Francois Kara Akoa-Mongo Dr

Bantu Tales Francois Kara Akoa-Mongo Dr

The typical native African story or legend is marked by many repetitions of certain portions of the account. The same incidents occur to a succession of individuals; monotony being prevented by a variation in the conduct of those individuals, as they reveal their weakness or stupidity, artifice or treachery. The Narrators, while preserving the original plot and characters of a Tale, make variations, and graphic by introducing objects known and familiar to their audience. These inconsistencies do not interfere with belief or offend the taste of a people with whom even the impossible is not a bar to faith; rather, the inconsistency sharpens their enjoyment of the story. Surprise must not be felt at the impossibility of some of the situations; e. g., the swallowing by an animal of someone's wife baggage or household furniture, as a means of hiding them. The absurdity of such situations is one of the distinctive attractions to the minds of the excited listeners. It is not a surprise to find variations of the same Tale, as told in different Tribes, among the people whose language was not written until within the last hundred years; the Tales having been transmitted verbally, from generation to generation, for, probably, thousands of years. As to their antiquity, these Tales to be of very ancient origin. No argument must be taken against them because of the internal evidence of allusion to modern things, or implements, or customs of known modern date; e. g., "cannon," "tables," "steamships," etc., etc. Narrators constantly embellish by novel additions; e. g., where, in the original story, a character used a spear, the narrator may substitute a pistol. Almost all these Tales locate themselves in supposed prehistoric times, when Beasts and Human Beings are asserted to have lived together with social relations in the same