Akan-Ashanti Folktales; collected and translated by Capt. R.S. Rattray and illustrated by Africans of the Gold Coast Colony http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.CH.DOCUMENT.sip100061 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org Akan-Ashanti Folktales; collected and translated by Capt. R.S. Rattray and illustrated by Africans of the Gold Coast Colony Author/Creator Rattray, Robert S. Date 1930 Resource type Books Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) Volta-Tano Watershed, Ghana, Elmina;Asante Temples, Besease Temple;Patakro Temple, Western Africa, Asante Source Smithsonian Institution Libraries, GR360 .A55R3X 1930 Description A collection of Akan folktales recorded in the Ashanti and Kwawu areas of Ghana. Each folktale in Twi/Akan is followed by an English translation. These folktales, performed only at night, were more akin to theater than myths, histories, religious tales, or other forms of storytelling in that they were performed before crowds as a form of entertainment and amusement with a narrator accompanied by actors dressed in costumes. Performances took place in the street with the audience seated in a circle or within one of the three stage-like verandas found in the roofless inner courtyard of the traditional Akan home, with the performers in one veranda and the audience standing or seated in the other two open verandas while others gathered under the eaves. Though there are various genres of this type of entertainment (comedies, moral tales, adventure, etc), this volume is a collection of what the Akan call 'Anansesem', which are essentially amusing origin and lesson stories, i.e. 'how it came to be that some people are good-looking and others not'. They are not meant to be factual or historical but rather entertaining. Format extent 309 pages (length/size) http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.CH.DOCUMENT.sip100061 http://www.aluka.org AKAN-ASHANTI FOLK-TALES AKAN-ASHANTI FOLK-TALES Collected and translated by CAPT. R. S. RATTRAY C.B.E., B.Sc. (Oxon.) Gold Coast Political Service; of Gray's Inn, Barrister-at-Law and illustrated by AFRICANS OF THE GOLD COAST COLONY OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1930 SNIAv NO 718 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS AMEN HOUSE, E.C. 4 LONDON EDINBURGH GLASGOW LEIPZIG NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE CAPETOWN BOMBAY. CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI HUMPHREY MILFORD PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY Printed in Great Britain PREFACE THE task of compiling Folk-tales in West Africa-and possibly elsewhere-may either present the collector with a somewhat difficult or a peculiarly simple task, according to the modus operandi pursued by him in gathering the necessary data. On the Gold Coast, where many of its inhabitants have a good knowledge of our language, the assistance of some of these literates may readily be obtained; they may be asked to write down in English such tales as they themselves happen to know, or detailed to collect similar stories from their illiterate fellow-countrymen. If a number of such helpers be employed, a large collection of tales may be obtained in a very short time, without much effort or any necessity for special qualifications on the part of the European collector, save the simplest preliminary organization. All that the latter will then have to do is to edit the English of his various African collaborators.' The most that can be said for such methods is that the results are perhaps better than not having anything at all. I need not enter here into all the details as to why this should be the case. There are several factors at work which are likely to militate against the high value-from an anthropological standpoint-of folk-tales collected in this manner. Not the least of these disadvantages is that the transcribers are prone to ignore the African idiom, and to omit just those apparently trivial details which stamp these tales with individuality and make them of value to students of language and customs. Even when these Europeanized African helpers have been asked to write down the stories in the vernacular, I have noticed that, unless carefully instructed to record the actual words of the narrators, the long training in the Mission or other schools appears to have resulted in a curious uniform standard of unidiomatic expression which is not really the spoken language of the mass of the people,2 nor the one in which these tales were originally told. I stand open to correction, but I believe that most, if not all, of the collections of Akan Folk-tales have been made in this manner.3 I Thereby, incidentally, possibly removing the last hope of such a collection being of very much scientific value. 2 This somewhat curious state of affairs has been noted elsewhere. At a recent Missionary Conference, one speaker deplored the fact that sermons which the Missionary preached in the vernacular in the environment of the Mission Station were often almost unintelligible to the people outside that area. 3 Such has also hitherto been the unsatisfactory method of research in many other fields of anthropological work in West Africa. These remarks need not, of course, apply to Folk- Undoubtedly the method that will give the most satisfactory results is for the trained observer to collect his stories at their source; that is, in the remoter villages, as told at night by the old folk, under the stars. The contents of the present volume have been gathered in this manner. The collection represents the gleanings, if not of " a thousand and one nights ", at least of many scores of evenings spent sitting in a circle after darkI in the village street or, if in the rains, in some open pato (three-walled room) with the four sides of the gyase kesie (big courtyard) of the compound thronged with villagers gathered under the dripping eaves to hear and to relate these tales. After an evening's story-telling, the best tale would be noted, and the story-teller asked to come to me later on, when the tale would be repeated, written down, and finally read over for correction. The only editing done has been in an attempt to record the originals in a more or less uniform dialect. The stories were collected in areas widely apart-comprising, indeed, most of Ashanti and south into Kwawu.2 Slight variations in dialect were therefore not uncommon. Occasionally, also, I have altered a tense in the English translation. The story-teller would often lead off in the past, and in the next sentence slip into an historic present or sometimes into a perfect tense, of which they are very fond. Otherwise the originals represent the Akan language as it is actually spoken to-day in Ashanti. In this respect they are, I believe, unique among works printed in the vernacular. I have not, for several reasons which I need not here enumerate, made any endeavour to conform to the latest fashion in vernacular spelling, and, as in all my previous volumes, have omitted diacritical marks. The student who is specially interested in these can without much difficulty make the necessary alterations in his own copy. I have, throughout, made the English translation as nearly literal as possible. At this point one meets a certain difficulty in a conflict between a desire for accuracy and an endeavour to give a translation acceptable to English ears. Where an editor has not been tied down by a vernacular text, it is easy to slur over difficulties in translation and to dress such tales so that they seem to run smoothly. The discords that seem inevitable in a more careful translatales written down by Africans wholly ignorant of English who employ their own script, where such happens to exist. I These stories, as we shall see presently, may only be told after dark, with one exception, i.e. they may be related in the daytime at the funeral of one who, during his life, was famous as a story-teller. 2 Wrongly spelled " KwAHu " on the maps. tion are, however, I think, frequently one of the chief charms and most happy claim to originality in these tales. At any rate, they are certainly more valuable than harmonies in diction and English idioms which the illiterate African could never have conceived, and have marred so many pseudoAfrican collections of Folk-tales. There are at least three important lines of research in connexion with this subject which I think have never been adequately explored, or at any rate, judged by my own local experience, correctly explained. The first of these relates to the origin of many of these tales; that is, to the question as to how far they may be considered as native to Ashanti and the Gold Coast.