will kill you." So de nex' mornin' b'o' Rabby an' b'o' Boukee went. When dey got dere, dey say,—
"Timmy fee,
Timmy fin."
An' de tree bruk open. B'o' Rabbit take a bucket an' he dip out his bucket full. An' b'o' Boukee shove he head, an' de tree close on his neck. B'o' Boukee look up. Long-Tus' an' b'o' Bear be acomin'.[1] An' when he put his han' up an' shove dat tree, he peeled his skin right off. An' when he get home, his chillun look up, he say, "Pa has a raw head." An' he say to them, "Why you don' say, "A raw head an' a bloody bone." An' when de chil' ran feel his head, he slap him, an' de chil' darted, an' I flash him an' cause me to be here to tell you dat story.[2]
The pattern of the pass-word is used in several other ways in the Bahamas and elsewhere. It is the introduction to the tale of "In the Cow's Belly," a tale in which, in Sierra Leone Frog and Spider, in the Cape Verde Islands Lob and Tubinh, in the Bahamas Rabbit and Boukee, go into the cow to cut flesh.[3] The animals use the pass-word to go in—"Cow open" or "Vaca, abri nhefa, dexan entra (Cow, open mouth, let me in)," "Vaca, fixa nhefa, dexan sai (Cow, shut mouth, let me out)," or "Open, gobanje, open," "Shut, gobanje, shut,"[4] and Lob or Boukee[5]
- ↑ In a Louisiana variant it is Sunday dresses and new shoes for his children Compair Bouki goes to get from the tree. Forgetting to say "Tree, open!" Bouki is caught by the thieves who hid their booty in the tree. They gave Compair Bouki such a beating he could hardly move. Fortier, Alice, Louisiana Folk-Tales, p. 112; Mem. Amer. Folk-Lore Soc. ii. 1895. For the pattern applied to a tree see too Hartt, C. F., Amazonian Tortoise Myths, pp. 17-18, Rio de Janeiro, 1875.
- ↑ Parsons, 31.
- ↑ The provenience of the rest of this tale we shall consider in a later article.
- ↑ Or "Hopen, Kabendye, hopen!" (Bahama Songs and Stories, pp. 77-8).
- ↑ In the Sierra Leone tale (Cronise and Ward, pp. 231-38), instead of forgetting the pass-word, Spider cuts into the cow's heart and the cow drops dead. This version, the proper version of "In the Cow's Belly," is also told in the Bahamas. "The Pass-word" has obviously been spliced into "In the Cow's Belly."
