ere were quite a few Rhymes sung where the banjo and fiddle formed
what is termed in music a simple accompaniment. Examples of these are
found in "Run, Nigger, Run," and "I'll Wear Me a Cotton Dress." In such
cases the music consisted of simple short tunes unquestionably "born to
die."

There was another class of Rhymes like "Devilish Pigs," that were used
with the banjo and fiddle in quite another way. It was the banjo and
fiddle productions of this kind of Rhyme that made the "old time" Negro
banjo picker and fiddler famous. It has caused quite a few, who heard
them, to declare that, saint or sinner, it was impossible to keep your
feet still while they played. The compositions were comparatively long.
From one to four lines of a Negro Folk Rhyme were sung to the opening
measures of the instrumental composition; then followed the larger and
remaining part of the composition, instruments alone. In the Rhyme
"Devilish Pigs" four lines were used at a time. Each time that the music
theme of the composition was repeated, another set of Rhyme lines was
repeated; and the variations in the music theme were played in each
repeat which recalled the newly repeated words of the Rhyme. The ideal
in composition from an instrumental viewpoint might quite well remind
one of the ideal in piano compositions, which consists of a theme with
variations. The first movement of Beethoven's Sonata, Opus 26,
illustrates the music ideal in composition to which I refer.

So far as I know no Caucasian instrumental music composer has ever
ordered the performers under his direction to sing a few of the first
measures of his composition while the string division of the orchestra
played its opening chords. Only the ignorant Negro composer has done
this. Some white composers have made little approaches to it. A fair
sample of an approach is found in the Idylls of Edward McDowell, for
piano, where every exquisite little tone picture is headed by some gem
in verse, reading which the less musically gifted may gain a deeper
insight into the philosophical tone discourse set forth in the notes and
chords of the composition.

The Negro Folk Rhyme, then, furnished the ideas about which the "old
time" Negro banjo picker and fiddler clustered his best instrumental
music thoughts. It is too bad that this music passed away unrecorded
save by the hearts of men. Paul Laurence Dunbar depicts its telling
effects upon the hearer in his poem "The Party":

"Cripp