
Folk Tales of Vanuatu — Part 1: The Three Fish · The Rat and the Rail · The Mim · Story of the Old Woman, How She Made the Sea · Ganviviris · The Woman and the Eel | KacheliTV World Classics
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Folk Tales of Vanuatu — Part 1 (The Three Fish · The Rat and the Rail · The Mim · Story of the Old Woman, How She Made the Sea · Ganviviris · The Woman and the Eel) Part one — the premiere of a new shelf. Six Vanuatu folk tales collected and translated by R. H. Codrington in The Melanesians (Clarendon Press, 1891), read here in a clean modern reading text, complete and in book order. In The Three Fish, from Ureparapara in the Banks Islands, the Watwata and the Sole scratch one another and play hide and seek — and the Song has grinned ever since. In The Rat and the Rail, also from Ureparapara, a cheating Rat and a patient Rail settle their account over gaviga fruit, and that is why the rat has a tail and the rail a red forehead. In The Mim, from the Torres Islands, the Mim people drag the yams from island to island, and the people of Lo, down on the reefs fishing, get only the rinds — small yams, but plentiful. In Story of the Old Woman, How She Made the Sea, from Lepers' Island (Ambae), two boys shoot at a lizard on the forbidden leaf, the water bursts forth, and the old woman's cry makes the sea stand round the whole world. In Ganviviris, from Mota in the Banks Islands, the idle orphan shoots a fish that is Ro Som, Money herself, and is raised through every rank of the suqe — until he disobeys her one condition. And in The Woman and the Eel, from Aurora Island (Maewo), the men cook the great eel that the pandanus leaves became, and every eater turns into an eel and follows it into the water. The episode opens and closes with its theme, Lightning Crash, heard also briefly between the stories. Chapters 0:39 The Three Fish 2:29 The Rat and the Rail 4:48 The Mim 6:51 Story of the Old Woman, How She Made the Sea 9:54 Ganviviris 20:56 The Woman and the Eel Seventeen further Vanuatu tales of the same chapter are not read on this shelf, each excluded by name after a full reading: The Birds' Voyage · The Shark and the Snake · The Hen and Her Chickens · The Origin of Poisoned Arrows · How Tagaro the Little Found Fish · The Story of Dilingavuv · A Story About an Eel · The Ghost-Wife · The Little Owl · The Winged Wife · The Story of Taso · About Betawerai a Snake · The Story of Basi and Dovaowari · The Story of Deitari · Tarkeke · The Woman and the Ghost · About Merambuto and Tagaro. One more, A Story About Tagaro the Little, is held for the owner's ruling by name and is not read here. The chapter's three Solomon Islands tales belong to another shelf. No claim of completeness for the book is made. From The Melanesians by R. H. Codrington (1891), public domain — the Vanuatu stories of Chapter XIX, complete and in book order. Narrated by Madame de Pamplemousse. Theme: Lightning Crash. KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
- Transcript


















