Banjo

“ And there’s Little Babe of Lonesome Creek who delights in a gourd banjo. His grandsir, finding a straight, long-necked gourd among those clustered on the vine over kitchen-house door, fashioned it into a banjo for the least one. Cut it flat on one side, did the old man, scooped out the seed, then covered the opening with a bit of brown paper made fast with flour paste, strung it with cat gut. And there, bless you, as fine a banjo as ever a body would want to pick.
They are neighborly in the Blue Ridge Country. They ask no favor of any man. ”

“ Then someone twanged a banjo and burst into drunken song. “White wings they neveeer grow wearrrry,” was gurgled out. “Tink-er-ty-pomp—tum-tum-tiddle-te-tum! rrrrrrrrrrrh! ter-ra-te-rrip!” went the banjo strings, till silence came over the slopes, for it was very late. Even the stars were off indoors as the moon rose on the seaward horizon. One by one the beachcombers stole back to the shore, back to the promontory where lay the derelict hulk. ”

“ When everybody was tired out the banjo player, a young fellow with deep-set black eyes and the unmistakable look of an artist in embryo, swung into a 48 monologue accompanied by the banjo, part talk, part song, describing a fox hunt which was most fascinating and altogether remarkable. ”

“ Heart's Ease—in which she is now playing at NIBLO'S Garden, is plainly born of the banjo, and lives for that melodious instrument alone. The author said to himself, "A California mining-camp would be a nice place for a banjo solo." Wherefore he conceived the camp, with a chorus of red-shirted miners. Wherefore too, he created a comic Yankee who should be eccentric enough to bring a banjo to the camp, and a lover who should be charmed by its touching strains. ”

“ The little romance describes how the lover and Sally will be married and settle themselves down, and live happily all on the banks of the old Pee Dee. A heart-felt, charming Southern idyll.
The banjo is an African instrument, made from the half of a fruit called the calabash, or gourd, which has a very hard rind. A thin skin or piece of bladder is stretched over the opening, and over this one or two strings are stretched, which are raised on a bridge. The banjo is the negroes' guitar, and certainly it is the first born among stringed instruments. ”

“ But no one would have thanked me for spoiling so well-managed an entertainment as this picnic—and a dust-storm, more or less, does no great harm.
We gathered by the tank. Some one had brought out a banjo—which is a most sentimental instrument—and three or four of us sang. You must not laugh at this. Our amusements in out-of-the-way Stations are very few indeed. ”

“ After supper was over and the toasts had been drunk, the boy Pablo was called in to play for the company while the gentlemen smoked. The banjo always remained a foreign instrument to Father Latour; he found it more than a little savage. When this strange yellow boy played it, there was softness and languor in the wire strings—but there was also a kind of madness; the recklessness, the call of wild countries which all these men had felt and followed in one way or another. ”

“ Yes, there are girls down by the landing with a banjo, and young men singing the songs of love, the modern songs of love dashed with college slang. The banjo suggests a little fastness; and this new generation carries off its sentiment with some bravado and a mocking tone. ”

“ Gipsy thought for a moment before she replied:
"I wonder if it would be possible to borrow a banjo? I used to play one out in America, and I know some very pretty Creole songs, and one or two Spanish ones."
"My brother has a banjo that he'd lend, I'm sure," said Lena Morris.
"Good! We'll rig you out as a Spanish gipsy," agreed Helen. "There are lots of things in our [156] dramatic property box that would come in. You'd look the part no end!"
"I'll send the banjo this evening, so that you can practise it," volunteered Lena.
Naturally the afternoon of the bazaar was a great event at Briarcroft. ”

“ Both the guide and the waiter brought off their baggage in the boat. Among the effects of Griffin Leeds I noticed a violin-case. Tom Sands, the cabin-waiter, whom I had obtained at Jacksonville, played the banjo in the most artistic manner. Neither of the waiters were any common sort of colored men; and I soon found that race distinctions were vastly more insisted on by these men than by any white man on board, unless it was the Floridian. ”

