(THE PLAYERS)
Si' Myra was a Congo. She believed the Obi priests could boil water
without fire, and in many ways cause frightful woes. To her own myths
she had added Danish ones. "De wehr-wolf, yes, me chile! Dem nights
w'en de moon shine bright and de dogs a-barkin', you see twelb dogs
a-talkin' togedder in a ring, and one in de middle. Dah dem wait till
dem yerry [hear] him; den dem take arter him, me chile," etc.
Strangest, wildest practice of the slaves was the hideous misuse
Christian masters allowed them to make of Chrismas Day and week. It
was then they danced the bamboula, incessantly. All through the year
this Saturnalia was prepared for in meetings held at night by their
leaders. The songs to which they danced were made of white society's
scandals reduced to satirical rhyme; and to the rashest girl or man
there was power in the warning, "You'll get yourself sung about at
Christmas." Yearly a king, queen, and retinue were elected. The
dresses of court and all were a mixture of splendor and tawdriness that
exhausted the savings and pilferings of a twelvemonth. Good-natured
"missies" often helped make these outfits. They were of velvet, silk,
satin, cotton lace, false flowers, the brilliant seeds of the licorice
and coquelicot, tinsel, beads, and pinch-beck. Sometimes mistresses
even lent--firmly sewed fast--their own jewelry.
On Christmas Eve, here and there in the town, ground-floor rooms were
hired and decorated with palm branches; or palm booths were built,
decked with oranges and boughs of cinnamon berries, lighted with
candles and lanterns and furnished with seats for the king, queen, and
musicians, and with buckets of rum punch. Then the "bulrush man" went
his round. Covered with capes and flounces of rushes and crowned with
a high waving fringe of them, he rattled pebbles in calabashes, danced
to their clatter, proclaimed the feast, and begged such of us white
children as his dress did not terrify, for stivers from our holiday
savings.
Soon the dancers began to gather in the booths; women in gorgeous
trailing gowns, the men bearing showy batons and clad in gay shirts or
satin jackets, and with a mongrel infant rabble at their heels. When
the goombay--a flour-barrel drum--sounded, the town knew the bamboula
had begun. On two confronting lines, the men in one, the women in the
other, a leading couple improvised a song and all took up the refrain.
The goombay beat time, and the dancers rattled or tinkled the woody
seed-cases of the sand-box tree set on long handles and with each of
their lobes painted a separate vivid color; rattles of basketwork; and
calabashes filled with pebbles and shells. All instruments were gay
with floating ribbons. So the lines approached each other by two
steps, receded, advanced, and receded, always in wild cadence to the
signals of voice and instrument; then bowed so low that they
touched--twice--thrice; then pirouetted and resumed the first movement,
and now and then, with two or three turns or bows, clashed their
rattles together in time. As night darkened, the rude lights flared
yellow and red upon the dusky forms bedizened with beads, bangles, and
grotesquer trumpery. Faces, necks, arms reeked and shone in the heat,
ribbons streamed, gross odors arose, the goombay dominated all, and
children of the master race--for even I was permitted to witness these
orgies--without comprehending, stood aghast. Close outside, the
matchless night lay on land and sea; a relieved sense caught ethereal
perfumes and was soothed by the exquisite refinement into whose space
and silence the faint deep voice of the savage drum sobbed one grief
and one prayer alike for slave and master.
The revel always ended with New Year's Day. The next morning broke
silently, and with the rising of the sun the plantation bell or the
conch called the bondman and bondwoman into the cane-fields. Then,
alike in broadest noon or deepest night, a spectral fear hovered
wherever the master sat among his loved ones or rode from place to
place. Not often did the hand of oppression fall upon any slave with
illegal violence, or he or she turn to slaughter or poison the
oppressor; but the slaves were in thousands, the masters were but
hundreds, the laws were cruel; the whipping-post stood among the town's
best houses of commerce, justice, and worship, with the thumbscrews
hard by. As to armed defense, the well-drilled and finely caparisoned
volunteer "troopers" were but a handful, the Danish garrison a mere
squad; the governor was mild and aged, and the two towns were the width
of the island apart.