Reading Notes: Nigeria Folk Stories, Reading A

 

("Sun and Moon" by Wonderlane via Flickr)

The story that I chose to focus my reading notes on for this post is “Why the Sun and the Moon Live in the Sky” by Elphinstone Dayrell (1910). This story is about how the sun and the moon, his wife, invited the water and his people their home. The water warned the sun that his people were numerous and that they would have to buy an extremely large compound to house them all. Once the water arrived at the sun’s house, a few of his people went in and filled the house until the water was knee-deep. Every now and then, the water would ask the sun if it was okay for more of his people to come in, to which the sun agreed. Eventually, the water filled the entire house until the sun and his wife had to escape to the roof. They eventually went up to the sky and stayed there ever since. This story and the others in this section all have a similar plot and ending to them. It usually ends with why something is the way it is such as why the cats kill rats or why the sun and moon are in the sky. One unique thing that I thought was interesting in this story is that the characters in this story aren’t capitalized. My guess for the reason that the characters aren’t capitalized is that possibly the author wanted to make the impression that the sun, moon, and water are the actual objects in real life but I am not sure.