Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/103

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[ following papers were written in 1896 by coloured students at Mico College, Jamaica, preparing to become elementary teachers. They were communicated to Professor York Powell by Mr. Frank Cundall, Secretary and Librarian of the Institute of Jamaica. It is thought better to suppress the writers' names, merely distinguishing them by the letters A, B, C, &c. The flourishes about the blessings of education and civilisation with which most of them begin or end have also been omitted, with the exception of a specimen or two. Otherwise the papers are given exactly as they were written. They are in good "commercial" handwritings, with very few errors of spelling. Besides the intrinsic interest of the subject-matter of their contents, its bearing on the question of the transmission of folklore renders them specially worthy of attention. These negroes have preserved the beliefs of their West African ancestors as to spirits and shadows, while they have at the same time adopted many of the most familiar of trivial English superstitions, and have utilised their acquaintance with Christianity for magical purposes.—]

There are lingering in Jamaica many false beliefs which are to be eradicated. It is very strange, indeed, that in such an enlightened land as Jamaica there are such beliefs, but we can safely say that they are dying out little by little. Some of the evils believed in in these days are unpractised such as you shall see indicated later on by this ( × ).

It is the great work of education and religion that has diminished some of these evils, and within a few years of labour of these two principles all the false beliefs will die out. Education and religion will be the chief agents to eradicate them.

The following are some of the beliefs formerly and presently believed in:

Instead of the natural death, which is allotted to men, most people when die [sic] are believed to be killed by some one, not personal murder, but by obeah and the duppy.

× When a man kills another, and he does not want the duppy to