SUNDAY SAUCE - Tie the queen!

Oxy Moron, Contributor

The village of Endeavour was generally quiet but, from time to time, there would be an incident or another that brought much excitement to the villagers. Here are some of them.

• Woman of unsound mind

There was a woman of unsound mind who cooked food in a big cooking-oil-tin container every day. In the morning, she would go fetch her food and, by midday, she would be back. Nobody paid much attention to her, but the day when she was spotted coming up the road with a big, black bird strung over her shoulders, people had no choice but to stop and stare.

She claimed it was a 'peel-neck rooster', though the villagers knew otherwise. Some people followed her, deriding her as they went along their way. At her gate, they watched as she made a wood fire and put her tin pot over it. About 20 minutes after, they all stood agape as the woman put the entire 'john crow', feathers and all, into the pot of boiling water, and covered it.

• Old man Ezra

In fury, old man Ezra cut down his orange trees one Friday morning. To ward off thieves, he had tied many bottles of coloured liquid to the trees. It was alleged that the bottles contained obeah oils. The idea seemed to work until that morning when Ezra discovered that all the oranges and bottles of liquid were gone. What he found was a note nailed to the tree that said, "Fi mi obeah man betta dan fi yuh."

• Miss Myrtle

Miss Myrtle claimed that Millicent, her husband's sweetheart, had set a female duppy of East Indian descent on her, so she got the help of the village 'mother woman' to extricate the duppy from her heart, body and soul. The mother woman told her to leave a pot of curried rice at her door every night. The duppy, she said, would be so tired after eating the rice it would have no time to trouble her.

The first night when Miss Myrtle peeped through her window to see whether the duppy was eating the rice, she was just in time to see a man of African descent dashing off with the pot of rice. In her bewilderment, she remained at the window. And there he was, returning with the empty pot. Right away, Myrtle knew she was tricked. But she was to have the last laugh, for unbeknownst to the mother woman, Myrtle had laced the curried rice with some powder that was supposed to run the duppy belly.

• Gloria Green

One night, Gloria Green searched under a huge rock by torchlight for a toad that might have swallowed her wedding ring. It was customary of her to put the ring on that rock before she started to wash her clothes. This time, when she was finished, the ring could not be found. Then she remembered a story she had read in school about a toad that loved to swallow gold trinkets.

Gloria's vigil bore fruit because a toad was found. With all her might, she beat the warty creature with a piece of stick, hoping it would regurgitate her ring. Her husband, who missed her from the house, happened upon the desperate scene and shouted, "Leave the bullfrog alone, yuh lef de ring pon de dresser!"

• Maas Frank

Maas Frank, the man who wore his watch around his biceps because it was too big for his wrist, was the same man who shouted, "Tie the queen, tie queen!" when his hives were being blown over by strong winds one stormy day. The youngster who was assisting him snapped, "Wha mi fi tie har wid Missa Frank, yuh watch?"

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