Chapter VII: Part II: A Study in Negro Folk Rhymes (3)

Taking up the matter of the rabbit Mr. John McBride, Jr., had a very fine and lengthy discussion on "Br'er Rabbit in the Folk Tales of the Negro and other Races" in _The Sewanee Review_, April, 1911. On page 201 of that journal's issue we find these words: "Among the Hottentots, for example, there is a story in which the hare appears in the moon and of which several versions are extant. The story goes that the moon sent the hare to the earth to inform men that, as she died away and rose again, so should all men die and again come to life," etc. I drop the story here because so much of it suffices my purpose. It brings out the fact that the African here had probably truly considered the Rabbit as a messenger of the moon. Now the fact that the Hottentots were thus talking in lore of receiving messages concerning immortality from the moon means there must have been at least a time in their history when they considered the Moon a kind of super-being, a kind of god.

I quote again from Dr. Sheppard's "Presbyterian Pioneers in Congo," page 113. "King Lukenga offers up a sacrifice of a goat or lamb on every new moon. The blood is sprinkled on a large idol in his own fetich house, in the presence of all his counselors. This sacrifice is for the healthfulness of all the King's country, for the crops," etc.

I think after considering the foregoing one will see that there are those of Africa who connect their worship with the moon. We learn also that there are those who claim the rabbit to be the moon's messenger. From this, if we should accept the theory for Animal Rhymes advanced, we would easily see why the rabbit as a messenger of a god or gods would figure so largely in Rhyme and in story. We also would easily see how and why as a messenger of a god he would become "Brother Rabbit." If one will read the little Rhyme "Jaybird" he will notice that the rhymer places the intelligence of the rabbit above his own. Our theory accounts for this.

I would next consider the frog, but I imagine I hear the reader saying: "That is not a beginning. How about your bear, terrapin, wolf, squirrel, etc.?"

Seeing that I am faced by so large an array of animals, I beg the reader to walk with me through just one more little path of thought and with his consent I shall leave the matter there.

We see, in two of our African Rhymes, lines on a buzzard and an owl; yet these African natives do not worship these birds. The American Negro children of my childhood repeated Folk Rhymes concerning the rabbit, the fox, etc., without any thought whatever of worshiping them. These American children had received the whole through dim traditional rhymes and stories and engaged in passing them on to others without any special thought. The uncivilized and the unlettered hand down everything by word of mouth. Religion, trades, superstition, medicine, sense, and nonsense all flow in the same stream and from this stream all is drunk down without question. If therefore the Negro's rhyme-clustering habit in America was the same as it had ever been and the centering of rhymes about animals is due to a former worship of them in Africa, the verses would include not only the animals worshiped in modern Africa but in ancient Africa. The verses would take in animals included in any accepted African religion antedating the comparatively recent religions found there.

The Bakuba tribe have a tradition of their origin. Quoting from Dr. Sheppard's book again, page 114, we have the following: "From all the information I can gather, they (the Bakuba) migrated from the far North, crossed rivers and settled on the high table land." Here is one tradition, standing as a guide post, with its hand pointing toward Egypt. A one fact premise practically never forms a safe basis for a conclusion, but when we couple this tradition with the fact that, so far as we know, men originated in Southwest Asia and therefore probably came into Africa by way of the Isthmus of Suez, I think the case of the Bakuba hand pointing toward a near Egyptian residence a strong one. Now turn to your Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. X, ninth edition, with American revisions and additions, to the article on "Glass," page 647. Near the bottom of the second column on that page we read: "The Phoenicians probably derived this knowledge of the art (of glass making) from Egypt. * * * It seems probable that the earliest products of the industry of Phoenicia in the art of glass making are the colored beads which have been found in almost all parts of Europe, in India, and other parts of Asia, and in _Africa_. The "aggry" beads so much valued by the _Ashantees and other natives_ of that part of Africa which lies near the Gold Coast, have _probably_ the same origin. * * * Their wide dispersion may be referred with much probability to their having been objects of barter between the Phoenician merchants and the barbarous inhabitants of the various countries with which they traded." Here are evidences, then, that the African in his prehistoric days traded with somebody who bartered in beads of Phoenician or Egyptian make. I say Egyptian or Phoenician because if the Phoenicians got this art from the Egyptians I think it would be very difficult for those who lived thousands of years afterward to be sure in which country a specific bead was made, the art as practiced by one country being a kind of copy of the art as practiced in the other country. With the historic record that the Phoenicians were the great traders of the Ancient World our writers attributed the carrying of the beads into Africa, among the natives, to the Phoenicians. Without questioning these time-honored conclusions, we do know that Egyptian caravans still make journeys into the interior of Africa for the purpose of trade. Shall we think this trading practice on the part of Egypt in Africa one of recent origin or probably one that runs back through the centuries? I see no reason for believing this trading custom to be other than an ancient one. If the ancient Egyptians traded with the surrounding Africans and these Africans gradually migrated South, as is stated in the Bakuba tradition, the whole matter of how all kinds of animals got mixed into Negro Folk Rhymes by custom becomes clear. It also will explain how animal worship got scattered throughout Africa, for it is the unbroken history of the world that traders of a race superior in attainment always somehow manage to carry along their religion to the race inferior in attainment. The religious emissaries generally follow along in the wake of the traders. If we make the assumption, on the foregoing grounds, that the very ancient African Negro got in touch with the religion of Ancient Egypt, then the appearance of the frog, birds, etc., in Negro Rhyme is explained, for if we read the lists of animal gods of Ancient Egypt and the animal states through which spirits were supposed to pass, we have no trouble finding the list of animals extolled in Negro rhyme and story.

