University of Virginia Library

NEGRO MINSTRELSY—ANCIENT AND MODERN.

It is now some eighteen or twenty years since an enterprising Yankee, actuated, it is but charitable to suppose, by the purest love of musical art, by the enthusiasm of the discoverer, or by a proper and praiseworthy desire for posthumous fame, produced upon the boards of one of our metropolitan theatres, a musical sketch entitled "Jim Crow." Beyond the simple fact of its production by the estimable gentleman above referred to, the origin of this ancient and peculiar melody is beyond the reach of modern antiquarian lore. Whether it was first sung upon the banks of the Alatamaha, the Alabama, or the Mississippi; or, whether it is pre-American, and a relic of heathen rites in Congo, or in that mysterious heart of Africa, which foot of civilized man has never trod, is a problem whose solution must be left to the zeal and research of some future Ethiopian Oldbuck. It is sufficient for the present disquisition to know that it appeared in the manner above stated. To those (if there can be any such) who are unacquainted with its character and general scope, it may be proper to remark that "Jim Crow" is what may be called a dramatic song, depending for its success, perhaps more than any play ever written for the stage, upon the action and mimetic powers of the performer. Its success was immediate and marked. It touched a chord in the American heart which had never before vibrated, but which now responded to the skilful fingers of its first expounder, like the music of the Bermoothes to the magic wand of Prospero. The schoolboy whistled the melody on his unwilling way to his daily tasks. The ploughman checked his oxen in mid-furrow, as he reached its chorus, that the poetic exhortation to "do just so," might have the action suited to the word. Merchants and staid professional men, to whom a joke was a sin, were sometimes seen by the eyes of prying curiosity in private to unbend their dignity to that weird and wonderful posture, now, alas! seldom seen but in historic pictures, or upon the sign of a tobacconist; and of the thoroughly impressive and extraordinary sights which the writer of this article has in his lifetime beheld, the most memorable and noteworthy was that of a young lady in a sort of inspired rapture, throwing her weight alternately upon the tendon Achillis of the one, and the toes of the other foot, her left hand resting upon her hip, her right, like that of some prophetic sybil, extended aloft, gyrating as the exigencies of the song required, and singing Jim Crow at the top of her voice. Popularity like this laughs at anathemas from the pulpit, or sneers from the press. The song which is sung in the parlor, hummed in the kitchen, and whistled in the stable, may defy oblivion. But such signal and triumphant success can produce but one result. Close upon the heels of Jim Crow, came treading, one after the other, "Zip Coon," "Long-tailed Blue," "Ole Virginny neber tire," "Settin' on a Rail," and a host of others, all of superior merit, though unequal alike in their intrinsic value, and in their participation in public approval. The golden age of negro literature had commenced. Thenceforward for several years the appearance of a new melody was an event whose importance can hardly be appreciated by the coming generation. It flew from mouth to mouth, and from hamlet to hamlet, with a rapidity which seemed miraculous. The stage-driver dropped a stave or two of it during a change of the mails at some out of the way tavern; it was treasured up and remembered, and added to from day to day, till the whole became familiar as household words. Yankee Doodle went to town with a load of garden vegetables. If upon his ears there fell the echo of a new plantation song, barter and sight-seeing were secondary objects till he had mastered both its words and music. Thereafter, and until supplanted by some equally enthusiastic and enterprising neighbor, Yankee Doodle was the hero of his native vale, of Todd Hollow. Like the troubadours and minstrels of ancient days, he found open doors and warm hearts wherever he went. Cider, pumpkin pie, and the smiles of the fair were bestowed upon him with an unsparing hand. His song was for the time to him the wand of Fortunatus.

