Audiobook

Flame Tree and Other Folk-Lore Stories from Uganda

Rosetta Baskerville

Rosetta Baskerville was the wife of George Baskerville, a missionary in Uganda. Some of the folktales in this book, published in 1925, are stories that Baskerville heard herself, while other stories she adapted from the Baganda folktales collected by Apollo Kaggwa [1864–1927]. You will find origin stories here, like the origin of the flame tree and of the flowers called "Nsangi's tears." There are fairy tales like "The Buffalo Maiden" and "The River Fairy." The main trickster character is the hare (rabbit), as in the story of "The Elephant That Wanted to Dance" and The Hare Who Earned a Cow and a Chieftainship." Some of the stories are connected with proverbs, like "The Absent-minded Bridegroom" and "The Quits of Gomba," and there are riddles in the story of "The Holy Man." This book is a follow-up to Baskerville's first collection of folktales from Uganda, The King of the Snakes and Other Folklore Stories from Uganda, published in 1922. (Summary by Laura Gibbs)