ABC 2: The Miracle Child: A Story from Ethiopia

The second book we're reading for Anansi Book Club is The Miracle Child: A Story from Ethiopia by Elizabeth Laird and Abba Aregawi Wolde Gabriel, with illustrations from an 18th-century Ethiopian manuscript. We'll be reading this book from May 8 - May 14, and I'll try to update this post each day with new information along with comments that come up in the Twitter discussion. Be sure to use the hashtag #AnansiBookClub when you tweet! (Here are all the books for May.)

The Internet Archive has 3 copies of the book available, so if one is checked out, you can borrow another one.

This book is about the Ethiopian saint Tekle, and you can find out more about Saint Tekle at Wikipedia. Like the lives of holy people in any religious tradition, the stories here are a mixture of history and popular legend, and the Wikipedia article is helpful if you want to know about the more strictly historical accounts of Saint Tekle. The story of Tekle as a "miracle child" does not appear in Wikipedia, but it is at the heart of this book.

The beautiful illustrations are from an 18th-century Ethiopian manuscript held in a collection in London. The book contains helpful notes accompanying the images, identifying the characters and other important details you need to "read" the image, as here (click on the image for a larger view): The child and his mother appear twice in this picture. First, the little boy fills the baskets with flour. Then his mother, her tears dried, runs to bring him the oil pots. A guardian angel watches from above.

Here's another one: Saga Zaab sits in the covered chair of a great man while his son sits on the ground in front of him. Ethiopian children still learn the Bible in this way, resting their book or manuscript on a special wooden stand like this one. The pupil reads aloud from the book, and the teacher corrects him.

There are many storytelling parallels between the legends of this Ethiopian saint and saints' legends from western Christian traditions. For example, Saint Tekle confronted a dragon, cut it in half, and when he did so, Satan was terrified and fled. You can see that Saint Tekle is shown here with wings; for more about the iconography of his wings, see Wikipedia. (The book also contains a story about how Saint Tekle's wings saved his life!)

So, this is a wonderful book both for learning about Ethiopian Christian storytelling both in words and also in images. 

I'll be updating his post with more information each day this week, and I hope you will want to read the book, jump in, and share your thoughts at Twitter!

The Miracle Child: A Story from Ethiopia

by Elizabeth Laird and Abba Aregawi Wolde Gabriel 

UPDATES

The Life of Takla Haymanot. If you are interested in reading an actual translation of the story of the saint's life, this book by E. A. Wallis Budge is a great resource: The Life of Takla Haymanot in the version of Dabra Libanos and the Miracles of Takla Haymanot in the version of Dabra Libanos and the Book of the Riches of Kings. You will find here the manuscript with the same illustrations as in The Miracle Child, together with an English translation of the Ethiopian text. And at over 500 pages long, you know it covers much more detail than in this children's book version! For example, here is the illustration for the story of how Matalome tried to burn the saint to death, but he stood in the fire unharmed:

And you can use the thumbnail view at Internet Archive to quickly navigate by means of the images, many of which you will recognize from this week's book!

For example, one of my favorite miracle is the one where a donkey and a mule go to their owner and tell him he needs to seek help from the saint to cure his diseased hand. Here's the picture and brief story from The Miracle Child:

And here's the story in Budge's translation, with the illustration and Ethiopian text:

THE MIRACLE OF THE CATTLE WHICH SPAKE. There was another man and he had a disease in his hand, and his cattle said unto him, "Go thou to our father Takla Haymanot, and thou shalt be made whole." Now these beasts which have no understanding, and the mouths of which are moved by muzzle and bridle, had knowledge of the miracles of our father Takla Haymanot, and by means of these creatures which have no understanding God gave understanding to that man, and what they had said came to pass.

E. Wallis Budge. The The Life of Takla Haymanot discussed above was translated by E. Wallis Budge, who for many years worked for the British Museum, primarily as an Egyptologist (find out more at Wikipedia), but he also had an abiding interest in the ancient traditions of Ethiopia. In addigiont to The Life of Takla Haymanot, he was the first person to translate the Kebra Nagast into English, and he also translated the Ethiopian version of the Life and Exploits of Alexander, a collection of fascinating legends about Alexander the Great, and the Ethiopian version of Baralam and Yewasef, a Christian adaption of the life of Gautama Buddha!

Kebra Nagast: The Ethiopian Epic of the

Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek

Ethiopian version of the 

Life and Exploits of Alexander

Ethiopian version of Baralam and Yewasef

British Library ms. There is a manuscript at the British Library, fully digitized and online, which is also has illustrations for Saint Takla's story. You can find that manuscript online here: Act of St. Takla Haymanot, dated to the early 18th century. There is also a helpful list of pages that contain the illustrations:  5r, 5v, 14v, 27r, 27v, 31v, 32r, 41v, 51v, 59v, 60r, 67v, 74v, 81v, 91v, 93r, 93v, 97v, 106r, 106v, 109v, 110r, 116v, 117r, 117v, 130r, 130v, 136r, 136v, 152r, 152v, 160r, 160v, 166v, 167r, 167v, 174r, 174v, 175r, 175v, 181v, 182r, 182v, 183r, 183v, 200v, 201r, 201v, 202r, 202v. For example, here is casting out of a demon on 130v.

And here is the saint with his famous wings, surviving the demon's attack, on 182r.

Elizabeth Laird. One of the authors of this book, Elizabeth Laird, has spent many decades both traveling in Ethiopia and studying their storytelling cultures. The Internet Archive has some of her other books, and I've blogged about her here: Elizabeth Laird blog posts. Here are the books:

When the World Began:

Stories Collected in Ethiopia

The Lure of the Honey Bird:

The Storytellers of Ethiopia

The Ogress and the Snake

and Other Stories from Somalia

Even better, she is also the creator of this astounding website, with hundreds of folktales collected from the different regions of Ethiopia: Ethiopian Folktales. The stories are available in both English and Amharic.

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