The Caribs fear the Horses

In the year of our Lord 1533, the Spanish establishment on the island, named for the Trinity, discovered by the Grand Admiral forty-five years ago, was comprised of just one pueblo at a place described by the naturals as Mucurapo.

It was a fortified camp and consisted of thirty-one houses with kitchens, stables, smithy and storehouses.

Before the attack in September of that year, it was protected by a singly stockade, but now a double wall was constructed of heavy balks of timber, filled between with earth. This wall was 180 paces each way, pierced with loop holes and flanked by bastions mounted with cannons from the ships. The strength of the last Indian attack had clearly left and indelible impression upon the Spaniards. Antonio de Herrera in his 'Historia General de Las Indias 1730' cited a report by Antonio Sedeño to His Most Catholic Majesty's Audencia at Madrid:

"Thus we waited on watch until four o'clock in the early morning of September 13th, 1533, as dawn was breaking upon the pueblo and before the guards were relieved or the rounds made, a great number of Indians, all clothed, swept down upon us, with loud cries contrary to their usual mode of attack.

They at once surrounded the pueblo on all sides and launched the attack with great courage and persistence as though they had been Turks, and in half-an-hour about 15—20 of our men had been wounded.

So many were the arrows that they covered the ground. As the horses were stabled in the middle of the pueblo, the Indians were not able to get at them through the defenses, but by shooting arrows high up they managed to wound five out of the eight before steps were taken to cover them. These horses were the principal reserve and would be urgently required later, as we felt certain that without them we should all be killed. We all agreed that if these horses were lost, that day or soon after, it would be necessary to abandon the Island with the loss of everything.

We then sent out the horses to resist and break up this furious attack. As soon as the first horseman was seen, the Indians began to shout loudly, 'Horses, Horses, Horses,' and to turn and fly. As the other horsemen followed and wounded and killed the Indians, they broke completely and fled to the hills, leaving on the battlefield many bows, arrows, shields and war clubs.  We killed about 30 Indians and captured three alive, from whom we learnt that many tribes had united to make this assault. They had agreed to take arms to kill the Spaniards and drive them out of the Island. If this attempt were not successful they had agreed to return again in eight days in still greater numbers to make the Island free of us.

This was sure to happen sooner or later and our men were depressed at this news, for the punishment inflicted by the horsemen was not sufficiently great. We searched the battlefield and collected our wounded, about 20 or more. Amongst these was the Teniente of Paria who had been one of the horsemen; his horse had been killed by two arrows tipped with poison, so that it died raving mad."

The tribal people generally referred to as Caribs were terrified of horses. The Spaniards with iron helmets and breast plates were recognisable as men, but horses, it would appear, touched some nerve, some primal fear. The second battle of Mucurapo lasted about an hour and  half, involved some 3,000 Caribs. It commenced in the pre-dawn hours. The warriors had moved silently across the Savannah and through the high forest of giant silk cotton trees. This attack was in response to one launched upon an Indian village by the Spaniards some months before when at the one in the morning they had fallen upon a sleeping village. The Indians had engaged in a desperate defense and refused to yield. The Spaniards set fire to the huts so as to bring out the men, the women and the children, and by the fierce light of their blazing homes, this bitter and unequal fight continued to the end.

Event he women and children submitted voluntarily to the flames rather than surrender. Many warriors died, a handful fled into the northern mountains. Of the Spaniards, ten had died "raving in madness' from the wounds of poisoned arrows. The Caribs took the fort by surprise and penetrated the stockade of the Spanish camp and were engaged in hand to hand fighting (K.S. Wise). It was only the timely action by the horsemen which saved the day for Spain.

It was now evident that the Carib people had gathered in strength and were not afraid to die for their Iere. Antonio Sedeño knew that the margin by which he and his men had survived was very narrow. Fourteen Spaniards had been killed, and only 30 men remained. All the horses had been wounded. There was great dissent in the camp at Mucurapo. Antonio de Herrera declared that this conquest of Trinidad was doomed to failure and that he intended to leave for the main land.

That night, the rations almost done, they received food from the cacique Maruana, leader of the south of the island. the Caribs, as well received fresh reinforcements and a large quantity of poisonous arrows. From the fort, their encampments could be seen dotting the forested areas of what is now Woodbrook and St. James. The campfires in the fort were piled high with logs and blazed brightly as the sun settled into the Dragon's Mouth, turning gold to red with the intensity of primeval volcanoes. Starving sentinels scanned the forest for a sign that could signal attack from the Caribs. The night grew inordinately still.

Sedeño had received news that no assistance nor supplies could be expected in Trinidad. Many men had deserted, preferring to risk the crossing to the main in rotting and unsafe pirogues than to face the poisoned arrows of the Caribs. Dissatisfaction and discouragement enhanced by the absence of adequate supplies of food had grown since March 1534 the rest of his men mutinied against Sedeño and demanded to be led away from Trinidad where only death and destruction awaited them. That night, he was arrested by his own men and removed to the mainland. The second battle of Mucurapo had been won by the Caribs.

