Tales Told in Togoland by A. W. Cardinall

Author:A. W. Cardinall [Cardinall, A. W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, African Studies, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781351023207
Google: exBqDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 3914665
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-08-16T02:57:02+00:00

* * *

1 Cf. p. 20.

1 Vide supra, p. 38.

1 In many respects this story of the Ajati resembles the legends of the Gow and Sorko, hunters and fishers, of the Songhai race. Cf. Dupuis-Yakouba, Les Gow, Paris, 1911, and Desplagnes, Le Plateau Central-Nigérien, Paris, 1907.

1 Beer brewed from millet.

1 Cf. supra, p. 43, Edubiaku; p. 129, Antiakoti; et infra, p. 246.

Chapter Seven

WHICH TELLS HOW ANANSI BECAME A SPIDER

WHO IS ANANSI?—HERO OR ANIMAL—INFLUENCE OF TWI LITERATURE SPREADING—THE STORY OF THE DRESS THAT SANG—TERROR OF SHAME—HOW ANANSI ASSUMED HIS PRESENT FORM—GREED AND DISCOURTESY ARE MATTERS TO BE ASHAMED OF.

FROM the preceding tales and the following ones it seems that Anansi has become the hero of two totally different types of narrative. In one set he would almost certainly seem to be a name for some former hero or sovereign of these negro people, and in the second type he assumes the character more of a spider or is more animal than human. I venture to suggest that Anansi was either a hero or a name given to represent the man-in-the-street or serf, and that eventually owing to his name being the same, whether by design or not does not matter, as that of the spider, the latter came to represent in the animal world the insignificant beast triumphing over the mighty.

This may, I think, account for the fact that in the tales told by the northern tribes the poor man so often bests the chief or king, who is of alien stock and cannot be deposed, whilst in the stories related by the tribes influenced by the Twi-speaking Ashanti, who are almost republican and have chiefs who can be deposed, the weakling hero, Anansi, defeats not the Omanhin or King but God himself. The negro race has from time immemorial, with only here and there occasional exceptions, been ever the downtrodden, the slave, the under-dog. It might be expected therefore that he would have had to devise some form of consolation, some means of somehow defeating his superior. He could only manage that for a short while; he could not remain for ever master. Thus the poor man might momentarily triumph; the chief must inevitably regain his chieftainship. It is the folk-lore par excellence for the individual who finds himself for ever up against odds too powerful for him to compete with, and therefore one finds that he must resort to some form of sharp practice or wiliness in order to gain the victory over his far stronger opponent.

This is much more apparent in the tales of the northern tribes than in those of the tribes whose form of government approximates that of the Ashanti or Fanti tribes. In these latter countries the King or Omanhin is a personage raised almost democratically to his high position. In his youth he plays with the sons of the generality of the town; his position is only that of a possible ruler; he will not in any case even inherit the divine right in which he can do no wrong.

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