Suriname folk-lore

6. The Telling of the Tales

Though few tales have been recorded, these play an important role in the life of the Suriname Negroes. They are, whatever their nature, called Anąnsi-tɔri, the stories of Anansi, the Twi trickster-hero, who, like in Curaçao and Jamaica has survived his migration to the western hemisphere to be here, as on the Gold Coast, the most important single character in the folk-tales of the Negroes of these regions.³ Whether a story deals with animals, or recounts the adventures of kings and princesses, or tells of ghosts, the name is still Anąnsi-tɔri, though at times one hears the term ‘ɔndrofeni tɔri’ applied to those purporting to recount personal experiences. The explanation for the generic term of Anąnsi-tɔri for all stories may be had from the myth told in Ashanti, which tells how Anansi acquired the right to have all tales bear his name - formerly they were called ‘God's stories’ - by performing the tasks set for him by God.⁴

3 See Cardinall, (I) and Rattray (III), for Anansi among the Gold Coast peoples. It must not be assumed, however, that the spider (under other names, it is true) is found only on the Gold Coast. He is a prominent character in Cronise and Ward's and in Thomas' collection (VI) from Sierra Leone, among the Guro, Gagu and Agni of the Ivory Coast (Tauxier, I, III), in Togoland (Speiss, I), and among the Hausa, where, according to Tremearne, (III, p. 10) ‘since the spider is the king of cunning and craftiness, all fables are told in his name.’ Even in the far-off Cameroons, the spider is the wahrsager of the animals (Lederbogen, I). For Anansi in Jamaica, see Beckwith (II), passim. Encyc. p. 44, states that in Curaçao these tales are called Cuenta di nansi. Van Cappelle (p. 267, note 2), states the spider in Curaçao is called ‘Nanzi’. It is perhaps not without significance that ‘Miss Nancy’ figures as an occasional character in the Sea Island tales (Parsons, II, No. 62, IV, and passim).

4 Rattray's statement that ‘all of the stories in this volume would, however, be classed by the Akan-speaking African under the generic title of “Anansesem” (Spider stories) whether the spider appeared in the tale or not,’ is pertinent (II, p. xiii). Indeed, we ourselves found among the Ashanti that most of our informants began by offering to tell us the story of how Nyᾳkɔnsɛm came to be called Anᾳnsesɛm.

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What is the role of the Anąnsi-tɔri in the life of the Paramaribo Negroes?¹ Its most important function is its place in the complex of the rites for the dead, and it is from this that stems the reason why these tales may not be told during the day,² for the belief holds that the dead would come and sit beside the tellers of the tales if this were essayed, thus causing their death.³ Among the Saramacca Bush-Negroes, these tales are told to entertain the dead while they lie in state in the dɛdɛ-wosu, the house of death that every village possesses, since burial seldom takes place, even for a man of no great rank in the community, until six or seven days have elapsed since his death. In Paramaribo, though stories are told at all wakes, and often at anniversary celebrations for the dead, the most important story-telling ceremony for the dead is what is called ai̯ti-dei̯ neti, ‘eighth-day night (after death)’. This wake, beginning early in the evening with hymns which last for about an hour, continues, after what is called prati skrati (‘serving the chocolate’, as the refreshments are known), with riddling, and games of forfeits and impersonation, and story telling until daybreak.⁴ It must not be thought, however, that the Anansi-stories are told only on occasions associated with honoring or entertaining the spirits of the dead, for they serve an important educational function, and serve, as well, to entertain during the leisure of an unoccupied evening in the ‘yard’, on the plantation, or in work-camps where men from the city are isolated in the bush.

The tales may be divided into three general groups; those that have animals as their dramatis personae, those with human characters, and those containing animals and humans, who appear to share the world they inhabit on equal terms. Among those tales in which only humans figure are to be found the incidents dealing with magic manipulation or with idiosyncracies traceable to the world of the tellers of the tales, or with ghosts. The animal tales may in turn be subdivided into those in which Anansi, the spider, figures as leading character, and those in which other animals appear. In arranging the stories, we have followed the sequence of presenting the animal tales about Anansi first, then those about other animals,

1 While we were unable to collect tales in Saramaka tɔ̨ŋgo, we heard many Anᾳnsi-tɔri told in the bush, and we found that both in the tales told and in the social setting of the stories, there is but little difference between town and bush.

