The songs, sermons and other materials collected in this anthology thoroughly characterize and demonstrate the distinctive language and culture that developed when African and European exiles came together on the plantations of Jamaica. Accounts of planters, slave-trading captains, and other testimonies from both the colonial and indigenous population effectively illustrate the unfolding of this unique culture.
IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPre-Emancipation: The 18th CenturyGrace before Ratsa Double ExileWilliamsFrancisFranciscus Williams, To … George Haldane, Esq., An OdeWelcome, Welcome, Brother DebtorWest India Customs and MannersMoretonJ. B.If Me Want fe Go in a EboMe Know No Law, Me Know No SinTajo! My Mackey Massa!Polite ConversationYellow SnakeThe History of the MaroonsDallasRobert CharlesOne Wife Too ManyMarried without SwearPre-Emancipation: The 19th CenturyDiaryRossGeorgeThe Maroons DefraudedMemoirsCrowCaptain HughOld Shipmates MeetRecollections of the Middle PassagePartners: The African TradersThe Welcome in KingstonWalter Jekyll, Editor, Jamaican Song and StoryDry-boneMatthew G. Lewis, Journal of a West India ProprietorLewisMatthew G.The RunawaySong of the King of the EboesMammy Luna: A Nancy StoryThe Old Woman with No HeadCarry Him Along!A Tour through the Island of JamaicaWilliamsCynric R.Sermon at a Slave's FuneralEbenezer in the BilboesEbenezer and the MulesBuckra ParsonMarly; or, A Planter's Life in JamaicaRat Good fe NyamA FloggingWhite Creoles at a Ball“De Black Man's Lub Song” (Caricature and Verse). Sketched and Written by a Native ArtistTom Cringle's LogScottMichaelQuacco's GravesideSergeant HeavysternJohn CanoeA Dispute over Breakfast[Bernard Martin Senior], Jamaica, as It Was, as It Is, and as It May Be, by a Retired Military OfficerTurning OutA Rebel's AppealApprenticeship: 1834–1838The Life of James Mursell PhillippoUnderhillEdward BeanA Prayer on Emancipation DayJamaica: Its Past and Present StatePhillippoJames MursellAnswering ChargesBorn AgainBetween Two MastersPost-Emancipation: 1838 and BeyondA Twelvemonth Residence in the West IndiesMaddenRichard RobertChant at a FuneralA Letter Written by Abu Bakr of TimbuktuDead Planters, Ruined PlantationsNarrative of the Cruel Treatment of James Williams, A Negro Apprentice in Jamaica from 1st August, 1834, Till the Purchase of His Freedom in 1837 by Joseph Sturge, Esq., of Birmingham, by Whom He Was Brought to EnglandSketches of Character of the Negro PopulationBelisarioIsaac MendesLovey's SongThe Reverend R. Banbury, Jamaica Superstitions; or, The Obeah BookToken ShowSong of the Shadow-CatchersObeah-pulling SongsReturn of the ObeahmenManners and Customs of the Country a Generation Ago: Tom Kittle's WakeMurrayHenry G.Captain Clutterbuck's ChampagneHamleyWilliam GeorgeDomingo Visits the ClergymanMournersThe Creole and the AfricanLeander and the DaddyLetters from JamaicaRampiniC[harles]The Old ServantAnnancy and TigerWhy Hawks Eat FowlsGraceNotesGlossarySelect Bibliography
Jean D'Costa retired as Leavenworth Professor Emeritus from Hamilton College in 1998, and lives in Florida with her husband, David D’Costa. Her children’s fiction includes Sprat Morrison (1972; 1990), Escape to Last Man Peak (1976), Voice in the Wind (1978) for ages ten to twelve. For children aged seven to ten, she has published Duppy Tales (1997), Caesar and the Three Robbers (1996), along with Jenny and the General (2006) and, with Velma Pollard, co-edited and co-authored an anthology of short stories, Over Our Way (1981; 1993). With Professor Barbara Lalla, she has produced Language in Exile: Three Hundred Years of Jamaican Creole (1990), and also Voices in Exile: Jamaican Texts of the 18th and 19th Centuries (1989).
Barbara Lalla is Professor of Language and Literature in the Department of Liberal Arts, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Her doctorate is in Medieval Studies, and teaching includes Language History, Literary Linguistics, and Medieval and Postcolonial Literature. Publications include Language in Exile: Three Hundred Years of Jamaican Creole (1990) and Voices in Exile: Jamaican Texts of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1989), companion volumes both co-authored/co-edited with Professor Jean D’Costa; Defining Jamaican Fiction: Marronage and the Discourse of Survival (1996), and articles on Caribbean literature, discourse and language history. Her historical novel, Arch of Fire, appeared in 1998, and has since been translated into German (Flammedes Land, 2000).
