Part two. Seventeen more Vai 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.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
A hunter cuts his own rope and tries to talk his way out of the chase; three brothers break a country pot and find a town; Spider rides the Deer to a bride; a little horn gives two blind men their sight, and jealousy takes it back; the Goat bluffs the Elephant with a rock; three doctor-brothers cross a river on smoke, thread, and arrows; a bride-test of a house on a rock is answered by a dish of crabs; the Snail's people win a race the Deer cannot lose; the Tide argues with the Minnow; brothers with a glass, a hammock, and a medicine race death itself; two story-tellers build a bird and the tree it must sit in; a cooked bird under one cover starts a theft trial; an old lady, a plantain, and a sleeping fine of fifty dollars meet in court; a blind man feels his way out of a drowning pact; a poor man's marriage ends in a judge's unanswered question; two thieves are undone by a sheep's teeth; and a Mori man — a Muslim scholar and teacher — gathers a hundred best friends to prove that a secret cannot be kept. The episode opens and closes with its theme, Blazing Fire, heard also briefly between the stories.
Passage notes, as printed and carried here under their notes: in Three Rival Brothers, the King's bride-price demand is spoken at the outset and the quest is abandoned unfulfilled, the princess's offstage death is reversed by medicine, and the brothers' closing fight is one clause, parted by the people; in Two Poor Men, one clause has a bird "that he had shot" brought for cooking, as setup only; in The Deer and the Snail, the wager's stake is spoken in the bet and never imposed; in Poor Man and King's Daughter, the hard choice is proposed and debated only, and the judge declines to decide.
Chapters
1:02 The Man and the Goat
2:56 The Three Brothers and the Town
6:14 The Race for a Wife
8:35 The Two Blind Men
11:10 Why the Elephant Runs from the Goat
12:25 Rival Brothers
14:06 The Man and the Crabs
16:37 The Deer and the Snail
19:27 The Tide and the Minnow
20:40 Three Rival Brothers
24:12 Rival Story-Tellers
26:05 Two Poor Men
29:15 The Old Lady and the Little Boy
31:20 The Blind and Legless Men
33:56 Poor Man and King's Daughter
36:27 The Two Thieves
38:55 The Mori Man and the Secret
From Negro Culture in West Africa by George W. Ellis (New York, 1914), public domain — stories 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 31, 34 and 37, complete and in book order, in a fresh telling in standard English. Twenty items of Chapter IX are excluded by name after full readings (the full register stands in Part 1's notes), and six are held for a ruling; no claim of completeness for the book is made. Narrated by Felix. Theme: Blazing Fire.
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