How to Read a Folktale

Front matter

How to Read a Folktale

The /bonia Epic from Madagascar n

Lee HARING

Preface

Introduction: What Ibonia is and How to Read it . How to Read Ibonia: Folkloric Restatement

Dna FF WON he

. Ibonia, He of the Clear and Captivating Glance There Is No Child

Her Quest for Conception

The Locust Becomes a Baby

The Baby Chooses a Wife and Refuses Names His Quest for a Birthplace

Yet Unnamed

Refusing Names from Princes

The Name for a Perfected Man

Power

Stone Man Shakes

He Refuses More Names

Games

He Arms Himself

He Is Tested

He Combats Beast and Man

He Refuses Other Wives

The Disguised Flayer

An Old Man Becomes Stone Man’s Rival

Victory: “Dead, I Do Not Leave You on Earth; Living, I Give You to No Man”

Return of the Royal Couple

Ibonia Prescribes Laws and Bids Farewell

Text 0, “Rasoanor”. Antandroy, 1650s. Translated from Etienne de Flacourt (1661)

Text 2, “Ibonia”. Merina tale collected in 1875-1877. James Sibree Jr. (1884)

Text 3, Merina tale collected in 1875-1877. Summary by John Richardson (1877)

Text 6, “The king of the north and the king of the south”. Merina tale collected in 1907-1910 at Alasora, region of Antananarivo. Translated from Charles Renel, Charles (1910)

Text 7, “Tafolavitra the adulterer”. Tanala tale collected in 1907— 1910 in Ikongo region, Farafangana province. Translated from Charles Renel (1910)

Text 8, “Soavololonapanga”. Bara tale, ca. 1934. Translated from Raymond Decary (1964)

Text 9, “The childless couple”. Antankarana tale, collected in 1907- 1910 at Manakana, Vohemar province. Translated from Charles Renel (1910)

Text 14, “The story of Ravato-Rabonia”. Sakalava, 1970s. Translated from Suzanne Chazan-Gillig (1991)

Index

Supplementary material

The original versions of many of the texts translated in this volume are provided on the website associated with this volume:

http://www.openbookpublishers.com/isbn/9781909254053