7 Mar 1737:11 (173)
New York Weekly Journal              
NYWJ.737.007                                                            
7 Mar 1737:11 (173)                                                     
Utopia, April 10.___                                                    
Mr.___ ____                                                             
It is with pleasure I send you these few lines; for as I                
have been some weeks in this place, I have in some measure              
been able to form a judgment of it.-- . . . [3 lines] This              
morning I heard my landlord's black fellow very busy at                 
tuning of his banger, as he call'd it, and playing some of              
his tunes; I, who am alwys delighted with music, be it never            
so rustic, under a pretence of washing came into the                    
kitchen, and at last asked, what the meaning was of his                 
being so merry?  He started up and with a blithsom                      
countenance answered, "Massa, to day holiday; Backerah no               
work; Ningar no work; me no savy play banger; go yander, you            
see Ningar play banger for true, dance too; you see sport to            
day for true."---He continued, "Massa, you savy the field,              
little way out a town, no houses there, grandy room for                 
dance there."  Upon this I drest and went to the place, for             
I had several times diverted my self with walking there.  It            
was no small amusement to me, to see the plain partly                   
covered with booths, and well crouded with whites, the                  
Negroes divided into companies, I suppose according to their            
different nations, some dancing to the hollow sound of a                
drum, made of the trunk of a hollow tree, othersome to the              
grating rattling noise of pebles or shells in a small                   
basket, others plied the banger,and some knew how to joyn               
the voice it.--The wariors were not idle, for I saw several             
companies of the blacks, some exercising the cudgel, and                
some of them small sticks in imitation of the short pike;               
and some who had been unlucky enough to get a dram too much,            
as I suppose, were got to loggerheads; all cursing and                  
swearing, and that in a Christian dialect, enough to raise              
one's hair an end.--I leave it to you to judge whether all              
these confused noises so near to one another didn't make a              
__cord. . . [92 lines] I had almost forgot to to tell you               
that I have been drove out of my quarters several times by              
the confused noise of a horne, and the singing (or rather               
howling) of some half drunk fellows; I am told that the                 
noise almost resembles the Indians Kintekaying.  In short               
time you may expect more from Yours, etc. [signed] The Spy.