18.3.2 Animals in Oral Tradition

Animals play an important role in nearly all oral traditions and religions. Across cultures, including Western cultures in Europe and the United States, animals appear as protagonists in myths and stories. The animal characters in nursery rhymes, fairy tales, fables, and folktales teach adults and children lessons and morals and model personal characteristics, some peculiar to a specific culture and others more universal. For example, the story of Chicken Little, also known in the UK as Henny Penny, is one that many US children learn at an early age. It was collected in print in the early 19th century, but it has older roots as a European folktale. In this tale, Chicken Little goes out for a walk on a windy day, and an acorn falls on her head. She panics—the sky must be falling! She runs around the farm warning all the animals about the calamity that she believes is happening: “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” The moral of the story is to have courage and not believe everything you hear.

“The Queen Bee” is an interesting European reflection on animals, recorded from oral tradition by the Grimm brothers in 1812 . In this story, three princes, all brothers, leave their castle home to seek their fortunes and travel around the world. Two of the brothers move about haphazardly, paying no attention to the animals around them, but the youngest son, with the insulting name of Simpleton, is more considerate to the animals they encounter. When the older brothers try to destroy an anthill, kill ducks, and chase bees out of their hive, Simpleton intervenes to protect the animals and stop his brothers from causing harm. Eventually, the three princes arrive at another castle, in which everything living has been turned to stone except for one very old man. The old man tells the princes that if they can perform three tasks, all of which depend on the help of animals, they will be able to wake up the castle and earn the hand of a princess. The animals, remembering how they were treated, agree to help only young Simpleton, who thereby gains the keys of the kingdom. The moral is that even the smallest animals serve a mighty purpose.

Many of the animal stories that are still told in Western societies were either collected by the Grimm brothers in the early 1800s (1812–1857) or taken from Aesop’s Fables, a collection of stories supposedly told by Aesop, an enslaved Greek storyteller, around 500 BCE. These stories have made their way into children’s storybooks and animated movies—including an animated version of Chicken Little.

Indigenous societies across cultures have their own sets of animal stories that provide instruction and wisdom. Some of the most common animal symbols among Native American cultures are the coyote, the raven, the bear, and the spider. Coyote and Raven often appear in stories as tricksters, animal spirits or deities who are lively and clever and get into trouble through thoughtless or unconventional actions. In the story of Coyote and Bluebird from the Pima people of the southeastern United States, Coyote envies Bluebird’s plumage and asks for the secret to the beautiful blue color of the bird’s feathers. Bluebird tells Coyote that these pretty blue feathers came from bathing in blue water. Coyote does the same and comes out with a fine blue coat. In his vanity, he tries to outrun his shadow so that he can see his beautiful blue body in the light, and he crashes into a stump head-on, landing in the dirt, which coats his blue fur and paints him a “dirty” color that he still has today. The moral of this tale is that vanity does not serve an individual well.

In West Africa, many myths focus on a supernatural figure named Anansi, the spider. Anansi is a culture hero who teaches lessons of bravery and morality. Culture heroes are typically associated with supernatural feats and are particular to each cultural group, exhibiting specific traits, actions, and discoveries that are significant in that culture. In one Anansi story cycle brought by enslaved Africans to the Caribbean area during the time of the Atlantic slave trade, Anansi goes fishing and fills his basket with many different sizes of fish. On his way home, he crosses paths with Tiger, who demands to know what Anansi is carrying in the basket. Scared, Anansi lies and says he has nothing. Tiger takes the basket and sees the fish. In a series of back-and-forth interactions, Anansi succeeds in outsmarting Tiger by agreeing to clean his fur. Tiger shakes down his long hair, and then Anansi uses it to tie Tiger to the trunk of a tree, picks up his basket of fish, and continues home. The moral of the story? Use your wit to protect yourself and your possessions. Or, perhaps, Don’t let a bully get the best of you.