Reading Diary B: South African Folktales

To start, I was slightly confused by The Dance for Water. I believed it was earlier in this unit that I read another story that was almost exactly identical. The Dance for Water is a story about how all the animals but the Hare dance to get water, and it actually works. Then the Hare drinks the water even though he didn't dance for it any everyone's upset. So they decide to have the Tortoise hide at the edge of the pond and make his shell sticky, so that when the Hare came he would be stuck to the Tortoise's shell. In the previous portion of the unit, The Story of a Dam tells a similar story concerning Jackal, one that ends with Lion determining the punishment will be spinning by the tail and dashing Jackal's head against the rocks. In the second story, the punishment is taking Rabbit's tail and dashing his head against the stones. I found this close parallelism in consecutive stories interesting and a little confusing. Outside of that, I again enjoyed the second half of this unit, though there were no stories that really stood out to me like Tink Tinkje did in the first half.

Citation:
South African Folktales

Rabbit tracks in the sand

Reading Diary A: South African Folktales

First, an overall comment. I enjoyed these stories quite a bit but was somewhat frustrated with them. The Lion loses to the Jackal in basically every single story. I know that this is a shout out to being cunning and clever and manipulative, but the Jackal was also pretty clearly a terrible creature. I'm boring and prefer a story with a moral message that I approve of, so that was somewhat discouraging. On an individual level though, I thought the stories were quite good. My favorite was Tink-Tinkje, which is a story about the competition between the birds of South Africa to be named King of the birds. There is a lot of disagreement on what the actual competition should be, but ultimately they decide that it will be whoever can fly the highest. This seems rigged from the start, because it's openly acknowledged that the Vulture can fly the highest. But they compete anyways, and just when the Vulture thinks it has flown the highest, the Tink-Tinkje appears from beneath its (the Vulture's) wing and declares that it has actually flown the highest. I did enjoy this show of cunning to outwit a physically superior animal, which is interesting because it is somewhat a parallel of the situation between the Jackal and the Lion. That further reinforces for me the idea that the message of a story has quite a bit to do with whether or not I enjoy it.

South African Folktales

Tink-Tinkje Bird