Tricksters. African, Asian, Hispanic Plays.

Since I'll be out of town for the next two weeks, I wanted to finish up this week of Nasruddin resources with something that opens back up into the big world of trickster tales: three books of folktale scripts by Barbara Winther. There is a Nasruddin play, Listen to the Hodja, in this book: Plays from Folktales of Africa and Asia.

In addition to the Nasruddin play, you can find some other great trickster plays in this collection: Anansi the African Spider, Ijapa the Tortoise, Abu Nawas, and Little Mouse-Deer. There are other plays in the book too, of course, but you know I'm just on the lookout for tricksters these days!

The African plays in this book actually come from another book by Winther devoted to African folktales with more trickster stories: Plays from African Tales. So, if you are looking for the African rabbit, you will find him here: Trickster Hare's Feast. The rabbit is also the trickster hero of this play: The Great Tug of War. There's even a play about the San trickster: Mantis the Dreamer.

And.... there's more! Winther also wrote a book of Hispanic plays, and you will find trickster plays here too: Plays from Hispanic Tales. There are two rabbit plays: The Great Hurricane and Brother Rabbit Sells Corn. There is even a play about the trickster Pedro de Urdemalas.

Barbara Winther [1926-2018] began writing folktale plays when she was working as a teacher in California and could not find any folktale scripts to perform with her students. These are "royalty-free" scripts which means they can be performed without paying royalties. The books are still copyrighted, but you can borrow them at the Internet Archive, thanks to the power of Controlled Digital Lending!

So, I'll be back with more trickster books when I get back home; meanwhile, you can browse the past trickster resource blog posts. There are over a 100 posts so far... and lots more to come!

Plays from Folktales of Africa and Asia

by Barbara Winther

Plays from African Tales

by Barbara Winther

Plays from Hispanic Tales

by Barbara Winther

Tricksters. Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin

Next up in this week of Nasruddin stories is one of my favorite collections of Nasruddin stories: The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin : Stories, Jests, and Donkey Tales of the Beloved Persian Folk Hero by Ron Suresha.

I was so excited when I saw this book had been digitized by the Archive; it came online here just a few months ago! And look: it's a signed copy! (It's always fun to see traces from the outside world inscribed in Internet Archive books.)

A distinctive feature of Suresha's book is that he organizes the stories along a kind of chronology for Nasruddin's lifetime. As you've seen from previous posts, Nasruddin takes on different identities and plays different roles in different stories, and by arranging the stories "biographically" this way, Suresha provides a really nice vantage point from which to see those different identities side by side.

Meanwhile, don't forget that you can also use the search features at the Archive to search the contents of the book, so if you want to find all the donkey stories, regardless of Nasruddin's personal timeline, just do a search for donkey: so many results!

I'll be back with one more Nasruddin book to finish up this week before I leave for 2 weeks' vacation... meanwhile, enjoy the life of Nasruddin told in the stories here:

The Uncommon Sense of
the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin
by Ron Suresha

Tricksters. Fables from the Islamic World

Carrying on with this week of Nasruddin stories, here is a beautiful collection from Barefoot Books by Shahrukh Husain: The Wise Fool: Fables from the Islamic World.

As she explains in the introduction, Husain heard Nasruddin stories everywhere in Pakistan and India growing up, and she has created a lovely tribute to that tradition with this book.

The gorgeous artwork is by Micha Archer. Here is Nasruddin and his dear donkey:

And just look at this two-page spread: wow!

You can find lots more Barefoot Books at the Internet Archive; they are always such a pleasure to read. Enjoy!

The Wise Fool: Fables from the Islamic World

by Shahrukh Husain

Tricksters. Goha the Wise Fool

Carrying on with Goha today (see the Arab Folktales from yesterday), I have a lovely little book of Goha stories to share: Goha the Wise Fool by Denys Johnson-Davies.

