Episode Details

KacheliTV returns to Jamaica, and to Martha Warren Beckwith's Jamaica Anansi Stories of 1924 — tales told to her by Jamaican storytellers, whose names she kept. Anansi the spider-man — small, hungry, and quick — is the hero of them all, and Part 2 goes on through the animal stories.

"Throwing Away Knives" plays the food trick twice over: once with a knife at the pineapple field, and once with a spoon at other men's tables. "Grace Before Meat" pulls Monkey out of Tiger's hands with a clap of joy, and loses Tiger his goat to a prayer. Of "House in the Air" one telling is read here: Rabbit and her children going up to Heaven, and how Anansi's waist came to be narrow. "Dog and Dog-head" makes a dog's head catch a cow. In "Tacoomah's Corn-piece" a whole field is stolen to the sound of a fiddle. "The Grave" buries a man who is not dead in the middle of his wife's peas. "Inside the Cow" sends Anansi in by a magic word after beef-fat — and shuts the door on his own greed. And "The Duckano Tree" hides one fruit that no one can pick but Tacoomah.

Within the tales read here, some hard beats stand as told, each in a single clause: a dog is eaten in one breath of "Dog and Dog-head"; Tacoomah drops dead of vexation in the last sentence of his own tale, no hand laid on him; and in "Inside the Cow" the magic cow dies by one cut string, and a second cow is killed in a clause for the roasting. Three tales of this stretch stand held for a ruling, and are not read: "Long-Shirt," for the horn cut in innocence till the blood came; the telling of "Carencro's House," whose answer is a packey of hot water; and "The Escape from Tiger," whose tar-baby ends in the fire. Four more stand excluded at this shelf's gate, recorded plainly: "Shut Up in the Pot," where Tiger and Tacoomah are cooked in the pot; two tellings of "House in the Air" — the rope cut over Tiger, and the duppy's boiling water; "Goat on the Hill-side," whose barrel is filled by the machete; and "Cunnie-More-than-Father," whose coffin goes twice to the sea. The tellings of "Food and Cudgel" stand held likewise, for their whipping packey. No completeness is claimed for this stretch of the book.

The book's storytellers, kept with honour: Benjamin Collins of Mandeville ("Tiger and Anansi"); William Forbes of Dry River ("Sheep and Anansi", "The Duckano Tree"); Samuel Christie of St. Anne's Bay ("Monkey and Anansi"); Henry Spence of Bog, Westmoreland ("Goat and Anansi"); William Saunders of Mandeville ("Rabbit and Children Going up to Heaven"); Richard Morgan of the Santa Cruz Mountains ("Dog and Dog-head"); Adolphus Iron of Claremont, St. Ann ("Tacoomah's Corn-piece"); Stanley Jones of Claremont, St. Ann ("The Grave"); and George Parkes of Mandeville ("Inside the Cow").

Chapters:

00:31 — Tiger and Anansi

01:14 — Sheep and Anansi

02:25 — Monkey and Anansi

03:55 — Goat and Anansi

04:31 — Rabbit and Children Going up to Heaven

05:31 — Dog and Dog-head

06:44 — Tacoomah's Corn-piece

08:02 — The Grave

10:21 — Inside the Cow

14:58 — The Duckano Tree

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 3 of the Jamaican tales follows on this shelf.

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