Back there a long time ago, Nansi and Brer Death decided to plant a provision field together.
Back there a long time ago, Nansi and Brer Death decided to plant a provision field together.
But Nansi and Death had a lot of quarrels. Nansi was always around smiling, playing around, making lots of nonsense. He would sit under the bamboo tree and make like he was some overseer. Anything but working in that field of provisions. So, of course, his yams and beans didn't grow.
But Brer Death, he carried his hoe all day, and while he was hoeing he was smacking his lips thinking about all the yams and beans he was going to eat.
Nansi, he started thinking too about all the yams and beans growing in the field. So he told his wife, Tookooma, that he was going to sneak over the field with his basket to get a taste. He told her to stay at the gate with a basket, so that when he came back with a basket of yams, she could hand him one for the beans. Tookooma said, "Duppies [ghosts] are going to catch you, husband." Nansi sucked his teeth: "Chuck! Dupphies don't bother me. Tonight I'm a white man and the duppies won't go after me."
Now, Brer Death thought that his provisions were getting to look awfully nice, so he started to stand watch over the field at night, with his cutlass in his hand. Bye and bye, he heard a sound and snuck over and sure enough he saw Nansi with a basket, right there in the middle of his field. He said, "Howdy Brer Nansi. What's happening with you?"
And Nansi said, "Howdy Brer Death, I'm just feeling so-so."
"What brings you to my provision field so late at night?"
"I like to watch your yams grow, Brer Death."
"Your mouth is running away with you, Nansi Why are you carrying a basket then?"
"I'm going to hunt for crayfish, Brer Death."
So he could see that Nansi was there to steal his yams, so he flew at him with his cutlass, and Nansi started running toward home. He called way down the road: "Open the back door, shut the front door, Tookooma; Death is coming after me."
And Tookooma didn't hear him too well and asked, "Well, did you fill the basket?"
Nansi, who was closer now, said, "You fool, you; open the back door, shut the front door.": She still couldn't hear him well. "What did you say husband? Did you bring the basket?"
"Oh, you fool you! Open the back door, shut the front door. Death is coming after me!"
Nansi ran in the front door, and Death almost caught him and hit him with his cutlass. Nansi ran out the back and into an old shed, and ran up the wall like a big black spider, and he hid himself in a cranny so that Brer Death couldn't find him. And that's why you always find Nansi and all his webs sittting up in the rafters of old sheds and places like that.
This anonymous oral tale is still told by itinerant talkers in rural Jamaica. It appeared in Volume III number 1 of New Mystery Magazine. Thanks to the translation and editing by Roger Abrahams, (Afro-American Tales, Pantheon 1985) and a primary source version by Miss Betty Lou, (Kingston People Books 1994.)
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