I

A WORLD APART

Gwen

ELIZÉ MALEWÉ

Tout mama ki ti ni jen fi

Pa lésé yo allé en plési yo,

Pa lésé yo allé en jewté yo.

Si diab la vini yi kai anni mé yo.

Elizé malewé

Elizé malewé

Elizé malewé.

On pon innocen la ou van ba de demon la.

All mothers with young daughters!

Don’t let them go follow their own pleasures,

Don’t let them go follow their joy.

If the devil comes, he will just take them away.

Poor Elizé

Poor Elizé

Poor Elizé.

You took an innocent child and sold her to the two devils.

(Translation by Sonia Magloire-Akba, with thanks.^*)

*The largest single holding of Jean Rhys’s personal papers is at the handsomely Gothic-styled McFarlin Library, which forms part of the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The library contains a digitalised recording of Jean Rhys singing this old island song in July 1963, when she was almost seventy-three years old. I’m grateful to Sonia Magloire-Akba, an authority on the Kwéyòl (Creole) language still in use today on Dominica, for her informal translation.