Jamaican song and story

by Unknown

"[Annancy and Death]" is curious, and, as it stands, not very intelligible. Death, as a person, is introduced into several African stories,[25] and even (in one from the Ivory Coast) together with the Spider, but none of these have anything parallel with the one before us. The last part, however, where Annancy and his children are clinging to the rafters, and Death waiting for them below, recalls the story to be found on pp. 224-226 of Cunnie Rabbit. The Spider and his family take refuge in the roof when pursued by the Leopard, and he sits on the ground and catches them as they drop one by one. Last of all, the wife, Nahker, "he say he done tire, en Spider say: 'Yo' wey (= who) big so? Fa' down now, yo' go get de trouble.' Nahker fa' down, Lepped yeat um. Spider he one lef' hang." He escapes, however.

In "[Dummy]," Annancy wins a bet and the hand of the King's daughter by inducing "Peafowl" to make the dumb man talk. This "Peafowl" does by the sweetness of his song; but in a Duala story given by Lederbogen as "Der Tausendfuss und das stumme Kind," the means adopted more nearly resemble the time-honoured recipes for detecting changelings in this country. The Mouse advised the dumb child's parents to consult the Spider, who told them to hang up a centipede over the fireplace, set on a pot of water just underneath it, and leave the child sitting beside the fire. They did so, and went out. As soon as the steam rose from the water, the centipede, feeling the heat, began to struggle, and the dumb child watching it cried out in his excitement, "Father! there is a centipede going to fall into the pot."

"[William Tell]" is puzzling. There is no single point of contact between the owner of the witch-tree and the mythical archer of Europe. It is most probable that the name (a likely one to remain in the memory) had been picked up by some negro story-teller who did not know the tale belonging to it and simply attached it to the first character that came handy. The "sings" by means of which Annancy fells the tree occur frequently in native African stories; we need only mention the incident (found not only in the Xosa "Bird that made Milk," but in a Duala tale, and elsewhere) of the song which made the hoed garden return to grass and weeds, and that of Simbubukwana's sister[26] who sang "Have legs, have arms," and the boy who was without those members immediately grew them. The notion of spells to be sung, however, does not seem to be confined to any country or race.

I do not remember any exact parallel to "[Dry River]" (XXXIII.), but the incident of the river rising is found in Africa with several different sequels. In a Nyanja story which I have in MS., some children go out into the bush to gather wild fruit, and are cut off on their return by the rising of the river. They are helped across by "a big bird, with one wing, one eye and one leg" (one of the "half-beings"[27] whose place in Bantu folk-lore has not yet been fully worked out), and charged not to tell who took them over. One boy tells his mother, and is drowned on the next expedition, his companions getting across in safety. In "The Village Maiden and the Cannibal" (Mrs. Martin's Basutoland, its Legends and Customs), the girls cannot cross the swollen stream till they have thrown a large root into the water, and complied with the directions. The last girl, who is reluctant to obey, but finally gives in, is not drowned, but she and her sister have an adventure with cannibals of a not uncommon kind, which may be referred to Mr. Jacobs's "Flight from Witchcraft" type. Two other stories, a Kinga (North-east Nyasa) and a Machame (Kilimanjaro) one, have the same opening incident (in the one case, however, it is a rock and not a river which enlarges itself and blocks the way), but continue in quite a different way—the girls are helped by an animal (in one case a jackal, in another a hyena) who subsequently insists on marrying one of them. The Machame tale, to which we shall have to return presently, as it belongs to the group to which we refer "[Yellow Snake]" and some others, goes on to relate how the girl escaped from the hyena's village; the Kinga one takes an entirely different course.

