Wangla (sesame indicum)

In her writings on Jamaican ethnobotany, Martha Warren Beckwith never gave the Latin name for wangla but according to the Natural History Museum of Jamaica’s plant names database it is sesamum indicum or sesame. In Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaica Folk Life (1929), she noted that the plant was believed to have “Obeah powers” which aided in the detection of theft. If a person had stolen plants from another’s provision grounds and had left a footprint, the victim should:

 “take up the earth carefully in a leaf, measure it with a spoon, and put “four-thirds” as much wangla seed with it and put the whole lot into a pot upon the fire. Call the name of the person you think is the thief and if you are right, as many “bumps” will appear on his foot as there are seeds that “pop.””

 

An alternate method could be used if the thief’s identity was known. Any wangla planted in the provision ground should be hit whilst calling out the thief’s name. This too would bring out bumps on his or her leg. Simon Falconer, one of Beckwith’s informants, told her that the only way the thief could prevent this happening was to have previously eaten some wangla seed.

Thomas Banbury  also wrote of some very unpleasant effects that wangla could wreak on thieves. In Banbury’s account, if a thief walked along a road on which a mix of wangla, salt and pepper had be burned, then he or she would contract “Jamaica leprosy”.

 

Next time….
“Nature & Supernatural Nature” goes on its hols. But that doesn’t mean slouching on a sun lounger, slathered in factor 50 and sipping cocktails. Instead, we’re off to Warwickshire, England, to investigate why only bad people can grow parsley.

 

Sources
Martha Warren Beckwith, Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaica Folk Life (reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969, of orig. edn, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1929), pp. 128-129.
Rev. Thomas Banbury, Jamaica Superstitions; or the Obeah Book: A Complete Treatise of the Absurdities Believed in by the People of the Island (Kingston: Mortimer Co. De Souza, 1894), p. 10. Cited in Beckwith, Black Roadways, p. 129.
Image credits: Pearson Scott Foresman https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASesame_(PSF).png

Gourds

Gourds have a number of connections with African-Jamaican spiritual practices: as musical instruments, as a form of oracle and as receptacles for charms. In Black Roadways (1929), Martha Warren Beckwith wrote of how the Myal men in the Cockpits area of Jamaica used rattles, called “shakeys” alongside bon, panay and gombay drums to accompany the Myal dance to summon the spirits of the dead. She described a shakey as consisting of  “a gourd fastened to the end of a stick and filled with the shot-like seed of the wild canna or with small stones. Such a rattle is often reported from Africa as an accompaniment of war or medicine dances”.

Writing on Jonkonnu festivities, Beckwith mentioned about the gourd rattle being used in the parade, along with other musical instruments such as the “African Gombay drum”, all of which had associations with the invocation of spirits.

 

 

Beckwith also cited the 17th century naturalist, Hans Sloane, who had observed how such rattles were:

”used as fetishes by the Indians of the Mosquito coast… The Indians adorned them with feathers and “planted” them among their houses. Such an object was called a maraca. After feeding for thirteen of fourteen days it would cause the roots to grow and would ‘answer’ questions”.

 

In addition to being employed as percussion instruments and oracles, gourds were also used as receptacles for Obeah practitioners’ charms. Writing at the end of the nineteenth century, Thomas Banbury  detailed the items such charms could contain. These included “pieces of broken bottles, cats’ or serpents’ teeth, nails, and bones, pins, needles, vials, pieces of cloth, &c”. The Obeah person would then recite an incantation over the charm. It was now ready to be buried in the yard or path of the intended victim. If the person stepped on it, the charm was believed to transfer its power to their body.

 

Next time….
The Obeah powers of Wangla are under the spotlight

 

Sources
Martha Warren Beckwith, Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaica Folk Life (reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969, of orig. edn, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1929), p. 148, pp. 212-213.
Martha Warren Beckwith, “Jamaica Ethnobotany” in Martha Warren Beckwith, with music recorded in the field by Helen H. Roberts, Jamaica Folklore (New York: The American Folk-Lore Society, 1928), p. 12.
Rev. Thomas Banbury, Jamaica Superstitions; or the Obeah Book: A Complete Treatise of the Absurdities Believed in by the People of the Island (Kingston: Mortimer Co. De Souza, 1894), p. 6, 7.
Image credits: picture by Tmwatha – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFashion_Calabash.jpg
N.B. Unfortunately Beckwith doesn’t give the Latin name of the type of gourd which she is referring to. This makes finding an image of a specific plant difficult as there are a large number of species of gourd. Therefore I’ve used an image of some African gourd rattles which I think may have been made on similar lines to the Jamaican ones.

