Kenyeri, the Elephant-Hide Schemer

Overview

Kenyeri is the small schemer translated as a weasel in the third fable of Koelle’s collection. After bearing a child, his wife asks for clothes made from an elephant’s hide. He consults a fowl, who tells him to invite a sequence of animals to help clear his overgrown farm. The muck-worm arrives first; the fowl swallows it and begins working. Each later arrival asks who came before, and the weasel recounts the accumulating chain. Cat swallows fowl, dog swallows cat and hyena swallows dog. Leopard then kills and eats hyena, while Lion kills Leopard after wrestling with him.

Elephant arrives last and is directed towards Lion. The weasel has prepared a hidden pit containing a pointed pole, covered with a mat and earth. During their fight Elephant falls in, while Lion returns to the forest. The weasel takes Elephant’s hide home, and his wife covers her children with it. The ending says she now recognises her husband’s superior cunning and links the incident with comparing a subtle person to a weasel. Koelle’s vocabulary calls kenyeri a very cunning little animal, probably a kind of weasel. The profile preserves that tentative identification and the narrative’s ending without presenting its predatory hierarchy as zoological fact.

Origins & earliest records

Part III, Fables, in Koelle’s African Native Literature. Complete Kanuri text pp. 38–41; English translation pp. 158–161. The preface describes dictation from interpreters during Sierra Leone research but does not individually identify a teller for this fable.

Records & interpretation

Complete original and translation retained; all English narrative pages 158–161 and corresponding original beginnings/endings viewed. Relevant vocabulary entry checked against its original page.

Selected bibliography

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

1. 01

   African Native Literature, or Proverbs, Tales, Fables, & Historical Fragments in the Kanuri or Bornu Language

   S. W. Koelle, missionary recorder and English translator; Kanuri-speaking contributors described in preface · 1854

   Part III: original pp. 38–41, translation pp. 158–161; complete preface and lexical qualification 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 Kanuri/English collectionKoelle 1854: original, complete English fable and lexical qualificationResearch access: 2026-10-18

Image credits

Kenyeri imagined as a small weasel-like animal; species and appearance remain tentative.

Original contextual illustration; tentative animal identification, species, colours, proportions and setting interpreted, not authenticated Kanuri iconography or modern national origin.