About the Story Finder

This "Story Finder" project is inspired by the Story Finder books by Sharon Elswit; you can find out about all four of her books — Caribbean Story Finder, Latin American Story Finder, Jewish Story Finder, East Asian Story Finder — at her webisite: SharonElswit.com. They are incredibly useful resources! Each volume in the series features hundreds of stories, and for each story she provides a detailed summary along with variant versions across multiple sources. Here's a screenshot of a two-page spread from the Latin American Story Finder, so you can get a sense of the approach she has taken (click on the image for a larger view):

In those books, Elswit relies on a variety of published and online sources, some of which are readily accessible (i.e. available in local libraries or at used booksellers, etc.), but some of which are not. Since discovering her books, I started wondering what it would be like to create some Story Finder books that are based on public domain and open access resources that everyone can read.

My own focus for the past couple of years has been folktales from Africa, and I've done a comprehensive survey of English-language public domain and open access materials available as online books or online articles at the Internet Archive. That includes public domain books published before 1928, books published after 1928 whose copyrights have lapsed, plus materials that are available with Creative Commons licenses or other forms of open access. I completed that survey in conjunction with the books that were available by controlled digital lending from the Internet Archive; you can see the bibliography guide I published here: A Reader's Guide to African Folktales at the Internet Archive (free ebook). Unfortunately, the big publishers' lawsuit against the Internet Archive has put the future of controlled digital lending in doubt, but there is still an abundance of public domain and open access material available.

What finally prompted me to start working on an actual Story Finder project was that I started recording for LibriVox in August 2023. I made an index of the African folktales already available at LibriVox (142 stories from 5 different sources), and then I started recording more African folktale sources. I completed one book which has been cataloged (Stafford's Animal Fables) and another book which is still waiting to be cataloged; meanwhile, I am working on my third book! By the time that third book is done, I will have added 130 more stories, nearly doubling the number of stories available. And I have LOTS more sources to record. There are over 1000 African folktales available in public domain books, and that many again (actually more) in public domain articles from journals like Folklore, The Journal of American Folklore, etc.

So, I am going to be recording (and recording and recording...), and I am also going to be writing posts at this blog featuring the story motifs and story types that reveal the inner workings and creative invention of African storytelling traditions. These posts will, in turn, provide the raw material for a book I would eventually like to write about African storytelling, something similar to Elswit's Story Finder books, although instead of summaries I will include public-domain texts of the stories. Of course, it won't be enough just to rely on public domain sources; I will need to supplement these colonial-era sources with more contemporary work, with an emphasis on work published by African storytellers and scholars, citing those resources in the bibliography and in the variant versions. Still, I am excited about building the book with a core of public domain materials that everyone can access online all over the world.

Here are the posts I've written so far:

1. Motif: Heyo, House!
2. Motif: Measuring the Snake
3. Type: The Bird That Made Milk
4. Type: Chain of Debt Collectors
5. Type: Trickster and Dupe on a Journey

Meanwhile, just for fun, I made a randomizing widget which displays LibriVox recordings of African folktales embedded right here in my blog. You can see the widget below, and also in the blog sidebar. I'll update the widget as more and more stories get added — and if you are curious about such widgets, I build them with a free program created by a former student: RotateContent.com.

Happy listening!

---

---

Type: Trickster and Dupe on a Journey

Today's story — "How Isuro the Rabbit Tricked Gudu" — is from The Orange Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, published in 1906 (for more stories, see the index). You can listen to today's story via LibriVox and which you can read online at the Internet Archive. The story is item 5 in the audiobook playlist:

Of all Lang's Fairy Books, the Orange Fairy Book is the one with the most stories from Africa, and you can find all of the African stories from the Fairy Books here: African Folktales in the Fairy Books of Andrew Lang. This particular story comes from the Shona storytelling tradition, and the characters have their Shona names: Isuro (tsuro) the rabbit and Gudu (gudo) the Baboon.

The book is illustrated by Henry Justice Ford, and here is his illustration for the story, showing the first trick, when the baboon gets the rabbit to drop his food in the water, while he only pretends to drop his food, dropping a stone in stead.

This story type is Trickster and Dupe on a Journey. The role of the trickster usually shifts at some point in the story. For example, in this story, the baboon starts out tricking the rabbit, but finally the rabbit gets wise to what is going on, and in the final part of the story, the rabbit is the trickster and the baboon becomes his dupe.

To see another story of this type, take a look here:

"Baboon and Hare" in "Tales and Proverbs of the Vandau of Portuguese South Africa" by Franz Boas and C. Kamba Simango published in Journal of American Folklore. This version has a different role reversal: on the first journey, Baboon travels with Wild-Cat, and Baboon tricks Wild-Cat every time. When Wild-Cat comes home, he tells Hare what happened. Baboon then asks Hare to journey with him, Hare makes Baboon his dupe. Then Baboon wants revenge and he takes Hare on another journey, but again Hare outsmarts him. You will find both the Ndau version here and a literal English translation.

