KacheliTV returns to Jamaica, and to Martha Warren Beckwith's Jamaica Anansi Stories of 1924 — tales Jamaican storytellers told her, their names kept. Part Six opens the book's second country, the Old Stories, Chiefly of Sorcery, and takes its gentle stretch: exchange and riddle tales, a wish that turns a tree into a wife, a threat defeated by a name carried home in song, two pea-fowl messengers, a ferryman's lesson, and a little fish sung back to the river whole.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In "The Pea That Made a Fortune" one planted pea climbs a chain of exchanges — horn, fish, moreen, whip, cow — into riches. "Settling the Father's Debt" is settled on a boy's riddle-answers. "The Tree-Wife" grows from a hunter's wish and is sung home on the road of her own spittle. In "Grandy-Do-An'-Do" a very bad woman's threat is beaten by a name Crab gives and a song keeps. "John Studee" and "Contavio" send the pea-fowl flying from house-top to house-top as messenger. "Crossing the River" teaches a greedy boy the ferryman's price. And in "Fish, Fish, Fish" a caught fish is sung up again, whole, and put back in the river.
One passage stands as told, in a single summary clause: in "Fish, Fish, Fish" the caught fish is cooked for the family's dinner — ordinary meat-taking, kept at source weight — before the daughter's song brings all of him up again and turns him back into a big fish. Every tale of this stretch was read in full at this shelf's gate. Held for a ruling, and not read here: "Asoonah," whose single shot is the hinge of its tale. Excluded at the gate, recorded plainly, each turning on an enacted killing: "Mr. Lenaman's Corn-Field"; "Simon Tootoos"; "Sammy the Comferee"; "Grandy-Do-An'-Do" in its first telling; "Jack and Harry"; "The Barking Puppy"; "The Singing Bird," both tellings; "Two Sisters"; "The Greedy Child" in its second telling; "Alimoty and Aliminty"; "The Fish Lover," first and third tellings; "Juggin Straw Blue"; "The Witch and the Grain of Peas"; "Bosen Corner"; "The Three Dogs," both tellings; and "Andrew and His Sisters." No completeness is claimed for this stretch of the book.
The book's storytellers, kept with honour: Etheline Samuels of Claremont ("The Pea That Made a Fortune"); Simeon Falconer of Santa Cruz Mountains ("Settling the Father's Debt"); Thomas White of Maroon Town ("The Tree-Wife"); Julia Gentle of Malvern ("Grandy-Do-An'-Do"); Matilda Hall of Maroon Town ("John Studee"); Oliver D. Witter of Santa Cruz Mountains ("Contavio"); George Barrett of Maroon Town ("Crossing the River"); and Florence Thomlinson of Lacovia ("Fish, Fish, Fish").
Chapters:
00:32 The Pea That Made a Fortune
01:35 Settling the Father's Debt
03:30 The Tree-Wife
05:44 Grandy-Do-An'-Do
07:54 John Studee
10:32 Contavio
11:56 Crossing the River
12:50 Fish, Fish, 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 — with Part Six the Old Stories open; the Jamaican tales continue on this shelf.
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