In the district of Columbia we have:—
"By the Holy Evangels of the Lord,
I marry this Indian to this squaw.
By the point of my jack-knife
I pronounce you man and wife."
Also—
"By the holy and religerally law."
The other lines unchanged.
Among the coloured people of Virginia the first line becomes—
"The Bible is a holy and visible law."
This last instance, lying well out of the line of migration, indicates a very early date of origin. Note, too, that the "levitical law," and the tendency to lay on good advice and spare not, disappear from the ritual when we leave the Puritan settlements and their colonies. Nevertheless the resemblance is too great for us to suppose more than one root; and the "Indian" and the "squaw" require that root to be in the New World. Probably we are safe in ascribing it to some pioneer of the early colonial period when Indians were more plentiful than ministers, and sometimes inconveniently importunate in their desire to adopt the white man's ceremonies. Such a half-jesting marriage service would be readily picked up by the children and incorporated into their games, thus ensuring it a life as long as that of the language itself. Considered as a relic of earlier manners and race-dealings it is the most instructive American contribution of the kind that I know. "Blackberry Wine," reported in Lippincott's Magazine for March 1886, though seemingly of later date, has a certain value of the same sort. But perhaps I may be wrong in thinking it entirely American.
The negroes have a number of song-games still used by adults or half-grown young people in backward neighbourhoods, as well as those confined to the children of that race. I have already reported several which are without any considerable European element, and now add a few more collected by a lady of this city from the recitation of a coloured servant girl, formerly a resident of Bowling Green, Virginia:
