Jamaican Song and Story Part 3

PART I. ANNANCY STORIES.

When the hoes stop clicking and you hear peals of laughter from the field, you may know that somebody is telling an Annancy story. If you go out, you will find a group of Negroes round the narrator, punctuating all the good points with delighted chuckles. Their sunny faces are beaming, and at the recital of any special piece of knavery on Annancy's part ordinary means of expression fail, and they fling themselves on the ground and wriggle in convulsions of merriment.

Annancy is a legendary being whose chief characteristic is trickery. A strong and good workman, he is invariably lazy, and is only to be tempted to honest labour by the offer of a large reward. He prefers to fill the bag which he always carries, by fraud or theft. His appet.i.te is voracious, and nothing comes amiss to him, cooked or raw. No sooner is one gluttonous feast over than he is ready for another, and endless are his s.h.i.+fts and devices to supply himself with food. Sometimes he will thrust himself upon an unwilling neighbour, and eat up all his breakfast. At another time he carries out his bag and brings it home full of flesh or fish obtained by thieving. He is perfectly selfish, and knows no remorse for his many deeds of violence, treachery and cruelty. His only redeeming point is a sort of hail-fellow-well-met-ness, which appeals so much to his a.s.sociates that they are ready almost, if not quite, to condone his offences.

Annancy has a defect of speech owing to a cleft palate, and p.r.o.nounces his words badly. He speaks somewhat like Punch, through his nose very rapidly, and uses the most countrified form of dialect. He cannot say "brother," and has to leave out the _th_ owing to the failure of the tongue to meet the palate, so he says "bro'er." He even pretends he cannot say "puss," and turns it into "push." Strings of little words he delights in, such as, in the Brother Death story, the often-repeated "no mo so me no yerry," an expressive phrase difficult to render into good English. It means "I must have failed to hear."

The words are "no more so me no hear," equivalent to "it must be so (that) I (do) not hear," the "no more" having something of the force of the same words in the colloquial phrases, "no more I do," "no more I will." When, for instance, to the remark, "I thought you didn't like the smell of paint," we make the rejoinder "no more I do," Priscian strives in vain to disentangle the words and reduce them to rule of syntax, but they mean "Well! I do not." Thus "no more me hear" would be "Well! I do not hear." The "so" introduces the hypothetical element and the "no" before "yerry" is a reduplicated negative.

Thus far for the sense. Now for the p.r.o.nunciation. The accent indicates where the stress of the voice falls, and unless the accent is caught, the phrase will not run off the tongue. This is how it goes:

n[)o] m[)o] | s[=o] m[)e] n[)o] | yerry.

As an ill.u.s.tration of the necessity of right placing of the accent, take the name of that town in Madagascar, which we so often saw in our papers a few years ago, Antananarivo. Most of us just nodded our heads at it, but never tried, or at least only feebly, to articulate it.

With all this "an an" it was the same sort of hopeless business as the deciphering of the hieroglyphics of those writers whose words seem to be composed of nothing but _m_'s. And yet how simple, and easy to say, the word is when we catch the accent. First "an"; then stop a little; "tnana," same values as traveller; and finally "rivo." French sounds for the vowels of course, An-tananarivo. This grouping of accents is that which in music is known as rhythm. Rightly grouped they make musical sense, wrongly grouped--and alas! how often we hear it--musical nonsense. See the stuttering hopelessness and helplessness of n-tn-n---there might be any number more of "an-an"s to follow, and compare with this the neat satisfying form Antnanarivo. So let no bungler read in the story of Brother Death "no m so m no yerry" with halting and panting, but let him reel off as quickly as he can "no mo so me no yerry" with just the accent that he would use in this phrase:--"It is here that I want you." Remember, too, that the _o_'s have the open sound of Italian, and not the close sound of English. So is exactly like _sol_ (the musical note) with the _l_ left out, and not as we p.r.o.nounce it. And above all, speed.

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. The old puzzle sentence, _Caille a haut nid, taupe a bas nid_, shows this very well.

The ear catches the sound but fails to differentiate the words, and, their real ident.i.ty being disguised, the listener has a sort of impression of modern Greek or Italian, writing these fragments in his brain _oni_, _bani_.

Just as hopeless is negro English to the newcomer, and the first thing to do is to set about learning it. And well it repays investigation.

It is the boast of the English language that it has got rid of so much superfluous grammatical matter in the way of genders, inflections and such-like perplexities. True, it has abolished much that was evil, and enables us to speak and write shortly and to the point. But negro English goes a step further, and its form is still more concise.

Compare these expressions:

NEGRO. ENGLISH.

Corn the horse. Give the horse some corn.

Care the child. Take care of the child.

Him wife turn fire. His wife became a shrew.

You middle hand. The middle of your hand.

My bottom foot. The bottom of my foot.

Out the lamp. Put out the lamp.

The boy too trick. The boy is very tricky.

I did him nothing. I did not provoke him.

See the 'tar up a 'ky. Look at the star up in the sky.

