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_....
II.
_Ça qui pa té connaitt Yé?_... Who is there in all Martinique who never
heard of Yé? Everybody used to know the old rascal. He had every fault
under the sun;--he was the laziest negro in the whole island; he was
the biggest glutton in the whole world. He had an amazing number [52] of
children; and they were most of the time all half dead for hunger.
Well, one day Yé went out to the woods to look for something to eat.
And he walked through the woods nearly all day, till he became ever so
tired; but he could not find anything to eat. He was just going to
give up the search, when he heard a queer crackling noise,--at no great
distance. He went to see what it was,--hiding himself behind the big
trees as he got nearer to it.
All at once he came to a little hollow in the woods, and saw a great
fire burning there,--and he saw a Devil sitting beside the fire. The
Devil was roasting a great heap of snails; and the sound Yé had heard
was the crackling of the snail-shells. The Devil seemed to be very
old;--he was sitting on the trunk of a bread-fruit tree; and Yé took a
good long look at him. After Yé had watched him for a while, Yé found
out that the old Devil was quite blind.
--The Devil had a big calabash in his hand full of _feroce_,--that is
to say, boiled salt codfish and manioc flour, with ever so many pimentos
(_épi en pile piment_),--just what negroes like Yé are most fond of. And
the Devil seemed to be very hungry; and the food was going so fast down
his throat that it made Yé unhappy to see it disappearing. It made him
so unhappy that he felt at last he could not resist the temptation to
steal from the old blind Devil. He crept quite close up to the Devil
without making any noise, and began to rob him. Every time the Devil
would lift his hand to his mouth, Yé would slip his own fingers into
the calabash, and snatch a piece. The old Devil did not even look
puzzled;--he did not seem to know anything; and Yé thought to himself
that the old Devil was a great fool. He began to get more and more
courage;--he took bigger and bigger handfuls out of the calabash;--he
ate even faster than the Devil could eat. At last there was only one
little bit left in the calabash. Yé put out his hand to take it,--and
all of a sudden the Devil made a grab at Yé's hand and caught it! Yé was
so frightened he could not even cry out, _Aïe-yaïe_. The Devil finished
the last morsel, threw down the calabash, and said to Yé in a terrible
voice:--"_Atò, saff!--ou c'est ta moin!_" (I've got you now, you
glutton;--you belong to me!) Then he jumped on Yé's back, like a great
ape, and twisted his legs round Yé's neck, and cried out:---"Carry me to
your cabin,--and walk fast!"
... When Yé's poor children saw him coming, they wondered what their
papa was carrying on his back. They thought it might be a sack of bread
or vegetables or perhaps a _régime_ of bananas,--for it was getting
dark, and they could not see well. They laughed and showed their
teeth and danced and screamed: "Here's papa coming with something to
eat!--papa's coming with something to eat!" But when Yé had got near
enough for them to see what he was carrying, they yelled and ran away to
hide themselves. As for the poor mother, she could only hold up her two
hands for horror.
When they got into the cabin the Devil pointed to a corner, and said to
Yé:--"Put me down there!" Yé put him down. The Devil sat there in the
corner and never moved or spoke all that evening and all that night. He
seemed to be a very quiet Devil indeed. The children began to look at
him.
But at breakfast-time, when the poor mother had managed to procure
something for the children to eat,--just some bread-fruit and yams,--the
old Devil suddenly rose up from his corner and muttered:--
--"_Manman mò!--papa mò!--touttt yche mò!_" (Mamma dead!--papa
dead!--all the children dead!)
And he blew his breath on them, and they all fell down stiff as if they
were dead--_raidi-cadave!_. Then the Devil ate up everything there was
on the table. When he was done, he filled the pots and dishes with dirt,
and blew his breath again on Yé and all the family, and muttered:--
--"_Toutt moune lévé!_" (Everybody get up!)
Then they all got up. Then he pointed to all the plates and dishes full
of dirt, and said to them:--*
[* In the original:--"Y té ka monté assous tabe-là, épi y té ka fai caca
adans toutt plats-à, adans toutt zassiett-là."]
--"_Gobe-moin ça!_"
And they had to gobble it all up, as he told them.
After that it was no use trying to eat anything. Every time anything was
cooked, the Devil would do the same thing. It was thus the next day, and
the next, and the day after, and so every day for a long, long time.
Yé did not know what to do; but his wife said she did. If she was only
a man, she would soon get rid of that Devil. "Yé," she insisted, "go
and see the Bon-Dié [the Good-God], and ask him what to do. I would go
myself if I could; but women are not strong enough to climb the great
morne."
So Yé started off very, very early one morning, before the peep of day,
and began to climb the Montagne Pelée. He climbed and walked, and walked
and climbed, until he got at last to the top of the Morne de la Croix.*
[*A peaklet rising above the verge of the ancient crater now filled with
water.]
