Showing posts with label Spring 10. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spring 10. Show all posts

Saturday, April 10, 2021

Week 10 Project research notes: Mantis/Ikaggen

Well, I just have to say WOW about this. I had always known there was a mantis trickster among the San people (Bushman people)... but this project is my first time to work with these materials, and I am totally blown away. This mantis is definitely a trickster, but his stories take place in a world that is NOT our world (yet), and that gives it all such a different feeling.

I'm thinking I want to do Mantis and the Elephants, and then maybe Mantis and Korotwiten. Those are more self-contained as stories... but the other cycles are so powerful! Anyway, here are my notes and resources for when I get ready to add the Mantis page in Week 11.


Very glad I discovered this book by Jenny Seed: The Bushman's Dream: African Tales of the Creation, published in 1974. It takes the main line of Mantis stories and connects them in a continuous narrative. Each chapter focuses on a specific Mantis story, but there's also an arc from start to finish as the Mantis more and more clearly perceives what is happening: the First People, like Mantis and his family, and the other people like the Tick People, Frog, and so on, are becoming animals. Then we come, the Next People, and we share our world with these animals who were once people. She doesn't give the chapters titles, so I've provided titles here for future reference:
Chapter 1 (p. 4): Introduction: we meet Mantis and he goes off into the wilderness with his springbok.
Chapter 2 (p. 12): Elephant People steal the springbok; his one is amazing: I love how Mantis escapes through the trunk.
Chapter 3 (p. 20): Korotwiten Bird teaches Mantis how to hunt ants but Mantis gets greedy. (This is also a great story about trickster greed and recklessness.)
Chapter 4 (p. 30): Blue Crane protects the Tortoise from Foulmouth the Ogre. (She is Mantis's sister, and this story is not really about Mantis but about her heroism.)
Chapter 5 (p. 38): Manti smakes an eland from Kwammanga's shoe (Rainbow Man, who is his son-in-law). The people kill the eland for meat. Angry, Mantis tells the sun not to shine. Then Mantis regrets the darkness, and makes the moon.
Chapter 6 (p. 50): Mantis confronts Old Smooth Head, who has eyes in his toes.
Chapter 7 (p. 58): Mantis offends the Bee People and Rock Rabbit People with his bad behavior; Kwammanga is well behaved. There is a rockfall, and the hosts protect Kwammanga, but Mantis gets hurt. 
Chapter 8 (p. 68): The Baboon People kill Mantis's son. Mantis fights the Baboons and brings his son back to life. 
Chapter 9 (p. 80): Frog Man and Frog Woman quarrel. Frog Man goes away and becomes a frog. Looking for Frog Man, Blue Crane becomes a crane.
Chapter 10 (p. 88): Mantis tries to steal food from the Tick People. They beat Mantis, but he uses his magic to take their sheep and their houses; they become ticks. 
Chapter 11 (p. 100): Mantis gets sick from eating too much sheep and decides to invite the All-Devourer, the father of his foster-daughter Porcupine to come eat with them. Everyone warns him not to do this, and it is a disaster: All-Devourer eats everything. He even eats Mantis and Kwammanga.
Chapter 12 (p. 112): Young Mantis and Young Kwammanga (his other son, not the Mongoose) battle the All-Devourer; everything comes back out that All-Devourer had eaten. Then Mantis says it is time to go away, and he becomes a mantis. 

These stories are all so good; I don't know how I will choose what to include in the Storybook! Here are links to the materials in Mantis and his Friends, which is one of the books online:


These stories are a more reader-friendly presentation of materials in Specimens of Bushman Folklore (see also this table of contents).

I also found this amazing archive of their work: Bleek and Lloyd Archive, including scans of the artwork, like this: These are sorcery’s things. I think that one man, to the right of the spectator, having killed a hartebeest, becomes like it with his companions. The Mantis is going with them. The others had helped him. They become Mantises. The Mantis is not there.’ The Mantis was the protector of the bucks, particularly of the eland and the hartebeest; the latter was said to resemble him, as its horns turn back like his antennae. Bushmen say, ‘The Mantis is used to go with the hartebeest when he walks about.’


Plus, I splurged (really splurged) and ordered a very expensive new book from a German publisher which covers both the material in the books and in the archive; I've pasted in the table of contents below (it covers all the story cycles; these are just screenshots of the Mantis materials):




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Week 10 Story: Rabbit and Terrapin, Two Tricksters

Author's Note. The African American folktales collected by Joel Chandler Harris in the late 19th century are one of our most important sources for African folktales told in the United States, specifically in Georgia, where Harris collected stories from former slaves. Although slave owners did their best to eradicate African cultural traditions among the slaves, the stories persisted. Stories from many different African cultures came together in new ways, and there was also back-and-forth sharing of stories with Native American storytellers. The trickster "Brer Rabbit" is the main character in the stories Harris collected, but the trickster "Brer Terrapin" (turtle) also appears in many stories; the word terrapin is itself a Native American name for the turtle (Wiktionary). For this experiment, I decided to look at the stories that features both Rabbit and Turtle to see what happens. Most of the time, they cooperate! Although in one famous story, they compete. Here are some of those stories told in 100 words.

Turtle in the Sack

Fox caught Turtle and put him in a sack. "Turtle-soup for supper tonight!" he sang.
Turtle kicked and squirmed. "Turn me loose!" he shouted.
Rabbit ran up. "Folks are raiding your watermelon-patch!" he told Fox. "I'll hold that sack. Run quick!"
Fox ran off, and Rabbit let Turtle out. Then Rabbit fetched a hornet-nest and put it inside the sack.
Rabbit and Turtle waited near Fox's house. Finally Fox arrived, toting the sack. "Rabbit thought he'd fool me, but I've still got Turtle." Then Fox opened the sack and the furious hornets bit Fox all over.
Rabbit and Turtle laughed.





Moon in the Mill-Pond

Rabbit and Turtle decided to have some fun.
"Let's go fishing!" they said to Bear, Wolf, and Fox. "Meet us at the mill-pond tonight."
When everyone had arrived, Rabbit yelled, "Moon's in the water! Let's rescue her!"
"She carries a pot of gold," shouted Turtle. "We'll rescue Moon and get the gold!"
Bear rushed forward. "I'll go!" he said, plunging into the water.
"No, me first!" yelled Wolf, and Fox jumped in too.
Rabbit and Turtle stood on the bank and laughed at Bear, Wolf, and Fox all pushing each other under the water, trying to grab the Moon's reflection.





Wolf under the Rock

Rabbit heard someone shouting.
It was Wolf, trapped under a rock. "Help!"
"If I help you," said Rabbit, "you'll eat me."
"No, I swear!" said Wolf.
Rabbit helped roll the rock away.
Then Wolf grabbed Rabbit. "Now I'll eat you!"
"But you promised!" Rabbit shrieked. 
Turtle heard the ruckus. "What's going on?"
Rabbit explained.
"I don't understand," said Turtle.
Wolf explained.
"I still don't understand," said Turtle. "Show me!"
"I was under this rock..." said Wolf, getting under the rock.
"NOW!" He and Rabbit slammed the rock down, killing Wolf.
"Best be more careful next time Rabbit," said Turtle, laughing.





Rabbit Races Turtle

"You're smart," Rabbit said, "but I'm fast!"
"I'm faster than you!" shouted Turtle. "Let's race! You take the road, I'll take the roadside."
They marked out a five-mile race. "One-two-three-GO!" said Buzzard, who was the judge.
Rabbit ran a mile. Turtle popped his head out of the bushes. "Best hurry, Rabbit!" he said.
Two miles. Three miles. Four miles. Turtle popped out in front every time!
Rabbit dashed to the finish-line, but Turtle was already there, doing his victory dance.
Rabbit never figured out those were Turtle's brothers and sisters. To Rabbit, they all looked alike.
Turtle won without running!





Additional Notes. Harris's versions are long and full of all kinds of charming detail; I had to leave all that out when creating these tiny versions. In the story of Rabbit rescuing Turtle, for example, Rabbit gets the hornets all riled up by banging the sack against a rock a few times. In the story about going fishing, Turtle and Rabbit make sure "Miss Meadows and the gals" are watching, so that Wolf, Bear, and Fox are humiliated in front of the ladies, and the same is true in the story of the race, where Turtle humiliates Rabbit in front of the gals. The story of the wolf under the rock comes originally from India; you may remember the Indian version of the story with jackal as the trickster: Tiger, Brahman, and Jackal. You probably also know the famous Aesop's fable about the Tortoise and the Hare; I like the idea that maybe that Tortoise was a trickster too, and even Aesop was fooled! :-)

Bibliography. You can read Harris's stories online here:

Image credits.



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