I
He who first gave to Martinique its poetical name, _Le Pays des
Revenants_, thought of his wonderful island only as "The Country of
Comers-back," where Native's unspeakable spell bewitches wandering souls
like the caress of a Circe,--never as the Land of Ghosts. Yet either
translation of the name holds equal truth: a land of ghosts it is, this
marvellous Martinique! Almost every plantation has its familiar
spirits,--its phantoms: some may be unknown beyond the particular
district in which fancy first gave them being;--but some belong to
popular song and story,--to the imaginative life of the whole people.
Almost every promontory and peak, every village and valley along the
coast, has its special folk-lore, its particular tradition. The legend
of Thomasseau of Perinnelle, whose body was taken out of the coffin and
carried away by the devil through a certain window of the
plantation-house, which cannot be closed up by human power;--the
Demarche legend of the spectral horseman who rides up the hill on bright
hot days to seek a friend buried more than a hundred years ago;--the
legend of the _Habitation Dillon_, whose proprietor was one night
mysteriously summoned from a banquet to disappear forever;--the legend
of l'Abbé Piot, who cursed the sea with the curse of perpetual
unrest;--the legend of Aimée Derivry of Robert, captured by Barbary
pirates, and sold to become a Sultana-Validé--(she never existed,
though you can find an alleged portrait in M. Sidney Darney's history of
Martinique): these and many similar tales might be told to you even on a
journey from St. Pierre to Fort-de-France, or from Lamentin to La
Trinité, according as a rising of some peak into view, or the sudden
opening of an before the vessel's approach, recalls them to a creole
companion.
And new legends are even now being made; for in this remote colony, to
which white immigration has long ceased,--a country so mountainous that
people are born and buried in the same valley without ever seeing towns
but a few hours' journey beyond their native hills, and that distinct
racial types are forming within three leagues of each other,--the memory
of an event or of a name which has had influence enough to send one echo
through all the forty-nine miles of peaks and craters is apt to create
legend within a single generation. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, is
popular imagination more oddly naïve and superstitious; nowhere are
facts more readily exaggerated or distorted into unrecognizability; and
the forms of any legend thus originated become furthermore specialized
in each separate locality where it obtains a habitat. On tracing back
such a legend or tradition to its primal source, one feels amazed at the
variety of the metamorphoses which the simplest fact may rapidly assume
in the childish fancy of this people.
I was first incited to make an effort in this direction by hearing the
remarkable story of "Missié Bon." No legendary expression is more
wide-spread throughout the country than _temps coudvent Missié Bon_ (in
the time of the big wind of Monsieur Bon). Whenever a hurricane
threatens, you will hear colored folks expressing the hope that it may
not be like the _coudvent Missié Bon._ And some years ago, in all the
creole police-courts, old colored witnesses who could not tell their age
would invariably try to give the magistrate some idea of it by referring
to the never-to-be-forgotten _temps coudvent Missié Bon._
... "_Temps coudvent Missié Bon, moin té ka tété encò_" (I was a
child at the breast in the time of the big wind of Missié Bon); or
"_Temps coudvent Missié Bon, moin té toutt piti manmaille,--moin ka
souvini y pouend caïe manman moin pòté allé._" (I was a very, very
little child in the time of the big wind of Missié Bon,--but I remember
it blew mamma's cabin away.) The magistrates of those days knew the
exact date of the _coudvent._
But all I could learn about Missié Bon among the country-folk was this:
Missié Bon used to be a great slave-owner and a cruel master. He was a
very wicked man. And he treated his slaves so terribly that at last the
Good-God (_Bon-Dié_) one day sent a great wind which blew away Missié
Bon and Missié Bon's house and everybody in it, so that nothing was
ever heard of them again.
It was not without considerable research that I succeeded at last in
finding some one able to give me the true facts in the case of Monsieur
Bon. My informant was a charming old gentleman, who represents a New
York company in the city of St. Pierre, and who takes more interest in
the history of his native island than creoles usually do. He laughed at
the legend I had found, but informed me that I could trace it, with
slight variations, through nearly every canton of Martinique.
"And now," he continued, "I can tell you the real history of 'Missié
Bon,'--for he was an old friend of my grandfather; and my grandfather
related it to me.
"It may have been in 1809--I can give you the exact date by reference to
some old papers if necessary--Monsieur Bon was Collector of Customs at
St. Pierre: and my grandfather was doing business in the Grande Rue. A
certain captain, whose vessel had been consigned to my grandfather,
invited him and the collector to breakfast in his cabin. My grandfather
was so busy he could not accept the invitation;--but Monsieur Bon went
with the captain on board the bark."
... "It was a morning like this; the sea was just as blue and the sky as
clear. All of a sudden, while they were at breakfast, the sea began to
break heavily without a wind, and clouds came up, with every sign of a
hurricane. The captain was obliged to sacrifice his anchor; there was no
time to land his guest: he hoisted a little jib and top-gallant, and
made for open water, taking Monsieur Bon with him. Then the hurricane
came; and from that day to this nothing has ever been heard of the bark
nor of the captain nor of Monsieur Bon."[7]
"But did Monsieur Bon ever do anything to deserve the reputation he has
left among the people?" I asked.
"Ah! le pauvre vieux corps!... A kind old soul who never uttered a harsh
word to human being;--timid,--good-natured,--old-fashioned even for
those old-fashioned days.... Never had a slave in his life!"
[Footnote 7: What is known in the West Indies as a hurricane is happily
rare; it blows with the force of a cyclone, but not always circularly;
it may come from one direction, and strengthen gradually for days until
its highest velocity and destructive force are reached. One in the time
of Père Labat blew away the walls of a fort;--that of 1780 destroyed
the lives of twenty-two thousand people in four islands: Martinique,
Saint Lucia, St. Vincent, and Barbadoes.
Before the approach of such a visitation animals manifest the same signs
of terror they display prior to an earthquake. Cattle assemble together,
stamp, and roar; sea-birds fly to the interior; fowl seek the nearest
crevice they can hide in. Then, while the sky is yet dear, begins the
breaking of the sea; then darkness comes, and after it the wind.]