2 This reluctance to tell tales during the day is characteristic of New World and West African Negroes alike, and has been remarked upon by almost every student.

3 The Penards (II, pp. 242-3) state ‘It is considered unlucky to tell Anansi-tori in the daytime; but, if this is to be done, the narrator may avert the evil consequences of his indiscretion by first plucking a hair from his eyelids.’ Though most of our tales were gathered during the day, we have never seen this done.

4 Cf. Beckwith, (II), pp. xi-xii, for a similar statement as regards Jamaica.

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and finally the tales of humans, following in our grouping the distinctions made above.¹

With the exception of Elephant, asau², and Whale, who figure in the Tug of War tale, there are no animals who do not come from the immediate environment of the people of Suriname. Thus we find among them Anansi, the spider, Tiger (by which term the jaguar is named), Kɔnikɔni (variously denoted the rabbit and the aguti), Deer, Buffalo (the tapir), Monkey, Wild Dog, Goat, Cock, Cockroach, Wren (Tyɔtyɔforu), Toad, Tortoise, Hog, Ant-eater, Parrot, Cricket and Alligator.³ Of supernatural characters we have Death, the Devil, and Lɛba, god of the crossroads; of personifications we have ‘Gun’ and the magic peanuts who break into speech. The traits that individualise these characters are, as is usual in animal stories, those which they manifest in everyday life. Thus, Tortoise is slow and Spider is cunning, while Tiger is strong, but lacking in shrewdness.

In the majority of the tales in which Anansi figures as trickster, he attains his ends by some ruse, but there are instances of retribution; one of them comes at the hands of Rabbit (No. 23); another comes from Alligator (No. 29), and yet another from Tortoise (Nos. 83 and 84). In three instances he is outwitted by his own wife (Nos. 43, 44, and 45), and for the rest, it is usually ‘the king’ or ‘the chief’ who sees to his punishment. There are instances where a son surpasses him in cunning (No. 65), or where he saves Anansi's life (Nos. 11 and 12). The common factor in all the animal tales is that the small animal outwits the larger one. We see this in Anansi's exploits against Tiger (as in No. 30), or in the story of the flying contest (No. 26), where the little bird who mounts on the back of Falcon is made king of the birds, or where Rabbit and Tortoise save themselves from Tiger (as in No. 18).

This motif also occurs in the human tales, where the small boy (No. 128) or the poor boy, endowed with magic (No. 103) or given magic by a witch (No. 104), outwits the king and marries the king's daughter. It is tempting to refer the human tales figuring kings and hunters, and boy heroes, and princesses and witches, to a European provenience, because of their resemblance to the fairytales found in such a collection as that of the Brothers Grimm. This assumption, however, is by no means entirely borne out when reference is also made to the African literature. Thus, in a tale such as ‘The Good Child and the Bad’ (No. 100), although we have

1 We collected all versions of any tale told to us, and have grouped the variants, whatever their characters, hence in some instances the above classifications are not held to.

2 Compare Kongo nzau, in Bentley, p. 68.

3 It is not necessary to indicate how in these, as in the tales of most folk whose lore is living, the stories reflect the everyday life of the people. This can be seen in the way such tales as No. 100 or as No. 122 are embroidered with details arising out of the experiences and beliefs of those who tell them.

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a combination of two, and perhaps three, well-known European tales (Frau Holle, Cinderella, and the Magic Whip), it is equally true that an impressively large number of West African correspondences for both the Frau Holle and the Magic Whip portions of the tale are found in the available literature. Indeed, the Frau Holle tale is an excellent case in point in illustrating the manner in which a story that lies deep in African patterns may be credited by the comparative folk-lorist, studying New World Negro tales, to European provenience exclusively. West African folk-lore, however, shows frequent occurrence of what may be termed the ‘orphan’ cycle of tales, the moral of which teaches consideration for the orphan. When recording tales in Dahomey, we repeatedly heard the expression, ‘this will be a nɔtchiɔvi story’, and nɔtchiɔvi means ‘motherless child’. Most African collections contain the well known and often repeated tales of the market of the dead, where the orphan is helped by her dead mother to destroy the co-wife who had mistreated her, or, even more frequently, they contain this Frau Holle motif of the orphaned child obeying difficult and apparently meaningless injunctions and being rewarded, while the well-treated child refuses to obey, and is punished.

That there is an appreciable European influence in the stories, particularly in the tales about human beings, is indisputable. But that there are also elements of African provenience in these tales of kings and princes, of demons and changelings must not be ignored. A consideration of the correspondences to European and West African tales does, in fact, bring up problems of a larger nature which cannot be discussed here. In the light of the number of African correspondences for human as well as animal stories, it may, however, be queried whether the conclusion that New World Negro tales of this character are largely derived from European influences, may not profitably be reinvestigated.

The arrangement of the stories in this collection to follow a sequence of animal, animal-human, and human tales was made in order to facilitate comparative work of students of folk-lore. They might have been grouped otherwise, - as explanatory and moralising tales, for example, with an intermediate group for tales which overlap these two types. There would have been ample reason for such classification, for these aspects of the character of the tales explain their function as an educational factor among the Negroes. ‘While you Whites have schools and books for teaching your children, we tell them stories, for our stories are our books,’ the West African Dahomeans say. In Paramaribo, though a large proportion of the children attend school, they still listen after dusk to Anansi-stories, and they are encouraged by the older women in the yard to recount them to one another, to break the flow of narrative with songs, and to end with the proper moral, or the proper explanatory sentence. If riddles are asked the children, no

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emphasis is given to the elements of double entendre, but stress is laid upon memorising the answers.

The tales told by adults at night for their own entertainment fall principally into the group of stories about human beings, though animal tales, whether they point a moral or not, are included if they afford the teller an opportunity for impersonation and mimicry. Such tales as the Tar-baby, with the pantomimed description of the trickster striking the doll, or those which pit Anansi's cunning against the Tiger's strength and afford the teller the opportunity of imitating the mincing voice of Anansi and the gruff tones of the larger animal, are special favorites.

Story-telling among these people is not an art which is dependent upon the skill of the narrator alone, for any well told story becomes a dramatic presentation with a principal impersonator, and a chorus.¹

To understand the character of this participation by the listeners, it is necessary to go beyond story-telling, and to examine the pattern underlying conversation in the Suriname Bush, or in such regions of West Africa as the Gold Coast, or Nigeria, or Dahomey. Among the Bush-Negroes, whether two men pass each other on the river, and state their respective errands and exchange greetings, or two women meet on the path to the fields, and stop to recount some domestic incident, or men meet in the council-house, or gather for a joint enterprise, what is spoken by one is punctuated with a phrase of interpolation by the other, so that all speech consists of a series of statements and responses and becomes liturgical in its rhythms. These interpolations may come at the end of a pause, or they may break the length of a sentence, and they are often no more than ‘Yes!’ ‘Well, so it is!’ ‘So I hear!’ ‘True-true!’ ‘That's so!’ ‘Yes, brother!’² To listen to speech passively would be considered boorish, or unfriendly. The interpolations which punctuate the flow of the story and introduce the songs are, therefore, fundamental to narrative structure.

In the Paramaribo tales, these interruptions are called kɔt' tɔri, literally ‘cutting the story’, and the songs are kɔt' sɩŋgi, ‘songs that cut (the story)’.

Before we discuss the formulae for these kɔt' tɔri, however, we must mention the two most popular openings for stories. The first is

‘Er, tin, tin’

with the answer

‘Tin, tin, tin’³

1 This characterises the telling of tales by Negroes everywhere; cf. the descriptions of story-telling given by Dennett, (I, ch. II), Rattray, (III, p. vi, x-xi), Cronise and Ward, Tauxier, (I), Westermann, (III, pp. 357ff.), and Parsons, (III, pp. xx-xxi), among numerous others.

