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The two new hounci-canzos were sitting side by side near the drums. I had imagined, for some reason,
that they were men, and was astonished when they both turned out to be women. One was a young
girl with round and bewildered eyes, the other middle-aged: plump, homely figures, looking, among the
strong-featured and flamboyant Haitians, phenomenally domesticated and Dutch. The elder was dressed
in a severe, rather governessy dress of pale lilac, the other in green with a lace collar, and both of them
wore their new hounci-canzo necklaces crossed over the breast. The Haitian houncis were at pains to
make them feel at home. But, as their new fellow-initiates could speak neither French nor Créole, it was
heavy going, an intercourse of smiles and rolled eyes and friendly gestures. The two initiates would ex-
change a few words between themselves in Papiamento from time to time. It was as though two rather
timid visitors from a Dutch provincial town had arrived in Paris with letters of introduction and had first
encountered their new hosts in the middle of a bohemian party where nobody spoke a word of Dutch.
[1] In point of fact, Emotivo-Kinetic Mysticism has, apart from Negro sects like the Holy Rollers, oc-
casionally appeared in the Christian world. The rage for producing religious ecstasy by dancing which
was launched by Montanus, Priscilla and Maximilla in Phrygia in the second century, held sway in many
eastern and north African bishoprics. Tertullian himself became a modified Montanist. The other in-
stance— Les Convulsionnaires , whose antics represent the death-throes of Jansenism in eighteenth-cen-
tury France—is more remarkable.
[2] Centred upon the seaboard and hinterland of the Grain Coast and the Ivory Coast.
[3] This raises the suspicion that Jackaminory, whose brief life story is such a disappointment in the nurs-
ery, is none other than St. James the Minor, St. Jaques Mineur , and that he owes his position in nursery
lore to a similar fortuitous cause.
[4] Or Amo Ama, Nabulaku or Anyambé.
[5] E, W, N, and S.
[6] These ceremonies never end, as might be supposed, in an orgy. The Ghédés leave them within a
couple of hours, and their abandoned lodgings are far more prone, as the community breaks up, to think
of the Church than the alcove.
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