Read Ebook: Jamaican Song and Story Annancy stories digging sings ring tunes and dancing tunes by Werner Alice Author Of Introduction Etc Jekyll Walter Compiler Broadwood Lucy Etheldred Contributor Myers Charles S Charles Samuel Contributor

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INTRODUCTION , xxiii

INTRODUCTION.

Mr. Jekyll's delightful collection of tales and songs from Jamaica suggests many interesting problems. It presents to us a network of interwoven strands of European and African origin, and when these have been to some extent disentangled we are confronted with the further question, to which of the peoples of the Dark Continent may the African element be attributed?

The exact relationship between the "Negro" and Bantu races,--which of them is the original and which the adulterated stock ,--is a subject quite beyond my competence to discuss. It seems certain that the Negro languages are as distinct from the singularly homogeneous and well-defined Bantu family, as Aryan from Semitic. Ibo, at one end of the area, has possible Bantu affinities, which await fuller investigation; the same thing has been conjectured of Bullom and Temne at the other end ; but these are so slight and as yet so doubtful that they scarcely affect the above estimate.

The difference in West Coast and Bantu folk-tales is not so marked as that between the languages; yet here, too, along with a great deal which the two have in common, we can pick out some features peculiar to each. And Mr. Jekyll's tales, so far as they can be supposed to come from Africa at all, are not Bantu. The name of "Annancy" alone is enough to tell us that.

But the British West Indies would seem to have been chiefly supplied from Upper Guinea, or the "West Coast" proper . Among the tribes to be found in Jamaica, Mr. Jekyll tells me are the Ibo , Coromantin , Hausa, Mandingo, Moko , Nago , and Sobo .

The Tshi, Ewe and Yoruba languages are genderless, like the Bantu. This fact explains the appearance of such personages as "Brother Cow" , and the wild confusion of pronouns sometimes observed: "Annancy really want that gal fe marry, but he couldn' catch him."--"When the gal go, him go meet Brother Death,"--etc.

Annancy, then, is the Spider, and as such he is conceived throughout the folk-lore of West Africa. If he seems, as he continually does, to take on a human character, going to Freetown to buy a gun and powder , or applying to a "Mory man" for amulets , he only behaves like all other animals, as explained above. A Temne authority maintains that "Spider was a person" in old times, and did not look the same as he does in these days, "he done turn odder kind of thing now." But this looks like an attempt at rationalising the situation, possibly in response to European inquiries. The change of shape alluded to at the end of the Temne Tar-baby episode is comparatively a minor matter: he was formerly "round lek pusson," but became flattened out through the beating he received while attached to the Wax Girl. In the Gold Coast stories, too, Anansi is quite as much a spider as Brer Rabbit is a rabbit; but in Jamaica, though he still retains traces of his origin, they are somewhat obscured--so much so that Mr. Jekyll speaks of the "metamorphic shape, that of the Spider," which he assumes, as though the human were his real form, the other only an occasional disguise. In "Annancy and Brother Tiger" we find that he has to "run up a house-top" to escape the revenge of the monkeys, which accounts for some of his habits to this day. In "Yung-kyum-pyung" , the only hint of his spider character is contained in a mere allusion to his "running 'pon him rope." In "Brother Death," Annancy and all his family cling to the rafters, hoping to escape from Death; but it scarcely seems in character that they should be incapable of holding on long. They drop, one after another, Annancy last . He is always in danger from Cows : "Anywhere Cow see him, he reach him down with his mouth"; and he lives in a banana branch for fear of Calcutta Monkey and his whip. His moral character is consistently bad all through; he is a "clever thief"--greedy, treacherous, and cruel, but intellectually he does not uniformly shine. He has to call in the help of a wizard in his love affairs; "Monkey was too clever for him" on more than one occasion; he has to be extricated from the slaughter-house by Blackbird and his army of Wasps, and in "Man-crow" he is signally discomfited. In other cases his roguery is successful, and he is described as the greatest musician and "the biggest rascal in the world" . Much the same is the character given to Mr. Spider in "Cunnie Rabbit." Not one amiable trait is recorded of him.