How to remove lizards if they become stuck in your arm

In my last blog entry I mentioned how anthropologist Martha Warren Beckwith wondered if the use of a plant with vermifugal properties such as Worm-weed  gave rise to the idea that animals and other foreign bodies could be removed from under a person’s skin by Obeah practitioners.

In Black Roadways (1929), Beckwith wrote of the technique of Obeah pulling; i.e. removing an object or creature from patient’s body as a cure for their malady. Beckwith’s description is almost entirely based on the writings of the African-Jamaican clergyman, Thomas Banbury. In my post on Calabashes  I looked briefly at Banbury’s account of Obeah pulling where calabash cups were placed on a patient’s body to draw out the foreign body which infected him. Banbury went on to describe how the skin was scored with a knife to facilitate the removal of the object and the practitioner/ healer could also suck the foreign matter out using his or her mouth rather than a cup.

Items removed by this method included “pieces of glass bottles, nails, pins, needles, the teeth of cats, serpents, bits of bones, shells, small vials, lizards, spiders and other small insects.”

Prior to the procedure, some practitioners would consult an item called an amber. Beckwith described ambers as “fetich” objects employed by Myalists or Obeah practitioners. In some areas an amber bead was used, in others a glass marble.

An example of using an amber in Obeah-pulling is illustrated in the excerpts of song lyrics from the early 20th century collected by Beckwith shown below. The first song came from James White, described by Beckwith as having “a reputation for knowledge of herb medicines and of songs to raise the dead” and the second song’s lyrics were given to Beckwith by Swabe, the lead dancer in Jonkonnu ceremonies in Prospect. The eagle-eyed among you may notice a few different spellings of “amber” – I’m using both variations as this is how the songs appear in Beckwith’s text.

 “Amber Song”
Pull-ee me am-bah ye, Pull –ee me am- bah ye
Pull-ee me am-bah ye, Pull-ee me am-bah ye[p.

and

“Amba Song”
Amba dead a dirt-ee, oh, good ol’ amba!
Tol’ somebody dat you saw dem, good ol’ amba!
Come pull out obeah fe me, oh, good ol’ amba!

Next time….
I get musical with gourds

 

Sources
Rev. Thomas Banbury, Jamaica Superstitions; or the Obeah Book: A Complete Treatise of the Absurdities Believed in by the People of the Island (Kingston: Mortimer Co. De Souza, 1894), pp. 12-13, 14.
Martha Warren Beckwith, Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaica Folk Life (reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969, of orig. edn, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1929), p. 132.
Martha Warren Beckwith, “Christmas Mummings” in Martha Warren Beckwith, with music recorded in the field by Helen H. Roberts, Jamaica Folklore (New York: The American Folk-Lore Society, 1928), pp. 49, 11
Song lyrics from “Christmas Mummings”, pp. 52, 33
Picture credits: Charles J Sharp – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AJamaican_Gray_(stripefoot)_anole_(Anolis lineatopus)JPG

 

 

 

 

 

 

Worm-weed (Chenopodium ambrosioides, L.)

In both Black Roadways and “Jamaica Ethnobotany”, Martha Warren Beckwith noted that Worm-weed (AKA “See-me-contract”/ “Semi contrac”) was used to drive duppies away. This could be done by either rubbing the leaves on your body or scattering them about your house.

Beckwith also referred to the plant’s medicinal usage in the treatment for intestinal worms citing an eighteenth century physician, Patrick Browne:

“Browne uses ‘worm-weed’… to produce an effect like opium… After such a dose he gives an ordinary purge, after which the worms are discharged… Such experiences… may account for the belief in the removal of animals from a patient’s body into a bottle which forms so common a practice in obeah today”.

This idea of worm-weed as a vermifuge appears in modern Jamaican folk medicine. Its emetic and anti-inflammatory properties are also used in remedies for arthritis, constipation and worms.

Would the plant’s purgative qualities have influenced ideas that it could also dispel evil spirits?

Next time…

How to remove lizards if they become stuck in your arm.

 

Sources

Image – drawing of worm-weed © H. R. Sparkes

Martha Warren Beckwith, “Jamaica Ethnobotany” in Martha Warren Beckwith, with music recorded in the field by Helen H. Roberts, Jamaica Folklore (New York: The American Folk-Lore Society, 1928), p. 26, 30.

Martha Warren Beckwith, Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaica Folk Life (reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969, of orig. edn, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1929), p. 94.

