African Animal Tales in the Public Domain / Koelle's stories from Sierra Leone

I've completed, more or less, my inventory of English-language materials, both books and articles, with African folktales published before 1925; I've found 145 sources, with a total of 3063 stories contained in those sources. Pretty amazing! These materials are all available at the digital libraries which have worked so hard to make these public domain materials available, like Internet Archive, Hathi Trust, and others. I might find other sources to add to the collection, but still: this is a very solid foundation on which to start building.

And here's what I want to build: a collection specifically of African animal tales from those public domain sources that I can then publish in a gigantic ebook that can then be a resource for both scholars and writers who might want to re-use / re-mix / re-publish those materials for their own purposes: in textbooks, in children's books, as audio... whatever they are inspired to do! I'll probably do a version of my own personal favorites retold in my own way (as microfiction or otherwise), but for now, my focus is just on collecting the stories as-is from the public domain sources.

The OCR is a good start, but it needs some human care and attention, which is also a chance for me to immerse myself in reading these materials. I'm not sure how many animal tales I will find. Hundreds for sure! Only a few of these resources have already been properly digitized at Project Gutenberg or Sacred Texts, so I have a huge amount of work to do. I'm guessing it will take a year or two, which is just fine with me (yay retirement!).

I've decided to begin at the beginning and work my way through the books and articles in order by date of publication, starting with the oldest book that I've found which happens to be: African Native Literature, or: Proverbs, Tales, Fables, and Historical Fragments in the Kanuri or Bornu Language by S. W. Koelle, published in 1854. You can find the book at the Internet Archive.

The way I've been indexing the books and articles is to create a GoogleDoc page where I quickly listed the titles of the stories, using a unique ID number to identify that item. Now, in "transcribing" phase, I am creating a separate GoogleDoc for each animal story in the collection; the index page links to those individual pages, and those individual pages in turn link back to the index page. Since these materials are all in the public domain, I'm making all my GoogleDoc pages public, which means you can access them too. 

It's then easy to assemble all those items into a single folder using the uniqueID number, so here is the Koelle folder (public; you should be able to click on that link to access it), which contains the index page plus the story pages. I used "1000" as the number for the index page, and then 1001, 1002, and so on to refer to the stories in the book (since some books do have a hundred or more stories); that then allows me to sort by file name to get the book/stories in order. In the case of this book, the first animal fable is story #6 in the book, and there are a total of 12 animal fables.

Koelle was not writing here with literary goals, nor was he writing as a folklore scholar; instead, he was providing literal translations of the stories recounted to him by the Kanuri people with whom he worked to prepare a Kanuri vocabulary and grammar for use by other missionaries like himself: "the great and noble work of bringing the everlasting Gospel to all the nations of the earth" as he explains in the Introduction. Koelle (1823-1902) was one of the first European scholars of African languages and linguistics; you can read more about him at Wikipedia.

So with this first book we confront head-on the missionary and colonial context in which almost all of these public domain materials were created and published. These missionary and colonial projects are often repugnant (Koelle is better than most, truth be told), yet, despite the repugnant context, the stories conveyed in these texts are a kind of folktale miracle: we have here the voices of African storytellers (in this case, storytellers from Sierra Leone) speaking to us from over 150 years ago. 

In a book like Koelle's, it is not just the storytellers' words as translated and interpreted by English-speaking missionaries and colonial officials; Koelle provides the actual Kanuri language texts, and the literal English translations are meant to help people who are trying to learn the Kanuri language, a language spoken by millions of people today in Nigeria and other nations of western Africa.

For me, as a collector of folktales, the stories that I found here were DAZZLING. The weasel appears as a trickster in multiple stories. For example, he tricks his companion, the hyena: The Weasel and the Hyena. In another story, a weasel starts a chain-tale (my favorite type of folktale!) which ends with the weasel defeating the elephant: A Weasel and his Wife. There is an astounding story about a war between the animals and the birds as a result of love rivalry between the elephant and the rooster: A Cock and an Elephant. Each story was recognizable to me because of familiar folktale motifs, but at the same time each story had some unique twists and turns (in the characters, the plots, the telling) that I had not seen before. And that I would never have seen were it not for Koelle's book.

