Jamaican Song and Story Part 1

Jamaican Song and Story.

by Walter Jekyll.

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 (in other words, whether the adulteration was an improvement or the reverse),--is a subject quite beyond my competence to discuss. It seems certain that the Negro languages (as yet only tentatively cla.s.sified) are as distinct from the singularly h.o.m.ogeneous 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 (Sierra Leone); 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.

_Annancy_, or _Anansi_ is the Tshi (Ashanti)[1] word for "spider"; and the Spider figures largely in the folk-tales of the West Coast (by which we mean, roughly, the coast between Cape Verde and Kamerun), while, with some curious exceptions to be noted later on, he seems to be absent from Bantu folk-lore. His place is there taken by the Hare (Brer Rabbit), and, in some of his aspects, by the Tortoise.

[Footnote 1: Fanti is a dialect of this language, which is variously called Twi, Chwi, Otyi, and Ochi.]

We find the "Brer Rabbit" stories (best known through _Uncle Remus_) in the Middle and Southern States of America, where a large proportion, at any rate, of the negro slaves were imported from Lower Guinea. Some personal names and other words preserved among them (_e.g._ "goober" = _nguba_, the ground-nut, or "pea-nut") can be traced to the Fiote, or Lower Congo language; and some songs of which I have seen the words,[2] _look_ as if they might be Bantu, but corrupted apparently beyond recognition.

[Footnote 2: One is given by Mr. G.W. Cable in the _Century Magazine_, x.x.x. 820, as a Louisiana Voodoo song:

Hron mand, tigui li papa, Hron mand, dos dan G.o.do.

Another by Mr. W.E. Burghart Du Bois in _The Souls of Black Folk_, p.

254--apparently a lullaby:

Doba na coba gene me, gene me!

Ben d' nu li, nu li, nu li, nu li, bend'le.

I can make nothing of these. In the latter case, uncertainty as to the phonetic system adopted complicates the puzzle. One might be tempted to connect the last two words with Zulu _endhle_ or _pandhle_ = outside,--but I can find nothing else to support this resemblance, and such stray guesses are unprofitable work.]

But the British West Indies would seem to have been chiefly supplied from Upper Guinea, or the "West Coast" proper (it really faces south, while Loango, Congo, etc., are the "South-West Coast"--a point which is sometimes puzzling to the uninitiated). Among the tribes to be found in Jamaica, Mr. Jekyll tells me are the Ibo (Lower Niger), Coromantin (Gold Coast), Hausa, Mandingo, Moko (inland from Calabar), Nago (Yoruba), and Sobo (Lower Niger).

Mr. Jekyll furnishes a bit of confirmatory evidence in the list of names (p. 156) given to children according to the day of the week on which they are born. These are immediately recognizable as Tshi. As given in Christaller's _Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi_ (1881), the boys' names are identical or nearly so (allowing for the different systems of spelling) with those in Mr.

Jekyll's list. They are: Kwasi, Kwadwo, Kwabena, Kwaku, Kwaw (or Yaw), Kofi, Kwame. (Mr. George Macdonald, in _The Gold Coast Past and Present_, gives Kwamina, instead of Kwame, probably owing to a difference of dialect.) The girls' names are less easily recognizable, but a careful scrutiny reveals the interesting fact that in some cases an older form seems to have been preserved in Jamaica. Moreover, the sound written _w_ by Christaller approaches that of _b_, which seems to be convertible with it under certain conditions, all the girls'

names being formed by means of the suffix _ba_ = a child. Conversely, _ekpo_ in the mouth of a West Coast native sounds to a casual ear like _ekwo_.

Akosuwa [= Akwasiba] = Quashiba.

Adwowa = Jubba. (Cf. dw = dj in "Cudjo").

Abeua = Cubba.

Akuwa = Memba.

Ya [= Yawa] = Abba.

Afuwa = Fibba.

Amma [= Amenenewa] = Beniba.

The boys' names have "Kwa" (= _akoa_, a man, slave) prefixed to that of the day, or, more correctly speaking, of its presiding genius.

