In the latter passages, there is a naïveté, and also a faith and
fervor, that are mediæval. Indeed one has to go to the
Middle Ages to find anything quite like this combination of
childlike simplicity of thought with strangely consummate
artistry of mood. A quaintly literal, lisping, fervent Christianity, we feel it to be the evangelical and Protestant counter-part of the naïve Catholicism of the tenth to the thirteenth centuries. And just as there we had quaint versions of Bernard of Clairvaux and Saint Francis in the Virgin songs and Saints Legends, so here we have Bunyan and John Wesley percolated through a peasant mind and imagination, and concentrated into something intellectually less, but emotionally more
vital and satisfying. If the analogy seems forced, remember
that we see the homely colloquialism of the one through the
glamorous distance of romance, and of the other, through the
disillusioning nearness of social stigma and disdain. How
regrettable though, that the very qualities that add charm to
the one should arouse mirthful ridicule for the other.
Over-keen sensitiveness to this reaction, which will completely pass within a half generation or so, has unfortunately caused many singers and musicians to blur the dialect and pungent colloquialisms of the Spirituals so as not to impede with irrelevant reactions their proper artistic and emotional effect. Some have gone so far as to advocate the abandonment of the dialect versions to insure their dignity and reverence. But for all their inadequacies, the words are the vital clues to the moods of these songs. If anything is to be changed, it should be the popular attitude. One thing further may be said, without verging upon apologetics, about their verbal form. In this broken dialect and grammar there is almost invariably an unerring sense of euphony. Mr. Work goes so as to suggest-rightly, I think--that in many instances the dropped, elided, and added syllables, especially the latter, are a matter of instinctive euphonic sense following the requirements of the musical rhythm, as, for example, “The Blood came a twinklin' down” from “The Crucifixion” or “Lying there fo' to be heal” from "Blind Man at the Pool.” Mr. Work calls attention to the extra beat syllable, as in "De trumpet
