KacheliTV stays in Jamaica, in Martha Warren Beckwith's Jamaica Anansi Stories of 1924 — tales Jamaican storytellers told her, their names kept. Part Nine opens the book's third country, the Modern European Stories, opening with two tales ruled in by name and told as printed.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In "Asoonah" a great skin-thing comes daily to the yard, and only a little boy can name its skin before the king. In "The Rescue" a bride chooses the handsome man her brother warned her was a snake, and his shot answers her song. "Bull-of-all-the-Land" is King Henry, a bull by day, whose true wife washes three drops of blood from his shirt with a lime and sings him awake. In "The Twelve One-Eyed Men" two brothers open the hundredth door in turn, and each finds his chair waiting. A mermaid questions "The Boy and the Mermaid" under the sea, and his four No's carry him home. This "Jack and the Bean-Stalk" has no killing in it — Jack hides in a barrel and takes the giant's money bag. "Jack's Riddle" is the riddle itself: two kill one, and one kill seven. Two fortune-tellers close the part — Jack, who finds the queen's ring by working his head, and Robin, who loses his own name under the dish.
Two tales stand as told under the owner's ruling: in "Asoonah" the father fires the gun and the creature falls and breaks its neck; in "The Rescue" Collin shoots the Yellow Snake dead as its head reaches his sister's nose. Other passages stand as told: in "Jack's Riddle" the donkey Poor Lo dies from the poisoned dumpling in one clause, and seven John-crows die eating him — the riddle's own working; in "Jack as Fortune-Teller" a turkey is killed in one clause for the ring in its craw, and in "Robin as Fortune-Teller" a robin is killed and roasted in one clause. Every tale here was read in full at the gate. Excluded at the gate, recorded plainly: "Ali Baba and Kissem"; "The Boiling Pot"; "Bird and Hunter"; "Uncle Green and Jack"; "Big Begum and Little Begum"; "The Fool and the Wise Brother"; "The Children and the Witch"; "Difficult Tasks"; "The Grateful Beasts"; and "Jack and the Devil" — each turning on an enacted killing or mutilation. Held for the owner's ruling: "Jack and the Devil Errant" and "The Magic Hat and the Staff of Life." No completeness is claimed for this stretch.
Storytellers, kept with honour: Philipp Brown of Mandeville ("Asoonah"); Richard Morgan of Santa Cruz Mountains ("The Rescue"); William Forbes of Dry River ("Bull-of-all-the-Land"); Henry Pottinger of Claremont ("The Twelve One-Eyed Men"); Emily Alexander of Mandeville ("The Boy and the Mermaid"); Clarence Tathum of Mandeville ("Jack and the Bean-Stalk" and "Jack's Riddle"); T. Brown of Claremont ("Jack as Fortune-Teller"); and Henry Spence of Bog, Westmoreland ("Robin as Fortune-Teller").
Chapters:
01:19 Asoonah
03:14 The Rescue
05:04 Bull-of-all-the-Land
07:23 The Twelve One-Eyed Men
11:03 The Boy and the Mermaid
12:04 Jack and the Bean-Stalk
13:46 Jack's Riddle
14:47 Jack as Fortune-Teller
16:24 Robin as Fortune-Teller
Source: Martha Warren Beckwith, Jamaica Anansi Stories, Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, Vol. XVII (1924); public-domain 1924 edition (Project Gutenberg eBook #72735). Our telling is a fresh in-house rendering of the 1924 text. Music: opening and closing theme, "The River's Dying Vision 2".
Thank you for listening.
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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
