ABC 33. Mee-An and the Magic Serpent

Here we are in the middle of January, so it's time for our third book this month! You can see the January Calendar at the website, and you can also see all the Book Club posts from 2022 here at the blog (and additional information at the website about previous months).

This week's book is by one of my favorite book authors and illustrators, and he will be familiar to you who've been following along: Baba Wagué Diakité! This time we're reading his book Mee-An and the Magic Serpent (and if you want to look at some other books by Diakité here at the blog, here are links: The Hatseller and the Monkeys and The Hunterman and the Crocodile).

This story about two sisters is an example of one of the most famous African folktale types: the suspect suitor! I don't want to give away too many details just yet, but as we work through the book I will have some great parallel stories to share.

Meanwhile, one of the best things about this book is that it has some bits of Bambara, one of the languages of Mali, scattered throughout. There are two songs that are important to the story, and the book opens with this lovely graphic and a proverb to go with it that sets the mood for the story's theme: If you say you are beautiful at night, when daylight comes, you will be seen.

As you can see from the diacritical markings, Bambara is a tonal language, as so many African languages are. You can find out more at Wikipedia: Bambara Language.

To get started though, I encourage you to luxuriate in Diakité's artwork, which is simply GORGEOUS and full of details that tie in to the story's events and characters. For example, in the picture here on the cover, look at the design on the dress: I'll tell you know that it's a motif that will appear again in the story!

I would actually have titled this story "Mee-An and Her Magic Sister" because one of the main characters in the book is the sister who is able to change herself into a fly... isn't that cool? You can see the transformation on this page:

And then on the next page it's a kind of "Where's Waldo?" where you have to look closely at the image to find the fly buzzing around in the marketplace, helping her sister to look for a suitable suitor.

The suitor that Mee-An demands must have no blemishes of any kind: none, no marks, no scars, no blemishes, no pimples, nothing. As you can imagine, no man fits the bill, so a magical snake decides he will morph into the man Mee-An wants. A really cool detail is that the snake overhears about all of this while he is resting inside a termite mound, listening to shepherds talking. I love the idea of the snake lurking in the termite mound! Here's that illustration: see the snake?!

You can read more about amazing termite mounds at Wikipedia. 

As promised, a story about blemish-less suitors: The Leopard of the Fine Skin. This story comes from a Mpongwe storyteller at Libreville, in what is now Gabon; the English translation is by Robert Nassau in his book Where Animals Talk: West African Folklore Tales. The woman in this story does not have a sister to help her, but she does have......... a magical horse! It's a great story; you can read it online.

An important part of the story consists of the songs, which are presented with the Bambara lyrics (about Bambara, see above) and English translation. My favorite is the way the sisters learn about the husband's true identity from a song that he sings in his snake form when he gets into the river to catch fish:

I like to fish for Mee-An,

For Mee-An and her sister,

To fatten them up

So they can make a delicious meal.

And just look at the great details in the picture: do you see the clothes and sack hanging on the tree branch? Those are the serpent's clothes when he is in his unblemished-human form, and the sack belongs to the man too, as you can see in the preceding picture. The snake can magically change form, but he still needs to come up with human clothes to wear, and to put them somewhere when he goes fishing in his snake form!

Like so many African folktales, this one provides aetiologies for the "why" of how things are. I don't want to give away all the details, but one of the things the story explains is why herons feel like they have the right to ride on the backs of animals! here is an illustration from the story:

And here is a photograph of an actual heron on a buffalo's back (Joegoauk Goa at Flickr):

So, I hope you have enjoyed this wonderful version of the story of "the unblemished suitor" by Baba Wagué Diakité, plus all the great art, and you can learn more about the artist and his work at his website (be sure to check out the gallery!) here: Baba Wagué Diakité ... artist, author, illustrator, storyteller.

Mee-An and the Magic Serpent 

by Baba Wagué Diakité