Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings

Joel Chandler Harris

VII

Transcriptions

1. A Plantation Chant

HIT’S eighteen hunder’d forty-en-fo’,
Christ done open dat He’v’mly do’—
An’ I don’t wanter stay yer no longer;
Hit’s eighteen hunder’d forty-en-five,
Christ done made dat dead man alive—
An’ I don’t wanter stay yer no longer.
You ax me ter run home,
Little childun—
Run home, dat sun done roll—
An’ I don’t wanter stay yer no longer.

Hit’s eighteen hunder’d forty-en-six,
Christ is got us a place done fix—
An’ I don’t wanter stay yer no longer;
Hit’s eighteen hunder’d forty-en-sev’m
Christ done sot a table in Hev’m
An’ I don’t wanter stay yer no longer.
You ax me ter run home,
Little childun
Run home, dat sun done roll—
An’ I don’t wanter stay yer no longer.

Hit’s eighteen hunder’d foiiy-en-eight,
Christ done make dat crooked way straight—
An’ I don’t wanter stay yer no longer;
Hit’s eighteen hunder’d forty-en-nine,
Christ done tu’n dat water inter wine—
An’ I don’t wanter stay yer no longer.
You ax me ter run home,
Little childun—
Run home, dat sun done roll—
An’ I don’t wanter stay yer no longer.

Hit’s eighteen hunder’d forty-en-ten,
Christ is do mo’ner’s onliest fr’en’—
An’ I don’t wanter stay yer no longer;
Hit’s eighteen hunder’d forty-en-lev’m,
Christ’ll be at do do’ w’en we all git ter Hev’m—
An’ I don’t wanter stay yer no longer.
You ax me ter run home,
Little childun—
Run home, dat sun done roll—
An’ I don’t wanter stay yer no longer.

If these are adaptations from songs the negroes have caught from the whites, their origin is very remote. I have transcrihed them literally, and I regard them as in the highest degree characteristic. [back]

Uncle Remus    |    A Plantion Serenade

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