Edited by Azizi Powell
Latest revision: April 1, 2020
This pancocojams post provides general information about the book Negro Folk Singing Games And Folk Games of the Habitants by Grace Cleveland Porter.
This post also includes my editorial comments about that book.
Other pancocojams post that showcases one or more specific examples of African American ring games (singing games) from Grace Cleveland Porter's book Negro Folk Singing Games And Folk Games of the Habitants will be added to this series periodically. Those posts will be identified by using the tag "1914 book of Black singing games pancocojams" in Google search or in pancocojams' internal search engine.
The content of this post is presented for historical, folkloric, and cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks all those who shared examples of singing games and stories that are found in this book. Thanks to Grace Cleveland Porter for collecting these singing games and editing them in this book and thanks to Harvey Worthington Loomis for his musical notations. Thanks, also, to all those who are responsible for copies of this book being available online and offline.
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GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE 1914 BOOK "NEGRO FOLK SINGING GAMES AND FOLK GAMES OF THE HABITANTS
The book Negro Folk Singing Games And Folk Games Of The Habitants was written by (White American) Grace Cleveland Porter with musical notations by Harvey Worthington Loomis. This book was published in London, England around 1914. Most of these singing games (as well as the folk stories) in this book were shared with Porter by an "old coloured woman" from Georgia who is only identified by the referent "Mammy". After the end of slavery, that woman "made her way to the North" and later worked as a servant for Grace Cleveland Porter. The examples that "Mammy" shared with Porter are labeled as "Southern folk tunes" in their musical notations.
In the Acknowledgement section of that book, Grace Cleveland Porter thanks Mr. Henry E. Krehbiel and W.W. Newell for four examples of singing games that she included in her book. Those examples had been collected by Mrs. Louise Clarke-Prynelle in Florida and given to Krehbiel who shared them in newspaper articles and then subsequently shared them with W. W. Newell for Newell's for his book, “Games and Songs of American Children” [which was published in 1883]. The titles for those examples are "I’m walkin’ on the Levee”, "King and Queen”, "I’ve lost a Partner", and “Turn, Cinnamon, turn". In the musical notations in Porter's book, these examples are labeled "Florida Singing Games". Porter writes that "These games [were] played by the 'Crackers,' a term playfully applied to the country folk of Florida." [end of quote] I'm not sure whether that referent (which is now derogatory) applied then only to White people as it does now. If so, the title of Porter's book and those rhymes dialectic English seem to imply that the above mentioned singing games which were played by White children had their source in "Negro" singing games. Note that the referent "Negro" became outdated, if not considered derogatory, since the late 1960s.
A "Brer Rabbit” traditional game and dance is also given in the second section of that book. That “Negro” game is identified as being from Mississippi and was given to Porter by her friend, Jean Cathcart of Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.A. Jean Cathcart was undoubtedly also a White American. The “Folk Games Of The Inhabitants” section of that book is a page of commentary about and three singing games from (White) French Canadians.
In the "Mammy's Stories" portion of the book, Porter wrote that she transcribed the singing games Mammy told her "not many years ago". In her commentary, Mammy mentions that she lived in the state of Georgia and that she knew these "ring games" (which Porter calls "singing games") for as long as she can remember. Given those comments, it's safe to say that these ring games are from 19th century Georgia, and may be even older than that.
Complete online copies of this book are available in several formats. I prefer the digital copy that begins at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.l0070051420&view=1up&seq=9. (scanned by the University of California.)
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MY COMMENTS ABOUT THIS BOOK
As an African American living in the twenty-first century, I found Negro Folk Singing Games And Folk Games Of The Habitants to be a difficult read because of “Mammy’s “Negro” dialect, because of her laudatory comments about her life as a nurse to “quality children” during slavery, because of the Grace Cleveland Porter's nostalgic references to the “Old South” and that author's benign stereotypes of mammies during slavery and afterwards. Furthermore, I disliked reading Porter's elitist comments about Florida "Crackers". Also, the French-Canadian section (the Habitants) didn't appear to me to fit in well with the e rest of the book.
