In de shape o' mortal man.

I told her dat I love' her,
Dat my love wus bed-cord strong;
Den I axed her w'en she'd have me,
An' she jes' say, "Go 'long!"

There is also a dramatic quality about many of these rhymes which must
not be overlooked. It has long been my observation that the Negro is
possessed by nature of considerable, though not as yet highly developed,
histrionic ability; he takes delight in acting out in pantomime whatever
he may be relating in song or story. It is not surprising, then, to find
that the play-rhymes, originating from the "call" and "response," are
really little dramas when presented in their proper settings. "Caught By
The Witch" would not be ineffective if, on a dark night, it were acted
in the vicinity of a graveyard! And one ballad--if I may be permitted to
dignify it by that name--called "Promises of Freedom" is characterized
by an unadorned narrative style and a dramatic ending which are
associated with the best English folk-ballads. The singer tells simply
and, one feels, with a grim impersonality of how his mistress promised
to set him free; it seemed as if she would never die--but "she's somehow
gone"! His master likewise made promises,

Yes, my ole Mosser promise' me;
But "his papers" didn't leave me free.
A dose of pizen he'pped 'im along.
May de Devil preach 'is f[=u]ner'l song.

The manner of this conclusion is strikingly like that of the Scottish
ballad, "Edward,"

The curse of hell frae me sall ye beir,
Mither, Mither,
The curse of hell frae me sall ye beir,
Sic counseils ye gave to me O.

In both a story of cruelty is suggested in a single artistic line and
ended with startling, dramatic abruptness.

In fact, these two songs probably had their ultimate origin in not
widely dissimilar types of illiterate, unsophisticated human society.
Professor Talley's "Study in Negro Folk Rhymes," appended to this volume
of songs, is illuminating. One may not be disposed to accept without
considerable modification his theories entire; still his account from
personal, first-hand knowledge of the beginnings and possible evolution
of certain rhymes in this collection is apparently authentic. Here we
have again, in the nineteenth century, the record of a singing, dancing
people creating by a process approximating communal authorship a mass
of verse embodying tribal memories, ancestral superstitions, and racial
wisdom handed d