These latter are: Ayisi, Adwo, Ben, Wuku, Yaw, Afi, Amin. The names of the days appear to be formed from them by the omission of the initial A (where it exists), and the addition of the suffix _da_, with some irregularities, which no doubt a fuller knowledge of the language would explain: Kwasida, Dwoda, Benada, Wukuda, Yawda, Fida, Memeneda (Meminda). The week of seven days does not seem to be known elsewhere in Africa, except as a result of Moslem or Christian influence. The Congo week of four days is puzzling, till one remembers that it, too, rests on a division of the lunar month: 7 4 instead of 4 7.[3]

[Footnote 3: R.E. Dennett, _Folklore of the Fjort_, p. 8.]

The Tshi, Ewe and Yoruba languages are genderless, like the Bantu.

(The word _ba_ has come to mean "a daughter" when appropriated as a suffix to feminine names; but, properly, it seems to mean "a child" of either s.e.x.) This fact explains the appearance of such personages as "Brother Cow" (see also Mr. Jekyll's note on p. 107), and the wild confusion of p.r.o.nouns sometimes observed: "Annancy really want that gal fe marry, but he couldn' catch him."--"When the gal go, him go meet Brother Death,"--etc.

The few words given as "African" by Mr. Jekyll seem to be traceable to Tshi. "Ma.s.soo" (pp. 12, 13) is _m so_ = to lift. _Afu_ ("hafoo,"

"afoo," p. 18) is not in Christaller's _Dictionary_, except as equivalent to "gra.s.s," or "herbs"; _fufu_ is a food made from yams or plantains boiled and pounded; perhaps there is some slight confusion.

_Nyam_ is not "to eat," but _enm_ is Tshi for "meat," as _nyama_ (in some form or other) is in every Bantu language. The nonsense-words in the songs may be corrupted from Tshi or some cognate language, but a fuller knowledge of these than I possess would be necessary in order to determine the point.

Transplanted African folk-lore has a peculiar interest of its own, and one is very glad to find Mr. Jekyll doing for Jamaica what Mr.

Chandler Harris, _e.g._ has done for Georgia. But the African element in the stories before us is far less evident than in "Uncle Remus,"

and is in many cases overlaid and inextricably mixed up with matter of European origin. At least eleven out of the fifty-one stories before us can be set down as imported, directly or indirectly, from Europe. I say directly or indirectly, because an examination of Chatelain's _Folk-tales of Angola_ and Junod's _Chants et Contes des Baronga_ shows that some tales, at any rate, have pa.s.sed from Portugal to Africa. Such are _La fille du Roi_ (Ronga), which is identical with Grimm's _The Shoes that were danced to pieces_, and with the Slovak-gypsy story of _The Three Girls_ (Groome, _Gypsy Folk-tales_, p. 141). But in the absence of more detailed and direct evidence than we yet possess, it would be rash to a.s.sume that they have pa.s.sed to America by way of Africa, rather than that they have been independently transmitted.

The eleven stories above referred to are: II. Yung-kyum-pyung, III.

King Daniel, VI. Blackbird and Woss-woss, X. Mr. Bluebeard, XVII.

Man-crow, XVIII. Saylan, XXI. Tacoma and the Old-witch Girl, XXVI. The Three Pigs, x.x.xI. Pretty Poll (another version of III.), x.x.xIX. Open Sesame (variant of VI.), VII. The Three Sisters. But some of these, as I hope to show presently, also have genuine African prototypes, and it is a question how far these fading traditions have been amalgamated with fairy-tales told to the slaves by the children of their European masters. The last named is one of a small group of tales (VII., XXIV., x.x.xIV., L.) which I cannot help referring to a common African original.

By far the greater number of the stories in this book, whether, strictly speaking, "Annancy stories" or not, come under the heading of animal-stories, and are of the same type as "Uncle Remus," Junod's "Roman du Livre," and numerous examples from various parts of Africa.

