15

Music and the Trickster

Without music life would be a mistake.

—Nietzsche

If music be the food of love, play on.

—Williams Shakespeare

It is no accident that one of the first tasks the Old Testament God gives to Adam is that of naming the animals. Language categorizes our world, divides it into nouns, subjects, and objects; and it mimics the animation of moving, living things through verbs. Such power is part of the trickster’s realm, the “silver-tongued-devil” who can manipulate rhetoric to his own advantage, akin to the ancient Greek Sophists, who Plato despised for their ability to speak from both sides of their mouth, artfully. For the Fon of Africa, Legba, the trickster figure, is also known as the “divine linguist” who

speaks all languages, he who interprets the alphabet of Mawu to man and to the other gods. Yoruba sculptures of Esu almost always include a calabash that he holds in his hands. In this calabash he keeps ase, the very ase with which Olodumare, the supreme deity of the Yoruba, created the universe. We can translate ase in many words, but the ase used to create the universe I translate as ‘logos,’ as the word as understanding, the word as audible, and later the visible, ordinary word. It is the word with irrevocability, reinforced with double assuredness and undaunted authenticity. This probably explains why Esu’s mouth, from which the audible word proceeds, sometimes appears double; Esu’s discourse, metaphorically, is double-voiced. Esu’s mastery of ase gives him an immense amount of power; ase makes Esu “he who says so and does so.”1

Likewise, the beginning of the world in the Old Testament initiates from the voice of God: “And God said, let there be light and there was light.” In the New Testament, Jesus is also identified with the logos in John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Language is power, and in ancient times words were thought to have magical properties. But the greatest power of all regarding language has always been in the form of song.

When God blows his breath into Adam’s nostrils, it is akin to a song, Adam becoming the musical instrument of God. Moses—a kind of trickster himself for all his magical abilities—surviving as a baby in a reed ark, talking with a burning bush, holding a magic staff (like Hermes), sending plagues, causing God to open the sea, going up to the mountain-top for visions for the inscribed words of God, having God drop manna from heaven, is himself associated with song:

Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the LORD, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the LORD, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him.

Moses therefore wrote this song the same day, and taught it the children of Israel.4 And Moses spake in the ears of all the congregation of Israel the words of this song, until they were ended. And Moses came and spake all the words of this song in the ears of the people, he, and Hoshea the son of Nun.

In the African story, “Iyadola’s Babies,” “two spirit people [are] sneezed out of the mouth of the Creator.” There are countless creation stories where breath, wind, voice, initiate the magic of life. And for ancient, preliterate, and primal people, song—breath and voice at its greatest pitch—was the mainstay of literature. Songs were used for everything—to rock a child to sleep, to still the wind, to bring the rain, to heal the sick, to prepare for war, to put parents to sleep so that a man might enter the tepee of his beloved, or to bury the dead. Even in our own culture, we use songs to consecrate our most significant and ceremonial events—a baptism, a graduation, a catechism or bar mitzvah, a seduction of a lover, a birthday, a funeral. Music—with the inclusion of rhythm—is no doubt the oldest of the arts, stemming from the very movement of our bodies, the beating of our hearts, and it seems to have a mysterious force that works on us in ways nothing else does. As we have seen with chimpanzees, there may be a glimpse of the first song in their rain dances. And of course many animals sing—everything from the howling of wolves to the multitude of bird songs throughout the world. It was Darwin who first brought up the idea that human song must have had its origins in our proto-human phase of existence for reasons similar to the development of song in other species.

For primal people, songs are a way of keeping the mind, body and the natural world in order. Poems, as we have seen, in preliterate societies, are always songs. And prayer is usually song as well. A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff, writing of harmony in American Indian traditional culture between the psychic and physical universe states that

balance [is] vital to an individual and communal sense of wholeness or beauty . . . [and that] breath, speech, and verbal art are so closely linked to each other that in many oral cultures they are often signified by the same word. The reverence for the power of thought and the word that is an integral part of American Indian religions is exemplified in Navajo culture. In Language and Art in the Navajo Universe, Gary Witherspoon points out that the Navajo world was brought into being by the gods, who entered the sweathouse and thought the world into existence. The thoughts of the gods were realized through human speech, song, and prayer.2

