Lafcaido Hearn
1890
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NOTE |
It is an oft-repeated fact that the word "zombie" first entered the English language in 1929; this is not true. Nor is the etymological dictionary quite correct that its first appearance in English came in 1871. In 1808, a French novel referenced African slaves' belief in the "zombi" as what its author understood to be the "devil," from an African word for the snake god. In 1696, the leader of a slave revolt in Brazil went by the name of the Zombi, and in 1839, Chambers' Edinburgh Journal published a piece of fiction that described an African belief in the "zombi," a type of semi-mythical revenant. Apparently the phrase "catch a Zombi" was, if not popular, at least a frequent nineteenth-century expression.
In 1887, Lafcaido Hearn, the famous writer and compiler of ghost legends, spent two years on Martinique, where he collected folklore of the African-descended islanders. As part of this inquiry, he tried to define what exactly a zombie was. This is what he learned, as published in the 1890 volume Two Years in the French West Indies. As you'll see, in 1890, the word "zombie" had a much more nebulous definition than it does today. |
LA GUIABLESSE.
(The Devil Woman)
I.
Night in all countries brings with it vaguenesses and illusions which terrify certain imaginations;—but in the tropics it produces effects peculiarly impressive and peculiarly sinister. Shapes of vegetation that startle even while the sun shines upon them assume, after his setting, a grimness,—a grotesquery,—a suggestiveness for which there is no name. ... In the North a tree is simply a tree;—here it is a personality that makes itself felt; it has a vague physiognomy, an indefinable Me: it is an Individual (with a capital I); it is a Being (with a capital B).
From the high woods, as the moon mounts, fantastic darknesses descend into the roads,—black distortions, mockeries, bad dreams,—an endless procession of goblins. Least startling are the shadows flung down by the various forms of palm, because instantly recognizable;—yet these take the semblance of giant fingers opening and closing over the way, or a black crawling of unutterable spiders. . . .
Nevertheless, these phasma seldom alarm the solitary and belated Bitaco: the darknesses that creep stealthily along the path have no frightful signification for him,— do not appeal to his imagination;—if he suddenly starts and stops and stares, it is not because of such shapes, but because he has perceived two specks of orange light, and is not yet sure whether they are only fire-flies, or the eyes of a trigonocephalus. The spectres of his fancy have nothing in common with those indistinct and monstrous umbrages: what he most fears, next to the deadly serpent, are human witchcrafts. A white rag, an old bone lying in the path, might be a maléfice which, if trodden upon, would cause his leg to blacken and swell up to the size of the limb of an elephant;—an unopened bundle of plantain leaves or of bamboo strippings, dropped by the way-side, might contain the skin of a Soucouyan. But the ghastly being who doffs or dons his skin at will—and the Zombi — and the Moun-Mò—may be quelled or exorcised by prayer; and the lights of shrines, the white gleaming of crosses, continually remind the traveller of his duty to the Powers that save. All along the way there are shrines at intervals, not very far apart: while standing in the radiance of one niche-lamp, you may perhaps discern the glow of the next, if the road be level and straight. They are almost everywhere,—shining along the skirts of the woods, at the entrance of ravines, by the verges of precipices;—there is a cross even upon the summit of the loftiest peak in the island. And the night-walker removes his hat each time his bare feet touch the soft stream of yellow light outpoured from the illuminated shrine of a white Virgin or a white Christ. These are good ghostly company for him;—he salutes them, talks to them, tells them his pains or fears: their blanched faces seem to him full of sympathy;—they appear to cheer him voicelessly as he strides from gloom to gloom, under the goblinry of those woods which tower black as ebony under the stars. . . . And he has other companionship. One of the greatest terrors of darkness in other lands does not exist here after the setting of the sun,—the terror of Silence. . . . Tropical night is full of voices;—extraordinary populations of crickets are trilling; nations of tree-frogs are chanting; the Cabri-desbois* or cra-cra, almost deafens you with the wheezy bleating sound by which it earned its creole name; birds pipe: everything that bells, ululates, drones, clacks, guggles, joins the enormous chorus; and you fancy you see all the shadows vibrating to the force of this vocal storm. The true life of Nature in the tropics begins with the darkness, ends with the light.
