The wandering child.
My personal nightmare.
The second in this series for Folklore Month 2024 is on the douen—the ever-wandering child who calls your name, who beckons you to follow into the dark.
Every Tuesday in October, I will be sharing some content from Tales of Root, Silk & Bone, along with my own thoughts & experiences.
Tales of Root, Silk & Bone is a collaborative book on Trinidad history, culture, and folklore—curated by me. I gathered stories, art, poetry, photography, and experiences of people from the hills of Paramin to the coasts of Moruga to connect those who came before us to those who will be here after we leave—because these stories are important to keep alive.
This was an easy follow-up for me: the douen, also known as the one character in Trinidad folklore that can still scare the living daylights out of me.
I first learned of the douen when in primary school and I had to do a project on Trinidad folklore, and since then, the imagery of the child with no face, and feet turned backwards, ready and waiting to lead me astray and lose me in the forest, has been very vivid. (Even into my adult life—my sister knows this, and when we were on a dark road in Paramin waiting in the car for our other sister and mother to return from a friend’s house, she called out “douen!” and I screamed.)
However, when talking to Kriston Chen about folklore characters, as well as the intersection of folklore with teaching certain lessons and the history of people arriving to Trinidad, he said:
Douen Islands: An Interview with Kriston Chen
For me, the ones that made me the most afraid were the Douens and the Moko Jumbies. Folktales were ways to help discipline children, by invoking fear. They can also be political. Folk stories traveled with our ancestors and adapted to the social dynamics of the time. Through slavery and colonialism, we inherited a society built on traumatic events. Not everything agrees — religion, race, class, etc. It’s a constant negotiation. We’re faced with acknowledging these realities, and asking, how do these contradictory things coexist? …
There is — back to folklore — the relationship between us, visual culture, and fear. That a lot of folklore stories were created to discipline and you realise there is a sort of coercion that is happening. Let’s say with the Douens, it’s really for the parents, not the children — they were telling the parents: watch the kids, don’t let them out of your sight so that they get lost with the Douens. The kids would love to go off and play, but it’s the parents, and more about them being mindful and responsible of their children.
Tales of Root, Silk & Bone, pg. 54
That connection of douens being a teaching moment, not for the children, but for the parents, really ignited something in me—especially in light of the “origin” of a douen: that of a child who dies before being baptised.
Because of this fear-fascination I’ve had with douens, I found myself more drawn to them as inspiration for my own work; and I am not the only one.
Because I love to talk about douens, I feel like I end up repeating myself; but some of it bears repeating. One of the most fascinating links in our folklore when I was gathering these tales and experiences came with the douens—and was something I’d never heard of with them specifically til I started to talk to people, the first in this interview with Eric Lewis in Moruga:
A Thin Line: An Interview with Eric Lewis
My uncles have spoken about when my mum, Edith, was a child that she wandered off on the estate and she was technically abducted by douens. And that was a huge estate that they lived on – a 300-acre estate plantation. They said that they were playing hide and seek and she remembers hearing, “ah coming for yuh, I coming for yuh,” and she ran off into the bushes – and bushes does not mean the place was overgrown. It was a cocoa plantation, so it was quite clean and properly well maintained so you can see far into the plantation, and they knew they were safe because it was all just the family estate there. She remembered this small creature, this figure of a boy walking her into the bamboo patch. He was a little bigger than she was, and she was like four or five, walking her into the bamboo patch and giving her a fish to eat. Feeding her a fish! And she ate the fish, raw. Her siblings said everybody was out searching for her everywhere. The douen kept her company and was there with her, and she remembers that encounter.
For them, it’s not a folklore, it’s not a story, it’s an actual encounter.
Tales of Root, Silk & Bone, pg. 186
And the second in this interview with Chinee, who grew up in Blanchisseuse:
In the Bush: An Interview with Hunters
CHINEE: And a lot of people that grow up my age, young people growing up, their parents sometimes miss them. And when they go down in the bush, not too far from the ravine, they mostly see them in the bamboo patch, the douen meeting them in the bamboo patch – and this is real thing that happen when you’re young. People talk about that as, you know, story, but this is real thing that happen to people. It have people right now that could tell you that, and they say normally what the douen feed them on is crayfish, the crayfish in the river, that is what they use to give the people and them, whosoever they have, like something they used to do when they put you in the bamboo that you cannot move from there, it’s the people in the village have to come and release you, you couldn’t move. Something, I don’t know if it’s a form of hypnotisation or you know?