A Gold Coast story, however, shows him arbitrating between a Rat and a Panther in very much the same way as the Yao Che Sungula settles the difficulty between the Man and the Crocodile, making the latter go back into the trap whence he had too confidingly been released, in order to show how it was done. Once having got the ungrateful Panther back into the trap, the Spider advises the Rat to leave him there.

Mr. R.E. Dennett gives a Lower Congo story, telling how the Spider brought fire down from Nzambi Mpungu in heaven, and won the daughter of Nzambi by so doing. In an Angola story the Spider is mentioned as affording a means of communication between heaven and earth, by which the Sun's maidservants go down to draw water, and his daughter is ultimately let down to be married to the son of Kimanaueze. But the Spider only comes in incidentally; it is the Frog whose resourcefulness makes the marriage possible. The notion of the spider's web as a ladder to heaven is one that might occur independently in any part of the world, and there is no need to suppose these tales to be derivatives of the Hausa one given by Sch?n.

"The form of a sex-denoting language, by exciting sympathy even for creatures not connected with us by human fellowship, leads in the first instance to the humanization of animals, and thus especially gives rise to the creation of fables. Even on the lowest stage of national development, we find the Hottentot language accompanied by a literature of fables, for which we may vainly seek a parallel in the literatures of the prefix-pronominal languages."

We shall have occasion to refer, later on, to more than one instance where a story is found in two forms, one having animals, the other human beings, as its characters.

If we add to this his power of living for a long time without food, his silence, the extreme slowness and caution of his movements, his instinct of keeping out of sight, and the peculiar air of dogged determination with which he sets about overcoming or circumventing obstacles, it is "easy to understand how in process of time the word which stood for tortoise became a synonym for cunning and craft, and a man of exceptional intelligence was in this way known among the Ibo as 'Mbai,' and among the Ibani as 'Ekake,' meaning a tortoise. For although he of the shell-back was slow, he was sure, as the old Greek Aesop tells us.... This sureness, in the native mind, implied doggedness and a fixed determination, while silence and secrecy implied mystery and a veiled purpose behind which it is impossible to get."

The tortoise of African folk-lore is sometimes, in fact usually, the land-tortoise , of which there are several species, living either in forest-country or in deserts like the Kalahari. In Angola, the story of "Man and Turtle" refers to a kind which, if not aquatic, is evidently amphibious. We find tortoise stories all over Negro and Bantu Africa; we have Temne, Bullom, and Yoruba examples, besides Duala, Konde , Yao, Nyanja, Herero, Bemba, Congo , Angola and Sesuto ones. This does not exhaust the list I have made out, and further research would no doubt bring to light many more. One of these is the well-known "tug-of-war" story, which in "Uncle Remus" has the title "Mr. Terrapin shows his strength." We have two versions of this from the Kamerun, one told by the Duala, the other by the Yabakalaki-Bakoko tribe. Here it is the Elephant and the Hippopotamus whom the Tortoise induces to pull against each other. The American Negro substitutes the Bear for one of these competitors, and then, apparently at a loss for a wild animal strong enough to take the place of the other, makes "Brer Tarrypin" tie "Miss Meadows's bed-cord" to a root in the bed of the stream. But it is interesting to find two native African versions in which other animals are substituted for the Tortoise. The Temne gives his part to the Spider, while the Bemba people make the Hare the hero of the adventure. Col. Monteil gives a Mandingo variant, introducing a different motive for the contest: the Hare has borrowed a slave apiece from the Elephant and the Hippopotamus, and when pressed for payment hands each of his competitors in turn the end of a rope, with the words, "Tu n'as qu'? tirer sur cette corde, le captif est au bout."

Another Temne story collected by Miss Cronise, "Mr. Turtle makes a riding-horse of Mr. Leopard," is paralleled by an Angola one in which it is Mr. Frog who plays the trick on Mr. Elephant. In the New World, it will be remembered that Brer Rabbit has usurped the part.

