I found this book at the Phoenicia Library. It has appealing sentences like “Gudo and Tsuro were a famous pair” and
“Chibode said okay. He never talked much. He was such a pitiful and honest fellow.”
“The Tortoise and the Hare” is nothing like the story we know; it’s about two animals being boiled a pot. The characters are Types: the rich man and the poor man, the wise son and the brainless son, the boy who lived in the big town and the grandmother who lived in the country. Are these characters present in all folktales? Probably. In “The Dog with Two Horns” the big-town boy sees a goat (while visiting his rural Grandma) and believes it’s a horned dog.
At the end are “Afrikan Sayings of Wisdom (Tsumo),” such as: “When two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers most,” and “Nothing is as plain to see as when a very old person disappears and a leopard vomits grey hair.”
