Tricksters. Ring of Tricksters

Yesterday I shared Cronise and Ward's collection of stories from Sierra Leone told in pidgin, and I promised a literary version of some of the stories today... so here it is: Virginia Hamilton's Ring of Tricksters: Animal Tales from America, the West Indies, and Africa.

This book is obviously a great trickster resource in general, and I wrote a post about this book back in November. In this post, I want to focus on her "cunnie rabbit" story: Cunnie Rabbit and Sipder Make a Match.

I like the eerie way that the illustrator, Barry Moser, has depicted the tiny royal antelope in that illustration: he may be small, but you can tell he is powerful, and in the story, both "cunnie rabbit" and the spider will manifest supernatural abilities.

Here's the royal antelope wrestling the elephant... and the tiny antelope wins!

Hamilton has done a brilliant job of keeping the qualities of the African English while modifying it just a little to make it easier to read. Here's a comparison of a bit of Cronise's version with Hamilton's version:

Cronise: Elephan' take he long mout', he wrap Cunnie Rabbit, he wrap um 'trong.He fling um, turn, turn um, he hebe um up, so he jam to de sky.

Hamilton: Elephant has his long snout out straight. He wraps Cunnie Rabbit in it and flings him. He turns, turns, turns him and lifts him up, way up. He jams Cunnie Rabbit to the sky!

So, if you find Cronise hard to read, enjoy Hamilton's story here, along with all the other stories in this book!

Ring of Tricksters:

Animal Tales from America,

the West Indies, and Africa

by Virginia Hamilton