The animals were supposed to work Mouse-Deer's land, but Leopard made them all go work for him.
Angry, Mouse-Deer went to the spring near Leopard's land and began playing his harp. "Leopard is a mighty man," he sang. "Mighty, mighty is he!"
When the animals came to get water, they couldn't resist: they started singing and dancing.
Goat came.
Then Monkey.
Also Pangolin. Warthog. Buffalo. All of them.
Finally, Leopard came. "Where are my workers?" he shouted. Then he heard the song.
"Leopard is a mighty man..."
Leopard starting dancing too!
No work got done at Leopard's farm that day.
[a story from Liberia]
Inspired by: "Dancing at the Spring" in Folktales from Liberia (in Journal of American Folklore) by Richard C. Bundy, 1919.
Notes: You can read the original story online. The mouse-deer is regularly a trickster in Kru folktales, so I have rendered "Nymo" here as the mouse-deer, although I am not certain about that. Hopefully I can find more information that will help determine that for sure; for now, I'll just choose the trickseter-animal that seems to fit the context. You can read about the belly-harp at Wikipedia.
No comments:
Post a Comment