The negro slaves of the South, finally, with their traditional dance and song, strangely influenced by one of the few elements of civilization which really came into their life, the religious element, offer another interesting bit of evidence to show how emotional speech, a rude poetry, is born of rhythm by consent of a throng. In those so-called “spirituals” of the negro is the recitative or the chorus to be looked upon as original? Perhaps Colonel Higginson had as good a chance to study this communal song as any one could have; in an article[222] written soon after the war he described the singing of the “spirituals” by men of his regiment, now in camp, now on the march, now to the fall of the oars. He speaks of the trait so prominent in all primitive song, exact and inevitable rhythm, however harsh the voices and however uncouth the words. “Often ... I have ... silently approached some glimmering fire, round which the dusky figures moved in the rhythmical barbaric dance the negroes call a ‘shout,’ chanting, often harshly, but always in the most perfect time, some monotonous refrain.” What was the favourite of all these spirituals, “sung perhaps twice as often as any other”? A song called _Hold Your Light_, “sung with no accompaniment but the measured clapping of hands and the clatter of many feet;” it “properly consisted of a chorus alone with which the verses of other songs might be combined at random.”
Hold your light, Brudder Robert,— Hold your light, Hold your light on Canaan’s shore....
For Robert, another name would be given,[223] then another, and so on for half an hour. This seemed to Colonel Higginson “the simplest primitive type of ‘spiritual.’” Next in favour was:—
Jordan River, I’m bound to go, Bound to go, bound to go, Jordan River, I’m bound to go, And bid ’em fare ye well,
then with Brudder Robert, Sister Lucy, and so on, the well-known cumulative refrain. Now if one had only the text of many of these songs, and knew nothing of the singing and dancing, one would call them rhythmical prose, recitative; for example, a part of _The Coming Day_. One is told, however, that this “was a boat-song and timed well with the tug of the oar.” The fact is that here, as in savage and presumably in primitive song, movement of body and rhythm of voice are the main consideration, while the words, on which civilized man imposes individual and syntactic correctness, are of very subordinate value. Syllables may be dropped or added at will, but the rhythm must be exact; and the simplest way to avoid verbal distress is the primitive device of repetition.[224] When the words, and the thought in them, begin to be of overmastering importance in poetry, “scanning” acts as deputy of exact rhythm and song, until at last declamation pushes scanning aside, and rhythm is reduced to the same ancillary function once assigned to thought and words.