these familiar tags of ballad style are therefore common to the folk-tale. But especially does the theory of a dialogue song surviving which once formed part of a prose tale make it easy to account for that economy in connectives and absence of explanatory action in the ballad form which has been the despair of imitators and has contributed more than any other element to weaken the claim of the folk to ballad composition and to strengthen that of the expert and the aristocrat.[27]
This paucity of connectives is the natural order of things if we think of the ballad-song itself as an inset within the prose of the narrative. The prose, which is more or less extemporaneous, drops easily away as the story becomes familiar to the folk. Presently it comes about that the song carries the story with it in people's minds and there is no need of the recital to explain its meaning. If a foreign audience asks a question or two, the singer will readily furnish an introductory and concluding stanza in the measure of the song, and from that time on the ballad can stand alone and carry its story with it. Modifications are constantly occurring in the incident to soften or render more plausible what might disgust or puzzle a later age. The structure itself, however, has been fixed by the original prose setting of the song, and this structure remains the permanent mark of the genuine old folk ballad. On the basis of this theory also it is equally simple to explain the presence of the refrain in our old ballad form. Those who derive the ballad out of the dance, point to the presence of this disjointed and skipping melody as proof positive of a dance origin.28 Others believe it to be an afterthought, attached when the ballad came to be used for dancing. Just as the complete dialogue song furnishes the ballad proper, so the more fragmentary scraps of song whose presence I have illustrated in the primitive folk-tale, may supply the popular refrain. The song fragments survive when the story is lost because the story was told in a different medium, that of prose. When, as described above, the dialogue song came to usurp more and more of the interest of the crowd, it was this burden or refrain which they could all sing in chorus and which they invariably connected with the words of the more detailed song within the prose tale. Exactly the same treatment which I have illustrated in Jamaica story-telling is accorded to the refrain in ballad literature. The ballad refrain may serve to carry on the story, but often it is made up of mere nonsense syllables. It varies with different versions of the ballad, and the same refrain may belong to different ballads. It looks as if catch- songs of this kind were in everybody's head and got to be attached to those dialogue songs with which they had been associated in story form, or were borrowed from story to story with the ready ease of appropriation natural to a folk art. Finally, the subject-matter of the kind of song-story I am describing is amazingly close to ballad tradition; The reason why some writers have hesitated to accept the parallel may be because much folk-tale today is modernized and sophisticated and has lost that atmosphere of primitive wonder which haunts our old ballad literature.[29]
When I put together those folk- tales still preserved in Jamaica which are neither animal tales nor of recent European introduction, I find a considerable number of tales of sorcery which do preserve this atmosphere, and just these tales it is which contain song To take an example out of this very ballad of Little Musgrove. The tale bearer in ballad literature is often no little foot-page, but a singing bird which its mistress attempts to bribe into silence. The theme of the messenger bird who reveals crime appears in all collections of African texts and is closely bound up with the idea that the spirit of the dead takes the form of a bird in order to protect the innocent or avenge itself upon the guilty here on earth. So with the whole supernatural world revealed in ballad literature. It is not treated like a fairy-tale, nor with the half-playful satire of those who manipulate the unbelievable for purposes of story. Things happen in a world where the supernatural is the expected order. There is sorcery going on, and a constant conflict with those spiritual forces which fill the imagination of the folk with shapes and presences more real than flesh and blood. The simple obligations of the family life carried out inexorably through the forces of the dead -this is what forms the social background of our better ballads, and it is this same background which dominates also the old body of folk-tale in Jamaica. Add to this the fact that it is in just this old body of tales that we find imbedded the dialogue or refrain-like songs whose likeness to the ballad form I have been arguing, and the probability becomes very strong that originally ballads themselves were once a part of just such narrative recitations of the folk. I am aware that such a hypothesis of the origin of the ballad as I am attempting to outline must still remain a hypothesis, however tempting the supposition. For although one may prove conclusively that such a treatment of folk-tale might have produced the ballad form, we cannot so easily demonstrate that such a metamorphosis actually did take place. Was such a fashion of story-telling common to our northern folk, and did it occur to them, under the stimulus of epic tale and romance and given a ready rhyme and meter made familiar in the popular church drama and ritual, to liberate the song from its connecting prose, add head and tail and other body-filling stanza, and then, under the habit still of the ejaculatory song, at intervals in the recital to dance and sing a sort of interlinear jig to the old-time melody? Perhaps it is the dance accent which has always persisted out of those supposititious song- story-telling days. Those scraps of meaningless, refrain which collectors complain of as the useless fragments of corrupt balladry, may be in very fact the "catch-words or memory-tags" of the tale to which they belong-a prose tale which, because always extemporaneous, never got written down at all, and a dialogue-song which, softened and filled out by succeeding generations of singers, determined the form of the continuous narrative song of our better English ballads.
