Do we have big bad wolves?

Every fairytale lover is only too familiar with the big bad wolf. I had never come across this character in West African folklore though…at least, not until recently when I was told two separate stories by two separate people that involved ‘creatures’ which swallowed people who were later rescued by being cut out of the ‘creatures’ stomach.

Here is the first of those stories – the monster who had fire – and it was unclear in the original telling if this monster was a man with severe deformities and anger management issues or just a monster. In the story, I say he was the only one in the village who had fire but it wasn’t told to me that way. However, the villagers risked their lives to get fire from this man/monster/creature, so it must have been their only option. In which case, killing him must have put the villagers in a bad position…but it’s really fruitless (sometimes) to analyze these folktales.

Happy New Year, but it’s February

Happy New Year everybody! It’s already February and I am just making the first update in 2007 to this site. After my bunch of excuses for slow/irregular updates late last year and promises of many new stories to post, that seems pretty lame. I apologize.

The new year is a time of reflection and reprioritization, and that’s what I did. The result? Updating allfolktales.com dropped several notches in my priority rankings. Other personal and professional activities need more of my attention at this time and so be it. But allfolktales.com is still here, it will still get updated now and then, I still have those new stories I promised and I will still post them but just not as quickly or as often as I had intended.

Again, I wish everyone a happy new year and success in all your plans for 2007 and beyond.