“ His features—refined by the mental anxiety, and the almost monastic seclusion to which he has been lately subjected—are extremely pleasing, and even handsome, set-off as they are by the clean collar which he has put on in anticipation of his approaching doom. Before sinking into childlike slumber, he listened with evident pleasure to a banjo which was being played outside a public-house in the vicinity of the gaol. ”

“ Most of the ancient pastimes have been lost in this neighborhood, and religion, mock or real, has succeeded them. The banjo, their national instrument, is known but in name, or in a few of the tunes which have survived. Some of the younger negroes sing and dance, but the evenings and holidays are usually occupied in working, in visiting, and in praying and singing hymns. The primitive customs and sports are, I believe, better preserved further south, where slaves were brought from Africa long after they ceased to come here. ”

“ On rivers boatmen safely moor'd at nightfall in their boats under shelter of high banks,
Some of the younger men dance to the sound of the banjo or fiddle, others sit on the gunwale smoking and talking ”

“ To that end he has become a prime mover in a folksong and folklore conservation movement called American Folkways Association. “There are a lot of McCoys,” he says, “who can pick a banjo and sing as fine a ditty as you ever heard. There’s Bud McCoy over on Levisa Fork. Never saw his betters when it comes to picking the banjo. We’ve played together a whole day at a stretch and never played the same tune twice. We just stop long enough to eat dinner and then we go at it again. ”

“ “I never knew you played the banjo!” cried Harris and I, in one breath.
“Not exactly,” replied George: “but it’s very easy, they tell me; and I’ve got the instruction book!” ”

“ The only other method is to jump up and down outside the window. After this latter proceeding, however, if you do not bring out a banjo and commence to sing, the youthful inhabitants of the neighborhood, who have gathered round in expectation, become disappointed. ”

“ Our mornings on board are generally very social, the ladies sitting with the gentlemen of their party upon the guards, or gath{210}ering in groups with their work, while the male passengers are smoking, talking politics, or gambling. The negro banjo, and merry laugh, or joke, of some son of Erin, echoes up from the lower deck; but in the afternoon the siesta is the fashion, and every one turns in his berth to take a nap. ”

“ The moon had risen higher, and floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes on the lawn. ”

“ We drove the cattle through the hills, along the new-found way,
And this was our first camping-ground -- just where I live today.
"Then others came across the range and built the township here,
And then there came the railway line and this young engineer;
He drove about with tents and traps, a cook to cook his meals,
A bath to wash himself at night, a chain-man at his heels. ”

“ Where the league-long rollers pour
All the wash of the Pacific on the coral-guarded bay,
Riding lightly at their ease,
In the calm of tropic seas,
The three great nations' warships at their anchors proudly lay. ”

“ But the mother pined and faded, and cried, and took no rest,
And rode each day to the ranges on her hopeless, weary quest.
Seeking her loved one ever, she faded and pined away,
But with strength of her great affection she still sought every day. ”

“ Was away like fire through the ranges to join the wild mob's ranks;
And a broken-hearted woman and an old man worn and grey
Were searching all night in the ranges till the sunrise brought the day.
And the mother kept feebly calling, with a hope that would not die,
"Willie! where are you, Willie?" But how can the dead reply;
And hope died out with the daylight, and the darkness brought despair,
God pity the stricken mother, and answer the widow's prayer! ”

“ The charm it holds for the restless rover;
A great grey chaos -- a land half made,
Where endless space is and no life stirreth;
There the soul of a man will recoil afraid
From the sphinx-like visage that Nature weareth. ”

“ As the wind swept down and the driving rain;
And the water rose till it reached the floor
Of our highest room; and 'twas very plain --
The way the torrent was sweeping down --
We must make for the highlands at once, or drown. ”

“ Like sands on the white Pacific shore,
The crowding people cluster;
For evermore it's the story old,
While races are bought and backers are sold
Drawn by the greed of the gain of gold,
In their thousands still they muster. ”

