2 93 
chap. III.] WEST INDIES. 
Their songs are commonly impromptu , and there 
are among them individuals who resemble the irn- 
proviscitore, or extempore bards, of Italy; but I 
cannot say much for their poetry. Their tunes in 
general are characteristic of their national manners; 
those of the Eboes being soft and languishing; of 
the Koromantyns heroic and martial. At the same 
time, there is observable, in most of them, a pre¬ 
dominant melancholy, which, to a man of feeling, 
is sometimes very affecting. 
At their merry meetings, and midnight festivals, 
they are not without ballads of another kind, adapt¬ 
ed to such occasions; and here they give full scope 
to a talent for ridicule and derision, which is exer¬ 
cised not only against each other, but also, not un- 
frequently, at the expense of their owner or em¬ 
ployer; but most part of their songs at these places 
are fraught with obscene ribaldry, and accompanied 
with dances in the highest degree licentious and 
wanton. 
At other times, more especially at the burial of 
such among them as were respected in life, or ve¬ 
nerable through age, they exhibit a sort of Pyrr- 
hick or warlike dance, in which their bodies are 
strongly agitated by running, leaping, and jumping, 
with many violent and frantic gestures and contor¬ 
tions. Their funeral songs too are all of the he¬ 
roic or martial cast; affording some colour to the 
prevalent notion, that the negroes consider death 
not only as a welcome and happy release from the 
