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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.
The first form of this story is very common in Jamaica. It is told by Pamela Smith, Candoo, 28–30; Wona, Do-mek-I-see, 9–18. The introductory trick is generally told as an independent witticism.
Compare: Basset 11, 93–95; 102; Barker, 39–44; Dayrell, 20–28; Parsons, Andros Island, 141 and note for further references. See Grimm 36, The Wishing Table, the Gold-ass, and the Cudgell in the Sack, discussed in Bolte u. Polívka, 2: 336–361.