I.
HE who first gave to Martinique its poetical name, Le Pays des
Revenants, thought of his wonderful island only as "The Country
of Comers-back," where Nature's unspeakable spell bewitches
wandering souls like the caress of a Circe,—never as the Land of
Ghosts. Yet either translation of the name holds equal truth: a
land of ghosts it is, this marvellous Martinique!. Almost every
plantation has its familiar spirits,—its phantoms: some may be
unknown beyond the particular district in which fancy first gave
them being;—but some belong to popular song and story,—to the
imaginative life of the whole people. Almost every promontory
and peak, every village and valley along the coast, has its
special folk-lore, its particular tradition. The legend of
Thomasseau of Perinnelle, whose body was taken out of the coffin
and carried away by the devil through a certain window of the
plantation-house, which cannot be closed up by human power;—the
Demarche legend of the spectral horseman who rides up the hill on
bright hot days to seek a friend buried more than a hundred years
ago;—the legend of the Habitation Dillon, whose proprietor
was one night mysteriously summoned from a banquet to disappear
forever;—the legend of l'Abbé Piot, who cursed the sea with the
curse of perpetual unrest;—the legend of Aimeé Derivry of
Robert, captured by Barbary pirates, and sold to become a
Sultana-Validé—(she never
existed, though you can find an alleged
portrait in M. Sidney Daney's history of Martinique): these and
many similar tales might be told to you even on a journey from
St. Pierre to Fort-de-France, or from Lamentin to La Trinité,
according as a rising of some peak into view, or the sudden
opening of an
anse before the vessel's approach, recalls them
to a creole companion.
And new legends are even now being made; for in this remote
colony, to which white immigration has long ceased,—a country so
mountainous that people are born (and buried in the same valley
without ever seeing towns but a few hours' journey beyond their
native hills, and that distinct racial types are forming within
three leagues of each other,—the memory of an event or of a name
which has had influence enough to send one echo through all the
forty-nine miles of peaks and craters is apt to create legend
within a single generation. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, is
popular imagination more oddly naive and superstitious; nowhere
are facts more readily exaggerated or distorted into
unrecognizability; and the forms of any legend thus originated
become furthermore specialized in each separate locality where it
obtains a habitat. On tracing back such a legend or tradition to
its primal source, one feels amazed at the variety of the
metamorphoses which the simplest fact may rapidly assume in the
childish fancy of this people.
I was first incited to make an effort in this direction by
hearing the remarkable story of "Missié Bon." No legendary
expression is more wide-spread throughout the country than temps
coudvent Missié Bon (in the time of the big wind of Monsieur
Bon). Whenever a hurricane threatens, you will hear colored
folks expressing the hope that it may not be like the coudvent
Missié Bon. And some years ago, in all the creole police-courts,
old colored witnesses who could not tell their age would
invariably try to give the magistrate some idea of it by
referring to the never-to-be-forgotten
temps coudvent Missié
Bon.
… "Temps coudvent Missié Bon, moin té ka tété encó"
(I was a child at the breast in the time of the big wind of Missié Bon);
or "Temps coudvent Missié Bon, moin té toutt piti manmaill,—
moin ka souvini y pouend caiie manman moin póté allé." (I was a
very, very little child in the time of the big wind of Missié
Bon,—but I remember it blew mamma's cabin away.) The magistrates
of those days knew the exact date of the coudvent.
But all could learn about Missié Bon among the country-folk was
this: Missié Bon used to be a great slave-owner and a cruel
master. He was a very wicked man. And he treated his slaves so
terribly that at last the Good-God (Bon-Dié) one day sent a
great wind which blew away Missié Bon and Missié Bon's house and
everybody in it, so that nothing was ever heard of them again.
It was not without considerable research that I suceeded at last
in finding some one able to give me the true facts in the case of
Monsieur Bon. My informant was a charming old gentleman, who
represents a New York company in the city of St. Pierre, and who
takes more interest in the history of his native island than
creoles usually do. He laughed at the legend I had found, but
informed me that I could trace it, with slight variations,
through nearly every canton of Martinique.
"And now" he continued "I can tell you the real history of
'Missié Bon'—for he was an old friend of my grandfather; and my
grandfather related it to me.
"It may have been in 1809—I can give you the exact date by
reference to some old papers if necessary—Monsieur Bon was
Collector of Customs at St. Pierre: and my grandfather was doing
business in the Grande Rue. A certain captain, whose vessel had
been consigned to my grandfather, invited him and the collector
to breakfast in his cabin. My grandfather was so busy he could
not accept the invitation;—but Monsieur Bon went with the
captain on board the bark.
… "It was a morning like this; the sea was just as blue and
the sky as clear. All of a sudden, while they were at breakfast,
the sea began to break heavily without a wind, and clouds came
up, with every sign of a hurricane. The captain was obliged to
sacrifice his anchor; there was no time to land his guest: he
hoisted a little jib and top-gallant, and made for open water,
taking Monsieur Bon with him. Then the hurricane came; and from
that day to this nothing has ever been heard of the bark nor of
the captain nor of Monsieur
Bon." *
"But did Monsieur Bon ever do anything to deserve the reputation
he has left among the people ?" I asked.
"Ah! le pauvre vieux corps! … A kind old soul who never
uttered a harsh word to human being;—timid,—good-natured,—
old-fashioned even for those old-fashioned days. … Never had a
slave in his life!"
[_]
* What is known
in the West Indies as a hurricane is happily
rare; it blows with the force of a cyclone, but not always
circularly; it may come from one direction, and strengthen
gradually for days until its highest velocity and destructive
force are reached. One in the time of Père Labat blew away the
walls of a fort;—that of 1780 destroyed the lives of twenty-two
thousand people in four islands: Martinique, Saint Lucia, St.
Vincent, and Barbadoes.
Before the approach of such a visitation animals manifest the
same signs of terror they display prior to an earthquake. Cattle
assemble together, stamp, and roar; sea-birds fly to the
interior; fowl seek the nearest crevice they can hide in. Then,
while the sky is yet clear, begins the breaking of the sea; then
darkness comes, and after it the wind.