The legend of "Missié Bon" had prepared me to hear without surprise the
details of a still more singular tradition,--that of Father Labat.... I
was returning from a mountain ramble with my guide, by way of the
Ajoupa-Bouillon road;--the sun had gone down; there remained only a
blood-red glow in the west, against which the silhouettes of the hills
took a velvety blackness indescribably soft; and stars were beginning to
twinkle out everywhere through the violet. Suddenly I noticed on the
flank of a neighboring morne--which I remembered by day as an apparently
uninhabitable wilderness of bamboos, tree-ferns, and balisiers--a
swiftly moving point of yellow light. My guide had observed it
simultaneously;--he crossed himself, and exclaimed:
"_Moinka ka couè c'est fanal Pè Lobatt!_" (I believe it is the lantern
of Père Labat.)
"Does he live there?" I innocently inquired.
"Live there?--why he has been dead hundreds of years!... _Ouill!_ you
never heard of Pè Labatt?"...
"Not the same who wrote a book about Martinique?"
"Yes,--himself.... They say he comes back at night. Ask mother about
him;--she knows."...
... I questioned old Théréza as soon as we reached home; and she told
me all she knew about "Pè Labatt." I found that the father had left a
reputation far more wide-spread than the recollection of "Missié
Bon,"--that his memory had created, in fact, the most impressive legend
in all Martinique folk-lore.
"Whether you really saw Pè Labatt's lantern," said old Théréza, "I do
not know;--there are a great many queer lights to be seen after
nightfall among these mornes. Some are zombi-fires; and some are
lanterns carried by living men; and some are lights burning in ajoupas
so high up that you can only see a gleam coming through the trees now
and then. It is not everybody who sees the lantern of Pè Labatt; and it
is not good-luck to see it.
"Pè Labatt was a priest who lived here hundreds of years ago; and he
wrote a book about what he saw. He was the first person to introduce
slavery into Martinique; and it is thought that is why he comes back at
night. It is his penance for having established slavery here.
"They used to say, before 1848, that when slavery should be abolished,
Pè Labatt's light would not be seen any more. But I can remember very
well when slavery was abolished; and I saw the light many a time after.
It used to move up the Morne d'Orange every dear night;--I could see it
very well from my window when I lived in St. Pierre. You knew it was Pè
Labatt, because the light passed up places where no man could walk. But
since the statue of Notre Dame de la Garde was placed on the Morne
d'Orange, people tell me that the light is not seen there any more.
"But it is seen elsewhere; and it is not good-luck to see it. Everybody
is afraid of seeing it.... And mothers tell their children, when the
little ones are naughty: '_Mit main ké fai Pè Lobatt vini pouend
ou,--oui!_' (I will make Pè Labatt come and take you away.)"...
What old Théréza stated regarding the establishment of slavery in
Martinique by Père Labat, I knew required no investigation,--inasmuch
as slavery was a flourishing institution in the time of Père Du Tertre,
another Dominican missionary and historian, who wrote his book,--a queer
book in old French,[8]--before Labat was born. But it did not take me
long to find out that such was the general belief about Père Labat's
sin and penance, and to ascertain that his name is indeed used to
frighten naughty children. _Eh! ti manmaille-là, moin ké fai Pè
Labatt vini pouend ou!_--is an exclamation often heard in the vicinity
of ajoupas just about the hour when all good little children ought to be
in bed and asleep.
... The first variation of the legend I heard was on a plantation in the
neighborhood of Ajoupa-Bouillon. There I was informed that Père Labat
had come to his death by the bite of a snake,--the hugest snake that
ever was seen in Martinique. Père Labat had believed it possible to
exterminate the fer-de-lance, and had adopted extraordinary measures for
its destruction. On receiving his death-wound he exclaimed, "_C'est pè
toutt sépent qui té ka mòdé moin_" (It is the Father of all Snakes
that has bitten me); and he vowed that he would come back to destroy the
brood, and would haunt the island until there should be not one snake
left. And the light that moves about the peaks at night is the lantern
of Père Labat still hunting for snakes.
"_Ou pa pè suive ti limié-là press!_" continued my informant. "You
cannot follow that little light at all;--when you first see it, it is
perhaps only a kilometre away; the next moment it is two, three or four
kilometres away."
I was also told that the light is frequently seen near Grande Anse, on
the other side of the island,--and on the heights of La Caravelle, the
long fantastic promontory that reaches three leagues into the sea south
of the harbor of La Trinité.[9] And on my return to St. Pierre I found
a totally different version of the legend;--my informant being one
Manm-Robert, a kind old soul who kept a little _boutique-lapacotte_ (a
little booth where cooked food is sold) near the precipitous Street of
the Friendships.
