“The Hunter and the Boa” is reprinted from The Black Cloth: A Collection of African Folktales by Bernard Binlin Dadie, translated by Karen C. Hatch, copyright © 1987 by The University of Massachusetts Press.
Bernard Binlin Dadie - novelist, dramatist, poet, and minister of cultural affairs of the Ivory Coast - was born in 1916 and came of age under French colonial rule. Like others in his generation of African-French writers, Dadie sought to rediscover the oral literature of his ancestors. The Black Cloth was published in 1955 in French; an English translation did not appear until some thirty years later. All the stories in this collection - the re-creations of traditional folktales as well as the original compositions - are steeped in the African oral tradition. Speaking at the First International Congress of Africanists at Accra in 1962, Dadie spoke of that tradition as a “luxuriant folklore, whose roots strike deep into the earth… [its] values have provide their worth, and continue to mould the consciences of men in our villages.”
Dadie's are not merely literary tales, they are wisdom stories. Because of Dadie's tremendous skill, the reader never loses the sense of the presence of the griot, the traditional storyteller, as the writing transports him into the African universe far more effectively than folklorist's transcriptions.
The story that follows is representative of a type of folktale that has traditionally formed an integral part of moral training for a great many Africans. Such tales are widespread on that continent, although still not very familiar to most of the rest of the world. The storyteller often concludes his narration with a question, challenging listeners to choose among alternatives to resolve the dilemma. Discussion and debate, sometimes intense, follow. The tales thus function to train young listeners in the adjudication of disputes, whether within the family or in a formal court of law. Furthermore, the listener - or reader - must contemplate and perhaps even refine his ethical judgment.
The Editor
A very poor hunter had set his traps along the banks of a river.
None of the traps anywhere had caught even the tiniest animal. Not even a palm-rat, hurrying to scramble up a palm tree to get at the finely ripened fruit. And not even a single scatter-brained partridge who, always traveling with a group, frisked about in the clearings and undergrowth!
The hunter was, indeed, a very poor man. Therefore, he had gathered up all of his traps and had set them along the banks of the river; for even those that he had placed in trees had never caught a single bird. The birds would fly over in squadrons to the nearby trees, and perch on the bent wood of the traps to give their concert. And the traps would remain that way, as they listened to the music of the birds. The traps had, in fact, listened the music for so long now that they lost all interest in catching anything anymore. And so, they always remained bent. Did they perhaps understand all that whispering, and wailing, and shrieking of the grief-stricken bush as it rebelled against the hunter? Against man?
The hunter then went to set his traps in the
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