Jamaica Anansi stories

Chapter 350: 87. Bull as Bridegroom. [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]

87. Bull as Bridegroom. [Story]

The story of the beast-husband transformed by means of a song is very common in Jamaica. It occurs in Milne-Home, 42–45, and Jekyll, 73–77; 132–135.

Compare Junod, 246–253; Parsons, Andros Island, 39–43 and references in note 1.

In Parsons’s Andros Island variants, the transformed beast is the wife (compare number 84) and has the form of a bird, as in Jekyll’s two versions, one of which, 132–135, ends with the “Yonec” story. In all the versions I heard, and in Milne-Home, the wooer is a bull.