le Joe, de ole rheumatic, danced dat flo' frum side to middle.
Throwed away his crutch an' hopped it, what's rheumatics 'gainst a
fiddle?
Eldah Thompson got so tickled dat he lak to los' his grace,
Had to take bofe feet an' hold 'em, so's to keep 'em in deir place.
An' de Christuns an' de sinnahs got so mixed up on dat flo',
Dat I don't see how dey's pahted ef de trump had chonced to blow."

Perhaps a new school of orchestral music might be built on the Negro
idea that some of the performers sing a sentence or so here and there,
both to assist the hearers to a clearer musical understanding and to
heighten the general artistic finish. The old Negro performers generally
sang lines of the Folk Rhymes at the opening but occasionally in the
midst of their instrumental compositions. I do not recall any case where
lines were sung to the closing measures of the compositions.

It might seem odd to some that the grotesque Folk Rhyme should have
given rise to comparatively long instrumental music compositions. I
think the explanation is probably very simple. The African on his native
heath had his crude ancestral drum as his leading musical instrument. He
sang or shouted his war songs consisting of a few words, and of a few
notes, then followed them up with the beating of his drum, perhaps for
many minutes, or even for hours. In civilization, the banjo, fiddle,
"quills," and "triangle" largely took the place of his drum. Thus the
singing of opening strains and following them with the main body of the
instrumental composition, is in keeping with the Negro's inherited law
for instrumental compositions from his days of savagery. The rattling,
distinct tones of the banjo, recalling unconsciously his inherited love
for the rattle of the African ancestral drum, is probably the thing
which caused that instrument to become a favorite among Negro slaves.

I would next consider the relation of the Folk Rhymes to Negro child
life. They were instilled into children as warnings. In the years
closely following our Civil War, it was common for a young Negro child,
about to engage in a doubtful venture, to hear his mother call out to
him the Negro Rhyme recorded by Joel Chandler Harris, in the Negro
story, "The End of Mr. Bear":

"Tree stan' high, but honey mighty sweet--
Watch dem bees wid stingers on der feet."

These lines commonly served to recall t