You will find 15 stories from the Arabic tradition here, and Denys Johnson-Davies was himself one of the most famous translators of Arabic literature into English. You can read more about his life and career at Wikipedia. I was delighted to see that Goha was among his interests!

But what makes this book really amazing is that artwork... which comes in the form of needlework! The needlework artists are the "Fattouh Sons," Hag Hamdy and Hany, who have their shop in the Street of the Testmakers in Cairo's old Islamic quarter. You can read more about them in the book, which includes this photo:

So, just look at how lovely the art is! On the title page you can see the famous story of father-son-and-donkey, where Goha cannot decide just who should ride and who should walk.

Here is the illustration for one of my favorites about Goha, his wife, and the cat. See the cat? On the scales? Such a funny story!

I was delighted to find this book at the Internet Archive and I immediately ordered a copy to add to my Nasruddin book collection. Not because of the stories, but because of this beautiful folk art!

Goha the Wise Fool

by Denys Johnson-Davies

Tricksters. Arab Folktales

For this week of Nasruddin stories, I want to make sure to emphasize some of the storytelling traditions affiliated with Nasruddin in different cultures, and this beautiful book is a great place to start: Arab Folktales by Inea Bushnaq.

The stories in this book come from all over the Arab world, and they are organized thematically, including a whole section of "Famous Fools and Rascals" which features Djuha stories from Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, and Iraq; Djeha stories from Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya; Ben Sikran stories from Algeria; Abu Nawas stories from Tunisia, Syria, and Iraq; and Bahlul stories from Iraq, Palestine, and Morocco.

The Nasruddin storytelling tradition coalesced with these other traditions over the past thousand years, so you will find some familiar stories from the Nasruddin corpus here, plus some new stories too, I'm sure! 

And of course there are hundreds more wonderful stories in this big book (almost 400 pages) to enjoy.

Arab Folktales

by Inea Bushnaq

Tricksters. Hoja Tales from Turkey

Starting up a new week of posts (before I take a Spring Break... in the Bay area!), I thought I would return to Nasruddin, who, like last week's Cree trickster, goes by different names in different traditions. He is famous through Turkey, throughout the Arab world (and thus also in Sicily), and in India. Today's book is by a writer from India now based in Canada, Rina Singh, who refers to Nasrudin by his honorific title, the Hoja: Nearly Nonsense: Hoja Tales from Turkey.

You will find ten stories here, and they are told in an elaborate, detailed style, unlike the Nasruddin stories that are told more as quick jokes. As Singh explains in the introduction, the Hoja may seem foolish or comical, "but there is a hidden wisdom to each that Sufis (Muslim mystics) use to illustrate their teachings. Although the stories may have changed with time, Hoja has remained constant the endearing fool, an impossible trickster, and a beloved character of Turkish folktales."

The illustrations are by Farida Zaman; here's the illustration for one of my favorite Nasruddin stories, The Sermon:

So, enjoy, and I'll be back with more Nasruddin stories every day this week. :-)

Nearly Nonsense: Hoja Tales from Turkey

by Rina Singh

Tricksters. Wisahketchahk spreadsheet

To finish up this week of Wisahketchahk stories, I don't have a book... I have a spreadsheet, which is FULL of books and articles from the Internet Archive, featuring 175 different Wisahketchahk stories. Here is a link to the spreadsheet:

This was part of a presentation for Maskwacis Cultural College; you can see the presentation here in the form of a Padlet: Writing with Wisahketchahk: Trickster Tales and Creative Writing Prompts.

Using the search tools at the Internet Archive to find all these stories was an amazing experience! This character's name is spelled in different ways in English, so searched diligently for all the different spellings, and I found so many stories, most of them from Cree storytellers, which made it even more exciting. 

As readers of this blog may know, oral arguments in the publishers' lawsuit against the Internet Archive will be heard on Monday, March 20. The proceedings are not being livestreamed, but you there will be a live-Zoom-commentary with Michelle Wu and Kyle Courtney: register for the link.