Patrick Browne, The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica (London, 1789), p. 156 cited in Beckwith, “Jamaica Ethnobotany”, p. 30.

Arvilla Payne-Jackson, and Mervyn C. Alleyne, Jamaican Folk Medicine: A Source of Healing (Jamaica: University of West Indies Press, 2004), pp. 168, 150, 154.

 

 

Interlude: International Women’s Day/ Martha Warren Beckwith

Today, Nature and Supernatural Nature is taking some time out from its investigation into the spirit lore associated with Jamaican plants to celebrate International Women’s Day https://www.internationalwomensday.com/ and pay tribute to the woman who provided the inspiration for this blog, Martha Warren Beckwith

Martha Warren Beckwith (1879-1959) was an American anthropologist, folklorist and academic who is perhaps best known today for her work on Hawaii. However, her Jamaican research was pioneering as not only did she focus on the Caribbean when it was considered an unfashionable area for study by many anthropologists but she also took African-Jamaican folk religions seriously. She was writing at a time when Jamaican folk stories, song and dance were starting to be celebrated but the island’s folk religions and spiritual beliefs were still denigrated by many commentators.

Beckwith’s Jamaican fieldwork, which took place between 1919 and 1924, resulted in a number of articles and the books, Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaican Folk Life (1929), Jamaica Proverbs (1925), Jamaican Folklore (1928) and Jamaica Anansi Stories (1924). Her Caribbean research influenced Melville Herskovits, who himself went on to influence a generation of “American anthropologists who studied the Caribbean, including Katherine Dunham, Zora Neale Hurston, and George Eaton Simpson” (Forde and Paton, p. 17)

Beckwith was not only ground-breaking in her approach to her Caribbean fieldwork. She also played an important role in the development of folklore studies in academia. In 1920 Beckwith became research Professor of the Folklore Foundation and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Vassar College, making her America’s first chair of folklore. In the early twentieth century, folklore studies at university level were based in either anthropology or literature departments. Beckwith disagreed with this, considering folklore to be a subject worthy of study in its own right and, under the auspices of Vassar’s Folklore Foundation, Beckwith was able to bring literature and anthropology together in the study of folklore as a distinct subject.

So on this International Women’s Day I’m raising a glass to all those who work to make women’s lives better and also to the inspirational Martha Warren Beckwith

Next time…

Normal service will be resumed as I look at the duppy prevention and vermifugal qualities of Worm-weed.

Sources

Maarit Forde and Diana Paton, “Introduction” to Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics of Caribbean Religion and Healing (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2012).

Picture credit: by Davide Restivo at

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AA_glass_of_red_wine.jpg

 

Addendum: Broom-weed (Malvastrum coromandelianum)

Since my last post I’ve come across an example of broom-weed being used in theft detection charms by North American Conjure practitioners. In her essay “Hoodoo in America” (1931), the American novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston noted that:

“To catch a thief: hang three sprigs of broomweed about the neck of the suspect and recite Psalm 50:18, and if he is the guilty one it will choke him to death”.

Psalm 50, verse 18 concerns God condemning those who recite the commandments and talk of their faith whilst also being “the friend of every thief” they see.

Hurston didn’t give the Latin names of the plants the Hoodoo and Conjure practitioners used. As there are a number of species called “broom-weed” I can’t be sure if it is the malvastrum coromanelianum of the Jamaican ritual. However, the employment of broom-weed in Hoodoo demonstrates that it was employed in anti-theft techniques in different parts of the New World.

Did the idea/technique travel from North America to the Caribbean or vice versa?

One obvious difference between the North American and the Jamaican versions of the broom-weed anti-theft charm are the words recited. As seen in my previous post, in Jamaica a rhyme invoking St Peter and Saint Paul is used. In the USA, a psalm.

Saint Paul is not mentioned at all in Hurston’s collection of Hoodoo remedies. However St Peter is included in a couple of the charms though these are aimed at increasing success and prosperity rather than the detection/prevention of theft (see “Hoodoo in America”, pp. 338 and 413).

Next time…

How wormweed can prevent unwanted attention from duppies.

 

Sources

Zora Neale Hurston, “Hoodoo in America”, The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 44, no. 174 (Oct-Dec, 1931), p. 324.

Good News Bible: Today’s English Version (London: Collins/Fontana, 1976), p. 565.