Nevertheless, I recognize Negro Folk Singing Games And Folk Games of the Habitants as one of the earliest books on African American children's singing games and folk tales, and I welcome the opportunity to learn these examples and share them with other via these my Google blogs pancocojams and cocojams2 (where one example to date - Bounce Around (also known as Going 'Round The Assembly) has been included in this post since 2015: https://cocojams2.blogspot.com/2014/11/african-american-singing-games-movement.html African American Singing Games & Movement Rhymes (A-L).
Apart from its examples of African American singing games and folk stories, I believe that reading, studying, and writing about Grace Cleveland Porter's 1914 book Negro Folk Singing Games And Folk Games of the Habitants should be of interest to folklorist interested in 19th century/early 20th century French Canadian culture. And that book should be of interests to historians and sociologists interested in how enslaved Black people and freed Black people considered themselves and other Black people during slavery, with particular attention to the dynamics of field slaves and house slaves, and the real and perceived status that house slaves had based on the families who owned them. Portions of Negro Folk Singing Games And Folk Games of the Habitants that refer to all of these topics except the one about French Canadians will be quoted in upcoming pancocojams posts. The "1914 book on Negro singing games pancocojams" tag will also be used for that post or posts.
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INFORMATION ABOUT GRACE CLEVELAND PORTER
There's no Wikipedia page for Grace Cleveland Porter. However she is briefly mentioned in the Wikipedia page for her husband, Riccardo Nobili, who was "an Italian painter, writer, and antiquarian, who she married in 1933: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riccardo_Nobili. Among that information about Porter is the fact that she was the great niece of United States President Grover Cleveland. Nobili's Wikipedia page also indicates that Grace Cleveland Porter ..."volunteered in Italy during World War I as a nurse with the Red Cross in an Italian hospital, and as Director of Recreation Services in Italian War Hospitals in Rome under the auspices of the YMCA. She wrote Negro Folk Singing Games and Folk Games of the Habitants and Mammina Graziosa (1916). Nobili received awards and decorations from the Italian government for her war service. Owing to her extraordinary service to Italy, despite being a Protestant, she was granted special permission to be buried next to her husband in the family chapel near Florence. Her papers were left to Smith College."
https://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Porter,_Grace_Cleveland/Collections provides this information about Grace Cleveland Porter:
Furthermore, that website includes a photograph of Porter and her birth/death dates: "(1880 — 1953)". That website also indicates that "Works by this person are most likely not public domain within the EU and in those countries where the copyright term is life+70 years. They may also be protected by copyright in the USA, unless published before 1925, in which case they are PD there as well. However, this person's works are public domain in Canada (where IMSLP is hosted), and in other countries where the copyright term is life+50 years."...
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TABLE OF CONTENT FOR [from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.l0070051420&view=1up&seq=20
"FOREWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PREFACE
MAMMY.S STORY
BRER’ RABBIT. Game and Dance \without music)
GLIMPSES ALONG THE ROADSIDE IN A HABITANT
VILLAGE PHOTOGRAPHS
Singing-Games.
MARCHIN’ ON DIS CAMP GROUN’
YOUR DARLIN’, MY DARLIN’
DE QUEEN OB ENGLAN’
I’M WALKIN’ ON THE LEVEE* .
I LOS’ MAH MISTIS’ DAIRY KEY...
BOUNCE AROUN’ .
COME, MAH LITTLE DARLIN’
FLY ROUN’ . .
THE NEEDLE‘S EYE . ..
MAH HEART’S GONE AWAY TO LOOSIANA
TURN, CINNAMON, TURN
KING AND QUEEN
I’VE LOST A PARTNER
LA BASTRINGUE ..
L’HIRONDELLE (THE SwALLow)
IL N’Y A QU’UN SEUL DIEU (THERE IS BUT 0x1; GOD)"
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