Folk Tales of Liberia — Part 1 (The Old Lady and the Bird · Three Royal Lovers · The Father and Three Sons · The Jealous Husband · The Two Brothers)
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Part one — the premiere of a new shelf. Five Vai folk tales of Liberia's Cape Mount country, collected on the ground by George W. Ellis during his eight years as Secretary of the United States Legation in Liberia, and published in Chapter IX of his Negro Culture in West Africa (New York, 1914); heard here in a fresh telling in standard English. In The Old Lady and the Bird, the last living soul of a dead town shuts her eyes at a great Bird's word and finds her people, her cattle and her riches restored — all of it hanging on two eggs she must keep. In Three Royal Lovers, the sons of three kings court one princess with a bath, a feast, and a sunset walk, and the judge himself cannot decide between them. In The Father and Three Sons, three hungry brothers visit a girl in famine time and disgrace themselves one after another — until their father goes himself and does worse, and the girl covers his shame with her ring. In The Jealous Husband, a wife hides one friend in a carrying-basket and sends the other away carrying him, so that each man owes the other his life. And in The Two Brothers, a trap-maker and a cloth-maker dispute the woman who brought rice to the trap, and a King settles it with generosity. The episode opens and closes with its theme, Subterranean Earth, heard also briefly between the stories.
Chapters
0:38 The Old Lady and the Bird
4:09 Three Royal Lovers
7:01 The Father and Three Sons
11:36 The Jealous Husband
14:29 The Two Brothers
Twenty further items of the book's Chapter IX are not read on this shelf, each excluded by name after a full reading: The Rival Sleepers (No. 1) · Man Hunting (No. 4) · The Fly, the Crab, and the Minnow (No. 9) · The Rival Doctors (No. 11) · The Man and His Chicken (No. 12) · Three Men Want First Smoke (No. 13) · Two Boys and the Snake (No. 14) · The Rabbit, Big Snake, and the Ground Squirrel (No. 15) · The Fox and the Goat (No. 25) · The Two Faithful Friends (No. 29) · The One Eyed Monarch (No. 30) · The Blind Mori Man (No. 32) · The Little Boy and the Snake (No. 33) · The King and His Bangle (No. 36) · The Lion, the Fox, and the Monkey (No. 40) · The Two Fighters (No. 42) · Two Unfortunate Men (No. 44) · The Lion, the Leopard, and the Dog (No. 45) · Two Orphan Brothers (No. 49) · The Six Rival Heirs (No. 52). Twenty-one more tales passed the screen and stand on the bench for later parts of this shelf, and six more are held for a ruling. No claim of completeness for the book is made.
From Negro Culture in West Africa by George W. Ellis (New York, 1914), public domain — stories 26, 27, 35, 38 and 43, complete and in book order, in a fresh telling in standard English. Narrated by Orson. Theme: Subterranean Earth.
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