Folklore And It's Wisdom

This book is broken up into two sections. Stories about Anansi which contain eighteen stories (not all are about him) and the section containing eighteen miscellaneous tales. Thirty-six stories in all.

Of all the stories I read/heard about Anansi only one in this book contained the clever wisdom he is said to claim. That is the story of how he managed to get Nyame to give him all the stories.

In this book the title of that story is How We Got The Name Spider Tales. Although searching online shows the title names vary.

I noticed several of the stories mention a famine but I can not tell by reading this book nor in my online search how many famines there were and how long they lasted. I am sure though that these stories were not created as a metaphor. Even China suffered famines in historical times, mainly due to wars.

Another theme I noticed in this book was a magical item that made food from near nothing. one ithe was a pot given to Anansi and another is a stone found in the forest by his son. I have seen this theme in other folklore but have been unable to locate a round about geographical origin. I will keep looking to see if I can find this information and write more about it another time.

In the mean time there are at least three other books about Anansi folklore I will be reading. I will try to make notes about these stories to write about in a future post. Until then go check this book out and let me know what your thoughts on it are.

Thank you for reading this and I look forward to engaging with you in the comments. If you are coming from outside of hive and enjoyed my content, please consider supporting me.