Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/684

664 There is indeed a wonderful power in some of these songs, and the charm undoubtedly lies in the fact that they are founded on Bible texts.

No one questions the remarkable hold the genuine negro music has upon the Anglo-Saxon race, as is evidenced by the success of the Jubilee singers years ago and of the Hampton students now. The negroes have simply used the weird African melodies as a fascinating vehicle for Bible truths.

Most students of English hymnology have observed a similar fact in their own religious poetry. One of the most powerful devotional hymns in the language—How Firm a Foundation, ye Saints of the Lord—is largely indebted for its perpetuity to the fact that almost every line is taken directly from the Bible.

To illustrate the power of this music upon the colored people themselves, I may be permitted to give this little bit of personal experience:

A few nights ago I went to pay a visit to an old "mammy" from Charleston. All her family sat round the room when they found I was from the South. The eldest daughter said: "Bress de Lord! I'm glad to see you! The Norf am no place for people what's been used to eberyting. Nuffin but wuk, wuk, wuk; all's jes money. No fun, nor lub, nor Jesus Christ nowhar! Why, dey'll jes meet you and pass de time ob day, and dey'll let you go away widout eber stoppin' to ax yer ef you's prepared to die, and how's your soul. Why, I neber seed no stranger in Charleston 'thout axin' 'em how's der soul comin' on? De niggers heah ain't got no Holy Spirit and dey is singing no 'count songs—dese white songs from books."

At this juncture I quietly began to sing, "I don't want to be buried in de Storm." Suddenly they all began to sing and pat with me, and quickly adapted their different versions to mine. They lost no time in getting happy. They all jumped up and down in a perfect ecstasy of delight, and shouted, "I feel like de Holy Spirit is right on my hade!"

Another one exclaimed: "People! dem songs makes de har rise up. Mine a-risin' now."

"We all had a good time, and I felt greatly complimented when the head of the house explained enthusiastically: "You does shore sing 'em good; and for a white lady you is got a good deal ob de Holy Spirit in you, honey"; and before I left the house they had tried to convince me that God has surely blessed this music by taking a hand in forming it himself.

We find many of the genuine negro melodies in Jubilee and Hampton Song Books, but for the uninitiated student of the future