| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
94 |
NEGRO FOLK-SONGS |
||
|
had "passed out/' as they say, and his friends had made up the amount of ten dollars to buy his coffin. A colored man was started to town on a mule to buy the coffin. On his way he passed a couple of Negroes by the roadside, shooting craps. He could not resist joinÂing them, though he had no money of his own; and so he yielded to the impulse to stake the funeral money. Throwing his ten dollars down dramatically, he staked it all on one throw. "Two coffins or none!" he cried.
It turned out to be none, and so the corpse was buried wrapped in a sheet. I do not know what the contributors of the embezzled ten dollars did to the gambler.
Worth Tuttle Hedden, formerly instructor in English in Straight College, New Orleans, sent a ballad which was sung by a student in the college, a young Galveston Negro. He reports that it is rather widely sung among the Negroes in Galveston, and he calls it "a love ballad." The hospital referred to is a local institution, and so the song undoubtedly must have originated in Galveston, and is probÂably of somewhat recent origin.
How Sad Was the Death oe My Sweetheart
I went to John Seley's hospital;
The nurse there she turned me around. She turned me around, yes, so slowly,
An' said, "The poor girl is sleepin' in the ground."
I was walkin' down Walnut Street so lonely,
My head it was hanging so low. It made me think of my sweetheart,
Who was gone to a world far unknown.
Let her go, let her go.
May. God bless her, wherever she may be.
She is mine.
She may roam this wide world over
But she will never fin' a man like me.
While walkin' I met her dear mother, With her head hangin' low as was mine.
"Here's the ring of your daughter, dear mother, And the last words as she closed her eyes:
"' Take this ring, take this ring,
Place it on your lovin' right hand. And when I am dead and forgotten
Keep the grass from growing on my grave.' " |
|||