Alice Werner

“ To go to church is a mark of respectability. To obtain that mark is one of his reasons for going. The other reason is to show his clothes and his boots. He will talk like a saint for the mere pleasure of rolling out words, and the ministers have to pretend to believe something of what he says. They are not, however, really deceived, and will tell you in private with a sigh that Christianity makes no progress; it is profession without practice. Of the Negro's real religion, which is bound up with Obeah, we get hardly a hint in the sings. ”

“ It is interesting to trace the African elements in these imported tales as distinct from those which are merely derived from West Indian surroundings. Thus Mr. Bluebeard's three-legged horse (compare also the three-legged horse in "Devil and the Princess") is, as explained in the footnote, a "duppy"; and the duppy, whatever the derivation of his name, seems to be West African in origin. Duppies are the souls of the dead, "capable of assuming various forms of men and other animals." ”

“ When the stranger lands in Jamaica and hears the rapid rush of words, and the soft, open vowels, he often says: "Why, I thought they talked English here, but it sounds like Spanish or Italian!" The difficulty in understanding a new language lies in the inability to distinguish the point where one word ends and the next begins. ”

“ She is thinking it all over. "So you have got three acres of coffee and four acres of bare land, then why don't you come and ask for me?"
"Bare" land is good land which has not yet been taken into cultivation. The first money a poor boy earns he spends in boots, which are the outward and visible sign of being well-to-do. They hurt him, "burn him" as he says, but no matter. Next he buys a piece of land. This is probably in bush, covered that is with the rough growth of grass, bushes and trees that so quickly springs up in the tropics. ”

“ All Annancy stories end with these or similar words. The Jack is a member of the company to whom the story is told, perhaps its principal member; and the narrator addresses him, and says: "I do not pick you out, Jack, or any of your companions, to be flogged as Tiger and Annancy were by the monkeys." Among the African tribes stories we know are often told with an object. The Negro is quick to seize a parable, and the point of a cunningly constructed story directed at an individual obnoxious to the reciter would not miss. ”

“ The one from God is good, and the one not from God may be either good or bad. During sleep, these spirits leave the body and go to other people's houses in search of food. Being shadows themselves, they feed on the shadow of food and on the smell of food. They are seldom far apart, and the heavenly spirit can always prevent the earthly spirit from doing harm. At death the God-given spirit flies up upon a tree, and goes to heaven the third day. The other spirit remains on earth as Duppy. ”

“ By far the greater number of the stories in this book, whether, strictly speaking, "Annancy stories" or not, come under the heading of animal-stories, and are of the same type as "Uncle Remus," Junod's "Roman du Lièvre," and numerous examples from various parts of Africa. It will be remembered that, in most of these, the difference between animals and human beings is not very clearly kept in view by the narrators. As M. Junod says, "Toutes les bêtes qui passent et repassent dans ces curieux récits représentent des êtres humains, cela va sans dire. ”

“ Jekyll's tales, so far as they can be supposed to come from Africa at all, are not Bantu. The name of "Annancy" alone is enough to tell us that.
Annancy, or Anansi is the Tshi (Ashanti) [1] word for "spider"; and the Spider figures largely in the folk-tales of the West Coast-xxiv- (by which we mean, roughly, the coast between Cape Verde and Kamerun) , while, with some curious exceptions to be noted later on, he seems to be absent from Bantu folk-lore. His place is there taken by the Hare (Brer Rabbit) , and, in some of his aspects, by the Tortoise. ”

“ In every district there is an Obeah-man, or Bush-doctor, as he is often called, from his supposed knowledge of herb simples. He is by no means the innocent person which this latter designation would seem to imply. He deals in magic and sorcery of all descriptions, and there is not a Black man who does not believe in his powers. They consult him on every conceivable business and he gets heavy fees. He will secure a man the favour of his master so that he shall not lose his place, or help him to revenge a wrong, real or fancied. ”

“ In the Gold Coast stories, too, Anansi is quite as much a spider as Brer Rabbit is a rabbit; but in Jamaica, though he still retains traces of his origin, they are somewhat obscured—so much so that Mr. Jekyll speaks (pp. 4-5) of the "metamorphic shape, that of the Spider," which he assumes, as though the human were his real form, the other only an occasional disguise. In "Annancy and Brother Tiger" we find that he has to "run up a house-top" to escape the revenge of the monkeys, which accounts for some of his habits to this day. ”

