The clothes-borrowing idea occurs in Cronise and Ward, 178–186, where “half-man” borrows his other half; in Dayrell, 39; Fortier, 71; Hollis, Masai, 201–202; Parsons, Andros Island, 48 iv, 49 v, 50 i, 53 iv, and in Sea Islands, 46.
(3) In Jekyll, 102, and all my versions, the girl’s song for help and the answering swallowing song furnish the main interest of the story; and the rescue by the brothers follows in Jekyll and in my two versions. In my third version, the Snake swallows the girl while her parents are sleeping. In Lewis’s much earlier story, a jealous sorceress gives her step-daughter over to a great black dog named Tiger, who takes her away to his den. She sings until her hunter brothers hear her song, rush in and rescue her.
In Renel 1:275–277, a girl weds a beast in disguise, because of his handsome clothes, is carried away to his hole, and finally attracts her mother’s ears by her song of lamentation. In other African stories of monster marriages, the song is entrusted to a bird messenger.
For the rescue, see Jekyll’s Bluebeard story, 35–37; Bleek, 61–64; Christensen, 10–14; and numbers 83 and 86.
Evidently the story has become fixed in Jamaica out of a number of different elements and does not depend upon a common source. The lesson to the over-fastidious girl, ridicule of her fear of the ordeal of marriage, and the old setting of the rescue by hunter-brothers, are drawn together into a coherent story. It is the song that makes the story popular.
86. The Girls who married the Devil. [[Story]]
The flight from a Devil husband has also taken on a fixed form in Jamaica in contrast to the number of variants related on Andros Island and the much more complex versions known in Africa. It is possible that this is true only for the localities visited.
The story has three parts. (1) A girl marries a handsome man against her little brother’s warning. (2) The man, who is usually the devil, carries her home, accompanied in secret by the brother, locks her up, and sets a cock to watch her. (3) An old woman befriends her, they feed the cock with various grains and finally escape over the river in the Devil’s magic boat, pursued by the Devil.
Jekyll, 148–151, The Devil and the Princess, has a version of this story.