In times of great emotion nothing else will do but song. Nearly all healing through shamanistic rituals is accompanied by song. Songs are often the primary way tribal people communicate with their deities. Songs in trickster tales are often present—during acts of creation, during sexual seduction, during healing, and in a host of other moments in which song breaks forth to punctuate life. In many trickster stories, such as the Yoruba tales from West Africa, Trickster is well known as a musician, and music is an integral part of his rapscallion personality as well as his method of seduction. This brings us back to the Ornamental Mind theory of Miller and the Courting Arts Darwin saw as the antecedent to music, poetry, and song. Evolutionary theory predicts that we should see a link between the arts, sexual selection, seduction, and procreation, which we continually do.

The following origin stories give an insight into the primacy of music in the origin myths of various primal people in which the Creator instigates the big bang with the help of song. In some there appear obvious combinations of Christian and aboriginal elements.

Singing the World into Being: Creation Stories with Song

Apache Creation Story (North America)

In the beginning nothing existed—no earth, no sky, no sun, no moon, only darkness was everywhere.

Suddenly from the darkness emerged a thin disc, one side yellow and the other side white, appearing suspended in midair. Within the disc sat a small bearded man, Creator, the One Who Lives Above. As if waking from a long nap, he rubbed his eyes and face with both hands.

When he looked into the endless darkness, light appeared above. He looked down and it became a sea of light. To the east, he created yellow streaks of dawn. To the west, tints of many colours appeared everywhere. There were also clouds of different colors.

Creator wiped his sweating face and rubbed his hands together, thrusting them downward. Behold! A shining cloud upon which sat a little girl.

“Stand up and tell me where are you going,” said Creator. But she did not reply. He rubbed his eyes again and offered his right hand to the Girl-Without-Parents.

“Where did you come from?” she asked, grasping his hand.

“From the east where it is now light,” he replied, stepping upon her cloud.

“Where is the earth?” she asked.

“Where is the sky?” he asked, and sang, “I am thinking, thinking, thinking what I shall create next.” He sang four times, which was the magic number.

Creator brushed his face with his hands, rubbed them together, then flung them wide open! Before them stood Sun-God. Again Creator rubbed his sweaty brow and from his hands dropped Small-Boy.

All four gods sat in deep thought upon the small cloud.

“What shall we make next?” asked Creator. “This cloud is much too small for us to live upon.”

Then he created Tarantula, Big Dipper, Wind, Lightning-Maker, and some western clouds in which to house Lightning-Rumbler, which he just finished.

Creator sang, “Let us make earth. I am thinking of the earth, earth, earth; I am thinking of the earth,” he sang four times.

All four gods shook hands. In doing so, their sweat mixed together and Creator rubbed his palms, from which fell a small round, brown ball, not much larger than a bean.

Creator kicked it, and it expanded. Girl-Without-Parents kicked the ball, and it enlarged more. Sun-God and Small-Boy took turns giving it hard kicks, and each time the ball expanded. Creator told Wind to go inside the ball and to blow it up.

Tarantula spun a black cord and, attaching it to the ball, crawled away fast to the east, pulling on the cord with all his strength. Tarantula repeated with a blue cord to the south, a yellow cord to the west, and a white cord to the north. With mighty pulls in each direction, the brown ball stretched to immeasurable size—it became the earth! No hills, mountains, or rivers were visible; only smooth, treeless, brown plains appeared.

Creator scratched his chest and rubbed his fingers together and there appeared Hummingbird.

“Fly north, south, east, and west and tell us what you see,” said Creator.

“All is well,” reported Hummingbird upon his return. “The earth is most beautiful, with water on the west side.”

But the earth kept rolling and dancing up and down. So Creator made four giant posts—black, blue, yellow, and white to support the earth. Wind carried the four posts, placing them beneath the four cardinal points of the earth. The earth sat still.

Creator sang, “World is now made and now sits still,” which he repeated four times.3

Bunjil the Creator, No. 1 (Aboriginal, Australian)

Bunjil was not satisfied until he had created sentient human beings. It was a harder task than any he had attempted. The making of other forms of animal life had been comparatively simple. The marking of a man was a challenge to the Great Spirit, for within the framework of flesh there was need for powers of thought, reasoning, and other human characteristics that would separate man from the animal creation.

