Grishka, you just hit the nail on the head! I kind of like the idea of there actually being a jumbie there- after all the next line is, "He said, "Boy, no money inside your bed", so how can it be Matilda? I love the idea of her being an obeah woman who used spells to make the narrator fall in love with her.
Now I've been planning a story based on this song, examining her motivations, and I want to know: Does anyone know if this song could possibly have been inspired by a true event? I know that the first-person perspective doesn't mean anything, but a Trinidadian writer, in the Trinidad Guardian, implies that it might have been. So for the experts: a) did something like this happen around 1938, when the song was written? b) was it based on something in King Radio (or someone else)'s actual life,
and c) where would I find any records of it?