But we look in vain for the tortoise in these stories of Mr. Jekyll's. Even in the race-story, as we have seen, the part which in Africa is so peculiarly his own, is taken by the Toad. Probably this is because the land-tortoise is not found in Jamaica, and the great turtle of the seas is not a creature whose ways would come under the daily observation of the peasantry. In the same way familiar animals have been substituted for unfamiliar ones in a great many cases, though not in all. Mr. Jekyll thinks "Tiger" is a substitute for "Lion," but it seems equally possible that "Leopard" is meant. All over South Africa, leopards are called "tigers" by Dutch, English, and Germans, just as hyenas are called "wolves," and bustards "peacocks" . "Tiger" is used in the same sense in German Kamerun, and probably elsewhere in West Africa. Lion and elephant are known--perhaps by genuine tradition--to Uncle Remus; but they seem to have faded from the recollection of the Jamaica negroes; indeed, the lion is not found in their original homes, being absent from the whole West Coast as far as Sierra Leone.

"Brer Rabbit," so characteristic a figure of Bantu folk-lore that his adventures are related from one side of Africa to the other , only appears in two of Mr. Jekyll's stories, in none of which we can recognize anything of his traditional character. In "Annancy and his Fish-pot," he is unscrupulously victimised by Annancy, and subsequently dies of fright and worry; in "Snake the Postman," he escapes from Annancy's machinations, but there is no indication that he could ever be considered a match for "that cravin' fellah." In "John Crow and Fowl-hawk" he is merely alluded to . In "Dry Bone," he is induced by Guinea-pig to carry the unwelcome load, but succeeds in passing it on, for the time being, to Annancy. Finally, in "Gaulin," he cuts a poor figure as the unsuccessful suitor. A Bantu story by no means complimentary to the Hare's intelligence is given by M. Junod, and seems to have reached Louisiana as "Compair Lapin et Michi? Dinde," where the Rabbit gets his head cut off under the belief that the Turkey has removed his when he puts it under his wing to sleep. M. Junod thinks this must refer to a second species of Hare, a by-word for stupidity, as the other is for cuteness; but it is at least worth noting that the same story is told by the Basumbwa of the Hen and the Tiger-cat.

"Annancy and Hog" is a fragmentary story, not very easy to understand as we have it, but something has evidently dropped out. The sentence "An' when Hog think him done up Annancy him done up him own mother" may point to some original similar to the Fiote story given by Mr. Dennett, in which the Leopard's wife is induced to eat her husband's head. But in that case it is difficult to understand the connection with the opening incidents.

In "Dummy," Annancy wins a bet and the hand of the King's daughter by inducing "Peafowl" to make the dumb man talk. This "Peafowl" does by the sweetness of his song; but in a Duala story given by Lederbogen as "Der Tausendfuss und das stumme Kind," the means adopted more nearly resemble the time-honoured recipes for detecting changelings in this country. The Mouse advised the dumb child's parents to consult the Spider, who told them to hang up a centipede over the fireplace, set on a pot of water just underneath it, and leave the child sitting beside the fire. They did so, and went out. As soon as the steam rose from the water, the centipede, feeling the heat, began to struggle, and the dumb child watching it cried out in his excitement, "Father! there is a centipede going to fall into the pot."

"William Tell" is puzzling. There is no single point of contact between the owner of the witch-tree and the mythical archer of Europe. It is most probable that the name had been picked up by some negro story-teller who did not know the tale belonging to it and simply attached it to the first character that came handy. The "sings" by means of which Annancy fells the tree occur frequently in native African stories; we need only mention the incident of the song which made the hoed garden return to grass and weeds, and that of Simbubukwana's sister who sang "Have legs, have arms," and the boy who was without those members immediately grew them. The notion of spells to be sung, however, does not seem to be confined to any country or race.

I do not remember any exact parallel to "Dry River" , but the incident of the river rising is found in Africa with several different sequels. In a Nyanja story which I have in MS., some children go out into the bush to gather wild fruit, and are cut off on their return by the rising of the river. They are helped across by "a big bird, with one wing, one eye and one leg" , and charged not to tell who took them over. One boy tells his mother, and is drowned on the next expedition, his companions getting across in safety. In "The Village Maiden and the Cannibal" , the girls cannot cross the swollen stream till they have thrown a large root into the water, and complied with the directions. The last girl, who is reluctant to obey, but finally gives in, is not drowned, but she and her sister have an adventure with cannibals of a not uncommon kind, which may be referred to Mr. Jacobs's "Flight from Witchcraft" type. Two other stories, a Kinga and a Machame one, have the same opening incident , but continue in quite a different way--the girls are helped by an animal who subsequently insists on marrying one of them. The Machame tale, to which we shall have to return presently, as it belongs to the group to which we refer "Yellow Snake" and some others, goes on to relate how the girl escaped from the hyena's village; the Kinga one takes an entirely different course.

