take to imagine that the language adopted by negro minstrels is that of the negro; the Englishman might as fairly be judged by the "Mylord Goddam" of the French stage; and the use of hab for have, lub for love, massa for master, is by no means universal, nor has it ever been common to all slaves. Of genuine African words which have become sufficiently wellknown to be considered Americanisms, there are probably but three in our speech. One is the term Buckra, which, on the African coast, is universally applied to white men, meaning originally "a spirit, a powerful being," and is used in that application throughout the Southern States. Hence, Mr. Bartlett quotes the negro song: "Great way off at sea, When at home I binny, Buckra man take me From de coast ob Guinea." Its meaning is occasionally transferred to white objects, and negroes thus speak of buckra yam, with the understanding, however, that it is not only white, but peculiarly good also. The word is occasionally enforced by the addition of swanga, an African term, meaning elegant or bright-colored, so as to strike and please the eye. A Swanga Buckra serves, therefore, among negroes, to designate a specially well-dressed white man. From this African term is, curiously enough, a word derived which has made its way to New England, and is now quite at home on the banks of Newfoundland. This is Swankey, the name given-probably as something very elegant in taste and effect-to a beverage consisting of molasses, vinegar, and water, the favorite drink of fishermen. "Roll along here, shouted the cook. Tumble up an' git your swankey, boys. It's as good as ever you cocked a lip at. And at the word each man, his face glowing with excitement and exercise, took his turn at the swankey pail." (Newfoundland Fisheries, p. 110.) It is presumed, though not proven, that the Moonack, a mythical animal known to negroes only, is also of African origin. The beast lives, according to their belief, in caves or hollow trees, and the poor negro who meets it in his solitary rambles is doomed. His reason is impaired, till he becomes a madman, or is carried off by some lingering malady. He dare not speak of it, but old, experienced negroes say when they look at him: "He gwine to die; he seed the moonack.” Cuffy, which is often claimed as a negro term, is in all probability nothing more than a corruption of the English slang term, a cove, and quite as frequently heard abroad as in the United States. "The fine dash of Virginia upper cuffyism, it is gone, gone forever. Sambo has settled down into a simple bourgeois. (Putnam's Magazine, December, 1854.) Nor is the number of words large which express the relations of master and slave, and to which ignorant negroes, dull of hearing, have given a new meaning. Even the familiar appellations of Uncle and Aunt, by which for many generations every colored man and woman was called, were not peculiar to America, as Pegge's Supplement to Grose distinctly states that the two words are "in Cornwall applied to all elderly persons." The house and stable servant, in like manner, went by the generic term of boy, irrespective of age. A word as hideous in sound as of import, connected with the negro, is the famous Black Code, a collection of laws first made by Bienville in Louisiana, which was ever after the model for all legislation on the relations of master and slave. When the colony was taken possession of by the Crown of Spain in the year 1769, the provisions of the Black Code were retained with such modifications as the "Siete Partidas" made on the subject of slavery. This system of laws has ever since been the Blackstone of Spain and her colonies, and is still the authority in the parts of America settled by Spaniards. Its power continued long in. Louisiana, and controlled largely the rights of negroes, even after the colony became a State of the Union. It is comforting to turn from such a subject to the term of tenderness, by which the black nurse was, for so many generations, known to the children of the South. This used to be Mammy, the same name formerly given in England to grandmothers, and by some derived from the Gypsy word Mami, which means grandmother. Even now many a Mammy is spending her declining years in the family of those whom she has nursed and reared, and thus the name still lingers on in the Southern States. In South Carolina and some of the Gulf States, the word is sounded and written Maumer, and thus it is quoted by a recent writer: “An old Maumer (the general term of Southern children for their nurses), whose gray hairs are still covered by the bright turban, which always gave such dignity to the appearance of the nursery ruler. Where are those maumers, whom the children loved only less than those who bore them, and with whom the friendship only ceased with life? They, too, belong now to the past." Indirectly, at least, the negro has given us the verb, to maroon, from maroon, the name applied in the West Indies to runaway negroes, who lived as outlaws in remote and