Then he knocked at the sky as loud as he could till the Good-God put his
head out of a cloud and asked him what he wanted:--
--"_Eh bien!--ça ou ni, Yé fa ou lè?_"
When Yé had recounted his troubles, the Good-God said:--
--"_Pauv ma pauv!_ I knew it all before you came, Yé. I can tell you
what to do; but I am afraid it will be no use--you will never be able to
do it! Your gluttony is going to be the ruin of you, poor Yé! Still, you
can try. Now listen well to what I am going to tell you. First of all,
you must not eat anything before you get home. Then when your wife has
the children's dinner ready, and you see the Devil getting up, you must
cry out:--'_Tam ni pou tam ni bé!_' Then the Devil will drop down dead.
Don't forget not to eat anything--_ou tanne?_"...
Yé promised to remember all he was told, and not to eat anything on his
way down;--then he said good-bye to the Bon-Dié (_bien conm y faut_),
and started. All the way he kept repeating the words the Good-God had
told him: "_Tam ni pou tam ni bé!"--"tam ni pou tam ni bé!_"--over and
over again.
--But before reaching home he had to cross a little stream; and on both
banks he saw wild guava-bushes growing, with plenty of sour guavas
upon them;--for it was not yet time for guavas to be ripe. Poor Yé was
hungry! He did all he could to resist the temptation, but it proved too
much for him. He broke all his promises to the Bon-Dié: he ate and ate
and ate till there were no more guavas left,--and then he began to eat
_zicaques_ and green plums, and all sorts of nasty sour things, till he
could not eat any more.
--By the time he got to the cabin his teeth were so on edge that he
could scarcely speak distinctly enough to tell his wife to get the
supper ready.
And so while everybody was happy, thinking that they were going to be
freed from their trouble, Yé was really in no condition to do anything.
The moment the supper was ready, the Devil got up from his corner as
usual, and approached the table. Then Yé tried to speak; but his teeth
were so on edge that instead of saying,--"_Tam ni pou tam ni bé_," he
could only stammer out:---"_Anni toqué Diabe-là cagnan_."
This had no effect on the Devil at all: he seemed to be used to it! He
blew his breath on them all, sent them to sleep, ate up all the supper,
filled the empty dishes with filth, awoke Yé and his family, and ordered
them as usual;--
--"_Gobe-moin ça!_" And they had to gobble it up,--every bit of it.
The family nearly died of hunger and disgust. Twice more Yé climbed the
Montagne Pelée; twice more he climbed the Morne de la Croix; twice more
he disturbed the poor Bon-Dié, all for nothing!--since each time on his
way down he would fill his paunch with all sorts of nasty sour things,
so that he could not speak right. The Devil remained in the house night
and day;--the poor mother threw herself down on the ground, and pulled
out her hair,--so unhappy she was!
But luckily for the poor woman, she had one child as cunning as a
rat,--*
[* The great field-rat of Martinique is, in Martinique folk-
lore, the symbol of all cunning, and probably merits its
reputation.]
a boy called Ti Fonté (little Impudent), who bore his name well. When he
saw his mother crying so much, he said to her:--
--"Mamma, send papa just once more to see the Good-God: I know something
to do!"
The mother knew how cunning her boy was: she felt sure he meant
something by his words;--she sent old Yé for the last time to see the
Bon-Dié.
Yé used always to wear one of those big long coats they call
_lavalasses_;--whether it was hot or cool, wet or dry, he never went
out without it. There were two very big pockets in it--one on each side.
When Ti Fonté saw his father getting ready to go, he jumped _floup!_
into one of the pockets and hid himself there. Yé climbed all the way
to the top of the Morne de la Croix without suspecting anything. When he
got there the little boy put one of his ears out of Yé's pocket,--so as
to hear everything the Good-God would say.
This time he was very angry,--the Bon-Dié: he spoke very crossly; he
scolded Yé a great deal. But he was so kind for all that,--he was so
generous to good-for-nothing Yé, that he took the pains to repeat the
words over and over again for him:--"_Tam ni pou tam ni bé_."... And
this time the Bon-Dié was not talking to no purpose: there was somebody
there well able to remember what he said. Ti Fonté made the most of his
chance;--he sharpened that little tongue of his; he thought of his mamma
and all his little brothers and sisters dying of hunger down below. As
for his father, Yé did as he had done before--stuffed himself with all
the green fruit he could find.
The moment Yé got home and took off his coat, Ti Fonté jumped out,
_plapp!_--and ran to his mamma, and whispered:--
--"Mamma, get ready a nice, big dinner!--we are going to have it all to
ourselves to-day: the Good-God didn't talk for nothing,--I heard every
word he said!"
Then the mother got ready a nice _calalou-crabe_, a _tonton-banane_,
a _matété-cirique_,--several calabashes of _couss-caye_, two
_régimes-figues_ (bunches of small bananas),--in short, a very fine
dinner indeed, with a _chopine_ of tafia to wash it all well down.