"Leah and Tiger" is one of the stories which can be most unhesitatingly identified as African; and, as it happens, the examples at present known to me are nearly all Bantu. Perhaps the closest parallel is the Suto "Tselane" , where, however, the girl, instead of being secluded by her father to avoid the trouble which her refusal to marry threatens to bring upon him, herself insists on staying in the house her parents are leaving. As in the Jamaica version, they bring her food every day, and sing to let her know of their approach. The cannibal on the prowl imitates the mother's voice, but fails; after swallowing a red-hot hoe, he succeeds at the first trial. He does not eat Tselane, however, and so end the story with a warning against obstinacy; he puts her into a bag to carry her home, and rests on his way at a hut, which proves to be her uncle's. While he is resting inside the hut, leaving his bag outside, the family discover the girl and let her out, substituting a dog and some biting ants. In other versions it is bees and wasps, or snakes and toads; but the result is always the same--the death of the cannibal. The incident of swallowing red-hot iron to soften the voice is found also in "Demane and Demazana" and elsewhere. In a curious Masai story, "The Old Man and his Knee" , the "enemies" carry off the old man's two children by means of the same stratagem. After failing in the first attempt they consult a medicine-man to find out how they can "make their voices resemble an old man's." He tells them merely to go back, and eat nothing on the road. They eat a lizard and an ant, and their voices do not produce the desired effect. On trying again, and this time complying exactly with the doctor's directions, they deceive the children and get the door opened. This incident is preserved in "Leah," and, like the Masai "enemies," Tiger thinks that such a trifle as the guava and "duckanoo" cannot possibly do any harm. The Masai story concludes with the killing of the old man by making him swallow a hot stone--an incident which crops up in various connections in the Hare stories, but seems out of its place in this one. On the whole it seems more probable that the Masai had picked up this tale from some of their Bantu neighbours than that the Bantu should have adopted it from them.

"King Daniel" is the story of the jealous sister, best known, perhaps, in the ballad of "Binnorie." But it has African prototypes as well, though the resemblance to these is not so close, in which the crime is discovered by the song of a bird--sometimes the metamorphosed heart of the victim. In "Masilo and Masilonyane" and the Kinga "Die Reiherfeder," one brother kills the other; in "Unyengebule" the husband kills the wife, and here it is her feather head-dress which turns into a bird. "Pretty Poll" is a variant of this story.

"Man-crow" is the story, which exists in so many variants, where the hero is robbed of the fruit of his achievement by an impostor stepping in at the last minute. The nearest parallel which occurs to me is "Rombao" , where the hero kills the whale and cuts out its tongue; the captain who finds it dead claims his reward, but is discomfited by Rombao's appearance with the tongue.

The stories of "Fenda Maria" and "Fenda Maria and her elder brother Nga Nzu?" , are good examples of transplanted stories invested with local colour by successive generations of narrators, till, as Mr. Chatelain says, "the fundamental idea of exotic origin has been so perfectly covered with Angola foliage and blossoms, that science alone can detect the imported elements, and no native would believe that are not entirely Angolan."

The method of divination in "Mr. Bluebeard" is one I do not remember to have met with, though it may be akin to the "magic mirror of ink." The magic drum by which Calcutta Monkey finds out Annancy's whereabouts is African. I do not recall any parallel story, but drums are much used by witch-doctors and in ceremonial dances, and in some cases auguries are drawn from their sound. But Monkey first discovers Annancy to be the thief by cutting the cards, which of course is European.

