NOTES TO THE POEMS
Jamaican Periodical Poetry, 1911â12
My notes dealing with Jamaican dialect are greatly indebted to F. G. Cassidy and R. B. Le Pageâs Dictionary of Jamaican English.
âAgnes oâ de Village Laneâ: Published in the Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), 7 Oct. 1911, 6. According to Winston James, this poem commemorates McKayâs childhood love, Agnes, who died while working in a Kingston brothel. Several other sympathetic poems about prostitutes would follow, and Agnes in particular may be enshrined in âCommemorationâ and âMemorialâ from the collection Harlem Shadows.
âSweet Timesâ: Published in the Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), 21 Oct. 1911, 17. Line 2, âjackna-bushâ: the Eupatorium odoratum, a large white âtea bushâ with medicinal uses. Line 14, âFavourâ: to seem or appear.
âDe Hailstormâ: Published in the Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), 11 Nov. 1911, 18. Line 7, âpattârinââ: pattering. Line 28, âhope fe meetâ: hope to meet.
âThe Daily Gleanerâ: Published on the cover of the Christmas insert to the Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), 16 Dec. 1911. A note in the original explains that the poem was written at the Gleanerâs request to celebrate âthe growth of the [newspaper] since 1834, when it was first established.â Despite the paperâs connections to the island plantocracy, McKay manages to link the Gleanerâs birth to the emancipation of Jamaican slaves. In August 1833, slavery was legally abolished throughout the British Empire, with the provisions of freedom taking hold one year later. Line 18, âTellâ: until.
âThe Christmas Treeâ: Published in the Christmas insert to the Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), 16 Dec. 1911, 11. Line 6, âred god-roseâ: a type of West Indian mistletoe. Line 13, âfee-feesâ: toy whistles.
âChristmas in de Airâ: Published in the Jamaica Times, 16 Dec. 1911, 27. Though the poem was specially commissioned by the Times, its focus on government inaction in the face of want and despair is extraordinary and should be compared with the very different holiday scene of âThe Christmas Tree.â Line 13, âmancha leafâ: banana leaf, from a nickname for the Martinique banana. Line 42, âHard Timesâ: a reference to the Charles Dickens industrial protest novel, published in 1854 and denounced by Thomas Macaulay for its âsullen socialism.â The atmosphere of Dickensâs Christmas Carol (1843) also informs the poem. Line 46, âpoppy showâ: a puffed-up display, concealing inadequacy.
âPeasantsâ Ways oâ Thinkinââ: Published in the Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), 27 Jan. 1912, 18. Line 5, âwanâ fe tryâ: should try. Line 7, âcaanââ: canât. Line 13, âbuccraâ: the white man. Line 14, âdutyâ: a regressive tax then imposed by Jamaican law on imported foods. Line 15, âfe weâ: for us. Line 18, âosnabuâgâ: rough, thick cloth, once used in the work clothes of slaves. Line 19, âgillâ: money. Line 44, âtâatchâ: thatch. Line 53, âleeâ: little. Line 56, âfuppenceâ: five pence. Line 60, âSyrianâ: the emigrants from Lebanon, Damascus, and Bethlehem who began arriving in Jamaica in the 1890s and who established themselves as peddlers. Lines 81â82, âColon,â Panama, and âLimon,â Costa Rica: common destinations of Jamaican economic migrants in the early twentieth century. Line 93, âJohn-tâ-whitsâ: black-whiskered vireos; âmammee treeâ: the West Indian tree Mammea americana. Line 103, âruânateâ: ruined. Line 117, âmancha-rootâ: banana tree.
âPassive Resistanceâ: Published in the Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), 6 Apr. 1912, page number unknown. The text and citation are taken from Wayne F. Cooperâs generally reliable selection of McKayâs poems and prose, The Passion of Claude McKay. My own examination of the Gleanerâs run from 1911 through 1912 did not uncover any printings of the poem, though Max Eastmanâs introduction to Harlem Shadows and Winston Jamesâs Fierce Hatred of Injustice concur on McKayâs authorship. The poem voices the position of those citizens of Kingston, dubbed âpassive resistersâ in advance of the U.S. civil rights movement, who fought the imposition of higher tramway fees in 1912 through a campaign to inconvenience conductors with requests for change and transfer vouchers. McKayâs speaker recommends keeping active, rioting resisters âin check,â but the martial rhetoric of âIf We Must Dieâ (1919) is already in rehearsal. Line 15, âayeâ: ever.
âMy Eucharisâ: Published in the Jamaica Times, 20 Apr. 1912, 1. Line 2, âmy Eucharisâ: neither a beloved woman nor an allusion to Holy Communion, but a bulbous flower. Line 13, âtwininâ wisâ: a twining tree wand, especially that of a willow.
âGeorge William Gordon to the Oppressed Nativesâ: Published in T.P.âs Weekly (London), Apr. 1912, page unknown. Republished in the Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), 3 May 1912, 13; and as âGordon to the Oppressed Nativesâ in the Jamaica Times, 4 May 1912, 20, with âWilberforceâ for âWilâerforceâ in line 9; âandâ for âanââ in line 10; âTyrannyâ for âtyrannyâ in line 11; âfreedmenâ for âfreed menâ in line 19; and âthy kind;â for âmy kind!â in line 23. McKay here ventriloquizes the Jamaican national hero George William Gordon (circa 1820â65). Born the son of a Scottish plantation owner and an Afro-Jamaican slave mother, Gordon became a powerful landowner and a prominent member of the âfree colouredsâ who helped to spark nineteenth-century Jamaican nationalism. Despite his wealth, Gordon was the leading voice of the poor in the Jamaican House of Assembly and was publicly hanged for his possible role in the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865, in which impoverished blacks burned the Morant Bay courthouse after being denied an audience with the governor. Winston James quotes McKayâs prideful memory that the poem âcreated as much of a stir as âIf We Must Dieâ created in the United Statesâ (89). Lines 9â10, âWilâerforceâ; âSharpe anâ Buxtonâ: William Wilberforce and Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton were leading English parliamentary abolitionists of the early nineteenth century; Samuel âDaddyâ Sharpe, another national hero of Jamaica, was a Baptist deacon, slave leader, and martyr who organized the Christmas rebellion of slaves in the western parishes in 1831â32. Line 13, âClarksonâsâ: Thomas Clarkson was a leading antislavery organizer in England and Scotland and the author of the Cambridge University prize essay âIs It Right to Make Men Slaves against Their Will?â (1785).
âSnared!â: Published in the Jamaica Times, 27 July 1912, 1. Line 1, âJohnnieâ: the black-whiskered vireo, sometimes called the John-to-whit or John-chewit in Jamaica in honor of its song. Line 4, âButtyâsâ: the name Butty is perhaps a version of Buta, derived from the Ko word for man, mbuta, and used in Jamaicaâs St. Thomas Parish to refer to an adult. Line 6, âmammee treeâ: see the note to line 93 of âPeasantsâ Ways oâ Thinkinâ.â Line 10, âJew waterâ: dew, from the more common juu or ju-ju water.
âClarendon Hills, Farewell!â: Published in the Daily Gleaner (Kingston, Jamaica), 5 Aug. 1912, 3. Line 2, âayeâ: ever.
âTo a Friendâ: Published in the Jamaica Times, 17 Aug. 1912, 1. Note to the original: âThese lines were written on the eve of the authorâs departure to America to take a course of Agricultural training.â Line 5, âereâ: before.
Songs of Jamaica (1912)
McKayâs Songs of Jamaica was published by Aston W. Gardner of Kingston in 1912. McKay dedicated the book to the islandâs governor, a fellow Fabian socialist and a friend of his mentor Walter Jekyll:
TO HIS EXCELLENCY
SIR SYDNEY OLIVIER, K.C.M.G.,
GOVERNOR OF JAMAICA,
WHO
BY HIS SYMPATHY WITH THE BLACK RACE HAS WON
THE LOVE AND ADMIRATION OF ALL JAMAICANS,
THIS VOLUME IS
BY PERMISSION
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.
Jekyllâs technical preface to McKayâs poems in the âJamaican tongue,â imagined as an elegantly feminine and romantic ânegro variantâ of the English language, reads as follows:
What Italian is to Latin, that in regard to English is the negro variant thereof. It shortens, softens, rejects the harder sounds alike of consonants and vowels; I might almost say, refines. In its soft tones we have an expression of the languorous sweetness of the South: it is a feminine version of masculine English; preeminently a language of love, as all will feel who, setting prejudice aside, will allow the charmingly naĂŻve love-songs of this volume to make their due impression upon them. But this can only happen when the verses are read aloud, and those unacquainted with the Jamaican tongue may therefore welcome a few hints as to pronunciation.
