Once in a while we catch a strange word of an un-
known tongue, as the "Mighty Myo," which figures as a
river of death; more often slight words or mere doggerel are
joined to music of singular sweetness. Purely secular songs are
few in number, partly because many of them were turned into
hymns by a change of words, partly because the frolics were
seldom heard by the stranger, and the music less often caught.
Of nearly all the songs, however, the music is distinctly
sorrowful. The ten master songs I have mentioned tell in
word and music of trouble and exile, of strife and hiding;
they grope toward some unseen power and sigh for rest in the
End.
The words that are left to us are not without interest, and,
cleared of evident dross, they conceal much of real poetry
and meaning beneath conventional theology and unmeaning
rhapsody. Like all primitive folk, the slave stood near to
Nature's heart. Life was a "rough and rolling sea" like the
brown Atlantic of the Sea Islands; the "Wilderness" was the
home of God, and the "lonesome valley" led to the way of
life. "Winter'll soon be over," was the picture of life and
death to a tropical imagination.
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