Look around where you a
Telephones, automobiles, movies, washing machines, and water sprinklers, improve our living. Banking, travelling, medical attention and purchasing-all seem so readily available. Alas, amongst all this, even sport and games are not what they used to be during our childhood. Sport is now professional; now BUSINESS. Games are overwhelmingly ELECTRONIC. They have lost a lot of fun and innocence. So unlike our youth in Guyana. Games then were physical and full of fun and skill. Let’s recall just some of them — As today we take a break from the more serious.
Team games at school or in backyards or on streets included those involving singing, clapping, speed, and some trickery. Remember JEAN AND LOUISA, RING AROUND THE ROSES, I LEFT MY BELT, SAAL PASS, JUMBIE LEF’’E PIPE YAH?, MISS MARY HAD SOME DRY HEAD CHILDREN and all those others with five or more participants on teams?
Two children or small teams played various of marbles like JUM; they made SPINNERS, and also BUCKTOPS from Awara and Kooroo seeds. You males must remember CUSH and CHINK often played for buttons or rubber-bands. BOAT-RACES were done in clean trenches and drains or gutters. And those boats were made from light wood or just paper! And remember DOG-AND-THE-BONE AND COCK-FIGHTS?
Girls played HOPSCOTCH, SKIPPING, and of course, games involving Doll’s House, “cooking and sewing”. I have not mentioned the obvious cricket, football, table-tennis, or even “cowboy” games. I just wanted you to recall the more creole, fun-filled games we used to play in the open.
How even sport and games have changed! It is interesting to consider sometimes: which generation had more, clean fun? Poverty or no poverty? Oh, if you wish to get details of those old button games or any other, contact me through TRAKKER or at allanafenty@yahoo.com
This folk-figure falls within the category of those which may be described, variously, as HORRIBLE, FRIGHTENING, VIOLENT AND VENGEFUL.
The Moongazer will be our first folk being to be described in some detail for you “Americans” and seems to be EAST INDIAN in origin.
In Guyana folklore the MOONGAZER is a tall, giant of a man-like creature (as in MALE), which be-straddles some roadway or village dam as if reaching up for the clouds on his abnormally long legs. Towering up from-and across dams, roads or backdam, routes, the Moongazer always seems to be studying the moon on moonlit nights. Old East Indian sugar workers would tell tales of the frightening figure “breathing the clouds from around the moon”. The ensuing light would help them to find their way to their logies or village homes. But the Moongazer had an angry evil, side to his nature and character.
Indo-Guyanese legend has it that when upset or vengeful, it stamps you to death or breaks your neck when you attempt to passing through its ladder-like legs. Researchers into Guyanese folklore report that the MOONGAZER’S basic features include his human-like, abnormally tall size, always male, he straddles the road and “gazes” at the moon.
Other characteristics vary according to the old-folk “eyewitnesses” you speak with: he could be twenty-to-sixty feet tall; mostly clothed in white, he sometimes disappears if spoken to when not TOO very angry or upset. But he grows in height or diminishes according to the varying brightness of the light of the moon.
When angry he reaches down to lift up and devour those who try to pass through his widely-spread legs. But some say, the guard against the Moongazer’s wrath is to smoke a cigarette or simple hold hands and DON’T SPEAK when in his presence.
Of course, he is at his worst when the moon is hidden by clouds. So if you’re ever in Guyana- or live there – observe this rural spirit-being from afar. And as I usually recommend: BE ON GUARD !
You must be logged in to post a comment.