Tricksters. 3 Wesakaychak stories

One of the treasures that I found while looking for Wesakaychak stories at the Internet Archive was this series of 3 books in Cree and English, each with a different story about Wesakaychak, and illustrated by the students at St. Andrew's School on the James Bay coast in Kashechewan, Ontario.

Wesakaychak and the Wolves

Wesakaychak and the Beaver

Wesakaychak and the Wild Geese

Tricksters. Cree Trickster Tales.

I have a wonderful addition to this week of Wesakachak stories: these are the stories told by Chief Thunderchild in the 1920s to Edward Ahenakew, which Ahenakew published in the Journal of American Folklore in 1929: Cree Trickster Tales. 

This is a remarkable collection of stories, and it covers a wide range of the Wesakachak cycle, beginning with his birth and the drama of his mother, the rolling head, and ends with his departure from this world into some place unknown. 

You can read more about the life of Chief Thunderchild, Peyasiw-Awasis, at The Canadian Encyclopedia Online. This photo was taken around 1925; Thunderchild was born in 1849 and died in 1927.

There is an article about Ahenakew at Wikipedia, whose grandfather was the brother of Chief Ahtahkakoop, making Ahenakew Chief Ahtahkakoop's great-nephew.

After Edward Ahenakew's death in 1961, papers were found with the other stories he heard from Chief Thunderchild, and these were finally published in 1973. That book is also at the Internet Archive! They are beautiful resources for learning about Chief Thunderchild and the world that he knew: Voices of the Plains Cree.

Norman. Trickster and the Fainting Birds

Carrying on with this week of Wesakachak stories, I have a lovely book by Howard Norman (he also wrote a Glooskap book that I posted about previously). You'll find seven Wesakachak stories here: Trickster and the Fainting Birds.

The stories are: Trickster and the Best Hermit, Trickster and the Shut-Eye Dancers, Trickster Tells Whiskey Jack the Truth, Trickster and the Walking Contest, Trickster and the Clacking Sleeves, Trickster and the Night-Tailed Weasels, and Trickster and the Fainting Birds.

Norman gathered these stories from Cree storytellers starting back in the 1970s, stories about Wistchahik, Wesucechak, Wichikapache, etc. the specific name being based on the Cree community where the storyteller was from. In this book, he has just used "Trickster" as the name for the hero of the stories. Be sure to read the introduction where Norman explains how he worked with Cree storyteller Albert Sandy, learning about the ways of Wistchahik, and there are also story notes in the back.

The lovely illustrations are by Tom Pohrt. Here is Trickster in his fish-head-and-bones coat in the story of Trickster and the Clacking Sleeves:

You can find out more about Howard Norman and his work at Wikipedia, and there are more of his books at the Internet Archive, all just a click away! 

Trickster and the Fainting Birds

by Howard Norman

Tricksters. Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island

As Frank Speck's use of Latin (!) in yesterday's collection of Cree stories, he was writing very much as an outsider, and censoring what he found. I wanted to share something very different for today's addition to the week of Wisahkecahk stories; this time it's a wonderful collection of stories by Indigenous writers: Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island, edited by Sophie McCall, ‎Deanna Reder, and  ‎David Gaertner. 

Three items in this book work with Wisahkecahk traditions: An Athabasca Story by Warren Cariou is a short story about "Elder Brother," which is one of the mames by which Wisahkecahk is known.

There is also an excerpt from Darkness Calls by Steven Keewatin, a graphic novel!

Finally, there is an excerpt from The Kiss of the Fur Queen by Tomson Highway. 

Plus, if you like Tomson Highway's work, you can read that entire novel at the Internet Archive too: Kiss of the Fur Queen; you can also find more by Tomson Highway at the Archive, and you can find out more about Tomson Highway at Wikipedia. 

So now that we've had one very old account of Wisahkecahk and this more modern book, I'll be back with more Wisahkecahk stories tomorrow.

Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island

by Sophie McCall, ‎Deanna Reder, and  ‎David Gaertner

Tricksters. Myths and Folklore of the Timiskaming Algonquin

This week of trickster resources at the Internet Archive is going to be dedicated to Wisakedjak, the trickster hero of the Cree and other Algonquin peoples. I'll start with an old book by Frank Speck: Myths and Folklore of the Timiskaming Algonquin and Timagami Ojibwa.

This book was published in 1915, and it features a cycle of Wisakedjak stories told by Benjamin Mackenzie of Timiskaming Band in 1913. Speck published only the English translations, but he retains the distinctive features of the storyteller's style, such as the way he ends the stories as if he were a spectator at the events of the story: "So I had some travelling to do and I left Wisakedjak there, and I don't know where he went."

There are six Wiskedjak stories here: Wiskedjak Pursues the Beaver, Wiskedjak Kills the Bear and Gets his Head Fastened in the Skull, Wiskedjak Invites the Ducks to a Dance. Wiskedjak Anum Suum Urit and Originates Rock-Weed and Red Willow from the Scabs, Wiskedjak Disguises himself as a Lynx, and Wiskedjak's Love Affair. (The Ojibwa section contains stories about Nenebuc, i.e. Nanabush, Manabozho, etc.)

Did you notice that part of that fourth title is in Latin? Yep. That's because even though Speck is transmitting the story as told by Benjamin Mackenzie, he is also censoring the story, turning all the references to Wiskedjak's butt (specifically, his butt-hole, Latin anus) into Latin to protect innocent readers, mixing the Latin right in with the English, just as he did there in the title: Wiskedjak Anum Suum Urit and Originates Rock-Weed and Red Willow from the Scabs (Anum Suum Urit means "burns his butt"). Many anthropologists of the time did the same, and I've often thought about creating an anthology of these Latin stories and bits of stories! So in this story, every time there is a reference to the trickster's butt, Speck puts that in Latin. Wiskedjak tells his butt o stand guard over the roasting ducks, but when the butt warns Wiskedjak, Wiskedjak doesn't listen, and then when the ducks are stolen, he gets angry at his butt and decides to burn it... but of course that means he is burning himself! And it hurts!

These stories about Wiskedjak are sometimes told about other tricksters too; you might recall the story of the skull from a book I wrote about earlier: Iktomi and the Buffalo Skull: A Plains Indian Story. The details of the two stories are very different: Wiskedjak follows ants into a bear-skull where they are eating the brains, while Iktomi follows the mice into a buffalo-skull where the mouse are having a pow-wow. To me, that's just fascinating: it tells us that the story traveled far, from one storyteller to another to another, with each storyteller adjusting and changing the story along the way!

I'll be back with more Wiskedjak stories tomorrow!

Myths and Folklore of the

Timiskaming Algonquin

and Timagami Ojibwa

by Frank Speck

Trickster. The Tortoise in Zambia

In yesterday's post I shared some trickster Tortoise stories from eastern and southern Africa, and I'll finish up this week of Tortoise stories with stories from The Ila-Speaking Peoples of Northern Rhodesia [Zambia] by Edwin Smith and Andrew Murray Dale, published in 1920. The book was published in two volumes, and the folktales are in Volume II.

You can read more about the Ila people of Zambia and about the Ila language (a Bantu language) at Wikipedia. Fulwe is the Tortoise's Ila name, and his trickster rival is Sulwe, the hare. Some of the Tortoise stories in this book are part of the Hare cycle of stories: Tortoise and the Fish-Eagle, Why the Cracks in Tortoise's Shell, Hare's Destiny Foretold by Tortoise, Hare is Outwitted by Mrs. Tortoise, and Hare's Last Adventures and Death.

And for a more contemporary book from Zambia, here is The Magic Tortoise: Further Tales From the Forest for Children in Africa by Adrian Storrs, published in Lusaka in 1974. 