Really a weasel... or not? I was kind of surprised to find the weasel featured so prominently (there are African weasels, but more in southern Africa rather than western Africa). In the dictionary part of the book, Koelle admits that he is not quite sure just what animal this kenyeri might be: "a very cunning little animal, probably a kind of weasel." My guess is that this kenyeri might turn out to be the water chevrotain or royal antelope, who is a tiny trickster I would expect to play this role in stories from western Africa, including Sierra Leone where Koelle collected these stories. Compare also the use of the phrase "cunnie rabbit" as the name for the water chevrotain in Sierra Leone creole (more about that here re: Virginia Hamilton's "cunnie rabbit" stories retold). 

The chain-tale about the "weasel" is the most exciting for me, so I've pasted it in here below. Consider the first of what will be hundreds of public domain African animal tales that will end up in an OER book. I have no idea how long this will take me... but I'm retired! I can take all the time I want/need. And I am going to learn so much as part of the process. I'll be keeping a special eye out for chain tales. I first started obsessing about chain tales because they are a popular folktale genre in India, but they are even more popular in Africa. So, yes, for sure an anthology of chain tales from Africa will be taking shape too!

I'm not ready to take the liberty (yet) of changing Koelle's weasel to another word, but keep in mind that this trickster is probably a tiny royal antelope, the smallest deer in the world, only about 10 inches high and weighing about 6 pounds. And notice how the story ends with a proverb; there is a close connection between folktales and proverbs, especially animal folktales and animal proverbs, so I'm collecting animal proverbs too. More about that in a later post.

And now, here's the trickster chain-tale:

A Weasel and his Wife

The wife of a weasel bore a child, and then called her husband and said, "Seek such clothes as I like, and bring them to me." 

The husband listened to his wife's word, and said to her, "What kind of clothes dost thou like?" 

The wife replied to her husband, "I like the hide of an elephant." 

The husband attended to his wife's wish, arose, and went to a fowl, saying, "Sister fowl, listen, and I will tell thee something which my wife told me." 

The fowl replied to the weasel, "Tell me what thou hast to say: I will hear." 

The weasel said to the fowl, "Sister fowl, yesterday, when my wife had given birth to a child, she said to me that she does not like any kind of clothes, except an elephant's hide: now what shall I do to obtain an elephant's hide so as to give it to her?" 

The fowl answered, and said to the weasel, "Stop, and I will teach thee a trick that thou mayest obtain an elephant's hide: go, call the muck-worm, the fowl, the cat, the dog, the hyena, the leopard, the lion, and the elephant, call them all and ask them, saying, 'Be pleased to come: my farm is overgrown with grass,' and when they are come, thou mayest obtain an elephant's hide." 

The weasel attended to what the fowl said: he called all whomsoever he liked, and when they were come to him, he asked them, and they agreed to his request and went home. 

Next morning the muck-worm arose first, took his hoe and his spear, and went to the farm of the weasel. Then he stuck his spear in the ground, and began to hoe. The weasel was sitting in the midst of his farm, while the muck-worm hoed, and the fowl came. 

The fowl having come, she said to the weasel, "Who came before me?" 

The weasel replied, "Behold, the muck-worm has come, and is at work." 

As soon as the fowl had seen the muck-worm, she took and swallowed it, and then began to work. 

When the cat arose and went to the farm, she asked the weasel, "Brother weasel, who did come before me?" 

When the weasel replied, "The muck-worm came," the cat asked, "Where is the muck-worm?" and on being told that the fowl had swallowed it, she asked, "Where is the fowl?" 

The answer was, "Yonder the fowl is at work." 

The cat went, seized and swallowed the fowl, and then fell to work alone. 

The dog arose, and on arriving at the farm, asked the weasel, "Brother weasel, who came before me?" 

