Back on task:

There are a lot of contemporary children's rhymes that use the floating verse "I love coffee, I love tea" {or "I like coffee I like tea."} These rhymes used to be chanted for jump rope, but I've usually I see them done as handclap rhymes.

Here is an old African American folk rhyme that includes this verse
This rhyme also makes reference to 'greens', the topic of another current Mudcat thread {"Hominy Grits and Greens"}:

ADD Lyrics: VINIE
Thomas W. Talley, "Negro Folk Rhymes", 1922; p 130

I loves coffee, an' I loves tea.
I axes you, Vinie, does you love me?

My day's study's Vinie, an' my midnight dreams,
My apples, my peaches, my tunnups, an' greens.

Oh I wants dat good 'possum, an' I wants to be free;
But I don't need no sugar, if Vinie loves me.

De river is wide, an' I cain't well step it.
I loves you, dear Vinie; an' you known I cain't
help it.

Dat sugar is sweet, an' dat butter is greasy;
But I loves you, sweet Vinie, on't be oneasy.

Some loves ten, an' some loves twenty,
But I loves you, Vinie, an' dat is a plenty.

Oh silver, it shine, an' lakwise do tin.
De way I loves Vinie, it mus' be a sin.

Well, de cedar is greeen, an' so is de pine.
God bless you, Vinie! I wish you' us mine.

-snip-

I like this rhyme {which Talley describes as a dance song} because it documents that Black men and Black women dared to love each other in spite of the ravages and uncertainties of slavery which could separate loved ones from each other at a moment's notice.

The references to food in this {and many other African American secular slave songs} should be read in the context of the times-food was very much on the minds of enslaved people as the food supplies that they received were very much insufficient. Sugar and butter, for instance, were seldom made available to enslaved African Americans and therefore were very much desired. It was therefore a big deal for the man reciting these words to say he would give up sugar for love of Vinie.

I hope he was successful and blessed in his courtship and life with the woman he loved.



Azizi