Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [452]
ORDONNATEUR: accountant.
OUANGA: a charm, magical talisman.
PAILLASSE: a sleeping pallet, straw mattress.
PARRAIN: godfather. In slave communities, the parrain was responsible for teaching a newly imported slave the appropriate ways of the new situation.
PARIADE: the wholesale rape of slave women by sailors on slave ships; the pariade had something of the status of a ritual. Any pregnancies that resulted were assumed to increase the value of the slave women to their eventual purchasers. PATOIS: dialect.
PAVÉ: paving stone.
PAYSANNE: peasant woman.
PETIT BLANC: member of Saint Domingue’s white artisan class, a group which mostly lived in the coastal cities, and which was not necessarily French in origin. The petit blancs sometimes owned small numbers of slaves but seldom owned land; most of them were aligned with French Revolutionary politics.
PETITE CERCLE: intimate group.
PETIT MARRON: a runaway slave or maroon who intended to remain absent for only a short period—these escapees often returned to their owners of their own accord.
LA PETITE VÉROLE: smallpox.
PETRO: a particular set of Vodou rituals with some different deities—angry and more violent than rada.
PIERRE TONNERRE: thunderstone. Believed by Vodouisants to be formed by lightning striking in the earth—in reality ancient Indian ax heads, pestles, and the like.
PINCE-NEZ: eyeglasses secured by a nose-clip spring.
POMPONS BLANCS: members of the royalist faction in post-1789 Saint Domingue; their name derives from the white cockade they wore to declare their political sentiments. The majority of grand blancs inclined in this direction.
POMPONS ROUGES: members of the revolutionary faction in post-1789 Saint Domingue, so called for the red cockades they wore to identify themselves. Most of the colony’s petit blancs inclined in this direction.
POSSÉDÉ: believer possessed by his god.
POTEAU MITAN: central post in a Vodou hûnfor, the metaphysical route of passage for the entrance of the loa into the human world.
PRÊTRE SAVANNE: bush priest.
PWA ROUJ: red beans.
PWEN: a focal point of spiritual energy with the power to do magical work. A pwen may be an object or even a word or a phrase.
QUARTERONNÉ: a particular combination of African and European blood: the result, for instance, of combining a full-blood white with a mamelouque.
QUARTIER-GÉNÉRAL: headquarters.
RADA: the more pacific rite of Vodou, as opposed to petro.
RADA BATTERIE: ensemble of drums for Vodou ceremony.
RAMIER: wood pigeon.
RAQUETTE: mesquite-sized tree sprouting cactus-like paddles in place of leaves. RATOONS: second-growth cane from plants already cut.
REDINGOTE: a fashionable frock coat.
REQUIN: shark.
RIZ AK PWA: rice and beans.
RIZIÈ: rice paddy.
ROMANIÈRE: curative herb.
SACATRA: a particular combination of African and European blood: the result, for instance, of combining a full-blood black with a griffe or griffonne.
SAGE-FEMME: wise woman, midwife.
SALLE DE BAINS: washroom.
SANG-MÊLÉ: a particular combination of African and European blood: the result, for instance, of combining a full-blood white with a quarteronné.
SANS-CULOTTE: French Revolutionary freedom fighter.
SEREIN: evening breeze.
SERVITEUR: Vodou observer, one who serves the loa.
SI DYÉ VLÉ: If God so wills.
SIFFLEUR MONTAGNE: literally mountain whistler, a night-singing bird.
SONGE: dream, vision.
SONNETTE: medicinal herb.
SOULÈVEMENT: popular uprising, rebellion.
SOUPE GIRAUMON: squash soup, also known as soupe joumoun. TABAC À JACQUOT: medicinal herb.
TAFIA: rum.
TAMBOU: drum.
THYM À MANGER: medicinal herb believed to cause miscarriage.
TI BON ANGE: literally, the “little good angel,” an aspect of the Vodou soul. “The ti bon ange is that part of the soul directly associated with the individual . . . It is one’s aura, and the source of all personality, character and willpower.”7
TONNELLE: brush arbor.
TREMBLEMENT DE TERRE: earthquake.
VÉVÉ: diagram symbolizing and invoking a particular loa.
VINGT-ET-UN: card