_Mr. President, Members of the Folk-Lore Society, Ladies and Gentlemen:_
I should first like to say a word as to why I have been given the honor of
addressing this meeting. Mr. Lomax is solely to blame for that. A short
while after this society was organized, Mr. Lomax approached me one day
while I was holding an examination and asked me to join the society and to
make a study of the negro songs. He did so, no doubt, out of a knowledge
of the fact that as I had lived all by life in a part of the State where
the negroes are thick, and as I was then devoting my summers to active
farming where negroes were employed, I would, therefore, have an excellent
opportunity for studying the negro and his songs, as the geologist would
say, _in situ_.
You will notice that I have taken as my title, "Some Current Folk-Songs of
the Negro and Their Economic Interpretation." Now it is somewhat
misleading at this day and time to speak of the negro as a "folk." That
word seems to me to be applicable only to a people living in an industry
in which economic function has not been specialized. So it would be more
accurate to speak of "negro class lore." The class that I am treating of
is the semi-rural proletariat. So far as my observation goes, the
property-holding negro never sings. You see, property lends
respectability, and respectability is too great a burden for any
literature to bear, even our own. Although we generally think of beliefs,
customs, and practices, when we hear the word "folk-lore" used, I believe
all treatises on the subject recognize songs, sayings, ballads, and arts
of all kinds as proper divisions of the subject. So a collection and study
of the following songs is certainly not out of place on a program got up
by this society.
Now just one word more under this head. I have found it very difficult to
keep separate and distinct the study of folk-lore and the study of
folk-psychology. The latter has always been extremely interesting to me;
hence I can't refrain from sharing with you the two following instances: A
negro girl was once attending a protracted meeting when she "got religion"
and went off into a deep swoon, which lasted for two whole days, no food
or drink being taken in the meantime. A negro explained to me as follows:
"Now when that nigger comes to, if she's been possumin', she sho' will be
hungry; but if she hasn't been possumin', it will be just the same as if
she had been eatin' all the time." The other instance is that of an old
negro who just before he died had been lucky enough to join a burial
association which guaranteed to its members a relatively elaborate
interment. So, when this old negro died, the undertaker dressed him out in
a nice black suit, patent leather shoes, laundered shirt and collar, and
all that. His daughter, in relating the incident after the funeral, said:
"Bless your life, when they put Pappy in that coffin, he looked so fine
that he just _had_ to open his eyes and look at his self."
I imagine that folk-lore appeals differently to different individuals
according to what intellectual or cultural interest predominates their
beings. I suppose that the first interest in folk-lore was that of the
antiquarian. Then came the interest of the linguist and the literateur.
But it seems to me that if the pursuit of folk-lore is to be thoroughly
worth while to-day the interest must above all be psychological and
sociological. At least these are my interests in the subject. For
instance, take that piece of well known folk-lore--the belief that by
hanging a dead snake on a barbed wire fence--one can induce rain in a time
of drought. I would give almost anything to know just how the two ideas
"hanging a snake on a fence" and "raining" were ever associated. But I can
perhaps still better illustrate my attitude by relating a piece of Herbert
Spencerian lore. Herbert Spencer tells in his autobiography of this
incident that he met with while on one of his annual trips to Scotland.
The house at which he was a guest contained a room which bore the
reputation of being haunted. It was in this room that Herbert Spencer was
asked to sleep. So he did and lay awake most of the night, though not out
of fear that the ghost would choose that particular night to pay a visit,
but out of a philosophical curiosity to figure out the origin of such a
"fool" belief.
In reference to these songs, when I say that I am interested in a study of
origins, I do not mean the origin of any particular song, but the origin
of the songs as a social phenomenon. Or to put it interrogatively, why do
the members of this particular class sing, and why do their songs contain
the thoughts that they do?
I believe it is pretty generally agreed today that any well-defined period
of literature is merely the reflection of some great economic change. I
notice that the critics have begun to speak of Victorian literature as
merely the ornament of nineteenth century prosperity--the prosperity that
was incident to the utilization of steam as motive power.
Now a great change has come into the negro's economic life within the past
two decades. Its causes have been two. He has come into competition with
the European immigrant, whose staying qualities are much greater than his;
and agriculture has been changing from a feudalistic to a capitalistic
basis, which requires a greater technical ability than the negro
possesses. The result is that he is being steadily pushed into the less
inviting and less secure occupations. To go into the intricacies of my
thesis would be to abuse the privilege of the program; so I shall have to
content myself with merely stating it. The negro, then, sings because he
is losing his economic foothold. This economic insecurity has interfered
most seriously with those two primal necessities--work and love--and you
will notice that the thoughts in all these songs cluster around these two
ideas.
So much for the interpretation; now for the appreciation. It has been my
experience that where a knowledge of the negro's every day, or rather
every-night, life is lacking, the appreciation of these songs is never
very keen. Hence, in order to make it certain that you will appreciate
these songs, I deem it necessary to try to acquaint you with the life of
one of the "songsters." Otherwise I am afraid that too many of you will
look upon these songs as absolutely puerile. Remember that a greater man
than you or I once declared the ancient ballads to be without merit and
also maintained that he could write, on the spur of the moment, a stanza
that was just as good and that contained just as much meaning. Whereupon,
being challenged he sat down and wrote:
"I put my hat upon my head and went into the Strand,
And there I met another man with his hat in his hand."
The colored semi-rural proletarian, then--how shall I describe him so that
you may see him in your mind's eye, as I read these songs? I don't know
how many of you are already acquainted with him, but, if any of you have
ever tried to employ him profitably, I am sure you will never forget him.
Perhaps I can picture him best by using the method of contrast. Let us
follow one as he works with a white man, the latter, of course, being
boss. We shall start with the morning.
The white man rises early and eats his breakfast. My proletarian doesn't
rise at all for the chances are that he has never gone to bed. At noon
they "knock off." While the white man is preparing to eat his lunch, the
"nigger" has already done so and is up in the bed of a wagon or on a plank
underneath a tree fast asleep, usually with his head in the sun. At
nightfall, the white man eats supper and spends the evening reading or
with his family. Not so my proletarian. He generally borrows thirty-five
cents from the white man, steps out the back gate, gives a shrill whistle
or two, and allows how he believes he'll "step off a piece to-night."
As I have not been on the farm much for the last two years. I have been
unable to use the Boswellian method of recording these songs but have had
to depend mostly on memory. The result is that some of them are not
complete and some may not be textually correct. Of course the collection
is not anything like an exhaustive one.
If you consider these songs as the negro's literature, you will notice
some striking parallels between its history and that of English
literature. As all of you know, English literature for several centuries
was little more than paraphrases of various parts of the Bible. The first
songs I shall read you are clearly not indigenous but are merely revamping
the Biblical incidents and reflections of the sect disputes of the whites.
The first song here presented is one that I heard twenty years ago as it
was sung on the banks of a creek at a "big baptizing." It is entitled: