KacheliTV returns to Jamaica, and to Martha Warren Beckwith's Jamaica Anansi Stories of 1924 — tales Jamaican storytellers told her, their names kept. Part Five belongs to Brer Rabbit and the racing animals, and it closes the book's Animal Stories.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
“The Tar Baby” stands in Brer Fox's common, and Rabbit talks himself fast to it — foot, foot, hand, hand, head and mouth. In “Saying Grace” a grace said with clasped hands opens the road home. “Pretending Dead” dresses Rabbit in bonpon hat and spectacles to inspect the corpse. “Horse and Turtle” runs the great race to Kingston, a turtle's song always one mile-post ahead. And “Pigeon and Parrot” courts by relay, the answering voice always behind — until it is before.
One hard beat stands as told, in a single clause: Horse, galloping mile-post to mile-post after a voice always ahead of him, drops down dead at the Kingston post in “Horse and Turtle” — a death by the effort itself, no hand laid on him. Held from earlier in the book for a ruling, and not read: “Fire and Anansi” (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: “Man Is Stronger” (a hunter's gun; Tiger dead of it), which closes the Animal Stories behind this part. One telling — “The Fasting Trial” — stands unfinished in the book as we have it, a fragment, and is not judged. Ahead stands the book's next country, the Old Stories, chiefly of sorcery; they are not entered here. No completeness is claimed for this stretch of the book.
The book's storytellers, kept with honour: Rennie Macfarlane of Mandeville ("The Tar Baby", "Saying Grace", "Pretending Dead"); Alfred Williams of Maroon Town ("Horse and Turtle"); and Julia Gentle of Santa Cruz Mountains ("Pigeon and Parrot").
Chapters:
00:29 The Tar Baby
01:51 Saying Grace
02:19 Pretending Dead
03:06 Horse and Turtle
04:44 Pigeon and Parrot
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 — with Part Five the book's Animal Stories close; the Jamaican tales continue on this shelf.
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