"Why, there was Clementina, Maude, and Missus Gundy,
They was the three finest looking gals beneath the sky;
You ought (to see) them when they dress upon a Monday,
What you would swear they was three goddess in the sky.
Chorus.Take back, &c.
"I took her to all the amusements in the city,
I said, Clementina .... I am bound to go.
Just because she see me dress so smart, smooth, and witty,
She said that I was just her bow.[1]
Chorus.Take back, &c.
"One evening when my heart was in a flutter,
Eound Missus Clementina house I call,
She bin curious of peeping through the shutter.
When I saw a sight that made my heart pall.
Chorus.Take back, &c.
"I saw her eyes, and all her teeth upon the table,
Her curly hair was hanging round the peg;
I laugh out as hard as I was able
When I saw her screwing on her wooden leg!
Chorus.Take back", &c.
These songs are sung on the Carrington Estate in Barbados, and were obtained for me by Miss Elizabeth Carrington, of Great Missenden Abbey, who had them written down by the negroes themselves. It is stated that the coloured people of the United States are fast losing their characteristic minstrelsy. In the preface to the valuable little collection of Slave Songs, published by Simpson and Co., New York, 1867, the editors remark—"It is, we repeat, already becoming difficult to obtain these songs. Even the 'spirituals' are going out of use on the plantations, superseded by the new style of religious music 'closely imitated from the white people.'" Of secular songs there are in that collection very few indeed, and those few are mostly composed in the French dialect, spoken by the negroes of Lousiana. Mr. Joel Chandler Harris has succeeded in finding some further specimens, but a recent writer in the Atlantic Monthly confirms
- ↑ Beau.
