strange bed-fellows, brought the North into touch with the slaves
on the islands off the coast of North and South Carolina, and
Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson heard the wonder of these
songs
and set himself to make them known. But it was not until
the Fisk Jubilee Singers began to sing the slave-songs deeply into
the world's heart that men really gave heed.

They were only a little women, under George

To George L. White the world owes a deeper debt than it knows. After Gettysburg he served in the Freedmen's Bureau, down South, and it was there he heard the Spirituals sung by those who had just been freed from slavery. He knew at once that it was his life-work to let those Negroes sing to the world as they had sung to him. So in 1871 the Fisk Jubilee Singers, as they were called, began their great trek. company of eight or nine black men and White's leadership. At Wilberforce a Negro minister gave them God-speed and they started northwards. They were thrust off the street-cars, refused admittance to hotels, rudely rebuffed and sneered at in a hundred towns and cities. But they kept all these things in their hearts. They had a purpose and they refused to allow anything to divert them from it. They knew that the message of their song, once understood by the white world, would do more than all else to make an end of race bitterness and discrimination. Slowly their songs began to win a response, until at last a great burst of applause at the Congregational Church at Oberlin made their name ring in every city of the North. In New York, Henry Ward Beecher gave them his powerful support, in spite of the newspaper sneers at his "nigger minstrels." Soon their fame spread across the Atlantic, and they were urged to follow; and before long they were singing their Spirituals in Scotland and Switzerland, Dublin and Amsterdam, before the Queen of England, and the German Kaiser. For seven years they went up and down the white world subduing great audiences by the magic of their song, and finally returning home with 150,000 dollars for the founding of Fisk University. Since then there have been many imitators, some good-like the singers of Hampton and Atlanta; some poor-like the strolling quartettes that abound.

It was genuinely feared that with the coming of emancipation the Negroes would, in sheer reaction from slavery, abandon everything connected with their former life. Probably the Spirituals

would have been lost beyond possibility of recall had not the elder people, who had found them a solace and support in the old unhappy days, kept them alive at prayer and class meetings, at revivals and love-feasts. For a time the Spirituals were largely abandoned. Choirs, organs and "white" anthems began to be features of Negro church services, and the Spirituals were regarded as having upon them the marks of slavery. Happily that phase has run its course, and the Spirituals have come back again into vogue amongst the Negroes themselves, and through them have passed into the musical currency of the world. To-day the Spirituals are closely linked with the growing race-consciousness of the Negro people, and black and white alike are recognizing that in music, at any rate, humanity has much to learn from the children of the slaves.

Why the Spirituals do not get stale is a constant amazement. Although several generations of Afro-Americans have sung scarcely anything else, yet no songs are more popular to this day in the Black Belt of America. To hear them sung by the Negro students of Hampton or Tuskegee Institutions, or at a Negro revival service or a camp meeting, is an unforgettable experience. It seems that their appeal is perennial; and the singers do not tire nor do the hearers. An audience that has heard them all a hundred times before will sit through a long performance of them, not only without any signs of boredom, but will even clamour for more. Although the words are almost always Biblical, and the music invariably derived from the ancient folk-rhythms of Africa, yet they avoid monotony. They spring from a common source and are confined to the narrow experience of the slaves and their freed descendants; yet they do not grow threadbare. Only music that approaches perfection in its kind could stand such repetition without beginning to pall.

Clearly there is something of permanent value here, and something which mankind will not willingly let die. The Negro Spirituals contain the religious faith and aspirations of the Negro race, and are to that extent of universal appeal, since men everywhere are incorrigibly religious. They provide the emotional stimulus and furnish the emotional outlet, and for that reason again have an appeal as wide as humanity, for men everywhere crave a certain emotional warmth. Their present popularity is therefore not just a passing craze to be followed by oblivion: they are now a part of mankind's spiritual and musical heritage.

