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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 familiar episode of the Wolf’s head which occurs early in the Reynard cycle (see Percy Society Publications 12, Introduction, pages xxxiii–xxxiv) is, in African stories, often combined with that of the Goat in the Lion’s den (or the Hyena’s). Compare Rattray, Chinyanje, 149–152; Tremearne, 227–229; FL 22:63–65.