Fireside stories and the cunning hare

Telling folk and animal stories was a favourite evening amusement: villagers, men and women, boys and girls, sat round the fire and passed the hours with fables.

• Good narrators acted as they told: they showed the character of each animal or person with gestures and changes of voice.
• The hare, famous for its cunning, was given a mumbling voice, because of its cleft lip.
• A storyteller with a fine manner and many stories became known beyond his own village, and might be invited to another to entertain the household for an evening, for the price of a pot of beer.

Driberg printed a selection of Lango stories, in Lango with English translations, at the end of his book. It is public domain and can be read on the Internet Archive.

Source: J. H. Driberg, The Lango: A Nilotic Tribe of Uganda (London, 1923), p. 133; public domain. It describes life about a hundred years ago as a colonial administrator saw it, so customs have changed and some may be told differently today. Elders and families are invited to correct it and add what they know.