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American Ballads and Folk Songs
Struck it three times, ring-a ring.
Mone, member, mone! Watch dem healin' waters spring,
Mone, member, mone! Come ye now and squench yo' thirst.
Mone, member, mone! Yes, de preacher an' de elder first.
Mone, member, mone! Den de leader an' de member nex',
Mone, member, mone! Bringin' wid 'em a gospel tex'.
Mone, member, mone! Sinner-man, is you gwineter stay,
Mone, member, mone! Way behin' on de blessed day?
Mone, member, mone! Hypocrite, you got no room,
Mone, member, mone! To repent dis side in de tomb.
Mone, member, mone! |
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MOANIN'
The backwoods congregations of the South, both Negro and white, before they were rich or stable enough to buy hymn books and when few, if any, of the members could read, used to be led in singing by their ministers. These men would "line out" several phrases from the Bible or, perhaps, from Watts's hymnal, and the congregations would take them up and repeat them in a singsong fashion. Long after the white churches had abandoned this mode of singing, the Negro congregations kept it up, and on Victor record No. 20810 the
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