
Folk Tales of Togo — Part 2 (The Three Orphans · A Courtship in Bird Language · The Hyena and the Bush-Cat · Why Monkeys Live in Trees)
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Part Two of our Togo shelf turns, as promised, to Jakob Spieth's parables and his chapter on the language of the birds — and completes its reading from the shelf's second gated source, A. B. Ellis's The Ewe-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (London, 1890). In The Three Orphans, three children who called their grandmother "Mother" learn the truth from their playmates, and set out to find their mother's grave in the stream — one to show the way, one to drink the stream dry, and one to know her bones again; Spieth's own printed answer to the parable's question is kept. In A Courtship in Bird Language, the doves akpakpa and voli plead their suits before the town elders in their own speech — one brought much, once; the other brings a little every day — and the elders judge what the birdsong means. In The Hyena and the Bush-Cat, two animals unknowingly build one house between them, each certain the work is doing itself, until a noise in the next room sends both running. And in Why Monkeys Live in Trees, the monkey who tied the sleeping bush-cat's tail to a tree learns why the ground is no longer safe for him. Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 3:55 The Three Orphans 6:03 A Courtship in Bird Language 7:59 The Hyena and the Bush-Cat 12:26 Why Monkeys Live in Trees Sources and selection: Spieth's parable chapter holds two parables; one is not read here — The Mender, the Hunter and the Thief — because its rescue turns on a shot fired at an eagle. Ellis's chapter holds four specimen tales; two are not read here — The Maiden Who Always Refused, and Why the Hare Runs Away — because each turns on depicted harm, which this channel does not read aloud. Our Togo reading therefore claims no more than the four pieces named above. Sources: Jakob Spieth, Die Ewe-Stämme (Berlin, 1906) — parables and bird language, in a fresh in-house translation from the German; A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (London, 1890) — both public domain. Narrated by Madame de Pamplemousse. Music: opening and closing theme, "Convergence at Dusk" — heard at the introduction and the close, and as a short separator between the tales; the tales themselves are read dry. KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
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