“ The men's voices are of extraordinary beauty. To hear a group chatting is a pure pleasure to the ear, quite irrespective of the funny things they say; and their remarks are accompanied with the prettiest little twirks and turns of intonation, sometimes on the words, sometimes mere vocal ejaculations between them. The women's voices have the same fine quality when they speak low, but this they seldom do, and their usual vivacious chatter is anything but melodious.
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I. ANNANCY AND BROTHER TIGER. One day Annancy an' Bro'er Tiger go a river fe wash'kin. ”

“ Annancy wins a bet and the hand of the King's daughter by inducing "Peafowl" to make the dumb man talk. This "Peafowl" does by the sweetness of his song; but in a Duala story given by Lederbogen as "Der Tausendfuss und das stumme Kind," the means adopted more nearly resemble the time-honoured recipes for detecting changelings in this country. The Mouse advised the dumb child's parents to consult the Spider, who told them to hang up a centipede over the fireplace, set on a pot of water just underneath it, and leave the child sitting beside the fire. ”

“ To the elephant—herbivorous, like himself—he is too insignificant, for unlike the mosquito or the sand-fly, he has no sting; and although they meet in fable, in real life the hippopotamus and himself are not much thrown together. From the leopard or the bush-cat, he has nothing to fear, for their teeth cannot penetrate his shell, nor can [their] claws do him any damage. Thus it is that ... the tortoise has been practically immune from attack and therefore destruction—a fact that in a great measure explains his longevity. ”

“ Those who are born with a caul can see Duppy. So can those who rub their faces with the rheum from the eye of a horse or dog, and those who cut their eyelashes. Every Duppy walks two feet above the ground, floating in the air. If a child is not christened before it is six months old, Duppy will carry it away into the bush. ”

“ M. Junod seems to me to overrate the conscious artistic purpose in the narrators of these tales: the native mind is quite ready to assume that animals think and act in much the same way as human beings, and this attitude makes it easy to forget the outward distinctions when they appear as actors in a story. No doubt this haziness of view is increased by the popular conception of metamorphosis as a possible occurrence in everyday life. ”

“ Ogre would easily be corrupted to Tiger, and with the information, which might have been acquired at the same time, that Tiger was a fierce animal which ate men, his name would find its way into stories repeated from mouth to mouth. ”

“ As there is a Gold Coast tradition which affirms the human race to be descended from the Spider, [7] it might be expected that he should sometimes appear in a more favourable light, and also that those peoples who had lost this myth, or never possessed it, should concentrate their attention on the darker side of his character. At the same time, even in what may be called his own home, he does not appear as infallible. ”

“ In the Sesuto story [22] the Monkey suspects a trick and escapes, when the Hare persuades the Lion to entrap the other animals by shamming death. Perhaps the baptism of the crabs ("Annancy in Crab Country") may be connected with "Mr. Spider initiates the fowls," [23] where the Temne Spider, assuming for the nonce a quasi-religious character, gathers his victims together to celebrate the Bundo mysteries, and massacres them wholesale.
"Annancy and Hog" (XXXII.) is a fragmentary story, not very easy to understand as we have it, but something has evidently dropped out. ”

“ The Busha is a white or coloured man as a rule—coloured in Jamaica meaning mixed white and black—and he is responsible to the master or owner. The workers have to be carefully looked after, for like other people the-189- Negro will not do more work than he can help. Only when he is working for himself will he "let out," as he describes it, the whole of his splendid strength. It is a mistake to suppose that the black man is either stupid or lazy. When he has an incentive to work he is industrious, and will do as much in one day in his own field as he will in two for an employer who pays him. ”

“ In "I will married to you" the wheeling becomes a giddy business, at least to the onlooker. The dancers never seem to feel it, nor do they appear to mind the heat. They simply stream with perspiration and put their handkerchiefs round their necks to save their white collars. ”