BRITT: Specifically in a bamboo patch?
CHINEE: They love the bamboo patch. You see they have so many people who have that experience in the village. They have people who have that experience in the village. So once they miss their children, they know exactly where to go and look for, you understand? So it could either be two things – it could either be somebody else doing it, or they themselves doing it, so they know exactly where to go, but these are things that happen. These things happen, and these things real. sometimes you go in the bush and you feel your pores raise.
Tales of Root, Silk & Bone, pg. 78
((Know you won’t find me following any child into a bamboo patch from here on.))
An interesting line—that you see repeated here, by two different men—is the blur between fact and folklore; and that to them, there is no division. These experiences actually happened. Though, rationally, we may try to say—oh, the children knew to go to the bamboo patch, maybe it was a prank—there is also that belief that it isn’t just a childish prank. That they were led to this bamboo patch by a child—and more specifically, a douen.
As I said, I can talk about douens with anyone, and likely have done it so much that I repeat myself, so here is a snippet of an interview I did with Akash Rampersad, recorded and edited by Stefan Couri:
The funniest thing to me in this interview is seeing my own face when I talk about them—that fear/fascination.
In my poetry book, Shattered Galaxies, long before Tales of Root, Silk & Bone was even a dream of a dream, I wrote this poem, a piece I find myself returning to quite frequently:
the empty spaces between the branches
beckon
and the laughter of children
unseen
invite me deeperthe douen takes my hand
and guides me to a sunlit clearing
and tells me to dance, danceand I do
until my feet are bloody
and raw
and all turn'd roundand I cannot stop playing at being merry
and I beckon, beckon
to the child
to come and dance, dance,
with me
The imagery I really tried to capture was the horror of being caught, of being turned into a douen. Because that’s one thing that is never really address about the douen: if the child isn’t returned, then what happens to the child? It is this question, more than anything else, that has kept me jumping at shadows.
If there are any folktales that particularly haunt you, or have ignited your imagination in any particular way, please share! I’d love to hear your stories.
Til then…don’t follow the child into the forest.
ᛝBritt
What is the douen?
A douen is said to be the spirit of a child who dies before being baptised. It is sexless, with no face, but sometimes depicted with a small mouth. Notably, it wears a wide brimmed straw hat and its feet are turned backwards—said to confuse any search parties who go looking for the child.
It is said that a douen can imitate someone’s voice to call out to the child, so the child will follow. This voice can be of their friend, or a parent. It is also why some people say not to call out someone’s name when it is getting dark, as the douen can then copy your voice.
In Tales of Root, Silk & Bone, you can find more tales, poetry, and art of the douen:
Fading Away: An Interview with Pansy (Paramin) pg. 132
Living with Shadow People: An Interview with Donna Mora (Lopinot) pg. 167
The Doom of the Douen by AM . ALI (Poem) pg. 171
Douens by Nigel Sealey (Poem) pg. 190
Douens by Gabrielle Wilkes (Art) pg. 218
The Douen of First Boca: A Tale from Craig pg. 232
The Cry of the Douen by MuZe (Poem) pg. 235
(Not So) Mythical Trip Down Memory Lane: Tales from Diana Ramgobin-Saroop pg. 250
Want to get your hands on a copy of the book?
Or find it in Trinidad:
Junckollage Gypsy Caravan (121 Long Circular Rd.)
Paper Based (The Writers Centre, 14 Alcazar St., St. Clair)
Noir Coffee Lab (10 Austin St., Saint Augustine)
Scribbles & Quills (6 Gaston St., Lange Park, Chaguanas)
B3 Wine & Spirits (1 Nook Ave., St. Ann’s)
Lopinot Tourism Association (Lopinot)
Craft Creators in West Mall
The Book Specialists
Tales N Treasures (19 Delhi St., St. James)
Post Scripts 👣
👣 Do you enjoy folklore stories? Join us at Kettle Brew Café this Saturday 12th October for their Folklore Tent!
👣 Watch the full interview with Akash here:
👣 Missed the first installment of this series? Check it out here:
