The stories in this collection were taken down from the lips of over
sixty negro story-tellers in the remote country districts of Jamaica
during two visits to the island, one of six weeks in the summer of
1919, the other of five weeks in the winter of 1921. The music was all
recorded during the second visit by Miss Helen Roberts, either directly
from the story-teller or from a phonographic record which I had made.
In this way the original style of the story-telling, which in some
instances mingles story, song and dance, is as nearly as possible
preserved, although much is necessarily lost in the slow process of
dictation. The lively and dramatic action, the change in voice, even
the rapid and elliptical vernacular, can not appear on the printed
page. But the stories are set down without polish or adornment, as
nearly as possible as they were told to me, and hence represent, so far
as they go, a true folk art.
Although some story-tellers claimed to know “more than a hundred”
stories, no one narrator gave me more than thirty, and usually not more
than four or five at one interview.
To all such story-telling, as to riddling and song, the name of “Anansi
story” is applied,—an appellation at least as old as 1816, when Monk
Lewis in his journal describes the classes of “Nancy stories” popular
in his day among the negroes as the tragical witch story and the
farcical “neger-trick.” The “neger-trick” harks back to slave times and
is rarely heard to-day; tales of sorcery, too, are heard best from the
lips of older narrators. Modern European fairy tales and animal stories
(evidently unknown to Lewis) have taken their place. Two influences
have dominated story-telling in Jamaica, the first an absorbing
interest in the magical effect of song which, at least in the old witch
tales, far surpasses that in the action of the story; the second, the
conception of the spider Anansi as the trickster hero among a group of
animal figures. Anansi is the culture hero of the Gold Coast,—a kind of
god—, just as Turtle is of the Slave coast and Hare (our own Brer
Rabbit) of the Bantu people. “Anansi stories” regularly form the
entertainment during wake-nights, and it is difficult not to believe
that the vividness with which these animal actors take part in the
story springs from the idea that they really represent the dead in the
underworld whose spirits have the power, according to the native
belief, of taking animal form. The head-man on a Westmoreland
cattle-pen even assured me that Anansi, once a man, was now leader of
the dead in this land of shades. However this may be, the development
of Jamaican obeah or witchcraft has been along the same two lines of
interest. Magic songs are used in communicating with the dead, and the
obeah-man who sets a ghost upon an enemy often sends it in the form of
some animal; hence there are animals which must be carefully handled
lest they be something other than they appear.
Riddling is a favorite pastime of the Jamaica negro. Much is preserved
from old African originals in the personification of common objects of
yard and road-side, much is borrowed also from old English folk
riddling. That this spread has been along the line of a common language
is proved by the fact that only a dozen parallels occur in Mason’s
Spanish collection from Porto Rico, at least ten of which are quoted by
Espinosa from New Mexico, while of collections from English-speaking
neighbors, fourteen out of fifty-five riddles collected in South
Carolina and nine out of twenty-one from Andros Island are found also
in Jamaica. Particular patterns are set for Jamaica riddling into which
the phrasing falls with a rhythmical swing careless of rhyme,—“My
father has in his yard” and “Going up to town.” The giving of a riddle
is regularly preceded by a formula drawn from old English sources—
Riddle me this, riddle me that,
Perhaps you can guess this riddle
And perhaps not!
generally abbreviated into
Riddle me riddle,
Guess me this riddle,
And perhaps not.
The art is practised as a social amusement, groups forming in which
each person in the circle must propound riddles until his supply is
exhausted or his riddle unguessed.
My own work as a collector in this engrossing field of Jamaican
folk-lore owes much to those collectors who have preceded me and who
have enjoyed a longer and more intimate acquaintance than has been
possible for me with the people and their idiom;—to Monk Lewis, a true
folk-lorist, whose “Journal” of 1816 is of the greatest interest
to-day, to Mr. Walter Jekyll and his excellent volume of songs and
stories in the Folk-lore Publications of 1907, and to the writers of
nursery tales, Mrs. Milne-Home, Pamela Smith, and Mrs. W. E. Wilson
(Wona). I take this opportunity also to acknowledge most gratefully the
many courtesies for which I am indebted during my visits to the island.
I particularly wish to thank Professor Frank Cundall for his advice and
cooperation, and for the use of the invaluable West India library
connected with the Jamaica Institute in Kingston where I was able to
consult books not easily to be found in library collections. To the
Hon. and Mrs. Coke-Kerr, to Mrs. Harry Farquharson and to the Rev. and
Mrs. Ashton I am gratefully indebted for many courtesies in the task of
finding reliable native informants. To these informants themselves,—to
Simeon Falconer, William Forbes, George Parkes, and a score of others I
owe thanks for their ready response to my interest. In America also I
wish to thank Mrs. Elsie Clews Parsons for suggestions as to method and
for the use of her valuable bibliography and Mrs. Louise Dennis Hand
for help with Spanish collections, and to express my grateful
obligations to Professor Franz Boas for his patient editing and
valuable bibliographical suggestions.
The Folk-lore Foundation
Vassar College Martha Warren Beckwith
April, 1924.