No make him get 'way. Do not let him get away.

Me go buy. I am going to buy.

A door. Out of doors.

Short-mout'ed. Quick at repartee.

Bull a broke pen. The bull has broken out of the pen.

Bell a ring a yard. The bell is ringing in the yard.

Same place him patch. In the place where it was patched.

To warm fire. To warm oneself by the fire.

You no give. If you do not give.

Bring come. Bring it here.

A bush. In the bush.[38]

[Footnote 38: These idioms are very similar to those of Cape Dutch, especially as spoken by the coloured people, and may help to ill.u.s.trate its development. Cf. _Jy is te skellum_,--_ek gaan_ (or better, _Corp_) korp, etc. "To warm fire" reminds one of the Bantu _Ku ot a moto_, of which it is almost a literal translation. (A.W.)]

These are a few typical sentences out of a host which might be cited to show the neat, short turn they take in the mouth of the Jamaica Negro.

The rapidity of utterance natural to all the Blacks is exaggerated by Annancy. He generally affects, too, a falsetto tone as in "Play up the music, play up the music," in Yung-kyum-pyung. He has a metamorphic shape, that of the Spider. At one moment he is a man "tiefing (thieving) cow," the next he is running upon his rope (web).

As he is the chief personage in most of the stories in this book, it is well to have a perfectly clear idea of the p.r.o.nunciation of his name. Unnahncy does not represent it badly, but the first letter has actually the sound of short French _a_ as in _la_. The accent falls strongly on the middle syllable. In "Tacoma" all the syllables are very short. The first has the sound of French _ta_, and takes the accent; _co_ is something between English _cook_ and Italian _con_, and it is impossible to determine whether to write the vowel _o_ or _u_; _ma_ again as in French. The exact relation in which Tacoma stands to Annancy is obscure. In one case he is described as Annancy's son, but, according to most of the stories, he appears to be an independent neighbour.

The stories are obviously derived from various sources, the most primitive being no doubt those which are concerned only, or chiefly, with animals. These may be of African origin, but we should have expected to find the Elephant and not the Tiger. I have a suspicion that Tiger was originally Lion, and that he is the Ogre of Jack the Giant-killer, and other fairy stories brought to Jamaica from England.

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. This is, however, pure conjecture. How much the stories vary may be seen from the two versions of Ali Baba, in one of which the point is so entirely lost that the door is not kept shut upon the intruder.

The tunes are in the same case as the stories. What I take to be certainly primitive about them is the little short refrains, like "Carry him go 'long" (Dry Bone) and "Commando" (Annancy and Hog).

These suggest tapping on a drum. Again, the same influence that has produced the American Plantation Songs is occasionally visible, as in "Some a we da go to Mount Siney" (Annancy in Crab Country). This kind of patter is just what the Negro likes. Some of the tunes are evidently popular songs of the day, as, for instance, the vulgar "Somebody waiting for Salizon" (Snake the Postman). But others are a puzzle, showing as they do a high order of melodic instinct. Such are the melodies in "The Three Sisters" and "Leah," and the digging-tunes, "Oh, Samuel, Oh!" and "Three Acres of Coffee." These digging-tunes are very pleasant to hear, and the singers are quick at improvising parts.

They are an appropriate accompaniment to the joyous labour of this sunny, happy land.

One more word with regard to the tunes. They gain a peculiar and almost indescribable lilt from a peculiarity in the time-organisation of the Negro. If you ask him to beat the time with his foot, he does it perfectly regularly, but just where the white man does not do it.

We beat _with_ the time; he beats _against_ it. To make my meaning quite plain, take common measure. His first beat in the bar will be exactly midway between our first and second beats. The effect of this peculiarity in their singing is, that there is commonly a feeling of syncopation about it. The Americans call it "rag-time."

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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns 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.

I. ANNANCY AND BROTHER TIGER.

One day Annancy an' Bro'er Tiger go a river fe wash'kin. Annancy said to Bro'er Tiger:--"Bro'er Tiger, as you are such a big man, if you go in a de blue hole with your fat you a go drownded, so you fe take out your fat so lef' it here."

Tiger said to Bro'er Annancy:--"You must take out fe you too."

Annancy say:--"You take out first, an' me me take out after."

Tiger first take out.

Annancy say:--"Go in a hole, Bro'er Tiger, an' make me see how you swim light."

Bro'er Annancy never go in.

As Tiger was paying attention to the swimming, Annancy take up his fat an' eat it.

Then Annancy was so frightened for Tiger, he leaves the river side an'

go to Big Monkey town.

Him say:--"Bro'er Monkey, I hear them s.h.i.+ng a s.h.i.+ng a river side say:--

[Music:

"Yeshterday this time me a nyam Tiger fat, Yeshterday this time me a nyam Tiger fat, Yeshterday this time me a nyam Tiger fat, Yeshterday this time me a nyam Tiger fat."]

The Big Monkey drive him away, say they don't want to hear no song.

So him leave and go to Little Monkey town, an' when him go him said:--