Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/146

 138 sometimes rather grotesque. For instance, we may pass abruptly in the same company from "Skip Angelina" and the buffalo's incredible gymnastics to

The wellspring of this is unmistakable. Oddly I have not as yet found it among the white children, through whom it must have passed to its present repository.

Here is another of a very different sort that seems to have crossed the sea, gin being very little used in this country, to say nothing of other ear-marks:—

To return to more poetical specimens, I find among these Virginia negro-songs that variant of "Green grows the willow tree" which introduces the "lady with a rose in her hand." Except a slight change in the adjuration to the improvident "young man," who is to be held to his bargain, the words are identical.

On the other hand, the song-games which originate among the negroes never find permanent acceptance among the white children. An aphorism, a few words about weather-lore, a hint about "signs," appealing to childish fear or childish wonder, may thus be transferred, but even here the rule is otherwise. An elderly coloured woman, learned in such matters, explains that in "signs" she always followed her "old mistress." This explains the very great predominance of English elements in negro nurse-lore of birth and death.

But in anything so artistic and extended as a song, a narrative, or