Reading Notes: Nigerian Folk Stories, Part A

The first story for this weeks reading caught my attention fairly quickly and caught me off guard. It was about a king who was successful and well liked and hated at the same time by his people. He got what he wanted and any pretty girl that he wanted as well. A neighboring town did not liked the king and wanted him killed, so a witch agreed to do so. This witch turned herself into a pretty girl and deceived the king by poisoning his food that she made for him. All the sudden the story got gory and she sliced the kings head off when he was poisoned. Her town was able to then defeat the king's town as they were not prepared. I think if I was able to give one of my characters a supernatural power that would make for an entertaining story. I have always liked the idea of tricking others to think you are someone else. Secretly in my own mind I wish I could do that.

The next short story from the reading had to do with a bat and a rat. The central theme was jealousy, and ultimately the rat tried to do what the bad had done to make his soup just as good. In the end, the rat lost his life and the king sent people after the bat. I enjoyed how the end of the story led to the reason that bats only come out to feed in the dark. They have fear that something will happen to them. Maybe for my story I could use something like this and lead up to something normal.

The third story in this first half of the reading

Bush rat 

was about a daughter who disobeyed her parents and wound up marrying someone that she shouldn't. At first, I thought surely something was going to happen to the girl when she went off with the skull who borrowed things to appear handsome for her since the skull was from an evil land of spirits. I thought the moral of the story was going to be that you should listen to what your parents tell you, otherwise something bad might happen. It seemed bad, but then she was sent home because she was kind to the skull's mother. I didn't quite know what the moral of the story was then, but I liked how I thought something was going to happen then something else happened instead.

Following that story, the next one I really enjoyed reading was about a king and a cock's daughter. The king was able to get any girl that he ultimately wanted and had many wives. He heard of the cock's daughter and that she was beautiful, so he wanted her. Seeing as how the cock was poor, he had no option but to present his daughter to the king, although he warned the king that she still contained some qualities of a cock. This part I though was especially interesting because I think it would be fun to add qualities to humans that people don't expect into my story. As the story goes on, the cock's daughter eventually becomes the favorite and the other wives are jealous. They then expose her qualities and embarrass the king so that he gets rid of her, and their plan works. When the king finds out it was a set up he gets rid of the wife that planned it and she ends up poor and homeless. The king himself eventually dies because he is unhappy that he sent the cock's daughter away.


Bibliography - Nigerian Folk Stories by Elphinstone Dayrell