The folk tales of a people are a guide to the understanding of their past. If you want to understand people of today you must find out what they have been. If the wealth of beautiful African legends is indicative of the early civilization of that continent the natives must have reached a high level of culture. To appreciate the African, then, we must hear him speak for himself in the charming stories handed down from sire to son.
Folk tales, as a rule, deal with the terrible and formidable, telling of animal ancestors, dwarfs, and monsters; but in African stories one often discovers “tender and gracious touches.” Some of these legends have a fine sense of humor. Many of them present a point of view and emphasize a moral. Taken as a whole, they show the wit, wisdom, and philosophy of the people. In this way primitive man undertook to account for the natural, moral, and spiritual world in which he moved.
Story-telling in Africa is almost an institution. Certain persons, largely old women, specialize in telling the youth interesting stories. Here and there are found professional story-tellers, those who go from place to place, devoting all of their time to this sort of occupation. They are the literary group of the tribe. They thus hand down to posterity the traditions of the fathers.
The story-teller passes as a respectable person in the community and figures especially in its social functions. In certain parts, however, story-telling is a daily performance. At the close of the day when night comes to make easy the doing of mysterious things, the group gathers around the narrator in the village street or camp to listen to a charming story.
The story is told with a wealth of descriptive detail, in a sort of dramatic, recitative chanting and crooning very much like a song. The actors in most cases are beasts; but they speak and live sometimes “as human beings in a human environment” and sometimes “as human beings in a beast environment.” The narrator imitates the voice of the characters and speaks with gestures, often followed by a shriek or howl. Observers generally agree that the African story-teller does his task well.
The stories herein published are merely a few legends from different sources. Most of them may be found in varying forms in any large collection of African Folklore. These are presented here without modification of thought but in the simplest language possible to reach the minds of children of the lower grades of public schools. The glossary at the end will be helpful.
WASHINGTON, D. C.,
November, 1928.
CARTER GODWIN WOODSON.