Correction:
The verse for version #1 is

My sister Rose de udder night did dream
Dat she was floating down de stream,
When she woke up she 'gin to cry,
And de white cat picked out de black cat's eye.

-snip-

Although we may never know, I'm inclined to believe that these cat verses as sung by 19th century Black folks were a coded expression of those African Americans feeling of anger & hostility toward and a desire for aggressive action toward White people who held them in bondage, and often treated them so horrendously.

Given that theory, an important part of the code could have been the somewhat arbitrary changing of the aggressor cat's fur color (since doing so helped hide the real meaning of that verse). The aggressor cat could therefore be a white cat kicking or stricking a black cat in the eye, or the aggressor cat could be a black cat kicking or stricking a yellow cat in the eye. The color didn't matter, because (according to my theory) the "Colored folks" knew what those word really meant.

Alternatively, it's possible that the white cat in version #1 (and other versions of this cat verse) could have represented the master, mistress, overseerer, and those other White people who were oppressing Black people. The black cat in that verse could have represented Black people who were being oppressed (having their essence of their life taken from them [the eye being the window to the soul]. And Rose could have cried when she woke up because that dream was so terribly true.

The same could be said for version #2. Mary could have sighed when she woke from her dream in which the grey cat symbolized White people and the black cat symbolized Black people.

But if the color of the cats didn't matter because no matter what color was given, the aggressor cat symbolized the aggression towards White people that enslaved Black were unable to express, or if the versions included a black cat kicking a white cat's eye, then the cries and sighs that the women gave when they awakened could mean that they were sorry that their dream was just a dream.



Azizi Powell