The prevailing characteristics of the melodies which this period produced are their perfect and continual lightness, spirit, and good humor; but the true secret of their favor with the world is to be found in the fact that they

are genuine and real. They are no senseless and ridiculous imitations forged in the dull brain of some northern self-styled minstrel, but the veritable tunes and words which have lightened the labor of some weary negro in the cotton fields, amused his moonlight hours as he fished, or waked the spirits of the woods as he followed in the track of the wary racoon. It is as impossible to counterfeit, or successfully imitate, one of these songs, as it would be for a modern poet to produce a border ballad like Chevy Chase or Lord Jamie Douglas. It is not alone the patient and laborious student of negro minstrelsy that can detect the ring of the false metal. The shameless imitations carry their imposture upon their face. Walpole, with all his credulity, would never have been deceived, had Chatterton turned his attention to manufacturing plantation songs.

The allusion to ancient English and Scottish ballads cannot fail to bring to the mind of the poetical scholar, the striking similarity that exists between many of the "specimens" of Percy, Ritson and others, and the most approved poetry of the African school. In the terseness and fitness of the language, the oft repeated idiomatic expressions, the occasional looseness and negligence in respect to rhyme, the carelessness and license in the metre, and, above all, in the incoherence of the constantly recurring refrain; the lover of negro minstrelsy is continually reminded of the old, plain songs which Shakespeare loved, and "the spinsters and the knitters in the sun" did use to chant. I quote almost at random from Motherwell.

Let the words peculiarly Scottish in Hynd Horn, the ballad from which the above is taken, or in almost any other ancient ballad, be literally translated into the African dialect, and we have at once a plantation song. The birk and the brume may be more alliterative, but they are certainly not more poetic trees than the gum and the persimmon. In further illustration of this subject I cannot forbear quoting a portion of a banjo song from a volume now lying before me. Its genuineness, no one at all familiar with negro literature will presume to question, while its intrinsic worth and excellence will be perceived by the most indifferent or prejudiced observer. It is hardly possible to peruse it without thinking of Gil Maurice or Syr Charles Bawdin. Not inferior to the former in its simplicity and truthfulness, it is far above the feeble imitation of Chatterton in dramatic effect and artistic construction.

Those of us who have for so many years been looking anxiously forward to

the advent of the coming poet who is to take away from America the sin and the shame of never having produced an epic, or a lyric, commensurate with Niagara and the Rocky Mountains, will do well to get up a subscription and buy the author of this song, if his owner can be persuaded to part with him. His noble, poetic nature must chafe in the cotton field like Pegasus in harness. The specimen above given, is simple, grand, and expressive. The picture it presents to the imagination is natural and life-like. The stream of song runs in a straight channel, and conducts us swiftly and directly to the catastrophe. There is no turning aside for flowery metaphors, or forcible expressions—no straining for effect—no lugubrious whining over the hero's downfall—no moralizing his unhappy fate. Even the jingle of rhyme is wanting. And yet, for severe beauty, perfect dramatic structure, and succinct impressive narration, it would be difficult in the whole range of ancient and modern ballad poetry, to find a worthy rival to "Uncle Gabriel."

The lightness and prevailing good humor of the negro songs, have been before remarked upon. A true southern melody is seldom sentimental, and never melancholy. And this results directly from the character and habits of the colored race. No hardships or troubles can destroy, or even check their happiness and levity. As I pen these words, the grinning image of the boy Quash rises up before me like a phantom. Light-hearted, witty, and gay, he was the very type of his race. His jests, his laughter, and his songs linger with me yet, though many a long year has passed since I gazed upon his shining face. It is but fitting that I should embalm his memory in these pages. Watching one day the embarkation of a few bales of cotton, I noticed Quash in the shadow of the steamboat as she lay alongside the dock. A foolish whim induced me to say, "Quash, what is the name of that boat?" Quash stepped deliberately up to the side of the boat, gazed knowingly at the large black letters on the wheel-house, shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked again, dropped his head between his shoulders, and peered earnestly into the unknown characters, stepped a few paces back, and went through the same manoeuvres, and at last turned to me with an arch leer upon his face. "I 'clar Maussa," replied he, "I'se so near-sighted, dis mornin', I can't 'stinguish de letters."