The weasel replied, "The muck-worm came." 

He asked the weasel, "Where is the muck-worm?" 

The weasel replied, "The fowl swallowed the muck-worm." 

He asked again, "Where is the fowl?" 

The answer was, "The cat has swallowed the fowl." 

Next question, "Where is the cat?" 

Answer, "Behold, here is the cat at work." 

The dog took and swallowed the cat, and then began to work alone on the farm. 

The hyena arose, and when he came to the farm, asked the weasel, "Who came before me?" 

The weasel answered, "The muck-worm came before thee." 

He asked again, "Where is the muck-worm?" 

"The fowl swallowed the muck-worm."

"Where is the fowl?" 

"The cat swallowed the fowl." 

"Where is the cat?" 

"The dog swallowed the cat." 

"Where is the dog?" 

The weasel answered to the hyena, "Yonder the dog is at work." 

When the hyena saw the dog, he went, seized and swallowed him, and then went, and began to work. 

Next the leopard arose, took his hoe, and went to the farm. When he had come and asked the weasel, the weasel said, "The muck-worm came first." 

He asked, "Where is the muck-worm?" 

"The fowl swallowed it." 

"Where is the fowl?" 

"The cat swallowed it." 

"Where is the cat?" 

"The dog swallowed it." 

"Where is the dog?" 

"The hyena swallowed it." 

"Where is the hyena?" 

"Yonder he is at work." 

As soon as the leopard saw the hyena, he went, seized, killed, and ate it, and then began to work. 

Next the lion arose, took his hoe and went to the farm. When he came, and saw the weasel sitting, he asked him, "Brother weasel, who came first, before me?" 

The weasel replied, "The muck-worm came." 

He asked again, "Where is the muck-worm?" 

"The fowl swallowed it." 

"Where is the fowl?" 

"The cat swallowed it." 

"Where is the cat?" 

"The dog swallowed it." 

"Where is the dog?" 

"The hyena swallowed it." 

"Where is the hyena?" 

"The leopard swallowed it." 

"Where is the leopard?" 

The weasel answered to the lion, "Yonder the leopard is at work." 

When the lion looked before him, he saw the leopard at work. Then he went, seized the leopard, and, after some wrestling, killed him, upon which he went and began to work. 

Next the elephant arose, took his hoe, and went to the farm. — They did not know that the weasel was more cunning than all of them. — When the elephant asked the weasel, "Brother weasel, who came before me?" the weasel replied, "The muck-worm came." 

He asked again, "Where is the muck- worm?" 

"The fowl swallowed it." 

"Where is the fowl?" 

"The cat swallowed it" 

"Where is the cat?" 

"The dog swallowed it." 

"Where is the dog?" 

"The hyena swallowed it." 

"Where is the hyena?" 

"The leopard swallowed it." 

"Where is the leopard?" 

"The lion swallowed it." 

"Where is the lion?" 

The weasel replied to the elephant, "The lion is working yonder." 

The elephant listened to what the weasel said, but did not know that the weasel was cunning. The weasel had made a trap-hole, fastened a pointed pole in it, shut it with a mat, and covered it with earth. The elephant did not see it, so when he went and attacked the lion, and they fought and wrestled, they came near the trap-hole, and the elephant fell in. When he had fallen in, the lion went back to his forest. 

Then the weasel arose, and when he came to the trap-hole, he saw the elephant in it. As soon as he saw this, he fetched his knife, flayed the elephant's skin, and brought it to his wife, saying, "As thou saidst to me that thou didst not like any clothes, except an elephant's hide, today I bring thee, by the help of God, what thy soul likes: behold, here it is." 

The wife arose, took the hide from her husband, and also took her children, and covered them with the elephant's hide. At that time was this done by the weasel and his wife, the weasel's wife had not known that her husband was more subtle than all the beasts of the earth, nor that he was more subtle than herself, but then she knew that her husband was most subtle. 

Now it is said of any one who is observed to be subtle: "This man is as subtle as a weasel." — This is finished.