(from "Chronicles of the Carib Wars", K.S. Wise)

The Witch of Rose Hall

Sparrow and I were in Jamaica doing a recording at Byron Lee's studio in Kingston, when I first heard about Anne Palmer, the famous "white witch of Rose Hall".

It must have been after 2 in the morning, when in the company of Herman Hadeed and two Jamaican musicians we sat down under the stars outside of the studio to unwind from the day's and the night's work with the best that Jah Kingdom has to offer.

One of the musicians, a bass player, whose name I cannot bring to mind, felt compelled to tell a story -  the story of Rose Hall Estate. He said it was about ten or twelve miles east of Montego Bay. As you drove along the north coast road, you would pass through miles of sugar cane until you come to a point when the road branches off to the right and passes some poor people's houses and a Chinese shop. You could follow a dirt road to a little hilltop and there find the ruined halls of the most terrible haunted house in Jamaica, if not the Caribbean.

"If only those walls coulda talk, man," he said, his lion-like mane darkly silhouetted against a starlit night sky, "they would tell you that to this day people 'round there fear this place."

Here is the gist of his story.

Rose Hall began as a happy house to which in the 1750s a sugar planter, George Fanning, brought his pretty, vivacious bride Rose. Rose had had four previous husbands - now don't hold that against her, mortality was high in the colonies back then! They lived a good life, and when she died, her husband John had a medallion with her profile carved and set into the wall of the nearby parish church.

For several years, the great house was shut up. Tall weeds grew right up to the massive doors, while the huge iron gates hung rusting on their hinges.

In 1820, Fanning's grand nephew, John Palmer, inherited the estate and brought his young bride Anne to live at Rose Hall. Sugar had by that time started to decline. The slave trade had been abolished in 1807; there was talk of emancipation.

In oral history, there are many tales about Annie's background. Was she an Englishwoman, who was instructed in Voudoun black magic by a Haitian priestess? Did she only remember the sadistic elements of her teaching and forgot about the healing properties of that cult? Whatever it was, the young and pretty Annie managed to engulf her surroundings and those who shared her home in terror.

Around the great house at Rose Hall there grew an atmosphere not of joyous anticipation, but increasingly one of fear. It was said amongst the slaves - amongst those of them who knew of such things - that Anne was a witch. Her beauty drew men to her. Her powers of witchcraft kept her slaves subdued despite of the dreadful punishments she inflicted on them. In beatings, she herself wielded the whip. She put with her own thin hands the spiked iron collar around their necks. She had their feet burnt until their toebones dropped out.

John Palmer died in 1826 a haggard man. His widow Anne now ruled the mansion and was in control of the wealth. At nights, the house was brilliantly lit. Seen reflected in the huge silver tureens and mahogany floors polished to a shine were terrible sequences of events. In their golden frames, the long-dead Palmers gazed down on scenes that would have turned their Protestant bowels to liquid. The house-slaves knew of the men, overseers, book-keepers and the like, who, entrapped by her, died there in that house, their bodies no one knew where.

Legend has it that there were bloodstains on the floor of one of the bedrooms upstairs that could not wash away, where a man had died of a dagger wound, the blood pouring across the highly polished floor.  In one stain was the print of a heel, in the other the mark of the ball of a woman's foot. It was said that it was in these upper rooms that Anne Palmer killed lover after lover, including slaves. Sometimes they were strangled by her slaves as she watched on.

There was a young man who lived at Rose Hall, a relative of her late husband John. His name was Andrew Phillips. His account was saved by one Rose Stopford who wrote of a young Englishman coming to Rose Hall:

"Just at that moment came a stranger's voice calling my name - 'Is Andrew Phillips here?' I turned and saw a tall, handsome youth. He did not look older than myself, but gay and  ... and talked with ease. He told me he was my employer's son, Ned Palmer, and that he had come aboard to welcome me and to take me back with him to the estate. I gave Ned Palmer all the news from home, then poured out my questions - an endless stream. Good-humouredly, he answered all I asked. Then our eyes met - we knew we should be friends. A sudden shadow passed across his face, his eyes left mine, and gazing out to sea he muttered: 'Why did you come? Go back. there is still time. The boat is here until Saturday. It's a hard life and you are very young.'"

Young Andrew stayed on an took up the job of overseer at Rose Hall. One day, he had occasion to rescue a lovely young slave girl from a cruel beating and went up to the great house to protest. It was getting on to twilight. A splendid sunset lit up the sky, the many windows of that stately house glowed red as blood, the mansion seemed on fire, through the double doors he entered a long room. A silvery voice said: "Here he is at last. I hoped that I should meet our overseer."

A slender woman rose in welcome. Here eyes were bright and tender. She smiled the sweetest smile that he had ever seen. He stammered out an answer awkwardly. Then he remembered why he had come.

"This is no friendly call. I come to say I found a slave receiving punishment. They told me you had ordered her the lash."

