Bright with wings and feathers fair.”
CHAPTER XIV
OBEAHISM AND COFFEE-PLANTING
It was whilst staying at this pen that I learnt a good deal on the subject of native negro superstitions.
I had been told by a coffee-planter, whose dealings with his black labourers had been somewhat acrimonious, that they had “set Obi” for him. Although the matter in dispute between him as landlord, and the negroes as tenants, amounted only to a few pounds, the latter, collectively, had paid as much as £25 to an Obeah man to Obi him. He had laughed at them, and had pointed out to them the futility of their spells and curses, so far as he and his health and prosperity were concerned.
“You can’t Obi me. There’s not a man among you good enough to Obi me,” he told them. The black woolly pates had gone off to talk the matter over amongst themselves, and they had come to the same conclusion: they couldn’t Obi a white man. So ingrained in them is this belief in the spell of their wizards, that I am told in the country parts, where their ignorance is still almost undiluted, that they look upon the “passon” as the white Obeah man.
I have not seen a negro grow pale at the mention of Obeah, but I have seen him squirm, and noted the expression of unqualified tenor spreading over his features as I enlarged upon the folly of it.
Mrs M——’s governess, who came from a parish some 20 miles down the Black River, told me that she knew by sight several of these champion swindlers, called “Obeah men,” and that Obi prevailed largely in that neighbourhood notwithstanding the laws passed for its suppression.
Before proceeding further, I will quote from two authorities upon this subject of Obeahism which the professors of it originally brought from Africa. In fact there have been few estates which have not had their particular “Obeah man” in times past.