by Robert Hamill Nassau · 1912
Fantasy · Classics
West African folk tales in which animals talk, trick one another and teach lessons, collected by a missionary and doctor who lived in what is now Gabon.
Content note: Collected by a nineteenth-century Christian missionary, and his notes and framing reflect the attitudes of his time.
Mpongwe
FOREWORD
The following sixteen Tales were narrated to me, many years ago, by two members of the Mpongwe tribe (one now dead) at the town of Libreville, Gaboon river, equatorial West Africa. Both of them were well-educated persons, a man and a woman. They chose legends that were current in their own tribe. They spoke in Mpongwe; and, in my English rendition, I have retained some of their native idioms. As far as I am aware none of these legends have ever been printed in English, excepting Tale 5, a version of which appeared in a British magazine from a writer in Kamerun, after I had heard it at Gaboon. Also, excepting Tale 14. It appeared, in another form, more than fifty years ago, in Rev. Dr. J. L. Wilson’s “Western Africa.” But my narrator was not aware of that, when he told it to me.
TALE 1
Do Not Trust Your Friend
Place
Country of the Animals
Persons
Njĕgâ (Leopard)
Ntori (Wild Rat)
Ra-Marânge (Medicine Man)
Nyare (Ox)
Ngowa (Hog)
Nkambi (Antelope)
Leopard’s Wife; and others
NOTE
A story of the treachery of the Leopard as matched by the duplicity of the Rat.