For a second, a shadow crossed her face and then she smiled.

"Come, sit down. I see I must explain. That wretched girl had spoiled a whole day's work. The sugar boiled today must be drawn off - ruined because of one rat-eaten cane."

"But I think the punishment extreme. We should exempt women from the lash."

She dropped her eyes. He, following her downward gaze, saw the beauty with which she was made, framed in burgundy velvet. The new overseer fell under Anne Palmer's spell, until one terrible afternoon when he came face to face with her wickedness in one of the dry ravines behind the estate.

He had been dozing in the upstairs verandah of his cottage when he heard a voice:

"Take him to the gully, take him to the gully, bring back the frock and board, carry him along." He knew the ravine well; it was where they threw the dead slaves for the birds of prey, thus saving the money for the undertaker.

"Take him to the gully," she shouted.

"Oh massa, me no deadee yet."

He could not bear the house, but got his horse and cantered up a lonely mountain track, going anywhere to be alone. At length, the pathway slowly widened out, the mare stood still. He could not urge her on.

Great mossy rocks were scattered on the grass and gray with lichen were the twisted trees. Dismounting, he walked forward to explore. Something was creaking in the gentle wind. A sickly odour was wafting in the breeze. the flapping of big black wings startled him, the flock flew skyward. There before him an iron frame was hanging from a tree, and in the frame a woman's body hung. He knew at once it was the girl. Even so, with this horror in his mind, Anne Palmer's spell on him was strong. He made up his mind to leave, but felt compelled to go to the great house to bid her good-bye - this in spite of the pleading of the slaves. One old woman who had grown to love him for the care he took in all that came under his charge fell on her knees before him.

"Oh massa, do not do dey," she pleaded. "Massa McNeil, he go and not come back. Ask Miss Palmer where McNeil is now."

It was then he learnt the real truth.

"When the mistress tire of the man she love, she make them two black slaves go throttle them, den drag dem dong dat passage to the sea and throw them to the sharks - them tell no tales."

Little wonder is then that Anne Palmer was hated by her slaves and yet they dared not touch her, because they believed her to be possessed by magic powers. However, in the slave uprising of 1831, they set fire to the sugar cane, and then the time came when one of her lovers, sensing that he was falling out of favour, strangled her before she could have him murdered. This might have been in 1833. There is also a version of the story that a group of slaves came to kill her in her bed, surprising her in her slumber.

None of her own slaves would bury her body. Planters brought their coachmen from neighbouring estates and buried Anne Palmer in the centre of the garden by the east wing of the great house, setting a pile of large stones to mark the spot where the white witch of Rose Hall lay to rot.

(from De Lisser "White Witch of Rose Hall", Dr. Phillip Sherlock's papers and the bass player in Byron Lee's Band in 1975)

Alfredo Antonio Codallo

Folklore Artist (1913 - 1971)

After a text by artist Holly Gayadeen, friend and fervent supporter of the work of Alfred Codallo, published by the author in 1983.

Holly Gayadeen's first vocation was to become a teacher, and underwent training for this profession in Trinidad and in England. But his true calling was to be an artist. Throughout his long career, Gayadeen always combined the two, expressing himself in various media such as painting and ceramics, and at the same time teaching visual arts, crafts and design. His special interest in art education as well as local folklore manifests itself strongly in his book "Alfredo Codallo - Artist and Folklorist", which Gayadeen published in 1983.

Codallo's folklore drawings are special in several ways. Firstly, they were done for the world of communications in an era when advertising agencies didn't even exist yet. Hand Arnold and Fernandes Distillers were the two companies who commissioned Codallo's pictures for their advertising campaigns in local newspapers. Illustrating the usage of flour and rum, Codallo managed to capture life in the streets, back yards, shops and homes of Trinidad.

"Honesty, acceptance and a penetrating vision of one who lived a full life with the people and for the people" - this is how Gayadeen characterises Codallo's work. Much like somebody with a benevolent camera, Codallo managed to capture everyday life of the 'simple people', their chores, their surroundings, even their hopes and their fears.

His work is contemporaneous with other artists, who, as Gayadeen puts it, "struggled relentlessly in their artistic pursuits to record for posterity the people, places, folklore and festivals of Trinidad and Tobago": M.P. Alladin, Sybil Atteck, Leo Basso, Dominic Isaac and, in the performing arts, Beryl McBurnie and Thora Dumbell to name but a few. "Even at that period, there was no particular trend or school of painting. Each artist developed his own personalised style and pursued a particular direction. Despite this, as it is even so today, the Caribbean idiom and images are easily recognisable in the art productions of our artists whose works have found themselves in collections locally and abroad," writes Gayadeen.

In 1962, Alfred Codallo wrote about himself: "Through art, I wish to speak in a language that all should understand. A language of beauty - unspoilt by confounding 'isms', yet rich with common understanding and native pride. In my self-imposed job of preserving the folklore way of life, dances, land, river and sea scapes of my country, I am trying to establish a link with our past in the most comprehensive way I know."