Reading Othello one warm and quiet afternoon, in the shade of a spreading fig-tree, I became suddenly aware of the bright eyes of Quash, which were turned with a curious gaze upon me and my book, as if he were wondering at that strange and awful science, which discloses to us the thoughts and feelings of the dead. "Quash," said I, wishing to get, from a mind totally unbiased by the conflicting opinions of critics, a "first impression" upon a disputed passage, "which reading to you prefer, 'Put out the light, and then—Put out the light,' or, 'Put out the light, and then—put out the light'?" Quash scratched his woolly head, and putting on that same indescribable leer again, solved the difficulty at once. "I tink, Maussa," replied he, "I should make um blow de light out de fuss time." If the student of Shakespeare ponders as long and as deeply upon this answer as I did, the covert satire and the AEsopian wisdom which it displays will not be lost upon him. Alexander's solution of the Gordian knot was not more witty or more wise. But that rascal Quash is at his old trick, again, I find, of causing me to neglect my business. Let us return.

In or about the year 1841, a descriptive ballad, entitled "Ole Dan Tucker," first made its appearance, and speedily acquired a renown and popularity hardly excelled, even by that of "Jim Crow." This may be partly attributable to the fact that less histrionic talent is required to give it a fitting interpretation, and partly to its intrinsic worth. In some respects Ole Dan Tucker may be regarded as the best of what I have denominated the ancient negro ballads. The melody* was far superior to anything that had preceded it. In its vivacity and liveliness, the music occasionally reminds us of some of Donizetti's happiest efforts, while its simplicity and quaintness at times breathe of Auber. The words, too, came more dearly home to the heart of the American people than those of its predecessors. The song, it is needless to say, consists of a series of vivid pictures, disconnected in themselves, varying as rapidly as the changes in a kaleidoscope, and yet presenting

to us the character of the hero, as a most artistic whole. The most searching test of popularity can be applied to "Ole Dan Tucker" with perfect confidence. It has been sung, perhaps, oftener than any melody ever written.

I have said that this was in some aspects the best of these songs. It was the last. With that ballad African minstrelsy may be said to have culminated. From that period its decline and fall was rapid and saddening. Hardly a song has been produced since that time which does not present the most glaring marks of barefaced and impudent imposition. The zealous student of this species of literature, as he wanders amongst the decaying ruins of its former grandeur, may well sigh at the rank and mildewed vegetation which is fast overspreading those noble relics of antiquity. If a buttress or a cornice of beauty meets his eye, he finds it but a portion of the old edifice degraded to a new position. If a gleam of the former light occasionally sparkles in his path, it is but the phosphoric glimmer which beams from loathsome and decaying putrescence. Vile parodies, sentimental love songs, dirges for dead wenches who are generally sleeping under the willow, on the bank of some stream, and melancholy reminiscences of negroic childhood fill the places once allotted to the grand old ballads of former days. From the volume before mentioned, I have not been able, after a most critical examination, to select more than ten which bear any trace of the cotton-field afflatus, and these ten, with only one exception, have been so patched and dressed up for drawing-room inspection, that they look like a bumpkin who has suddenly come into possession of a fortune. They have lost their country grace without acquiring a city polish. This inundation of trash has swept away in its might all the ancient landmarks of song. It is mortifying to be obliged to confess that I have searched unsuccessfully from Appleton's to the book stand in the rear of the post-office, for a copy of the original Jim Crow. The names, even, have lost their marked significance. The questionable taste which has given birth to appellations like Fanny Fern, Lotty Lee, Minnie Myrtle, and their long retinue of vegetable alliterations, has crept into this department of poetry and exhibits itself in such Africo-romantic fancies as Rosa Lee, Lily Dale, Flora May, Nelly Bell or Etty Way*. Poetasters who never saw an alligator, or smelt the magnolia blossom in their lives, sit coolly down to write an African ditty as a pleasant after-dinner pastime, or a daily task; and, as a natural consequence of this reprehensible assumption, we find the banana growing wild in Tennessee, South Carolina slaves gorging themselves with pumpkin pie, a deceased negress buried upon the Lawrence river in the midst of a furious snow, and a Kentucky sugar mill in full blast in the month of June.