BALLAD TEXTS
1. LITTLE MUSGROVE (first form)
(Recited and sung as a "Nasi story" by old William Forbes of Dry River near Maggotty.)
Little Musgrove did went to church
An' saw de lady gay,
An' de very first one his eye did spy
Was me lord Barnaby wife.
An de lady said,
"Come go home, my little Musgrove,
Home you wi' shall go,
For I got two bed in Banbrownbury
Dey both neat an' clean."
An' come go home, little Musgrove,
I give you one of your own.
An' Musgrove go home wid him. An' him said in de night,
Raise up, raise up, my gay lady, "
For I t'ink it is time to go.
De lady said, "Lie still, lie still, my little Musgrove,
To keep off de col' off of me.
Musgrove said,
I understand dat little Foot-speed
Can very well see and can hear,
For I t'ink I hear Lord Barnaby horn
Was blowing so loud and sweet.
The gay lady said,
Lie still, lie still, my little Musgrove,
For I t'ink my fader sharp horn
Was blowing over de flock.
An' fe a little time, Lord Barnaby an' all his soldiers come right in an' surroun' de yard. An' him said gwine to shove de door an' go inside an' see little Musgrove. An' said,
Raise up, raise up, my little Musgrove,
An' put on you clo'es, Musgrove,
For I won't 'low de worl' to got it to said
I kill a naked man.
An' turn to de woman an' said,
Raise up, raise up, my gay lady,
An' put on you clo'es, lady,
For I won't let dis worl' to have it to said
Dat I kill a naked woman.
2. LITTLE MUSGROVE (second form). (Sung into the phonograph by old Forbes and transcribed by Helen Roberts.)
1. Little Mus-grove did went to church
an' saw de young Lady so gay,
An' de very firs' one his eye did 'spize
was me Lord Barnaby wife.
Said "Come, go home, my Little Musgrove,
I'll gi'e yo' one ob yo' own,
Fo' I got two beds both nice an' clean,
I'll gi'e you one ob yo' own. [1] [in Brown berry?]
"An' come, go home, my little Mus-grove,
fo' home you we shall go."
Now raise up, raise up, my gay La - dy,
I t'ink it's time to go,
Fo' I t'ink I heah Lord Barnaby horn,
was blowing so loud
an' lit - tle Mus-grove, an' put on yo' clo'es once mo',
So raise up, raise up, my lit - tle Mus-grove,
an' put on yo' clo'es once mo'.
I won' let de world no body to said,
I kill a naked man,
I won' let de world nobody to said,
I kill a naked man."
"Now raise up, raise up, my gay Lady,
an' put on yo' clo'es once mo.'
Now raise up, raise up, my gay La - dy,
an' put on yo' clo'es once mo'.
I won' let de wud no bod - y to said,
I kill a naked woman.
I won' let de wud no - bod - y to said,
I kill a naked woman."
3. LITTLE MUSGROVE (third form). (A popular song sung into the phonograph by Maroons from Accompong and transcribed by Helen Roberts.)
Lie still, my pretty young man,
Lie still, my pretty young man,
Lie still, my pretty young man.
My father's driving his sheep,
all dem make a deal ob noise.
Who is dere goes away,
Who is dere goes 'way.
Who is dere goes away,
It's a murder will be dere,
It's a murder will be dere. . .
4. IF I WENT UP TO A HILL-TOP. (A popular song based on ballad Fragments, sung into the phonogragh by Maroons from Accompong and transcribed by Helen Roherts.)
