Rich in songs is the history of slavery. Toiling on the Great Pyramids, Egyptian slaves intoned rhythmical chants (sample: "Hey, you, work! You, get up!"). Dixie's Negroes put body & soul into their work songs. Volga boatmen were soothed by the haunting tautology of Ei Ukhnem. More recently, political prisoners in Nazi concentration camps composed and sang such songs as the now famous Peat-Bog Soldiers:
Up and down the guards are pacing,
No one, no one can go through
Flight would mean a sure death facing,
Guns and barbed wire greet our view.
In Siberia and in the arctic wastes of...