Tale
Apologhi ed aneddoti volti in lingua Tigriñña
Not translated into English
Ghebre-Medhin Dighnei · 1902
Synopsis
Forty short tales rendered into Tigrinya. Nine are fables in which animals speak: the strongest in them are unjust and unreliable, the weakest virtuous but powerless. The other thirty-one are folk tales, which the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica links mostly to the traditions of the Hamasen, on the high plateau; under number thirty-four, one recognises the story of the boy who cried wolf.
Context
The booklet, of nineteen pages, appeared in Rome in 1902 from De Luigi, printed in Ethiopic characters; it is also said to have been published in a journal. The orientalist bibliographies of Germany and France noted it as soon as it came out. In 1906, at Aksum, Enno Littmann had his servant, Paulus, dictate these tales to him, to transcribe and translate them following his explanations. Johannes Kolmodin, publishing in 1912 the traditions of Tsazzega and Hazzega, still cited “the well-known work” for a verbal form which he judged influenced by Amharic.
Who it is for
Very short narratives in Tigrinya, never translated into French or English; a document for the history of the written language rather than a book for reading.
Prizes and reception
Halévy welcomed it in 1903 as useful for the study of the dialect; Littmann and Kolmodin used it in their own work on Tigrinya.
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The pages consulted to check this page.