Jamaica Anansi stories

Chapter 282: 18. Goat on the Hill-side. [Story]

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About This Book

A collection of Jamaican folktales gathers short animal and trickster narratives centered on the spider Anansi alongside tales about tigers, monkeys, goats, and birds. Stories account for curious animal traits, stage comic reversals, and probe themes of cunning, justice, and social order through episodic plots and origin motifs. The volume also presents riddles, dance and song materials, and field-recorded music, arranged in thematic sections that compile variants, brief notes, and folkloric context for each tale.

[Contents]

18. Goat on the Hill-side. [Story]

This well-known East Indian fable is common in Jamaica. Jekyll gives a version, 20–22.

Compare: Parsons, Andros Island, 88–89 and note for references; also Chatelain, 189–191; Junod, 123–124; Edwards, JAFL 4: 52.

The ruse is one generally planned by the weak trickster for his strong but dull-witted companion, as in number 23. There is a tendency to place the incident among the monkeys, as in number 37. In Parsons’s three versions the slaughter is made among them; in Jekyll’s version, in a second of my own from Mandeville, and in Jacottet’s form, it is the monkey or baboon who discovers the trick. In Tremearne, FL 21: 209–210, a bird gives warning; in Chatelain, a deer.