Week 9 Story: The Origin of Fairy Tales

Once upon a time – before stories were called fairytales – they were called spider tales, after the spider Anansi. Anansi was very clever and had won the right to call stories that after outsmarting the chief of the gods. However, the news of this attracted the attention of another trickster, named Puck, and this is where our story begins.

Puck is a fairy of the woods and of summertime, and he thinks stories should be named for him, and not Anansi.  So, he travels across the sea to Anansi’s house, and asks him if the stories can be named after the fair folk instead.

Anansi considers this request then says, “I had to complete three tasks to get the stories named after me. It is only fair that you do the same.”

Puck agrees to this happily. It sounds like a game, and all fairies are fond of games.

“First,” Anansi says, “you must bring me a gourd full of live honeybees. Second, you must bring me a tiger. For the third and last task, you must outsmart me, Anansi.”

For the first task, Puck hollows out a gourd and paints it to look like a beehive. Then while the bees sleep, he paints their hive to look like a gourd. When the bees leave for the day to collect nectar, he swaps the two. When the worker bees return, they ask their queen why she is in a gourd, and usher her into the “hive.” That night, Puck seals the gourd, and takes it to Anansi.

For the second task, Puck finds a tiger taking a nap by a river. While the tiger sleeps, Puck rubs fairy dust into its eyes, blinding it. When it wakes up, the tiger panics, and shouts, “Help! I have been blinded! Somebody help me!”

“I can help you,” Puck says, “come with me, and I will take you to someone who will cure you.”

With that, Puck leads the tiger to Anansi.

Now, the third task makes Puck pause. Anansi is known for his cleverness, to outsmart him would be a difficult task indeed. However, Puck knows that Anansi is known for his greed as well. First, Puck makes a figure out of tar, and uses his fairy glamour to make it look like a person. Then, Puck places a dish of mashed yams in the tar person's "hands," and hides. Eventually, Anansi walks by and sees the tar person with its yam dish. 

"Hello friend," Anansi says to it, "do you mind sharing your yams with me?" At the lack of response from the tar person, Anansi grows angry, and smacks it. When his hand becomes stuck, he kicks it. This continues until all of his limbs are stuck in the tar. Puck emerges from his hiding place, laughing at Anansi, and from then on stories were known as fairy tales. 

Author's Note

This is meant to be a sort of sequel to the original story, which explains why stories are called "spider tales." Around here, stories are known as fairytales, not spider tales, so I wrote this to explain how fairies won the stories from Spider. I used Puck since he is a well known trickster fairy in English folklore. His first two tasks are similar to the original tasks, but I changed the solutions a bit to be less like something a spider would do and more like something a fairy would do. For example, in the original Anansi sews the tiger's eyes closed. The last one is a reference to the tar baby trope, because it is the most well known trickster "trick," and I felt I had to include it. I had the dish be yams because they are a food that shows up a lot in the West African folktales, and also because I personally like them. I imagined the gourd to be a pumpkin and the hive to be a cartoony beehive, but any gourd would work because beehives in real life look weird and lumpy anyway. 

Bibliography: "How We Got the Name "Spider Tales"" from West African Folktales by William H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair. Story Source.

Image Information: personal picture from October 2020 of the spider who lives in the kitchen of my apartment. I have affectionately dubbed him "my son" and have had to carry him away from the oven multiple times. 

-A.