- Not prominent their belly; clean and strong
- Their thighs and legs, in just proportion rise.1
- Such soon will brave the fervours of the clime;
- And free from ails, that kill thy negroe-train,
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A useful servitude will long support. [80]
- YET, if thine own, thy childrens life, be dear;
- Buy not a Cormantee,2 tho’ healthy, young.
- Of breed too generous for the servile field;
- They, born to freedom in their native land,
- Chuse death before dishonourable bonds: [85]
- Or, fir’d with vengeance, at the midnight hour,
- Sudden they seize thine unsuspecting watch,
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And thine own poinard3 bury in thy breast.
- AT home, the men, in many a sylvan realm,
- Their rank tobacco, charm of sauntering minds, [90]
- From clayey tubes inhale;4 or, vacant, beat
- For prey the forest; or, in war’s dread ranks,
- Their country’s foes affront: while, in the field,
- Their wives plant rice, or yams, or lofty maize,5
- Fell hunger to repel. Be these thy choice: [95]
- They, hardy, with the labours of the Cane
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Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), an acquaintance of Grainger and one of the most important writers of the eighteenth century, referred to this and the preceding three lines (lines 74-77) in a review of The Sugar-Cane that he published in the Critical Review (Oct 1764). While the review was largely positive, Johnson took issue with the fact that, here and in the stanzas that follow, Grainger is giving “instructions for the buying and choice” of the enslaved. As he further comments, “here we think that tenderness and humanity, with which the former part of the poem seems replete, is, in some measure, forgotten. The poet talks of this ungenerous commerce without the least appearance of detestation; but proceeds to direct these purchasers of their fellow-creatures with the same indifference that a groom would give instructions for chusing an horse” (276-277). ↩︎
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Cormantee or Coromantin. Name given to Fanti people embarked at Fort Kormantse in the modern nation of Ghana. By the mid-eighteenth century, the name Cormantee was closely associated with warlike people who resisted enslavement, thus explaining Grainger’s warning in these lines. Indeed, Grainger would have been familiar with Tacky’s Revolt, a 1760 uprising led by Coromantins in Jamaica. The uprising, which occurred less than a year after Grainger arrived in St. Kitts, loomed large over the remainder of the century and led to a number of increasingly repressive laws. Click Click here for more information about Tacky’s Revolt. ↩︎
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Dagger. ↩︎
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Grainger is describing Africans smoking tobacco out of pipes. Tobacco was introduced from the Americas to Africa in the 1500s. ↩︎
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Rice, yams, and maize were three major food crops in West Africa. While rice (Oryza glaberrima) and yams (one of many species of tuber within the Dioscorea genus) were native to the region, maize or corn (Zea mays) was not: maize’s native range is Mexico and Guatemala. Maize was, however, introduced to Africa around 1500. Grainger could also be referring to Guinea corn (Sorghum bicolor), an important staple crop first cultivated in Africa thousands of years ago (Higman 222-232). ↩︎