Africa at the Internet Archive: The Baganda

Today is the last day of my self-proclaimed "month of the public domain" for this African folktale project, and I wrote my last public-domain-inspired story for #NaNoWriMo yesterday ("The Young Rabbit and the Cow"). Now for this final post in the series, I've chosen another public domain book that provided material for a more recent book (much like the public domain project I've now started, rewriting public domain stories in my own way). 

So, the public domain book is John Roscoe's The Baganda: An Account of Their Native Customs and Beliefs, published in 1911.

John Roscoe was an Anglican missionary in eastern Africa, arriving there in 1884. He returned to England in 1909, whereupon he published several books about his time in Africa (more books by Roscoe).

Here are links to the 14 folktales from Uganda included in Roscoe's book: The Legend of Kintu / The Story of Mpobe / The Leopard and the Hare / The Cat and the Fowl / The Lion and the Crocodile / The Dog and the Leopard / The Lioness and the Cow / Sesota, the Large Snake / Kiwobe and His Sheep / Sifirwakange and Kasokambirye / The Hare and the Elephant / Ndyakubi and Ndalakubi / Why the Bats Hang Head Downwards / Wakubira Omulalu Mu Kyama.

Roscoe's story "Wakubira" in turn appears as "The Blacksmith's Dilemma" in Kathleen Arnott's African Myths and Legends, published in 1962. 

The book contains 34 stories from a variety of sources (there's a bibliography in the back): Why the Dog Is the Friend of Man / The Man Who Learned the Language of the Animals / Tortoise and Lizard / The Rubber Man / Tortoise and the Baboon / Spider and the Lion / Thunder and Lightning / Why the Crab Has No Head / A Test of Skill / The Tale of the Superman / Why the Bush-fowl Calls at Dawn / Spider and Squirrel / Unanana and the Elephant / Spider's Web / The Magic Horns / Snake Magic / Hare and the Corn Bins / What the Squirrel Saw / Hare and the Hyena / The Calabash Children / The Blacksmith's Dilemma / The Magic Drum / Why the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky / The Monkey's Heart / The Children Who Lived in a Tree-house / Why the Bat Flies at Night / Tug of War / The Discontented Fish / Hallabau's Jealousy / Goto, King of the Land and the Water / The Singing Drum and the Mysterious Pumpkin / The Snake Chief / The Two Brothers / Fereyel and Debbo Engal the Witch.

The illustrations for the 1962 book are by Joan Kiddell-Monroe. Most are in black-and-white but some are color, like this depiction of Lion and Spider:

This book has been reprinted with a different title, Tales from Africa, as part of the Oxford Myths and Legends series. The illustrations are new, but the text remains the same.

I've written about Kathleen Arnott here before; you might recall her book Tales of Temba, also just a click away at the Internet Archive. 

So, I have really enjoyed sharing all these different public domain books over the month of November, and hopefully I will have my own public domain anthology to share sometime next year too. I'm really enjoying the process of (re)writing public domain stories that are so much longer than my usual 100-word stories. Just like Kathleen Arnott and so many other anthologists have drawn on the public domain books for stories, I will be doing that too! And maybe you too will be inspired to do something similar; there are public domain folktale books from all over the world, not only Africa, just waiting for you at Internet Archive (and I will keep writing about them ad infinitum).

The Baganda: An Account 

of Their Native Customs and Beliefs

by John Roscoe

African Myths and Legends

 by Kathleen Arnott

Africa at the Internet Archive: St. Lys / Courlander

I'm carrying on with the public domain for the month of November, this time featuring a collection of folktales from Namibia, along with a Harold Courlander anthology drawing on that earlier book.

So, here's the public domain book: From a Vanished German Colony: Folklore, Folktales and Proverbs from Southwest Africa by Odette St. Lys, published in 1916.

These stories date back to German colonization of South Africa, prior to the British colonization; you can read more about German colonialism in Africa at Wikipedia, and there is also a specific article about German South-West Africa, in what is now Namibia. And, yes, also the scene of the Herero and Namaqua genocide.

