Africa at the Internet Archive: In the Shadow of the Bush

Finishing up another week of public domain African folktales at the Internet Archive, I chose a book that gives me an excuse to write about one of my favorite children's book authors and artists, Ashley Bryan. So, today's book is: In the Shadow of the Bush by P. Amaury Talbot, published in 1912; it contains folktales of the Ekoi people of Nigeria:

The Ekoi live in southeastern Nigeria, where Talbot was a British colonial admistrator from 1902 until 1931. You can find out more about the Ekoi people at Wikipedia, and here is a list of the Ekoi folktales in the book, linked to the specific pages of Talbot's book: How All Stories and All History Came Among Me / How the First Rain Came / How the Moon First Came Into the Sky / How All the Stars Came / How the Two Biggest Stars Came Into the Sky / How the Sun Came Into the Sky / How Sun and Moon Went Up to the Sky / Why the Sunset Is Sometimes Red and Stormy / How All the Rivers First Came on Earth / How the Lame Boy Brought Fire From Heaven / Oporopootop / How Palm Trees and Water Came on Earth / How Pythons Lost Hands and Feet / Why Snake Has Neither Hands Nor Feet / Why Lizard's Head Is Always Moving Up and Down / How the Tortoise Got the Cracks and Bumps on His Back / Why There Are No More Lions in the Bush / Why Bush Fowl Always Calls Up the Dawn / Why Frog and Snake Never Play Together / How the First Hippopotami Came / How Black and White Men Came on Earth / The Treasure House in the Bush / Why the Other Members Must Serve Belly / How Human Beings Got Knee-caps / Hair's Revenge.

The wonderful story about Why Frog and Snake Never Play Together provided the inspiration for one of Ashley Bryan's stories in this collection of African folktales which he retold and illustrated: Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum, just a click away at the Internet Archive.

Bryan takes the very brief version of the story reported in Talbot and elaborates on it with abundant detail, really bringing the friendship of the young frog and the young snake to life, as you can see by comparing the two versions. Plus, of course, the story has some of Bryan's wonderful and very distinctive artwork; here are the frog and the snake playing:

There are five stories in Bryan's book from a variety of sources, and the book makes for wonderful reading; highly recommended! You can find out more about Bryan and his work in this previous post:  The Dancing Granny.

Another book that I've written at this blog is Maria Leach's book of creation stories, and she also includes an Ekoi story there; here's the book, which you can find at Internet Archive: The Beginning: Creation Myths around the World. 

And the Ekoi story that she includes is "Obassi Osaw and Obassi Nsi" on p. 138:

You can compare her retelling with her source material in Talbot's book, which in addition to the folktales listed above contains a variety of legendary and mythological material throughout the book, including many references to these gods, as you can see from the search results:

Public domain books are ready and waiting for all kinds of reuse as Bryan and Leach have shown with their books. Maybe you too will be inspired by these stories from the Ekoi people of Nigeria:

In the Shadow of the Bush

by P. Amaury Talbot

Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum

by Ashley Bryan