He pondered long before attempting the supreme masterpiece. When at last he was ready he prepared two sheets of bark, cutting them to the shape he envisaged as suited to such a noble purpose. Mobility and dexterity were important, and these he incorporated into his design. Next he took soft clay, molding it to the shape of the bark, smoothing it with his hands.

When the work was finished he danced round the two inert figures, implanting seeds of knowledge and the capacity to reason and learn.

The time had come for his skill to be put to the test. He gave them names—Berrook-boorn and Kookin-berrook. This was the first and most important step, for without names they would have lacked personality and spirit. Bunjil was well aware that if these beings were to fulfill their purpose, they must share his spirit as well as the characteristics of animals.

Although without breath, they were now named and ready for the infilling of the life force. Again Bunjil danced round them and then lay on their bodies, one after the other, breathing breath and life into their mouths, nostrils, and navels.

For the third time Bunjil danced round them. As his feet wove intricate patterns in the dust, Berrook-boorn and Kookin-berrook rose slowly to their feet. They linked hands with Bunjil and with each other, joining the All-Father in the dance of life, singing with him the first song that ever came from the lips of man.4

Diné (or Navajo) (North America)

According to the Diné, they emerged from three previous underworlds into this, the fourth, or “Glittering World,” through a magic reed. The first people from the other three worlds were not like the people of today. They were animals, insects, or masked spirits as depicted in Navajo ceremonies. First Man (‘Altsé Hastiin), and First Woman (‘Altsé ‘Asdzáá), were two of the beings from the First or Black World. First Man was made in the east from the meeting of the white and black clouds. First Woman was made in the west from the joining of the yellow and blue clouds. Spider Woman (Na ashje’ii ‘Asdzáá), who taught Navajo women how to weave, was also from the first world.

Once in the Glittering World, the first thing the people did was build a sweat house and sing the Blessing Song.5

Mythic Trickster Musicians and Singers

As we have seen, music and language in all probability stem from the same root, music being older, with both emerging primarily due to sexual selection as courtship strategies, and the link between sexuality and music is absolutely clear in many trickster stories. In his introduction to Yoruba Trickster Tales, Oyekan Owomoyela gives a succinct description of the character of Ajapa, the Trickster who appears as Tortoise, one of his chief characteristics being his musical genius.

No discussion of Ajapa can ignore one of his most remarkable accomplishments: his irresistible musicianship. In many tales his scheme is carried by his singing, which casts a powerful spell on individuals and whole communities, even on other-wordly beings, so that they forget themselves and their present purpose, abandoning themselves to the rhythm of his songs. But perhaps the Trickster’s most impressive endowments are his indestructibility and immortality, qualities that might justify those instances in which he is elevated to the status of a god.

Ajapa and the Roasted Peanut Seller (Yoruba, Africa)

There once lived in Ajapa’s town a woman famous for the incredible, mouth-watering roasted peanuts she prepared and sold at the daily market. Each day market people waited expectantly for the breeze to waft the aroma of roasting peanuts to their nostrils, signaling them either to make their way to the woman’s stall or to send a child or servant to purchase some of the treat. They simply would not feel right about starting their day until they had satisfied the craving the irresistible aroma unfailingly provoked in them.

There was no more faithful market-goer than Ajapa, not because he had anything to sell, for he was incurably lazy and incapable of addressing himself to any productive venture, not because he had anything to buy, for without producing anything he lacked the means to purchase anything. No, he was religiously at the market each day because he could always find some compassionate trader to extend some alms to him. Yet each day at the market was also torture to him, because like everybody else, his gullet involuntarily commenced to swallow emptiness whenever the smell of roasted peanuts reached his nose. Unfortunately, that was one commodity no one seemed willing to share with him, and the peanut seller was herself a hard-hearted woman as far as Ajapa was concerned. Nothing he did, no plea he made softened her to offer him even a taste of her peanuts.