If I went up to a hill- top,
I will go down to Barbay
If I went up to a hill top,
I will go down to Barbay.
Den ma-dame, ma - dame,
come an' hol' dat dog,
Oh, madame, madame,
come an' hol' dat dog
I am gwine down to Barbay.
If you fight me a gold sword, man,
I will fight you a silver one.
An' if you fight me a silver sword, man,
I will fight you a gold - en one.
Den, madame, madame,
Come an' hol' dat dog.
Oh, madame, madame,
come an' hol' dat dog.
I am gwine down to Bar - bay..
5. THE MAID FREED FROM THE GALLOWS (Recited and sung by old Thomas Williams from Harmony Hall, near Accom pong.)
Deh was a princess propose to be married. During de time she was going on to de day of marriage, she do somet'ing against de rule and regulation of her royalty dat cause her to be brought up in trial, found guilty, an' sentenced to be hung. What she did was against de family rule, so none of dem prepare any help to escape her from de gallows. De day come fo' her execution. De hour is at hand. She said to de hang-man, "My time is at han'; save me five an' twenty minutes mo'!" She look off an' see her fader was coming.
Ay! ay! deh come me only fader
Who trabbel so many mile!
Do you bring me gold an' silver
To save me body from de eart'?
Fader say,
No, no, Sarey! I came to see you hung,
An' now you mus' be hung, girl,
You' body is boun' to de eart'.
An' she say, "Still, gentlemen, save me five an' twenty minute more!" Mudder is coming.
Mudderl mudderl Coming trabbling so many mile,
Do you bring me gold an' silver
To save me body from de eart'?
Mudder replied same as de fader,
No, no, Sarey! I came to see you hung,
An' hung you mus' be hung,
You' body is boun' to de eart'.
An say, "Gentlemen, save me five an' twenty minute more!" An' look far away off yonder, an' saw a bright light, sparkling light, brillian' light. So ev'rybody dat was waiting to see her hung get frightened, t'ink dey was doing wrong to her. So all moving off to de way whe' de brightness is coming direct to de gallows. So all move an' leave de princess alone on de gallows stage. So she mek her escape, pull de rope as how it was fixed to her an' move herself to a safe place beyon' de light dat is coming. An' she sing,
Ye do come, me only husban,'
Trabbel so many milel
Do you bring me gold an' silver
To save me body from de eart'?
No answer. Repeat twice. An' de power of de chariot an' de great light come up to de gallows, cut it down, mash it up. Great heap, mountain of gold and silver and all great pieces of precious stones, diamonds an' rubies an' all precious t'ing! Der was no end of it. And tek her up. She was help in by her husban' an' save! Dat's why when people marry, dey drive so rapidly home, horse jump an' mek big! An' pour out money like mountains. Dat's why de king an' queen an' princess so rich now.
6. SWEET RILEY (Recited and sung by old Julia Gentle from the Santa Cruz Mountains.)
Anansi son name Stan'-up-stick. As Anansi poor, Stan'-up- stick don' notice him. An' Stan'-up-stick buy a gold ring give him daughter Absa; de ring cost a t'ousen' pound; it cut wid dimon' brooches an' spliced wid hair. An' de daughter give it to a gentleman name William Riley. When Stan'-up- stick see William Riley wid de ring, he sing, There is a ring I give my daughter, It cost a t'ousen' pound. It cut with di'mon brooches An' splic-ed with my hair.
De daughter sing, If you have them now, sweet Riley, Pray send them back to me. William sing, 0 yes, my general lady, With many a thank to you. Wear it upon your right han' An' think upon my broken heart When you are in foreign Ian'. Riley said, "My hands an' feet are chained to the ground like a murderer!" Lady sings, Come justice of the jury, Come plead the case for Riley And let his bond-es freel For he never stole my jewels, I will swear to all about; For I gave them to sweet Riley For token of true love. Stan'-up-stick, he rise an' sing, This ring, I give it my daughter, It cost a t'ousan' pound. Anansi come up an' say, "God! a you love me, so mek Stan'-up- stick loss his t'ousan' pound!"
