Five tales from Madagascar, collected by Charles Renel and published in Paris in 1910 in his Contes de Madagascar — heard in English in a fresh translation made for this series, from Betsimisaraka, Sakalava and Tsimihety storytellers.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
A whole family is deaf, and every answer misses its question. Four strangers each do one piece of work on the same rice-field — and all come back to claim the harvest. A husband swears every food his wife finds is poison, until a bird gives him away. A rich couple long for a child, and a father sets out to fetch the full moon. And from the days when the Sun and Moon were friends: how the chickens got their name, and why they still greet the dawn.
Stories in this episode:
0:35 Introduction
1:46 The Three Deaf People
3:17 The Rice-Field
5:42 Ranalahy and Ranavavy
10:08 The Childless Couple
12:51 The Sun, the Moon, the Stars and the Chickens
Source: Contes de Madagascar, collected by Charles Renel (Ernest Leroux, Paris, 1910) — public domain; translated from the French for KacheliTV. Narrated by Mira.
Music: "Falling Leaves at the Ice Cliffs" (instrumental) — opening and closing theme, with a short excerpt between stories.