Codallo grew up in a generation that felt oppressed by what would be the last decades of colonial government. After the First World War, the mentality of Trinidadians changed: having shared the common experience of the trenches with "white" soldiers, the stereotypes of race and class started to soften up. However, the economy didn't flourish, and poverty amongst black people was as dire as ever in the 1930s, when Codallo would have been in his prime.

"He was a simple man who always seemed to have preferred the informality and unpretentious atmosphere of genuine camaraderie. It was easy to converse with him and his views were generally pointed, serious and sometimes colourfully expressed," writes Gayadeen. Like Gayadeen himself, Codallo was an art teacher, who never had any qualms about imparting his knowledge and skills to those who came to him.

Self-educated, Codallo had little interest in the artistic approaches of impressionism, Fauvism, Dadaism or expressionism. "Codallo's works reflect that quality of superb realism," writes Gayadeen. "He gave visible forms to his concepts of the several folkloric themes, traditional cultural patterns and the environment."

Codallo's subjects were drawn from the Afro-Creole segment of Trinidad's society. His own ethnic background was not from this matrix per se: his father was from Venezuela, his mother was of East Indian descent. Having been born in Arima and grown up in Port of Spain, Codallo grew up as a good 'mixer' full of joie-de-vivre, as Gayadeen describes him.

"Codallo was keenly aware of the fact that West Indian folklore has a rich heritage and that legends surrounding the mythical characters of La Diablesse - the female devil, Soucouyants, Douens etc., never fail to stir the imagination. It was Alf himself who gave the name of Paul Carr Landeau (Poluycar) as a man who delighted in telling stories in the open air of Tamarind Square in Port of Spain, wherever he happened to be away from his occupation of a shipwright."

The Trinidad Publishing Company noticed Codallo's talents and employed him as commercial artist, photographer, photo-engraver and lithographic artist. Codallo drew for advertising: the "Spirit of Trinidad" festival and folklore series was created for Fernandes Vat 19 and the village life series to advertise flour.

In many cases, Cadallo's drawings of these two series are the only visual representations of what many Trinidadians feel to be the 'good old days'. Especially the older generation seems to have known characters who looked 'just like that' - the Portuguese shopkeeper, the impoverished French Creole man who uses the back door, the ancient cello player in a parang band. Codallo managed to capture the essence of the role in the character, which has, many decades later, become a blueprint for our communal memory.

"He had been an introspective artist of visionary ideas," writes Gayadeen. "His creations have a metaphysical and mythological concept, each one showing a genuine power of characterisation."

Alfred Codallo passed away at the young age of 58 years, leaving us with many images of life long ago, and the memory of himself as an artist of distinction.

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T. Geddes Grant

Written for the Centenary Anniversary of T. Geddes Grant Limited - From Grandfather to Grandson after a text by Sir K. Lindsay Grant

"A family heirloom" - this is how members of the Grant family view the firm of T. Geddes Grant Limited. In this article, we look at the historical role of the firm in the chronicles of Trinidad and Tobago, and in particular at the founder, Thomas Geddes Grant.

A family firm can only be successful if there is family unity and devotion to a common goal by the family members who contribute to the enterprise. To maintain a family firm for a century is an outstanding feat in a relatively young society as ours. The 100th anniversary of T. Geddes Grant is not only a company jubilee, but, in truth and in fact, a celebration of a family tradition. Now a member of the Neal & Massy Group of companies, T. Geddes Grant is still very much an institution in the business life of Trinidad and Tobago.

130 years ago, a Canadian missionary, Reverend K.J. Grant, sailed into Trinidad with his four-year old son, Thomas Geddes Grant, little realising the lasting impact this boy would have made in later years in the commercial life of Trinidad and Tobago. The immigration of  Indian indentured labourers was at its height, and Reverend Grant was one of the clerics who, in the tradition of the Presbyterian Canadian Mission to the Indians, helped to bring education and welfare to the offspring of the indentured men and women in South Trinidad.

Young Thomas was born in Merigomish, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, on May 19, 1866. But it would be the island of Trinidad that he would always know as his home. As a youngster, he worked as a clerk with Tennants Estates Limited in San Fernando. After 17 years with Tennants, the young man decided to enter into the intriguing world of business on his own, and started his own Commission Agency at the age of 34. He was possessed with a spirit of adventure, unlimited drive and considerable business acumen, and his 17 years' experience with Tennants as a protégé of Alexander Riddell served him in good stead.

As a Canadian, it followed that young Thomas would concentrate in the main thrust of his business on Canadian manufacturing contacts, since it was absolutely necessary to gain a foothold as agent in that market. Trinidad and Tobago and in fact the British Caribbean as a whole depended largely on numerous Canadian manufacturers. Thomas amassed a considerable number of agencies, and as such contributed to Trinidad's growing reputation as a commercial centre in the Eastern  Caribbean. So effective had been his association with the Canadian trade, that in April 1922 he was appointed the Dominion's first and only Honorary Trade Commissioner to the West Indies.