But ludicrous anachronisms, and unpardonable ignorance of topography, are not the worst evils of which we have to complain. Instead of the lyrics which once stirred the heart of the nation, our wives and children are daily and nightly compelled to listen to some such horrible parody as this—

or sentimental trash like this—

or this—

They are fortunate if they get to bed without being wearied and disgusted with some crude burlesque on a popular opera, served up with vulgar caricatures of the style and manner of well-known

artists; and commended to popular favor by the vilest puns, of which "Lend her de Sham-money," or "Lucy did lam a Moor," are not exaggerated specimens. Now, all this may serve to make the unskilful laugh, but it cannot fail to make the judicious grieve. It is from the purpose of negroic minstrelsy, whose end at the first was, and now ought to be, to present to the lovers of original poetry and music, a class of songs, peculiar, genuine, and unadulterated. A thoughtful, reflective man, can hardly leave one of the temples devoted to such barbaric sacrifices, without reasonable and just despondency and alarm. The decay of Athens and Rome was as marked and as melancholy in their literature as in their government*. The poet, the orator, and the statesman, went down hand in hand into the shadowy valley, and disappeared together in the clouds of ignorance and superstition that veil for ever the Dark Ages. Is it treasonable to hint, for the warning of American minstrels and politicians, that there is something more than a striking coincidence in this simultaneous decline; and that the present diseased taste in popular poetry, may be but the first faint symptoms of another dark period, in which America shall be hidden from the gaze of the world; never, perhaps, to emerge to her pristine dignity and splendor? I am no alarmist, and yet it seems to me that, in these views, the patriot may find matter for deep and serious consideration.

A proper diagnosis of the disease, however, is of no effect, unless a remedy is applied. Fortunately, in this case, we are not left without hope. The mine from which Jim Crow and Ole Dan Tucker were dug, is not yet exhausted, and a resort to it will be alike easy and successful. Why need we groan and grumble under the inflictions of ignorant and self-conceited song-writers, when every cotton-field teems with melody, and every slave hut, throughout the Southern country, has its little list of genuine ballads, which only need to be known, in order to be received to the heart of a nation. We talk with vague regrets and sentimental longings, of the forgotten strains of Tasso, once chanted so commonly by the shrill-voiced gondoliers of Venice. Poets have mused dejectedly over the songless boatmen, travellers have feelingly bewailed the silence and desolation of those once gay canals; romancists and serenaders are gradually ceasing to adjure us to "list to the voice of the gay gondolier." That malice which delights to slander the unresisting dead, has begun to deny both the gaiety of the gondolier, and the purity of his voice. He shares the fate of Memnon. Ever since the hush of those mysterious sounds which were wont to greet the dawn, there have not been wanting travelled Gradgrinds to assure us that the song from his lips was a humbug and a sham; and to degrade that majestic statue into a vulgar shoemaker with a musical lapstone, upon which the morning hymn was hammered by his knavish priests. So we are asked to believe that the voice of the gondolier was harsh and unmusical, and that "Tasso's echoes," chanted alternately, were but such polite and complimentary remarks as may be heard to this day among the drivers on the Erie Canal. But as I seat myself in imagination, on this calm and moonlight night, by a certain wayside in the South, I leave these discussions to the prosy antiquary, and care not for the songs of Venice, or the music of Memnon. Up from the Sound comes a gentle south wind, rippling the water, and fanning my whiskers; the shore surge whispers low at my feet; afar in the distance I hear the hum of the plantation. The tumultuous harmony of the stock, mingled and blending with the faint shouts and cries of the "people," and the nameless and varied sounds of insect life lull my senses like the gentle susurrus of Tityrus. And now, faintly heard far over the water, I distinguish the soft thump of oars in the rowlock of an approaching boat. I listen with attentive ears—for I know by experience the gratification in store for me—and soon catch the distant tones of the human voice—now more faintly heard, and now entirely lost. A few minutes pass, and the breeze once more wafts to me the swelling notes of the chorus half buried in the measured cadence of the oars. The wind dies away, and my straining ears again hear nothing but the measured beat of the rowers, and the plashing of the restless sea. But now, anew, I hear the sound of those manly negro voices swelling up upon the evening gale. Nearer and nearer comes the boat, higher and higher rises the melody, till it overpowers and subdues the noise of the oars, which in their turn become subservient

to the song, and mark its time with harmonious beating. And now the boat is so near, that every word and every tone comes to my ear, over the water, with perfect distinctness, and I recognize the grand old triumphal chorus of the stirring patriotic melody of "Gen'el Jackson":