[* In creole, cabritt-bois—(“the Wood-Kid.”)—a colossal cricket. Precisely at half-past four in the morning it becomes silent; and for thousands of early risers too poor to own a clock, the cessation of its song is the signal to get up.]
And it is partly, perhaps, because of these conditions that the coming of the dawn does not dissipate all fears of the supernatural. I ni pè zombi mênm gran’-jou (he is afraid of ghosts even in broad daylight) is a phrase which does not sound exaggerated in these latitudes,—not, at least, to any one knowing something of the conditions that nourish or inspire weird beliefs. In the awful peace of tropical day, in the hush of the woods, the solemn silence of the hills (broken only by torrent voices that cannot make themselves heard at night), even in the amazing luminosity, there is a something apparitional and weird,—something that seems to weigh upon the world like a measureless haunting. So still all Nature’s chambers are that a loud utterance jars upon the ear brutally, like a burst of laughter in a sanctuary. With all its luxuriance of color, with all its violence of light, this tropical day has its ghostliness and its ghosts. Among the people of color there are many who believe that even at noon—when the boulevards behind the city are most deserted—the zombis will show themselves to solitary loiterers.
From the high woods, as the moon mounts, fantastic darknesses descend into the roads,—black distortions, mockeries, bad dreams,—an endless procession of goblins. Least startling are the shadows flung down by the various forms of palm, because instantly recognizable;—yet these take the semblance of giant fingers opening and closing over the way, or a black crawling of unutterable spiders. . . .
Nevertheless, these phasma seldom alarm the solitary and belated Bitaco: the darknesses that creep stealthily along the path have no frightful signification for him,— do not appeal to his imagination;—if he suddenly starts and stops and stares, it is not because of such shapes, but because he has perceived two specks of orange light, and is not yet sure whether they are only fire-flies, or the eyes of a trigonocephalus. The spectres of his fancy have nothing in common with those indistinct and monstrous umbrages: what he most fears, next to the deadly serpent, are human witchcrafts. A white rag, an old bone lying in the path, might be a maléfice which, if trodden upon, would cause his leg to blacken and swell up to the size of the limb of an elephant;—an unopened bundle of plantain leaves or of bamboo strippings, dropped by the way-side, might contain the skin of a Soucouyan. But the ghastly being who doffs or dons his skin at will—and the Zombi — and the Moun-Mò—may be quelled or exorcised by prayer; and the lights of shrines, the white gleaming of crosses, continually remind the traveller of his duty to the Powers that save. All along the way there are shrines at intervals, not very far apart: while standing in the radiance of one niche-lamp, you may perhaps discern the glow of the next, if the road be level and straight. They are almost everywhere,—shining along the skirts of the woods, at the entrance of ravines, by the verges of precipices;—there is a cross even upon the summit of the loftiest peak in the island. And the night-walker removes his hat each time his bare feet touch the soft stream of yellow light outpoured from the illuminated shrine of a white Virgin or a white Christ. These are good ghostly company for him;—he salutes them, talks to them, tells them his pains or fears: their blanched faces seem to him full of sympathy;—they appear to cheer him voicelessly as he strides from gloom to gloom, under the goblinry of those woods which tower black as ebony under the stars. . . . And he has other companionship. One of the greatest terrors of darkness in other lands does not exist here after the setting of the sun,—the terror of Silence. . . . Tropical night is full of voices;—extraordinary populations of crickets are trilling; nations of tree-frogs are chanting; the Cabri-desbois* or cra-cra, almost deafens you with the wheezy bleating sound by which it earned its creole name; birds pipe: everything that bells, ululates, drones, clacks, guggles, joins the enormous chorus; and you fancy you see all the shadows vibrating to the force of this vocal storm. The true life of Nature in the tropics begins with the darkness, ends with the light.
