Dog, and His Human Speech is a Central African folktale collected by missionary Robert Hamill Nassau, from the Tanga people. According to scholars, the tale is related to the folkloric theme of the Calumniated Wife, and finds parallels with European variants of tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children", of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index. These tales refer to stories where a girl promises a king she will bear a child or children with wonderful attributes, but her jealous relatives or the king's wives plot against the babies and their mother.
Summary A chief named Njambo is already married to a woman named Nyangwa-Mbwa, and they have a son named Mbwa (described as a creature with human speech). Njambo then marries three sisters: Majanga, responsible for cleaning their house; Inyanji, occupied with planting; and Mamĕndi, who is to bear Njambo's children. Mamĕndi is attended by her sisters and gives birth to twin boys. Majanga and Inyanji cast them into the pig-pen. They take two anthills (Nassau attributed it to their conical shape) and present them to Njambo as his sons.Nassau, Robert Hamill. Where Animals Talk: West African Folklore Tales. Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, 1912. p. 168-170.
Mbwa finds the boys in the pig-pen and takes them to his mother to rear and suckle. One day when Nyangwa-Mbwa is away, Mamĕndi's jealous sisters kill the twins. Mbwa goes to a person named Nja-ya-melema-mya-bato to get two "heart-lives" to resurrect the twins. The twin boys come back to life and grow up as fine young men. The twin boys hunt game and give Mbwa to bring to his father Njambo. Njambo wonders where Mbwa is finding all these animals to hunt.
Finally, after some years, Mbwa convinces his father to summon all the people in an assembly. Mbwa brings to the assembly the twins, and reveals the whole truth.Nassau, Robert Hamill. Where Animals Talk: West African Folklore Tales. Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, 1912. pp. 168-173.
Analysis Tale type Folklorist Stith Thompson noted that tale type ATU 707 was "well established in all parts of Africa".Thompson, Stith (1977). The Folktale. University of California Press. p. 121. .
According to Daniel Crowley, researcher May Augusta Klipple, in a preliminary study published in 1938, indicated the existence of 10 variants of tale type 707 from Africa, without specifying their region.Klipple, May Augusta. African Folk Tales with Foreign Analogues. Volume 2. Indiana University, 1938. pp. 533-541.Crowley, Daniel J. "Haring's Herring: Theoretical Implications of the "Malagasy Tale Index"." Journal of Folklore Research 23, no. 1 (1986): 46, 48. Accessed June 22, 2022. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3814480. However, analysing Klipple's study, scholar Hasan El-Shamy identified that Klipple pointed to 11 variants in the following ethnic groups: 9 tales among Venda, Larusa, Kamba and Masai (East Africa); one from the Sotho (southern Africa), and one from the Hausa (west Africa).El-Shamy, Hasan M. Folktales of Egypt. University of Chicago Press. 1980. p. 256. .
Motifs El-Shamy also noted that variants from Subsaharan Africa focus on the rivalry between co-wives and the bond between male twins.El-Shamy, Hasan M. Folktales of Egypt. University of Chicago Press. 1980. p. 255. .
Variants Central Africa Nassau collected another tale from the with the name The Toucan and the Three Golden-Girdled Children, and published it in Journal of American Folklore, in 1915. In this tale, the wife promises to give birth to three children, Manga ("Sea"), Joba ("Sun") and Ngânde ("Moon"). A toucan plays the role of the Speaking Bird and helps the family to reconcile.Nassau, R. H. "Batanga Tales". In: The Journal of American Folklore 28, no. 107 (1915): 48–51. Accessed June 22, 2022. doi:10.2307/534556.
Cameroon
In a tale collected from Cameroonian (Peul) teller Goggo Addi with the Peul title Ɓiɓɓe Fulɓe wudinaaɓe and translated to French with the title Des enfants peuls jetés à l'égout ("The Peul Children Cast in the Sewer"), a king is childless, so he searches for a wife. Three women go to the woods and utter their wishes to have the king make them as his concubine: the elder boasts she could be a great cook for him, the second to sweep and clean his house, and the third promises to bear him twins. Their conversation is overheard by a hunter who informs the king. The monarch sends for them and marries them as his new concubines. The third woman becomes pregnant and gives birth to male twins. The other co-concubines take the children and throw them in a sewer ("conduit d'évacuation", in the French translation), but the boys are saved by an old woman, while their mother is expelled from the palace and moved out to a humble hut on the outskirts of the palace. The old woman feeds the boys with cow milk and goat milk, and they grow up. They tell their adoptive mother about wanting to play with horses by the river, but the old woman forbids them. Still, they play with clay and approach the king's servants and breaking their tools for drawing water, repeating a sentence "they are the Peul children cast beyond the wall of pregnancy". The incident is reported to the king, who sends an invitation to the old woman to bring the two boys, for the king will queue up a line of women with dishes for the boys to try. The twins' mother joins the other women at the end of the queue with a dish ("calabasse") of giblets ("abats") and red millet. The old woman enters the palace with the boys and the king asks where she found them. The old woman answers God gave her the boys, and the king allows the twins to choose their dish. The boys look over the food offered by the other women, but choose the food prepared by their mother, and invite their adoptive mother to partake of the repast. The twins embrace their mother, and the king recognizes her as the mother of the twins, then orders the other women to serve her. The twins then request for the wicked women to have their throats slit, their bodies buried in the septic tank, and for the skulls ("crânes") to be used as stepping stones for their mother. It happens thus.
