Throughout history folk tales have been told and retold. Each culture personalizes the stories in their own way.
These stories were originally published in 1917 by W. H. Barker. Over time these stories have woven themselves into American, English, and Island folklore and cartoons.
The Ashanti, the origin of most of these folk tales and the largest tribe in Ghana, have always understood the importance of the mother’s lineage. Unlike western culture, the Ashanti are Matrilineal (their surnames come from the mother, not the father). Eons before mankind learned the importance of the mother’s linage the Ashanti understood its value.
Just as our Mitochondria DNA allows us to trace the footsteps of mankind, folk tales allow us to trace the culture, beliefs, and verbal history of mankind. It is through literature, in this case folk tales, that we can uncover the threads that makeup the very fabric of culture.
West African Folk tales are centuries old and part of Ghana’s rich, colorful, and vibrant verbal history. These wonderful folk tales teach values, beliefs, and morals.
For more then a century the Western world has retold many of these and called them Tales of Virtues. Many have been adapted and re-told for years in cartoons and storybooks in non-African homes. West African folk tales have been retold for centuries, they are woven into the very fabric of Western culture without us even knowing it.
Through these pages I hope to re-connect you to a world we often forget we left behind, yet is so intertwined in our culture.
As you read this book see if you can find the links between the West African Folk Tale and its Western counterpart.
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