Surely there is nothing in America to suggest
such thoughts, but such thoughts might have come from Africa where
natives gather their fruit from the bread tree and dip it into honey
gathered from the forests.

Read "When My Wife Dies." This is a Dance Rhyme Song. When the Rhymer
chants in seemingly light vein in our hearing that he will simply get
another wife when his wife dies, we turn away our faces in disgust, but
we turn back almost amazed when he announces in the immediately
succeeding lines that his heart will sorrow when she is gone because
none better has been created among women. The dance goes on and we
almost see grim Death himself smile as the Rhymer closes his Dance Song
with directions not to bury him deep, and to put bread in his hand and
molasses at his feet that he may eat on the way to the "Promised Land."

If you had asked a Negro boy in the days gone by what this Dance Rhyme
Song meant, he would have told you that he didn't know, that it was
simply an old song he had picked up from somewhere. Thus he would go
right along thoughtlessly singing or repeating and passing the Rhyme to
others. The dancing over the dead and the song which accompanied it
certainly had no place in American life. But do you ask where there was
such a place? Get Dr. William H. Sheppard's "Presbyterian Pioneers in
Congo" and read on page 136 the author's description of the behavior of
the Africans in Lukenga's Land on the day following the death of one of
their fellow tribesmen. It reads in part as follows: "The next day
friends from neighboring villages joined with these and in their best
clothes danced all day. These dances are to cheer up the bereaved family
and to run away evil spirits." Dr. Sheppard also tells us that in one of
the tribes in Africa where he labored, a kind of funnel was pushed down
into the grave and down this funnel food was dropped for the deceased to
feed upon. I have heard from other missionaries to other parts of Africa
similar accounts. The minute you suppose the Rhyme "When My Wife Dies"
to have had its origin in Africa, the whole thought content is
explained. Of course the stanza concerning the pickling of the bones in
alcohol is probably of American origin but I doubt not that the thought
of the "key verses" came from Africa.

These Rhymes whose thought content I have just discussed I consider only
illustrative of the many Rhymes whose thought drift came from Africa.

Many of the Folk Rhymes fa