Guinea Negro Song

DESCRIPTION: A slave's complaint of his capture: (lines from various versions): "The Englie man he [s]teal me, And carry me to Birgimy [Virginee]. The American man he [s]teal me, And give me pretty red coatee, And make me fence rail toatee."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1922 (Brown)
KEYWORDS: slave work commerce theft clothes
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 472, "Guinea Negro Song" (2 short texts, probably from the same informant)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore5 472, "Guinea Negro Song" (2 tunes plus text excerpts)
Roud #11800
NOTES [82 words]: Brown's notes indicate that this came from an ex-slave to whom this originally happened. White objected that this was chronologically impossible. It isn't, quite -- while the English banned the slave trade in the early nineteenth century, and even the Americans eventually stopped it, an Englishman with no morals might have taken a slave and slipped him through American customs.
But I think White is right and the informant didn't suffer this fate. The dialect is just a little too cutesy. - RBW
Last updated in version 4.1
File: Br3472

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