“ Gaulin, however, can only be deprived of his clothes (and so made to appear in his true shape) by means of a magic song. The "old-witch" brother, who has overheard the song, plays its tune at the wedding and thus exposes the bridegroom, who flies out at the door. "John-Crow" is detected by a Cinderella-like device of keeping him till daylight, and his hurried flight through the window (in which he scraped the feathers off his head on the broken glass) explains a characteristic feature of these useful but unattractive birds. ”

“ Annancy go. When him go he see a big he-goat, him beard was a yard long. Annancy catch the beard, lift him up t'row him a ground, take a big stick begin to beat him, give bup! bup! say:—"You b'ute! a you master nyam all me egg never give me so so one self."
Him beat him so till the goat form 'tiff dead. Now this was Tiger all the time. Annancy leave him gone to see if he can get any knife to cut him up.
By Annancy come back him don't see no goat, only a big old man standing up. Him put after him. Annancy run back to Tiger yard. The man was after him. Annancy see a gourdy, run right in it. ”

“ A good Duppy will watch over and protect the living. A bad Duppy tries to frighten and harm people, which it is able to do now that it has lost the restraining influence of its former companion, the heavenly spirit. It can assume any sort of shape, appearing sometimes as a man, sometimes as an animal. If it is a very bad Duppy, it makes the place where it is unbearably hot. The Negro believes that he can put a bad Duppy upon another person. ”

“ The magic drum by which Calcutta Monkey (XXXVIII.) finds out Annancy's whereabouts is African. I do not recall any parallel story, but drums are much used by witch-doctors and in ceremonial dances, and in some cases auguries are drawn from their sound. But Monkey first discovers Annancy to be the thief by cutting the cards, which of course is European.
Two stories, "Annancy and the Old Lady's Field" (XVI.) and "Devil's Honeydram," introduce the incident of a woman compelled to dance against her will—in one case to dance herself to death. In both cases the music seems to be the compelling power ”

“ However, from our study of comparative music elsewhere, we may make one statement with certainty, namely, that an African music does not exist. There must be almost as many styles of native music in Africa as in Europe—varieties differing not only broadly in general form and structure, but also more minutely in the intervals and rhythms which are employed.
I have been informed by travellers in West Africa that surprising differences occur in the degree of development of musical-279- art even in closely neighbouring regions. In one district hardly any music is to be heard at all ”

“ This feature constantly meets one in Bantu folk-lore: the hare and the elephant hire themselves out to hoe a man's garden; the swallow invites the cock to dinner and his wife prepares the food, in the usual native hut with the fireplace in the middle and the nsanja staging over it; the hare's wife goes to the river to draw water, and is caught by a crocodile; the tortoise carries his complaint to the village elders assembled in the smithy, and so on. ”

“ Strangers are called "follow-line" because, as they come down from their homes in the higher hills, they walk in strings. No Black man or woman ever goes alone if he can help it. He always hitches on to somebody else, and the string increases in length as it passes along. This walking in Indian file is necessitated by the narrowness of the track, which is seldom wide enough for two to walk abreast.
The tune has the character of a march rather than of a dance, but I am assured it is used for a Schottische, which has a somewhat slower measure than a Polka, and for Fourth Figure. ”

“ In the already-quoted 'Koromanti song,' we may observe the curious temporary change of rhythm in the second air, and the characteristic measure which prevails throughout the third air with its syncopation and almost baffling changes. Such features are precisely what we should expect to meet with among a primitive people who more than two centuries ago doubtless possessed in a still higher degree that delight in complication of rhythm which according to Mr. Jekyll (p. 6) -285- persists among their descendants of to-day. ”

“ The story of the last sing is briefly this. A has a friend who is an Obeah-man. From him he gets Obeah to injure an enemy B. The enemy does not suffer. So A says his waistcoat is torn, a figurative way of expressing the fact that he is beaten, B's Obeah turning out to be stronger than A's and able to repel it. Having indiscreetly talked about what he meant to do to B, B reports him to the police, and he has to abscond and seek shelter in the bush till the matter blows over. ”

“ Ratta was passing, an' as Annancy see him Annancy said to him:—"I's all you deeshent man I like to see."
An' Ratta ask him:—"What for?"
An' Annancy say:—"Don't be afraid; a living is here for you an' me." ”