7. THE WURLEAN WOMAN (Sung by old Julia Gentle from the Santa Cruz Mountains) A wurlean woman say: Young people who delight in sin, I will tell you what has lately been. A lady who was young and fair, She died in sin and sad despair. She go to frolics, dance and play, In spite of all her friends could say. Oh, when I get old I will return to God And he will then receive my soul. One Friday morning she took sick, Then her stubborn heart began to break. (S)he call her mother to her bed,- "Rise we're rolling in her head. I laugh, I laugh, my days I spendI Good God, it is too late for me to mend." She holla, she bawl before she died. Hope this [not] be your case.
Upon your knee, for mercy sake,
Or you will die in sin as Polly do.
8. THE GREAT RAM OF DARBY (first form) (Sung by Alexander Townsend of Flamstead as an old loading song used when ships came to port.) As I was going to Darby, I hear about a ram. His horn was nearly touch de moon, An' de man who kill de ram His knee was deep in de blood, An' it take all de women in Darby To carry away de horn. De tail upon de ram Will make a t'ousand brush, Send 'em home to England To brush de dining hall. He's a ramble, he's a ramble, Said de butcher to de ram, "Cut it down." De horn upon de ram Make a t'ousand comb, Send 'em on to England To comb young lady hair. He's a ramble, he's a ramble, Said de butcher to de ram, "Cut it down."
9. THE GREAT RAM OF DARBY (second form) (Recited as a prose tale by James Smith, a young man of Claremont, St. Ann. There was a great ram; everybody heard about him but could not kill him. Anansi heard about him and took a ride to Darby town to look at the ram. The finest ram that ever is seen! It feeds upon hay. The wool that grows on that ram's back seems tall enough to reach the sky. The John-crow build their nest thert. I think I hear the young ones cry. Bill, if you think I lie, JUb saddle an' bridle you' mule an' take you' knife an' have a ride with me to Darby's stone to have a look at the ram. The man who killed that ram was up to his knees in blood. The flood carried away all the young men in Darby town, and all the young women were screaming out for the skin and bone to boil it down to oil to rub the old man's bones. Meanwhile, Anansi had the ram secure in his bag and started for home, leaving the mourning in Darby town.
10. ADNAH. (Sung by old Hannah French, housekeeper at Butler's, to the tune of "Spring field Mountain." Recorded by Helen Roberts.) =56 NI $ _I 56.7~r~ 1L - As A - di - nah was walk-in' in de gar- den one day, _ - n--P-A _ J Up came her pu - pa an, dus did he say, "Go dress yo' self, A - di - nah, in gor - ge -ous ar- Li Fe.}$i -'~ -~-d d, . ray, Fo' I'm bring-in' you a hus - ban' both han'-some an' gay." A 2nd verse. w -- IT iJ qff__ __ - V ._ Oh, Pu - pa, oh, Pu - pa, not made up ma min, To be mar - ried juls' now I don' feel in - V~~~~~~ line'. I' give all ma fo' ^ tune to de near -es' ob [!$##"#-=:-- -1b W .> 1 4 , J)f^ D1i kins, If you let me live sin-" gle a yeah o' two mo'. Sing - in' tour - al, sing-in' tour -al, sig- in' tour - al aol
cleah, Fo' I t'ink I heah Lord Bar- na - by horn was D Ip L0 A - blow- ing so loud an' cleah, Fo' I un - der - stan' dat lit - tle Foot-speed can ver - y well see an' can heah, Fo' I _c~~ 1* _ _ f--*-- X 1- WA N) I HRui un - der - stan' dat lit - tle Foot-speed can ver- y well see an' can heah." "Oh, lie still, lie still, my lit - tle Mus-grove, an' ~~~~~~~~~~~~~3 A , . t ~~~* , I n-Il_ keep off de col' off ob me, Oh, lie still, lie still, my lit - tle Mus-grove, an' keep off de col' off ob me, Fo' it's P, . on - ly my fad-der's Yar - mout' horn was blow-ing o - veh de ? shep-herd ? flock, Fo' it's on - ly my fad - der's Yar - mout' horn was blow - ing o - veh de flock." "So, raise up, raise up, my
day, R1 tour - al, ri tour - al, ri tour - al all day. 3rd verse. As Wil - lie Dick was walk - in' in de gar - den one day, He saw poor Di - nah laid cold on de groun', Wid a cup o' cold poi - son by her side was laid. He called fo' A - di - nah but she was no mo'. 4th verse. He kissed her cold car-case a thous-and times o'er, To ie- part from A - di - nah he could not en - dure, To de- part from A - di - nah he could not en - dure, So he swal-lowed de poi - son as a brave lov- er bold; So
Wil - lie Dick an' A - di - nai were laid in one grave. CHORITS. I I b G J nIG -G Sing-in' tour - al, sing-in' tour - al, sing-in' tour - al all -##4 I SS S SIG S 21#: Ti-r. day, RI tour - al, rl tour - al, ri tour - al all day.
