Reading Notes: Nigerian Folk Stories, Part A

 

The Eyes of an Elephant. Source: Flickr.

    I decided to write about two stories! The first story I read was called "The Elephant and the Tortoise." This story first really grabbed my attention because I was curious what an elephant and a tortoise had to do with one another. After reading the story, I really enjoyed the creativity the author had in creating it. This story explains why elephants have small eyes compared to their enormous bodies and why worms do not really have any eyes at all. I love stories that give creative reasons and details as to why things are the way they are in current times. The story begins by mentioning a king named Ambo and his feasts. The elephant would always attend and eat a large portion of all of the food. The tortoise got very tired of the elephant eating beyond his portion of the food, so the tortoise decided to take revenge on the elephant. The tortoise ends up using the elephant's own greed for food against him and this ends with the elephant having no eyes. The elephant goes around looking for someone to lend him a pair of eyes and when he asked a nearby worm, the worm was so flattered regarding the request. The elephant took the tiny eyes of the worm. The elephant's new eyes eventually became permanently attached to the elephant, and the elephant ignored the worm's requests to get its eyes back. Origin stories like this are so cool to me because the writer can be very creative with them to explain all sorts of things in the world.

    The second story I decided to write about was called "Why the Cat Kills Rats." This story is another origin story as well and explains why cats are constantly chasing after and killing rats. The cat and the rat were servants to a king, and the rat fell in love with another of the king's servants. The rat was poor so it decided to steal from the king in order to impress his love with gifts. The king found out he was missing things, and the cat found out it was the rat's doing. The cat told the king that the rat was the culprit, and the king had the rat's lover punished. The rat was handed over to the cat, and the king fired the cat and the rat as servants, which made the cat very angry. The cat killed the rat and this is why cats always try to chase and kill rats to this day.

    These stories are both very creative and explain different things. I would love to either retell one with my own twists or just utilize the same writing style to come up with one of my own!

Source for the stories: Folk Stories From Southern Nigeria by Elphinstone Dayrell (1910).