An African Narrative
Another find while moving was a small, white book from my childhood, titled Myths and Legends from Malawi. It is edited and illustrated by a E.E. Singano and published in Blantyre, year unknown. It contains a number of Aesop-like fables about village life and relations between animals, and animals and humans like "Saved by a sick girl" and "Why the dog lives with us". Here is one of the shorter stories, directly copied from the book. I suspect it has been translated into English from the local language, Chichewa. It puzzled me quite a bit and I wanted to share it here, thinking that is not very likely than any of my regular readers have access to this book.

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THE STORY OF A TOAD AND CHICKEN
Once, there was a chicken. She had three little chickens. She used to wonder about in the bush to look for food.

One day, she was with her little chickens.She was scratching on the ground with her toes trying to uncover any food that was buried in the ground. As she was doing so, she scratched the back of a toad that was buried in the soil. The toad also had young toads with her. Indeed, the poor toad was furious. The toad shouted to the hen that she should not have scratched her back like that. The toad shouted and shouted until the hen got angry. After sometime they started fighting. The hen bit the toad on the back. Poor toad could not bit the hen because his arms and legs were very short.

While they were fighting, the hen told the young toads, to go home and tell their father that thier mother was dying. The toad replied that the hen should not have said that because they did not know who would die. So the young toads waited to see who would win the fight. Alas! the hen could not breathe because the mucus like stuff that the toad excreted blocked her nose and mouth. Immediately she fell on the ground and died.

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There is a certain computer-generated story-like quality to it, isn't there? I had to read it a few times to discover who is who (a slight problem of gender) and what the alledged point of the story might be. And the ending is cruel and leaves you wondering what happens to the three poor motherless chicks...All in all, it got me started thinking about a lot of things:
Could a story like this have been written in Europe? There are certain local traits which you would not find in European countries (I think), like the poisonous toad and the wandering about in the bush. But the morale: that you should not sell the pelt, before the bear is shot (as we say in Danish) is universal, I guess, though the exact way the story told might vary between geographical regions. Is this then proof that content can be international, but form is always local? How would it be to listen to this story, if it was told in Chichewa, for instance? Is there many subleties we loose in the translation? And would it make sense to translate into a complete other language: like trying to convey the morale through the playing of a computer game, for instance? Have to think more about that.

Update:
Here is a link to a native Malawian who uses the myths and legends in his dance work
There is actually a little portal with links to various African legends and fables here.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 17:45