Thomas established his firm at a very opportune time. Oil had been discovered at Guayaguayare and the colony was just about beginning to enjoy the advantages of what, in that day, was the sophistication of progress. the telephone, a relatively new invention of the day, was becoming more and more popular. Electric street lights took the place of gas lamps, and buggies and carriages were making way for motorcars.

The first office address was 19, Henry Street. The firm had about six employees. The modest Henry Street office soon proved inadequate to conduct the company's growing business, and new offices were found. In 1908, T. Geddes Grant had about a dozen employees, and the firm moved to 9, Broadway.

As the country prospered, so did T. Geddes Grant. With the increasing business volume, Thomas also realised the first step towards a Caribbean commercial empire: in 1916, the British Guiana (now Guyana) branch of the company was opened.

The First World War was literally in is dying stages when, in 1917, T. Geddes Grant was converted into a limited liability company with the founder as Governing Director and his eldest son, Frederick Geddes Grant, the Managing Director. An office was opened in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to expedite the export of goods to Trinidad. This office was maintained until 1931. Another branch was established in Bridgetown, Barbados, and three years later, in 1920, the company expanded to Jamaica.

The company had now grown so much that a house magazine started to be published: "The G.G. Advisor". The objective of the magazine was to give buyers first-hand information on the organisation and the latest developments on market conditions. It was one of the first company magazines in Trinidad and Tobago, and continued to be published for many decades on a monthly basis under the name "The T.G.G. Review". In 1923, there was another move, which was to be the last one for years to come: 1a Chacon Street.

But it was not all easy sailing for the company. When the Wall Street markets crashed and the world was plunged into an economic quagmire in the early 1930s, only a few survived. Owing to the firm, guiding hand of Thomas, the firm managed to wade through successfully. But the crisis took a toll on him: in 1934, Thomas Geddes Grant died.

His son, Fred Grant, O.B.E., took over with equal fervour, dedication and commitment as his late father. Apart from his dedication to duty, Fred always found time to carry out civic responsibilities: he was an appointee of the Legislative Council, a position which he held until his death, served on numerous government committees and also distinguished himself in cricket, yachting and football.

Fred was faced with the challenges of World War II. The Barbados office was destroyed by fire in 1938 and had to be rebuilt two years later; German U-Boats threatened and destroyed merchant fleets in the Caribbean and in the Atlantic, and in 1945, it was the Guyana office that burnt down. Just one year after the war ended, in 1946, Fred died as well, leaving the helmsmanship of the family firm to his brother, Kenneth Lindsay Grant.

It was now the 1950s, and the company had about 200 employees. Expansion was the order of the day. Business was thriving. Willard Geddes Grant, another son of the founder, joined his brother in running the business. The Guyana office was rebuilt, and new warehouses were opened at Laventille and in Jamaica. Towards the end of the decade, the number of employees had more than doubled to 464.

In 1963, one year after Trinidad and Tobago had been granted its independence from the British Crown, Lindsay Grant was knighted by her Majesty the Queen. Later that year, T. Geddes Grant Ltd. became a public company.

Thomas Geddes Grant's significant contribution to maintenance and development of the lifestyles of all their workers during the difficult years of recession and virtual economic collapse can never be underestimated. 

STOP! You imperfect speaker!

As we all know, Carnival is a barometer, the mirror of the society. The tempo, the feel of the mass, reflects the society. Art imitating life imitating art: evolving through the centuries, Carnival has at times provided the means for various styles of self-expression and a ready vehicle for confrontation, which could be played out between the competing revellers themselves or against the authorities.

Carnival bands were by their origins aggressive, led by chantwells who encouraged the stickmen, who were, in turn, enervated by the music, which, together with the heat and the rum, also drove the crowds, both members and onlookers, into a frenzy.

Carnival for the outsider is often unnerving in its disorder and abandon. To the European of the 1880s, the dancing was nothing but the most disgusting obscenity, "being an imitation more or less vigorous and lustful by the male and female performer of the motions of the respective sexes in the act of coition".

The contemporary writer goes on to add that together with the rum and the excitement, "performers and spectators then disperse with their passions excited to go and put into immediate practice the immoral lessons they have been greedily imbibing." Ent.

Undoubtedly, there was a grain of truth in this observation. But there was more to it than that. The portrayals expressed the grandeur of the imagination of a subject people, yearning for the "other". Let's go and look at mas in 1937.

Dressed in several textures of black, his shoes replicas of coffins, his very wide-brimmed hat a castle of crossed destinies, armed with cutlasses, knives and pistols, his face painted white like a skull, his whistle rings loud above the surrounding noise, his prey embarrassed in their uncostumed role of spectator grin sheepishly, trying to edge away, but already a small crowd has gathered and they now find themselves as a part of street theater, protagonist, antagonist and audience -

"STOP! You imperfect speaker! Stop!

