A recitation or salute by an individual, sometimes with drink in hand. The following
comes from one “Slim” of Jefferson City, Missouri, who recited it to Bruce Jackson in
June 1964:
Well here’s to the crane that flew down the lane and lit upon the mast
pole.
Stretched his neck and shit a peck and sparks flew from his asshole.
(quoted in Jackson 1977:229–230)
Scholars have most notably characterized toasts as a type of folk poetry and/or traditional
prose narrative coming primarily from African American oral tradition, although
folklorist David Evans reminds us that “such recitations have long been a standard part of
men’s gatherings, which usually involve drinking, among both Whites and Blacks”
(Evans 1977:130). Folklorists concur that toasts circulating in black oral tradition are
“usually long poetic recitations that tell a story or portray a situation” (Evans 1977:130).
Performed toasts contain rhymed couplets coming from numerous sources. Roger
Abrahams discusses the manner in which African Americans possibly appropriated the
term in his seminal collection, Deep Doivn in thejungle: Negro Narrative Folklorefrom
the Streets of Philadelphia (Abrahams 1970:109–111), suggesting that on the one hand
the minstrel show may have affected the tradition’s early history but that on the other
hand the form of toasts current in the late 20th century perhaps derived from the custom
of verse toasts pledged with a drink (Abrahams 1970:109). Certainly the end of World
War I and the subsequent Prohibition era must have had an effect on such a function;
however, most of the informants who appear in 20th-century collections of toasts are
male prisoners or minors unable to purchase liquor and who are often performing for a
folklorist, with no drink in hand. Conversely, another published collection by Anthony
M. Reynolds shows that liquor probably still plays an important role.
Reynolds includes in his collection a description of more natural settings among Black
males in the free world: “The formal telling of toasts unrolls as the bottle of scotch is
drained, and ends in laughter and discussion in much the same way it began” (Reynolds
1974:299). Reynolds recorded a representative body of toasts in South Central Los
Angeles that he demonstrates come from a wide range of sources, including some locally
well-known printed ones, such as George Milburn’s TheHobo’s Hornbook (1930). He
distinguishes the “society toasts” from the bad man (for example, “Stackolee”) and
“contest” toasts (“The Signifying Monkey”), both of which have appeared in several
collections. Society toasts, unlike the other types, lack obscenities, are fit for mixed
company, have a greater frequency of internal rhyme, have a moralistic tone, and obtain
close identification between the storyteller and the main characters (Reynolds 1974:273–
274).
Perhaps one of the most popular toasts in Black oral tradition is the following version
of a Titanic toast, which Bruce Jackson recorded in a southeast Texas prison farm in
1966. The protagonist, Shine, is a cross between the bad man and the trickster characters
in African American folklore. This toast appears in Jacksons 1974 collection, “Get
YourAss in the Water and Swim Like Me”: Narrative Poetryfrom Black Oral Tradition:
It was sad, indeed, it was sad in mind,
April the fourteenth of nineteen-twelve was a hell of a
time,
When the news reached a seaport town
That the great Titanic was a sinking down.
Up popped Shine from the deck below,
Says, “Captain captain,” says, “you don’t know.”
Says, “There’s about forty feet of water on the
boilerroom floor.”
He said, “Never mind, Shine, you go on back and
keep stackin’ them sacks,
I got forty-eight pumps to keep the water back.”
Shine said, “Well, that seems damned funny, it may be
damned fine,
But I’m gonna try to save this black ass of mine.”
So Shine jumped overboard and begin to swim, and all
the people were standin on deck watchin him.
Captain’s daughter jumped on the deck with her dress above her
head and her teddies below her knees
And said, “Shine, Shine,” say, “won’t you save poor me?”
Say, “I’ll make you rich as any shine can be.”
Shine said, “Miss, I know you is pretty and that is
true,
But there’s women on the shore can make a ass out a you.”
Captain said, “Shine, Shine, you save poor me,
I make you as rich as any shine can be.”
Shine say, “There s fish in the ocean, whales in the sea,
captain, get your ass in the water and swim like
me.”
So Shine turned over and began to swim,
People on the deck were still watchin’ him.
A whale jumped up in the middle of the sea,
Said, “Put a ‘special delivery’ on his black ass for me.”
