LXXV.
Now we come to a tragedy. Selina is drowned, and they sing smoothly and flowingly:—
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Oh Selina! Oh Selina! John Crow de a river side a call fe Selina! Oh poor Selina! Duppy an' all a call fe Selina! Oh poor Selina. |
Everybody in Jamaica believes in Duppy, and many women and children will not go out at night for fear of meeting one.
A man, they say, has two spirits, one from God and the other not from God. The one from God is good, and the one not from God may be either good or bad. During sleep, these spirits leave the body and go to other people's houses in search of food. Being shadows themselves, they feed on the shadow of food and on the smell of food. They are seldom far apart, and the heavenly spirit can always prevent the earthly spirit from doing harm. At death the God-given spirit flies up upon a tree, and goes to heaven the third day. The other spirit remains on earth as Duppy. Its abiding place is the grave of the dead man, but it wanders about at night as it did when he was alive. A good Duppy will watch over and protect the living. A bad Duppy tries to frighten and harm people, which it is able to do now that it has lost the restraining influence of its former companion, the heavenly spirit. It can assume any sort of shape, appearing sometimes as a man, sometimes as an animal. If it is a very bad Duppy, it makes the place where it is unbearably hot. The Negro believes that he can put a bad Duppy upon another person.[48] He proceeds as follows:—Going to the grave at midnight, he scoops a small hollow in the ground and puts in some rice, sprinkling it with sugar-water, a mixture of water and moist cane-sugar. He then directs Duppy to visit the person whose name he mentions, and goes away without looking behind him. The person on whom Duppy is put becomes "tearing mad," and it requires a ten-pound fee to "take the shadow off." How to do this is the Obeah-man's secret. A Duppy of one's own family is worse than a stranger's, and the "baddest" of all is Coolie Duppy. One of the most dreaded Duppies is "Rolling (i.e. roaring) Calf." It goes about making a hideous noise, and clanking a chain. "If Rolling Calf catch you, give you one lick, you dead." Your only chance is to run, and you must keep on "cutting ten" (making the sign of the cross), and the pursuing monster has to go round that place ten times. "Shop-keeper and butcher," so goes local tradition, "tief too much (rob their customers very much) and when they dead they turn Rolling Calf."
Those who are born with a caul can see Duppy. So can those who rub their faces with the rheum from the eye of a horse or dog, and those who cut their eyelashes. Every Duppy walks two feet above the ground, floating in the air. If a child is not christened before it is six months old, Duppy will carry it away into the bush. To avoid this, a Bible and pair of scissors are laid on the child's pillow. The scissors are a protection, owing to their cross-like form.
Such are the main beliefs with regard to this remarkable superstition of Duppy on earth.[49]