Where Animals Talk: West African Folk Lore TalesNassau, Robert Hamill
Philosophy
Where Animals Talk: West African Folk Lore Tales
Nassau, Robert Hamill
Animals -- Folklore; Tales -- Africa, West
Then the company all went back to their village with their nets. They
arrived there during the daytime. And the father ordered his son,
"Go! climb that coco tree, and bring me a nut." The son began to climb
the tree. But, as he climbed, the father, by Magic-Power, caused the
tree to grow rapidly upward. When, finally, Utigebode reached the top,
he was unable to come down the excessively long tree-trunk. He began
to call to his father for help, "My father!" But the father was still
very angry, and replied, "Call your friends, the Beasts and Birds,
to save you. I will not help you." And Njambo went to sit down in
his village, leaving his son in the treetop.
The son saw Eagle passing, and he called to it, "Yungu! Help me!" Eagle
replied, "I am not able to carry a Man; you are heavy;" so, Eagle
passed on. Utigebode saw many Beasts one after another passing below,
and he called to them, "Save me!" But, they said, "We have no wings
with which to go up to you. How can we get you down? We are not Birds
that could let you down. We Beasts are unable to help you. Do not
expect us."
He was left there in the tree-top a period of two weeks, living only on
the coconuts; and then he died, and his body fell to the earth. Njambo
came out to see the corpse, and he said to it, "You have died through
lack of obedience. You disobeyed me; and your beasts did not help you."
The father and the mother lived another year in their village; and
then they died, because they had no children to help them with food
or clothes. And the people came from other villages to bury them.
TALE 24
ORIGINS OF THE IVORY TRADE (1st Version)
Persons
King Ukanakâdi, and His Son Lombolokindi, and His Mother,
With Birds and Other Animals
Tombeseki (A Magic-Spear); An Old Woman
Njâku (Elephant); An Ox (A Metamorphosed Man)
A Foreign Vessel, and Traders
Ukanakâdi lived in his great house, having with him his many wives. One
of them bore him a son whom he named Lombolokindi.
As time passed on, the child grew in size, and strength, and
skill. Because of this, his mother was treated by Ukanakâdi with
special favor. This aroused the jealousy of one of the other wives. She
took the child one day, and secretly gave him a certain evil medicine,
which caused him to be constantly hungry, hungry, hungry. Even when
he ate enormously, no amount of food could fill his stomach or satisfy
his appetite.
Ukanakâdi finally was angry at the child, and said to the mother,
"All the food of my plantations is finished, eaten up by your child. We
have no more plantains, no more cassava, no more eddoes, nor anything
else in our plantations or in our kitchen-gardens. You have brought
a curse upon us! Go away to your father's house!" (He said this,
not knowing that a Fetish-Medicine had caused all the trouble.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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