Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica

A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.

I fail to see where it would have been more uplifting for them to have been inside a church listening to a man urging them to 'contemplate the sufferings of our Lord,' which is just another way of punishing one's self for nothing. It is very much better for them to climb the rocks in their bare clean feet and meet Him face to face in their search for the eternal in beauty.

Perhaps it is natural for the god of the poor to be akin to the god of the dead, for there is something about poverty that smells of death

You cannot avoid hearing drums in Haiti.

After all the imagination is a beautiful thing.

It all stems from the firm belief in survival after death. Or rather that there is no death. Activities are merely changed from one condition to the other. One old man smoking jackass rope tobacco said to me in explanation: “One day you see a man walking the road, the next day you come to his yard and find him dead. Him don’t walk, him don’t talk again. He is still and silent and does none of the things that he used to do. But you look upon him and you see that he has all the parts that the living have. Why is it that he cannot do what the living do? It is because the thing that gave power to these parts is no longer there. That is the duppy, and that is the most powerful part of any man.

Brother Anansi, the Spider, that great cultural hero of West Africa who is personated in Haiti by Ti Malice and in the United States by Brer Rabbit.

Sharp spur mek maugre horse cut caper. (The pinch of circumstances forces people to do what they thought impossible.) Sickness ride horse come, take foot go away. (It is easier to get sick than it is to get well.) Table napkin want to turn table cloth. (Referring to social climbing.) Bull horn nebber too heavy for him head. (We always see ourselves in a favorable light.) Cock roach nebber in de right befo’ fowl. (The oppressor always justifies his oppression of the weak.) If you want fo’ lick old woman pot, you scratch him back. (The masculine pronoun is always used for female. Use flattery and you will succeed.) Do fe do make guinea nigger come a’ Jamaica. (Fighting among themselves in Africa caused the negroes to be sold into slavery in America.) Dog run for him character; hog run for him life. (It means nothing to you, but everything to me.) Finger nebber say, “look here,” him say “look dere.” (People always point out the shortcomings of others but never their own.) Cutacoo on man back no yerry what kim massa yerry. (The basket on a man’s back does not hear what he hears.)

The will to make life beautiful was strong.

Once Africans could all fly because they never ate salt. Many of them were brought to Jamaica to be slaves, but they never were slaves. They flew back to Africa. Those who ate salt had to stay in Jamaica and be slaves, because they were too heavy to fly.