Episode Details

KacheliTV opens a new shelf: the folk tales of Jamaica, in Martha Warren Beckwith's Jamaica Anansi Stories of 1924 — tales Jamaican storytellers told her, and she wrote down with their names. Anansi the spider-man — small, hungry, and quick — is the hero of them all, and his great victim is Brer Tiger: big, rough, and sure that strength is the same thing as sense. Part 1 begins where the book begins, with the animal stories.

"The Fish-basket" and "The Storm" are the book's two tellings of the tying of Tiger: once by his long hair to a fruit-tree, over a basket of stolen fish; once to his own mango-tree, under a law Anansi invented on the spot. "Tiger as Riding-horse" settles an insult before witnesses — with a saddle, a bridle, spurs, and a whip, each one explained away. In "Tiger's Sheep-skin Suit" Anansi, himself the thief of Mr. Mighty's sheep, dresses Tiger for a ball and sings the accusation aloud. "The Substitute" trades a spoiled bird, night by night, for a whole sheep-pen. "Tiger's Breakfast" swaps breakfast scams both ways, and ends on the hill-side with the reason Anansi's belly is white. In "Eggs and Scorpions," Blinkie does not keep the egg pact. "Tiger's Bone-hole" hides a whole family where the bones are thrown. And "The Christening" names three children — Top take off, Catch in the middle, and Lick clean — over a keg of butter that two friends found together.

Three of the book's tales stand held for a ruling, and are not read here: the two tellings under "Tiger as Substitute," whose substitutions turn on a copper of hot water and a heated iron, and "The Escape," whose sheep is not a sheep. Four more stand excluded at this shelf's gate, recorded plainly: "In the House-top," where Anansi's own family pays the price of his escape; both tellings of "Eating Tiger's Guts"; the three tellings of "Day-time Trouble," which turn on the killing of Tiger's young; and "New Names," whose bargain costs three mothers their lives. Within the tales read here, two hard beats stand as told, a clause apiece: a hunter finds the tied Tiger and kills him, in the book's own closing sentence of "The Fish-basket"; and a little bird is killed in a single clause to set "The Substitute" in motion. No completeness is claimed for this stretch of the book.

The book's storytellers, kept with honour: George Parkes of Mandeville ("The Fish-basket", "Tiger's Sheep-skin Suit"); Vivian Bailey of Mandeville ("The Storm"); William Forbes of Dry River ("Tiger as Riding-horse", "Eggs and Scorpions", "Tiger's Bone-hole"); Samuel Christie of St. Ann's Bay ("The Substitute"); Richard Morgan of the Santa Cruz Mountains ("Tiger's Breakfast"); and Charles Wright of Maroon Town ("The Christening").

Chapters: 00:29 — The Fish-basket 04:18 — The Storm 06:13 — Tiger as Riding-horse 08:08 — Tiger's Sheep-skin Suit 11:31 — The Substitute 13:10 — Tiger's Breakfast 15:04 — Eggs and Scorpions 16:30 — Tiger's Bone-hole 18:08 — The Christening

Source: Martha Warren Beckwith, Jamaica Anansi Stories, Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, Vol. XVII (1924) — the tales told by the Jamaican storytellers credited above; public-domain 1924 edition (Project Gutenberg eBook #72735). The collector's notes stand in the book, unread here. Our telling is a fresh in-house rendering of the 1924 text. Music: gentle instrumental bed under the narration.

Thank you for listening — Part 2 of the Jamaican tales follows on this shelf. 🔊 The KacheliTV podcast carries a new world folk tale every day — follow the show so the next story finds you.