Drop your keys and bend you knees,

and call me the Prince of Darkness, Criminal Master.

I have no compassion. In this time of execution,

Master of Masters, King of Kings,

man who can compel men and women to die,

I following the star of the unconquered will,

which makes me inexorable and unbeaten still,

as a burning diadem upon my breast,

invulnerable and calm and self-possessed.

Now my fabulous verses will befuddle your dunce head.

I will have fun and I will give you rocks for bread.

So stand and deliver all the "King's Head" (pennies)

that jangle in your pocket or I will blast your tail like a rocket!"

The crowd, much larger now, applauds. The undisguised shuffle and pay up. They seek to escape, for another robber is on the way, dressed from head to foot in red with tiny silver mirrors sparkling in the brilliant light of noon. From the distance, loud cracks like gunshots. The crowd shout and scatters.

"Jab Jab!" shouts a boy. "Look they coming from Erthig Road!"

In the clearing crowd appear three tall, strapping men dressed in red and yellow tights. Golden hearts cover their chests, and they wear jester's hats like horns, tipped with bells. Their trousers' ends are also sequined with bells, and bells surround their waists. They wield 15 foot long bull whips that crack the sky. Their eyes are wild. Men, women and children flee before their impertinence!

Now what's that smell? Oh Lord no! I thought they would stay in Jouvay. They must have slept out last night - it's a Pissenlit band. these dreadful people have soaked nighties in urine for days or weeks and are wearing them. Run, they coming to rub up on you! Run, quick!

"Look, look what is that?"

It's bats - a bat band on roller skates, all dressed in gray and brown fur, huge wings catching the breeze. Look, one little boy bat! He is jumping, trying to fly. How fantastic! Their masks so real, like bats.

Moko Jumbies always have a dwarf with them to make them look even taller, stalking on stilts 15 or 20 feet above the crowd, dressed in striped pants, a wide skirt and a colourful shirt. They wear torshon for a hat and carry a small umbrella. They collect money from the people in the upstairs windows, but have to be careful about electric wires.

Oh, how cute! Look a baby doll band, all dressed in pink and blue with lots of fru-fru and baby powder! How sweet - what that he's drinking from his bottle? Rum! And look that one, it look like curry running down his legs out of his diapers. What's that he wants to show you? A shilling to see Cain and Abel - well, there it is in a little black box, a piece of cane and a bell.

Carnival is something else again, yes. Oh, look a truck disguised as a radio full of pretty girls! They all work at Rediffusion, Trinidad , you know.

Come let's go and see what Mr. Strasser playing this year. I hear he's coming out from Victoria Square. Last year he played a penny, a huge thing about 12 foot high. No one could see him until he stepped out from where he had formed a part of Britannia.

Look, there is something coming - it's Strasser. Everybody say it's Strasser. What is that - a stamp? Strasser playing six-pence stamp, a huge red stamp depicting Raleigh at the Pitch Lake! How real - look the detail, perfect! It's made of painted cloth with black and gold appliqués. Where is Strasser? He must be there - oh look, he's climbing up onto the float and he's gone, he has disappeared the moment he walked past it, he just stopped still and vanished - how fantastic! I want to see the Seven Ages of Man, they coming out from by Norville's drugstore. That so far, come go.

We go take a drink by Crown Lion Bar. Ah hear they have stick fight tonight!  Look, Mahalle. Eh, Mahalle, give us a drop! - "Not in this car, it not for hiring, it's a private vehicle," he said, slipping into first and driving off his invisible car just missing the orange man.

Patrick Jones and them fellers playing Beelzebub and the Forty Thieves. That is devil mas! They have a Satan with a face, almost as big as you. Eleven devils chained together in the everlasting darkness. Gilbert Scamaroni is plying the beast from the apocalypse, chained to female imps dressed in red with shimmering wings. They have a dance - very sexy. Look skullboxman, bookman, keyman and bellman, and Lucifer the Demon straight from hell. Shiffer Fabien father is play that. They does meet in Lapeyrouse to practice that mas every night for nine nights before Carnival! They collect dead dogs and boil them till they get the bones. Look he have a dog's skull round his neck and look that one have a cowfoot. Take care, they will throw the water they boil the dead dogs in on you. If that hit you, you blight for life!

Look the Belmont tram coming. Let we go by Crown Lion, ah could take a beer.

And several years later:

"Invaders beating sweet - ah ha

Coming down Park Street,

Tokyo coming up, beating very slow

and when the two bands clash

if you see cutlass

never me again to jump up in a steelband in Port of Spain!"

Born in Dominica - The Foundation of St. Anns

"La Fantaisie Road," she murmured, looking over her shoulder. The MG picked up speed. "Who lives there?"

"The Prime Minister."

"La Fantaisie, what a lovely word."

She smelled vaguely of the type of cologne wealthy women wear. Her eyebrows, unshaped, were quite thick. They gave her an outdoor, sporting sort of look.