If it be granted that the Spirituals have come to stay, it may be asked if they also have exerted an influence on the relations of white and black in America. That they have served in a negative way by helping to remove prejudice against the Negro is certain; but, have they performed any positive function? Acute observers of American life are beginning to answer the question in the affirmative. The popular notion was that the Negro had nothing to give save his labour; for the rest his part was to receive-to receive education, morality, religion, culture. But the truth is that the Negro is a contributor to the common life, and his contribution on the side of song has done as much as any other single thing to bring about a new orientation of mind on the part of the white American to his black fellow-citizen. The white man is asking whether the Negro may not have other precious things to bring into the common stock of American life; whether the cramping of the black man's sphere in the past may not have deprived America of many forms of wealth? Perhaps the Spirituals, the fruit of the black man's anguish of body and spirit, may yet win for his whole race a worthier regard and a more human treatment.

For a long time the Negroes themselves were not aware of the value of the Spirituals, and this new-found appreciation is naturally greatly affecting them. It is increasing their belief in themselves, in their race, and in their future; it is evoking a literary outburst, marked by a new confidence, which in turn is feeding the source from which it springs. What the opening of this new door may lead to no man can say, save that there is to-day an increasing conviction that mankind needs the Negro for something else than his brawn and muscle alone. The view is being more and more widely held that a world full of white folk would be as lacking in interest as a tune played only on the white notes of a piano. The blacks too are needed.

The Spirituals, even the great and well-known ones, vary in value; but there are about ten or a dozen that are truly mastersongs, as Du Bois calls them, which will last as long as mankind has any love for religious song. Among the most notable are Nobody knows de trouble I see," "Steel away, steal away, steal away to Jesus," "Swing low, sweet chariot," "You may bury me in the East," "Roll, Jordan, Roll," " My Lord, what a mornin', when I see the stars begin to fall !" and "Run, Nigger, run."

"Steal away, steal away to Jesus" was first sung in the slave days when the Negroes on some of the plantations were refused permission to hold religious services, as the masters feared that meetings might lead to disaffection and even risings. In many of such cases the slaves would meet in secret and at dead of night, in cabins or in the woods, where they would sing in subdued voices," Steal away, steal away to Jesus." Run, Nigger, run " was one of the oldest of the plantation songs. It arose in the faroff days when slaves were not allowed off the plantations without a pass. Patrols, called by the Negroes "patter-rollers," made regular rounds to see that no slave was missing. It was only natural that this would form the theme of one of the slave songsRun, Nigger, run, de patter-roller catch you, Run, Nigger, run, it's almost day.

Run, Nigger, run, de patter-roller catch you,
Run, Nigger, run, and try to get away.

One of the most popular Spirituals is undoubtedly " Heab'n, Heab'n." Old and young alike sang it and sing it still. It is unusually effective and moving if the word "heab'n "is hummed softly through closed lips to a simple, memorable melody:I got a robe, you got a robe,

All o' God's chillun got a robe,
When I get to heab'n,

I'm goin' to put on my robe,

I'm goin' to shout all ovah God's heab'n.

""

It is only natural that there should be debasements and poor imitations. These are seen in what are known as the " minstrel " and "coon songs, and in some of the "Gospel" hymns. The slave-songs became fashionable, a demand was created, and with it a perfectly natural attempt to supply the demand. This gave rise to artificiality, and Spirituals were to be heard on the musichall stage with a consequent comic element. In the Spiritual there is no place for the comic element; they are not meant to amuse; they are the heart-cry of a people, and on the lips of true singers, Spirituals, such as "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" and "Balm in Gilead," have the instantaneous appeal of simple, direct and passionate art.

It is easy to understand what an appeal such Spirituals as "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" or "I couldn't hear nobody pray " would have for an essentially emotional folk. Words and music alike would almost intoxicate them, and they would sway from side to side with religious fervour while they sang:

"Tis that ole-time religion,
"Tis that ole-time religion,
'Tis that ole-time religion,
It's good enough for me.

It was good enough for mother,
It was good enough for mother,
It was good enough for mother,
An' it's good enough for me.
It was good enough for father,
It was good enough for Peter,

and so on. This type of revival hymn was introduced into white churches on both sides of the Atlantic by the earlier American evangelists, and had a considerable vogue. The fashion has largely passed now, as was inevitable amongst a less emotional people, but the origin is to be found in the Spirituals of the slave