Week Nine Reading Notes Part B - West Africa

Source Story: "West African Folktales" by William H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, with drawings by Cecilia Sinclair (1917).

• "The Moon and Stars"
• Anansi and his son Kweku Tsin are captured by a dragon one day while they're out hunting. The dragon takes them back to his castle where they are guarded (along with many others) by a great white rooster. Kweku devises a plan to distract the rooster and make a ladder to climb up into the heavens, using a bag of bones and a magical fiddle to keep the dragon at bay as they climb. The gods make Kweku into the sun, Anansi into the moon, and all the others into the stars.
• "How the Tortoise Got His Shell"
• The gods decide to throw a party, so they send Klo (the tortoise) to get some wine from the chicken. Klo is very fast, and he gets there quickly. The chicken and the tortoise fight for the right to the wine and the palms that produce it. Klo wins, but there is too much wine for him to carry in his pot, so he drink all the leftover wine, then slings the pot onto his back along with all the trees. Being drunk, he is too slow getting back to the party and finds himself locked out in the rain for two months, during which time he dies under the weight of the pot. When they find his body, the gods are able to bring him back to life, but the pot had so melded to his body that it became part of him, and that's how tortoise got his shell.
• "The Hunter and the Tortoise"
• A hunter finds a singing tortoise in the woods, and takes her home to sing to him every day. She agrees with the condition that she will only sing to him, and not to others. But of course he tells everyone about it, and tells them they can kill him if it turns out that he's lying. They agree that, if he is telling the truth, he may punish them however he sees fit for disbelieving them. But the tortoise doesn't sing in front of them, because of the agreement they made. After they kill the hunter, the tortoise finally speaks, and explains that the man brought it on himself.
• "The Leopard and the Ram"
• A leopard and a ram mistakenly choose the same place to build their house, so they decide to live together. When Leopard realizes that Ram brings home as much meat from hunting as he does, he asks his son to find out how Ram kills animals. Leopard's son and Ram's son reveal to each other how their fathers hunt, and Leopard gets the information from his son that Ram backs up a bit, then rams forward with his head to kill an animal. One day, the rain makes the floor very wet, and Ram slips backwards. Thinking Ram is about to kill him, Leopard takes his son and flees into the woods, despite Ram's calling out to him. This is why rams are domestic (they continue living in the house) while leopards are wild (they flee into the forest).
• "King Chameleon and the Animals"
• The animals decide they need a king, but because they cannot agree on one, they decide to have a race to determine their ruler. The first one to sit in a certain stool should be the king. Hare, the fastest, makes it to the stool first, but finds that Chameleon has hidden himself on Hare's tail and jumped off at the last second to steal the seat. The other animals honor their agreement to make him king, but they are all unhappy with the outcome, so they leave Chameleon lonely forever, with no subjects to rule.
• "Elephant and Wren"
• The king tells all his subjects that anyone who can cut down a certain large tree with only a wooden axe will receive an elephant as a reward. Spider takes the challenge, but secretly uses a steel axe instead. However, he doesn't want to share the elephant with his family, so he ties it to a tree while he tries to catch a wren to give them to eat while he hides the elephant in the woods to eat by himself later. He fails at catching the wren, and the elephant escapes.
• "The Ungrateful Man"
• A hunter comes across a pit with a serpent, a rat, a leopard, and a man all trapped in it. He helps them all out, despite thinking that the man was the only one he should have saved. The serpent repays him with a powerful antivenom for snake bites (which must be mixed with the blood of a traitor), the leopard supplies him with meat for many weeks, and the rat brings him a bundle of riches. The man from the pit, however, only becomes envious of the hunter and mooches off of him until he finds an opportunity to do him wrong. He wrongly accuses the hunter of stealing from the king, and the hunter is sentenced to death. Before his execution, however, the hunter is able to save the king's son from death by a snakebite using his antivenom mixed with the blood of the ungrateful man, who they kill for being a traitor. The hunter is set free and given many riches.
• "Why Tigers Never Attack Men Unless They are Provoked"
• A tiger and a hunter befriend each other and take turns staying at each other's homes. The hunter's father dies, so the tiger and his cub come to visit to console their friend. As they are leaving, some of the hunter's friends shoot the tiger, who fortunately does not die, but worries that his friend has betrayed him. The tiger pretends to be dead to see what the hunter will do. The hunter is deeply grieves and stays by the tiger's side all night, crying, to protect the body. The tiger reveals that he isn't really dead and explains what happened, then promises to never attack a man unless the man provokes him first.
• "How Mushrooms First Grew"
• A pair of brothers racks up a lot of debt, but they decide to try to pay it off honestly by farming. A bird eats all their seed, so the debt transfers to the bird. The bird tries to lay eggs to sell, but a silk tree's branch smashes them, so the debt goes to the tree. The tree tries to make silk to sell, but an elephant takes down all the pods, so the debt goes to the elephant. A hunter kills the elephant, so the debt goes to him. A tree stump trips the hunter and breaks his leg, so the debt goes to the stump. A colony of white ants (termites) eats through the stump, so the debt goes to them. They all pool their money to buy linen thread, which they weave into pieces of cloth to sell to pay off the debt. They sometimes lay this cloth out on their anthills, and people call it "mushrooms."
• "Farmer Mybrow and the Fairies"
• Farmer Mybrow sets out to make a field next to the home of some fairies. The fairies help with whatever task he begins (clearing the field, planting, etc.). He keeps the field and the fairies a secret from everyone, even his wife. But eventually his wife finds out the location and goes there to gather some firewood, after promising her husband she won't answer any questions she hears there. She pulls an unripe ear of corn from a stalk, and the fairies ask what she is doing. Forgetting her promise, she tells them she is pulling down an ear of corn. The fairies immediately help her with her task, pulling down all the crops before they are ripe and ruining the field.

Image of a tortoise from Public Domain Pictures