82 HUGH HODGES

 This is, I think, an extremely significant transformation. After all,
Anancy the spider man is a key figure in Jamaican folk culture. He is
Jamaica's trickster figure, the central character in the bulk of Jamaican
folk stories. Indeed, Jamaican folk stories are generically referred to
as Nancy stories. Few figures real or imaginary have such a central
place in Jamaica's imagination, and certainly none has played a more
complex role. Leonard Barrett writes, "So intricately woven is Anansi
in Jamaican life that his cunning has become part of the Jamaican
personality stereotype."14 His origins are African. He is a relative of the
West African trickster spider Anansi or Anaanu, but one should be
careful not to overestimate the closeness of the relationship. The
traditional African trickster is a deity inhabiting a timeless world; his
Jamaican cousin is a poor black man in a hard, history-bound one.
Moreover, there's a kind of morality at work in Jamaican Anancy stories
that simply isn't part of the African stories. It is a specifically Christian
morality. Louise Bennett recalls telling Nancy stories as a child,

 At the end of each story, we had to say, "Jack Mandora, me no chose
 none," because Annancy sometimes did very wicked things in his
 stories, and we had to let Jack Mandora, the doorman at heaven's
 door, know that we were not in favor of Annancy's wicked ways. "Me
 no chose none" means "I don't choose to behave in any of these ways.'5

Storytellers, no matter how much they may admire or appreciate the
story's trick, feel obliged to distance themselves from the greed, spite
and deceitfulness that characteristically precipitate Anancy's tricks.
In Jamaica, the world Anancy inhabits is not as distinct from the
mundane world as the African trickster's; the fact that there is a division
at all must always be reiterated. And, in fact, the suspension of the real
world's morality that saying "Me no chose none" is meant to enact is
never entirely convincing. Anancy's trickified antics always threaten
to become a plausible model for human behaviour.
 Christianity's interaction with Anancy is more complex than its
disapproval of his antics would suggest, however. There is, in fact, a
deep affinity between Christianity and Anancy, or rather between
Christianity and the Anancy trick. Diane Austin-Broos observes this
affinity in her study of Pentecostalism in contemporary Jamaica:


 14 Leonard Barrett, The Sun and the Drum (London: Heinemann, 1976) 32.
 15 Bennett, "Me and Annancy" in Walter Jekyll, Jamaican Song and Story (New
York: Dover, 1966) ix.