Jamaica - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 208

Indeed, in the first barn-like fane that we visited, much of the service resembled an ordinary noncon-
formist assembly. Hymns were sung by the congregation on the benches and the preacher, sitting on a
rostrum, delivered a little homily. 'De Lawd,' he cried, 'is on the telephone. His number is Heaven One.
When in trouble, brothers, and sisters, we must dial the Lawd.' He went through the motions of doing
so. 'Hello? Hello? Is dat de Lawd? Is de Lawd there? Hello? Hello?' He rattled an invisible hook, and
at last, sadly replaced the imaginary receiver. 'There's no reply. And for why, brothers and sisters? For
why? Because I am a sinner and the wires have been cut .' Repentance, the electrician, had to be called
in, but even then the line was un-obtainable until Faith, the switchboard operator, had come to the rescue,
and at last put him through … Another hymn was sung, and the first symptoms of oddity appeared when
a woman with a white and gold flag danced slowly to and fro before the rostrum, while another near the
door rattled a peculiar implement like a thysis or a caduceus of plaited cane, from the terminal loop of
which hung two rings of wicker. An old woman on the front bench began softly moaning, and then, rising
to her feet, rocked slowly about the barn in a mild, rather drunken-seeming trance. An hour passed, and
there was little change. But during a moment of silence, our expert ears pricked to the sound of a distant
drum. We slipped out into the moonlight.
Trench Town is a labyrinth of slender alley-ways. Warm and sinuous troughs of dust uncoil between
tall hedges of candelabra cactus. In the blaze of the moonshine it looks secret and mysterious and as-
tonishingly beautiful. Gaps in these bristling palisades revealed huts of timber and palm-leaf and dusty
courtyards: cool and silvery expanses with here and there a donkey or a couple of goats—portentous
figures in that brilliant light—munching above the dark pools of their own shadows. The little torch-lit
temple that we discovered at last at the end of an arcade of branches was, virtually, a Haitian tonnelle .
The single drummer was invisible among the adepts. These, like the yanvalloux -dancers of Port-au-
Prince, shuffled in solitary evolutions round a table loaded with calabashes and flowers and feathers. The
priest, standing beside this altar, gyrated in dervish-like circles, goading the dancers on, and ringing, from
time to time, a large bell. He was arrayed in a mauve silk dressing-gown and a coronet of gilded card-
board, and a sparse curling beard framed the lower part of his face. The troop of girls that formed the core
of the dancing were all, like houncis, dressed in white, with white Indian-looking turbans. It was plain
that the dance would continue interminably, and I was able to inspect at my leisure the equipment of the
shrine at the far end of the hut.
Behind an altar adorned with a cross lay a round cement pool like the bassin in a houmfor for Dam-
ballah Wedo or Ogoun Agoué Arroyo. Suspended above the cross was a board covered with cabalistic
inscriptions. An enormous A, inscribed at its summit with a pentacle, bore, upon the two converging
bars, the words: 'By Moses and Jehovah Jah Bear reb Aaron,' and underneath, in uncouth capitals: 'Peter
James John walk with me Daniel Reynolds, set me free.' Upon the crossbar, among a profusion of sym-
bols, and signs of the Zodiac, was written: 'Holy Michael Holy Adonay Archangels and Spirits deliver
me.' Another board carried the words: 'Aijel Agoni, Eliaou joena ebreel Eloijela. Mephiniaj Phaon, God
of Gods plea for me.' A circle was filled with a number of letters which at a first glance appeared to be
Glagolitic or Etruscan, thus: