The heading refers to a legendary figure, Anancy, or Anansi, the Ashanti word for "spider" and the name of a folktale character.
"Nothing more joyous can be imagined," writes Jekyll, "than a good 'digging-sing' from twenty throats, with the pickers—so they call their pickaxes—falling in regular beat."
Jekyll explains, "One man starts or 'raises' the tune and the others come in with the 'bobbin,' the short refrain..." In the song "Miss Nancy Ray", for example, the bobbin is: "Oh hurrah, boys!"
During the 1970s, Oxford University Press published six collections of Jamaican folks songs arranged and annotated by Dr. Olive Lewin.
She concludes that "although Jekyll's interest extended beyond music to Jamaican folklore, it was by his considerable knowledge as a musician that he made the most valuable contribution to this all too neglected field of scholarship."