Anansi and the Sky God's Stories

In the beginning, all the stories in the world belonged to Nyame, the great Sky God, and they had no name at all — people called them simply 'sky-tales,' though no one on earth had ever actually heard one, for Nyame kept his stories close, the way a chief guards his royal stool.

Anansi the spider, who loved nothing more than a good tale and a good bargain, decided he would have these stories for the people of the earth, whatever the cost. So he spun a long thread up into the clouds and climbed all the way to Nyame's golden palace in the sky.

'Great Nyame,' said Anansi, bowing low, 'I have come to buy your stories, so that they may belong to the people of the earth, and be called by my name forever after.'

Nyame laughed, a sound like distant thunder rolling across the heavens. 'Many have asked for my stories before you, Anansi — kings, warriors, even other gods. I always ask the same price, and no one has ever managed to pay it.'

'What is your price?' asked Anansi.

'Bring me three things,' said Nyame, 'and the stories will be yours. Bring me Onini the python, who can swallow a grown man whole. Bring me the Mmoboro hornets, whose sting can fell an elephant. And bring me Osebo the leopard, whose teeth are as long as a man's fingers. Bring all three to me alive, and my stories are yours to carry down to earth.'

Many animals who had heard this price before had simply given up and gone home, certain the task was impossible. But Anansi only smiled his small, patient smile and began to plan.

First he went to find Onini the python, who lay coiled beside the river, sunning himself. 'Onini,' said Anansi, 'my wife and I have been arguing all morning. She insists you are longer than the branch of the odum tree by the water, and I say the branch is longer than you. Will you settle it for us? Lie down beside the branch so we may measure you properly.'

Onini, vain about his great length, agreed at once and stretched himself out alongside the branch. 'Ah, but you keep curling at the tip,' said Anansi. 'Let me tie this vine around you and the branch together, so you cannot move, and then we shall see the true measurement.' Onini agreed to this too, and Anansi wound the vine round and round the python and the branch until Onini could not move a single coil. 'Now I have you fairly measured,' laughed Anansi, and carried the bound python straight up to Nyame's palace.

Next Anansi turned to the Mmoboro hornets. He filled a calabash gourd halfway with water, then walked to the hornets' nest and poured a little of the water over his own head and over the nest, calling out, 'The rain has come early and caught us all! Quickly, hornets, shelter inside my dry calabash before the storm grows worse!' The confused hornets, seeing the water and believing a storm was truly coming, flew gratefully into the dry gourd, and Anansi quickly sealed the opening with a leaf, trapping them all inside.

Finally there was Osebo the leopard, fiercest of the three. Anansi dug a deep pit on the leopard's usual hunting path and covered it lightly with branches and leaves. That night, exactly as Anansi hoped, Osebo came prowling along the path in the darkness and fell straight through into the pit below, roaring in fury.

Anansi came to the edge of the pit the next morning and peered down. 'Osebo, my friend, what has happened to you?'

'I have fallen into this cursed hole,' snarled the leopard, 'and I cannot climb out. Help me, Anansi, and I will owe you a great favor.'

'I would gladly help,' said Anansi, 'but I am only a small spider — I fear if I lower a branch for you to climb, you will only think of eating me the moment you reach the top. How can I trust a hungry leopard?'

'I swear I will not harm you,' Osebo insisted, growing desperate.

So Anansi bent two strong branches down into the pit, and when Osebo grabbed hold and began to climb, Anansi let the branches spring back sharply, flinging the startled leopard high into the air and tangling him in a net of vines Anansi had woven and hidden nearby for exactly this purpose. Bound tightly, Osebo too was carried up to Nyame's palace.

When Anansi arrived a third time, presenting Onini, the hornets, and Osebo all bound before the throne, Nyame rose from his golden stool in genuine astonishment. 'No one has ever completed this price before, Anansi. You have done what warriors and kings could not do with cunning alone. From this day, all my stories belong to you and to the people of the earth. They shall be called Anansesem — spider stories — forever, in honor of what you have done.'

And so Anansi carried the stories down to earth on his long silk thread, and scattered them among every village and every fireside, and that is why, to this day, whenever a good story is told beneath the stars in Ashanti country, the elders say it began, long ago, with a small spider's patient courage in the court of the Sky God.