ABC 29: The Hunterman and the Crocodile

And it's here already: we're moving on to the second book of the December Calendar for Anansi Book Club, and you can also see all the Book Club posts so far this year (and additional information also about previous months). I am super-excited about this week's book because it is by one of my favorite children's authors... and it is based on one of my favorite folktale types! So, I hope you will all enjoy The Hunterman and the Crocodile told and illustrated by Baba Wagué Diakité.

I will have lots (LOTS) to say about the story in this book, but the illustrations also absolutely beautiful. Even just the dedication page is a work of art:

In addition to the scan you can find at the Internet Archive, you can also find the book at the International Children's Digital Library which is where the Archive's copy comes from. 

Either way: just a click away!

I'm always grateful when authors include notes or commentary on their story, and you will find a very helpful note in the back of this book (click on the image for a larger view):

As Diakité explains here, you can find many versions of this story around the world, as it has spread from India all over the world. It is especially popular in Africa, and many of those African versions then became part of storytelling traditions in the Americas. I am pleased to report that all three of the parallel versions that Diakité cites are available at the Internet Archive: Brer Possum's Dilemma by the remarkable African American storyteller Jackie Torrence, a version from India called The Brahman, the Tiger, and the Six Judges, and a Korean version called The Rabbit's Judgment. I'll be back tomorrow with some comments about the distinctive features of Diakité's version, especially the ending.

But first, a comment about how the story gets started: in most folktales of this type, the story begins with someone who has gotten stuck in a trap. In this story, however, the crocodile gets into trouble, along with all his family, when they go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. How charming is that! Here are the crocodiles on their pilgrimage to Mecca. (Side note: The nation of Mali is composed of many different ethnic groups, but it is a predominantly Muslim country. You can find out more about Mali at Wikipedia.)

But the crocodiles get into trouble when they get too far from water, and so they must ask the hunterman to return them to the water. The hunterman obliges, but then the crocodile says he is going to eat the hunterman. The hunterman protests, so they take their case to a series of judges: cow, horse, chicken, and mango tree have no sympathy for the hunterman because of how other humans have treated them, but then they go to the rabbit, the fifth judge, who manages to trick the crocodile. 

In some versions of this story told in Africa, there are no judges, and the story just focuses on the trickster. I prefer the versions with judges, which is why I especially like Diakité's version! One of my favorite versions from India has six judges: banyan tree, camel, bullock, eagle, and finally jackal, the sixth judge who, like rabbit, is a trickster. You can see read that Indian version of the story, "The Brahmin and the Tiger," in Georgene Faulkner's The White Elephant, and Other Tales from India. 

With today's update, we get to the most exciting part of Diakité's version of this story: the ending! I've never seen anything quite like this. Normally the story just ends with the ungrateful creature put back where things began: the tiger back in the trap, the snake back under the rock, etc. But in Diakité's version, there is a different kind of ending: the hunterman comes home to find out that his wife is deathly ill, and only the tears of the crocodile will save her. The hunterman weeps in sorrow, and then he releases the crocodiles, who weep from joy at being freed, which gives the hunterman a way to save his wife. So it is happily ever after for everyone, and the hunterman even learned a lesson from the judges who decided in favor of the crocodile: humans need to do better. Here is the hunterman gathering the tears:

The "crocodile's tears" are an English cliche about hypocrisy, where the crocodiles supposedly weep for their victims as they devour them; the cliche even has a Wikipedia article of its own. Here, the crocodile tears are instead a kind of magical talisman. In other African folktales, the tooth of the crocodile is the desired object, or the tears of the deer; in the "trickster seeks endowments" type of story, for example, the trickster must obtain the tooth of a crocodile and the tears of a deer in order to achieve his goal. Now I'll keep an eye out for references to "crocodile tears" to see if I see that particular combination in another African folktale, or whether this is instead just an elegant feature of Diakité's own version of this story.

For this week's post, I focused on the details of the story because what Diakité has done with this narrative is so distinctive and exciting! What the book has been honored for, however, is the artwork; among other awards, it received Coretta Scott King Honors for the illustrations, and you can see that honor seal on the book cover. Diakite has illustrated children's books and he also is an artist working in a a variety of different media; you can find out more in the Gallery at his website. 

One of my favorite pieces is this one that I found at a webpage from the U.S. Department of State honoring artists whose work can be seen in U.S. embassies around the world; the work is called: Hold Onto My Back.

You can find out more about Diakité and his work in an earlier blog post for the book club when we read this book: The Hatseller and the Monkeys. If you enjoyed the story of the hunterman, you should definitely read the story of the hatseller too, where there are also beautiful illustrations to enjoy!

The Hunterman and the Crocodile

by Baba Wagué Diakité