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.