The “Dry-head” episode is very popular in Jamaica. From Jekyll’s
version, 48–49, I have corrected my version 30c as Johnson gave it and
made Dry-head, not Anansi, the victim of the bag trick. Johnson was not
a reliable informant. Other Jamaica versions occur in Pamela Smith,
75–76, as the conclusion to the “cowitch” story, and in Wona, 44–50.
The story falls into three parts. (1) Anansi pretends that he is about
to die unless he has the whole of a fat barrow to himself. (2) He
carries it away into the woods to eat and inadvertently picks up
Dry-head, who devours the whole. (3) He invents an expedient to get rid
of Dry-head.
Compare Surinam, JAFL 30: 244–246; Madagascar, Renel 2: 1–2; 57–59;
Kaffir, Theal, 158–162; Upper Congo, Weeks FL 12: 82–83; West African,
Tremearne, FL 22: 61–63; Barker, 66; Cronise and Ward, 287–290;
Rattray, 2: 106–122.
(1) Rattray’s Hausa version is identical with the Jamaican. The Surinam
story lacks the Dry-head ending. In the Madagascar and Congo stories,
the trick turns upon pretending that a spirit warns the wife against
poison if she partakes of her husband’s food. In Theal, Kenkebe visits
his father-in-law in time of famine, is feasted on an ox and given bags
of corn, which he conceals. Compare numbers 21 c, 23, 24, 25, and 29.
(2) A Masai story (Hollis, 15) tells of two brothers who are given a
bullock to slaughter. They carry it to “a place where there was no man
or animal, or bird, or insect, or anything living,” and a devil puts
them to much inconvenience. The pursuit of Anansi by the shadow of
Death, in the Wona version of 27, has already been referred to in the
Dry-head episode. In Barker, 81–84, the stolen flour-producing stone
which Anansi is carrying off, sticks to his head and grinds him to
pieces, as referred to in the note to number 22.
In Theal, Kenkebe’s wife and son hide themselves behind the rock which
conceals his secret store, and push over a stone which pursues him as
far as his own house.
In Barker, 66, the king gives to the greedy man a box so enchanted that
it can never be put down.
In Sac and Fox Indian tales, JAFL 15: 177, the monster-killing twins
bring home a rock which sticks upon their backs until they carry it to
its place again.
In the Ojibway Nanabushu cycle, Jones, Pub. Eth. Soc. 1: 117–127,
Nanabushu is cooking a deer. The branches of the tree creak and he gets
up to grease them and is caught and hung there. Meanwhile, the wolves
come and eat up the deer. He finally escapes, discovers that the brains
of the deer are still left in the deer-skull, transforms himself into a
snake and crawls into the head. Turning too quickly back into human
shape, he gets caught with the skull fast to his head and has to carry
it about with him until he manages to break it against a rock.
(3) The regular Jamaica conclusion of the Dry-head episode seems to be
the Aesopic one in which a bird carries him in air and drops him, not
against a rock but, in Jekyll, “in the deepest part of the woods;” in
version (c), “in a sea-ball.” In another version not printed here,
Anansi takes in an old man because he has some food with him; but when
the food gives out, the man “become a Dry-head on him,” and Anansi puts
him off on Tacoomah, who leaves him by the sea so that a wave comes up
and drowns him. In version (a) Anansi burns him up. Version (b) is a
witticism in the same class as “Dry-head and the Barber” in this
collection.
In Pamela Smith’s version, Anansi shoots the bird who is doing him the
favor of carrying off Dry-head. See note to number 70 and compare P.
Smith, 59–64, in which Tiger, pursued by the “Nyams,” begs one animal
after another to hide him, but always lets his presence be known.
Finally, when Goat kills the “Nyams,” he eats Goat with the “Nyams.”
In Dorsey, The Pawnee, 126, and Traditions of the Arikara, 146–148,
Coyote, pursued by a Rolling Stone, takes refuge with the Bull-bats and
is defended by them. In the Pawnee version, he later insults his
rescuers.