Travel Reference
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Apasha—yé!'
What did the words mean? Nobody knew. The sense had been lost. But it was in the Koromantee
language, they said, the language that the old people, that their grandfathers and grandmothers, used to
speak. It was a song the old Maroons sang while they were digging graves for their dead. The air is so
authentically African, and so sad, that I will write down the music in case anybody with a knowledge of
West African races and tribes can trace its origin:—
Of another song, equally African sounding, he could only remember one couplet:—
which he sang several times over, as though, like many of the Voodoo incantations, the two lines were
sufficient in themselves.
I feel a slight pride in saving these two fragments of music and libretto from oblivion, for I think
Emmanuel Rowe is the last of the Maroons to remember it. When he dies (which may God defer for
many years) this last remaining link with Africa will be broken. Unless the tunes were brought here in
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