Jamaica - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 209

I gazed in mystification at this assembly of letters, and (to anticipate a few hours) came back next day to
ask Daniel Reynolds, the Shepherd (as a Pocomaniac priest is called), what language it was. He told me
that it was a runic alphabet that he had invented himself. He wrote it out for me. The inscription trans-
literated from the disc, reads AQA MY GOD STAND BY MY [ sic ] DANIEL REYNOLDS; the right-
angled boomerang in the second line seems to have slipped in by mistake. No more than that, a primitive
and purely personal eon of gnosis; fascinating, nevertheless, as a symptom of the need for mystification.
The pool served for the curative lustrations of Balmism, a form of African bush-medicine based on a
knowledge of the properties of plants and leaves. When I asked him if he had any acquaintance with
Obeah—black magic or sorcery—he flung his head back with the scandalized vehemence of a Haitian
Houngan against whom an imputation of Wanga is levelled. And the Hebrew-looking words—what did
they mean? Just words, he said, magical, white magical, words that he had learnt when he became a
Shepherd. He did not know what they meant. He made an impression of complete candour, to which his
willingness to part with the key to the alphabet lent verisimilitude. So, if this were true, we were back
once more in the child's secret palace with its arsenal of corroborative impedimenta—deep, deep down
once more in the darkness of Malampia, the chère petite grotte of Melanie Bastian, surrounded, in the
reeking darkness, by the matted hair, the chicken bones and the mountains of oyster shells….We must
return to the previous night.
Turning from the scrutiny of this peculiar iconostasis, I saw that the ceremony had altered. The gold
crown of the Shepherd had been replaced by a lofty turban of white linen like the headgear of a Wal-
lachian hospodar, and a swarm of white-robed devotees were assembled round the central table. All were
stationary. The Shepherd intoned a number of prayers from which the Blessed Virgin and the Catholic
Saints were notably absent. Their place was taken by the Trinity, the Apostles, the prophets of the Old
Testament, and by Archangels, Cherubim, Seraphim, Dominions and Thrones. Among the other prayers,
we were moved to hear the Celestial Host implored to keep kindly watch over the white sister and two
white brothers in their midst. As the last Amen died away, the whole congregation leant forward and
made a long guttural grunt—an alarmingly animal sound. Recovering with a jerk, the same motion and
noise were repeated, and then again and again, until it developed into a violent syncopated roar. With
each cry, the devotees jerked forward from the waist, hunching their shoulders back and craning their