Folk Tales of Algeria — Part 1: The Jackal and the Hedgehog
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Eleven tales from René Basset's Contes populaires berbères (Popular Berber Tales), collected and translated by Basset, professor at the School of Letters of Algiers, and published at Paris in 1887. For every tale Basset names the place it came from — the Beni Menacer country, the Zouaoua of Kabylia, the Mzab, and Bou Semghoun in the Algerian Sahara. The jackal and the hedgehog match tricks; a fairy keeps faith at a spring; a sack of ashes turns to coins; a lost king finds his family again. Fresh in-house English translation from Basset's French text of 1887.
In this episode:
• Introduction — 0:35
• The Jackal and the Hedgehog — 1:31
• The Jackal and the Ass — 3:15
• The Hedgehog and the Jackal — 5:07
• The Jackal and the Cock — 7:08
• The Woman and the Fairy — 8:20
• The Treasure of Asla — 10:07
• The Fairy's Gift — 11:40
• The Old Woman and the Fly — 13:21
• Strange Encounters — 15:01
• Charity — 16:49
• The King and His Family — 18:10
Source: René Basset, Contes populaires berbères (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1887). Basset (1855–1924) was professor of Arabic at the School of Letters of Algiers and gathered these tales from named Algerian provenances. The text is in the public domain.
A note on this episode: 11 of the book's 63 numbered pieces are told here. The pieces not told are not hidden: some are set aside by name in our records (violent or war matter is left out, never softened), some wait for later parts, and the book's Moroccan-provenanced tales are not billed as Algerian. Our catalogue record names each one and says why it stands where it stands.
Narrated by Scratch.
Opening and closing theme: "Lightning Crash" — from Nick's own instrumental library.
A tipping disclosure plays inside this episode, in the programme's own voice: this podcast runs a strict no-money tipping policy — tip us with a like and a subscription; it costs you precisely nothing.
Cover art: a jackal and a hedgehog face each other on a Saharan track at dusk, Kabylia mountains behind them, storybook style.
KacheliTV presents the world's folk tales in English — a new shelf of the library, built tale by tale.
