Tricksters. Royal Antelope and Spider

I promised African tricksters this week, and I've decided to focus on one of the tiniest and the most elusive because not many stories are recorded in English about this little trickster: the so-called "royal antelope" of western Africa, Neotragus pygmaeus, who is the smallest antelope in the world, just 10 inches high at the shoulder and weighing around 6 pounds. Here's a photo from Wikimedia:

And to get a sense of scale, here's a photo from Schwab's Tribes of the Liberian Hinterland, a book I'll be writing about later this week... and seeing this photo, you might guess how this animal got the name "cunnie rabbit" in Liberian pidgin (I'll have more to say about "cunnie rabbit" later this week):

There are actually a variety of these tiny antelope species in Africa, and also in Southeast Asia... and here's what's intriguing: the tiny mouse-deer is also a trickster in Southeast Asia, so I'll have more to say about that next week. For this week, the tiny trickster antelope of Africa will be the focus.

I'll start with a book I've written about before: Royal Antelope and Spider: West African Mende Tales by Marion Kilson.

When I wrote about that book before, I was focusing on the Anansi tales, whereas this time I'm sharing the book for its incredibly important contribution to our knowledge of royal antelope trickster stories. You can read about the Mende people, who live mostly in Sierra Leone, at Wikipedia; Kilson collected these stories in Sierra Leone in 1959 and 1960. She then returned to Sierra Leone in 1976 and did additional field work at that time. This book is the product of the work she did on those two stays. Later this week, I'll have a much older book from Sierra Leone which also features stories about the tiny antelope trickster.

As always, the Internet Archive edition of the book is super-useful because you can page through the book just looking at mentions of "antelope" by using the search feature set to antelope (click on the image for a larger view):

You can also search for "hagbe" which is the Mende name for the royal antelope; Kilson provides each story in Mende along with the English translation: search for hagbe.

Many of these stories involve both Spider and Royal Antelope together, which is even more fun. 

So, Kilson's book is absolutely invaluable; I will have some other royal antelope stories to share all this week, but her book is the single most important resource for documenting the adventures of this tiny African trickster, and I am so glad there is a copy at the Internet Archive! YAY ARCHIVE.ORG!

Royal Antelope and Spider:
West African Mende Tales

by Marion Kilson