Five tales of the Zulus, taken down in their own words and translated by the Reverend Canon Henry Callaway for his Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus (1868) — stories told in the kraals of Natal, many of them by women to children.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
A king's little daughter is driven from home for a wonder no one can explain — and the child she brings back becomes the wisest healer in the land, who takes no reward because he helps "from pure mercy." A man throws away his bread in the days of plenty, and goes searching for it, handful by handful, in the famine. How the baboons came down from the Amatusi, and why the people still shout jokes at them on the precipices. A hyena who drops his bone to catch the moon. And the hyrax who stayed home on the day the tails were given out.
Stories in this episode:
0:35 Introduction
1:41 The Wise Son of the King
7:24 The Man and the Bread
11:30 The Origin of Baboons
14:11 The Hyena and the Moon
15:48 The Hyrax Went Without a Tail, Because He Sent for It
Source: Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus, collected and translated by Henry Callaway (Trübner and Co., 1868) — public domain. Narrated by Scratch.
Music: "Golden Monologue" (instrumental) — opening and closing theme, with a short excerpt between stories.
