Joy and horror, life and death are often close together in art, and few could sing about it as well as Johnny Cash. “At rose Hall Plantation Where The Ocean Breezes Blow / Lived A Girl Named Annie Palmer, The Mistress of the Place,” he sang. One thinks you can feel the ocean breeze on your own skin. But then: “And the Slaves All Lived in Fear to See A Frown on Annie’s Face”. A frown was enough, and the people around Annie were scared. Because she had slaves and the goods of her arbitrariness. Cash brought the country song “The Ballad of Annie Palmer” on his album in 1973 “Any old wind that blows” out of here.
According to a legend, Annie Palmer’s spirit should still be very active. On the site of the Rose Hall Plantation Near Montego Bay on the Jamaican coast, her spirit plague people. Born at the end of the 18th century on Haiti as the daughter of an English mother and an Irish father, after her death she was raised by a nanny by yellow fever, which she familiarized with voodoo magic art. In Jamaica, she married, just of legal age, the owner of the Rose Hall Plantation, John Palmer.
“Where your Husband Annie Where’s Number Two and Three / Are They Sleeping Beneath Beneath Beside the Caribbean Sea / At Night I Hear You Ridin ‘And I Hear your your your your Feel Your Feel Your Feel your Feel your Feel House at Rose Hall .. “
Johnny Cash – “The Ballad of Annie Palmer”:
The 1.52 meter tall host is said to have not only killed Palmer, but also two other husbands, poisoned, strangled or stabbed depending on the story. Plantagenlaves for which she had set up her own torture studio in the basement. The view from her bedroom went into the garden, directly onto the beating post, where the serfs were flogged. One of her lovers, the slave Takooo, is supposed to have enough, enough, have murdered.
Today the renovated Rose Hall Great House is a tourist attraction. A two-story villa with a sympathetically old wooden mix, the meter-wide-creaking planks and a retro facility that, if not originally original from the 18th century, is blessed with sufficient aristocratic plantation flair, with woolen belt double beds, fragile vintage ceramic and a look at the Caribbean ocean.
Well, if you should ever go to see the great house at rose hall / there’s expensive chairs and china and great paintings on the wall / they’ll Show you annie’s sitting room and the whipping post outside / But they won’t Let you see The Room Where Annie’s Husbands Died “
There were no children on the oil portrait. These were dolls
Annie Palmer’s grave is located in the garden of the property. The only portrait of her hangs in the dining room, and it shows her in the company of many blond children. The boys and girls look in different directions, but Palmer himself was painted with “persecuting eyes” (“Mona-Lisa effect”). Wherever you go, the look of the housekeeper follows you. The dead eyes of the children, the museum leader, explained that Palmer was a reference to the unwanted childlessness. There were no children on the oil portrait. These were dolls.
Research from the 20th century showed that the “legend of the white witch” is quite cocolor. In fact, a woman named Annie Palmer existed in Montego Bay, but she had no connection to Rose Hall and showed no cruel or excessive behaviors. It is possible that the figure of the white witch is based on the novel “The White Witch of Roshall” published in 1929 by Herbert G. de Lisser.
The saying of a journalist has come from John Fords “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (1962): “When the Legend Baces Fact, Print the Legend”. Johnny Cash, who gave a concert in Rose Hall in the 1970s, also adhered to this. He believed in Annie Palmer’s legend.
Cash drove to the coast with his GolfCart, and the people on the street called him
In general, the island enchanted him. Johnny and his wife June Carter Cash discovered their love for Jamaica after an invitation from director Sydney Pollack, who had a villa on the island. Later, they bought that just a few minutes from Rose Hall. Cinnamon Hill Great Housea villa that once belonged to the poet Elizabeth Barret Browning. After the slave uprising in 1831 it burned down to the walls. Today’s Cinnamon Hill Great House had to be rebuilt. Cash bought the site from the businessman John Rollins, who also belonged to the Rose Hall, in which Annie Palmer haunted.
