Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/607

 Rh They are called "Ananzi Stories," because so many of them turn on the feats of Ananzi, whose character is a mixture of "The Master-thief," and of "Boots;" but the most curious thing about him is, that he illustrates the Beast Epic in a remarkable way. In all the West Indian Islands, "Ananzi" is the name of spiders in general, and of a very beautiful spider with yellow strips in particular. The Negroes think that this spider is the "Ananzi of their stories, but that his superior cunning enables him to take any shape he pleases. In fact, he is the example which the African tribes from which these stories came, have chosen to take as pointing out the superiority of wit over brute strength. In this way they have matched the cleverness and dexterity of the Spider, against the bone and muscle of the Lion, invariably to the disadvantage of the latter.

After this introduction, we let the Tales speak for themselves, only premising that the "Jack-Spaniard" in the first story is a very pretty fly of the wasp kind, and, like his European brother, very small in the waist; that the "Cush-cush," is a little red yam which imparts a strong red dye to everything with which it is boiled; and that the "Doukana" is a forest tree which bears a fruit, though of what kind it is hard to say.