Simeon Falconer, Santa Cruz Mountains.
There was a very hard time, no food whatsoever could they get, so
Anansi him family well fear. So when Bredder Tiger and Bredder Tacoomah
go see him, he tell them for last three or four days his wife and
children didn’t eat bread. Say they will go back home and send him some
of ’em food, and the two go back from Nansi yard and just dodge him now
and hear his wife call, “Heah! dinner ready!” And Bredder Tiger and
Bredder Tacoomah go back to the house knock on the door. The wife open
the door and Anansi go right out of the house—’shamed! The wife give
them some of the food to eat and it was only fresh beef.
They come back to Bredder Anansi now and Nansi tell them say, “I will
get the beef, but whatever I tell you to do, you mus’ be sure to do
it.” An’ he put on a big pot of water on fire, an’ him, Nansi, get into
the pot of water and gwine tell them shut him up in him pot. An’ tell
them as soon as him knock the pot, open the pot. An’ him come out now,
tell Bredder Tiger he mus’ get in the pot,—Tacoomah long side in the
pot too. And shut them up, an’ he get a heavy weight an’ put it on the
pot top. An’ he went right outside and tell him wife mus’ shove up the
fire, mak the fire bigger an’ bigger. An’ when him come back, them was
properly cooked. They gwine eat now, he was tuning up his fiddle—
“I got them now! I got them now!
Them think they got me, but I got them now!”