Image credits

From U.S. Library of Congress, author unknown: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Hurston-Zora-Neale-LOC.jpg

Broom-weed (Malvastrum coromandelianum)

This month’s plant is spiritual only in the sense that God and two saints are invoked in its usage. In “Jamaica Ethnobotany”, Martha Warren Beckwith wrote of how broom-weed was used by rural Jamaicans to catch thieves.

Mrs Peart, the wife of one of her informants, told Beckwith that to find a thief, you must: “take two pieces of the plant [broom-weed], dip them in lye-water* reciting ‘By St. Peter, by St. Paul, By the living God of all’”. The pieces of broom-weed should be placed either side of the suspect’s neck. The plant will then wind itself around the neck of the guilty party and choke him or her.

A turn of the century collection of African-Jamaican folklore described this technique as “the broom-weed gallows”.

I’m guessing that the inclusion of Saints Peter and Paul in the recitation used alongside the broom-weed has British origins. In Popular Magic: Cunning Folk in English History (2007), Owen Davies cites the example of a British nineteenth-century charm which included the names of the same two saints:
“By Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
God is the maker of us all;
What he gave to me I give to thee,
And that is nought to nobody.”

Giving “nought to nobody” implies that this rhyme was used to prevent theft. Peter and Paul’s names are to be found amongst a list of saints used in Anglo-Saxon charms to detect missing goods and livestock so maybe the 19th century charm is an abbreviated version of these much older ones?

I haven’t been able to found out why Peter and Paul were called upon for this purpose. Peter is believed to be the patron saint of locksmiths so that may be the reason. However Paul’s patronage is mainly for occupations involving writing so there doesn’t seem any obvious link there.

St Peter                                                                                      St Paul

                                       

* lye is a chemical used in soaps and detergents. Household cleaning products were sometimes used in Caribbean folk practices. For example, in his book on Obeah in nineteenth century Grenada, Sir Henry Hesketh Bell wrote of an Obeah man who had hung bottles containing laundry blue mixed with sea water off trees in to prevent petty larceny.from a garden.

Next time…
We’re back to preventing unwanted attention from duppies.

 

Sources

Martha Warren Beckwith, “Jamaica Ethnobotany” in Martha Warren Beckwith, with music recorded in the field by Helen H. Roberts, Jamaica Folklore (New York: The American Folk-Lore Society, 1928), p. 13.
Frank Cundall, “Folklore of the Negroes of Jamaica”, Folklore, Vol. 15, No. 1. (Mar. 25, 1904), p. 92.
Example from The Times, 30 March, 1850 cited in Owen Davies, Popular Magic: Cunning Folk in English History (London and New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2007), p. 154.
Lea Olsen, The Inscription of Charms in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts, Oral Tradition, Vol. 14, no. 2 (1999), p. 409.
Henry Hesketh J. Bell, Obeah: Witchcraft in the West Indies (reprint, Westport: Negro Universities Press, 1970 of 1889 edn, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1889), p. 4.

picture: broom-weed: Dinesh Valke https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File3AMalvastrum_coromandelianum_(1461771973).jpg
picture: St Peter: Jastrow https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File3ATondo_St_Peter_MNMA_Cl23759.jpg
picture: St Paul: Hchc2009 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File3ACastell_Coch_stained_glass_panel_1.JPG

 

On the naming of Jamaican plants: no. 1

It’s a year since Nature and Supernatural Nature hit the internet so after a slice of birthday cake, a sip of rum and a blowing-out of candles, on to this month’s post. This entry focuses on Martha Warren Beckwith’s take on how Jamaican plants got their names

 Beckwith wrote: “Most of the local plant-names here collected are evidently English – some applied by the whites, like ‘Rosemary’, others are used to name a plant to which they bear a fancied resemblance, as in the case of ‘Dandelion’, or ‘Batchelor’s-button’… Color, or leaf-shape, or seed-pod suggest the analogy for ‘Milk-tea’, ‘Bat-wing’, ‘Rattleweed’.”

“Other names derive from the disease which they cure, such as ‘Fever-grass’, ‘Worm-weed’, ‘Snake-weed’, or ‘Consumption-weed’.”

She noted how plants with ‘duppy’ or ‘spirit’ in their name were used to ward of unwelcome entities (see duppy-pumpkin).

Some flora was named by what Beckwith described as a ”riddling form” known as “Cromanty talk”. These plants include See-me-contract and Dead-and-wake. Other plant names had more obvious links to Africa, for example, Guinea-weed. African names for children born on particular days of the week (see below) can been found in plants such as Juba-bush and Quaco-bush.