"[Leah and Tiger]" is one of the stories which can be most unhesitatingly identified as African; and, as it happens, the examples at present known to me are nearly all Bantu. Perhaps the closest parallel is the Suto "Tselane" (Jacottet, p. 69),[28] where, however, the girl, instead of being secluded by her father to avoid the trouble which her refusal to marry threatens to bring upon him, herself insists on staying in the house her parents are leaving. As in the Jamaica version, they bring her food every day, and sing to let her know of their approach. The cannibal on the prowl (represented in Jamaica by the "tiger") imitates the mother's voice, but fails; after swallowing a red-hot hoe, he succeeds at the first trial. He does not eat Tselane, however, and so end the story with a warning against obstinacy; he puts her into a bag to carry her home, and rests on his way at a hut, which proves to be her uncle's. While he is resting inside the hut, leaving his bag outside, the family discover the girl and let her out, substituting a dog and some biting ants. In other versions it is bees and wasps, or snakes and toads; but the result is always the same—the death of the cannibal. The incident of swallowing red-hot iron to soften the voice is found also in "Demane and Demazana" (Theal) and elsewhere. In a curious Masai story, "The Old Man and his Knee" (Hollis, The Masai: Language and Folklore, p. 153), the "enemies" (not said to be cannibals) carry off the old man's two children by means of the same stratagem. After failing in the first attempt they consult a medicine-man to find out how they can "make their voices resemble an old man's." He tells them merely to go back, and eat nothing on the road. They eat a lizard and an ant, and their voices do not produce the desired effect. On trying again, and this time complying exactly with the doctor's directions, they deceive the children and get the door opened. This incident is preserved in "Leah," and, like the Masai "enemies," Tiger thinks that such a trifle as the guava and "duckanoo" cannot possibly do any harm. The Masai story concludes with the killing of the old man by making him swallow a hot stone—an incident which crops up in various connections in the Hare stories, but seems out of its place in this one. On the whole (though I do not like to hazard a conjecture) it seems more probable that the Masai had picked up this tale from some of their Bantu neighbours than that the Bantu should have adopted it from them.

As regards the imported stories, it seems reasonably clear that "[Yung-Kyum-Pyung]" is a "Rumpelstiltzchen" story which has accidentally become associated with Annancy. Though the superstition on which these stories are based exists in Africa as well as in other parts of the world, and is one of the factors in the custom of hlonipa, I do not remember any tale embodying it in this form, though there are numerous examples of those which turn a tabu of some sort.

"[King Daniel]" is the story of the jealous sister, best known, perhaps, in the ballad of "Binnorie." But it has African prototypes as well, though the resemblance to these is not so close, in which the crime is discovered by the song of a bird—sometimes the metamorphosed heart of the victim. In "Masilo and Masilonyane" and the Kinga "Die Reiherfeder,"[29] one brother (or companion) kills the other; in "Unyengebule" (Callaway) the husband kills the wife, and here it is her feather head-dress which turns into a bird. "[Pretty Poll]" (XXXI.) is a variant of this story.

Another pair of variants, apparently, are "[Blackbird and Woss-woss]" and "[Open Sesame]." But the former of these, it seems to me, corresponds much more closely with a Nago story of the Lizard and the Tortoise, given by M. Basset (Contes populaires d'Afrique, p. 217); and it should be remembered that the Nagos of Yoruba are one of the tribes represented among the Jamaica negroes. The lizard finds a rock containing a store of yams, and overhearing the words used by the owner "Stone, open!" obtains food for himself in time of famine. He imparts the secret to the tortoise, and they go together, but the tortoise lingers behind to load himself with all he can carry, and not knowing the word fails to get out, and is killed when the owner returns. He revives, however, and gets the cockroach to stick his shell together, thus presenting a point of contact with other aetiological myths about the Tortoise. The rescue by the army of wasps I have been unable to match.

"[Man-crow]" is the story, which exists in so many variants, where the hero is robbed of the fruit of his achievement by an impostor stepping in at the last minute. The nearest parallel which occurs to me is "Rombao" (probably obtained from a Portuguese source by the Quilimane natives who related it to Mr. Duff Macdonald), where the hero kills the whale and cuts out its tongue; the captain who finds it dead claims his reward, but is discomfited by Rombao's appearance with the tongue.

"[The Three Pigs]" will be readily recognized as the familiar English story, and corresponds pretty closely to the version in Mr. Jacobs's English Fairy Tales. A version current among the negroes of the Southern States is given by Mr. Owens in the paper in Lippincott's Magazine already referred to. This version, entitled "Tiny Pig," omits the two incidents of the apple-tree and the butter-churn; but curiously enough these appear as "Buh Rabbit" episodes in another part of the same paper, the apple-tree having become a pear-tree, and the churn a tin mug which Buh Rabbit puts over his head, while he hangs various articles of tinware about his person.