11. SIMON TOOTOOS. (Sung by Maroons of Accompong and recorded by Helen Roberts.) Come, take me up, come take me up, n~~~~~~~~ Si - mon Too - toes ....... Len - non boy.... Come take me up, oh, Len-non boy. Too - na - too..... 12. Tmz-AN'-ToOTOO. (Communicated by Mrs. Charles Wilson who had it from her old colored mammy. Music recorded by Helen Roberts.) - 41 t - r- E Me mu - ma, oh, me mu - ma, oh, Time an' Too- too, oh, Len-non boy! M oh, L-en-non boy! Me mu - ma, oh, me mu - ma, oh,
_ ^ . - ' wN -sr _- -t -t -7 - Time - an' - Too-too, oh, Len - non boy! Car - ry him go 'long, byp -A VP - go- _ w . Car - ry him go 'long, Hard ears, ba- by, oh, Len -non boy! rb ~ ~ ~ - - - :-t - * Car - ry him, go 'long, Car - ry him, go 'long, Hard ears ba - by, oh, Len - non boy! Me muma, oh, me muma, oh, Time-an'-Tootoo, oh, Lennon boy! Me muma, oh, me muma, oh, Time-an'-Tootoo, oh, Lennon boy! Carry him go 'long, carry him go 'long, Hard ears baby, oh, Lennon boy! Carry him go 'long, carry him go 'long, Hard ears baby, oh, Lennon boy! Me pupa, oh, me pupa, oh, Time-an'-Tootoo, oh, Lennon boy! Me sister, oh, me sister, oh, Time-an'-Tootoo, oh, Lennon boy! Me bredder, oh, me bredder, oh, Time-an'-Tootoo, oh, Lennon boy!
MARTHA W. BECKWITH
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Footnotes:
1 See Barry Mod.L ang.N otesX, XVIII . 1-5; Belden, Journ, Am. F olklore, XXV. 18; TolmanJ, ournA. m.F olk-lorXe,X IX. 192-193.
2 See Barry, Journ.A m. Folk-loreX,X II. 366f.; L omax, C owboy So ngs, N. Y. 1910,p p. 315-7.
3 See Child N o. 81 (IL 242-260)S; harp,E nglishF olkS ongf romth eS outhern Appalachians N, . Y. and Lond. 1917,p p. 78-89;R imbaultI,l lustrationtsoPercy'sR diques,p . 92; JournA. m. Folk-loreX,X III. 371-374;X XV. 182;
XXX. 311if
4Jekyll, "Jamaica Song and Story," Pubs. Folk-lore Soc. LV. 14; 26; 58; 65; Parsons, Folk-tales from Andros Island, Memoirs Am. Folk-lore Soc. XIII. 152-157.
6 Child No. 95 (II. 346-355); Jacobs, More English Fairy-tales, pp. 12-15; Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, pp. 106-108; Folk-lore Journ. VI: 144; Journ. Am. Folk-lore, XXI. 56; Parsons, op. cit., 152-154; Jekyll, op. cit., 58-59. 6 Sharp, op. cit., pp. 290-291 and note, 334.
7 See Barry, Journ. Am. Folk-lore, XVIII. 51-54; Cf. Tremearne, Hausa Superstitions and Customs, pp. 342-345.
8 The song was dictated by Margaret Morris, eighty-five years old. Later a chorus of four Maroon men sang it into the phonograph, from which record the music is transcribed. Compare Sharp's stanza,
Lay still, lay still, little Matthy Groves,
And keep me from the cold
It's only my father's shepherd-boy
Driving the sheep from the fold.
