Fairy Tales from Africa is not the first collection of fairy stories from one region in this series. Indian and Chinese fairy tales were very well received among the audience and the publisher expected the same for this book.
There are a few differences between the collections according to the themes and characters in the tales. The main one is probably the huge number of animals playing important roles, proving how fused is the storytelling tradition with nature in Africa.
The presented stories were brought to Europe by missionaries, explorers, and travelers. Rev. J. Rath, Rev. G. Kronlein, and Miss Kingsley were the most important for this very book, which, like so many others in the series, was illustrated by Brinsley Le Fanu.
Here are the contents:
I. Morning Pearl
II. The Bush Spider
III. The Golden Ladder
IV. Red Blossom And The Flying Lion
V. King Jan
VI. The Jackal's Adventures
Morning Pearl
Morning Pearl is a young girl who has two brothers. They are hunters and she would like to be one as well. Yet they expect from her to fit into a traditional role of a wife.
Morning Pearl meets a witch who has a son who is ready to get a wife. But she don't know he is an elephant.
Witch's son is not an ordinary elephant. He would like to have a human wife and most of all he would like to eat the same food as human. A lot of food.
The witch temporarily transforms her son into a man.
Morning Pearl marries him and they leave her home.
In their new home he starts fishing and hunting expecting her to become his cook.
He turns into an elephant again and his appetite is huge.
Morning Pearl is disappointed with her marriage and is yearning for some help.
Could her brothers help her? Will they ever return and find her?
One day they really found her and they together planned their escape.
They waited until the elephant falls asleep and then the run away with majority of his cattle.
In the morning he realizes what happened and starts following them. When he almost caught them, they reached a rocky mountain which looked like an insurmountable obstacle. But Morning Pearl learned a few tricks from the witch and led them to safety before the elephant got there.
A few important notes on this fairy tale:
- While the role of the Morning Pearl as the main character is stereotyped (she should stay home and cook for men), she is not a helpless princess like many well-known characters from collections by Grimms, Perrault, and many other authors / collectors in Europe. In fact, she is the one who organized the escape and leads her brothers to safety.
- Apart from the magic transformations, so important for fairy tales as a literary genre, there is clear mention of superstition what gives an interesting tension. Characters who clearly believe in magic at the same time don't believe in rumors and myths.
- Different setting of the story don't stop it to present some of the universal themes known from other fairy tales coming from other parts of the world: marriage, magical transformation, saving one or more characters by the loved ones, pursuit of a powerful opponent who is defeated by trickery, escaping with his treasury, ...
The Bush Spider
Valla was a great hunter. He greased his spear with a special medicine and always caught a lot of game. When he married things changed though. His wife also greased his spear but her medicine was stronger. So he started to throw his spear badly.
One day a bush-cow even hurt him so he could hardly return home. His wife Gulu nursed him and trying to convinced him to stop hunting. She was afraid for his life.
Instead, Valla, decided to learn making traps. He learned the trade from the spider.
He not only caught a lot, he learned to weave clothes for his wife too.
She was best-dressed lady in the village. The both lived happily ever after and their kids and grand-kids too.
The Golden Ladder
Red Blossom And The Flying Lion
This conclude the content of Fairy Tales from Africa (Books from the Bairns No. 79), illustrated by Brinsley Le Fanu. The last page is, as always, dedicated to promotion - this time of the titles from the collection published in French language. This is another proof of the success of the series.
