ROBBER GROPING IN DARK FOR HEIRS
By Rey Davis
Trinidad Guardian
February 19, 1999
Page 23
You could say this is about a dying breed.
You know there were these old western towns in western films where 'gun will travel', the fastest gun stay alive, where boot hill rested many a gundero slow on the draw, ambushed, bounty'ed more dead than alive! (You laugh? 'Tis nothing to laugh about. Ain't nothing funny. But why are you still laughing? Okay, have your belly full. I hope what follows doesn't scare the daylights out of you!
Let's start here…imagining what might have been said before meeting this cloaked figure on a sun-setting evening side of a downtown street this Tuesday past:
"Who your parents had destroyed a couple years ago.
I said nothing must be done to them.
After 13 pieces of steel was placed into his body
And seized the breath of life,
I said I will seek the revenge of
These men who have commit that.
I invited scientists from all part
Of de world to fishen out these bullets from his body,
To save his life that he should exist together with me.
The furst bullet that was tooken out his body,
I promise I shall prowl the city
and find the criminals who commit dis offence
The second? Thunder kicking,
Ah say, dis is the secon', ah say:
Has (sic) no fear, I will prevent the sun from rising.
The third one that came out his body, seize the breath of life.
Then I say I shall prowl the city in search of these criminal
who take my (sic) life of the great grandfather.
As I stroll along the street, you could have seen thousands of head
peeping thru doors and windows, saying:
(shrilly voice) Here comes the cold-blooded murderer
who prowl the city night and day.
Edder voices cried and say:
Who it could be?
It is the sons of Lucifer or Lucifer himself.
Then I tread on the states of America
With the rising of the sun, you
Could have heard the moanful cries of great kings and queens
On their bended knees saying,
(Raised voice) Master, be (alto) merciful unto us.
Figure there was things happening above.
No. It was my shadow, starting to spread over,
cover the city, and cause a darkness.
De church bells started to chime an' give warning.
Thousands of people ran towards de church door…
Figuring it was de bells of wedding.
Boar when dey reach to the church door an' see it was
just the black that goes, that signifies burials,
(Quicken speech) Mothers hid themselves in the interior
and started to give birth.
Babes that didn't born, get born deformed,
Overgrown trees start to bend to the ground,
(Quick say) Rocks started to tumble out of the mountain
(Raised voiced) Huge dwellings crumble like (shrill voice) raindrops.
Scotland Yard hold a mile alarm,
Surrounded men and sighted with machine guns.
(Raised shrill, emphatic voice) I wounded one thousand five!
And was chased with the balance of 20 miles.
{I} rest in that bone in that desert of Africa.
I tell you when I wake and yawn,
Ferocious animal heard dis voice
Of mine and start to break the forest down for the fence.
Unfortunate a ferocious lion and a ferocious tiger fall on my track.
I fought and got victorious.
I take out the gall of the octopus.
Coil up with the blood of the cobra
dem two-footed animal less
into the case of crime and punishment (Blow yuh whistle).
(Restart) In de case of crime and punishment,
I find myself on meeting John Dillinger
Who was one of the fastest gun puller.
I made him a toy and footstool in de gun draw.
Jesse James, a notorious bandit and a
Favourite gangland master criminal,
I still his wuk by taking his tongue out of his mouth,
That he shouldn't gibe the alarm that I was around.
I shaved the head of a master criminal and post it to the phantom graveyard as an example to prove that I, dis cold-blooded murderer who is the public enemy, number one, two and three,
As ESAU MILLINGTON
Is an uncanquerable (sic) monarch as a cold-blooded murderer!
(Blow yuh whistle).
Satisfied? Belly full? Still laughing? Scared? Want to call the Police? Want to cuss?
As a boy, I used to be scared of the pierrot grenade's nearness with the whip in hand. The jab jab too! And even today you would admit you have your apprehension about some Carnival characters like the jam ballassie, de play-de-devil jab-jab, de mud (hounds), de oil ting, even de powder, don't talk about the 3-canalian blue and de burrokeets brown.
The Carnival landscape knows no bounds really, but in surveying its face you'd accept that its contour has undergone welcome and unwelcome changes with the passage of time.
So it is with portrayals like the wild Indian, the sailors, the ancient Romans, the Greeks, fancy seabees, the minstrels, the police-with-baton and tief-paying-a-bobolee-price, papa and mama pierrots DE MIDNITE ROBBER.
Yes, the Midnite Robber, the one who poems his ostentatious self, his braggadacio, his bold-face immortality, like he did above.