9 Jekyll, op. cit., pp. 283-284.
10 "Jamaica Anansi Stories," Memoirs Am. Folk-lore Soc. XVII. 5.
11Ibid. p. 173.
12 Folk-games of Jamaica, Vassar College Pubs. in Folk Lore, 1922
13 J. Torrend, Specimens of Bantu Folk-lore from Northern Rhodesia, Lond. and N. Y., 1921. 14 Heli Chatelaine, "Folk-tales of Angola," Memoirs Am. Folk-lore Soc. 1894, 1. 16 Henri A. Junod, Les Chants et les Contes des Ba-Ronga de la baie de Delagoa, Lausanne, 1897. 16 Memoirs Am. Folk-lore Soc. III and XIII, (1895, 1918). 17 Op. cit., pp. 3-6. Op. cit., p. 77.
19 Steere, Swahii Tales as told by Natives of Zanzibar, Lond. 1889, Preface, p. vii.
20 the tale reads- or sings-so like a ballad turned story that I should be inclined U Cf. Parsons, Andros Island, pp. 62-65; Cronise and Ward, Cunnie Rabbit, Mr. Spider & the other Beef, pp. 160-163; Renel, Contes de Madagascar, IL 167-168; 283-286. In Cronise & Ward, from West Africa, the "hard-headed" stranger persists in setting his trap in "Devil's bush" and the pigeon he catches sings the song, which runs in this fashion: Daddy come loose me . . . Daddy kare me go nah ho'se Daddy kill me one tem . . . In the Madagascar version, the trapper persists in eating the child of a magic bird, in spite of the mother's warning. The song which is reported without "incremental repetition," runs,-
Il l'a mange, helasI cet homme 6 Il l'a mange l'enfant de l'Antsaly I1 l'a mange, h6las, oh!
(Snake) "Worra worra, me wi' swallow you
Till you' ma cannot fin' yout"
21 See "Mr. Miacca," in Jacobs, English Fairy Tales, p. 171; The Godfather, Grimm 42; "The Disobedient Boy," in Parsons, Andros Island, pp. 155-156. The Jamaica version and the song were obtained from Mrs. Charles Wilson of Jamaica, who had them from her negro mammy.
22 In the familiar tale of the girl courted by a transformed bull, one story- teller gave the transformation song as follows.- See me, Nancy, a wind, T'ink a me, Nancy, me come! Another sang it as, Me a Miles a moo, me a Miles a moo, Fe me Gracie is a fine girl. Fe me Gracie have a kill her! Pong, me lady, pongl A third, finally, as, Dirt i' room a yerry, Double bing, double bingl Dirt i' room a yerry, Double bing, double bing! Dirt i' room a yerry, Double bing, double bingl Belling belling beng, bell i' leng, bengl
23 "See my Jamaica stories, op. cit., p. 130. "
24 This is no new idea. Mr. Jacobs developed it in his note to "Childe Rowland" in English Fairy Tales. He says, "It is indeed unlikely that the ballad itself began as continuous verse, and the cante-fable is probably the protoplasm out of which both ballad and folk-tale have been differentiated, the ballad by omitting the narrative prose, the folk-tale by expanding it." I chanced upon this note of Mr. Jacobs's after having reached my own conclusion, but his process of reasoning is identical with my own and he goes into some detail to show how many traces of the cante-fable occur in other forms of literature,- in the French of the Aucassin and Nicolette type, the Arabian, Indian, Persian, even Hebrew story-books; and what traces of it are to be found in our own folk-tale. Mr. Gummere takes exception to Mr. Jacobs's thesis, as I think unjustly, on the ground that "under simple conditions, poetry breaks up into prose, but prose is not found in its transition to poetry." (F. B. Gummere, Beginnings of Poetry, Lond. and N. Y. 1901, p. 71). Mr. Jacobs is not arguing, however, for the development of the prose tale into poetry, but for the survival of the poetic dialogue apart from the prose in which it was once imbedded. 25 Miss Pound says: "It is not, in fact, the presencc of the refrain or of choral repetition that makes the Child pieces ballads. What is essential, if pieces are to be classified as ballads, is that they tell a story." (Louise Pound, Poetic Origins and the Ballad, N. Y. 1921, p. 77).
