Episode Details

KacheliTV returns to Jamaica, and to Martha Warren Beckwith's Jamaica Anansi Stories of 1924 — tales Jamaican storytellers told her, their names kept. Anansi the spider-man — small, hungry, and quick — is the hero of them all.

"The Riddle" sets a king a verse no wit could open, and rides a condemned friend home free. "The Cowitch and Mr. Foolman" fells a skin-eating tree, and loses a cow to a tail in the ground. "Dry-head" drops out of a tree, and loses a fat barrow to a spoon he cannot hold. In "Brother Dead" a stolen cock is swapped for a hawk. "Tumble-bug and Anansi" dips plantain and butter by rule, with a corpse that will not stay dead. "Horse and Anansi" gallops after a fire that cannot be caught — and Goat is watching. In "The Fishes" a promised cure is paid for in a frying-pan. "White-belly and Fish" lends Anansi wings, and takes them back as he sleeps. "The Rain" fiddles wild meat into the house, and a white stone crosses the river. "The Dance" sets two doors and four singers. And "Turtle's Escape" talks a dinner out of the pot.

Within the tales read here, some hard beats stand as told, each in a single clause: the mare opened for her unborn colt in "The Riddle"; the cow butchered off the page in "The Cowitch"; the barrow killed for the pot in "Dry-head"; the mother fish fried and eaten in "The Fishes"; the two young fish eaten at the close of "White-belly and Fish"; and Assono eating Anansi in the last sentence of "The Dance." Held for a ruling, and not read: "Go-long-go" (a man left in a lighted fire); "Fire and Anansi" (house and host burned); and "Food and Cudgel," from the part before. Excluded at this shelf's gate, recorded plainly: "Brother Dead's Wife" (a daughter found by her ring); "Goat and Plantain" (the three who drop to Goat, cut up); "Brother Dead and the Brindle Puppy" (Anansi burned to dust); "The Yam-Hills" (whoever counts to nine dies); "The Law Against Back-biting," all three tellings (whoever speaks of another dies); "Fling-a-Mile" (the forks at the mile mark); "But-but" (a father strikes his own family down); Anansi in Monkey Country (the pot and the oven); "The Six Children" (their mother cooked in her own kitchen); "Spider Marries Monkey's Daughter" (the cradle ends in death); and "The Chain of Victims" (the debtors kill in a chain). One telling — "The Dance" in Alfred Williams's mouth — stands unfinished in the book as we have it. No completeness is claimed for this stretch of the book.

The book's storytellers, kept with honour: Moses Hendricks of Mandeville ("The Riddle", "The Cowitch and Mr. Foolman", "Tumble-bug and Anansi"); Ezekiel Williams of Harmony Hall ("Dry-head"); Emanuel Johnson of Brownstown ("Brother Dead"); Alexander Archibald of Mandeville ("Horse and Anansi"); Rennie Macfarlane of Mandeville ("The Fishes"); Mrs. Ramtalli of Maggotty ("White-belly and Fish"); Richard Pottinger of Claremont, St. Ann ("The Rain"); Elizabeth Hilton of Harmony Hall ("The Dance"); and Henry Spence of Bog, Westmoreland ("Turtle's Escape").

Chapters:

00:27 — The Riddle

02:22 — The Cowitch and Mr. Foolman

04:54 — Dry-head

05:51 — Brother Dead

06:48 — Tumble-bug and Anansi

08:23 — Horse and Anansi

10:35 — The Fishes

12:05 — White-belly and Fish

14:49 — The Rain

16:21 — The Dance

17:49 — Turtle's Escape

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). Our telling is a fresh in-house rendering of the 1924 text. Music: gentle instrumental bed under the narration.

Thank you for listening — Part 4 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.