“You made no gash in the palm-tree, nor did you sling a shot to pierce the pate of the wine-producing tree, yet go to its base and expectantly uplift your open mouth. Do you think pal-wine flows of its own accord?” she sneered at him in response to his importunity.

The scolding was salt on Ajapa’s wounded pride, and being who he was, it was not long before his frustration and anger triggered his propensity for mischief, and he set about devising a way to get his fill of the delicious peanuts despite the mean seller. He sought out Okere the Giant Rat, who was renowned for his great burrowing prowess, and asked what it would take to get him to dig a tunnel from the nearby forest to the peanut woman’s stall in the market. Okete assured Ajapa that if the latter would provide him with a sackful of peanuts he could consider the job as good as done. For once Ajapa submitted himself to the necessity of self-exertion; he scoured the bases of tens of palm-trees in the forests around, gathering the nuts scattered thereabouts, and before long he had the sackful to pay Okete. The latter lost no time in setting to work as he promised, and in no more than two days the tunnel was ready, its mouth right by the peanut seller’s seat. Under cover of night Ajapa sneaked into the market and concealed the opening with dried leaves so expertly that no one could suspect its presence. That done, he went home to await the propitious time when, as he told himself, the boil that had long plagued him would at last be lanced.

At daybreak, market-goers flocked to their stalls as usual, and so did the peanut seller. The day had dawned like any other, offering no hint that it harbored any surprise for the traders, but Ajapa had installed himself at the mouth of the tunnel just below the leaf covering, armed with his drum and ready to act as soon as his nostrils announced to him the moment. He could not see any of the above-ground activity from his concealment, but he could hear it all. From there his keen nose registered the progress of the peanut roasting, and when he was satisfied that the seller had roasted a sufficiently large amount, he applied the stick to his drum and launched into song:

Peanut seller, do lend an ear,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Peanut seller, please hear my song,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Shouldn’t you be dancing?

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Yield yourself to my music,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Leave your stall in my care,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

You really should be dancing!

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Peanuts, crackling and popping,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Peanuts, crackling, and popping,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Had Ajapa but known it, and had he not been perversely addicted to idleness, he would have acknowledged his true calling and lived gainfully by it. For in truth few creatures were capable of making music as irresistible as his, music that could set the most reluctant feet dancing with abandon in spite of themselves. The effect of his performance on the peanut seller, on her customers, and indeed on everybody in the market was as Ajapa hoped. All gave way to dance with such vigor that they were soon enveloped in a cloud of dust, and in the time it would take a crab to blink their momentum had carried them almost to the other end of town. It did not matter that the music that got them dancing had long stopped, and they had danced so far from its source anyway that they could not have heard it even if it had not. Befuddled and shamefaced, they returned like suddenly sober drunkards to the market, where they found the peanut seller’s roasted nuts completely gone. No other stall had been disturbed.

She raised the alarm, and people quickly established a connection between the new musical phenomenon that had intruded into their midst and the disappearance of the peanuts. They had no option in such circumstances but to report the incident to the oba, in whose charge the welfare of the town lay.

Since the market was close to his palace, occupying a large open expanse in front of it, in fact, the oba had himself been aware of the unusual commotion, and he was therefore not entirely surprised when his people trooped into his courtyard and asked for an urgent audience. On hearing the peanut seller’s story he concluded that the culprit must be a clever rascal, a daytime rogue with a taste for roasted peanuts. He consulted with his chiefs, who advised him to assign the task of apprehending the culprit and preventing a repetition of the visitation to the seasoned hunters of the town, whose task was also to keep thieves and burglars at bay.

Dutifully, then, all the hunters gathered on the market day following, sporting their fearful weapons and festooned with powerful amulets and charms. However intrepid the rascal, he was about to discover the mettle of the town’s hunters, they vowed. A huge crowd, much larger than usually found at the market, had gathered to witness the confrontation between hunters and peanut fiend. The hunters kept the crowd back as best they could, positioned themselves around the peanut stall, and asked the seller to commence her usual activities. She obliged and began to roast peanuts, but for a while nothing happened. Then, after she had roasted a sizable heap of nuts, and just as the hunters and some in the crowd were becoming convinced that the phantom singer had allowed good sense to master his wayward appetite, the singing began:

Peanut seller, do lend an ear,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Peanut seller, please hear my song,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Shouldn’t you be dancing?

