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204 |
NEGRO FOLK-SONGS |
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La pluie tombe, Crapeau chante, Oin, oin! oin, oin! oin, oin! M'a pale baigner moin. La pluie tombe, Marin-gouin crie, M'a pale noyer moin. La pluie tombe, Marin-gouin crie, M'a pale noyer moin. Oin, oin I oin, oin! oin, oin!
This, roughly translated, says:
The rain falls,
The frog croaks,
Wee-wee! wee-wee! wee-wee!
Tells me to come into the water.
The rain falls,
The mosquito cries,
Tells me to drown myself.
Wee-wee! wee-wee! wee-wee!
Then, of course, one recalls the boll weevil, most famous of insects, picaresque, determined, resourceful, which has an elaborate ballad all its own, The Boll Weevil, recorded in an earlier chapter of this volume. And there is the abumberly-bee,J that gathers honey all day long and "stows hit in de ground."
One might go on indefinitely giving these folk-songs wherein the Negro intimately addresses the live creatures about him, with affecÂtionate understanding of their good points, but not blinded as to their shortcomings. He likes them. They interest him, and his poetry is of the things that honestly appeal to him, not of what he thinks a conventional public or white-collared editors expect him to praise. He may deal with his subjects impersonally, as figures in a universal comedy in which he is an observer. Or he may treat them subjectively, comparing his lot with theirs, as in the stanza I have heard my mother sing, and also given by May Terry Goodman, which will do to close with. |
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