2 One may refer to the ‘Yes, Lawd!’, ‘Glory!’, and other exclamations from the congregation which, in Negro churches in the United States, punctuate a prayer or a sermon.

3 This formula is said to mean ‘Once upon a time.’

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and the second is

‘Kri, kra, all men on their kra-kra!’¹

A tale may also open with a proverb (as in Nos. 98 or 107), or by an invocation (as in No. 121), in order to give the listeners the clue to the theme.

The first interruption may come after the narrator has spoken but five or six sentences.

Man in Audience: ‘Kri-kra!’
Narrator: ‘Fa yu taki? - What are you saying?’
Man... ‘Bato! Mi bɛn dapɛ. - Bato, I was there.’
Narrator: ‘Sąn yu si? - What did you see?’

The rejoinder to this is a song, led by the man who has interrupted, to the accompaniment of the listeners singing a chorus.

It is possible to shorten this formula, and simply call out ‘Bato!’ as a signal to the narrator to stop, and then to begin a song, or to call, ‘Kri-kra!’ and answer the narrator's first question with a song. It often happens that the story-teller himself cuts his own story, and breaks into a song, in which his audience joins. He may do this because his audience is listless, or because he wishes to heighten suspense, for the good story-teller introduces these interruptions with fine dramatic effect. One such kɔt' tɔri goes as follows:

Narrator: ‘Harki tɔri! yɛri tɔri! - Hear the tale! Listen to the tale!’
Voice from Audience: ‘A sɑ go? - Will it go?’
Narrator: ‘A mus' ką go! - It must go on!’

The teller may pause long enough to assure his audience that what follows is interesting, whereupon he will pause his narrative and exclaim,

‘Mɔksmɔriǫ, nąŋga shuba, shuba’²

or

‘Wɛ, mi mąn, opo yu yesi, yɛri tɔri, fō tɛ yu go taki baka fō yu no lei̯. - Well, my man, open your ears and hear the story, so that when you go to repeat it, you won't lie.’

These intervals are usually followed by at least one song.

The songs employed for the purpose of ‘cutting’ the story vary widely as to their character, as may be seen in the songs that ‘cut’ the tales of this collection. Only few of the traditional songs that are considered as an integral part of the story itself have been retained, for these are often replaced by more recent ones. The newer songs may be Dutch tunes to which some old words have been fitted, or a Dutch verse sung to an old tune, or a fresh adaptation of a traditional melody. Kɔt'sɩ̨ŋgi may also be religious songs, or those of the Kauna dances, the first being introduced

1 This formula is said to mean ‘All in their places’, kri, kra being a bird's cry, and kra-kra a perch on a tree.

2 This is said to be an African assurance that the tale will delight the listeners.

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because they are well known, their simple lines enabling the chorus to sing with the leader; and the second because the Kauna songs abound in satirical and gross allusions, and thus overcome the handicap of the longer recitative by the leader with the hilarity aroused by the rendition of words that are more or less known to all.

These interpolations, with song intervals and often short dance intervals as well, continue until the end of the tale, when the narrator closes with a proverb, or simply says, ‘A kaba - It is finished,’ or ‘Na tɔri kɔm kaba, - The story is at an end.’ Someone in the audience may interrupt at the very end of the story with yet a final exclamation, such as ‘Bato! Mi bɛn dapɛ! - Bato! I was there!’ and go on to tell how he himself shook hands with the prince and the princess whose trials the story had brought to a happy conclusion; or how he sat at their wedding feast; or how otherwise he participated in the action of the story's end. Or it may be that it is the teller of the tale who himself recounts how, as in story 99, it was the shock of the concluding action that brought him to the very place where he is recounting the story.¹ Thus the effect sought is the illusion of actual participation in the action, not only by the teller but by the entire audience. The swaying of the body to the rhythms of the songs, the accompaniment of hand-clapping, and the few dance-steps often introduced by the leader of a song or by the narrator, and repeated by others standing on the fringe of the listening group, all make for the heightening of this illusion, and it is this enjoyment of rhythmic participation that makes stylistic repetition in the tales a pattern that is as welcome as the similarly patterned repetition in songs and drum rhythms.

