Jamaica Anansi stories

Chapter 297: 33. Fling-a-mile. [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]

33. Fling-a-mile. [Story]

Jekyll, 152–155, has a good version of this very popular Jamaica story.

Compare the Bulu tales, Schwab, JAFL 27: 284–285; 32: 434.

In JAFL 27, Turtle sets a trap and by pretending to teach other animals who come along one by one how to use it, he catches one victim after another until he is himself caught.

In JAFL 32, Pangolin offers to initiate the animals one by one and makes them climb a tree and jump upon a concealed rock, which kills them. Turtle finally circumvents the trick.

In a Jamaica version collected in Mandeville, Anansi holds a butchering at a place where there is a tree which seizes any person who leans against it and flings him upon a lance which Anansi has set up.