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Jamaica Jim's Silly Insanity!
The Sermon of the Psaltree
Original
Psaltre Brochure
(Both outside and inside pages shown below)
Mr. Willis has
made some adaptions of Uncle Remus, which were made into radio programs.
It is probable that in the near future we may put out an album of records,
from which children may hear the stories of Bre'r Rabbit and Bre'r Fox pronounced
just as the old man told the stories to the little white boy from the "Big
House," while sitting beside his cabin fireplace so many years ago.
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AS PRESENTS
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Have you ever been puzzled
as to what present to give a friend? Practically all the few records
of the first issue that went to the public were taken by persons, who,
after hearing one, would send in a list of friends to whom they wanted
it sent. It will be highly valued by any educated person who knows
anything of the Bible; it is entirely unique; it will not be dumped in the
cellar to collect dust.
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If you send us your order
with your card and the date on which you want it shipped to your friends,
it will be sent at that time. These records are twelve inches double-faced,
playing time eight minutes, made of plastic and should last indefinitely.
The permanent plastic records will be mailed C. O. D. by Dialect
Records Co. for $2.20 each, plus postage and tax or your check for $2.50.
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DIALECT RECORDS COMPANY
P. O. Box 734
ROANOKE, VIRGINIA
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The
Psaltre
A PRICELESS BIT
OF AMERICANA
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The true Negro dialect of the time of Uncle Remus preserved on a permanent
plastic record.
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It is one you will want to give to your best friend and keep for your children.
If you wane to make a friend, give him one.
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No owner of a Psaltree record has ever failed to put it on for any group.
that came near his player. It is full of laughs.
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It, is a classic and belongs with your classics. No record library
can be coinplete without it.
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Probably nothing even similar has ever before been recorded.
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DIALECT RECORDS COMPANY
P. O. Box 734
ROANOKE, VIRGINIA
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The Psaltree
Entirely different
from any record you
have ever heard
Collectors have literally
clamored for this record for years. The author made it originally
for distribution to his family and friends in order that they might have
a better understanding of the Negro of the old South and has only decided
to let us put an edition out for the public, after receiving urgent
and insistent requests from all over the United States. While this
record is full of laughs, its chief interest lies in the fact that it is
an authentic record of the dialect and some of the quaint expressions of
the Southern Negro, who is now gone. It illustrates a sermon by a Negro
preacher of fifty years or more ago, as well as the belief of many of them
that, if they would let the Bible fall open at random, the first verse on
which their eyes rested would be the text to which the Lord had guided them
as appropriate for the day's sermon. Only a master of extemporaneous
speaking would have dared to follow this practice.
Historical Interest
Though much of it seems droll
now, many of those men were orators of high order and exerted a vast power
for good among their people. But they loved the flesh
pots and spent much time "gleaning in the Vinyard of the Lord," which was
most frequently some good sister's kitchen. This is not the dialect
of the Negro field hand or levee worker, but of the ministry,
who could frequently read print, called "readin'," as,, distinguished
from "writin'," or longhand, and had read largely from the Bible, but
were short on history. Naturally all they read was interpreted in
terms of the period in which they lived.
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A widely known writer once
asked, "What would you give for a transcription of a conversation with
Captain John Smith or Miles Standish?" The true negro dialect is largely
that of the early settlers, from whom he learned English.
It seems that much of that English
was not spoken as written.
While his white neighbors modernized their speech, the Negro
spoken as written. While his white
neighbors modernized their speech, the Negro
continued for nearly two centuries to speak English as he first learned
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For instance "ask" was always "axe," "going" was "gwine," "it" was
"hit" and "help" was "hope." Shakespeare, Milton and Alexander Pope use
these spellings at times, as do the white mountain people who have had little
contact with the outside world.
The author admits one lack of fidelity to the original, in that the
sermon is not intoned or chanted as the typical Negro sermon of that time
was. Nor, except at one point, does it carry the irrelevant
high-sounding phrases and Biblical quotations liberally sprinkled through
the originals, which, for some reason, seemed entirely correct and most
effective when used by those masters of their craft. One of their
favorites, when describing any pious Biblical character was "and he played
on the harp with a thousand strings — spirits of righteous men to make perfect,"
but note from the record how this sentence is pronounced. This method
of intoning would probably have rendered it unintelligible to most people
and record space did not permit the frequent interpolations.
This record was made by Mr. Holman Willis, who spent his early life
in Piedmont Virginia, and in a country community of the deep south where
the population consisted largely of Negroes, many of whom were grown
men and women when freed from slavery. The dialect of these people,
constituting about ten per cent of our population, was practically
a language in itself. It seems incredible that we are to lose this
language, when true recordings of it can still be made. We are flooded
with accounts of the progress of the Negro but the history of the rise
of the race will not be complete without standards for comparison by
which that rise may be measured.
As Mr. Willis has seen the old Negroes who spoke their original
dialect rapidly dying and has heard the frequently ridiculous imitations
current, he has become interested in pre-serving not only the pronunciation
but the hundreds of quaint constructions they used. It is so much a
part of our history, but it can not be written. There is hardly
a. handful of people alive today who can read Uncle Remus and pronounce the
words as the Negroes did and fewer still who can use the little inflections
and nuances as in the original.
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