Two stories, "Annancy and the Old Lady's Field" and "Devil's Honeydram," introduce the incident of a woman compelled to dance against her will--in one case to dance herself to death. In both cases the music seems to be the compelling power; but it is not clear whether, in "Devil's Honeydram," the knowledge of the woman's name has anything to do with the spell. If so, the idea is so universal that one can scarcely refer to it as specially African. It is interesting, though perhaps scarcely pertinent to the matter in hand, to note that the Akikuyu believe their images to have the power, if held up before people, of compelling them to dance.

Among funeral customs we find the following : "If a person dies where there are little children, after the body is put into the coffin, they will lift up each little child, and calling him by name, pass him over the dead body." According to a Sierra Leone paper this custom is observed there; but it is not stated by which of the tribes who make up the extremely mixed population. It may even be found on investigation that some of the freed slaves brought the notion back from the New World. The same authority states that it is considered unlucky to whistle, and adds the rationalizing explanation that whistling attracts snakes, lizards, and other undesirable creatures into the house. In Jamaica, you must not "whistle in the nights, for duppies will catch your voice."

The proportion of native and acquired, or African and European ideas in these superstitions can only be determined by a much more detailed examination than I can make here, and one based on fuller materials than are yet accessible.

In conclusion, I would briefly glance at five stories which I have grouped together as derived from a common African original, and which present several features of interest, though I am unable to examine them as much in detail as I should like to do. These are "The Three Sisters" , "Gaulin" , "Yellow Snake" , "John Crow" , and "Devil and the Princess" . The type to which these may be referred resembles the one registered by Mr. Jacobs as the "Robber-Bridegroom"; but the African prototypes are certainly indigenous, and it might seem as if the stories Mr. Jacobs had in view were late and comparatively civilized versions of the corresponding European and Asiatic ones, the Robber being the equivalent of an earlier wizard or devil, who, in the primitive form of the story, was simply an animal assuming human shape. The main incidents of the type-story are as follows:

A girl obstinately refuses all suitors.

She is wooed by an animal in human form, and at once accepts him.

She is warned and disregards the warning.

She is about to be killed and eaten, but is saved by the brother whose advice was disregarded.

In the Jamaican stories it strikes one that the idea of transformation is somewhat obscured. We are told how "Gaulin" and "John Crow" provide themselves with clothes and equipages--the latter a carriage and pair, the former the humbler local buggy;--and this seems to constitute the extent of their disguise. Yellow Snake is said to "change and fix up himself"--but the expression is vague. Gaulin, however, can only be deprived of his clothes by means of a magic song. The "old-witch" brother, who has overheard the song, plays its tune at the wedding and thus exposes the bridegroom, who flies out at the door. "John-Crow" is detected by a Cinderella-like device of keeping him till daylight, and his hurried flight through the window explains a characteristic feature of these useful but unattractive birds.

In neither of these is the bride in any danger: but in "Yellow Snake" her brothers save her when already more than half swallowed; in "Devil and the Princess," she escapes by the aid of the Devil's cook, who feeds the watchful cock on corn soaked in rum. In this story, too, it is not the girl's brother, but the "old-witch" servant-boy, who warns her; and, as he is cast into prison for his pains, he has no hand in the release. In two cases Annancy is one of the unsuccessful suitors, and, in the former, "Rabbit" is another. In the Nyanja story, Leopard and Hare are mentioned as meeting with refusals, before the Hyena arrives on the scene. "The Three Sisters," while keeping one or two points of the original story, is much altered, and seems to have introduced some rather unintelligible fragments of an English ballad . The Snake is never accepted; and the youngest of the sisters, who answers him on behalf of all, would seem to represent the "old-witch" brother who detects his true character. His "turning into a devil" is another alien element--perhaps due to Biblical recollections, and the concluding assertion that he "have chain round his waist until now" seems to refer to something which has dropped out, as there is no previous allusion to a chain in the story as it stands. Of all the five, "Yellow Snake" is, on the whole, the closest to what we may suppose to have been the original; "Devil and the Princess" is in some respects complete, but has acquired several foreign features, and "John Crow" has quite lost the characteristic conclusion. It is to be hoped that we may one day succeed in discovering, if not all the African variants of this story, yet enough to render those we possess more intelligible, and to afford materials for an interesting comparative study.

