15. Long Shirt. [[Story]]
Hendrick’s version of this good story is the only one I heard in Jamaica. It has a European coloring in the speaking garment, which resembles the English versions of Jack and the Bean-stalk. The setting of the dance resembles number [4], but in this story the dance plays no motivating part. For the horn as stump see Aesop, Phaedrus 2: 8. The conclusion is no doubt a turn of Hendrick’s own, as he was fond of explanatory endings and got one in whenever he could. [[242]]
16. Shut up in the Pot. [[Story]]
This common African story is not popular in America in this form, either because the idea is repulsive or because it is too simple to make a good story. The essential feature, that of taking turns going into the pot, is employed in number [37], and resembles the playing at tie each other of number [1]. It is used in some versions of number [98]. In Wona, 14–18, Anansi gets the animals into his pot by proposing a weight-testing contest.
Compare: Jacottet, 12–14; Junod, 91; Dayrell, 36–37; Elmslie, FL 3: 104–105; Boas and Simango JAFL 35: 168–170.
In Dayrell’s version, Bat pretends to make soup by jumping into a pot which he has previously prepared with food, and persuades his companion to scald himself to death by imitating him. Yeats drew his play of the “Pot of Lentils” from an Irish version in which a stone serves as the magic means instead of the magician’s person.
17. House in the Air. [[Story]]
The story of obtaining entrance to a hidden food-supply “in the air” takes two general forms in Jamaica—first, that in which a song serves as pass-word, as in the voice-softening Rapunzel plot, number [91]; second, that of the lost pass, numbers [22] and [100]. The lost pass takes two directions; there is either a forgotten pass-word or a destroyed “key.”