These are not traditional Tortoise folktales; instead, this is a book of stories about a wise old Tortoise who helps both humans and animals to thrive and prosper. The illustrations are by Joan Blakeney, and here, for example, the Tortoise helps the farmer to better irrigate his vegetables so that he can grow more and better food for the people to eat:

There is a first volume of stories entitles The Tortoise Dreams, but it is not available at the Archive. Hathi Trust has a copy of that book but, because it is copyrighted, you cannot read it there. Maybe someday Controlled Digital Lending will come to Hathi Trust, and then we'll be able to read another book of stories. Based on the contents of this follow-up book, I suspect The Tortoise Dreams is also a book of stories about developmental efforts in Zambia, with the Tortoise as a kind of wise guide.

So, this use of the Tortoise helps highlight the range of ways in which a trickster character like the Tortoise can function: he can be sly and cunning, and even greedy and dangerous, but he can also be helpful, using his wisdom to benefit others, as in these stories. You can learn more about Adrian Storrs' development efforts in Zambia in this book: A Study of Zambia's Natural Resources: The Story of Zambia's Flora and Fauna and Their Influence on Everyday Life. I'm not sure what path these books by Adrian Storrs followed to end up at the Internet Archive after being published in Zambia, but I am glad they found their way to this library online.

Tricksters. More African Tortoise Tales

Since the Igbo and Edo stories that I shared in yesterday's post were collected over a century ago, I wanted to be sure to share a more contemporary project. This is not focused on Tortoise stories per se, but it's no surprise that Tortoise shows up in this wonderful collection of stories from the African Women's Network in Dublin, Ireland... and yes, it's got a very long title even though it is just a very short book: Horses and Tortoises and Rabbits and Elephants and Birds and Hippos and Lions and Sisters and Frogs and Dogs and Hares and Jackals and Murder: Stories From Africa.

There are ten stories here, written and illustrated by members of the collective, which are intended for use in elementary schools so that Irish children can learn about African and also for African children living in Ireland to celebrate their heritage, thus furthering the goal of this organization: "a just society where there is equal opportunity and equal access to resources in all aspects of society: social, cultural, economic, civic, and political." Most, but not all, of the stories are animal stories, and each story has its country of provenance along with the name of the storyteller for that particular story. Of the ten stories here, two are about Tortoise: The Tortoise and the Hare and The Birds' Party, and each of those comes from a storyteller in Kenya. 

Because we read this book recently for Anansi Book Club, you can find out more in that post about the Tortoise stories and about the other stories in the book too.

Both of these are very well known Tortoise stories. To win his race against the faster animal, Tortoise uses a trick; usually he uses other Tortoises to stand in for him along the race-course, but in this version of the story he uses a different trick.

As for the story of the Tortoise and the birds' party, you can find another wonderful version in Tololwa Mollel's The Flying Tortoise (which I blogged about in the previous Tortoise week a couple months ago), and also in this version by a Bemba storyteller in Zambia (Helen Nde shared this one in a Twitter space recently): Why Tortoise's Shell is Cracked. This is from Lisa Grainger's book Stories Gogo Told Me, with illustrations by Celia von Poncet:

And there are other Tortoise stories in that book too: Why Crocodile Has No Tongue (a story told by Gcina Mhlophe!), The Race Between Hare and Tortoise (this version uses the substitution trick), The Incredible Mr. Tortoise, and The Forbidden Fruit.

So, while Tortoise is a predominant trickster in some western African traditions, you can find him in other places in Africa too, as in these southern and eastern African tales. Enjoy! And I'll be back with more Tortoise tricks tomorrow.

Stories Gogo Told Me

by Lisa Grainger

Horses and Tortoises and Rabbits and Elephants

and Birds and Hippos and Lions
and Sisters and Frogs and Dogs and Hares
and Jackals and Murder: Stories from Africa