There is a wide variety of folktales and folklore in this book; here's a list of the stories with links to those pages at the Internet Archive edition of the book: The Story of Long Snake / The Lion and the Ostrich / A Nursery Tale / Another Version of a Nursery Tale / Ulusanana / Story of Little Red Stomach / Story of Five Heads / The Story of a Dam / The Romance of Unyengebule / News from Zululand / Ngangezwe and Mnyamana / The Bewitched King / Kgolodikane / Two Stories told by an Mkipeta Girl. / Usomamekutyo / Masilo and Masilonyane / Umshalishall and Umlomo'sibucu / Much Searching Disturbs Things / The Distribution of Animals / The Ox Which Returned to Life / The Story of Umkuywana / Children of Bafurutsi / Tradition of the Bayeye / Bushman Folk Lore / The Son of the Wind / The Wind / The Lost Sons of God / Rafotsibe and Ikotofetsy and Imahaka / Ikotofetsy and Imahaka / A True Story / The Lion and the Jackal: A Hottentot Story / The Fleeing Girls and the Rock.

And here's the Harold Courlander book: The Crest and the Hide, published in 1982:

It contains these stories: The First Bard Among the Soninke / A Chief Names His Heirs / The Crest and the Hide / The Chief of Agogo and the Chief of Mampo / The Wonderful Thing / Kirama and Kankejan / Kene Bourama, a Manding Hero / The Hunter and His Medicine Spear / Peki, the Musician / Ngunza, Who Outwitted Death / Too Much Searching / Famien Does Not Make a Man Clever / Liongo, a Hero of Shanga / Musa and Kojere / The Departure of the Giants / All Things Are Linked / The Great Snake of Wagadou / Moses and Ojje Ben Onogh / Journey to Asamando / Chief Khama and the Duiker.

The illustrations are by Monica Vachula, and they are really beautiful; each story has an illustration! Here are two examples:

The Tswana story "Too Much Searching" is the one that Courlander took from St. Lys's book.

I've written about MANY of Courlander's books at this blog previously (and I'll have even more of his books to cite when I move on to African American sources). You can see all the posts with this link: Courlander books.

I'll be back tomorrow with one last post in celebration of the public domain for the last day of November this year. Meanwhile, enjoy today's books!

From a Vanished German Colony:

Folklore, Folktales and Proverbs

from Southwest Africa

by Odette St. Lys

The Crest and the Hide

by Harold Courlander

Africa at the Internet Archive: Hendrik, Karel, Koos

There are still a few more days in November, so that means a few more days of posts here about public domain African folktale books at the Internet Archive, and what I wanted to focus on today is a genre of books from South Africa that have a lot in common with the "Uncle Remus" books published by Joel Chandler Harris in the United States: the stories of African people are put inside the framework of a white family, providing a paternalistic sentimental picture of the African storyteller and his white audience. 

Like the Harris books, these books provide valuable testimony about traditional African stories that were being told a hundred years ago, but the condescending framing of the stories can be hard to take. You can get a sense of the sentimentalizing of the colonial occupation here in the words of Sanni Metelerkamp in the introduction to his book: "scenes flit across the lighted screen of Memory, noontides of tropic heat with all the world sunk in a languorous slumber... And always, part and parcel of the passing panorama, the quaint figure of the old Native with his little masters."

In a word: ugh. But if you can strip away this colonial whitewashing, you will find echoes of the African storytellers even in books like these, just as in the Brer Rabbit stories recorded by Joel Chandler Harris in Georgia.

I'll start with the oldest: Old Hendrik's Tales by Arthur Owen Vaughan, published in 1904.

These links will take you to the specific stories at Internet Archive: Why Old Baboon has that Kink in his Tail. / Old Jackal and Young Baboon. / Why Old Jackal Danced the War-Dance. / How Old Jackal got the Pigs. / When Ou’ Wolf built his House. / Ou’ Wolf lays a Trap. / Ou’ Jackalse takes Ou’ Wolf a-Sheep Stealing. / When the Birds would choose a King which tells also why the white owl only flies by night. / Why Old Jackal slinks his Tail. / Why Little Hare has such a Short Tail. / The Bargain for the Little Silver Fishes. / Why the Tortoise has no Hair on. / Why the Ratel is so Keen on Honey.

Old Hendrik is a Khoekhoe storyteller, and this book uses some eye-dialect to try to convey Hendrik's style of English. He regrets that his audience can't speak his language ("taal" is Afrikaans for language), so he has no choice but to tell the stories in English: "If you little folks only knowed de Taal! It don't soun' de same in you' Englis' somehow."

This book has illustrations by the British artist James A. Shepherd who also did the illustrations for the British editions of Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus books: Uncle Remus in 1901 (just before this book) and Nights with Uncle Remus in 1907 (just after this book), all done in a very similar style. Compare, for example, jackal riding the wolf from that book's cover with the story of Brer Rabbit riding Brer Fox here:

Jackal is the main trickster in the book, although there are also stories about the trickster Rabbit too. Here is Shepherd's Rabbit from a South African story (feeding Tortoise from a calabash):

And here is his Rabbit from an American story (with Lion):

Lions are a natural part of the landscape of African storytelling, of course... but not in Georgia. My own interest in African folktales began with the African storytellers in the Americas and specifically how the African folktales were told and retold in the southern United States. When Shepherd was reading these stories and working on these illustrations, I wonder how much he thought about the enslavement of people from Africa and how the stories came from Africa to the Americas centuries ago!

The next book is Outa Karel's Stories: South African Folklore Tales by Sanni Metelerkamp.

As you can see, the sentimental focus of the book is the young white child listening to the stories, just as Joel Chandler Harris focused on the young white child who was Uncle Remus's audience in those books. Outa Karel, "Old Man Karel," is the storytelling equivalent here of Uncle Remus. You really have to wonder that the author did not stop, even just for a moment, to think about the first appearance of Outa Karel in the book: "he looked like nothing so much as an ancient and muscular gorilla in man's clothes, and walking uncertainly on its hind legs." That's really bad; worse than Harris...

So, like I said above: the framing of the stories in these books is really repugnant, and we're talking here about a book published just a century ago. But I'm here for the stories, so here are the story links for this book: How Jakhals Fed Oom Leeuw / Who was King? / Why the Hyena is Lame / Who was the Thief? / The Sun / The Stars and the Stars’ Road / Why the Hare’s Nose is Slit / How the Jackal got his Stripe / The Animals’ Dam / Saved by his Tail / The Flying Lion / Why the Heron has a Crooked Neck / The Little Red Tortoise / The Ostrich Hunt .

The illustrations for this book are by Constance Penstone. There aren't many illustrations, but they are a welcome addition to the book, both for her drawings of the animal characters and also the people:

The third book in this series is Koos, the Hottentot: Tales of the Veld by Josef Marais, a more recent book, published in 1945, but identified at Hathi as being in the public domain.

As you can see, these stories feature traditional characters from San and Khoekhoe mythology and folktales: Raincow and Baboon King / The Honeybird and the Mamba / The Queen Serpent of the Rivers / Windbird and the Sun / Echo and Mirage / Hammerhead and Bullfrog / Moon and the Rock Swallows / Porcupine and Dassie / Mantis, the Hottentot God / Dawn and Dusk.

This book is illustrated by Henry Stahlhut, including some color illustrations, like this one of Mantis and Porcupine:

In this book, there is no attempt at reproducing any kind of African speech or dialect, although some Khoekhoe words are included, as when Koos is talking to the sheep, but when he is telling stories, Koos speaks a very high-style English. There are a large number of Afrikaans words in the book too, with a detailed glossary and pronunciation guide in the back (the other books also contain glossaries of Afrikaans words). This book also includes music both in the stories, and with an appendix of songs in the back.

So, proceed with caution, but there is a lot to learn in these three books, both about African folktales, and also about the pervasive white supremacy of colonial culture in Africa too. (And consider this post a promise of many more posts to come about the legacy of Joel Chandler Harris in the United States too!)

Old Hendrik's Tales

by Arthur Owen Vaughan

Outa Karel's Stories:

South African Folklore Tales

by Sanni Metelerkamp

Koos, the Hottentot:

Tales of the Veld

by Josef Marais

African Folktales at Internet Archive: Week 28

I hope everybody is doing well as we near the end of this month of November! I carried on with this month's project of focusing on public domain resources and also more contemporary books inspired by those resources; you can see the books from this past week all listed below. This was Week 28 (!), and you can see all the round-ups from past weeks using these links month by month: May - June - July - August - September - October - November.

I also updated the spreadsheet of story links! There are now over 5000 links there in over 170 books, all leading to the Internet Archive: everything just a click away, thanks to the power of Controlled Digital Lending. More about the spreadsheet here.

And here are this week's books:

Congo Life and Folklore

by John Weeks

The Mighty Sparrow:

A Trickster Tale of the African Congo

by Edel Wignell

The Mythology of All Races: African

by Alice Werner

Myths and Legends of the Bantu

by Alice Werner

Natives of British Central Africa

by Alice Werner

African Wonder Tales

by Frances Carpenter

The Shilluk People, 

Their Language and Folklore

by Diedrich Westermann

Lord of the Four Quarters:

Myths of the Royal Father

by John Weir Perry

The Life of a South African Tribe

by Henri-Alexandre Junod

Trickster Tales:

Forty Folk Stories from Around the World

by Josepha Sherman

Africa at the Internet Archive: Spreadsheet

Each week on Friday, I'll update my progress on the story-linking project at the Internet Archive. To find out more about this project, see the first post: Starting the Spreadsheet. I'll also be using spreadsheet as a post label so that you'll be able to find all the spreadsheet posts together.

I reached my goal for this week, which was to have 5000 stories indexed and linked to the Internet Archive. You can access the list of stories and links here: African Folktales Spreadsheet. I also updated the overview with information about just which rows I added in the latest update.

As you can see there, I've indexed 174 books and articles, and there are still many more to come. 

Here are just a few of the books that got added in this latest update, each of which is just a click away at the Internet Archive, thanks to the power of Controlled Digital Lending! The links below go to the blog posts that I've written about these books previously:

Ijapa the Tortoise, and Other Nigerian Tales

by Harold Courlander and Ezekiel Eshugbayi

Animals Mourn for Da Leopard,

and Other West African Tales

by Peter Dorliae

Limba Stories and Storytelling

by Ruth Finnegan

Fourteen Hundred Cowries

and Other African Tales

by Abayomi Fuja

Tales from Southern Africa

by A. C. Jordan

Hausa Tales and Traditions

by Neil Skinner

The Lion on the Path

and Other African Stories

by Hugh Tracey

Africa at the Internet Archive: Life of a South African Tribe

I'm carrying on today with public domain books that have been re-cycled into more modern books, this time with a South African collection that plays a part in a trickster tale anthology, both of which are available at the Internet Archive, just a click away.

The public domain book is The Life of a South African Tribe by Henri-Alexandre Junod.

The folktales are contained in volume 2 of the book; here is a list of the story's titles linked to those pages at the Internet Archive: Hare: A. Grey Antelope / Hare: B. Great Lizard / Hare: C. Tortoise / Hare: D. King Lion / Hare: E. Lion Skin / Hare: F. In the Burrow / Hare: G. Grey Antelope Again / Hare: H. Thirsty Hare / The Hare and the Lion: A. The Mud / The Hare and the Lion: B. The Cubs / The Hare and the Lion: C. Antelope / The Hare and the Lion: D. King Hare / The Hare and the Lion: E. Hare and Hen / The Hare and the Baboon / The Hare's Hoe / The Disobedient Child and the Big Snake / The Ogre Scaly-heart / Zili / The Child That Was Carried Off by a Baboon / Those Who Only Laugh Once.

Junod was a Swiss-born missionary who spent several decades in South Africa around Limpopo, in the northern part of the country bordering on Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique. He arrived in Africa in 1889 at the age of 26, and returned to Switzerland in 1921, and during his retirement (he died in 1934), Junod published a series of books, a few of which, like this one, are available in English. You can find out more at Wikipedia.

As you can see, the cycle of "trickster hare" stories is an important part of Junod's book, and some of the material he collected inspired one of the stories in this modern anthology of trickster stories: Trickster Tales: Forty Folk Stories from Around the World by Josepha Sherman.

The collection opens with stories from Africa, and there are five different African tales drawing on a variety of sources (see notes in the back of the book for details). Here are the stories you'll find in Sherman's book: Why Anansi Owns Every Story, Hare and Tortoise, Glara Saves His Sons, Tortoise's Debt and Pig's Grunt, and Hlakanyana, plus stories about Anansi and Compere Lapin (Brer Rabbit) in the Americas section too!

The illustrations are by David Boston; here you can see Hare tying a hoe to Lizard's tail:

This is a wonderful book, and it is just one in a series of storytelling books from August House Publishers (one of my favorite publishers!), many of which you can find at Internet Archive; here's a search for August House. So many fun books to read and enjoy:

Sometimes people have a little more time for reading and relaxing around the holiday season, and if you are looking for books to read, you will find an unlimited supply awaiting you at the Internet Archive...

The Life of a South African Tribe

by Henri-Alexandre Junod

Trickster Tales:

Forty Folk Stories from Around the World

by Josepha Sherman