United States or Montserrat ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
James stood and looked in at the window, and saw her sorting and arranging the family mending, busy over piles of stockings and shirts, while on the table beside her lay her open Bible, and she was singing to herself, in a low, sweet undertone, one of the favorite minor-keyed melodies of those days: "O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast And our eternal home!"
The melancholy pulse of the drums and the minor-keyed chant which issued out of the night sounded like a dirge sung by a dying people. "What became of Running Elk?" I inquired. The old man answered from within. "That was he I asked about the horse-races. He's the man you couldn't understand, who wouldn't talk to you. He's nearly an Indian again. Alicia Harman married a duke."
I remember that this minor-keyed pathos used to seem to me almost too sad to dwell upon, while slavery seemed destined to last for generations; but now that their patience has had its perfect work, history cannot afford to lose this portion of its record. There is no parallel instance of an oppressed race thus sustained by the religious sentiment alone.
Five nights had I strayed, like a lost soul, through an unreal wilderness, harkening to the drone of stories told in an unfamiliar tongue, to the minor-keyed dirges of an unknown race, to the thumping of countless moccasined feet in the measures of queer dances.
Captain McLean was a mournful, lengthy, considerate-looking old gentleman, with a long face, digressing into a long, thin, horny nose, which, when he applied his pocket handkerchief, gave forth a melancholy, minor-keyed sound, such as a ghost might make, using a pocket handkerchief in the long gallery of some old castle.
A most wailing minor-keyed tune was doled forth, which seemed quite refreshing to Sam's pathetic vein, as he sang in his most lugubrious tones, "'My name was Robert Kidd As I sailed, as I sailed, My name was Robert Kidd; God's laws I did forbid, And so wickedly I did, As I sailed, as I sailed. "Now ye see, boys, he's a goin' to tell how he abused his religious privileges; just hear now:
Many of the songs he sang were the weird, melancholy, minor-keyed canciones that he had learned from the Mexican sheep herders and vaqueros. One, in particular, charmed and soothed the soul of the lonely baron. It was a favourite song of the sheep herders, beginning: "Huile, huile, palomita," which being translated means, "Fly, fly, little dove."
There, a couple of hundred yards away, was the canoe they had followed, while at various distances farther on no less than six more small canoes were dotted about, their feather-crowned crews all busily employed fishing, while as the boats glided round the tree-covered rocks the nearest Indians struck up a soft minor-keyed chant which was taken up by the crews of the other canoes, the whole combining in a sweet low melody which floated over the smoothly-flowing river, fully explaining the sounds heard from the cavern-mouth overnight.
Word Of The Day