West Africa In an untitled West African tale collected by Allan Wolsey Cardinall, deity Nyame, who is already married to a woman named Akoko, the Barn-door Fowl, takes four other women as his wives, who later move to his house. There, they need to follow the rules of the head-wife, who asks the women what each would give to their husband: the first promises to clean and sweep the compound, the second would cook for him, the third that she would spin cotton for him, and the fourth answers she would bear him a "child of gold" (or "gold-child"). Some time later, the fourth wife gives birth to a twin entirely of silver and another entirely of gold. Akoko, the headwife, places them in a pot and abandons them under a dead odum tree, then replaces the twins for frogs. Nyame is tricked by the headwife and banishes the fourth wife to the distant corner of the kingdom. Back to the twins, they are found by a hunter, and the golden twin (the elder) tells the man they are Nyame's sons. The hunter takes them in, and becomes rich with the dust that falls down from the boys' metallic bodies. Later Anansi, the Spider, who knows of the whole truth, rushes to inform Nyame. The hunter then decides to take the twins to their father. On the way there, they collect stones to play wari with Nyame. After they arrive, the group sits for a game of wari. As the silver twin plays with him, the golden twin sings a song about their mother's story. Nyame learns the truth, restores the fourth wife to his house, and punishes Akoko.Cardinall, Allan Wolsey; E. F Tamakloe; and International African Institute. Tales Told in Togoland. London: Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1931. pp. 36–39. Anthropologist Paul Radin republished the tale as The Creator Nyame and His Four Wives, and sourced it from the Krachi people. The tale was also republished as Niame's Gold and Silver Twins. In another version, titled The Golden Child and the Silver Child, the twins' mother's rival is named Coco, and both she and the twins' mother vie for the position of Nyame's only wife.
In a tale from the Ndowe people of Equatorial Guinea, El cerco de los leones, two sisters confide in each other that they will bear handsome children. The younger, however, confesses that she will bear a boy with a star on the forehead and another on the chest. After the boy's birth, the elder sister replaces her nephew for a piece of wood and throws him into a den of lions.Creus, Jacint. Cuentos de los Ndowe de Guinea Ecuatorial. Malabo: Centro Cultural Hispano-Guineano, 1991. p. 43. .
In a tale from the Dahomey people, collected by Melville J. Herskovits with the title Slandering co-wife: Why there are several attendants at childbirth, a girl named Agenu (or Tohwesi), daughter of King Abiliba Numayago, becomes the second wife to a king called Beu. She becomes heavy with child and when it is time to give birth, she is blindfolded by her husband's other wife. Agenu gives birth to a boy, but the second wife hides the boy in a calabash and replace him for a stone. An old woman who was nearby gets the calabash to raise the boy, while his mother locked in a hut to be insulted by the other wives. Years later, the old woman requests an audience with the king, the prime minister and the second minister. The king gathers the people and the boy is asked to appoint his mother. The old woman reveals the treachery to the king.Herskovits, Melville Jean, and Frances Shapiro Herskovits. Dahomean Narrative: a Cross-cultural Analysis. Evanston [Ill.]: Northwestern University Press, 1958. pp. 397–400. Liberia
In a tale from the Sapo people of Liberia titled How a wicked woman burned, there live two chiefs, River Chief and Hill Chief. The first has a handsome son and augly daughter named Ti, while Hill Chief has none, so River Chief sends Ti to be Hill Chief's wife. Hill Chief welcomes her, despite her ugliness, and some time later she becomes pregnant. However, Hill Chief's headwife, who was childless, bears great jealousy towards the newcomer, and, to humiliate her, replaces Ti's first son for a kitten, then casts the baby in a box in the river. Ti's first son is found by River Chief's son, a fisherman, who takes the baby to raise. The same thing happens to Ti's second child, another son, whom the headwife replaces for a puppy and throws him in the river. The second baby is also saved by River Chief and his son, and raised by their family. Years later, the boys grow up, and River Chief suspects they are Ti and Hill Chief's sons, so he talks to his daughter Ti about it. The girl confides in him that she indeed has born two human babies. River Chief then sends Ti's sons to their father's, Hill Chief, house, without telling the truth, where they dine and see the headwife mistreat Ti, their mother, then return to River Chief's abode. The next day, River Chief summons a gathering of people where he reveals the whole truth and says Ti's sons are the two young men before them. The youths embrace Hill Chief and Ti as their parents, and the headwife is executed by burning.