Type: Chain of Debt Collectors

Today's story — "How a Hunter Obtained Money from His Friends" — is from Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria by Elphinstone Dayrell, published in 1910 (for more stories, see the index). You can listen to today's story via LibriVox and which you can read online at the Internet Archive. The story is item 3 in the audiobook playlist:

Elphinstone Daryell [1869-1917] was a British colonial administrator in southern Nigeria who had an interest in anthropology and folklore. He later published a second book with more Nigerian folktales: Ikom Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria.

This story type is Chain of Debt Collectors. The essential feature of this type of chain tale is that a series of characters show up to collect on a debt, and they kill one another so that in the end the debtor pays nothing. The chain in this story goes: rooster-bushcat-goat-leopard-hunter. This story has an additional layer, where one hunter has borrowed money from another, which is why, in turn, he has to go borrowing from his animal friends.

To see another story of this type, take a look here:

"The Chain of Victims" in Jamaica Anansi Stories by Martha Beckwith. This is an Anansi story from Jamaica with the following chain: hog-dog-monkey-tiger-lion. Beckwith includes a list of African versions, including the one in Daryell's book.

Type: The Bird That Made Milk

Today's story — "The Fairy Bird" — is from Fairy Tales from South Africa by Mrs. E. J. Bourhill and Mrs. J. B. Drake, published in 1908 (for more stories, see the index). You can listen to today's story via LibriVox and which you can read online at the Internet Archive. The story is item 10 in the audiobook playlist:

The fairy tales in this book are based on Swazi and Zulu stories from Swaziland (now Eswatini) and from KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. 

The book is illustrated by W. Herbert Holloway, and here is his illustration for this story, showing the angry mother throwing the children off a cliff, punishing them for having lost the bird.

This story type is The Bird That Made Milk. This is a story widely told throughout southern Africa. In the version told here, the children are abandoned by their parents, but then the fairy bird comes and helps them in thanks for having let him go.

To see another story of this type, take a look here:

"The Bird That Made Milk" in A Comparative Grammar of the South African Bantu Languages by J. Torrend. A version in Xhosa and English which includes music for the singing.

"The Bird That Excretes Milk" in The Treasury of Basuto Lore by Edouard Jacottet. The story in both Sesuto and English. 

"Story of the Bird that Made Milk" in Kaffir Folk Lore by George McCall Theal, who reports two versions of the story.

Motif: Heyo, House!

Today's story — "The Hare and the Lion" — is from Zanzibar Tales Told by Natives of the East Coast of Africa by George Bateman, published in 1901 (for more stories, see the index). You can listen to today's story via LibriVox and which you can read online at the Internet Archive. The story is item 3 in the audiobook playlist:

The stories in this book come from Swahili-speaking storytellers on the island of Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania), as retold in English by George Bateman, who uses the Swahili names for the animals: Sungura is the trickster hare, Simba is the lion, etc. 

The book is illustrated by Walter Bobbett, and here is one of his illustrations for this story. This illustration shows the moment in the story when Rabbit first escapes from Lion (look closely and you'll see him escaping behind Lion's back!). Later, Lion hides in Rabbit's house in order to catch him, which is when the Rabbit tricks him by pretending that the house normally greets him.

One of the folktale motifs in this story is "Heyo, House!" This motif is one of many ways that trickster can escape his enemies. This trick is used when the enemy is hiding, lying in wait to catch the trickster in the trickster's own home. The trickster shouts out, "Heyo, House!" and when there is no reply, he asks the house why it doesn't reply as it usually does. The dupe decides he should reply, and when he does, the trickster mocks him and makes his escape. This is a motif that most likely came to Africa from India, as it is found both in the Panchatantra (where the lion is hiding in the trickster jackal's cave), and in Vanarinda-Jataka (where the crocodile pretends to be a rock, and the monkey asks the rock why it does not greet him as it usually does).

To see this motif in another story, take a look here:

"Heyo, House!" in Uncle Remus and His Friends by Joel Chandler Harris. In this story, it is Brer Wolf who has decided to his in Brer Rabbit's house.

Motif: Measuring the Snake

Today's story — "How We Got the Name 'Spider Tales'" — is from West African Folk Tales by William Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, published in 1917 (for more stories, see the index). You can listen to today's story via LibriVox and which you can read online at the Internet Archive. The story is item 1 in the audiobook playlist:

William Barker and Cecilia Sinclair collected these stories from African students at a teacher training center in Accra, the capital of Ghana. The students wrote down the stories in English, and the authors then selected  stories to include in the book, sometimes combining multiple versions of the same story into a single version.

The book is illustrated by Cecilia Sinclair, and here is her illustration for this story. Sinclair depicts Anansi in human form, and here you can see him tricking the bees to go into the jar:

One of the folktale motifs in this story is Measuring the Snake. This is the "trickster seeks endowments" tale type, with spider seeking to have stories be his. To get his request, the trickster must complete a series of tasks, and one of the tasks in this story is to bring back a live snake. To do this, Anansi tricks the snake by making the snake prove he is as long as a stick Anansi is carrying, and when the snake stretches out next to the stick, Anansi ties him up and carries him away.

To see this motif in another story, take a look here:

"Brother Rabbit Submits to a Test" in Nights with Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris. In this story, the trickster is Brer Rabbit who is seeking to get wisdom from the Witch-Rabbit, and "measuring the snake" is one of the tricks he uses. In this story, the snake is a rattlesnake!