Adiaha (Woman with Two Skins)

Overview

Adiaha, a spider’s daughter, enters King Eyamba’s household because his subjects hope that her family’s exceptional fertility will provide an heir. The tale contrasts her mother’s numerous offspring with Adiaha’s eventual single births. Her outer covering makes her appear unattractive to the king and his other wives, who exclude her from their residence. A separate house protects neither her dignity nor her place in the marriage. Her mother’s promise requires the second skin to remain on except at night, until a later appointed time. The jealous head wife knows the hidden beauty and obtains a practitioner’s potion that makes the king forget Adiaha altogether.

After four months of neglect Adiaha returns to her parents. Her spider father consults a different practitioner, whose divination identifies the interference and whose counter-medicine she serves to the king. Recognition returns immediately. That evening she visits him, takes off the outer skin after darkness and replaces it at cockcrow. She repeats these night visits for four successive nights, and later gives birth to a son. Another hostile medicine makes the king sick and enables a false diagnosis blaming that baby. Royal advisers persuade him to throw the child into the river. Further spells produce three years of forgetting before another restoration of the marriage, followed by a daughter who is similarly cast away.

The children have survived under the care of the benevolent Water Ju Ju. When the grown son wins a public wrestling contest, his resemblance to the king begins the exposure of the deception. His protector sends him to tell his mother who he is and instructs Adiaha to appear at the trial without her outer skin: the period of compulsory covering has ended. She is reunited with both children, and the son publicly explains the head wife’s actions. The king acknowledges Adiaha as his queen. The tale closes with new compounds for mother and children, and the son’s eventual succession. The skin change is Adiaha’s attested bodily distinction; the children’s water rescue and the prince’s wrestling power are interventions by their separate protector.

Origins & earliest records

Selected narrative in Elphinstone Dayrell’s Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria (1910), collected through a colonial district commissioner.

Records & interpretation

Complete tale III, pp. 11–19, independently reread; appearance, separate agents and full conclusion checked against the digitized edition.

In the literature

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria, West Africa

   Elphinstone Dayrell, collector; Andrew Lang, introduction · 1910

   III. The Woman with Two Skins, pp. 11–19.

Family, evolution & connections

Textual family: Adiaha in The Woman with Two Skins

Adiaha’s stated parents and her one son in tale III.

Explicit parentage in the named collected tale. The descendant line follows the mother. Eyamba is the child’s separately stated father, not an additional child of Adiaha’s parents. Unnamed members stay unnamed. These are narrative relationships in Dayrell’s mediated collection, not natural species ancestry or verified historical households.

Located primary passages

Specific passages supporting details in this entry, grouped by their published witness.

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. Historical collected taleThe Woman with Two SkinsResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

Adiaha (Woman with Two Skins),1910 historical printed text witness, page13; documentary source-page facsimile

Documentary text facsimile of the exact named tale/being, not creature artwork. Printed page13 of the1910 collection. Original historical terminology remains in the source.