Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria, West Africa. Dayrell Elphinstone

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СКАЧАТЬ lives in the Water

       XXIII

       Why Dead People are Buried

       XXIV

       Of the Fat Woman who Melted Away

       XXV

       Concerning the Leopard, the Squirrel, and the Tortoise

       XXVI

       Why the Moon Waxes and Wanes

       XXVII

       The Story of the Leopard, the Tortoise, and the Bush Rat

       XXVIII

       The King and the Ju Ju Tree

       XXIX

       How the Tortoise overcame the Elephant and the Hippopotamus

       XXX

       Of the Pretty Girl and the Seven Jealous Women

       XXXI

       How the Cannibals drove the People from Insofan Mountain to the Cross River (Ikom)

       XXXII

       The Lucky Fisherman

       XXXIII

       The Orphan Boy and the Magic Stone

       XXXIV

       The Slave Girl who tried to Kill her Mistress

       XXXV

       The King and the 'Nsiat Bird

       XXXVI

       Concerning the Fate of Essido and his Evil Companions

       XXXVII

       Concerning the Hawk and the Owl

       XXXVIII

       The Story of the Drummer and the Alligators

       XXXIX

       The 'Nsasak Bird and the Odudu Bird

       XL

       The Election of the King Bird (the black-and-white Fishing Eagle)

       THE END

INTRODUCTION

       Table of Contents

      Many years ago a book on the Folk-Tales of the Eskimo was published, and the editor of The Academy (Dr. Appleton) told one of his minions to send it to me for revision. By mischance it was sent to an eminent expert in Political Economy, who, never suspecting any error, took the book for the text of an interesting essay on the economics of "the blameless Hyperboreans."

      Mr. Dayrell's "Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria" appeal to the anthropologist within me, no less than to the lover of what children and older people call "Fairy Tales." The stories are full of mentions of strange institutions, as well as of rare adventures. I may be permitted to offer some running notes and comments on this mass of African curiosities from the crowded lumber-room of the native mind.

      I. The Tortoise with a Pretty Daughter.—The story, like the tales of the dark native tribes of Australia, rises from that state of fancy by which man draws (at least for purposes of fiction) no line between himself and the lower animals. Why should not the fair heroine, Adet, daughter of the tortoise, be the daughter of human parents? The tale would be none the less interesting, and a good deal more credible to the mature intelligence. But the ancient fashion of animal parentage is presented. It may have originated, like the stories of the Australians, at a time when men were totemists, when every person had a bestial or vegetable "family-name," and when, to account for these hereditary names, stories of descent from a supernatural, bestial, primeval race were invented. In the fables of the world, speaking animals, human in all but outward aspect, are the characters. The fashion is universal among savages; it descends to the Buddha's jataka, or parables, to Æsop and La Fontaine. There could be no such fashion if fables had originated among civilised human beings.

      The polity of the people who tell this story seems to be despotic. The king makes a law that any girl prettier than the prince's fifty wives shall be put to death, with her parents. Who is to be the Paris, СКАЧАТЬ