But the boat touches the beach; the negroes with a wild cry quit their singing, tumble out into the shallow water, drag their dug-out up high and dry upon the sand, and I am left once more with the evening breeze and the quieter harmony of nature.

The song, a part of which I have just quoted, is fresh from the sable mint in which it was coined. Its originality and genuineness every one familiar with plantation life will at once perceive; while some Georgians may even be able to point to the very river on which the dusky troubadours still chant it. I am well aware that in depriving the words of their appropriate music, I rob it of much of its attractiveness, and still it is no bad sample of what may be called the Historic Plantation Ballad. The particular naval battle in which Old Hickory was engaged, I have not been able to discover; but the allusion to the bales of cotton in the third stanza may not be without its effect in settling one of the vexed questions relating to the defence of New Orleans; and it adds another to the many examples of the superiority of oral tradition over contemporaneous written history.

It is not alone, however, on the water that these quaint songs are produced. The annual corn-shucking season has its own peculiar class of songs, never heard but on that festival; their rhythmical structure or caesural pauses not being adapted to the measured cadence of the oars. Standing at a little distance from the corn heap, on some dark and quiet night, watching the sable forms of the gang, illuminated at intervals by the flashes of the lightwood knot, and listening to the wild high notes of their harvest songs, it is easy to imagine ourselves unseen spectators of some secret aboriginal rite or savage festival. Snatches of one or two songs which on such occasions I have heard, recur to me. Could I in the following specimen give you any idea of the wild grandeur and stirring music of the refrain, I should need no apology for presenting it to my readers.

I place the above in a class to which I have given the name of descriptive songs. By this I do not mean to be understood as hinting that it is an accurate description of a "whitefolks," party. On the contrary, it probably originated in the tipsy brain of its dusky author; or, perhaps, in a moment of discontent may have been composed as an exaggerated satire. The allusion to the kitchen, as the place where the gentlemen are engaged in their pleasing and congenial occupation goes to show that the minstrel had in his view a colored party, which I am inclined to think was in fact the case. But at this stage of our critical knowledge on the subject of negro literature, such speculations are alike tedious and unprofitable.

The comic ballads of the South, form a large and highly interesting class of songs, more especially as they are of a sort most readily transplanted, and most grateful to the public taste. Apart from their fun, however, they lack the merit which distinguishes many other kinds of African composition. The negro is humorous rather than witty, and his comic songs consist of ludicrous images, instead of witty conceits. I do not remember, in the whole course of my investigations, to have met with anything like a pun in a genuine plantation melody. The following shucking song has nothing to recommend it to public attention, save the questionable rhyme to "supper." The lovers of "Ole Dan Tucker" will be pleased and interested with a coincidence in which there cannot be the slightest ground for a suspicion of plagiarism.

The main obstacle which the enthusiastic collector of these songs will have to contend against, will be the difficulty of thoroughly comprehending the negro dialect. So peculiar is it, that those even who have been familiar with it from their infancy, are often times at a loss to interpret such passages as the chorus in the last specimen. No assistance can be expected in such matters from the negroes, who, when called upon to repeat slowly and distinctly a line which they have just sung, will declare with the utmost gravity and solemnity that they have utterly forgotten it. I used to think that they were unwilling to show to the world the richest treasures of their literature; but subsequent investigations induced me to believe their assertion, and to conclude that their intellects could only retain the words when assisted by the music. An intelligent friend to whom I applied, suggested, though not without doubt, that the line in question was "Oh! my lady, oh!" And the fact that the ballad is principally devoted to the misfortune of the "mistress," gives some countenance to this interpretation. With the line "He full um fote wid cotton bale," in the ballad of Gene'l Taylor, I had an amount of trouble which will hardly be appreciated by those who see the line in print. I suppose it is hardly necessary to observe that "full um fote" means "filled" i.e., constructed "his fort."

