Folk Tales of Mauritius — Part 1 (The Hare, the Elephant and the Whale · Petit-Jean Ox-Tail · The Elephant and the Hare in Partnership · The Story of the Four Bells)
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Part one — the premiere of a new shelf. Four Creole folk tales of Mauritius, collected on the island by Charles Baissac and published with his French translations in Le folk-lore de l'Île-Maurice (Paris, 1888); heard here in a fresh in-house English translation made from Baissac's French. In The Hare, the Elephant and the Whale, little Brother Hare bets two giants he is the stronger — and lets them prove it against each other at opposite ends of one rope. In Petit-Jean Ox-Tail, a grasshopper found at play climbs a chain of exchanges — arrow, coconut, lentils, feather, paper, an ox's tail — all the way to a cow from the king. In The Elephant and the Hare in Partnership, a bargain about hoe-handles and a fiddler's calabash end a garden partnership. And in The Story of the Four Bells, a wife who rings her husband home for nothing learns what the diamond bell was for — and why diamonds have been rare ever since. The episode opens and closes with its theme, Crimson Peak, heard also briefly between the stories.
Chapters
0:38 The Hare, the Elephant and the Whale
4:43 Petit-Jean Ox-Tail
10:14 The Elephant and the Hare in Partnership
13:12 The Story of the Four Bells
Nine further tales of the book are not read on this shelf, each excluded by name after a full reading: Histoire d'un Oiseau qui pondait des œufs d'or · Histoire d'un Malin Drôle · Histoire de Petit Jean · Histoire de l'Œuf, du Balai et de la Sagaïe · Histoire du Bonhomme Francœur · Histoire de Jean et de Jeanne · Histoire de Namcouticouti · Histoire des Colophanes · Histoire de Sabour. A tenth, Peau-d'Âne, is held back as a premise this channel does not use. No claim of completeness for the book is made.
From Le folk-lore de l'Île-Maurice by Charles Baissac (Paris: Maisonneuve & Ch. Leclerc, 1888), public domain — tales III, IV, X and XVI, complete and in book order, in a fresh in-house English translation from the French. Narrated by Amos. Theme: Crimson Peak.
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