“ There's never a sight can beat --
Away to the sky-line stretching far --
A sea of the ripening Wheat.
When the burning harvest sun sinks low,
And shadows stretch on the plain,
The roaring strippers come and go
Like ships on a sea of grain. ”

“ Marching to their last great fight;
Young and old, obscure and famous,
Hand to hand and knee to knee --
Hear the war-cry, "Salutamus
morituri te!"
Fight! Nor be the fight suspended
Till the corpses strew the plain. ”

“ And bade his Socialists ride forth,
East and west and south and north,
To summon his array.
East and west and south and north
The Socialists ride fast,
And every town in New South Wales
Has heard their trumpet's blast. ”

“ And, waiting at the crossing place,
I saw a maiden fair of face,
With eyes of deepest violet blue,
And cheeks to match the rose in hue --
The fairest maids Australia knows
Are bred among the mountain snows. ”

“ The daylight is dying
Away in the west,
The wild birds are flying
In silence to rest;
In leafage and frondage
Where shadows are deep,
They pass to its bondage --
The kingdom of sleep.
And watched in their sleeping
By stars in the height,
They rest in your keeping,
O wonderful night. ”

“ Oh, we're going deeper down:
If we fail to get the water, then it's ruin to the squatter,
For the drought is on the station and the weather's growing hotter,
But we're bound to get the water deeper down. ”

“ And the old man muttered fiercely, 'We may bid the mob good day,
No man can hold them down the other side.'
When they reached the mountain's summit, even Clancy took a pull,
It well might make the boldest hold their breath,
The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full
Of wombat holes, and any slip was death.
But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head,
And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer,
And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed,
While the others stood and watched in very fear. ”

“ All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush horses are,
And the stock-horse snuffs the battle with delight. ”

“ Shall the blind lead the blind -- shall the sower
Of wind read the storm as of yore?
Though they get to their goal somewhat slower,
They march where we hurried before.
For the world never learns -- just as we did
They gallantly go to their fate,
Unheeded all warnings, unheeded
The maxims of elders sedate.
As the husbandman, patiently toiling,
Draws a harvest each year from the soil,
So the fools grow afresh for the spoiling,
And a new crop of thieves for the spoil. ”

“ On rugged hills and steep,
I sit and watch you come,
O Riverinia Sheep!
You come from the fertile plains
Where saltbush (sometimes) grows,
And flats that (when it rains)
Will blossom like the rose. ”

“ It lies the hall doorway adorning,
A very good style of a mat.
Prison-made! how the spirit is moven
As we think of its story of dread --
What wiles of the wicked are woven
And spun in its intricate thread! ”

“ The vagabonding love of change
That drove us westward of the range
And westward of the suns.
The city folk go to and fro
Behind a prison's bars,
They never feel the breezes blow
And never see the stars ”

“ Back to the shadow of Kiley's Hill.
One is away on the roving quest,
Seeking his share of the golden spoil;
Out in the wastes of the trackless west,
Wandering ever he gives the best
Of his years and strength to the hopeless toil. ”

“ A man must cover with travelling sheep a six-mile stage a day;
But this is the law which the drovers make, right easily understood,
They travel their stage where the grass is bad, but they camp where the grass is good;
They camp, and they ravage the squatter's grass till never a blade remains. ”

“ We pass groups of banyans; and, in the pond that they shade, a great buffalo, of which we can only see the back and the moon-curved horns, stares at us with eyes of heavy stupor. We pass lines of women going to the fields. When one laughs her mirth spreads and grows feebler on the four faces that follow, and is effaced on the fifth. At the hour when the first ray of the sun traverses the virginal air, we gain the vast and empty plain; and, leaving behind us the tortuous road, we take our way toward the mountain across the fields of rice, tobacco, beans, pumpkins, cucumbers, and sugar-cane. ”

“ The man that goes with a travelling mob must keep to a half-mile track;
And the drovers keep to a half-mile track on the runs where the grass is dead,
But they spread their sheep on a well-grassed run till they go with a two-mile spread. ”