[* In creole, cabritt-bois—(“the Wood-Kid.”)—a colossal cricket. Precisely at half-past four in the morning it becomes silent; and for thousands of early risers too poor to own a clock, the cessation of its song is the signal to get up.]
And it is partly, perhaps, because of these conditions that the coming of the dawn does not dissipate all fears of the supernatural. I ni pè zombi mênm gran’-jou (he is afraid of ghosts even in broad daylight) is a phrase which does not sound exaggerated in these latitudes,—not, at least, to any one knowing something of the conditions that nourish or inspire weird beliefs. In the awful peace of tropical day, in the hush of the woods, the solemn silence of the hills (broken only by torrent voices that cannot make themselves heard at night), even in the amazing luminosity, there is a something apparitional and weird,—something that seems to weigh upon the world like a measureless haunting. So still all Nature’s chambers are that a loud utterance jars upon the ear brutally, like a burst of laughter in a sanctuary. With all its luxuriance of color, with all its violence of light, this tropical day has its ghostliness and its ghosts. Among the people of color there are many who believe that even at noon—when the boulevards behind the city are most deserted—the zombis will show themselves to solitary loiterers.
II.
. . . Here a doubt occurs to me,—a doubt regarding the precise nature of a word, which I call upon Adou to explain. Adou is the daughter of the kind old capresse from whom I rent my room in this little mountain cottage. The mother is almost precisely the color of cinnamon; the daughter’s complexion is brighter, — the ripe tint of an orange. . . . Adou tells me creole stories and tim-tim. Adou knows all about ghosts, and believes in them. So does Adou’s extraordinarily tall brother, Yébé,—my guide among the mountains.
—”Adou,” I ask, “what is a zombi?”
The smile that showed Adou’s beautiful white teeth has instantly disappeared; and she answers, very seriously, that she has never seen a zombi, and does not want to see one.
--“Moin pa té janmain ouè zombi,--pa ’lè ouè ça, moin!”
—“But, Adou, child, I did not ask you whether you ever saw It;—I asked you only to tell me what It is like ?”. . . Adou hesitates a little, and answers:
--“Zombi? Mais ça fai désòde lanuitt, zombi!”
Ah! it is Something which “makes disorder at night.” Still, that is not a satisfactory explanation. “Is it the spectre of a dead person, Adou? Is it one who comes back?”
—“Non, Missié,--non; çé pa ça.”
—“Not that ?... Then what was it you said the other night when you were afraid to pass the cemetery on an errand,--ça ou té ka di, Adou?”
—“Moin té ka di: ‘Moin pa lé k’allé bò cimétiè-là pa ouappò moun-mò;—moun-mò ké barré moin: moin pa sé pè vini enco.’” (I said, “I do not want to go by that cemetery because of the dead folk;--the dead folk will bar the way, and I cannot get back again”)
—“And you believe that, Adou?”
—“Yes, that is what they say. . . And if you go into the cemetery at night you cannot come out again: the dead folk will stop you--moun-mò ké barré ou.”. . .
—“But are the dead folk zombis, Adou?”
—“No; the moun-mò are not zombis. The zombis go everywhere: the dead folk remain in the graveyard. . . . Except on the Night of All Souls: then they go to the houses of their people everywhere.”
—“Adou, if after the doors and windows were locked and barred you were to see entering your room in the middle of the night, a Woman fourteen feet high?”. . .
—“Ah! pa pàlé ça!!”. . .
—“No! tell me, Adou?”
—“Why, yes: that would be a zombi. It is the zombis who make all those noises at night one cannot understand. . . . Or, again, if I were to see a dog that high [she holds her hand about five feet above the floor] coming into our house at night, I would scream: Mi Zombi!”
. . . Then it suddenly occurs to Adou that her mother knows something about zombis. --“Ou! Manman!”
--“Eti!” answers old Théréza’s voice from the little out-building where the evening meal is being prepared, over a charcoal furnace, in an earthen canari.
--“Missié-là ka mandé save ça ça yé yonne zombi;--vini ti bouin !”... The mother laughs, abandons her canari, and comes in to tell me all she knows about the weird word.