Autobiographic ballads hold a prominent position among Southern melodies; but as they are usually sung exclusively by their authors, and are regarded in a measure as private property, I do not feel at liberty to transfer any specimens to these pages; more especially as at this moment I find it impossible to bring any to my recollection. One melancholy chorus, "The long summer's day," I still remember. Its perpetually recurring sound never failed to have a singularly saddening and depressing effect upon me, whenever I heard it.

In speaking of this kind of literature the improvisations of the negroes must not be forgotten, but as they are usually but a running commentary on matters passing under the immediate notice of the minstrel, they possess but a local and transitory interest, and a single stanza taken at random will suffice. The reader will notice the chorus, which was a favorite one with the improvisator, and has served to string many thousand lines together.

Those who are familiar with Southern life, and especially those who have participated in its hunting delights, will perhaps understand, without any explanation, that the foregoing refrain is intended to be an imitation of the gobble of the wild turkey. I have performed many orthographical experiments, in order to represent the sound more nearly on paper, but without success, and I am aware that no words can express the rich, unctuous, guttural flow of the line, when uttered in perfect time by a full gang at their corn-shucking task. An approximation to it, however, may be made by pronouncing the words rapidly in a deep tone, and at the same time violently agitating the body in a perpendicular direction. Having on one or two occasions essayed this mode with considerable satisfaction to myself, and no little commendation from a few privileged spectators, I am enabled to make this assertion with some confidence; but, as the movement is slightly fatiguing, and totally devoid of grace, I do not wish to be understood as recommending it either to invalids or ladies. It is, however, the only feasible method of "talking turkey," that I have yet been able to discover.

I have thus attempted, as calmly and dispassionately as my own strong feelings of the importance of the subject will permit, to call the public attention to a serious and growing evil, and humbly, as becomes me, to point out some means for its removal. My task is finished, and my duty accomplished. Henceforth, the duty of guiding or correcting the public taste in these matters will devolve upon other pens than mine. I have endeavored to discharge my obligations to society fearlessly and sincerely.

For this courage and sincerity alone I desire credit. If the considerations which I have presented shall have the effect of awakening public attention to the subject, I shall be sufficiently rewarded; if not, the consciousness of duty performed will sustain me. It is earnestly to be desired that collections of genuine plantation songs may be made. The grateful incense of posterity would embalm the memory of him who should hand down to them authentic ballads, which another generation may sweep from the face of the earth forever. There are men whose birth or long residence in the South, whose knowledge of the negro dialect, and whose taste and accomplishments in polite literature, seem to have especially fitted them for this service. For the few and imperfect specimens which I have given above, I have been indebted to a treacherous memory of a few months' sojourn in Georgia some six or seven years ago, when I had no reason to suppose that I should ever feel called upon to pen this article. Could I have foreseen its necessity, the collection would have been greatly larger and more perfect. But enough has been presented to show how much may be effected by a zealous scholar under more advantageous circumstances. Upon a rough calculation, made with no statistics to refer to, I have concluded that there are, at least, thirty thousand slave plantations in the United States. Is it unreasonable to suppose that, on each of these plantations, one song may be found of undisputed genuineness and excellence? It will be a proud day for America when these thirty thousand songs are collected into several volumes, handsomely bound in Turkey morocco, and superbly embellished. Then negro minstrelsy will take its proper place in literature; then Ethiopian Serenaders, and Congo Minstrels will draw crowded houses at three dollars a seat, and one dollar for a promenade ticket; and then—but long ere that time the hand that writes these lines will have mouldered and become dust—will the eye of the student and antiquary linger reverently and delightedly over some time-worn manuscript as he deciphers the title "Jim Crow," or "Uncle Gabriel?"