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Yield yourself to my music,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Leave your stall in my care,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

You really should be dancing!

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Peanuts, crackling and popping,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Peanuts, crackling and popping,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

When some time later the hunters came to their senses and found themselves amidst the market crowd, bereft of their weapons, medicines, and charms, they knew something had gone badly awry. On looking around and recognizing their whereabouts, the end of town farthest from the market, they could not look one another in the face. This time the townspeople had no need to be embarrassed: rather they directed their mirthful ridicule at the hunters, making snide remarks about weapons that were no better than dancing staffs. The whole crowd trooped back to the market to find what they knew they would find: a depleted stock of peanuts.

The hunter’s disgrace convinced the oba of the severity of the problem on his hands. If his hunters were powerless against the mysterious thief, perhaps he was no mere human after all; perhaps the creature was an iwin, a fairy. With that suspicion in mind he sought the intervention of his diviners and medicine men. They gathered at the market on the next market day bristling with their own charms and assorted paraphernalia, all ready to make an end of whatever it was that plagued their town or at least teach it to give it a wide berth thenceforward. When the singing began, however, not even these masters of mysteries could control themselves. They surrendered to the music just as all the others had done before them.

Once sober again, the town was thrown into a panic, for even though the mysterious musical creature seemed interested only in peanuts, it nevertheless kept everyone from their trading. Moreover, any phenomenon that could humble the trusted hunters and medicine men could also wreak greater havoc on the town if it chose. It had to be stopped. The oba could think of nowhere else to turn but to the Osanyin clan. These were humanlike spirits endowed with great magical powers, and they regularly held commerce with humans as trouble-solvers of last resort, especially when the trouble involved other spirits. In appearance they were very much like humans, differing only with regard to how many legs they had: whereas humans normally had two, an Osanyin could have as many as ten legs and as few as one, but they could not have two, for a two-legged Osanyin would hardly be distinguishable from a human. When the oba turned to them for help, the ten-legged patriarch Osanyin assured him that he and his town would be rid of the music-playing, peanut-stealing wonder the next day. He gave instructions for the peanut seller and other marketers to carry out their routine the following day and leave matters to him.

The patriarch assigned the task first to the three-legged Osanyin, the one-legged one being considered so handicapped that the idea of his confronting the phenomenon was thought ludicrous. The next morning the first creature at the market was the prospective hero of the day, the three-legged Osanyin. Before anyone else arrived he pronounced fearsome incantations on the peanut seller’s stall and its vicinity, incantations designed to confuse and paralyze any wayward spirit that might venture near there. In time the market filled up, this time with the oba and his councilors in attendance. They would not miss the confrontation of spirits, nor a sight of the thing that had so disrupted the life of the town these past few days.

When all was ready, the Osanyin gave the word, and the peanut seller began roasting her peanuts. For a while nothing happened, until she had filled her calabash with a sizable mound of roasted peanuts, and the aroma suffused the air of the whole town. Then the music commenced:

Peanut seller, do lend an ear,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Peanut seller, please hear my song,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Shouldn’t you be dancing?

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Yield yourself to my music,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Leave your stall in my care,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

You really should be dancing!

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Peanuts, crackling and popping,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Peanuts, crackling and popping,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

The Osanyin danced so hard that he danced two of his legs off, and the oba and his councilors were indistinguishable from the ordinary people when the effects of the music wore off and they found themselves well away from the market.

Unable to bear the disgrace, the Osanyin clan went into conclave and vowed to bring the musical spirit to hell or permanently remove themselves from the vicinity of the town. They sent the four-legged Osanyin into the fray, but he also proved a failure; he lost three legs! The same fate befell the five-legged Osanyin and then the six-legged. To make a long story short, all the others, including the most powerful of them all, the ten-legged patriarch Osanyin, failed in their confrontation with the musical phenomenon, and they prepared to remove themselves into disgraceful exile.

