Tam!—tam!—tamtamtam! ... The spectacle is interesting from the Batterie d'Esnotz. High up the Rue Peysette,—up all the precipitous streets that ascend the mornes,—a far gathering of showy color appears: the massing of maskers in rose and blue and sulphur-yellow attire.... Then what a degringolade begins!—what a tumbling, leaping, cascading of color as the troupes descend. Simultaneously from north and south, from the Mouillage and the Fort, two immense bands enter the Grande Rue;—the great dancing societies these,—the Sans-souci and the Intrépides. They are rivals; they are the composers and singers of those Carnival songs,—cruel satires most often, of which the local meaning is unintelligible to those unacquainted with the incident inspiring the improvisation,—of which the words are too often coarse or obscene,—whose burdens will be caught up and re-echoed through all the burghs of the island. Vile as may be the motive, the satire, the malice, these chants are preserved for generations by the singular beauty of the airs; and the victim of a Carnival song need never hope that his failing or his wrong will be forgotten: it will be sung of long after he is in his grave.
... Ten minutes more, and the entire length of the street is thronged with a shouting, shrieking, laughing, gesticulating host of maskers. Thicker and thicker the press becomes;—the drums are silent: all are waiting for the signal of the general dance. Jests and practical jokes are being everywhere perpetrated; there is a vast hubbub, made up of screams, cries, chattering, laughter. Here and there snatches of Carnival song are being sung:—"Cambronne, Cambronne;" or "Ti fenm-là doux, li doux, li doux!"... "Sweeter than sirup the little woman is";—this burden will be remembered when the rest of the song passes out of fashion. Brown hands reach out from the crowd of masks, pulling the beards and patting the faces of white spectators.... "Main connaitt! ou, chè!—moin connaitt ou, doudoux! ba moin ti d'mi franc!" It is well to refuse the half-franc,—though you do not know what these maskers might take a notion to do to-day.... Then all the great drums suddenly boom together; all the bands strike up; the mad medley kaleidoscopes into some sort of order; and the immense processional dance begins. Prom the Mouillage to the Fort there is but one continuous torrent of sound and color: you are dazed by the tossing of peaked caps, the waving of hands, and twinkling of feet;—and all this passes with a huge swing,—a regular swaying to right and left.... It will take at least an hour for all to pass; and it is an hour well worth passing. Band after band whirls by; the musicians all garbed as women or as monks in canary-colored habits;—before them the dancers are dancing backward, with a motion as of skaters; behind them all leap and wave hands as in pursuit. Most of the bands are playing creole airs,—but that of the Sans-souci strikes up the melody of the latest French song in vogue,—Petits amoureux aux plumes ("Little feathered lovers"[18]). Everybody now seems to know this song by heart; you hear children only five or six years old singing it: there are pretty lines in it, although two out of its four stanzas are commonplace enough, and it is certainly the air rather than the words which accounts for its sudden popularity.
[18]"Petits amoureux aux plumes,
Enfants d'un brillant séjour
Vous ignorez l'amertume,
Vous parlez souvent d'amour:...
Vous méprisez la dorure,
Les salons, et les bijoux;
Vous chérissez la Nature,
Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!
"Voyez là bas, dans cette église,
Auprès d'un confessional,
Le prêtre, qui veut faire croire à Lise,
Qu'un baiser est un grand mal;—
Pour prouver à la mignonne
Qu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux,
N'a jamais damné personne
Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!"
[Translation.]
Little feathered lovers, cooing,
Children of the radiant air,
Sweet your speech,—the speech of wooing;
Ye have ne'er a grief to bear!
Gilded ease and jewelled fashion
Never own a charm for you;
Ye love Nature's truth with passion.
Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!
See that priest who, Lise confessing,
Wants to make the girl believe
That a kiss without a blessing
Is a fault for which to grieve!
Now to prove, to his vexation,
That no tender kiss and true
Ever caused a soul's damnation,
Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!
V
... Extraordinary things are happening in the streets through which the procession passes. Pest-smitten women rise from their beds to costume themselves,—to mask face already made unrecognizable by the hideous malady,—and stagger out to join the dancers.... They do this in the Rue Longchamps, in the Rue St. Jean-de-Dieu, in the Rue Peysette, in the Rue de Petit Versailles. And in the Rue Ste.-Marthe there are three young girls sick with the disease, who hear the blowing of the horns and the pattering of feet and clapping of hands in chorus;—they get up to look through the slats of their windows on the masquerade,—and the creole passion of the dance comes upon them. "Ah!" cries one,—"nou ké amieusé nou!—c'est zaffai si nou mò!" [We will have our fill of fun: what matter if we die after!] And all mask, and join the rout, and dance down to the Savane, and over the river bridge into the high streets of the Fort, carrying contagion with them!... No extraordinary example, this: the ranks of the dancers hold many and many a verrettier.
VI
... The costumes are rather disappointing,—though the mummery has some general characteristics that are not unpicturesque;—for example, the predominance of crimson and canary-yellow in choice of color, and a marked predilection for pointed hoods and high-peaked head-dresses. Mock religious costumes also form a striking element in the general tone of the display,—Franciscan, Dominion, or Penitent habits,—usually crimson or yellow, rarely sky-blue. There are no historical costumes, few eccentricities or monsters: only a few "vampire-bat" head-dresses abruptly break the effect of the peaked caps and the hoods.... Still there are some decidedly local ideas in dress which deserve notice,—the congo, the bébé (or ti-manmaille), the ti nègue gouos-sirop ("little molasses-negro"); and the diablesse.
The congo is merely the exact reproduction of the dress worn by workers on the plantations. For the women, a gray calico shirt and coarse petticoat of percaline; with two coarse handkerchiefs (mouchoirs fatas), one for her neck, and one for the head, over which is worn a monstrous straw hat;—she walks either barefoot or shod with rude native sandals, and she carries a hoe. For the man the costume consists of a gray shirt of rough material, blue canvas pantaloons, a large mouchoir fatas to tie around his waist, and a chapeau Bacoué,—an enormous hat of Martinique palm-straw. He walks barefooted and carries a cutlass.