KacheliTV stays in Jamaica, and in Martha Warren Beckwith's Jamaica Anansi Stories of 1924 — tales Jamaican storytellers told her, their names kept. Part Seven reads the bridegroom tales of the Old Stories, Chiefly of Sorcery: suitors who are not what they seem, and the brothers and sisters who see through every disguise.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In "The Bull Turned Courter" a hunter's daughter tells her new husband the one secret her mother warned her to save — and must out-turn him, trash, tree and needle, to get home. "The Cow Turned Woman" is its mirror: a hunter husband tells his cow-wife every secret but one, and the one unsaid saves him. In "The Rescue" a Yellow Snake bridegroom is met by the song of the sister he is swallowing, and her hunter brothers answer it. "The Devil-Husband" sends two sisters home in a boat named John Studee, on bags of corn, rice and barley. In "The Snake-Husband" a bride escapes a locked room twice against a talking cock. "Nancy" sings a bull out of his man-shape at his own wedding feast, "The Play-Song" sings the Devil out of his in the parlour, and "Gracie and Miles" ropes the bull who sang, every evening, that he had to kill his bride.
Three passages stand as told, each in a single summary clause: the hunter of "The Bull Turned Courter" shoots a cow at the pond for his house, day by day, as hunters do; in "The Rescue" the brothers kill the Snake, with no weapon named and nothing dwelt on; and in "The Snake-Husband" the escaped bride's mother-in-law is struck on the head with a stick and killed in the closing clause, after the escape is complete. Every tale of this stretch was read in full at this shelf's gate. Held for a ruling, and not read here: the first telling of "The Rescue," whose rescue turns on a brother's gun. Excluded at the gate, recorded plainly: "Snake Swallows the Bride"; "The Two Bulls"; "Ballinder Bull"; "Tiger Softens His Voice"; the first telling of "Anansi plays Baby"; "Anansi and Mr. Able"; and "The Boy Fools Anansi" — each turning on an enacted killing. One telling of this stretch stands banked untouched as a fragment the book itself prints: "Grass-quit." No completeness is claimed for this stretch of the book.
The book's storytellers, kept with honour: George Barret of Maroon Town ("The Bull Turned Courter"); Elizabeth Hilton of Harmony Hall ("The Cow Turned Woman"); Matilda Hall of Harmony Hall ("The Rescue"); William Forbes of Dry River ("The Devil-Husband"); Emilina Dodd of Lacovia ("The Snake-Husband"); Richard Morgan of Santa Cruz Mountains ("Nancy"); George Parkes of Mandeville ("The Play-Song"); and Florence Thomlinson of Lacovia ("Gracie and Miles").
Chapters:
00:36 The Bull Turned Courter
03:22 The Cow Turned Woman
05:12 The Rescue
07:12 The Devil-Husband
10:06 The Snake-Husband
12:30 Nancy
14:39 The Play-Song
17:03 Gracie and Miles
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 Seven the bridegroom tales are told; the Jamaican tales continue on this shelf.
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Jamaican folk tales, Anansi stories, Jamaican folk tales audiobook, Jamaican folklore, Martha Warren Beckwith, Caribbean folk tales, world folk tales, free audiobook