A. WERNER.

The district in which I live is that of the Port Royal Mountains behind Kingston. Other districts have other "Sings," for these depend upon local topics. The Annancy Stories are, so far as I know, more or less alike throughout the island. This title seems to include stories in which Annancy himself does not figure at all, but this is of course an illegitimate use of it. The collection in this book is a mere sample both of stories and tunes.

W.J.

JAMAICAN SONG AND STORY.

When the hoes stop clicking and you hear peals of laughter from the field, you may know that somebody is telling an Annancy story. If you go out, you will find a group of Negroes round the narrator, punctuating all the good points with delighted chuckles. Their sunny faces are beaming, and at the recital of any special piece of knavery on Annancy's part ordinary means of expression fail, and they fling themselves on the ground and wriggle in convulsions of merriment.

Annancy is a legendary being whose chief characteristic is trickery. A strong and good workman, he is invariably lazy, and is only to be tempted to honest labour by the offer of a large reward. He prefers to fill the bag which he always carries, by fraud or theft. His appetite is voracious, and nothing comes amiss to him, cooked or raw. No sooner is one gluttonous feast over than he is ready for another, and endless are his shifts and devices to supply himself with food. Sometimes he will thrust himself upon an unwilling neighbour, and eat up all his breakfast. At another time he carries out his bag and brings it home full of flesh or fish obtained by thieving. He is perfectly selfish, and knows no remorse for his many deeds of violence, treachery and cruelty. His only redeeming point is a sort of hail-fellow-well-met-ness, which appeals so much to his associates that they are ready almost, if not quite, to condone his offences.

Thus far for the sense. Now for the pronunciation. The accent indicates where the stress of the voice falls, and unless the accent is caught, the phrase will not run off the tongue. This is how it goes:

n m | s m n | yerry.

Just as hopeless is negro English to the newcomer, and the first thing to do is to set about learning it. And well it repays investigation. It is the boast of the English language that it has got rid of so much superfluous grammatical matter in the way of genders, inflections and such-like perplexities. True, it has abolished much that was evil, and enables us to speak and write shortly and to the point. But negro English goes a step further, and its form is still more concise. Compare these expressions:

NEGRO. ENGLISH.

Corn the horse. Give the horse some corn. Care the child. Take care of the child. Him wife turn fire. His wife became a shrew. You middle hand. The middle of your hand. My bottom foot. The bottom of my foot. Out the lamp. Put out the lamp. The boy too trick. The boy is very tricky. I did him nothing. I did not provoke him. See the 'tar up a 'ky. Look at the star up in the sky. No make him get 'way. Do not let him get away. Me go buy. I am going to buy. A door. Out of doors. Short-mout'ed. Quick at repartee. Bull a broke pen. The bull has broken out of the pen. Bell a ring a yard. The bell is ringing in the yard. Same place him patch. In the place where it was patched. To warm fire. To warm oneself by the fire. You no give. If you do not give. Bring come. Bring it here. A bush. In the bush.

These are a few typical sentences out of a host which might be cited to show the neat, short turn they take in the mouth of the Jamaica Negro.

The rapidity of utterance natural to all the Blacks is exaggerated by Annancy. He generally affects, too, a falsetto tone as in "Play up the music, play up the music," in Yung-kyum-pyung. He has a metamorphic shape, that of the Spider. At one moment he is a man "tiefing cow," the next he is running upon his rope .

The stories are obviously derived from various sources, the most primitive being no doubt those which are concerned only, or chiefly, with animals. These may be of African origin, but we should have expected to find the Elephant and not the Tiger. I have a suspicion that Tiger was originally Lion, and that he is the Ogre of Jack the Giant-killer, and other fairy stories brought to Jamaica from England. Ogre would easily be corrupted to Tiger, and with the information, which might have been acquired at the same time, that Tiger was a fierce animal which ate men, his name would find its way into stories repeated from mouth to mouth. This is, however, pure conjecture. How much the stories vary may be seen from the two versions of Ali Baba, in one of which the point is so entirely lost that the door is not kept shut upon the intruder.

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