If Negro Rhyme has always centered about Negro religion, then when the Negro was brought to America and began changing his religion, he should have had some songs or rhymes on the dividing line between the old and the new. In other words, there ought to be connecting links between "secular" Folk Rhymes and Jubilee Songs, songs that by nature partake of both types. This must happen in order to be in accord with the law of the presence of connecting links where evolution produces a new type from an old one. By using the procedure under Mendel's law of mating like descendants from a cross between two and by eliminating those who do not reproduce constant to the type which we are trying to produce, we can produce a new and constant type in the third succeeding generation of descendants.

Now the Negro slave turned quickly in America from heathenism to Christianity. This was accomplished through white Christians correcting and eliminating all thoughts and productions which hovered on the border line between heathen ideals and Christianity. They used the Mendelian procedure of eliminating all crosses that did not give a product with Christian characteristics and thus necessarily eliminated Rhymes or songs of the connecting link type. They did a good thorough job but the writer believes he sees two connecting links that escaped their sensitive ears and sharp eyes. They are Jubilee songs; one is "Keep inching along like a poor inch worm, Jesus will come by-and-by," the other is "Go chain the lion down before the Heaven doors close."

The reader will recall that I have already shown that the worm and the lion were connected with native African worship. Of course we all know quite well that a "Caddis worm" is not an "Inch worm," but for a man trying to turn from the old to the new, from idolatry to Christianity, a closer relation than this might not be very comfortable neutral ground.

The following Folk Rhymes found in our collection might also pass for connecting links: "Jawbone," "Outrunning the Devil," "How to Get to Glory Land," "The Ark," "Destinies of Good and Bad Children," "How to Keep or Kill the Devil," "Ration Day," and "When My Wife Dies." The superstitions of the Negro Rhymes are possibly only fossils left in one way or another by ancient native African worship.

In a few Rhymes the vice of stealing is either laughed at, or apparently laughed at. Such Rhymes carry on their face a strictly American slave origin. An example is found in "Christmas Turkey." If one asks how I know its origin to be American, the answer is that the native African had no such thing as Christmas and turkeys are indigenous to America. In explanation of the origin of these "stealing" Rhymes I would say that it was never the Negro slave's viewpoint that his hard-earned productions righteously belonged to another. His whole viewpoint in all such cases, where he sang in this kind of verse, is well summed up in the last two lines of this little Rhyme itself:

"I tuck mysef to my tucky roos',
An' I brung _my_ tucky home."

To the Negro it was his turkey. This was the Negro slave view and accounts for the origin and evolution of such verse. We leave to others a fair discussion of the ethics and a righteous conclusion; only asking them in fairness to conduct the discussion in the light of slave conditions and slave surroundings.

In a few of the Folk Rhymes one stanza will be found to be longer than any of the others. Now as to the origin of this, in the case of those sung whose tunes I happen to know, the long stanza was used as a kind of chorus, while the other stanzas were used as song "verses." I therefore think this is probably true in all cases. The reader will note that the long stanza is written first in many cases. This is because the Negro habitually begins his song with the Chorus, which is just the opposite to the custom of the Caucasian who begins his ordinary songs with the verse. This appears then to be the possible genesis of stanzas of unequal length.

I have written this little treatise on the use, origin, and evolution of the Negro Rhyme with much hesitation. I finally decided to do it only because I thought a truthful statement of fact concerning Negro Folk Rhymes might prove a help to those who are expert investigators in the field of literature and who are in search of the origin of all Folk literature and finally of all literature. The Negro being the last to come to the bright light of civilization has given or probably will give the last crop of Folk Rhymes. Human processes being largely the same, I hope that my little personal knowledge of the Negro Rhymes may help others in the other larger literary fields.

I am hoping that it may help and I am penning the last strokes to record my sincere desire that it may in no way hinder.

GENERAL INDEX