John and Alan Lomax in Louisiana, 1934
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La Jalouserie c'est l'imagination

Un Coup de baton

Mo malade / Li pas connais

Mo malheureux / Si li lé bat
PicturePhoto courtesy of Guneez Ibrahim.
According to John Lomax, Joe Massey was a worker on the St. John's Plantation near 
St. Martinville, where his job had been "running the dummy engine for the past nineteen years." 
To this day, a defunct dummy engine (essentially a small steam-powered locomotive once used on sugar cane plantations) sits in the grass, visible from the highway, on the grounds of St. John.