Trinidad - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 110

Take care of my junior commando!”'
The chorus goes on, rather dreamily—
'Soft like jelly,
Red like cherry,
Sweet like honey,
And you get it free.'
and so on through a sequence of weird and equivocal adventures.
The reader may have concluded by this time that the Trinidadian Parnassus is not a very high moun-
tain, and it is not fair, except for their interest as oddities, to print these lyrics without their accompani-
ment. For then every drawback of scansion and emphasis, every metrical sprain, seems to be righted
by magic, and this splendid, jangling, essentially plebeian music combines with the verse into the most
heady and startling songs that can be imagined. They must be the only living folk-music—at any rate, in
English—in the British Empire.
[1] For a full account of this strange Elizabethan and his exploits in the New World, the reader is warmly
recommended to read West Indian Summer , by James Pope-Hennessy.
[2] George Campbell, M.D., M.R.C.P., D.P.H., Health Horizon , October, 1947.
[3] A similar system, but one which ended much earlier, accounts for small East Indian minorities in the
French Antilles.
[4] Sir Algernon Aspinall.
[5] Slaves were smuggled from Africa to the West Indies for years after the Trade was abolished, and a
cosy illicit commerce went on between the planters and these wretches. At the approach of a Government
ship, cannon balls were speedily attached to the legs of the Negroes and the whole cargo was thrown
overboard. When the ship was searched, nothing was discovered on board but a token cargo as a cover
story.
[6] I have left out of the reckoning the Negroes of old slave stock which the French Royalist refugees
brought from the other Antilles during the Revolution, because I have not been able to discover what the
figures were; but I do not think there can have been enough of them, under the circumstances, to have
made much difference.
[7] Pronounced Sagga.
[8] I have not attempted to transliterate the Trinidadian accent because I do not know it well enough to
do it accurately. 'D' instead of 'Th' and the open, flat vowels as 'maan' for 'man,' etc., are the most no-
ticeable peculiarities.
[9] Who has moved to London.