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Trickster Tale

Ananse's Beef-Fat Deception: How the Spider Tricked His Children Out of Food

1 min read

About this folktale

Ananse's Beef-Fat Deception: How the Spider Tricked His Children Out of Food is published on Mythopia by Konlan Mikpekoah. The narrative connects to themes and tags including African Tales, Ghanaian Tales, Ananse, African Stories. Even shorter folktales carry moral and cultural weight: readers often compare how the lesson applies today, and how the same motif appears across regions. If you know another version from your family or community, Mythopia welcomes a respectful retelling so audiences can compare tone, detail, and local wisdom alongside this text.

African folktale illustration – Ananse's Beef-Fat Deception: How the Spider Tricked His Children Out of Food

Ananse's fire went out.

"Child," said Ananse,

"go to Tacoomah and get fire."

Tacoomah gave the child some fire.

"Take this beef-fat too!" Tacoomah said.

The child came back with fire and beef-fat.

"What's that nasty thing?" Ananse asked.

"Tacoomah gave it to me."

"Ugh!" said Ananse.

"I'll throw it away."

Ananse was just pretending;

he ate the beef-fat and wanted more.

Ananse poured water on the fire.

"Go get more fire!" he said to his other child.

The child came back with fire and beef-fat.

Ananse played the same trick and ate the beef-fat,

while his children went hungry.

THE END...