Barbados Ink Illustration
While I'm at home in Barbados I like to draw various plants around my house. I collected some references and decided to do two larger pieces using an old poem and a story I heard from several friends and my parents.
The first piece illustrates a story I have heard many times from friends and family in Barbados and Trinidad and other Caribbean islands. There is always a fruit tree in someone's backyard with ripe juicy fruit just out of reach. Parents always warn nimble children not to climb the trees because of various reasons, slipping, breaking branches etc. Someone's mother even said "if you break your two foots, don't come running to me". And of course no one ever heeds the warnings. The reward of fruit is too enticing. In this illustration our friend climbed a breadfruit tree and is learning the consequences of his actions.
The breadfruit incident. 2021, pen and ink, digital.
The second piece illustrates the poem that many older people on the island remember reciting on playgrounds when they were children. I couldn't find the origin of the poem online and there are many variations, some long and some short.
The version I know is:
Early one morning in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys began to fight,
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot one another.
A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came a shot those two dead boys.
Here's a quote from a thread I found about this poem on Literary Stack Exchange:
"Other people have been searching for the source of this poem for a while, eg poetrylibrary.org.uk/queries/lostquotes/?id=134. One comment on that page says "In one form or another the modern version of Two Dead Boys, including many orphan pieces, has been collected from children in playgrounds since the middle of the 19th century. A detailed study with examples collected throughout the British Isles since the turn of the 20th century can be found in Iona and Peter Opies The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren [1959, Oxford. Oxford University Press, pp. 24-29]."
This tracks because of the British influence on Barbados especially in school education. So maybe the poem was passed on around the same time to people on the island.
Early One, Morning Late at Night, Two dead Boys began to fight. 2021. Pen and ink, digital.