“I ni pè zombi”—I find from old Théréza’s explanations—is a phrase indefinite as our own vague expressions, “afraid of ghosts,” “afraid of the dark.” But the word “Zombi” also has special strange meanings. . . . “Ou passé nans grand chimin lanuitt, épi ou ka ouè gouôs difé, épi plis ou ka vini assou difé-à pli ou ka oué difé-à ka màché: çé zombi ka fai ça.... Encò, chouval ka passé,—chouval ka ni anni toua patt: ça zombi.” (You pass along the high-road at night, and you see a great fire, and the more you walk to get to it the more it moves away: it is the zombi makes that. ... Or a horse with only three legs passes you: that is a zombi.)
—“How big is the fire that the zombi makes?” I ask.
—“It fills the whole road,” answers Théréza: “li ka rempli toutt chimin-là. Folk call those fires the Evil Fires,--mauvai difé;—and if you follow them they will lead you into chasms,--ou ké tombé adans labîme”. . .
And then she tells me this:
—“Baidaux was a mad man of color who used to live at St. Pierre, in the Street of the Precipice. He was not dangerous,—never did any harm;—his sister used to take care of him. And what I am going to relate is true,--çe zhistouè veritabel
“One day Baidaux said to his sister: ‘Moin ni yonne yche,va!—ou pa connaitt li!’ [I have a child, ah!—you never saw it!] His sister paid no attention to what he said that day; but the next day he said it again, and the next, and the next, and every day after,—so that his sister at last became much annoyed by it, and used to cry out: ‘Ah! mais pé guiole ou, Baidaux! ou fou pou embêté moin conm ça!—ou bien fou!’... But he tormented her that way for months and for years.
“One evening he went out, and only came home at midnight leading a child by the hand,—a black child he had found in the street; and he said to his sister:--
“‘Mi yche-là moin mené ba ou! Tou léjou moin té ka di ou moin tini yonne yche: ou pa té ’lè couè,—eh, ben! MI Y!’ [Look at the child I have brought you! Every day I have been telling you I had a child: you would not believe me,—very well, LOOK AT HIM !]
“The sister gave one look, and cried out: ‘Baidaux, otí ou pouend yche-là?’ . . . For the child was growing taller and taller every moment. . . . And Baidaux,—because he was mad,—kept saying: ‘Çé yche-moin! çé yche moin!’ [It is my child!]
“And the sister threw open the shutters and screamed to all the neighbors,—‘Sécou, sécou, sécou! Vini oué ça Baidaux mené ba moin!’ [Help! help! Come see what Baidaux has brought in here!] And the child said to Baidaux: ‘Ou ni bonhè ou fou!’ [You are lucky that you are mad!] . . . Then all the neighbors came running in; but they could not see anything: the Zombi was gone.”. . .
—”Adou,” I ask, “what is a zombi?”
The smile that showed Adou’s beautiful white teeth has instantly disappeared; and she answers, very seriously, that she has never seen a zombi, and does not want to see one.
--“Moin pa té janmain ouè zombi,--pa ’lè ouè ça, moin!”
—“But, Adou, child, I did not ask you whether you ever saw It;—I asked you only to tell me what It is like ?”. . . Adou hesitates a little, and answers:
--“Zombi? Mais ça fai désòde lanuitt, zombi!”
Ah! it is Something which “makes disorder at night.” Still, that is not a satisfactory explanation. “Is it the spectre of a dead person, Adou? Is it one who comes back?”
—“Non, Missié,--non; çé pa ça.”
—“Not that ?... Then what was it you said the other night when you were afraid to pass the cemetery on an errand,--ça ou té ka di, Adou?”
—“Moin té ka di: ‘Moin pa lé k’allé bò cimétiè-là pa ouappò moun-mò;—moun-mò ké barré moin: moin pa sé pè vini enco.’” (I said, “I do not want to go by that cemetery because of the dead folk;--the dead folk will bar the way, and I cannot get back again”)
—“And you believe that, Adou?”
—“Yes, that is what they say. . . And if you go into the cemetery at night you cannot come out again: the dead folk will stop you--moun-mò ké barré ou.”. . .
