Reading Notes: Stories from Congo (Part A)

Bibliography: The following 'Stories from Congo' were in Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort by R.E. Dennett

I've put a '✿' next to the stories I enjoyed the most, with notes on them below.

How The Wives Restored Their Husband To Life
How Gazelle Got Married
✿ The Vanishing Wife
✿ Another Vanishing Wife
✿ The Jealous Wife
Ngomba's Balloon
The Wicked Husband
How Kengi Lost Her Child
The Twin Brothers
✿ The Younger Brother Who Knew More Than The Elder

• The Vanishing Wife & Another Vanishing Wife were both enjoyable stories that reminded me a lot of the stories of Cupid & Psyche. But in these stories, the roles were reversed. The woman was ethereal and the man was a plain human who benefitted from the woman's love. In the end, the man would reveal their secret and so the woman abandoned him and he lost everything that was good to him.

• The Jealous Wife was enjoyable because of the unexpected turn of events. Two wives married to the same man, both with children, take turns to get fish. One wife was annoyed that the other wife's child was generally better at things than her own, so she killed the child in the middle of the night. Only, the next day, she discovered that she had killed her own child.

• The Younger Brother Who Knew More Than The Elder reminded me of my younger twin sisters and I. We never fought like the brothers did in the story, but we definitely sass each other in a light-hearted way. I like how, in the end of the story, the older brother ended up looking after the younger brother despite all their past arguments.

Photo by Damiano Lingauri on Unsplash