It will be remembered that, in most of these, the difference between animals and human beings is not very clearly kept in view by the narrators. As M. Junod says, "Toutes les btes qui pa.s.sent et repa.s.sent dans ces curieux rcits reprsentent des tres humains, cela va sans dire. Ils sont personnaliss par un procd linguistique qui consiste mettre devant le nom de l'animal un prfixe de la cla.s.se des hommes." (This is a point we must come back to later on.) "Ainsi _mpfoundla_, le livre ordinaire, devient dans le contes Noua-mpfoundla.... La Rainette, c'est Noua-chinana, l'Elphant, Noua-ndlopfou.... Leurs caractres physiques particuliers sont prsents devant l'imagination du conteur pour autant qu'ils donnent du pittoresque au rcit. Mais on les...o...b..ie tout aussi aisment ds qu'ils ne sont plus essentiels la narration." This feature constantly meets one in Bantu folk-lore: the hare and the elephant hire themselves out to hoe a man's garden; the swallow invites the c.o.c.k to dinner and his wife prepares the food, in the usual native hut with the fireplace in the middle and the _nsanja_ staging over it; the hare's wife goes to the river to draw water, and is caught by a crocodile; the tortoise carries his complaint to the village elders a.s.sembled in the smithy, and so on. M. Junod seems to me to overrate the conscious artistic purpose in the narrators of these tales: the native mind is quite ready to a.s.sume that animals think and act in much the same way as human beings, and this att.i.tude makes it easy to forget the outward distinctions when they appear as actors in a story.

No doubt this haziness of view is increased by the popular conception of metamorphosis as a possible occurrence in everyday life. When, as has more than once been the case, we find men firmly believing, not only that they can, under certain circ.u.mstances, turn into animals, but that they actually have done so, we may expect them to think it quite easy for animals to turn into men.

The prefix given by the Baronga to animals, when they are, so to speak, personified in tales, may seem a slight point, but it is not without interest. The Yaos in like manner give them the prefix _Che_ (_Che Sungula_, the Rabbit, _Che Likoswe_, the Rat, etc.), which, though usually translated "Mr.," is of common gender and used quite as often in addressing women as men. In Chatelain's Angola stories the animals sometimes (not always) have the honorific prefix _Na_ or _Ngana_, "Mr."; the latter is sometimes translated "Lord." In Luganda folk-lore the elephant (_enjovu_) is called Wa Njovu. In Zulu, Ucakijana (to whom we shall come back presently) is the diminutive form of _i-cakide_, the Weasel, put into the personal cla.s.s. I do not recall anything similar in Nyanja tales, but cannot help connecting with the above the fact that animals, whatever cla.s.s their names may belong to, are usually treated as persons in the tales. Not to be unduly technical, I would briefly explain that _njobvu_ (elephant) and _ng'ona_ (crocodile) would naturally take the p.r.o.noun _i_, but in the stories (and, I think, sometimes in other cases) they take _a_, which belongs to the first, or personal cla.s.s. Now, the reader will notice how often the animals in the stories before us are distinguished as "Mr." or "Bro'er" (cf. pp. 20, 23, 31, 86, etc.), though the Jamaica people seem to be less uniformly polite in this respect than Uncle Remus. "Brer Rabbit" is so familiar as to be taken for granted, as a rule, without further question; but, years before he had become a household word in this country, we find a writer in _Lippincott's Magazine_[4] remarking, "The dramatis person are honoured with the t.i.tle _Buh_, which is generally supposed to be an abbreviation of the word 'brother,' but it probably is a t.i.tle of respect equal to our 'Mr.'" The "but" seems hardly called for, since both a.s.sertions are seemingly true. We might also compare the Zulu _u Cakijana_ (1st cla.s.s), who is human or quasi-human, while _i-cakide_ (2nd cla.s.s) is the name for the Weasel.

[Footnote 4: December, 1877, p. 751. The article is one on "Negro Folk-lore," by W. Owens, and contains several stories, some of these independent versions of "Uncle Remus" tales, while others are not to be found in that collection.]

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 (_Cunnie Rabbit_, p. 282), or applying to a "Mory man" for amulets (_ib._ p. 139), he only behaves like all other animals, as explained above. A Temne authority (_ib._ p. 93) 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 (pp.

4-5) of the "metamorphic shape, that of the Spider," which he a.s.sumes, 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" (a version of _Rumpelstilzchen_, or _Tom t.i.t Tot_), the only hint of his spider character is contained in a mere allusion (quite external to the story) 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 (p. 33).