inaccessible parts of the country. The term is used in the Southern States, though now less frequently than formerly, to designate, a pic-nic or excursion party extending over several days. A few families agree thus to go marooning; they take tents and cooking utensils, and spend their time away from the haunts of men, and more or less in Robinson Crusoe style. America owes the negro no small gratitude for the only national poetry which it possesses, as distinct from all imitation of old English verses, and all competition with English writers of our day. We have no ballad and no song that can be called American. The nearest approach ever made to the creation of a new type was the dramatic song Jim Crow, brought out about the year 1835 by an enthusiastic Yankee on the boards of a theatre in New York; it created a sensation, for it was new in form and conception, and no doubt rendered still more attractive by the strange guise in which it was presented. It was quickly followed by several other songs of the same kind, such as Zip Coon, Longtailed Blue, Ole Virginny nebber tire, Settin' on a Rail, etc. Then came, in 1841, a variation in the form of a descriptive ballad, famous Ole Dan Tucker, and after that the vein was exhausted. For a time this African inroad drove nearly every other song from the publisher's. store and the drawing-room. It is strange that they are almost all sad, touching, and resigned. Philanthropists have, of course, ascribed this to the sad fate of the race. This is a mistake, for the negro is by nature, and was even in the days of slavery, emphatically a merry creature, full of fun and endowed with an almost superhuman power of laughing. He has become sad only since the responsibilities of earning his livelihood and exercising the duties of a citizen have been so suddenly imposed upon him. It may be, that in another generation he will recover the happy cheerfulness of his race, and with it the love of song and laughter, but at present he feels instinctively that his race is passing through a great and perilous crisis. He is passionately fond, also, of religious music, and the good ear for music, with a fair endowment of voice, which have been vouchsafed to his race, enable him to perform creditably and to enjoy heartily all manner of hymn and psalmody. But he must be allowed to translate the words into his own familiar terms and to alter them at will, utterly regardless of their meaning, so they suit the metre and chime in with the cadence. The following hymn, a genuine native production, and sung in the churches of Baltimore, which appeared not long ago in that excellent paper, Appleton's Journal, will give an idea of their manner of treating religious subjects: PHARAO. Didn't ole Phay get loss? In de Red Sea? Phayo say, I gwine across In de Red Sea, So whip up horses an' gallop across, Didn't ole Phay get loss, Get loss, get loss? Didn't ole Phay get loss In de Red Sea? Hebrews say, we get across now In de Red Sea, At thy feet we humblie bow, Didn't ole Phay get loss? Get loss, get loss? Didn't ole Phay get loss In de Red Sea ? Phayo say, I gwine along home, Oh, how I wish I hadn't come In de Red Sea ! JOHN CHINAMAN. "The heathen Chinee is peculiar."--F. B. Harte. THE Heathen Chinee, as he will, no doubt, be called for many a year to come, bearing the baptismal name bestowed upon him in F. B. Harte's characteristic poem of Truthful James (a character invented by John Phoenix), has only so lately appeared on our shores, that Chinese terms can hardly be said to have found their way yet into our speech. Johnny, or John Chinaman, for under both names is he known in California, has for years given rise to angry debates in legislative halls, and to vehement discussions in public journals; he has been victimized unmercifully in the mines and gulches in the up-country, and brutally ill-treated in trade and in courts in the cities. He has recently even found his way to Southern plantations and to Northern factories, everywhere proving useful, faithful, and intelligent. The announcement of large arrivals of Chinese laborers and servants threatened at a time to become a question of national policy, and Labor-Leagues as well as Congress became deeply agitated on the subject. So far, however, their number has been too small, and their mode of life, their manners, and their faith, are too far apart from those of the United States to admit of their exercising any influence. The few Chinese terms used in conversation and by good authors, have all come to us through the English, and it is only due to our more frequent and more direct intercourse with China, if these words are in more general use here than abroad. Thus we say perhaps more frequently than our English cousins that a thing is first-chop, using the Canton-jargon of the Anglo-Chinese, which employs first-chop instead of our American first-rate. Joss-houses with ample supplies of joss-sticks are now quite common in San Francisco and other parts of California, where Buddhism and |