IMPACT ON HISTORY

IT’S A FACT

By JAMES SYDNEY

FAIRMAIDS OF THE CARIBBEAN

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It is not surprising that in the Caribbean there are versions of the legendary mermaid - with the head and torso of a woman and the tail of a fish. Such legends are found all over the world.

A pretty young woman in search of a mate is a powerfully tantalizing prospect for many men. Such a woman excites enough curiosity to make the world of the unknown and the probably hidden dangers of establishing a relationship with her seem worthy of exploration. Some mermaids of men’s imagination sing sweetly to lure men into their arms; some even take men to live in their underwater homes. Some are tender, others are deadly.

In the Caribbean, a mermaid is known as a fairmaid. Men who claim to have made contact with one are not easy to find these days. But those who claim to know about such matters say a fairmaid is generally shy. At night, she would sit by the koker for hours combing her long black hair in the moonlight.

The koker, in Guyana the sluice gate which controls the movement of channeled water towards and away from the land, is a favorite meeting place for many people of the village.

The fairmaid would sit there alone, when hardly anyone else is around, with her face toward the water and her back toward the world. The most that anybody could see of the fairmaid would be her profile. Try to see more and she would abruptly leave off her combing, splash into the koker water and head toward the river.

The shy Guyanese fairmaid does however take a "walk" sometimes. It is not clear how she does this with only a tail where there should be legs. Those who report on an encounter seem to have been so fixated by trying to get a proper view of a beautiful face, that they forgot to check.

The young men would at first think she was a new girl in the village. They would approach the fairmaid, "fall in step" with her, and try to strike up a conversation. Coyly, she would not answer.

If a young man were now to conclude that her silence was an indication that she was going to be compliant and try to get closer, the fairmaid might have a better-than-kungfu response in readiness for him. She might swiftly jump into the water, grab him by his heels and throw him off balance. That is if she didn’t much like him.

It appears however that often the fairmaid gets thrown off balance by some young man – she falls in love with him. Then she takes him down under the water.

Now, she may become very possessive. And although, they say, it is possible, with the use of white rum, drums and a number of other inducements to retrieve the hijacked lover from his underwater prison, if proper protocol is not observed and anything goes amiss, the next thing that happens is that the body of the young man is thrown up, neck broken.

Normally, however, the Guyanese fairmaid is not nasty. She is a quiet person, content to sit combing her hair in the peace of a moonlight night and would retreat at the slightest intrusion.

Not so the fairmaid of Tobago. She is a virago. Often she is seen bathing her baby in the water. Leave her alone. For if she finds your presence unwelcome, the "fairy-maid" (as she is called by Tobagonians) would drop her baby with a splash and come tearing after you to do you some kind of harm.

There would be only one thing to do now. Get beyond the nearest turn in the road – fast. The furious fairymaids of Tobago cannot round a turn in the road.

This article sand others like it, may be seen on the website silvertorch.com featuring facts of interest to people of the Caribbean – the serious, the fascinating, the funny.]

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THE GUYANA STORY

By Dr. ODEEN ISHMAEL

DISTURBANCES AT PLANTATION FRIENDS

Plantation Friends, located on the east bank of the Berbice River, was a flourishing sugar estate at the beginning of the twentieth century. In early 1903 the workers, most of whom were indentured Indians, asked the estate manager for an increase in the payment for preparing beds to plant new cane tops. A worker received at that time a payment of 40 cents for each bed that was prepared. After the manager refused this request, a strike resulted, and on the 6 May 1903, a large group of striking workers went to New Amsterdam to state their grievance to the Immigration Officer.

The manager of Plantation Friends also met with the Immigration Officer and firmly denied that the workers had ever asked for an increase in wages.

He then proceeded to make a formal complaint to the magistrate, Mr. Brummell that four of the striking workers had threatened to kill Gooding, his overseer. The magistrate issued a warrant for the arrest of the four men but the men were not immediately apprehended by the police.

Magistrate Brummell also ordered the striking workers to return to their jobs on the plantation. He suggested that after the period of work was completed, the matter of a pay increase should be settled by arbitration.

The impending arrest of the four men clearly upset the other workers who refused to obey the instruction of the magistrate and continued the strike on the 7 May. The manager, in the meantime, had requested police support, and early that morning 25 armed policemen arrived from New Amsterdam to confront the striking workers. The manager instructed the police to arrest the four men for whom warrants had been issued. As the four workers were held by the police, the crowd protested loudly and demanded their release. Some of the workers in the crowd became disorderly, and two of them were arrested. As the six arrested workers were about to be taken by the armed policemen to New Amsterdam, the crowd surged forward and tried to free them. However, the policemen kept the protesting workers back by pointing their bayonets at them.

By this time Magistrate Brummel had arrived on the scene, and as the crowd pressed forward, he read the Riot Act and ordered the police to fire a warning volley in the air. The angry workers responded by throwing bottles and stones at the police who opened fire at them. The result was that six workers were killed and seven seriously injured.

The shooting and killing caused the crowd to wildly disperse and eventually to quell their protests. A coroner's inquest into the killing blamed the striking workers for causing the disturbance, and complimented the police and the magistrate for their "administrative tact". The magistrate himself, in giving evidence at the inquest, supported the shooting the workers. He stated that the policemen were justified under the circumstances in firing on the crowd and that he would have been guilty of a gross dereliction of duty if he had failed to give the police orders to fire.

The coroner sharply castigated the Immigration Agent for not visiting Plantation Friends before the tragic event even though he knew of the existing labor problem. The coroner noted that the Agent's presence at the plantation on the morning of the 7 May could have prevented the arrest of the six men and thus averted the disturbances that preceded the shooting.

The six men who had earlier been arrested were charged with riotous behavior, and during their trial, they were defended by an African lawyer, S. E. Wills. However, all six men were convicted by the same magistrate who supported the shooting. A Congregational minister, Rev. Henry John Shirley, openly sympathized with the Indian laborers, while the Governor, James Swettenham, stated that he was not satisfied with the conduct of the manager of Plantation Friends. He insisted that if the manager was not dismissed, he would remove all the Indians from the estate.