SOME CURRENT FOLK-SONGS
OF THE NEGRO
BY
W. H. THOMAS, College Station, Texas
Read before the Folk-Lore Society of Texas, 1912
PUBLISHED BY THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY OF TEXAS
WILL THOMAS AND THE TEXAS FOLK-LORE SOCIETY
Now that this brochure is being reprinted by the Texas Folk-Lore Society,I take the opportunity to say a word concerning its author and itshistory.
Although not a numbered publication, Some Current Folk-Songs of the Negro(1912) was the first item produced by the Texas Folk-Lore Society. At thetime dues to the Society were two-bits a year—not enough to allow a veryextensive publication. Number I (now reprinted under the title of Roundthe Levee) was not issued until 1916; then it was seven more years beforeanother volume was issued, since which time, 1923, the Society has sentout a book annually to its members. The credit for initiating theSociety’s policy of recording the lore of Texas and the Southwest belongsto Will H. Thomas.
At the time his pamphlet was issued, he was president of the organization,to which office he was elected again in 1923. His idea was that people whowork with folk-lore should not only collect it but interpret it and alsoenjoy it. This view is expressed in his delightful essay on “The Declineand Decadence of Folk Metaphor,” in Publications Number II (Coffee in theGourd) of the Society.
The view is thoroughly representative of the man, for Will Thomas was avigorous, sane man with a vigorous, sane mind. He had a sense of humorand, therefore, a sense of the fitness of things. For nearly thirty yearshe taught English in the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, andI have often wished that more professors of English in the colleges anduniversities over the country saw into the shams and futilities and sheernonsense that passes for “scholarship” as thoroughly as he saw into them.Yet he was tolerant. He was a salt-of-the-earth kind of man.
He was born of the best of old-time Texas stock on a farm in FayetteCounty, January 11, 1880; he got his collegiate training at AustinCollege, Sherman, and the University of Texas and then took his Master’sdegree at Columbia University. He was co-editor, with Stewart Morgan, oftwo volumes of essays designed for collegians. He died March 1, 1935.Gates Thomas, Professor of English in Southwestern State Teachers Collegeat San Marcos, who has done notable work in Negro folk songs and who isone of the nestors and pillars of the Texas Folk-Lore Society, is hisbrother.
J. FRANK DOBIE
Austin, Texas
April, 1936
SOME CURRENT FOLK-SONGS OF THE NEGRO AND THEIR ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION.
BY W. H. THOMAS, COLLEGE STATION, TEXAS.
Mr. President, Members of the Folk-Lore Society, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I should first like to say a word as to why I have been given the honor ofaddressing this meeting. Mr. Lomax is solely to blame for that. A shortwhile after this society was organized, Mr. Lomax approached me one daywhile I was holding an examination and asked me to join the society and tomake a study of the negro songs. He did so, no doubt, out of a knowledgeof the fact that as I had lived all by life in a part of the State wherethe negroes are thick, and as I was then devoting