 

Beckwith’s list of African day names

Day                   male              female

Sunday            Quashe            Quasheba

Monday           Cudjo               Juba

Tuesday           Cubena            Benaba

Wednesday     Quaco              Cooba

Thursday         Quao               Abba

Friday              Cuffee             Fee-ba

Saturday         Quamin           Mimba

 

Next time….

I look at the criminal-catching properties of Broom-weed.

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Sources

Martha Warren Beckwith, “Jamaica Ethnobotany” in Martha Warren Beckwith, with music recorded in the field by Helen H. Roberts, Jamaica Folklore (New York: The American Folk-Lore Society, 1928), pp. 6-7

list of African days names in Martha Warren Beckwith, Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaica Folk Life (reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969, of orig. edn, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1929), p. 59

 

Bat-wing (Passiflora sexflora juss.)

               

Bat-wing (aka passion flower, duck-foot, or goat-foot) is a vine with smallish ornate flowers.

Its spiritual connections are very tenuous as so far as I’m aware it doesn’t have any! Its place in Jamaican plant lore seems solely in its healing capacity. However, I’m featuring it in the blog for two reasons. Firstly, in “Jamaica Ethnobotany”, Martha Warren Beckwith noted that bat-wing “is sometimes identified with ‘Duppy pumpkin’”. As I mentioned in a previous post, duppies were believed to feed on duppy pumpkin or play with its fruits.  Secondly, as it’s October, I wanted a plant with a Hallowe’en connection and despite several readings of Beckwith’s plant lists I haven’t found a Pharaoh’s Mummy vine or Aged Crone on Broomstick gourd….

In its role as a healing plant Beckwith wrote that bat-wing was used to help cure colds or fever. Like duppy pumpkin it was believed help to alleviate a cricked neck. Bat-wing was also used to heal sores or “a lame foot” by squishing the plant to a pulp in a mortar and applying the resulting paste to the affected area.

 

Next time….

Martha Beckwith’s take on how Jamaican plants got their names.

 

 

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Sources

Bat image: By “Myself” (Image:Bat_shadow.svg) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Photograph of passion flower: By Dick Culbert from Gibsons, B.C., Canada [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

Martha Warren Beckwith, “Jamaica Ethnobotany”, p. 11, in Martha Warren Beckwith, with music recorded in the field by Helen H. Roberts, Jamaica Folklore (New York: The American Folk-Lore Society, 1928).

 

 

The calabash (Crescentia Cujete L.)

Here’s another plant associated with African-Jamaican burial customs as well as ghosts.

Martha Warren Beckwith was told by Wilfred, one of her informants that calabash trees were planted at the head and foot of a grave to mark it but he would ‘not admit that their presence had any significance’.

However, Beckwith heard that in Westmoreland graves were beaten three times with ‘calabash switches’ as part of a ritual to raise the ghost of the dead to do one’s bidding.

Zora Neale Hurston details this ritual in Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (1938). In order to summon the ghost of its occupant, rum and money were first thrown on a grave and then it was beaten with the calabash stick.

Hurston also witnessed the strange behaviour of a calabash full of water at a Kumina ritual in St Thomas to ensure that the duppy of a dead man had reached his final resting place. The calabash, seemingly under its own volition, rose slowly to the top of the palm booth in which the ceremony was being held and then gradually descended. As bowls of water are used in some African-Caribbean religious ceremonies as portals by which spirits may enter or exit, there is a strong implication that the calabash was being moved by the spirit of the deceased.

Calabashes were also used in the process of “obeah pulling”. Writing in the 1890s, African-Jamaican clergyman Thomas Banbury described how cups made from calabashes were placed on a sick man’s skin. When they were removed, their contents were emptied into a basin along with lime juice and ashes. The latter ingredients were believed to kill any obeah that had come out of the patient’s body.

 

Next time…

As we hit October, I thought I’d pick something Hallowe’en related, albeit tenuously, so the next post will be looking Bat-wing.

 

 

 

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Sources

Photograph by Franz Xaver < https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ACrescentia_cujete_3.jpg&gt;

Martha Warren Beckwith, Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaica Folk Life (reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969, of orig. edn, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1929), pp. 75-76, 137.

Rev. Thomas Banbury, Jamaica Superstitions; or the Obeah Book: A Complete Treatise of the Absurdities Believed in by the People of the Island (Kingston: Mortimer Co. De Souza, 1894), pp. 12-13.

Zora Neale Hurston, Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica (reprint, with a new foreword by Ishmael Reed, New York: Harper & Row, 1990, of orig. edn, Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincourt Inc., 1938), pp. 45, 55-56.