Ring Shouts (Changes)

Topic: Origins - Ring Shout
Shouts observed by Lydia Parrish on Saint Simons Island in the 1920s and 1930s seemed tame and scripted compared to those seen by Thomas Wentworth Higginson on Saint Helena Island in 1862. He had described a ritual that began with men clapping their hands and stamping their feet, before some "circled like dervishes," while she only saw the first phase when they wound "monotonously." [1]

African Americans knew from slavery times their well-being depended on maintaining boundaries between public and private behavior. Thus, when Parrish watched Margaret wiggle "her hips shamelessly" at the Queen of the South Society hall, she was in a building controlled by a Black fraternal organization. When she had her photographed in the cabin she had built, Margaret was in a space controlled by a white benefactor. [2]

The wariness of outsiders extended beyond whites to the unknown African-Americans who accompanied them as retainers. Parrish observed, they were aware both groups considered shouts as "sad and disagreeable," to quote Harriet Ware on Saint Helena in 1865. [3] Even so, Parrish wrote:

"the hold of shouting is tenacious, and it is practiced during the Christmas holidays to this day. All the country Negroes enjoy it immensely, though many are unwilling to admit that they know how to do it, as they consider the dance old-fashioned. [4]

Protestant missionary attempts to suppress shouts introduced the separation of the sacred from everyday life to African Americans who perceived the two to be intertwined. While the sacred rituals were monitored by outsiders, the secular dances were dismissed as trivial because they were "done for fun." [5]

Before the Civil War, African Americans disguised shouts as exercises. Thus, James Hamilton Couper told Charles Lyell his slaves "sometimes contrive to take enough exercise to serve as a substitute for the dance." [6] Similarly, Edward Pierce concluded a "fastidious religionist might object to this exercise; but being in accordance with usage, and innocent enough in itself, it is not open to exception." [7]

After the war, when missionaries disparaged shouts, important rituals were transferred to the secular realm where they survived in forms carrying both innocent and symbolic meanings. The descendants of slaves Parrish met on Saint Simon were more protective of their secular dance traditions than their religious ones.

She had heard about a dance called the Buzzard Lope, but no one would admit knowing it. They claimed it was "done on some far-off island, such as St. Catherine’s or Sapelo." After ten years, a newcomer to the singing group demonstrated it, and then "a number who had previously denied such a gift" also showed her the steps. [8]

Parrish’s photograph showed a woman tilted forward at the hips with wide spread legs. Her arms, bent at the elbows, opened and closed like a bird’s wings. [9] The significance wasn’t in the movement but in the song in which people begged to be thrown into the "ole field" or graveyard when they died. Proper treatment of the dead in Africa was more important than salvation was to Protestants. [10]

Once it was known Parrish had seen the dance and heard the song, others were willing to show her. [11] On Sapelo Island, she found Isaac Johnson had incorporated modern steps. His teacher, a descendant of Bilali on Tom Spalding’s plantation, gave "a stylized pattern of the bird’s awkward steps, without any attempt at realism." She described it as a "high form of rhythmic approximation." [12]

Ring shouts were no more static than the Buzzard Lope. The ones Parrish saw may have included only one phase of the ones done on Saint Helena Island sixty years before, but African Americans had replaced what was lost with appropriations from whites, including round dances that were done by plantation owners. For instance, James Postell, whose family owned land on Saint Simons, spent time in Brunswick, Georgia, in the 1870s learning the steps of the "latest round dance" before a ball. [13]

"Down in de Mire" used incremental repetition like "Hold your light, Brudder Robert," which Higginson said was repeated with the names of everyone present. [14] Sterling Stuckey claimed the song was more complex, because he believed the names were those of the ancestors and that the lyrics blurred the line between the living and the dead. [15]

In the shout Parrish saw, the person whose name was called out had to kneel in the center with his or head touching the floor and "rotates with the group as it move around the circle." As they sang "Sister Emma, Oh you mus’ come down to de mire" and "Jesus been down to de mire," the "different shouters, as they pass, push the head ‘down to the mire.’ The several arms reaching out to give a push make an unusually picturesque pattern." [16]

Instead of a shout contacting the spirits, it was a re-enactment of another, older, African initiation ritual that had been camouflaged as a Protestant conversion experience. As mentioned in the post for 20 September 2018, Harriet Ware claimed shouts coincided with "meetings" in May 1862 that "take place for the examination of new members." Several generations later, the ritual appeared as a shout on Saint Simons with elements of a round dance.

The assimilation of white dance forms into shouts also occurred with the farewell song that closed a prayer meeting, shout, or service. Edward Pierce had noted, in January 1862, the slaves on Saint Helena "close with what is called ‘a glory shout, one joining hands with another, together in couples singing a verse and beating time with the foot." [17] Harriet Ware mentioned a church service in May 1862 that ended when they simply "shook hands all round." [18]

By the time Harriet Beecher Stowe described the religious meeting in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1867, the farewell had incorporated elements of the Virginia reel. [19] The one Lydia Parrish observed include parts of the grand-right-and-left associated with square dancing. Liverpool had been born in 1828 [20] on the Pierce Butler plantation. [21] At one singing session, he

"became excited as he heard again the old prayer-meeting song, left his seat, joined in the swaying group of sixty-five singers, and gave a demonstration of the ‘right hand of fellowship’ which he performed with the dignity seen in the minuet. First he gave his right hand to the singer on his right; then, bowing sedately, he crossed his left hand to the same member. Both hands were then shaken as the singers bowed with the rhythm before passing to the next neighbor and repeating the same ceremony." [22]

Parrish published one photograph of Willis Proctor "shaking the hand of Bessie in accordance with the usual custom at prayer meeting in a less sophisticated era." [23] They stood facing the camera clasping right hands, [24] much like the people mentioned by Pierce and Ware.

