Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria, West Africa

Forty tales from the Ekoi and neighbouring peoples of the Cross River: why the sun and moon live in the sky, the tortoise's cunning, the leopard's revenge, the woman who married a spirit. Elphinstone Dayrell was a district commissioner in southern Nigeria and set the tales down as he heard them, with the names of his tellers. The animal stories are the ancestors of much that later reached America. Sixty plates range from Nile banks and battles to altarpieces by Bourgeois and Fromentin, matching the river world of these Cross River tales.