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ut down a magic tree to clear space around his favorite bathing place but a splinter got into his eye causing horrible pain a man appeared to cure him but asked for his daughter in exchange of course the man was a spirit planning on eating the girl the princess however managed to get away from him with the help of a talking skull and after many adventures found her way out of the spirit world and back home as for the animal tales the one that stuck with me the most was the ominous story that explained why worms live underground it was the story of a great battle between the worms and the terrifying driver ants obviously won by the latter the story of the fat woman who melted in the sun despite the strange title was a story of beauty women were traditionally fattened up before marriage and this one big beautiful lady was very popular but also made of oil so she was forbidden from going out in the sun a jealous co wife however tricked her into going to the fields and the lady melted down to her big toe luckily she managed to pull herself together after a while the story of the king and the nsiat weaver bird on the other hand was a tale of breaking with traditions the king married the beautiful daughter of the bird despite the warning that women in her family give birth to twins and offense traditionally punished by death when the twins were born however the king loved his family so much that they ended up moving to the wilderness together to live with the bird family and they have been living as weaver birds ever since connections i was reminded of the cajun story of marie jolie by the tale of the disobedient girl who married a skull the skull came from the spirit world borrowing body parts from other spirits to form the perfect man and the girl was helped by a friendly old woman in her escape back home before the spirits would have devoured her the pretty stranger who killed the king carried the internationally popular motif of a beautiful new wife in this case an old witch in disguise beheading a king while he was asleep thus bringing down the entire kingdom this nigerian tortoise is more than 300 years old the local trickster is once again tortoise he had many adventures such as finding out the hippo s secret name and thus exiling him into the waters or playing tug o war with elephant and hippo the latter story had a nice twist in the end both animals decided they wanted tortoise to be their friend tortoise moved to the water with hippo and sent his son to live with elephant that s why we have turtles and tortoises now tortoise also played the leading role in the story of the king s magic drum that created food out of nowhere the trickster managed to get the drum from the king but broke the taboo associated with it so instead of food the drum now summoned people who beat everybody up using this new ability tortoise managed to get a second deal and acquire a tree that grew foo foo until his sons broke that taboo as well and the entire family had to move to the prickly bushes out of shame where to next cameroon posted by a tarkabarka hölgy at 12 00 am no comments labels africa animals folktales following folktales nigeria trickster monday august 19 2019 dawn to dusk following folktales around the world 118 benin today i continue the blog series titled following folktales around the world if you would like to know what the series is all about you can find the introduction post here you can find all posts here or you can follow the series on facebook dawn to dusk folk tales from benin iro eweka routledge 1998 this book is not just any folktale collection it was written by a member of the edo royal family iro eweka author poet psychologist belonged to the last generation of the family that had the chance to listen to the traditional storytellers in the original context of court entertainment while working on his doctorate in the usa he had the inspiration to write the stories of his childhood down to preserve them he arranged them in a sort of mythical chronology from creation to the fall of the edo empire in the 19th century each chapter opens with a quote most often an edo proverb at the end of the book there is a whole chapter of edo wisdom and proverbs and another one that tells about the origin of benin s name the stories themselves are retold in beautiful poetic language which made this book a truly amazing read highlights the book begins with a creation myth i especially liked how all animals and plants once they were created with the strike of a whip greeted the creator and introduced themselves by their own name so did men women and children the mythology around birth was especially fascinating according to edo belief everyone decides what they want their life to be before they are born and they tell it to the creator then they are sent down to earth with their invisible twin live their lives die then return to heaven and make modifications to their life based on their experiences then it s the invisible twin s turn to be born and so on and so forth for 14 cycles prayers made during a lifetime are added to the modifications for the next round the story also pointed out that this is why parents have to be grateful to their children because the child chooses them and not the other way around the story of creation was followed up by the great debate when arguments first arose between plants animals and humans ósánóbuá the creator was called down from the sky to do justice the debate was mostly carried by the wise trickster tortoise who listed the problems with the current state of things especially with how humans behaved in the end the creator decided to put more rules in place and give each creature their own language so they wouldn t understand each other anymore i really enjoyed the historical legend of prince ogun who was exiled from his kingdom and lived in the jungle for seven years he made friends with plants and animals learned all the healing arts saved a lion an antelope and a tree when he was told that he would regain his thorne if he sacrificed a tiger he refused saying he would rather stay in the jungle than kill an animal in the end of course he fulfilled his destiny and became king but didn t kill a tiger he was the one that named edo after a slave who saved his life among the folktales i liked the one that explained why leopard has spots it featured the mother of all animals who one day accidentally broke leopard s clay pot angering the creature she was defended by ram with the help of wise tortoise who helped him protect his large testicles in the fight the wounds that leopard received in the fight became his spots tortoise played similarly important roles in many other stories as the trickster advisor to the sacred kings i especially loved the story where he warned the king to only declare plans with the caveat barring any obstacles when the king said no obstacles can ever derail his plans tortoise climbed a tree and tossed roasted nuts at the king s workers who immediately abandoned their job to eat all the delicacies connections once again there was a myth about the raising of the shy in this one people did not have to gather their own food at the beginning of time because they could just take pieces of the low hanging sky to eat one day a frantic mother tore off too much sky and threw out the leftovers the sky got so offended that it asked for the creator s permission to rise higher out of reach humans were lucky that tortoise already knew how to cultivate crops and he taught them i was reminded of the story of the lion and the mouse by the tale of the spider and the deer spider asked deer to carry him across a river promising to return the favor one day he did by the classic spider trick of weaving webs to conceal deer s footprints when hunters wanted to trap him making it look like the prints were from many days earlier where to next nigeria posted by a tarkabarka hölgy at 12 00 am 3 comments labels africa benin folktales following folktales mythology monday august 12 2019 tricksters and more tricksters following folktales around the world 117 togo today i continue the blog series titled following folktales around the world if you would like to know what the series is all about you can find the introduction post here you can find all posts here or you can follow the series on facebook tales told in togoland a w cardinall oxford university press 1970 this book contains folktales and legends from togo collected by the author in the first half of the 20th century from hunters and farmers cardinall admits that he is not an anthropologist he merely wanted to record the stories in fear that a trained collector might not get to togo in time before they disappeared there is a detailed introduction about the country s geography cultures and history the stories themselves are grouped into thematic chapters in which they follow each other without sub titles connected by information on customs beliefs and folklore the last chapter is taken up by the oral history of the country from the times before colonization the book is a very enjoyable read and while the text is occasionally dated referring to some things as primitive it contains a whole lot of really great stories highlights i found the first cool story right in the introduction according to local beliefs animals could only be killed with bullets specifically crafted for that species a man went to the blacksmith for buffalo bullets and when he returned to pick them up a hunter followed him into the bush and saw the man turn into a buffalo he shot at the animal but the bullets bounced off since the buffalo used the magic of the buffalo bullets to protect himself from harm how cool is that since there were many many trickster tales in the book i also found some new favorites i loved the one where a chief had a competition with a boy about who can trick the other and when the chief lost he turned into a spider in his shame it was an anansi origin story i also liked another story that explained why anansi hides in shame in that one he tried to trick chameleon but ended up being tricked himself with the help of a cloak made of living flies in yet another story it was nyame who punished the spider for his pride burning his house down anansi only managed to save his pillow which is why even today you can find small white pillow like nests in spiderwebs i also enjoyed the tale in which a kind hearted hunter found food with the help of a chichiriga a forest spirit but when anansi tried to copy the trick he did not treat the spirit well enough and thus received nothing last but not least there was a fun story explaining the origin of wasps a girl called her mother a witch and the furious mom started chasing her to punish her various animals tried to help the girl but they were all intimidated by the mother until the wasp swallowed her whole the wasp tied a rope around its waist so that the old woman could not come out hence the tiny waists and since she went in face first her sharp tongue became the wasp s stinger connections since we are deep into west africa here many stories were familiar not just from other african countries but also from the caribbean and the usa i have already heard the creation story in which the sky was raised as a punishment for people annoying the sky god dilemma stories continue to be popular similar to other african countries there was the one about the three wives who saved their husband together and argued over who did the most the husband declared they were all equally important and another about four men saving a child from a snake and then arguing about who deserved the snake s skin the most in fact dilemma tales had half a chapter to themselves after mali i once again encountered a story about animals trying to take revenge on a hunter he revealed almost all his secrets to his animal wife except for one which helped him get away when she lured him unarmed into the bush honestly i was rooting for the animals another man had a similarly lucky escape from a crocodile when he helped the animal and it wanted to devour him instead of a thank you the man was helped by the clever little red flanked duiker a distant relative of the famous southeast asian trickster mouse deer a third daring escape featured a man about to be devoured by a hyena that was about to be devoured by a leopard that was about to be devoured by a lion and then all of them scared off by a rat that claimed he was about to devour them all i knew this story from another african collection with a muskrat as the hero and while we are on the topic of hunting i found a variant of the tale about the hunter s son from ghana in which a lion tried to take revenge on the boy when it saw the trophies of his kin there was a story similar to tales i know from brazil in which a hunter wounded an antelope and chased it into the village of the kulparga little people fairies where he discovered that all animals are kulparga in disguise and he had to watch the young antelope man die these little creatures by the way were similar to european fairies in that they also hated iron and played the main role in the story where a hunter joined their celebration and sang the days of the week with them gift of the fairies tale type in this case their gift was a large amount of cowrie shells kép innen the two main local tricksters were anansi the spider and soamba the hare both of them traveled to the americas from here next to such classics as the tar baby story there were also some familiar from ghana such as anansi and wisdom or anansi trading things up until he got a hundred slaves for one ear of corn i was also already familiar with the bring me something tale in which anansi spied on nyame in the disguise of a bird to find out what the deity wanted him to bring as well as the one where anansi killed the chief s sheep and tried to blame another spider for it but then in his greed gave himself away i noticed some european parallels in the story of the golden twins here nyame s five wives competed in doing the best for their husband the youngest gave birth to a silver and a gold child who were stolen by the others but wise anansi figured out the truth and the twin princes who were two friends that looked alike and ended up saving each other there was even a bible parallel in the ashanti myth in which tano younger son of nyame tricked his father into giving him the blessed lands he intended for his eldest son where to next benin posted by a tarkabarka hölgy at 12 00 am no comments labels africa animals folktales following folktales togo trickster sunday august 11 2019 the true history of the great kanchil stalking adventure drama high speed chases plot twists jungles we visited the hellabrunn zoo in munich meeting a live mouse deer has been on my bucket list for years some people travel hundreds of miles to meet their favorite actors or see their favorite band live me i got on a trai...