I
Almost every night, just before bedtime, I hear some group of children
in the street telling stories to each other. Stories, enigmas or
_tim-tim_, and songs, and round games, are the joy of child-life
here,--whether rich or poor. I am particularly fond of listening to the
stories,--which seem to me the oddest stories I ever heard.
I succeeded in getting several dictated to me, so that I could write
them;--others were written for me by creole friends, with better
success. To obtain them in all their original simplicity and naive humor
of detail, one should be able to write them down in short-hand as fast
as they are related: they lose greatly in the slow process of dictation.
The simple mind of the native story-teller, child or adult, is seriously
tried by the inevitable interruptions and restraints of the dictation
method;--the reciter loses spirit, becomes soon weary, and purposely
shortens the narrative to finish the task as soon as possible. It seems
painful to such a one to repeat a phrase more than once,--at least
in the same way; while frequent questioning may irritate the most
good-natured in a degree that shows how painful to the untrained brain
may be the exercise of memory and steady control of imagination required
for continuous dictation. By patience, however, I succeeded in obtaining
many curiosities of oral literature,--representing a group of stories
which, whatever their primal origin, have been so changed by local
thought and coloring as to form a distinctively Martinique folk-tale
circle. Among them are several especially popular with the children of
my neighborhood; and I notice that almost every narrator embellishes the
original plot with details of his own, which he varies at pleasure.
I submit a free rendering of one of these tales,--the history of Yé and
the Devil. The whole story of Yé would form a large book,--so numerous
the list of his adventures; and this adventure seems to me the most
characteristic of all. Yé is the most curious figure in Martinique
folk-lore. Yé is the typical Bitaco,--or mountain negro of the lazy
kind,--the country black whom city blacks love to poke fun at. As for
the Devil of Martinique folk-lore, he resembles the _travailleur_ at a
distance; but when you get dangerously near him, you find that he has
red eyes and red hair, and two little horns under his _chapeau-Bacouè_,
and feet like an ape, and fire in his throat. _Y ka sam yon gouôs, gouôs
macaque_....