Now the oba himself was in a panic. The chief duty the ancestors entrusted to him was to keep the town and the community secure, and on his departure from this life to hand them in full security to his successor. If in his time the town was laid waste because some unknown creature disrupted its life, what report would he give to those who preceded him when he was reunited with them in the afterlife? But just when he felt most hopeless, the oba found the one-legged Osanyin standing before him.

“The crown will live long on your head, your Majesty,” he greeted the oba.

“So be it,” the latter responded rather listlessly.

“The shoes will stay long on your feet,” the Osanyin continued.

“So be it,” the oba responded again, almost showing his impatience at this visit from one of the failed clan of Osanyin. He had too much on his mind for pleasantries.

“You have a message for me, perhaps, from the rest of your kin?” he asked.

“No, your Majesty,” the visitor responded. “I came on my own.”

“Well. . . ?”

“It is about the nuisance that’s causing you and your town all this trouble.”

“Yes?” the oba said questioningly.

“I will catch and deliver him to you,” the Osanyin said matter-of-factly.

“You?” the oba asked, hardly able to keep the incredulity from his voice.

There was a glint in his eyes, but one of wonderment. The creature was serious, but he was also being ridiculous, the oba thought. As the saying went, if an ago, the smartest of rats, fell victim to the snare, what chance had the olose, the most sluggish of rodents?

“I know what you are thinking, your Majesty,” his visitor said. “The Osanyin who had more limbs than I failed at the task, so how can I accomplish it? Remember, though, the needle may be tiny, but it is nothing for a chick to swallow. Let me at the troublesome wretch. If I succeed, you are well rid of the nuisance. If I fail, you would hardly be any worse off than you are now.”

The oba considered the offer and consulted with the chiefs sitting around him. In the end he agreed with his visitor. Since the town stood to lose nothing from the Esenin’s try, he might as well be given an opportunity to prove himself. He needed three days to prepare, he said, after which he would be at the market to take on the musical nuisance.

When the appointed day arrived, the market was so crowded that there was no room for one more foot or one more arm. In the crowd were the Osanyin whose earlier efforts had failed, very angry and present only in anticipation of the pleasure of laughing at their overreaching, upstart kin. The one-legged Osanyin had come armed with a sharp iron spike and nothing else—nothing, that is, except the cotton he had stuffed into his ears. He stuck his iron spike into the peanut seller’s fire until its tip glowed white-hot. Then he instructed the woman to commence roasting peanuts. Soon there was a small mountain of roasted peanuts in the calabash, and as the crowd had expected, the music started:

Peanut seller, do lend an ear,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Peanut seller, please hear my song,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Shouldn’t you be dancing?

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Yield yourself to my music,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Leave your stall in my care,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

You really should be dancing!

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Peanuts, crackling and popping,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

Peanuts, crackling and popping,

Crackle, crackle, pop!

As usual, the whole assemblage succumbed to dancing, including even the other Osanyin whose restored limbs had not quite healed. Very soon all that could be seen of the dancers was the cloud of dust that trailed them as their gyrating movements carried them farther and farther away. As for the one-legged Osanyin, having stuffed his ears with cotton he heard none of the music, and having one leg only, he would not have felt the urge to dance, anyway. He spared only one glance for the disappearing crowd before riveting his eyes again on the stall.

Soon he noticed the ground moving under the peanut seller’s abandoned seat. Carefully, he withdrew his iron spike from the fire and held it ready to strike. In a short while Ajapa had cleared the dry-leaf cover over the hole and was in plain sight. His eyes and mind were so fixed on the peanuts that he paid no attention to whatever or whoever else might be around as he closed in on them—until he felt a powerful, muscle-jerking, burning, piercing sensation in his nose. He writhed in pain, but his adversary was unrelenting. The Osanyin’s spike went all the way through Agapa’s nose and impaled him to the ground. He screamed and squirmed painfully, but the Osanyin showed no mercy. Ajapa became weaker and weaker, until satisfied that there was little fight left in him, the Osanyin relieved his pressure, lifted him up, and carried him to the oba’s palace.

There Ajapa was put on display for the returning crowd to see. No one would believe that Ajapa could have had such powers on them, but they had the testimony of their eyes, the words of the oba and the Osanyin, and the confession of the culprit himself. As for Ajapa’s fate, the oba decreed that it was only fitting that he spend the rest of his life serving the agent who proved powerful enough to apprehend him.