As a broad general direction, let it be observed that the vowels have rather the continental than the English sounds, while in the matter of the consonants the variation from English is of the nature of a pretty lisp.
The exact values of the vowels cannot, of course, be described, but they approximate on the whole more to those of Italy and France than to those of England. One sound, that of aw, is entirely rejected, and ah is substituted for it. Thus bawl, law, call, daughter, etc., become bahl, lah, cahl, dahter, etc.
In the word wheâ, which sometimes means where and sometimes which, the e has the same sound as in the word met. Deh is similarly pronounced, and the e is quite a short one, the h being added merely to distinguish deh from de (the). This short e often takes the place of the close English a, as in tek (take), mek (make).
My is almost invariably pronounced with a short y, and, to remind the reader of this, it is constantly spelt me. Feâgenerally meaning to, but sometimes forâmatches this short my exactly. In caanâ (canât) the a is doubled in order to ensure the pronunciation cahn.
It is difficult to convey the exact value of doân (down), grounâ (ground). There is a faint trace of ng at the end of these words, and they rhyme to tongue pronounced very shortly and with a dumber vowel sound.
Vowels are sometimes changed out of mere caprice, as it seems. Thus we have ef for if, trimble for tremble, anedder for anudder (another), stimulent for stimulant, aâpronounced shortâfor I, sperit for spirit.
In ya, originally meaning dâyou hearâbut now thrown in just to fill up, like the donât you know of certain talkersâthe a is a short ah.
We come now to the consonants. Bearing in mind what was said above of the pretty lisp, let the d so oftenâgenerally, we may sayâsubstituted for th, be of the very softest, as it were a th turning towards d, or to put it in another way, a lazily pronounced th. The negro has no difficulty whatever in pronouncing it clearly: it is merely that he does not, as a rule, take the trouble to do so. In these poems the, they, there, with, etc., are not always written de, dey, dere, wid, etc.; and the reader is at liberty to turn any soft th into d, and any d into soft th. And here let me remark, in passing, that in one breath the black man will pronounce a word in his own way, and in the next will articulate it as purely as the most refined Englishman. Where the substitution of d makes the word unrecognisable, as in moder (mother), oders (others), the spelling mudder, udders is resorted to; and for fear of confusion with well-known words, though, those are always written thus, although generally pronounced, dough, dose.
As d supplants the soft th, so does a simple t supplant the hard one; as in ting, notâing (or nuttinâ,âfor the g in words of two or more syllables is very commonly left out), tâink, tâick, târough, metâod, wutless (worthless).
V tends to pass into b, as in lub (love), hab, lib, ebery, neber, cultibation. Vex, though so written for the most part, is pronounced either with a decided b or with some compromise between that and v.
Of elisions, the commonest is that of the initial s when followed by another consonant. Thus start, spread, stop, scrape, spoil, sting, skin, etc., become âtart, âpread, âtop, âcrape, âpoil, âting, âkin, etc.
Final dâs are often dropped, as in lanâ, tâousanâ, pleaseâ (pleased) and other past participles, minâ, chilââin these let care be taken to keep the long sound of the iâwulâ (world), wud (word), enâ.
Final tâs also; as in breasâ, casâ, âgainsâ (against), iâ (it), lasâ, whaâ, wusâ (worst), tasâe (taste).
Present participles, passinâ, brukinâ (breaking), outpourinâ, etc., lose their gâs; and final kâs sometimes disappear, as in tasâ. Râs, too, as in youâ for your, moâ for more, befoâ or simply âfoâ for before: and they are even thrown out from the middle of words, as in wuk (work), tuân (turn), wud (word). Will occasionally loses its lâs and becomes wiâ.
Initial vowels have also a habit of vanishing: as in âbout (about), âlong (along), âway (away), nuff (enough), âpon (upon); but the elision of these and of longer first syllables is sometimes made up by tacking something to the end, and for about, without, because we get âbouten, âdouten, âcausen.
On the construction of the language it is unnecessary t...