Week 7 Storytelling: The Wicked Husband

Once upon a time there was a husband and a wife that lived in a village together. They usually worked together in everything they do. One day the wife requested that the husband go collect palm fruits from the jungle. The husband was upset because he had just gotten back from collecting the palm fruits. He asked his wife why he had to go collect palm fruits so often. His wife said that so many of their friends had come by, always asking for some of the great palm fruits. The wife was so nice that she gladly gave them to friends. The husband requested that she come with him this time to help carry back more palm fruits. She gladly agreed. 

Pictured is a common palm fruit. Taken by Neil Palmer. Web source: Wikipedia

            Off they went deep into the jungle, but the husband was fed up with his wife, so he formulated a dastardly plan to leave her behind in the jungle. The wife though was very smart, and knew that he intended to do this. After they were done collecting all of the palm fruits, the husband told the wife to come get in a boat with him. The wife knew that she was about to be sent out to sea, so she pushed her husband into the boat and sent him off to sea instead. The husband was upset that he had been taken so easily, but was never seen again. The wife happily collected the palm fruits and headed back to the village.

            Once back at the village, people began questioning what had happened to her husband. She lied to them and told that her husband had left her on her own. The village people were not tricked and knew that the wife had done something to him. After a lot of investigation, they found out that she had sent him out to sea and left him for the birds. For her crime, she was punished by death. The townspeople no longer received palm fruits from the couple, and no one else within the village knew where the palm fruits were located within the jungle. Since they had put the wife to death, the whole village ended up being wiped out by hunger. IF only the husband and wife could have been trustworthy to each other, maybe the village could have survived much longer than it did. 

Author's Note:

In the original story, The Wicked Husband, the wife was the one that was left to die in the jungle. I used the original story in the beginning, but in the end it was the wife who was the wicked one. In the original story the village didn't die off because of the palm fruits, but I thought that would make it a little more dramatic. I really enjoyed this original story but I thought I could make it a little better. I wanted the moral of the story to be that your actions a lot of times can have large affects on other people. The original story can be found here: Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort by Richard Edward Dennett (1898).

Extra Reading Diary: Stories from Congo

The Gazelle and the Leopard: A gazelle told a leopard that they should be cutting down brush because the dry season is coming, but the leopard told the gazelle to go ahead on his own. He caught a thief, which was a gazelle, and ate him. The end of the story was very odd because the leopard ate her own husband’s head. It wasn’t a very organized story and kind of only stated a lot of facts. I wish there had been a little better flow to the story, but that is how some old myths were written. Overall I enjoyed this story.

The Fetish Sunga: He began talking about his uncle’s twin brother, and how good of a fisherman he was. He said that he caught many fish everyday. The fisherman would lie to his own brother about the amount of fish that he had caught. He eventually was made to where he could no longer lie, because he got his power of speech taken away. I liked this story, but I felt it to be very random. There was no real storyline and didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

The Fight Between Two Fetishes: I really enjoyed this story although I am not quite sure why. I liked the moral behind the story because it was kind of sad, but ended up being for a weird reason. It kept me pretty interested throughout. Unlike the other stories, I actually did like the way that this one was written. I thought it had a great tone to it as well. Overall I enjoyed this whole unit and it has definitely been one of my favorites so far. 

Songye power figure from Congo,
sometimes called a fetish, photo by R. McCoy

Reading Diary A: Stories From Congo

The Vanishing Wife: This story is about two brothers who are very different and who despise each other. I would have liked this story more if they could just get along! I still really enjoyed this story about the vanishing wife though. I think that the way they wrote the story was very superb and made me want to keep reading the story. I wouldn’t add much more to this story. Overall it was very well done.

Harvesting from a palm tree. Web source: Dennet's book

The Jealous Wife: This story was probably my least favorite one, which is why I decided to write about it. I think that it was pretty plain and lacked a lot of detail. It is basically just enough detail to tell a story. I also didn’t like the ending and thought they could have done a lot better of a job telling it. It wasn’t the worst story that I have ever read, but I definitely would not recommend this to any of my friends. I feel like most of the stories were this way in this unit.  

The Wicked Husband: This story was pretty simple but I still enjoyed it. Basically a husband tells his wife to come with him to get palm nuts and she does. Once they get to where the palm nuts are, the husband cuts his wife’s arms and legs off. A passing man hears the wife’s singing and finds her. They kill the husband for killing his wife. I wish there was a little more storyline to this, and that they would have explained a little more why the husband did what he did.