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A collection of Jamaican folktales gathers short animal and trickster narratives centered on the spider Anansi alongside tales about tigers, monkeys, goats, and birds. Stories account for curious animal traits, stage comic reversals, and probe themes of cunning, justice, and social order through episodic plots and origin motifs. The volume also presents riddles, dance and song materials, and field-recorded music, arranged in thematic sections that compile variants, brief notes, and folkloric context for each tale.
Old Mary Roden was bed-ridden and lived in a one-roomed hut, the floor of which was falling in. The little grandchild, when prompted to “make a figure,” danced quite spontaneously to the rhythm of the grandmother’s quavering song. The same is true of the next two numbers. Songs sung to be danced to in this fashion have rather the monotonous rhythm of a drum-beat than any melody in our sense of the word. For the story, see number 23. [288]