—“But are the dead folk zombis, Adou?”
—“No; the moun-mò are not zombis. The zombis go everywhere: the dead folk remain in the graveyard. . . . Except on the Night of All Souls: then they go to the houses of their people everywhere.”
—“Adou, if after the doors and windows were locked and barred you were to see entering your room in the middle of the night, a Woman fourteen feet high?”. . .
—“Ah! pa pàlé ça!!”. . .
—“No! tell me, Adou?”
—“Why, yes: that would be a zombi. It is the zombis who make all those noises at night one cannot understand. . . . Or, again, if I were to see a dog that high [she holds her hand about five feet above the floor] coming into our house at night, I would scream: Mi Zombi!”
. . . Then it suddenly occurs to Adou that her mother knows something about zombis. --“Ou! Manman!”
--“Eti!” answers old Théréza’s voice from the little out-building where the evening meal is being prepared, over a charcoal furnace, in an earthen canari.
--“Missié-là ka mandé save ça ça yé yonne zombi;--vini ti bouin !”... The mother laughs, abandons her canari, and comes in to tell me all she knows about the weird word.
“I ni pè zombi”—I find from old Théréza’s explanations—is a phrase indefinite as our own vague expressions, “afraid of ghosts,” “afraid of the dark.” But the word “Zombi” also has special strange meanings. . . . “Ou passé nans grand chimin lanuitt, épi ou ka ouè gouôs difé, épi plis ou ka vini assou difé-à pli ou ka oué difé-à ka màché: çé zombi ka fai ça.... Encò, chouval ka passé,—chouval ka ni anni toua patt: ça zombi.” (You pass along the high-road at night, and you see a great fire, and the more you walk to get to it the more it moves away: it is the zombi makes that. ... Or a horse with only three legs passes you: that is a zombi.)
—“How big is the fire that the zombi makes?” I ask.
—“It fills the whole road,” answers Théréza: “li ka rempli toutt chimin-là. Folk call those fires the Evil Fires,--mauvai difé;—and if you follow them they will lead you into chasms,--ou ké tombé adans labîme”. . .
And then she tells me this:
—“Baidaux was a mad man of color who used to live at St. Pierre, in the Street of the Precipice. He was not dangerous,—never did any harm;—his sister used to take care of him. And what I am going to relate is true,--çe zhistouè veritabel
“One day Baidaux said to his sister: ‘Moin ni yonne yche,va!—ou pa connaitt li!’ [I have a child, ah!—you never saw it!] His sister paid no attention to what he said that day; but the next day he said it again, and the next, and the next, and every day after,—so that his sister at last became much annoyed by it, and used to cry out: ‘Ah! mais pé guiole ou, Baidaux! ou fou pou embêté moin conm ça!—ou bien fou!’... But he tormented her that way for months and for years.
“One evening he went out, and only came home at midnight leading a child by the hand,—a black child he had found in the street; and he said to his sister:--
“‘Mi yche-là moin mené ba ou! Tou léjou moin té ka di ou moin tini yonne yche: ou pa té ’lè couè,—eh, ben! MI Y!’ [Look at the child I have brought you! Every day I have been telling you I had a child: you would not believe me,—very well, LOOK AT HIM !]
“The sister gave one look, and cried out: ‘Baidaux, otí ou pouend yche-là?’ . . . For the child was growing taller and taller every moment. . . . And Baidaux,—because he was mad,—kept saying: ‘Çé yche-moin! çé yche moin!’ [It is my child!]
“And the sister threw open the shutters and screamed to all the neighbors,—‘Sécou, sécou, sécou! Vini oué ça Baidaux mené ba moin!’ [Help! help! Come see what Baidaux has brought in here!] And the child said to Baidaux: ‘Ou ni bonhè ou fou!’ [You are lucky that you are mad!] . . . Then all the neighbors came running in; but they could not see anything: the Zombi was gone.”. . .
Source: Lafcaido Hearn, Two Years in the French West Indies (New York: Harper & Bros., 1890), 184-190.
