The pourquoi episode: nine short tales of how things came to be. The driver ants settle their boast against the worms; a stolen hen-bride gives the hawk his right to chickens; the Sun's friend the Water comes visiting at last, and drives the Sun and Moon into the sky — the book's signature tale; the forgotten fly is awarded his dinner from the cow's eyes for ever; the rat's thefts set cat against rat for ever; Thunder the sheep cannot restrain her son Lightning, and both are banished to the sky; nobody may eat at the hippopotamus's feast who cannot name him, until the tortoise learns the name Isantim; the Creator's message of resurrection is garbled by a dawdling dog and a forgetful sheep, and so the dead are buried; and a wife made of oil melts away in the sun her jealous co-wife sends her into — and returns. A selection of tales from Dayrell's collection. Source: Elphinstone Dayrell, Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria, West Africa (1910), public domain; modernised in-house edition.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
