Hosannah! Mi Bui' Mi House (Hosannah! I Built My House)

DESCRIPTION: Jamaican patois: The singer says he built a home on sandy ground and the rain soaked it, the sun burnt it, the river flooded it and the breeze blew it down. Must be obeah at fault. But then he builds on rocky ground and it survives.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1951 (Murray-FolkSongsOfJamaica)
KEYWORDS: accusation fire flood ordeal magic
FOUND IN: West Indies(Jamaica)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Murray-FolkSongsOfJamaica, pp. 55-56, "Hosanna" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Noel Dexter and Godfrey Taylor, _Mango Time - Folk Songs of Jamaica_ (Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers, 2007), pp. 36-37, "Hosannah! Mi Buil' Mi House" (1 text, 1 tune)
RECORDINGS:
Edric Connor with the Caribbeans and Earl Inkman, "Hosanna" (on WIEConnor01)
Louise Bennett, "Hossana" (on WILBennett01, n.d., on "Jamaica-Mento: 1951-58," Fremaux and Associes CDFA 5275).
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Fyah Bun (Fire Burn)" (theme of destroyed house)
cf. "Bound to Go" (I) (theme: "built my house upon the rock ... no storm can blow it down")
NOTES [176 words]: Dexter and Taylor have this as a reference to Matthew 7:24-27. [So do I. No question; I knew it halfway through the description. There is a parallel in Luke 6:48-50. That passage is probably the basis for "Home in that Rock" and other songs. - RBW]
The Bennett recording eliminates the obeah blame; the obeah blame seems a distraction from the point of the song since there is no "three pigs" outcome in which the obeah tries but fails to take the house on rocky ground down (Jekyll does have has a "three pigs" story collected in Jamaica that closely following the English text. Walter Jekyll, Jamaican Song and Story (New York: Dover Publications, 1966 (Reprint of David Nutt, 1907)), #26 pp. 79-83); James Orchard Halliwell, The Nursery Rhymes of England (London: Frederick Varnbe and Co, 1886 ("Digitized by Google")), tales #55, pp. 37-41, "The Story of the Three Little Pigs"). - BS
Obeah is an ill-defined word, but it in this case it probably means a person with some spiritual or magical power who uses it for not entirely positive ends. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: JaMu055

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