Robbie Johnson's Mythology and Folklore Blog

 In the beginning, there was war amongst the animals. The elephants were at the top of the food chain and would eat the majority of the food available. The rest of the animals had to fight amongst themselves for the elephant's leftovers. As you can probably guess, this caused a lot of tension amongst the other animals. One day, the tortoise got his food stolen by a cheetah and because he was too slow, he could not get it back. This angered the tortoise so much that he decided he was going to stop this madness. He gathered a large group and held a meeting with all of the animals except for the elephants. In the meeting, the tortoise came up with the idea to combine the force of all the animals and wage an attack on the elephants. Even though there were many more animals than elephants, the elephants were massive, strong, and healthy because they had been eating full meals their entire lives.  During the meeting, the tortoise explained that the animals must all share the food ev...

 Why People Are Buried When reading these Nigerian stories, I have noticed that a lot of them start out with a creation story. A lot of the stories I have read start out saying something about people and animals living together and in peace.  This is a really interesting point because it would be a great thing for someone to use in their own creation story or even allow them to change it up and make things interesting. I could possibly write this story but start it out with a huge war between people and animals and animals with other animals. I feel like that would be a cool thing to add into a story. I also like how the creator in this story lives among the people and animals and is present in their every day lives. I also liked the fact that the dog was in charge of telling the people how to treat the dead in order for them to come back to life. In the end, the dog messes it up and tells them to bury people. I loved that this was such a creative way to explain why people are...

 The Elephant and the Tortoise provided me with so many good writing ideas that I can incorporate into my own writing. The beginning of this story also made me think of Adam and Eve when all the people and animals were able to coexist in peace. This was a really cool thing to add into the story because it showed that even the animals were able to get along. I also liked that they talked about how much the elephant eats and how the elephant would eat so much more than all of the other animals. I found it very clever that the elephant and his greediness with food ended up getting him hurt in the end. There is a lot I can do with this story and make my own creative twist to it.  ( Tortoise ) Bibliography: The Elephant and the Tortoise. by Elphinstone Dayrell.  Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria