XXIX

(THE PLAYERS)

Si' Myra was a Congo. She believed the Obi priests could boil water
without fire, and in many ways cause frightful woes. To her own myths
she had added Danish ones. "De wehr-wolf, yes, me chile! Dem nights
w'en de moon shine bright and de dogs a-barkin', you see twelb dogs
a-talkin' togedder in a ring, and one in de middle. Dah dem wait till
dem yerry [hear] him; den dem take arter him, me chile," etc.

Strangest, wildest practice of the slaves was the hideous misuse
Christian masters allowed them to make of Chrismas Day and week. It
was then they danced the bamboula, incessantly. All through the year
this Saturnalia was prepared for in meetings held at night by their
leaders. The songs to which they danced were made of white society's
scandals reduced to satirical rhyme; and to the rashest girl or man
there was power in the warning, "You'll get yourself sung about at
Christmas." Yearly a king, queen, and retinue were elected. The
dresses of court and all were a mixture of splendor and tawdriness that
exhausted the savings and pilferings of a twelvemonth. Good-natured
"missies" often helped make these outfits. They were of velvet, silk,
satin, cotton lace, false flowers, the brilliant seeds of the licorice
and coquelicot, tinsel, beads, and pinch-beck. Sometimes mistresses
even lent--firmly sewed fast--their own jewelry.

On Christmas Eve, here and there in the town, ground-floor rooms were
hired and decorated with palm branches; or palm booths were built,
decked with oranges and boughs of cinnamon berries, lighted with
candles and lanterns and furnished with seats for the king, queen, and
musicians, and with buckets of rum punch. Then the "bulrush man" went
his round. Covered with capes and flounces of rushes and crowned with
a high waving fringe of them, he rattled pebbles in calabashes, danced
to their clatter, proclaimed the feast, and begged such of us white
children as his dress did not terrify, for stivers from our holiday
savings.

Soon the dancers began to gather in the booths; women in gorgeous
trailing gowns, the men bearing showy batons and clad in gay shirts or
satin jackets, and with a mongrel infant rabble at their heels. When
the goombay--a flour-barrel drum--sounded, the town knew the bamboula
had begun. On two confronting lines, the men in one, the women in the
other, a leading couple improvised a song and all took up the refrain.
The goombay beat time, a