Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - Gabriella Varró: The Theme of Comic Love in Blackface Minstrelsy: The Anatomy of the Grotesque

Although the script of the love-triangle theme did not show much diversity in songs, the reaction of the cheated lover to the treachery of his sweetheart varied from song to song. Some, like the cheated suitor of "Dearest Belinda"

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8 by S. A. Wells, showed weakness and the inability to take revenge on their rivals. The song in question showed the black suitor as uneducated in chivalrous matters, and a coward in the rivalry between black males for the hand of the woman ("Belinda made me feel so bad,/I wished my rival dead,/My feelings got de best of me,/And so I went to bed."). This attitude prefigures E. Caldwell's treatment of callousness in the face of love betrayal in poor white families. To illustrate that the black male did not take his love affairs too much to heart, the black suitor went on singing: In de morning when dis nigger wake, I tink ob all dat past, Belinda treat me very bad, But I found her out at last, I go and bid her den farewell! I'll see her not again; I since have found another gal, And loved her not in vain. /Starr/ In some songs the black male got satisfaction simply from threatening his rival, like in "Katy Dean," ("I'll call that darky out, I will, and kill him very dead" /Dennison 136/). Occasionally, calling the rival ludicrous names proved enough of a put down, as can be seen in the already quoted "Dearest Belinda" or in "Who's Dat Nigga Dar A Peepin'?"

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9 Besides humiliation and ridicule, naming practices in both cases helped to join the pseudo-black male figures with the stereotype of the ludicrously pretentious black dandy. The maleness of Count 1

8 "Dearest Belinda" quoted in Dennison 136—7. 1

9 "Who's Dat Nigga Dar A Peepin?" published by C.H. Keith in 1844. Starr Collection. 108