Thursday, May 26, 2016

C034. Baer (p. 57). The Sad Fate of Mr. Fox

This is Chase034.

Types
ATU0073 blinding the guard
ATU0676 Open Sesame: use of password to gain entrance into a living animal for the purpose of cutting meat from it
ATU0122 wolf loses his prey: escape by false plea
Motifs
K0952 animal killed from within
G0061.1 child recognizes relative's flesh when it is served to be eaten
K0621 blinding the guard: escape by tricking guard into moving away
K0550 escape by false plea
Notes

Baer notes that all 4 of these episodes is common in African / West Indian tales, "although not necessarily in this same order."

See Bleek's Elephant and Tortoise for eating from within, and Ellis has Spider and Kwaku Tse jumping into cows. Baer suggests the Spider story might be behind the remarks at the end about Brer Rabbit's wife dying of poison-weed: "After Spider warns his partner not to cut into the belly or the heart just as Fox warns Rabbit, Spider asks Kwaku Tse what his mother died of. He replies, "She died by poison." At the end of the story the tricksters win the king's wives." ... Gerber refers to a Temne story of Spider and Mr. Raba as parallel. Mofokeng has Nyanja hare killing elephant after swallowing him in pumpkin, and Kamba story about angry bird that flies into elephant anus.

Flowers and Dorson has thoughts about typing, and Dundes remarks, "The point is that this African/Afro-American tale type has an identity of its own and it is neighter a subtype of AT 676 nor of AT 700 Tom Thumb."

For child recogniziong victim, Chatelain has motehr cooking meat recognized by child. Chatelain says "the forcing of an enemy to eat the flesh of his own people, either knowingly or unconsciously, is the ne plus ultra of revenge for an African. It occurs pretty frequently in Bantu folklore"

Baer can find no parallels for the grindstone, but considers it as example of "false plea"

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