nuary, 1922.

Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U.S.A.

INTRODUCTION

Of the making of books by individual authors there is no end; but a
cultivated literary taste among the exceptional few has rendered almost
impossible the production of genuine folk-songs. The spectacle,
therefore, of a homogeneous throng of partly civilized people dancing to
the music of crude instruments and evolving out of dance-rhythm a
lyrical or narrative utterance in poetic form is sufficiently rare in
the nineteenth century to challenge immediate attention. In _Negro Folk
Rhymes_ is to be found no inconsiderable part of the musical and poetic
life-records of a people; the compiler presents an arresting volume
which, in addition to being a pioneer and practically unique in its
field, is as nearly exhaustive as a sympathetic understanding of the
Negro mind, careful research, and labor of love can make it. Professor
Talley of Fisk University has spared himself no pains in collecting and
piecing together every attainable scrap and fragment of secular rhyme
which might help in adequately interpreting the inner life of his own
people.

Being the expression of a race in, or just emerging from bondage, these
songs may at first seem to some readers trivial and almost wholly devoid
of literary merit. In phraseology they may appear crude, lacking in that
elegance and finish ordinarily associated with poetic excellence; in
imagery they are at times exceedingly winter-starved, mediocre, common,
drab, scarcely ever rising above the unhappy environment of the singers.
The outlook upon life and nature is, for the most part, one of
imaginative simplicity and child-like naivete; superstitions crowd in
upon a worldly wisdom that is elementary, practical, and obvious; and a
warped and crooked human nature, developed and fostered by
circumstances, shows frequently through the lines. What else might be
expected? At the time when these rhymes were in process of being created
the conditions under which the American Negro lived and labored were not
calculated to inspire him with a desire for the highest artistic
expression. Restricted, cramped, bound in unwilling servitude, he looked
about him in his miserable little world to see whatever of the beautiful
or happy he might find; that which he discovered is pathetically slight,
but, such as it is, it served to keep alive h