Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/403

 rich with saga or legend, as in our songs; but, on the other hand, much sentiment, and a naïve, and often humorous seizing upon the moment and its circumstances. These songs have been made on the road; during the journeyings of the slaves; upon the rivers, as they paddled their canoes along, or steered the raft down the stream; and in particular at the corn-hustings, which are to the negroes what the harvest-home is to our peasants, and at which they sing impromptu, whatever is uppermost in their heart or in their brain. Yes, all these songs are peculiarly improvisations, which have taken root in the mind of the people, and are listened to and sung to the whites, who, possessed of a knowledge of music, have caught and noted them down. And this improvisation goes forward every day. People hear new songs continually; they are the offspring of nature and of accident, produced from the joys and the sorrows of a child-like race. The rhyme comes as it may, sometimes clumsily, sometimes no rhyme at all, sometimes most wonderfully fresh and perfect; the rhythm is excellent, and the descriptions have local colouring and distinctness. Alabama, Louisiana, Tennesee, Carolina, “Old Virginny,” all the melodious names of the Southern States and places there, the abodes of the slaves, are introduced into their songs, as well as their love-histories, and give a local interest and colouring not only to the song, but to the State and to the place which they sing about. Thus these songs are like flowers and fragrance from the negro-life in those states—like flowers cast upon the waves of the river, and borne hither and thither by the wind—like fragrance from the flowers of the wilderness in their summer life, because there is no bitterness, no gloomy spirit in these songs. They are the offspring of life's summer-day, and bear witness to this. And if bitterness and the condition of slavery were to cease for ever in the free land of the United States, these songs would still