Zulu Tales — Part 3: Umkatshana · Unthlangunthlangu
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Two more 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.
Umkatshana follows a rheebuck down a hole in the earth and comes to the people who live beneath, where his own friends send him home again. And in Unthlangunthlangu, a king's chief wife, pregnant for years while the other wives bear and rear their children, at last gives birth to a great snake — which is cast into a pool and left, while the king and his people fly to another country and leave the mother behind. But the snake in the pool is not what it seems, and one day ten beautiful children ride out on oxen raised from bones, crying at every village gateway: "We are seeking for our mother."
Stories in this episode:
0:35 Introduction
1:30 Umkatshana
3:55 Unthlangunthlangu
Source: Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus, collected and translated by Henry Callaway (Trübner and Co., 1868) — public domain. Narrated by Lulu.
Music: "Golden Monologue" (instrumental) — opening and closing theme, with a short excerpt between stories.
Zulu tales, Zulu folklore, Henry Callaway, Umkatshana, Unthlangunthlangu, African folk tales, bedtime stories, KacheliTV