Shine said, “Your eyes may roll and your teeth may
gnt,
But if you’re figurin on eatin’ me you can that shit.”
Shine continued to swim, he looked back, he ducked
his head, he showed his ass,
“Look out sharks and fishes and let me pass,”
He swimmed on till he came to a New York town, and
people asked had the Titanic gone down.
Shine said, “Hell, yeah.” They said, “How do you
know?”
He said, “I left the big motherfucker sinkin’ about
thirty minutes ago” (quoted in Jackson,
1974:185–186)
Jackson provides a brief discussion of some psychosocial functions
of toasts as they occur in “certain kinds of parties, among youths
hanging around street corners, [and] among inmates in jails and
prisons” (Jackson 1972:123). Identifying themes and “culture hero”
types characteristic of the genre, Wepman, Ronald B.Newman, and
Murray B.Binderman compare and briefly discuss such culture
heroes within toasts that Black prisoners performed during the
1950s and 1960s (Wepman, Newman, and Binderman 1976:1–15),
while William Labov and colleagues give a linguistic treatment of
toasts that also employ the trickster and the badman as protagonists
(Lebov, Cohen, Robins, and Lewis [1968] 1994:329–347).
Additionally, Wepman and colleagues identify the point of view in
which performers typically narrated toasts; much of their own data
contained third-person points of view, in contrast to the first-person
point of view Reynolds reports. However, by assessing the
collections of toasts from which folklorists draw conclusions when
characterizing toasts in general (Jackson 1975; Wepman, Newman,
and Binderman 1974), David Evans rightly identifies some
folklorists’ failure to print complete texts of the toasts they discuss”
(Evans 1977:129). Nevertheless, Jackson, Labov, and other
researchers have made available to the folklorist not only
representations of folklore performances, but also, particularly with
Reynolds’ study, the contextual settings in which they typically
emerge.
Finally, responding to Evans’ request that folklorists attend to the
genre as it appears among groups other than Black males, James
D.Johnson documents the tradition among Southern Whites
(Johnson 1981). Although Jackson never heardthe Titanic from
Whites (Jackson 1974:181), Johnson reports a version of the text
among his informants, who, having learned it from other Whites,
were surprised to hear that the protagonist was Black (1981:332)!
Nevertheless, in Black oral tradition the Titanic toast proclaims the
fiitility of earthly grandeur and riches, while taunting Whites for
excluding Blacks from the doomed vessel (including the Black
heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson). This toast’s
relevance to racial tensions endures, even though the meaning such
toasts have to those who perform and enjoy them will always be
culturally specific. But the toast is more than a response to racial
indignities. As Jackson observes:” [Shine] is the only one who has
enough sense…to swim away from the sinking supership…. His
power is total—body and mind—and so he alone gets home free,
perfectly safe to fuck and signify as he wishes. That all this happens
while a shipload of rich Whites drown is a gorgeous bonus.”
Richard Allen Burns
References
Abrahams, Roger. [1963] 1970. Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Folklore from the
Streets of Philadelphia. Chicago: Aldine.
Evans, David. 1977. The Toast in Context. Journal of American Folklore 90:129–148.
Jackson, Bruce. 1972. Circus and Street: Psychosocial Aspects of the Black Toast. Journal of
American Folklore 85:123–139.
——. 1974. “Get Your Ass in the Water and Swim Like Me”: Narrative Poetry from Black Oral
Tradition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
——. 1975. A Response to “Toasts: The Black Urban Poetry.” Journal of American Folklore
88:178–182.
Johnson, James D. 1981. An Instance ofToasts among Southern Whites. Western Folklore 40:329–
337.
Labov, William, Paul Cohen, Clarence Robins, and John Lewis. [1968] 1994. Toasts. In Mother
Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore, ed.
Alan Dundes. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, pp. 329–347.
Reynolds, Anthony M. 1974. Urban Toasts: A Hustler’s Point of View from L.A. Western Folklore
33:267–300.
Wepman, Dennis, Ronald B.Newman, and Murray B. Binderman. 1974. Toasts: The Black Urban
Folk Poetry. Journal of American Folklore 87:208–224.
——. 1975. A Rejoinder to Jackson. Journal of American Folklore 88:182–185.
——. 1976. The Life: The Lore and Folk Poetry of the Black Hustler. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press.