As Trinidad and Tobago gears up for its 50th Independence celebrations, there is a focus on prominent personalities, including the late eminent historian Dr Eric Williams and the contribution of national icons like sporting hero Brian Lara. Indigenous cultural expressions like pan and calypso are also being celebrated. T&T has a rich folkloric culture comprising a slew of characters like Papa Bois, soucouyant, lagahoo and la diablesse.
Author and publisher Gerard Besson has capitalised on the treasure trove of stories. He documented some of them in Folklore and Legends of Trinidad and Tobago. The collection includes jumbies and douens, Gang Gang Sara, Duendes' Mead, Witch Tales and Amerindian Tales.
In its preface, Besson spoke about his childhood and his introduction to storytelling. The book aims to show what those creatures looked like and to tell something about their various attributes. During Carnival, several of these characters are depicted by traditional mas players. He credits Anita Tardier for sharing these oral traditions which she had gathered as a child growing up in Paramin.
Another person who came in for kudos was his mentor Olga Mavrogordato. He remembered her as an original source for T&T?folklore and a patriot who had a great deal of love for T&T's history. Besson was awarded the Hummingbird Medal (Gold) during T&T 2007 Independence celebrations.
Stories around kerosene lamps
An excerpt from the preface says: "Long ago, as children we would go into the country for a long summer (August) vacation. One of the distinct memories surviving from those times, along with those of river and sea excursions, huge meals and friends made for life, is of the stories that we were told.
Sometimes my father or uncle Hecky would tell jumbie stories in the darkening twilight as the kerosene lamps with their Home Sweet Home chimneys threw out huge, wavering shadows onto the walls. We all crowded around to hear hair-raising, heart-thumping tales of terrible creatures and terrifying accounts of encounters with the supernatural. More often than not they were created on the spot, as my Aunt Polly's smile would reveal." He admired the manner in which his father drew upon the vast stock of standard information on the various characters and innovated and created narratives which caused them "to laugh with relief or quake in their shoes."
The la diablesse
Besson shares a story which an old man from Mount Diablo in Central Trinidad related to him. Before getting into it, he analyses la diablesse as a folkloric heroine who has often been depicted as a syncretic creation combining the West African goddess Erzulie, tragic mistress turned vengeful, slave concubine and the ever-young seductress. In the book The Voodoo Gods, Maya Deren presents her as Marinette, the wife of Ti Jean Petro. She stands for the "capacity to conceive beyond reality, to desire beyond adequacy, to create beyond need."
The la diablesse, like Erzulie, is not a mother goddess in the sense of being the mother of human beings. Instead, she is the mother of the human being's myth of life, of life's meaning. He speculates that she, as a philosophical principle rather than a ghost, was brought to Trinidad in the 1780s by Afro-Franco-Creole slaves from Grenada, St Lucia, Haiti and other islands of the French Antilles. In T&T, she is the spirit of the woman wronged, and as such awaits the male predator so as to take vengeance for transgressions against women.
A detailed description of la diablesse
"As the Devil woman, she possesses one cloven hoof. Her other foot is elegantly shod. From her slave heritage, there is an old iron chain that girds her waist and trails after her. Other than that, she is very elaborately dressed in the ancient costume of the French islands: a brilliant Madras turban, chemise with half-sleeves and much embroidery and lace, several gold necklaces made up of small gold nuggets, huge 'eggshell' earrings and many pins of gold trembling in her turban. In fact, Erzulie's cult too is preceded by an elaborate ceremony of dressing and toilette. Soaps, perfume, silk handkerchiefs, and jewelry are consecrated to her in the voodoo belief," Besson said.
He added: "The sound of her chain mingling with the rustle of her petticoats is the first thing that a man notices of a la diablesse's appearance, even before seeing her. She carries a bag tied to her waist. In it are the human bones of her previous life and the dirt of the grave in which she was once buried. There are also old English pennies, black with age, her passage money, as well as the sea shells, symbols of her travels."
About the book
The colour and black-and-white illustrations were done by Stuart Hahn, Avril Turner, Peter Shim, Sue Anne Gomes and Alfred Codallo. Among the illustrations are boismen, the bake shop, traditional wake and dances like the bongo and limbo.