He is always in danger from Cows (p. 107): "Anywhere Cow see him, he reach him down with his mouth"; and he lives in a banana branch (p.

119) 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 (p. 23) 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" (p. 62). 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,[5] 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,[6] 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.

[Footnote 5: J.C. Christaller, in Bttner's _Zeitschr. fr Afr.

Sprachen_. M. Rn Ba.s.set says of a similar story included in Col.

Monteil's _Contes Soudanais_: "L'Enfant et le caman est le sujet bien connu de l'ingrat.i.tude punie que l'on retrouve dans tous les pays de l'ancien monde, et dont M. Kenneth Mackenzie vient d'tudier les diverses variantes." The idea is one so likely to occur independently that we must not in all cases resort to the hypothesis of borrowing.]

[Footnote 6: Duff Macdonald, _Africana_, ii. 346.]

As there is a Gold Coast tradition which affirms the human race to be descended from the Spider,[7] it might be expected that he should sometimes appear in a more favourable light, and also that those peoples who had lost this myth, or never possessed it, should concentrate their attention on the darker side of his character. At the same time, even in what may be called his own home, he does not appear as infallible. A very curious story, given by Zimmermann in his _Grammatical Sketch of the Akra or G Language_, shows us the Spider and his son in the character of the two sisters who usually figure in tales of the "Holle" type,[8] and, strangely enough, it is the father who, by his wilfulness and indiscretion, forfeits the advantages which the son has gained. During a time of famine the young spider crawls into a rat-hole in search of a nut which has rolled into it, and there meets with three unkempt and unwashed spirits, who desire him to peel some yams and cook the peelings. He does so, and they are changed into large yams. They give him a large basket of yams to carry home, and teach him a spell which is not to be imparted to any one else. He repeatedly obtains supplies from the same source, but at last is followed by his father, who insists on going in his stead. He derides and disobeys the spirits, loses his yams, and is flogged into the bargain.

[Footnote 7: Ellis, _Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast_.]

[Footnote 8: No. 16 in the _Handbook of Folklore_ (p. 122). It might also be referred to the "Golden Goose" type (51). Stories of this kind are the Ronga "Route du Ciel," and "The Three Women" in Duff Macdonald's _Africana_. But perhaps the tale referred to in the text comes nearer to "The Two Hunchbacks."]

We have mentioned the comparative absence of the Spider from Bantu folk-lore. I have been able to discover only two references to him in East Africa, both to be found in Duff Macdonald's _Africana_. The first is in a creation-myth of the Yaos (i. 297), which informs us that when _Mulungu_ was driven from earth by the conduct of mankind, who had set the bush on fire, he went, being unable to climb a tree as the Chameleon had done, to call the Spider. "The spider went on high and returned again, and said, 'I have gone on high nicely,' and he said, 'You now, Mulungu, go on high.' Mulungu then went with the spider on high. And he said, 'When they die, let them come on high here.'" The other is in the story of "The Dead Chief and his Younger Brother" (ii. 322)--also Yao. The dead chief gives his brother four bags to enable him to overcome the obstacles which his enemies put in his way; he opens the first on coming to a large tree in his path--a wood-moth comes out and gnaws a way through. From the second bag comes out a manis (scaly ant-eater), which digs a way under a rock, and from the third (which he opens when he comes to the bank of a river) a spider, which "went to the other side," and, presumably (though this is not expressly stated), made a bridge with its web for him to cross.[9]

[Footnote 9: In Mr. Dudley Kidd's _Savage Childhood_ (published since the above was written), I find that Zulu (or Pondo?) boys draw certain omens from spiders, in connection with dreams (p. 105), and that in Gazaland the rainbow is called "the spider's bow" (p. 153).]

Mr. R.E. Dennett (_Folklore of the Fjort_, p. 74) gives a Lower Congo story, telling how the Spider brought fire down from Nzambi Mpungu in heaven, and won the daughter of Nzambi (Mother Earth) by so doing. In an Angola story (Heli Chatelain, p. 131) 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 Schn.[10]