By Henry Garland Murray

Henry Garland Murray’s Tom Kittle’s Wake (1877), recalls the story of a Jamaican fisherman, as well as his eventual wake. The author was a late nineteenth century newspaper editor and popular storyteller, who was probably the first person to write and publish his work in Jamaican Patois.

An excerpt from Tom Kittle’s Wake:
Old Tom Kittle was a fisherman, and in his time had been notable in that respect. He had had many a “hairbreadth ’scape” and had been the hero of many a deed that might have won a place in story; but he had not been wont to recount them, for the reason that he never at any time thought of them as highly as other people did.