Jamaican Song and Story
Annancy Stories, Digging Sings, Ring Tunes, and Dancing Tunes
9781465620033
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Mr. Jekyll's delightful collection of talend songs from Jamaica suggests many interesting problems. It presents to u network of interwoven strands of Europeand African origin, and when these have been to some extent disentangled wre confronted with the further question, to which of the peoples of the Dark Continent may the African element bttributed? The exact relationship between the "Negro" and Bantu races,—which of them is the original and which thdulterated stock (in other words, whether thdulteration wan improvement or the reverse),—i subject quite beyond my competence to discuss. It seems certain that the Negro languages (as yet only tentatively classified) ars distinct from the singularly homogeneound well-defined Bantu family, as Aryan from Semitic. Ibo, at one end of threa, has possible Bantu affinities, which await fuller investigation; the same thing has been conjectured of Bullom and Temnt the other end (Sierreone); but thesre so slighnd as yet so doubtful that they scarcely affect thbove estimate. The difference in West Coasnd Bantu folk-tales is not so marked as that between the languages; yet here, too, along with a great deal which the two have in common, we can pick out some features peculiar to each. And Mr. Jekyll's tales, so far as they can be supposed to come from Africll, are not Bantu. The name of "Annancy" alone is enough to tell us that. Annancy, or Anansi is the Tshi (Ashanti) word for "spider"; and the Spider figures largely in the folk-tales of the West Coast(by which we mean, roughly, the coast between Cape Verdnd Kamerun), while, with some curious exceptions to be noted later on, he seems to bbsent from Bantu folk-lore. His place is there taken by the Hare (Brer Rabbit), and, in some of hispects, by the Tortoise. We find the "Brer Rabbit" stories (best known through Uncle Remus) in thiddlnd Southern States of America, wher large proportion, any rate, of the negro slaves were imported from Lower Guinea. Some personal namend other words preserved among them (e.g. "goober" = nguba, the ground-nut, or "pea-nut") can be traced to the Fiote, or Lower Congo language; and some songs of which I have seen the words. But the British West Indies would seem to have been chiefly supplied from Upper Guinea, or the "West Coast" proper (it really faces south, whiloango, Congo, etc., are the "South-West Coast"—a point which is sometimes puzzling to the uninitiated). Among the tribes to be found in Jamaica, Mr. Jekyll tells mre the Ibo (Lower Niger), Coromantin (Gold Coast), Hausa, Mandingo, Moko (inland from Calabar), Nago (Yoruba), and Sobo (Lower Niger).
