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Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

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Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

American literature

In 1843, during Mr. Bryant’s visit to the South, he had
  the pleasure of witnessing one of those antebellum southern
  institutions known as a Corn-Shucking――one of the ideal
  occasions of the colored man’s life, to which both men and
  women were invited. They were free to tell all the jokes, sing
  all the songs and have all the fun they desired as they rapidly
  shucked the corn. Two leaders were usually chosen and the
  company divided into two parties which competed for a prize
  awarded to the first party which finished shucking the allotted
  pile of corn. Mr. Bryant thus graphically describes one of
  these novel occasions:

                          BARNWELL DISTRICT,
                   South Carolina, March 29, 1843.

BUT you must hear of the corn-shucking. The one at which I was present
was given on purpose that I might witness the humors of the Carolina
negroes. A huge fire of _light-wood_ was made near the corn-house.
Light-wood is the wood of the long-leaved pine, and is so called, not
because it is light, for it is almost the heaviest wood in the world,
but because it gives more light than any other fuel.

The light-wood-fire was made, and the negroes dropped in from the
neighboring plantations, singing as they came. The driver of the
plantation, a colored man, brought out baskets of corn in the husk,
and piled it in a heap; and the negroes began to strip the husks from
the ears, singing with great glee as they worked, keeping time to the
music, and now and then throwing in a joke and an extravagant burst
of laughter. The songs were generally of a comic character; but one of
them was set to a singularly wild and plaintive air, which some of our
musicians would do well to reduce to notation. These are the words:

    Johnny come down de hollow.
                  Oh hollow!
    Johnny come down de hollow.
                  Oh hollow!
    De nigger-trader got me.
                  Oh hollow!
    De speculator bought me.
                  Oh hollow!
    I’m sold for silver dollars.
                  Oh hollow!
    Boys, go catch the pony.
                  Oh hollow!
    Bring him round the corner.
                  Oh hollow!
    I’m goin’ away to Georgia.
                  Oh hollow!
    Boys, good-by forever!
                  Oh hollow!

The song of “Jenny gone away,” was also given, and another, called the
monkey-song, probably of African origin, in which the principal singer
personated a monkey, with all sorts of odd gesticulations, and the
other negroes bore part in the chorus, “Dan, dan, who’s the dandy?”
One of the songs commonly sung on these occasions, represents the
various animals of the woods as belonging to some profession or trade.
For example――

    De cooter is de boatman――

The cooter is the terrapin, and a very expert boatman he is.

    De cooter is de boatman.
          John John Crow.

    De red-bird de soger.
          John John Crow.

    De mocking-bird de lawyer.
          John John Crow.

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