You'd have to take Esau Millington seriously, despite his old age. I mean, the bell has tolled physical slowdown, impotency, bended back and creaky bones for many past 70.
Yet Esau Millington stands a colossus in the realm of the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival artform that is the Midnite Robber masquerade.
"I've been playing this mas about 60 years," the robber or gun talk over for now so that his tale could be told this Carnival Tuesday. A fresh enough unwrinkled dark face behind small eyes, sunken cheeks, paper-thin chin. Eyes peeping out below the big, broad-brimmed black hat with a strand of velvet here, there a skeleton. Hs neck-cloth roped about the neck, his wooded pistol tucked in his waist. His cape black, his trousers black, a white paper cup of "his drink" in the hand.
"Yes, about that (60 years in the mas) because November coming I'd be 86. I is 85 (years old) right now," he convinces.
Millington lives at Second Caledonia Road, Morvant. "I'm very easy to be found. When yuh reach up dey, you would ask for King. Just say 'de robber' and dey would put you on spot."
Born and honed in the artform from youth ("Ah born 106 Clifton Hill, Plaisance Road, 1913, the 13 of November"), Millington fears that the artform could pass away because of the failure to win the youth over and the disinterest shown toward the artform by the youth themselves.
"Yes I want to see the youth get involved in this. But (sic) I try to get them in, but they're not co-operating, all that I try."
Having been recognized by the National Carnival commission (NCC), Tidco (Tourism and Industrial Development Company) and even Government for his contribution to the art, he says he recognizes whatever encouragement he gets to try and perpetuate it.
"Yes, the NCC and dey always ask us to bring in the youths and teach them."
But he recognizes youth indifference: "The youths have no time for that. De road that they in, you can't tell them nothing of the kind. You have to wait for one saying 'Look I will go meyself and volunteer. And then very few of you may get (in).
"The only way you could get (them) is if I have sons coming up and I take them out with me on Carnival Day. Well I grow them in it. But to go anywhere and get (youth) from there you wouldn't be able to get."
When asked about using the schools as a way of sourcing volunteers, this 'robber' says, "I was trying to get on to the school to see if I could ah get some of the school chirren to train them on the thing, but they have their own function of category which they always put out (for) the children.
"You see, if I can appear at schools it will help to encourage some to play. But I will have to go thru' a lot of process to get the teacher to consent, because the teachers have their own people to bring them out in the type of mas that they have."
Esau wants to tread solid ground and he thinks of a way of courtship that may just win him the more spurs he wishes.
"You see, in these cases I have to be positive that they would like the category, that is the robber, to come in.
"You see the youths these days, they like this kind of mas with this skin-fit and thing. So therefore you wouldn't be able to bring them to what you want. You'd have to force them to the point.
"The only way I should be able to get a full gang of robber playing out, as I think it over some months ago, is just to have a whole category of robber with females in a kind of exposed admission calling it 'The beauty of the world.'
"And I will get the young people because they like they skin-fit and dis li'l piece a ting and so and so. Then I might be able to figure out a category of robber," he reckons, with a glint of hope in his voice and eyes.
Recitation is a wonderful art. We would all hate to think that gone are the days of schooling when by rote you had no problem in standing tall and saying:
"There was a naughty boy,
A Naughty boy was he
He ran away to Scotland
The people for to see"
Guess a surfeit of poems on the lips could engender in you the desire to create, to compose some of your own, to emerge perhaps as a song writer, a composer and lyricist.
So long in the business, Esau, even at his age, has not lost his compelling ability to compose the flow of "robber talk."
"I compose my own lyrics. Everything for myself. I don't write it. I just make them in the brain when I need them."
You'd have to catch up with him next year, though, listen for the sameness or changeness.
"Every year I change my lyrics," he says. And he has some he ain't use 'some years aback' like:
"When I, whenever a king or queen tread on any city,
You'd see millions of people running to and fro
With flags carrying various colours of the world,
In love, be joyous, happy and be merry.
But when I tread on any city,
It became dark,
Lightning'd start to flash, thunder will start to roll,
Volcano will start to buss in different places.
So there will be disaster.
"You understand?" He asked me, then went on.
"So on these things I always" his voice faded, before he gave another clue to how 'warrior-like' a tirade could be.
"But the only way you could get on to these categories is I has (sic) a robber with myself exchanging ideas."
Any takers? You feel you have more 'robber talk' than he, a faithful servant of the Carnival soil, perhaps a voice crying in the wilderness? A prophet without honour? A peer without peers? A Carnival without a the, MIDNITE ROBBER (certainly not the real thing as that's about, jail, no bail)!