Africa at the Internet Archive: Ila-Speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia

For today's public-domain book, I want to highlight some of the amazing full-text search features that you can use to explore the Internet Archive. The book is The Ila-Speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia by Edwin Smith and Andrew Murray Dale, published in 1920. It's in two volumes, and the folktales (60 folktales!) are in volume 2, just a click away at the Internet Archive (along with volume 1):

This book is an anthropological study, like the collection of Ndau folktales that I wrote about earlier this week. You can read more about the Ila people of Zambia and about the Ila language (a Bantu language) at Wikipedia.

This collection of folktales is especially exciting for me because most of them involve animals, and there is a long cycle of stories about the trickster rabbit (hare). There are also some useful comparative notes by the authors, along with a chapter of riddles and proverbs. This is a list of all the story titles, with links to the specific page for each story at the Internet Archive: How the Mason-Wasp Fetched Fire from God / The Blue-Jay who Married the Daughter of God / How God First Gave Men Grain and Fruits / Why Men Became Baboons / The Origin of Murder / How the Ringdove Came by Its Ring / How Ringdove Got Her Name / How Honey-Guide Came to Have Authority over Honey / Why Honey-Guide Betrays the Bees to People / How Squirrel Robbed Coney of his Tail / How Squirrel and Jackal Became Distant / How Skunk Came to be a Helper of Men / Why Duiker has a Fine Coat / How Elephant Lost his Clothing / Why the Elephant is Distinct from the Wart-Hog / Why the Wart-Hog Lives in a Burrow / Why Bushbuck Came to Have a Red Coat / Why Jackals Do not Got in Herds / Why Zebra Has no Horns / Why Leopard and Cheetah Became Distinct / Tortoise and Fish-Eagle Deceived Each Other / Why Rhinoceros and Hippopotamus Became Distinct / Why the Cracks in Tortoise's Shell / Why Hornbill Has Such a Big Beak / Why Hare Had His Destiny Foretold by Tortoise / Hippopotamus and Rhinoceros in a Tug-of-War / Hare Deceives Lion and Burns Him to Death / Hare Plays a Trick upon the Dragon / Hare Makes Himself Horns of Beeswax / Hare Plays a Trick on Ground Hornbill / Hare Scares Hyena / Hare Causes Lion to be Stung to Death by Bees / Hyena Wants to Wear a Lion Skin / How Hare and Crocodile Helped Each Other / Hare Kills Many Lions / Hare Deceives Jackal Three Times / Hare Breaks All Lion's Teeth and so Kills Him / Hare Eats Lion's Children / Hare is Outwitted by Mrs. Tortoise / How Hare Deceives the Animals / How Hare Made a Fool of Himself / Hare's Last Adventures and Death / The Man who Called Lions to his Aid / Kantanga and the Lions / The Woman who Married a Fish / The Little Old Woman who Changed into a Maiden / The Little Old Woman who Killed a Child / The Foolish Woman who Killed her CHild / The Fool that Hunted for his Axe / The Fool who Chopped Himself / The Fool who Lay Down and Slept in the Road / The Fools who Started Mourning / The Fools who Waited for Ground-Nuts to Fall / How Two Men Had a Dispute / The Scold who Split her Mouth / The Man and the Mushrooms / The Bogle and his Child / Tales of an Expectant Mother's Fantasies / A Man and his Mother / The Child who Wanted to Sleep in the Middle.

Since this is such an important collection of folktales, it has been widely cited in many books and articles over the past 100 years. That means, thanks to the power of full-text search at the Internet Archive, you can find all the books and articles in their collections which reference this book. Here's how that works: search results for book title search. Make sure you select "text contents" for the full text search. over 800 results!

Then, you can narrow the search even more by adding additional search terms. For my purposes, adding the word "folktales" helps narrow the search: book title - folktales. That brings it down to a more manageable 190 results, almost all of which are bound to be of interest to me in some way or other.

For example, the top search result there is a fantastic new discovery for me: Foundations in Southern African Oral Literature, edited by Russell H. Kaschula. The Internet Archive only has volume 2, so I'm feeling extra lucky: volume 2 is the one devoted to oral literature, while volume 1 is devoted to linguistics. I'm especially excited because there is a whole section of the book, almost 100 pages, devoted to the study of African riddles. (Yes, along with folktales and proverbs, the related folk genre of riddles is of huge interest to me!)

Then, further on down these search results, I  found this massive book, a compendium of the gods of the world: Guide to the Gods by Marjorie Leach.

A humongous book like this, 1000 pages long, is not very useful as a physical book, but it is incredibly useful as a digital book because I can search on a term inside this book, like Africa. Look at all the African gods and goddesses! Since this book is primarily a bibliographical reference tool, all these entries for gods and goddesses lead me to more books and articles, and you can browse through the search results page by page using the search-results navigation; it basically lets me create a customized "African gods and goddesses" version of this big book:

I could spend all day every day at the Internet Archive just following the search trail that leads from one book to another to another to another. It's a treasure: THANK YOU, Internet Archive, for making the knowledge of the world accessible to us with these great digital resources.

The Ila-Speaking Peoples

of Northern Rhodesia

by Edwin Smith

and Andrew Murray Dale

Foundations in Southern African

Oral Literature

edited by Russell H. Kaschula