Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Week 6 Reading Diary, continued: Nigerian Folklore



Reading Diary #6, continued: Nigerian Folklore

·       The Story of the Lighting and the Thunder: The king had the thunder and lightning live on the other side of the town, so they would be as far away as possible from other people’s houses. The thunder was an old mother sheep, and the thunder was her son, a ram.  The ram had an anger issue, in which when he got angry he would burn down houses, knocked down trees, did damage on the farms, and sometimes killed people. The old mother sheep would have to call out to him to stop doing damage, but the ram did not listen to his mother.
  


The people ended getting tired of the ram’s actions, and complained to the king. The king decided on ordering the sheep (Thunder) and her son, the ram (Lighting) to leave town and live in the far forest. This did not help their problem because when the ram got angry he would burn the forest, and the flames from the forest would spread to the farms and consume them. This led to the king banishing the lighting and the thunder from living on earth and made them move up into the sky, so they would not be able to cause anymore destruction. Ever since that has happened, when the lighting gets angry, he still commits acts of damage just as he did before, but you also hear his mother, the thunder, rebuking him for his actions and yelling at him to stop.

Nigeria: The Lightning and the Thunder, Elphinstone Dayrell (1910)

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