"Who gave La Fantaisie Road its name?"

"I believe it was named by Celeste Rose Peschier. It was really the driveway to a lovely house nestled between gigantic trees, long ago demolished. This is a very old part of Trinidad, in the sense that its development dates from the 1790s or even before."

"Do you know about it?"

"Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do."

I was taking my charming guest to Maracas Bay. "It all began with the wars between France and England for the control of the Caribbean's sugar-producing islands... It's quite a tale, I am afraid that I'll take a few liberties in the telling - but Maracas is a long drive."

"Artist's license?"

"Well, you be the judge!"

She had been born in Saint Domingue, Haiti, and there was no date of birth for her. For people like her you were either born before or after the revolution. Her circumstances were thus: her father, a Frenchman from Nice, butcher by profession, was sentenced to five years deportation for the attempted murder of a cooper over a matter of honour. It would appear that he had attempted to drown him in a barrel of his own manufacture. For five years he had laboured in the cane fields along side the seventeen slaves and three Canary islanders who, like himself, were indentured to Clotilde Voisin. Freed from indentureship, his life forever altered, he practiced his profession at the Grand Market in Port-au-Prince. As soon as he had enough money put by, he presented himself at the slave market and for the sum of one hundred and eighty pilars - silver Mexican-Spanish dollars - bought a tall, flat-chested, aggressive Ibo woman to be his house keeper, companion and mistress. His choice had been inspired by the fact that the available white women on the island of his class were absolutely worn out by their previous profession of prostitution and poverty in France, followed by five years of working under the tropical sun.

Much in this manner in those days, there came into being three classes, the white, the mulatto and the black, which at that time implied no particular evil, except the obvious one of slavery. Their domestic life together was organised along the lines of never ending attack, defense, capitulation, occupation, revolt, over throw, accommodation and the perpetual destruction of most of their worldly goods. It was during one of their more ferocious engagements that Ameline Louisa “Cocutes” Paseu was conceived, and it was at the time when the eye of the most devastating hurricane ever to surge out of the Atlantic ocean was steering down upon the most hideous collection of shacks that huddled in and around an enormous rubbish pile in the quarter of La Pac, that she was born. As a consequence there were no more offspring to the state of war that passed for their relationship. After a while he forgot that he owned her and she, despising both her keeper and her child, became a wealthy marchande and something of a power broker in the Grand Market at Port-au-Prince.

She grew to possess her mothers height but not her temperament, her fathers commitment to survival but not his lack of ambition. She belonged to a category of persons who were woven into the very fabric of the islands society. She belonged to all classes and to none. The entire system, the very structure of society of life, even death, on the island was based on the colour of your skin. It had nothing to do with class, money or worldly achievement. The coloured man could own 10,000 acres of land and be the master of 1,000 slaves and still be nothing in the eyes of the authorities. He could not carry a side arm, a sword or a sabre. He had to sit in public places where he was told. His life was circumscribed by the irrational fear of the European, who had engendered him and by his aversion to the race that had bore him. For the mulatto woman there was one way in which to conquer: it is said that they, in their youth, combined a natural naiveté, a touching gracefulness and a lascivious languor that could enflame the most placid, the most disdainful or the most sanctimonious of men. By the time of her sixteenth birthday she knew everything. The place was too crowded, there was too much competition. She needed a smaller island. She found passage on a windjammer by charging her favourite currency and within a week arrived on the beautiful island of Martinique. She became the plaything of an elderly Count who owned a plantation on nearby Trois Islets. He was attempting to paint, in watercolour, an idyllic scene from a classical fantasy on her smooth and slightly palpitating stomach when the calamity of revolution overwhelmed them.

Their escape was described by his later biographers as providential. For propriety's sake, she was written out of the story. Fleeing from the revolution, it took them south along the Caribbean chain to the Spanish isle of Trinidad, where before death closed his eyes he provided for her by introducing her to, and recommending her, as a housekeeper, companion and mistress to a young protégé of his by the name of Jean Charles Baron de Montalambert. He himself had recently escaped the guillotine by immigrating to Trinidad where he had joined another young aristocrat by the name of de Mallevault in an agricultural enterprise in the Cascade valley at a site where two rivers met, that they named, for sentimental reasons, Coblentz.

In the days of great peace, their love produced a boy of exceptional beauty, tall for his age. He was his father's constant companion. The plantation had come into existence as a result of a heroic escape from the bay of Ste. Anne in Martinique during a period of a particularly bloody war of retribution conducted with legendary savagery by all concerned. Amongst the several hundred, black and white, slaves and free, that had crowded the careening decks of the frigate "Marshall de Castries" was a dwarfish creature too ugly to be recognised as either man nor woman, who had secretly come aboard. Huddled in a chest that belonged to no one, it had with it just one possession: a vial of the most virulent poison to ever leave the Guinea Coast. He, for it was a man, was to become the estate’s cutler, sharpening all knives, plows, shares and scissors.

