The Earth Is On a Fish's Back: Tales of Beginnings

by Natalia Maree Belting, Esta Nesbitt (Illustrator)

An international collection of tales telling how things came to be. Includes: How Men Learned to Build Houses (Northeast India) / How Spider Taught Women to Weave (Chaco) / How Men Brought Fire to Earth (Snake) / The Origin of Corn (Ojibwa) / How Grasshopper Came to Be and Men Obtained Tobacco (Ojibwa) / How It Came About that There Is a Sun and a Moon (Kutenai) / Why the Sun Is Brighter than the Moon (Lilloet) / Why There Is Both Day and Night (Ojibwa) / How Night Was Let Loose and All the Animals Came to Be (Mundurucu) / Why There Is Thunder and Lightning (Buriat) / Why There Are Shooting Stars (Zuni) / Why There Are Four Seasons in the Year (Chippewayan) / Why the Ocean is Salyt (Philippines) / Why the Mountains Are Snow-Covered (Northeast India) / Why the Moon Has Scars on Her Face (Baiga) / How Coyote Brought Back People After the Flood (Miwok) / Why Some Animals Live With Man (Liberia) / Why Dog Has a Fur Coat and Woman Has Seven Tempers (Altaic) / Why Crow Is Black and Men Find Precious Stones in the Earth (Palung) / How Men Learned to Sing Songs (India) / How Man Learned About Evil (Kuki of Assam).

91 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1965

Reviews

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

From Elves and Ellefolk , which collects tales of the "Little People," to The Moon Is A Crystal Ball , in which stories of the heavenly bodies and phenomena are presented, Natalia Belting seems to have published quite a few thematic folktale collections. The Earth Is On a Fish's Back contains twenty-one creation stories and pourquoi tales, each one explaining how things came to be the way they are.

Here is How Men Learned to Build Houses, from northeast India, in which Kindor-Lalim and Kincha-Lali-Dam, gaining one suggestion from each of the animals around them, eventually learn how to construct a home. In How Spider Taught Women to Weave, from the Chaco people of Argentina, the women of the tribe steal Spider's thread, determined to learn her secret. And in Why There Is Thunder and Lightning, from the Buriat people of Siberia, an old man sets out on the road to heaven, only to find that his inquisitiveness, when stopping at the home of four youths, has doomed him to eternal wandering, bringing thunder and lightning in his wake.

Although there are one or two Siberian selections, a few tales from India, one from the Philippines, and two from Africa, the majority of the stories here comes from the Americas: North and South. This probably isn't that surprising, as Belting was an academic specializing in the ethnography of the Illinois Indians, but I did find myself wishing that the selection had been a little broader. I also, as is so often the case, wished that Belting had provided her source material. The black and white illustrations, by Esta Nesbitt, were fairly bland. All in all, this collection was probably more of a two-and-a-half-star book, but I rounded up.