Thus Ajapa became a servant to the Osanyin, and thus it came to be that to this day the sacrifice offered to an Osanyin is a tortoise. If anyone ever heard Ajapa’s speech he or she would notice its pronounced nasality, the enduring legacy of the Osanyin’s spike.6

Coyote Giving (Paiute, North America)

Every man should have his own song, and no one else should be allowed to sing it, unless the owner permits it. At the high points in a man’s life, when he kills his first deer, when he first makes love to a woman, out of this kind of happening he makes up his own song. He sings his song on great occasions. He might leave it to his son.

There was a man called No-Song. They called him that because this poor man owned no song. At a corn dance or a rain dance he would sit apart from the others. Often he tried to hide or lose himself in a crowd, because people would point him out to each other, saying: “Over there is that pitiful man who has no song.” And because of his sad condition, he was too shy to court the young maidens.

So one day this man No-Song had harvested a big load of corn. He also had a big pot bubbling full of delicious venison stew. Coyote smelled it from afar. Coyote came running. “Oh, my,” he thought, “I must get this corn, I must get this wonderful stew!” He was slavering. He said: “Hey, No-Song, what will you swap for your corn and for that sweet-smelling stew?”

“You are Coyote, the Song-Maker. You can have all this for a song.”

“What kind of song?” asked Coyote.

“A song that will make the heart of young women butter,” said No-Song. “I wish for a song to make glad the people so that they will admire me. Also I don’t want a Coyote song, because Coyotes are the kind of fellows who want to take their gifts back.”

“I would never do something so bad,” said Coyote, whose mouth kept on watering.

“Give me your word that this will not be what they call a ‘Coyote giving.’”

“I promise, I promise, as long as the song is wisely used for its purpose—to court a maiden and, on a special occasion, to gladden the hearts of the people.”

“How can you think that I would not use the song in the right way?” said No-Song, somewhat insulted. Then Coyote gave him a song and he gave to Coyote all the corn and the big pot of venison stew. Both were very happy with the bargain they had made.

Soon there was held a great feast and dance, a fine occasion for No-Song to sing. All the people were astonished and delighted at this song. “How come,” they asked, “suddenly No-Song can sing so sweetly?”

All the people clapped their hands and expressed their delight. At once a beautiful maiden suggested to No-Song that they should go behind some bushes, to a hidden place, and there do something that the teller of this story will not elaborate upon. And No-Song went from feast to feast, and from dance to dance, singing his song, and all who heard it were enchanted. And No-Song changed his name to “Singing Wonderfully.”

Now, this singing of his song had gone on for months, and he had sung his song wherever he found people to listen, and their praise went to his head. And the one who called himself Singing Wonderfully sang his song for many purposes for which it was not designed, and he sang it so often that people grew bored with it and fell asleep while he was singing. And so, one night when this man calling himself Singing Wonderfully was asleep, Coyote crept up to him and took the song back. Coyote felt justified in doing this, because Singing Wonderfully had misused the song. And when the singer awoke, the song was gone. He could not remember a single word of it and neither could anyone else.

And the people called him No-Song again. So now he is sitting there every day with a huge bag of corn before him and a huge bubbling pot of venison stew, but, so far, Coyote has not come back.7

Hermes (Greek)

Hermes, the herald of the Olympian gods, is the son of Zeus and the nymph Maia, daughter of Atlas and one of the Pleiades. Hermes is the god of shepherds, land travel, merchants, weights and measures, oratory, literature, athletics, and thieves, and known for his cunning and shrewdness. More importantly, he is the messenger of the gods. Besides that he was also a minor patron of poetry. He was worshipped throughout Greece—especially in Arcadia—and festivals in his honor were called Hermoea.

