The child sang it to his children and they to their children's
children, and so two hundred years it has travelled down to us
and we sing it to our children, knowing as little as our fathers
what its words may mean, but knowing well the meaning of
its music.
This was primitive African music; it may be seen in larger
form in the strange chant which heralds "The Coming of John":
"You may bury me in the East,
You may bury me in the West,
But I'll hear the trumpet sound in that morning,"
--the voice of exile.
Ten master songs, more or less, one may pluck from the
forest of melody-songs of undoubted Negro origin and wide
popular currency, and songs peculiarly characteristic of the
slave. One of these I have just mentioned. Another whose
strains begin this book is "Nobody knows the trouble I've
seen." When, struck with a sudden poverty, the United
States refused to fulfill its promises of land to the freedmen, a
brigadier-general went down to the Sea Islands to carry the
news. An old woman on the outskirts of the throng began
singing this song; all the mass joined with her, swaying. And
the soldier wept.
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