The Cataract in the Child’s Cumulative Complaint

Overview

The cataract is a brief but explicit personified participant in Schlenker’s Temne fable The Child and the Bird. A child catches a bird and asks his mother to roast it, but she eats it herself. His repeated complaint brings him maize in compensation. When termites eat that maize, he demands another replacement, reciting the earlier loss of the bird. The termites form earthen pots for him, and he carries them to a brook at the waterfall to scoop water. The cataract breaks the pots, so the child addresses it directly and repeats the whole accumulating account of what he has lost.

The cataract gives him a skate fish. A hawk then takes the fish and drops a feather; the wind carries the feather away and makes country-beans fall for the child. When baboons eat the beans, the child repeats his demand again. One baboon says he has nothing to give, and the child ties him up and carries him into town. The ending supplies no later settlement. In a footnote to the Temne text, Schlenker explicitly explains the animate pronoun by saying that the cataract is personified. No human body, face, separate river deity, shrine or named real waterfall is described.

Origins & earliest records

Part I, Chapter IV, Fable III, The Child and the Bird. The cataract belongs to this particular cumulative exchange narrative, not an independently named deity.

Records & interpretation

Complete bilingual fable, printed pp. 57–61, including final outcome. All English narrative pages viewed against original PDF; full preface retained.

Selected bibliography

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

1. 01

   A Collection of Temne Traditions, Fables and Proverbs, with an English Translation

   C. F. Schlenker, missionary compiler and English translator; unnamed elderly Port-Loko narrator acknowledged in preface · 1861

   Part I, Chapter IV, printed pp. 57–61; complete tale and relevant original footnotes retained.

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

References

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

1. Original historical bilingual Temne/English collectionSchlenker 1861, complete fable, pp. 57–61Research access: 2026-10-18

Image credits

Contextual waterfall for the personified cataract; no human or spirit body is supplied by the tale.

Original contextual illustration; landscape, species interpretation, colours, proportions and setting imagined, not authenticated Temne iconography, medical practice or modern national origin.