21 Mr. Kittredge concludes, in his introduction to the Cambridge edition of Child's Ballads, "It appears, then, that there is no lack of characteristic traits -besides the general air of impersonality-which justify the conjecture that the history of balladry, if we could follow it back in a straight line without interruptions, would lead us to very simple conditions of society, to the singing and dancing throng, to a period of communal composition" (p. xxii). Mr. Gummere thinks that the marchen "will do nothing for the origins of balladry; it follows an entirely different impulse, as any observer can determine for himself who watches the same group of children now playing 'Ring round the Rosy' or what-not, singing and shouting in concert with clasped hands and consenting feet, now sitting silent, absorbed, while some one tells them a story," (Entglish Ballad, p. 694). Mr. Gummere's own supposition in favor of communal dance as the original ballad substance is objected to by Miss Pound, who says, "There is no evidence that ballads are ever built up from dance songs, but a great deal that dance-songs may be built upon popular songs of all types" (op. cit. pp. 47-86). The theory I am advocating by no means decides the folk or minstrel origin of any particular ballad; it merely supplies the ballad structure, the style, the content, as the product of a folk art, which any minstrel may have used later for his own purposes. That this usage consisted in a retouching of old material already existing in dialogue-song, is suggested by the very small success that modern literary imitators have had in reproducing both form and spirit of the old English ballad.
27 Mr. Moore, ("Omission of the Central Action in English Ballads," Mod. Philol. II. 394), says, "The story so far as any exists, serves merely to furnish a background for the dialogue." Mr. Gummere finds characteristic the "abrupt dramatic openings with a dialogue only partially explained" (English Ballad, p. 84). Mr. Courthope says, "Often compression led to obscurity and in many ballads the story would not have been understood if the singer had not prefaced it with some explanation. The effect may be compared to what would be pre- sented by a paragraph of prose in which the sentences should be without connecting particles" (Hist. of Eng. Poetry, I. 461). Miss Pound's argument (op. cit. 139-146) against the early origin of the dialogue ballad, as opposed to Prof. Hart's thesis (that the dialogue ballad is earlier than other ballad forms), is misleading because she bases her arguments upon literary rather than upon folk sources. The dramatic improvised dialogue of the folk certainly has nothing in common with the unwieldy literary quality of early epic. Rather it should be compared with the speeches in the more simple church drama.
28 Out of 502 Scandinavian ballads, according to Steenstrup, only 20 lack a refrain; out of 305 Child ballads, 106 show evidence of chorus or refrain. See Gummere, p. 74 note. Mr. Gummere says "The refrain is an organic part of the ballad; it is of great structural importance . . . . ballads were at first always sung, and always had a refrain; the refrain is incontestably sprung from singing of the people at dance, play, work, going back to that choral repetition which seems to have been the protoplasm of all poetry," (English Ballad. p. 73). Mr. Moore (op. cit. p. 394), finds that in some fragments of ballad refrains "the story has been lost so completely that only a name or two serve to associate these fragments with the complete ballads. In such cases these chips seem to lose the chief characteristics of the old block and to become lyrical in character. It is the story which seems to drop out first. It is the situation with the lyrical comment upon it which remains." Mr. Cox (The Mediaeval Popular Ballad, pp. 85-88) shows how the refrain furnishes the "cohering quality" of the ballad because in it the listeners participate. It thus voices the mood of the ballad. Professor Kittredge (op. cit. pp. xx-xxi) believes that the refrain "presupposes a crowd of singers and dancers" and is "a very ancient survival which brings the whole category of ballads into close relations with the singing dancing theory."
29Mr. Henderson (Scottish Vernacular Literature, p. 370) says of ballads: "In many ways . . . they bring us into immediate contact with the antique, pagan, savage, superstitious, elemental characteristics of our race. They have to some extent embalmed for us the essence of old forgotten romances, and the essence of what the old romances embalmed-the sentiments, passions, beliefs, forms of thought, and imaginative wonder and dread of our pagan ancestors."