Aunt Dinah would also sing it pleadingly when begging for a present.
She would begin the supplication with hands clinched tight, and open
them quickly at the last line. She declared that she always sang it in
this exact manner in her old African home whenever she was asking a
favor, but she was never able to tell the meaning of any part of it
except the last line, the African of which she had forgotten, but
which meant that all black races are born with wide-open palms ready
and waiting for other peoples to pour rich gifts into them. This she
translated in her apt, crude way: "Eber sence I born, my hand stand
so!"
She had a relative named Moses, I think, who had three deep gashes
radiating from each eye. Of these he was very proud, as he said they
indicated that he was of the king's blood.
Ten days have elapsed since the above was written. I feel like crying,
"Eureka!" I have found my proof! After a diligent search for a real
live African, I have found an educated convert to Christianity, who
has been absent only two years from the wilds of the west coast of
Africa. In broken English he sang for me several songs sung by the
savages of the native Mendi tribe. The tunes sounded much like songs I
know, but I could not take them down during this interview. All the
songs I sang he said seemed very familiar--in certain portions
especially so.
I was especially interested in the description he gave of a peculiar
ceremony common among the wildest Bushmen and the Yolloff tribe. My
informant grew up and played with them a great deal when a child. He
says the death of a young boy they consider an affront to the
living--an affront which they never forgive. It is singular that among
some of our Indian tribes a similar notion prevails. The friends meet
around the corpse and exclaim, while they chant and sing and dance, in
a high-pitched voice: "Why did you die? Were you too proud to stay
with us? You thought yourself too good to stay with us. To whom do you
leave all your things? We don't want them! Take them with you if you
are so stuck up; we'll bury them with you!"
They work themselves into a perfect fury, and one gets a whip and
flogs the corpse until it is horribly mutilated. Then the few who have
really been friends to the child in their crude way draw near and
begin to sing:
"Anasa yi.
Anasa papa,"
which this native African assured me meant, as nearly as he could
translate it--
"Find out how mother is.
Find out how papa is."
The curious identity of the name for father in this African dialect
and our own he could not explain.
Even while the relatives were thus speaking kindly to the departed
child, others would come up with whips, and with blows spitefully
exclaim: "Tell my father's sister I am happy. Speak to her for me."
This they said, mocking the relatives for sending messages.
What better proof is required of the origin of the peculiar custom of
the negroes in our own Southland of sending communications by the
dead? He also gave me new stories of Brother Conch, and a tale of a
rabbit and a pitch-man.
He says he has heard a savage tribe often sing to the beat of a
peculiar drum, as they started to pillage and destroy a neighboring
tribe, these words, which he could not translate:
"Zo, whine, whine,
Zo, bottom balleh.
Zo, whine, whine,
Zo, bottom balleh."
Some of the tribes are followers of Mohammed. After they have broken
their fast, they sing this hymn to their God:
"Li li, e li li,
Moo moo dooroo, soo moo li."
I then sang for him a part of "Gawd bless dem Yankees, dey'll set me
free,"
[Music:
Gawd bless dem Yankees, dey'll set me free! 'Most done toil-in' heah!