Where Animals Talk: West African Folk Lore Tales:

by Robert H. Nassau

Overview

From the PREFACE

THE typical native African Ekano or legend is marked by repetition. 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.

Narrators, while preserving the original plot and characters of a Tale, vary it, and make it 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 his wife, baggage and 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781663538154
Publisher:	Barnes & Noble Press
Publication date:	07/21/2020
Pages:	252
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

Robert Hamill Nassau (1835 – May 6, 1921) was an American presbyterian missionary who spent forty years in Africa. Robert was born in Montgomery Square, Pennsylvania and went to the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, continuing his education at the College of New Jersey. From 1856 to 1859 he moved on to the Princeton Theological Seminary and obtained a medical qualification from Pennsylvania Medical School in 1861. On the instigation of the Presbytery of New Brunswick he joined the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions as a missionary, with his first posting being to the African island of Corisco. Throughout his career he served as a missionary in many places: Benita; Belambla; Kangwe; Talaguga; Baraka (Libreville); and Batanga.[1] Nassau established a mission station in Lambaréné.