Tricksters. Igbo and Edo

Carrying on with this week's ttrickster Tortoise stories, I am pleased to be able to share some stories from Igbo and Edo storytellers in the original language along with English translations by anthropologist Northcote Thomas; you can read more about Thomas's life and career at Wikipedia. You can even listen to some of Thomas's recordings at this web presentation: Re:Entanglements. Screenshot; the embedded video at their website looks like this:

The first collection from Northcote Thomas is his book Ibo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria which contains these Tortoise stories in both Ibo and English: Tortoise and His Children, Tortoise Becomes King, Tortoise Becomes King, Tortoise and the Blind Man, Tortoise and Hornbill, Tortoise and His Father-in-law, Tortoise and Bush Cat, Tortoise and the Blind Man, Tortoise and Daughters, Tortoise and Elephant, Spider and Tortoise, and Bush Buck and Frog. Thomas's translation is interlinear, so you can see the meaning word by word:

The second collection from Northcote Thomas is his book Edo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria which contains these Tortoise stories in both Ibo and English: The Three Boys and the Tortoise, Dog and Tortoise, Tortoise and Snail, King and Tortoise, Tortoise and Omemamoni, The Tortoise and the Eggs, Snail and Tortoise, and  Man and Wife.

As you can see, this is a very different sort of reading than the usual English-language collection of stories. It's one way to try to get a sense of just how much editing goes on when you are reading the English "version" of a Tortoise story!

Ibo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria

by Northcote Thomas

Edo-speaking Peoples of Nigeria

by Northcote Thomas