Title: Caribbean Folk Tales and Fantasies
Author: Michael Anthony
Publisher: Macmillan Caribbean
Reviewer: Tanya Batson-Savage
'Yes,' the teacher said, 'Don't you know what a Douen is? Well I'll tell you because you might meet one up one day.' And seeing the fright on the children's faces, she laughed again. Then she said, 'You children must learn our folklore. Douens are supposed to be little creatures of the forest. They are said to be children who died before they were christened. And their souls cannot rest. That's why they have to wander the forests forever. They have their little feet turned back-to-front so when you follow them you can't come back.' She paused and laughed. Then she said warningly, 'When they take other little children into the forest, you never see these little children again.'
THE ABOVE is an excerpt from 'In the Bushes near the School', the fifth story in the collection Caribbean Folk Tales and Fantasies, written by Michael Anthony. The collection features fairly entertaining stories, a few of which are quite funny. However, it is not of the same calibre as Anthony's more famous works The Games Were Coming, Green Days by the River and The Year in San Fernando. The stories are more clearly suited to the very young, though lovers of folk tales of all ages should be able to read the text.
Nonetheless, Caribbean Folk Tales and Fantasies is a worthy collection, and that lies in the choice of excerpt. The piece highlights both the value of the collection and the traditional use of folk tales. The teacher's warning voice points to the use of folk tales to warn, not just entertain. More importantly, when the teacher tells the students they need to learn about their folklore, the comment seems to come from Anthony himself to his potential readers, as that seems to be the point of the collection, to teach the modern generation about folklore.
A DEARTH OF INFORMATION
So, the text is more important because there remains a dearth of information about Caribbean folklore for either the young to learn of or the old to reminisce about. While Goldilocks and her kind still caper through our native bushes, continuing to colonise the minds of our young, our native forest creatures are being shoved further and further into the hinterland of the mind.
Anthony's collection reflects this. In several of the stories, the characters are non-believers living in the modern world and through some incident encounter the "reality" of what has been denigrated as mere superstition. The collection features nine stories most dealing with different creatures of eastern Caribbean folklore. Two of the stories, 'The Tug-of-war' and 'How Mrs. Feathery solved her problem', are fables, and 'The Dog Who Came to the City' is almost a fable as it involved a talking dog, but most of the characters are not animals. Other tales involve soucouyant, papa bois, la diablesse and there is even a tale about the religious sect, the Shango.
DUPPY STORIES
The stories 'One pitch-black Night', 'In the Bushes near the School', 'The Night of Papa Bois', 'The Dancing Lady' and 'The Cotton Trees of Sangre Grande' all bear the mark of duppy stories dealing with evil creatures of the night. Even so, the stories are not frightening, dancing more with humour than with horror.
Like science fiction, the fantasy genre has a tendency to use either allegorical or metaphorical tales where the real world is transposed upon another mythical place or time. Caribbean Folk Tales and Fantasies has no such underlying meaning. It is there to educate about folklore.
Even so, the tale 'The Dog Who Came to the City' quite diminishes the value of the collection, as the story simply is not very interesting. It is fortunately balanced by the very entertaining encounters in 'The Dancing Lady', and 'In The Bushes Near the School'. Both stories are warning tales about the danger of mythical folk in the former tale la diablesse and in the latter a douen.
So, while Caribbean Folk Tales and Fantasies is by no means brilliant (especially because the language lacks the magic to help make the mythical real), it is an important collection. Like Neville in 'In the Bushes Near the School', we are likely to be led into the bushes by a seemingly friendly spirit and then, because we cannot see where we came from (being lost in the hilarity of simply chasing after others) we may be unable to find our way back.