The Devil felt as sure of himself that day as he had always felt, and
got up the moment everything was ready. But Ti Fonté got up too, and
yelled out just as loud as he could:---"_Tam ni pou tam ni bé!_"
At once the Devil gave a scream so loud that it could be heard right
down to the bottom of hell,--and he fell dead.
Meanwhile, Yé, like the old fool he was, kept trying to say what the
Bon-Dié had told him, and could only mumble:--
--"_Anni toqué Diabe-là cagnan!_"
He would never have been able to do anything;--and his wife had a great
mind just to send him to bed at once, instead of letting him sit down to
eat all those nice things. But she was a kind-hearted soul; and so she
let Yé stay and eat with the children, though he did not deserve it. And
they all ate and ate, and kept on eating and filling themselves until
daybreak--_pauv piti!_
But during this time the Devil had begun to smell badly and he had
become swollen so big that Yé found he could not move him. Still, they
knew they must get him out of the way somehow. The children had eaten so
much that they were all full of strength--_yo tè plein lafòce_; and Yé
got a rope and tied one end round the Devil's foot; and then he and the
children--all pulling together--managed to drag the Devil out of the
cabin and into the bushes, where they left him just like a dead dog.
They all felt themselves very happy to be rid of that old Devil.
But some days after old good-for-nothing Yé went off to hunt for birds.
He had a whole lot of arrows with him. He suddenly remembered the Devil,
and thought he would like to take one more look at him. And he did.
_Fouinq!_ what a sight! The Devil's belly had swelled up like a morne:
it was yellow and blue and green,--looked as if it was going to burst.
And Yé, like the old fool he always was, shot an arrow up in the air,
so that it fell down and stuck into the Devil's belly. Then he wanted
to get the arrow, and he climbed up on the Devil, and pulled and pulled
till he got the arrow out. Then he put the point of the arrow to his
nose,--just to see what sort of a smell dead Devils had.
The moment he did that, his nose swelled up as big as the refinery-pot
of a sugar-plantation.
Yé could scarcely walk for the weight of his nose; but he had to go and
see the Bon-Dié again. The Bon-Dié said to him:--
--"Ah! Yé, my poor Yé, you will live and die a fool!--you are certainly
the biggest fool in the whole world!... Still, I must try to do
something for you;--I'll help you anyhow to get rid of that nose!...
I'll tell you how to do it. To-morrow morning, very early, get up and
take a big _taya_ [whip], and beat all the bushes well, and drive all
the birds to the Roche de la Caravelle. Then you must tell them that I,
the Bon-Dié, want them to take off their bills and feathers, and take a
good bath in the sea. While they are bathing, you can choose a nose for
yourself out of the heap of bills there."
Poor Yé did just as the Good-God told him; and while the birds were
bathing, he picked out a nose for himself from the heap of beaks,--and
left his own refinery-pot in its place.
The nose he took was the nose of the _coulivicou_.* And that is why the
_coulivicou_ always looks so much ashamed of himself even to this day.
[* The _coulivicou_, or "Colin Vicou," is a Martinique bird with a long
meagre body, and an enormous bill. It has a very tristful and taciturn
expression.... _Maig conm yon coulivicou_, "thin as a coulivicou," is
a popular comparison for the appearance of anybody much reduced by
sickness.]
III.
... Poor Yé!--you still live for me only too vividly outside of those
strange folk-tales of eating and of drinking which so cruelly reveal the
long slave-hunger of your race. For I have seen you cutting cane on peak
slopes above the clouds;--I have seen you climbing from plantation to
plantation with your cutlass in your hand, watching for snakes as you
wander to look for work, when starvation forces you to obey a master,
though born with the resentment of centuries against all masters;--I
have seen you prefer to carry two hundred-weight of bananas twenty miles
to market, rather than labor in the fields;--I have seen you
ascending through serpent-swarming woods to some dead crater to find
a cabbage-palm,--and always hungry,--and always shiftless! And you
are still a great fool, poor Yé!--and you have still your swarm of
children,--your _rafale yche_,--and they are famished; for you have
taken into your _ajoupa_ a Devil who devours even more than you can
earn,--even your heart, and your splendid muscles, and your poor artless
brain,--the Devil Tafia!... And there is no Bon-Dié to help you rid
yourself of him now: for the only Bon-Dié you ever really had, your old
creole master, cannot care for you any more, and you cannot care for
yourself. Mercilessly moral, the will of this enlightened century has
abolished forever that patriarchal power which brought you up strong
and healthy on scanty fare, and scourged you into its own idea of
righteousness, yet kept you innocent as a child of the law of the
struggle for life. But you feel that law now;--you are a citizen of the
Republic! you are free to vote, and free to work, and free to starve
if you prefer it, and free to do evil and suffer for it;--and this new
knowledge stupefies you so that you have almost forgotten how to laugh!