According to legend, Hermes was born in a cave on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia. Zeus had impregnated Maia in the dead of night while all other gods slept. When dawn broke amazingly he was born. Maia wrapped him in swaddling bands, then resting herself, fell fast asleep. Hermes, however, squirmed free and ran off to Thessaly. This is where Apollo, his brother, grazed his cattle. Hermes stole a number of the heard and drove them back to Greece. He hid them in a small grotto near to the city of Pylos and covered their tracks. Before returning to the cave he caught a tortoise, killed it, and removed its entrails. Using the intestines from a cow stolen from Apollo and the hollow tortoise shell, he made the first lyre. When he reached the cave he wrapped himself back into the swaddling bands. When Apollo realized he had been robbed he protested to Maia that it had been Hermes who had taken his cattle. Maia looked to Hermes and said it could not be, as he was still wrapped in swaddling bands. Zeus the all powerful intervened saying he had been watching and Hermes should return the cattle to Apollo. As the argument went on, Hermes began to play his lyre. The sweet music enchanted Apollo, and he offered Hermes to keep the cattle in exchange for the lyre. Apollo later became the grand master of the instrument, and it also became one of his symbols. Later while Hermes watched over his herd he invented the pipes known as syrinx (pan-pipes), which he made from reeds. Hermes was also credited with inventing the flute. Apollo, also desired this instrument, so Hermes bartered with Apollo and received his golden wand which Hermes later used as his heralds staff. (In other versions Zeus gave Hermes his heralds staff.)8

Hanuman (India)

In India, the god Hanuman, himself a manifestation of Shiva (the reincarnation of his eleventh incarnation, Rudra) is a trickster with the head and tail of a monkey and the body of a man. As soon as he was born he was unnaturally hungry:

Looking all around in the forest for something to eat, he caught sight of the sun. Mistaking it for a red fruit, he leapt into the firmament and seized it to devour. The Sun got terrified and shrieked and shouted for help.9

One version of the story has the Sun hiding in Indra’s heaven, with Indra hurling a thunderbolt at baby Hanuman, who is injured on the chin. After this Brahma gathers the gods and blesses Hanuman with great gifts of brilliance, oratory, health, wealth, and more. He goes back to the forest to be raised by his parents, becoming a prankster of a youth, cursed by muteness by irritated rishis trying to meditate, with the stipulation being that the curse could only be lifted when Hanuman was reminded of his gifts. Eventually his voice returns, and through education he develops even more superior skills—the ability to assume any shape or size and to become invisible; the power of great military genius; psychic powers; the ability to fly; great oratory, scholarship, and musical genius—even to the point where he creates a theory of music, for which the gods give him honor.10

South Indian sculptors appear to have been particularly fascinated by the artistic facets of Hanuman’s personality. Temples all over this region, from Andhra Pradesh downwards, are embellished with reliefs featuring the god striking an elegant dancing pose or playing on musical instruments. The bronze icons portray him in the same postures, entranced by devotional songs and music, wielding berena, cymbals and a manuscript or simply singing praises of his beloved lord Shri Rama.11

Scholars are uncertain as to the origin of Hanuman, whether he was originally a pre-Vedic tribal deity or arose later. But the stories of Hanuman traveled throughout Asia, Buddhists monks carrying the stories of Hanuman as they traveled, retelling the tales with various versions (promoting the concept of the Bodhisattva, a Buddhist version of the “saint” in Mahayana tradition, who gives up claim to entering nirvana until all sentient beings can first be saved) which radiated from China to Java to Japan, many of them becoming incorporated into the national literature of various Asian countries. In Southeast Asian stories, Hanuman is considered a philanderer, contrary to the tradition of him being celibate in Indian tradition, once again incorporating one of the most salient of Trickster characteristics.

The Zande Trickster, Tule; The Bushman (Africa)

In the introduction to The Zande Trickster, E. E. Evans-Pritchard states that Tule is a monster of depravity: liar, cheat, lecher, murderer; vain, greedy, treacherous, ungrateful, a poltroon, a braggart. This utterly selfish person is everything against which Azande warn their children most strongly. Yet he is the hero of their stories, and it is to their children that his exploits are related and he is presented, with very little moralizing—if as a rogue, as an engaging one. For there is another side to his character, which even to us is appealing: his whimsical fooling, recklessness, impetuosity, puckish irresponsibility, his childish desire to show how clever he is, his total absorption in song and dance, his feathered hat, and his flouting of every convention.12