During the period of slavery, poison was the most preoccupying consideration for the proprietors of plantations. Either the estate had a poisoner or it did not. The most commonly used poison was of course arsenic. It was used in the fields as an insecticide. But there were other sinister poisons such as the venom of snakes, centipedes, scorpions, the pulpy white starch that oozed from the manchineel plant, the dirt from graves and cesspits were easy to obtain as well as many roots and herbs. There were also the more obvious killers such as ground glass.

Poison and the poisoner on estates was a viable alternative to life as a slave and was sought after to gain release. Poison, applied when profound injustice with no hope of retribution was dished out between the enslaved, and for vengeance, was sought at a price. Poison was when a master, too cruel to accommodate had to be got rid of. Poison was used by an old man gone mad with an old man’s sense of obsolesce in a place so far from his ancestral gods that it might just as well been hell. Poison was used at Coblentz Estate in the year 1803. Amongst the 70 people who died was the masters son. Amongst those who lived was an incredibly ugly, short old man and a beautiful mulatto woman whose descendants might be found amongst the Bonaparte, Lambert, Danglarde and Foncette families and St. Anns and La Pastora."

We had arrived at Maracas.

"And what happened, how come 'La Fantaisie'?"

"Gyal, I'll tell you about that after a shark and bake!"

(continued next month)

Amerindian Names

Place names are points of memory in the fabric of West Indian lifestyle. Let us look at some of the names that come from the period long before the arrival of Columbus in the Caribbean Sea, from the years when Trinidad was settled only by the Amerindian people. The world being ‘brand new’ in those days, things received their names for the first time - some of them have survived.
The tribal people gave names to the rivers and plains, the mountains and capes. Some of these names are to be found in Venezuela as well, such as Tacarigua, which has a parallel in the Lago Tacarigua, or Cumana, which is found in two places on Trinidad’s North coast and also on the mainland. There is a Caroni river on this island and a mighty Caroni running through the jungles on the neighbouring continent. Other pre-Columbian names are Arouca and Caura, where the Capuchins had missions in the 17th century.
People spoke Spanish exclusively in these hamlets until quite recently. Siparia was the site of another mission, where tobacco was cultivated. Arima and Naparima, Toco and Tunapuna, Chaguanas and Chaguaramas, Piarco and Oropouche - all these are Amerindian names which survived. Port of Spain was once called Conquerabia, a name which disappeared early.
Corosal, Maraval and many other names ending in -al are very interesting, because in most cases the -al is the Spanish collective suffix, sometimes stuck onto an old Amerindian root. For example, a place rich in the palmtree called “corozo” by the Amerindians became “Corozal”. In Cocal, the name refers to an abundance of coconut trees. The story is that a ship was wrecked on this part of the east coast of Trinidad. Its cargo of nuts were washed ashore and took root. Maraval is described as a large track of land below Anapo. It was covered with maro trees.
This marriage of Spanish and Amerindian also happened in the other islands. Pouisal in Montserrat got its name from the abundance of poui trees, as did Morichal in the same island and in Trinidad as well, which refers to the moriche palms that grew there.
The Spanish settlers who came in the wake of Christopher Columbus named their estates after the distant places now left behind: El Socorro, Barataria, Aranjuez, El Dorado. When they marveled at the beauty of their new homes, they called the Vistabella and Buenos Ayres.
There is magic and beauty in these place names. They contain, like time capsules, messages from another age, when our country was still roamed by its original inhabitants.
They contain, like time capsules, messages from another age, when our country was young.

From the African languages, other words have survived like "zami" fi (meaning "friends"), and "susu", which we use when we become "partners", each contributing so much a week to a savings club. When gardeners went into their fields, they owuld take with them a calabash full of water, known long ago as a "paki", unsing te Ashanti work "apakyi". In parts of West Africa, it is the custom to name a child by the day of the week on which it was born, for example "cudjoe" is the the Ashanti word for Monday, "quashie" for Sunday, "quaco" for Wednesday, "cuffie" for Friday and so on.


In our search for African words that have survived, we have to turn to our floklore. Here we find fascinating evidence of African survivals: anansi, the central charater of many folk tales, is in fact the spider god of the Akan-Ashanti people. In Accra, Lagos and the northern regions of Nigeria, where the land falls away into a vast ocean of tawny-coloured sand, people know all about this Anasi, the spiderman who is weak but who overcomes the strong by guile in a way that the Greek hero Odysseus overcame the cyclop.
Nansi stories brough delight, but as a boy gowing up in belmont in the 1940s and 1950s, these were jumbies living in the "big canal", in Olton Road and at the corner of Reform Lane and Hermitage Road - a dangerous place after 9 o'clock!
Throughout the Caribbean, out the Caribbean region, chance word used in conversation, a game played at evening time, a song chanted to still a restless child, the names given to food and plants, link us with distant times and with men and women long dead. Cudjoe, Quashie, Paki, Zami, Senseh: words like these whisper of the past, revealing our history to us - but only to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.