Old Hige (Jamaican accounts)

Overview

Beckwith describes Old Hige as a continuing menace to infants in the Jamaican accounts she collected. Crosses and scattered grain appear among the household measures associated with keeping her away, including a blue cross on the ninth night after a child’s birth. The passage reports protective beliefs without recording an individual case of supernatural injury or giving one named household’s testimony.

In the tale pattern Beckwith says was commonly performed, a child watches the witch slip out of her skin. While she is absent, the child burns the skin or treats it with pepper. On returning she cannot put it back on and appeals in bewilderment to the skin that no longer recognizes her. Beckwith emphasizes the audience’s laughter at the recital. Her account does not state a single final fate for the witch after this failed return.

A second comic episode concerns counting at a doorway where grain or rice is scattered or an X is marked. Old Hige cannot proceed beyond three and continually begins again, so the counting never finishes. Beckwith’s discussion thus places protective household belief alongside amused storytelling, rather than describing uninterrupted terror. Her suggested comparison with Long-bubby Susan is tentative, and her classification of the figure as European folklore does not itself establish an independently verified route of transmission. Regional skin-shedding women remain comparisons, not automatic aliases for this Jamaican account.

Origins & earliest records

Martha Warren Beckwith, Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaican Folk Life (Chapel Hill,1929), chapterVII. Her foreword dates four visits to1919–1924; individual interview dates are not supplied for these passages.

Records & interpretation

Complete Old Hige discussion99 read with surrounding98–101 comparisons. Beckwith supplies no named individual narrator for these performed tale patterns; Banbury, Udal and Bell appear as cited comparative authors. The complete foreword was also read; its racial hierarchy and colonial judgments are not adopted as descriptions of Jamaican people.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Black Roadways: A Study of Jamaican Folk Life

   Martha Warren Beckwith · 1929

   Complete Old Hige discussion99 read with surrounding98–101 comparisons. Beckwith supplies no named individual narrator for these performed tale patterns; Banbury, Udal and Bell appear as cited comparative authors.

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. Primary textBeckwith1929 original edition, University of North Carolina library scanResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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