Folk Tales of Cabo Verde, Part Seven. Three tales from Elsie Clews Parsons' Folk-Lore from the Cape Verde Islands (1923), collected from Cape Verdean storytellers in New England and first printed in 1923 — read aloud as Parsons printed them, in the order she printed them.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
The Wonderful Travellers (No. 82): Manuel, the youngest of three poor brothers, is kind to a leprous old man and is given a boat that runs on land and sea. He gathers a wonderful crew — Porter, who carries the ship ashore on his shoulder; Shooter, who can shoot a fly off a cheek; Eater; Runner, with one foot here and one in California; Drinker; and Hearer, whose ear is open to everything in the world — and with their feats he wins Bright-Moon, whose light shames every other bride. Declared for this tale, in plain sight: Eater's feats are folk-tale gluttony — a feast laid for four hundred, and the king's cows and horses eaten in the pasture; Shooter shoots the little devil down from the mast and brings him to the ship, and shoots close past the sleeping Runner's eyes to wake him — nobody is wounded or killed anywhere in the tale; and Eater's "Give him to me, I'll eat him up" is words only. It stands as Parsons printed it, declared here rather than softened.
The Stolen Ring (No. 86): a boy who would rather fish than go to school catches a fish siren, who gives him a ring that grants whatever is wished. The ring is stolen away to another island, and it is the boy's rescued friends — a little dog, a little cat and a little rat, who swim the sea between the islands — who steal it back for him, lose it in the waves, and talk the crabs into fetching it up from the bottom of the sea.
Dutiful and Undutiful (No. 89): Anton, the youngest of three brothers, chooses his dying mother's blessing over money, shelters a leper who proves to be God, and carries San Anton's note to heaven where his unkind brothers would not. Declared for this tale: early on, the two elder brothers beat Anton's hand with a stick so that it swelled — one clause, the cruelty his kindness answers; and the brothers' end is told as fate, not shown — they die and go to hell, Anton dies and goes to heaven, and takes the seat at heaven's door that his blessing promised him.
These are three of the tales that passed this shelf's reading gate. The rest of Parsons' collection is being read in full, tale by tale; the tales that do not pass are named, with the reason, in the collection's written register. Nothing violent is framed or softened — it is left out, and the register says so.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Opening Theme
00:50 The Wonderful Travellers
06:57 The Stolen Ring
14:21 Dutiful and Undutiful
Source: Elsie Clews Parsons, Folk-Lore from the Cape Verde Islands, Parts I–II (Memoirs of the American Folk-Lore Society, Vol. XV, 1923) — public domain; text from the Internet Archive.
Narration: Violetta (KacheliTV). Music: opening and closing theme, "Tampa Across the Water 2" — heard at the introduction and the close only; the tales themselves are read dry.
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