Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/288



N the Folk-Lore Record, vol. iii. Part i., two Ananci Stories are given, as related by a Mulatto woman, born in Antigua, who said that Ananci was the spider. Probably many negro stories of a similar character are to be met with in the works of travellers and others. I have heard them spoken of by a lady who was born in Jamaica as Nancy Stories, and such would seem to have been the name generally given to them by Europeans. Mr. Matthew Gregory Lewis, better known as "Monk" Lewis, thus refers to them in his Journal of a West India Proprietor. The term "Ananci" is, however, the proper one; as appears from the following passage taken from William Bosman's Description of the Coast of Guinea, which also enables us to understand why the spider should be credited with the stories in question. Bosman, after mentioning an enormous spider which is found on the Gold Coast, says, "the Negroes call this spider Ananse, and believe that the first men were made by this creature; and, notwithstanding some of them by conversation with Europeans are better informed, there are yet a great number that remain of that opinion, out of which folly they are not to be reasoned."

The following is from the Journal (p. 253) of Lewis, who says:—"The negroes are also very fond of what they call Nancy stories, part of which is related, and part sung. The heroine of one of them is an old woman named Mammy Luna, who having left a pot boiling in her hut, found it robbed on her return. Her suspicions were divided between two children whom she found at play near her door and some Negroes who had passed that way to market. The children denied the theft positively. It was necessary for the negroes, in order to reach their own estate, to wade through a river at that time almost dry; and on their return Mammy Luna (who, it would seem, was not without some skill in witchcraft) warned them to take care in venturing across the stream, for that the water would infallibly