Visiting Kanchil (Following folktales around the world 195. - Malaysia)

Today I continue the blog series titled Following folktales around the world! If you would like to know what the series is all about, you can find the introduction post here. You can find all posts here, or you can follow the series on Facebook!

Kanchil the Wily One
Tales of the Malaysian Mouse-Deer
Stuart Dickens McHugh
Thornhill Press, 1977.

This was a fairly short book, and not written by a Malaysian person, but I definitely wanted to read about Kanchil for Malaysia. The book contains 9 folktales (9 is a lucky number in Malaysian culture, apparently), and all nine are about the wily Mouse Deer. In case you have missed the signs on this blog, I am a huge fan of Mouse Deer. This made me like this book despite its imperfections.

There were a few imperfections. One is that the tales are clearly re-told by the author. He claims the tales were told to his father by Malaysian sailors, and he translated them to English, telling them to his children and grandchildren. The tales were shaped through many re-tellings. The author notes that he loves Kipling's tales, and these nine stories sounded a lot like them. I could still recognize the folktale types in them, and while they were worded in a literary way, they are still likable and enjoyable as traditional stories.

Highlights

Have I mentioned Mouse Deer?

I have read many a Kanchil story in my storytelling career, but this book had some that were new for me. There is a good version of Kanchil in the Pit where Mouse Deer falls into a pit (go figure) and lures a bunch of other animals down too, so he can climb out on their backs. I also liked Kanchil and the Crocodiles (I knew another version of this, with fewer casualties). I appreciate that despite the re-tellings the author did not try to conceal the fact that Kanchil's tricks often end with other animals dying or captured (although he made heroic efforts to explain this fact). Kanchil and Mongoose, on the other hand, was a nice story that revolved around Kanchil making a friend and helping a human family.

Connections

All stories were classic trickster tales - sometimes Kanchil tricked others, and sometimes he himself was made a fool of. The most well-known story was Kanchil and the Snail, where our trickster ran a race with a water snail and lost, repeating the whole Tortoise and the Hare situation. 

Where to next?
Singapore!