African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African Americans 973
(in the Proppian sense or that of Lévi-Strauss); rather, it designates a category of tales in
which the form dominates over the narrative contents. The system Arewa actually
adopted is “based on arranging the African materials into thematic groups with reference
to the Motif Index” (Arewa 1980, 7) that offers more classificatory categories (chapters)
than does the type index (El-Shamy 1995, I:xiv–xvi). He designated 4350 types (1–
4350); the actual number of tale-types designated is far less, since a considerable number
of the tale-type slots were left as blanks for future additions (a practice begun in Aarne-
Thompson’s taletype index).
Arewa matched sixty-one of the East African tales he treated with their counterparts in
the Aarne-Thompson index. Yet, scores of other texts with obvious Aarne-Thompson
typological qualities were not identified. These happen to be tale-types which occur
frequently in North African countries and the southern Arabian Peninsula. Thus, it may
be concluded that the shared narrative traditions between that East African culture area
and the rest of the world is greater than current academic literature indicates. This is also
the case with other culture areas throughout the continent.
Examples of texts that clearly correspond to the Aarne-Thompson tale-type system
include the following: Arewa’s type 3248 corresponds to AT 136A* “Confession of
Animals” (El-Shamy 1980 No. 51); Arewa’s 3974 corresponds to AT 315A “The
Faithless Sister” (El-Shamy 1980, 242–244); Arewa’s 3492 corresponds to AT 872*,
“Brother and Sister” (El-Shamy 1999, No. 46); and Arewa’s 3346 corresponds to AT
313E*, “Girl Flees from Brother who Wants to Marry Her” and an adaptation of a tale
similar to the ancient Egyptian tale of the “Two Brothers,” designated as a new tale type:
318B§, “Murdered Person (Lover, Husband, Brother) Brought Back to Life through
Repeated Reincarnations (Transformations)” (El-Shamy 1999 Nos. 46 and 25
respectively).
Winifred Lambrecht’s, A Tale Type Index for Central Africa (1967) follows in the
footsteps of Arewa’s work. The author pointed out some inconsistency in Arewa’s
divisions of “animal tales” and “ordinary tales,” and the role accorded the “dramatic
persona in assigning a tale to one category or the other” (1967, 4). Her divisions (1–4550)
correspond to Arewa’s system except for one new chapter (nos. 4251–4450), which she
labeled “Personality Traits and Customs”; the rest of Lambrecht’s divisions, from number
1 to number 4350, duplicate Arewa’s classificatory schema. These “personality traits and
customs” are not character motivation. Lambrecht specified (1967, 58) that stories
classified under this rubric “are merely description or statements, and, as such do not
represent cause-effect relationships or the presence of lack and the resolution of that
lack,” as per A.Dundes’s morphological schema (1967, 6).
Lee Haring’s Malagasy Tale Index (1982) presents a synthesis of Aarne-Thompson’s
themes and Paulme-Propp’s morphological patterns. Haring classified some 850
Malagasy texts (published in European languages) into seven morphological categories.
However, from a utilitarian standpoint, classification in the Haring schema is actually
achieved through utilizing a combination of tale-type and motif, rather than the structural
attributes. Some of the tale-type identification seem to be based on superficial similarities
with the tale-type. Such is the case, for instance, with the Malagasy tale in which a youth
seeks “trouble” or to learn “what poverty is” which Haring identifies as belonging to AT
326, “The Youth Who Wanted to Learn What Fear Is” (“1.7.326”—Haring 1982, 227–
30, 482).