In the Cinnamon Hill Great House, the Cash couple, who died in 2003 every four months, spent many weeks a year. The property that they lived in the 1990s has become a museum. To a pilgrimage site for fans from all over the world, but also for Country unreasonable Jamaicans who want to find out how one of the greatest American singers of all time spent his days on their island. Cash drove to the coast with his GolfCart, and the people on the street called to him: “Respects, Mr. Cash, Respects.” That was even more true when he did not decide to turn his back on Jamaica after a robbery at home. More on that below.
The Rocky Road reminded him of his streets in America
The Cinnamon Hill House is located on an artificial clearing that was hit in the forest and can only be reached via a rumbling dirt road. Cash didn’t want him to be leveled. The Rocky Road reminded him of his streets in America.
Beds stand in a large number of rooms of the two -story villa. But Johnny Cash also had many children. He was married twice (his first marriage, with Vivian Liberto, lasted twelve years) and testified four daughters and a son. There are two cowboy hats on the night showcase in the parents’ bedroom. Unpleasant. You want to put them on, at least once. But unfortunately that is not allowed (and of course really that).
Johnny Cash was a songwriter and poet – and he loved books. His daughter Rosanne often complained that he was only reading. This can be viewed well in the Cinnamon Hill Great House. Every living space has a large bookcase. The arrangement of the books, which often appears to be eclectic, seems a bit, almost as organized by an interior designer who wants to sell visitors the wide -ranging interests of the landlord.
The books look credible
But cash’s interests are documented. And the books look credible. Here is the Bible alongside Thomas Pynchon’s Historica Philosophy “Mason & Dixon”, the reference work “Birds of Jamaica” alongside Tolstoy “War and Peace” and Michael J. Birds “The Town That Died”, a chronicle of the Halifax explosion from 1917 , when a French ammunition freighter collided with a Norwegian transport ship, and the up to today in lexicons as “the world’s largest accident -related explosion is conducted.
Past a concert wing we go to the stairs to the first floor. The skin of a crocodile is stretched over several meters on the wall next to the steps. It is said that Cash had his hands in the game when it was noted and molting the reptile. The crocodile comes from the 1973 film “Leave and die”, Roger Moore aka James Bond fled it from a dangerous river by jump over several crocodile backs. In any case, the swimming pool, which the Carter-Cashs never finished, can be viewed from the upper floor.
The eleven -year -old John Carter Cash held a pistol on the temple
Johnny Cash said he lived with spirits in the Cinnamon Hill House. A real threat were the three petty criminals who collapsed him in 1982. The eleven -year -old John Carter Cash held a pistol on the temple. Johnny recognized her desperate situation. These were not professionals, but drug addicts. He talked to her. They included the cashs and their household help in the basement and fled with little money.
The Jamaican government was concerned that the publicly effective burglary could pass cash away from the island, which in turn could harm tourism – and sent police officers to secure the area. Cash had it replaced by private security guards. The thieves that were made later were executed. Cash remained. And the people called him their “respectes”.
How dogs shot
Johnny Cash had sorry for the robbers who were killed on his house because of the robbery. He was the Great American Outlaw, and he too was an addict. He wrote in his memoirs: “What do I feel? How do I react emotionally to the fact (or at least the clear possibility) that the desperate junkie boy who threatened and traumatized my family and could have easily killed us (maybe without ever having such intentions), for their deed were executed – or murdered or how dogs were shot, whatever you want to call it? I have no more answers. My only certainty is that I mourning desperate young men and the societies that bring about so many of them and suffer from them, and I had the feeling of knowing these boys. We were similar, she and me: I knew how they thought, I knew what they needed. You were like me. ” For Cash’s funeral in September 2003, the Jamaican Prime Minister sent a delegate to Henderson, Tennessee.
The Cinnamon Hill Great House had a safe room. And it still exists, right next to the left side entrance. Johnny Cash had it built because he had heard of the many earthquakes that shake Jamaica. It is not known whether he also hoped for protection against Annie Palmer.
The visit to Rose Hill and the Cinnamon Hill Great House was supported by the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB), the accommodation in the resorts “Sandals Dunn’s Rivers” in Ocho Rios and the “Beaches Negril” provided in Negril.