Dog, and His Human Speech is a Central African folktale collected by missionary Robert Hamill Nassau, from the Tanga people. According to scholars, the tale is related to the folkloric theme of the Calumniated Wife, and finds parallels with European variants of tale type ATU 707, "The Three Golden Children", of the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index.
Summary
A chief named Njambo is already married to a woman named Nyangwa-Mbwa, and they have a son named Mbwa (described as a creature with human speech). Njambo then marries three sisters: Majanga, responsible for cleaning their house; Inyanji, occupied with planting; and Mamĕndi, who is to bear Njambo's children. Mamĕndi is attended by her sisters and gives birth to twin boys. Majanga and Inyanji cast them into the pig-pen. They take two anthills (Nassau attributed it to their conical shape) and present them to Njambo as his sons.
Mbwa finds the boys in the pig-pen and takes them to his mother to rear and suckle. One day when Nyangwa-Mbwa is away, Mamĕndi's jealous sisters kill the twins. Mbwa goes to a person named Nja-ya-melema-mya-bato to get two "heart-lives" to resurrect the twins. The twin boys come back to life and grow up as fine young men. The twin boys hunt game and give Mbwa to bring to his father Njambo. Njambo wonders where Mbwa is finding all these animals to hunt.
Finally, after some years, Mbwa convinces his father to summon all the people in an assembly. Mbwa brings to the assembly the twins, and reveals the whole truth.
Analysis
Tale type
Folklorist Stith Thompson noted that tale type ATU 707 was "well established in all parts of Africa".
According to Daniel Crowley, researcher May Augusta Klipple, in a preliminary study published in 1938, indicated the existence of 10 variants of tale type 707 from Africa, without specifying their region. However, analysing Klipple's study, scholar Hasan El-Shamy identified that Klipple pointed to 11 variants in the following ethnic groups: 9 tales among Venda, Larusa, Kamba and Masai (East Africa); one from the Sotho (southern Africa), and one from the Hausa (west Africa).
El-Shamy also noted that variants from Subsaharan Africa focus on the rivalry between co-wives and the bond between male twins.
Variants
Central Africa
Nassau collected another tale from the with the name The Toucan and the Three Golden-Girdled Children, and published it in Journal of American Folklore, in 1915. In this tale, the wife promises to give birth to three children, Manga ("Sea"), Joba ("Sun") and Ngânde ("Moon"). A toucan plays the role of the Speaking Bird and helps the family to reconcile.
West Africa
In an untitled West African tale collected by Allan Wolsey Cardinall, deity Nyame, who is already married to a woman named Akoko, the Barn-door Fowl, takes four other women as his wives, who later move to his house. There, they need to follow the rules of the head-wife, who asks the women what each would give to their husband: the first promises to clean and sweep the compound, the second would cook for him, the third that she would spin cotton for him, and the fourth answers she would bear him a "child of gold" (or "gold-child"). Some time later, the fourth wife gives birth to a twin entirely of silver and another entirely of gold. Akoko, the headwife, places them in a pot and abandons them under a dead odum tree, then replaces the twins for frogs. Nyame is tricked by the headwife and banishes the fourth wife to the distant corner of the kingdom. Back to the twins, they are found by a hunter, and the golden twin (the elder) tells the man they are Nyame's sons. The hunter takes them in, and becomes rich with the dust that falls down from the boys' metallic bodies. Later Anansi, the Spider, who knows of the whole truth, rushes to inform Nyame. The hunter then decides to take the twins to their father. On the way there, they collect stones to play wari with Nyame. After they arrive, the group sits for a game of wari. As the silver twin plays with him, the golden twin sings a song about their mother's story. Nyame learns the truth, restores the fourth wife to his house, and punishes Akoko. Anthropologist Paul Radin republished the tale as The Creator Nyame and His Four Wives, and sourced it from the Krachi people. The tale was also republished as Niame's Gold and Silver Twins. In another version, titled The Golden Child and the Silver Child, the twins' mother's rival is named Coco, and both she and the twins' mother vie for the position of Nyame's only wife.