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.

"Tailors and Fiddlers" opens at a ball, where a suit of maggot-flies smells the dinner and flies away. In "Fiddlers" a whispered tune loses Tiger the king's daughter. "Dung Jar" swaps Tumble-bug's money for Anansi's, on a clean sheet before the king. "Dog Is Looking" weighs a yam crop against a spider's leg. In "River Moss" a rock keeps what it was refused. "Ground-Dove" sings of his ears, and means it. "Hog Grunting" loses a mouth in the river. "Woodpecker" keeps a promise that stone could not hold. "Crab After Dark" dances away the head he was promised. "Rat's Wedding" scrapes the burnt rice under the pot. "Cock's Breakfast" keeps a sign that Cockroach cannot. "Feigning Sick" plays the fiddle once too often — twice over. "The Drum" is played first by the one shut out of making it. And "Hunter and Fish" ends with a song, a wave, and an empty tub.

Within the tales read here, some hard beats stand as told, each in a single clause: half of Anansi's skin left on the stone in "River Moss"; Rat killed under the lifted pot in "Rat's Wedding"; Cockroach swallowed at the close of "Cock's Breakfast" and of "Feigning Sick"; and Cockroach killed by Puss in the last line of "The Drum." Held for a ruling, and not read: "Fire and Anansi," from the part before (house and host burned); "Why John-Crow Has a Bald Head," both tellings (a baptism in boiling water; hot pop dashed on a dancer's head); and "Why Toad Croaks" (a pot of hot water poured to loosen a skin). Excluded at this shelf's gate, recorded plainly: "Why Mice Are No Bigger" (a nephew kills his uncle to be made big); and "Man Is Stronger" (a hunter's gun, and Tiger dead of it). One telling — "The Fasting Trial" — stands unfinished in the book as we have it, a fragment, and is not judged. No completeness is claimed for this stretch of the book.

The book's storytellers, kept with honour: David Roach of Lacovia ("Tailors and Fiddlers"); Henry Spence of Bog, Westmoreland ("Fiddlers"); William Forbes of Dry River ("Dung Jar"); Moses Hendricks of Mandeville ("Dog Is Looking"); Sarah Vassel of Bog, Westmoreland ("River Moss"); Simeon Falconer of Santa Cruz Mountains ("Ground-Dove"); Norman Hilton of Harmony Hall ("Hog Grunting"); Samuel Wright of Maroon Town ("Woodpecker"); Richard Morgan of Santa Cruz Mountains ("Crab After Dark", "Cock's Breakfast"); Thomas Williams of Harmony Hall ("Rat's Wedding", "Hunter and Fish"); Eliza Wright and George Barrett of Maroon Town ("Feigning Sick"); and Mrs. Matilda Hall of Harmony Hall ("The Drum").

Chapters:

00:29 — Tailors and Fiddlers

01:25 — Fiddlers

02:12 — Dung Jar

03:26 — Dog Is Looking

04:17 — River Moss

05:06 — Ground-Dove

05:44 — Hog Grunting

06:28 — Woodpecker

07:05 — Crab After Dark

08:03 — Rat's Wedding

09:21 — Cock's Breakfast

10:44 — Feigning Sick

12:33 — The Drum

13:51 — Hunter and Fish

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 5 of the Jamaican tales follows on this shelf.

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