POETS AND POETRY - .

A COLLECTION OF NEGRO FOLK RHYMES.* ALL popular and traditional poetry needs the voice of an- interpreter. It is not till verse begins to have an individual • A Collsetbrn of Negro Folk Rhymes. With. a Stady by. Mamas. W. Tally. London: Macmillan. pls. net.] and intellectual flavour about it that cold print can convey it. And perhaps of all traditional poetry and narrative the Negro racial fantasies need a voice most. For here is a very simple, very humorous and very sensuous spirit trying to express itself. The coral-insect authors who here added syllable to syllable no more put all that was to be expressed into so many words than does the good dramatist. (Of that art of omission the reader may learn fully in Mr. Granville Barker's last book on the theatre.) Therefore the volume before us is really to be regarded as a book of skeletons which a skilful reader is to clothe with flesh and blood—if he is fortunate, with memories of Mr. Vachel Lindsay or Mrs. Waldo Richards to guide him through those labyrinthine cadences. Here is one whose swing is typical :— " My name's Ran, I woks in do san' ;

But I'd druther be a Nigger dan a po white man.

Gwineter hitch my oxes side by side, An' take my gal fer a big fine ride.

An' take my gal to de country Mk'," ; Gwineter dress her up in rod calico.

You take Kate, an' I'll take Joe. Den off we'll go to de pahty-o.

Gwineter take my gal to do Hullabaloo,

Whar dere hain't no Crackers in a mile or two."

" Crackers," a note explains, is a slang name for Poor Whites. Here is one on Master's Stolen Coat. Here the annotator remarks that " stolen " means borrowed. This seems a strange reversal of an interchange with which we are most of us too familiar :-

" Ole Mosser bought a brand new coat, Ho hung it on de wall.

Dat Nigger stole dat coat away,

An' wore it to de Ball.

His head look lak a Coffee pot, His-nose look lak de spout, His mouf look lak de fier place, Wid de ashes all tuck out.

His face look lak a skillet lid, His years lak two big kites.

His eyes look lak two big 'piled aigs, Wid de yellers in de whites.

His body 'us lair a stuffed .toad frog, His foot look lak a board.

Oh-oh ! He thinks he is so fine, But he's greener dan a gourd."

The suppositions contained in Mr. Tally's Study as to symbolism and origins are interesting if not invariably convincing.

A. Wirx.rAusi-Euzs.