One tale of the Nyanja-speaking peoples of British Central Africa, the country about Lake Nyasa that is Malawi today, gathered by R. Sutherland Rattray during his years at Blantyre and in Central Angoniland and published in his "Some Folk-Lore Stories and Songs in Chinyanja" in London in 1907 — a fresh English rendering made for this episode from Rattray's book, in which the tale is printed in Chinyanja with his own English beside it. It is the last of the book's folk tales to be built on this shelf: with it, the book's tale material is accounted for in full below.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
In a drought, when the ground is hard and there is no water anywhere, the great animals stamp for a pool and fail — the Elephant's foot is like the bottom of a grain mortar, and still he raises only dust. The Rabbit, rebuked for his tiny little feet, answers that he can only try, and tramps his way down to the water. The Elephant then proclaims that no other Rabbit shall drink there, and sets himself as watchman. So the Rabbit comes back with a gourd-cup of honey and a strange condition, and after him the Tortoise, smeared with bees' wax, waits in the pool like a stone.
Declared passage notes, exactly as the tale tells them: the assembled animals speak of killing the Rabbit — the intent is spoken aloud, but no blow lands and no one in the tale is killed. The Rabbit's escape turns on his tail: seized by it, as he himself directs, it strips off, and at his village the Rabbits then strip off one another's tails, so that the Elephant, following the spoor, finds a village of tailless rabbits and gives up. This tale was held at this shelf's gate for a ruling by name, and was ruled in by name on October 19, 2026; it is built whole, as told.
R. Sutherland Rattray (1881–1938), "Some Folk-Lore Stories and Songs in Chinyanja, with English Translation and Notes" (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1907), Part II, No. XX. These are tales of the Nyanja-speaking peoples, billed by their people and their collector — not the whole of Malawi. Of the book's ten folk tales, five are built on this shelf (four in Part 1, and this one) and five are excluded by name under this shelf's register; the book's custom accounts, riddles and songs are not tale material, and no completeness is claimed for the book as a whole.
Narrated by Scratch. Music: opening and closing theme, "Winter Palace Rhapsody".
Chapters:
01:36 The Rabbit and the Elephant
Malawi folk tales · Chinyanja folk tales · Chewa folklore · African folk tales · R. S. Rattray · world folk tales · free audiobook