The formulae with which the tales are opened and closed call for some further mention, principally because in them we find one of the deep-seated African characteristics of folk-tales that has persisted in all portions of the New World. It is not easy to find illustrations of such devices in the published collections of African tales, mainly because these most frequently consist of abstracts, - though the abstracts may be extended ones, - rather than full renditions of the tales themselves. But where tales are given in close translation, or where attempts have been made to render them as they are told, examples do appear. The best instance is found in Rattray's collections. In his Ashanti stories² almost every tale is prefaced by the statement ‘We do not really mean, we do not really mean (that what we are going to say is true)’, while each ends with the formula ‘This, my story, which I have related, if it be sweet, (or) if it be not sweet, take some elsewhere, and let some come back to me.’ In Rattray's collection of Hausa tales,³ one often finds the opening ‘A story, a story. Let it go, let it come.’ In Nigeria, one of the

1 For other instances see Nos. 18, 23, 79, 96, 104, 119, 127, 128.

2 (III), passim.

3 (IV), passim.

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tales collected by us began, in a fashion we have heard during evenings of story-telling ‘Alo, alo. Itomi - Alo, alo. My story’; another began with the proverb that also ended it and was the point of the tale, while a third began with the statement

‘We live in de worl',
We live in de worl',
But no, we live in de devil-people country.’¹

In Dahomey, one informant, in writing for us a list of riddles, prefaced it with the heading, ‘Les formules que on se prononce d'abord avant le raconter les contes.’

Examples abound of New World correspondences to this trait of Suriname folk-lore style. Thus, in the Bahama Islands, Parsons gives numerous rhymes which open the stories she reports, -

‘Once upon a time, a very good time,
Monkey chew tobacco and spit white lime’²

is the one that appears most often. Her Sea Island tales carry no such openings, but Johnson³ maintains that this opening which we have quoted is common on Ladies Island, and quotes two others. Closing formulae are also very common in New World collections, and they are of close resemblance to the type of closing we have quoted from Suriname. Thus, in Louisiana, Fortier reports the ending of one story as consisting of the sentence

‘As I was there when all that happened, I ran away to relate it to you’⁴

and another with

‘The young girl said “Yes” and there was such a wedding that they sent me on to relate the story everywhere, everywhere.’⁵

From the Sea Islands, to cite only one instance from Parson's tales we find

‘Of course I couldn't stay any longer to see any more done’⁶

while as a variant to this ending, she gives

‘I was watching them very close, and I turn aroun', -
I step on a tin and the tin bend
And there my story end.’

1 Herskovits, M. & F., (II), p. 460.

2 (III), p. 1 and often elsewhere in this volume.

3 G. Johnson, p. 156.

4 (I) story XV, p. 53.

5 (I), story XVI, p. 61.

6 (II), p. 51.

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In the Bahamas, numerous examples of both kinds of ending dot Parsons' collection, two such, taken at random being the narrative ending

‘Boukee he started back, an' de reins broke an' hit me an' cause me to tell dis storee,’¹

and the formulary

‘E bo ben,
My story en'.’²

In Jamaica, no set beginning is reported, but Beckwith ends many of her tales with ‘Jack man dora!’,³ apparently a favorite closing formula. In Santo Domingo, where, according to Andrade, ‘the majority of the tales seem to be of European origin’, he finds that ‘it was customary at one time to begin a story with certain formulistic expressions...’ and states that ‘endings may be extemporised, but the one most commonly resorted to is... y a mí me dieron una patá y me dejaron aquí sentao.’⁴ It is not claimed, of course, that these endings to Negro tales are not European in provenience, for in some of the tales of such a collection as that of Grimm Brothers, endings reminiscent of these are present. They may perhaps be best regarded as representing a coalescing of African and European cultural elements.

1 (III), pp. 30-31.

2 (III), pp. 108 and 109.

3 (II), passim.

4 P. 26. See also the end of tale No. 43 for a different narrative closing.