Haiti continued - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 165

gourd enclosed in a loose cage of snakes' vertebræ and coloured beads. When the chanting subsided, the
Houngan would intone a new couplet. He was seconded in everything by the Houngenikon, whose name
means a candidate for the Voodoo priesthood, for the rank of Houngan.
So crammed were the three square yards of the houmfor with the stage properties of the cult, that it
took some moments to become aware that these manifold appliances were arranged with the utmost care.
On the massive white cubic altar stood a heavy wooden acute angle, an A without a cross-bar, about a
yard high, festooned with coloured necklaces. A recess filled with water lay to one side of the altar, and
above it leant the twisting iron serpent of Damballah. Serpents were also frescoed round an old lithograph
of St. Patrick trampling the snake of Ireland. Next to this a schooner was painted, the emblem of Ogoun
Agoué, the God of the Sea. Calabashes adorned with beads and red rags stood in rows, interspersed with
wooden bowls and china pots. These are the containers, at different junctures of their progress, of human
souls. A cross and an image of the Blessèd Virgin were almost hidden among bottles full of ambiguous
liquids, with dried flowers in their necks. In the ground had been struck an old-fashioned cavalry sabre,
the emblem of Ogoun Ferraille, the war god. Two sequin-embroidered flags were crossed above the al-
tar, each displaying a bird with its wings outstretched, and the remaining wall space was covered with
pictures of Christian saints who have also attained high rank in the Voodoo pantheon. At the striking of
a match, pictures of Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, St. Anthony, St. Nicholas, St. Charles Borromspeo,
St. James the Major, St. Rose of Lima and the Archangel Michael appeared out of the shadows.
At the edge of the crowd we came upon a little hut, scarcely larger than a dog kennel: Le caye Zombi .
The beam of a torch revealed a black cross inside and some rags and chains and shackles and whips:
adjuncts used at the Ghédé ceremonies, which Haitian ethnologists connect with the rejuvenation rites
of Osiris recorded in the topic of the Dead. A fire was burning, in which two sabres and a large pair of
pincers were standing, their lower parts red with the heat: le Feu Marinette , dedicated to a goddess who
is the evil obverse of the bland and amorous Maitresse Erzulie Fréda Dahomin, the Goddess of Love.
Beyond, with its base held fast in a socket of stone, stood a large black wooden cross. A white death's
head was painted near the base, and over the crossbar were pulled the sleeves of a very old morning coat.
Here also rested the brim of a battered bowler hat, through the torn crown of which the top of the cross
projected. This totem, with which every peristyle must be equipped, is not a lampoon of the central event
of the Christian faith, but represents the God of the Cemeteries and the Chief of the Legion of the Dead,
Baron Samedi. The Baron is paramount in all matters immediately beyond the tomb. He is Cerberus and
Charon as well as æacus, Rhadamanthus and Pluto.
Men were now scattered among the ranks of the female houncis, and the dance had grown more violent.
The dancers, simultaneously with the advance and recoil of buttocks, shoulders and chin, shook their
frames from side to side in quadruple time so that their bodies were trembling and jerking in every pos-
sible direction. The mambo moved across the tonnelle with her shoulder-blades shaking in a palsy while
her great hind-quarters, slowly evolving, rolled up her spine and flowed forward and sank again with the
motion of a surfacing and plunging whale.
In slow response to these cumulative hours of incantation, the gods were stirring in their distant home
in Africa. Each couplet and each step of the yanvalloux brought them closer, and the night above the
heads of the dancers was becoming populated with the denizens of that remote Valhalla: Legba, Loko,
Damballah Wédo, Zaka, Agoué Arroyo, Erzulie, Bossou Comblamin, Ogoun Ferraille, Ogoun Badag-
ris and the whole company of the Lwas, the divine spirits of the tribes of Guinea and Dahomey and the