Folk Tales of the Hausa People — Part 2 (A Test of Skill · A Giant, and the Cause of Thunder · The Spider, the Hippo, and the Elephant)
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Part two of the shelf. Three more folk tales of the Hausa people from R. Sutherland Rattray's Hausa Folk-Lore (1913) — the tales of Maalam Shaihu, collected, transliterated and translated by Rattray — heard in Rattray's English exactly as he printed it. In A Test of Skill, a chief sets his three sons to show their skill at the great baobab by his gate: the eldest thrusts his spear clean through it and rides through the hole, the second lifts his horse and jumps the tree, and the youngest pulls the whole baobab up, roots and all, and comes on waving it at his father. In A Giant, and the Cause of Thunder, a strong man who calls himself A-Man-among-Men will not believe his wife that a greater man exists — until he hides in the giant's meat-store, flees all night before the wind of his pursuer, and is saved only when the Giant of the Forest catches his hunter and the two wrestle up into the heavens, where they are wrestling still: that is the thunder. And in The Spider, the Hippo, and the Elephant, in a year of famine the spider cheats the elephant out of a hundred baskets of grain and the hippo out of a hundred baskets of fish, sets the two great chiefs pulling against each other at either end of his long rope over a horse that does not exist, and, when the fraud is found out, saves himself inside a dead antelope's skin by playing on their fear of his pointing hand. The episode opens and closes with its theme, Imperial Violin Masquerade, heard also briefly between the stories.
The tales:
0:45 A Story About a Test of Skill
2:52 A Story About a Giant, and the Cause of Thunder
15:03 The Spider, and the Hippo, and the Elephant
From Hausa Folk-Lore, Customs, Proverbs, Etc., by R. Sutherland Rattray (Oxford, 1913), public domain — the tales of Maalam Shaihu in Rattray's English translation as printed; this is his translation, not a new one. Held for the owner's ruling by name: The World · How the Whip and the 'Maara' Spoon Came to the Haunts of Men · The Doctor Who Went a Pilgrimage to Mecca on a Hyena · The Orphan of the Coat-of-Skin Saying · A Jealous Man and What Befell Him · A Great Friendship, and How It Was Put to the Test · Muusa (Moses) · The Spider and the Crows. Excluded by name: How Brothers and Sisters First Came to Quarrel · The Boy and the Old Woman, and the Wasp · A Chief, and How His Sons Observed His Funeral · A Witch, and How the Baby of the Family Outwitted Her · A Chief and His Cook · A Hunter and His Son · A Maiden and the Pumpkin · The Gawo-Tree and the Maiden · The Water of Ladi · The Lizard and the Hyena · The Beetle, and How He Got His Thatching Done · The Spider and the Lion · The Spider and the Dodo. Standing on the bench for Part 3: The He-Goat · The Lion and the Leopard. No claim of completeness for Rattray's book is made.
Narrated by Madame de Pamplemousse. Theme: Imperial Violin Masquerade — opening and closing theme, with short separators between the stories.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