... "_Ah! Pè Labatt, oui!_" she exclaimed, at my first question,--"Pè
Labatt was a good priest who lived here very long ago. And they did him
a great wrong here;--they gave him a wicked _coup d'langue_ (tongue
wound); and the hurt given by an evil tongue is worse than a serpent's
bite. They lied about him; they slandered him until they got him sent
away from the country. But before the Government 'embarked' him, when he
got to that quay, he took off his shoes and he shook the dust of his
shoe upon that quay, and he said: 'I curse you, O Martinique!--I curse
you! There will be food for nothing, and your people will not even be
able to buy it! There will be clothing material for nothing, and your
people will not be able to get so much as one dress! And the children
will beat their mothers!... You banish me;--but I will come back
again.'"[10]
"And then what happened, Manm-Robert?"
"_Eh! fouinq! chè_, all that Pè Labatt said has come true. There is
food for almost nothing, and people are starving here in St. Pierre;
there is clothing for almost nothing, and poor girls cannot earn enough
to buy a dress. The pretty printed calicoes (_indiennes_) that used to
be two francs and a half the metre, now sell at twelve sous the metre;
but nobody has any money. And if you read our papers,--_Les Colonies, La
Defense Coloniale_,--you will find that there are sons wicked enough to
beat their mothers: _oui! yche ka bait maman!_ It is the malediction of
Pè Labatt."
This was all that Manm-Robert could tell me. Who had related the story
to her? Her mother. Whence had her mother obtained it? From her
grandmother.... Subsequently I found many persons to confirm the
tradition of the curse,--precisely as Manm-Robert had related it.
Only a brief while after this little interview I was invited to pass an
afternoon at the home of a gentleman residing upon the Morne
d'Orange,--the locality supposed to be especially haunted by Père
Labat. The house of Monsieur M----stands on the side of the hill, fully
five hundred feet up, and in a grove of trees: an antiquated dwelling,
with foundations massive as the walls of a fortress, and huge broad
balconies of stone. From one of these balconies there is a view of the
city, the harbor, and Pelée, which I believe even those who have seen
Naples would confess to be one of the fairest sights in the world....
Towards evening I obtained a chance to ask my kind host some questions
about the legend of his neighborhood.
... "Ever since I was a child," observed Monsieur M----, "I heard it
said that Père Labat haunted this mountain, and I often saw what was
alleged to be his light. It looked very much like a lantern swinging in
the hand of some one climbing the hill. A queer fact was that it used to
come from the direction of Carbet, skirt the Morne d'Orange a few
hundred feet above the road, and then move up the face of what seemed a
sheer precipice. Of course somebody carried that light,--probably a
negro; and perhaps the cliff is not so inaccessible as it looks: still,
we could never discover who the individual was, nor could we imagine
what his purpose might have been.... But the light has not been seen
here now for years."
[Footnote 8: "Histoire Générale des Antilles... habités par les
Français." Par le R. P. Du Tertre, de l'Ordre des Frères Prescheurs.
Paris: 1661-71. 4 vols. (with illustrations) in 4 to.]
[Footnote 9: One of the lights seen on the Caravelle was certainly
carried by a cattle-thief,--a colossal negro who had the reputation of
being a sorcerer,--a _quimboiseur._ The greater part of the mountainous
land forming La Caravelle promontory was at that time the property of a
Monsieur Eustache, who used it merely for cattle-raising purposes. He
allowed his animals to run wild in the hills; they multiplied
exceedingly, and became very savage. Notwithstanding their ferocity,
however, large numbers of them were driven away at night, and secretly
slaughtered or sold, by somebody who used to practise the art of
cattle-stealing with a lantern, and evidently without aid. A watch was
set, and the thief arrested. Before the magistrate he displayed
extraordinary assurance, asserting that he had never stolen from a poor
man--he had stolen only from M. Eustache who could not count his own
cattle--_yon richard, mon chè!_ "How many cows did you steal from him?"
asked the magistrate. "_Ess main pè save?--moin té pouend yon savane
toutt pleine_," replied the prisoner. (How can I tell?--I took a whole
savanna-full.)... Condemned on the strength of his own confession, he
was taken to jail. "_Moin pa ké rété la geôle_," he observed. (I
shall not remain in prison.) They put him in irons, but on the following
morning the irons were found lying on the floor of the cell, and the
prisoner was gone. He was never seen in Martinique again.]
[Footnote 10: Y sucoué souyé assous quai-là;--y ka di: "Moin ka maudi
ou, Lanmatinique!--moin ka maudi ou!... Ké ni mangé pou engnien: ou pa
ké pè menm acheté y! Ké ni touèle pou engnien: ou pa ké pè menm
acheté yon robe! Epi yche ké batt manman.... Ou banni moin!--moin ké
vini encò!"]