She included one other photograph that illustrated the ways secular forms perpetuate sacred ones. A middle-school-aged boy was doing "Juba Dis, Juba Dat." [25] At first glance, Snooks’ pose was similar to that of William Henry Lane who began performing as Master Juba in minstrel shows in the 1840s. [26]

In a woodcut from 1848, he had one heel raised slightly with his other knee in the air with the toe pointed down. His arms were at his sides with his hands flexed, and his torso tilted from the hips. [27] Snooks didn’t raise his knee, but raised his heel. He had one arm at his side, and his other forearm pointing up from the elbow. His torso leaned from the hips so he was looking down.

If one looks more closely at Snooks, one would see this was the basic shout step that used bent knees and raised heels. The angle of the torso was the same as that of singers like George Nesbitt and Keith Johnson. [28] His elbows were bent like those of the people mentioned in the post for 2 October 2018. Only his raised forearm was different.

If he had been doing this during slavery times, as men no doubt were after Lane became popular, Snooks would have been practicing a sacred ritual in front of a plantation owner who saw only the copy of a popular theatre dance.

End Notes
1. For more on Parrish’s observations, see the post for 2 October 2018. For more on Higginson, see the post for 20 September 2018.

2. Margaret was discussed in the post for 2 October 2018.
3. For more on Harriet Ware, see the post for 20 September 2018.

4. Lydia Parrish. Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands. New York: Creative Age Press, 1942. Reprint edition, Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1992. 55.

5. Parrish. 93.

6. A fuller quotation from Lyell and the citation appeared in the post for 18 September 2018. Emphasis added.

7. A fuller quotation from Pierce and the citation appeared in the post for 25 September 2018. Emphasis added.

8. Parrish. 108.
9. Photograph by Ralph Steiner. In Parrish. Opposite 129.

10. Sterling Stuckey discussed the many ways African attitudes toward death and burial traditions were transferred to the American South. He included a discussion of the buzzard as a symbol for the men who enslaved others in Africa. (Slave Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013 edition. 2-4.)

11. She wrote: "It is a curious fact that the Negro rarely volunteers information–on the sound principle, perhaps, that if you tell nothing you have nothing to regret; and this is my reason for giving so many identifying titles and lines. If you know what to ask for, the work is half done." (page 14)

As an example, she recalled reading about ring-games in the library in Boston, but had not seen any on Saint Simon in the previous twenty years because she didn’t live near a school. When she asked her cook, Julia Armonstrong, what a shanty sung on the island had to do with a ring-game, the sister of Willis Proctor answered: "Dear me! It’s a ring-play song, but it’s so long since I sung one I’d forgotten we ever did."

Parrish concluded, "again it was brought home to me that we learn from these people who have no past, only what we first discover for ourselves." (page 93)

12. Parrish. 111.

13. Caroline Couper Lovell. The Light of Other Days. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1995. 45. As mentioned in the post for 2 October 2018, James Pettigrew Postell owned the plantation where Parrish built her home and cabin. This may have been his son, James Mackbeth Postell, born in 1856. (Amy. "Coastal Georgia Families 1." Ancestry website. 28 May 2017.) Brunswick, on the mainland, was the county seat for Glynn County.

14. A fuller quotation from Higginson and the citation appeared in the post for 20 September 2018.

15. Stuckey. 29.
16. Parrish. 71.

17. A fuller quotation from Pierce and the citation appeared in the post for 25 September 2018.

18. Harriet Ware. Letter, 1 May 1862. In Letters from Port Royal Written at the Time of the Civil War. Edited by Elizabeth Ware Pearson. Boston: W. B. Clarke Company, 1906.

19. For more on Stowe, see the post for 27 September 2018.
20. Parrish. Opposite 32.

21. Parrish. 8. During the Civil War, Liverpool had been a cook for the Confederate company commanded by William Miles Hazzard, [29] whose family owned plantations north of the north of the town Frederica on the island. [30] As mentioned in the post for 18 September 2018, Butler sold his slaves in 1859 to pay debts. It’s likely, he was purchased by Hazzard, who then conscripted him. Liverpool took Hazzard’s surname, rather than Butler’s, when one was needed after the war.

22. Parrish. 130.
23. Parrish. 32.

24. Photograph by Foresta Hodgson Wood. In Parrish. Opposite 96. Bessie was Bessie Cuyler, who was born in 1895 according to Benjamin Allen. (Glynn County. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2003.) Proctor was mentioned in the post for 2 October 2018.

25. Photograph by Clara Sipprell. In Parrish. Opposite 64. She did not provide Snooks’ last name.

26. Wikipedia. "Master Juba."

27. "Master Juba. The Illustrated London News. 5 August 1848. Reproduced by Hans Nathan. Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962. 74. Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 26 October 2005 by Amcaja and included in Wikipedia entry on Juba.

28. George Nesbitt was discussed in the post for 30 September 2018. Keith Johnson was described in the post for 23 September 2018.

29. Allen.

30. "The Plantation Era and Christ Church, Frederica, Saint Simons Island, Georgia." Oatlands Plantation website. 11.