Tail-Restored Baboon of Rabai

Overview

Werner hears an older Swahili woman telling the story at Fundisa and recognizes a Rabai account she also possesses in a copy written by James Mkoba, a mission teacher. The baboons want reliable food instead of dangerous raids on other people’s maize. They choose one of their own, remove his tail and send him to settle among humans. He builds a house and marries a woman. The intended arrangement assigns two gardens to the couple and five to the baboons.

For a time the husband and wife work diligently, while his relatives eat peacefully in their allotted gardens. Eventually the wife complains that their daily cultivation serves only the baboons, and her husband agrees. A baboon concealed beside the garden overhears them and informs the clan. The relatives fetch the removed tail, which has been kept, and seek the husband. He is away helping to thatch his father-in-law’s house, so they go there and publicly call him to collect it.

The summons exposes his identity to his wife and her relatives. He resumes the tail and returns to the bush with his own people. The story ends with that departure, not his death, his wife’s transformation or a recorded later reunion. The preserved and restored tail is the distinctive material feature of the disguise. The text does not claim that the baboon had wholly transformed into a human body or identify a zoological species.

The heard performance and Mkoba’s written copy are two explicitly mentioned channels of transmission. Werner does not name the older woman, and she distinguishes this episode from a somewhat different printed Swahili story involving an ape child. That comparison is not a second identity for the same husband. Her ethnological generalizations are kept separate from the narrated farming arrangement and its exact ending.

Origins & earliest records

Werner’s 1915 field-report article supplies the specific account and its stated transmission. Individual informants are retained where named; unspecified names and body details are left open.

Records & interpretation

Complete baboon episode pp. 61–62, with Fundisa performance and James Mkoba written-copy provenance p. 61; garden allocation and actual restored-tail departure p. 62.

Selected bibliography

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

1. 01

   Some Notes on East African Folklore

   Alice Werner, field collector and author · 1915

   Complete baboon episode pp. 61–62, with Fundisa performance and James Mkoba written-copy provenance p. 61; garden allocation and actual restored-tail departure p. 62.

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. Historical field-report article, Folklore 26(1), pp. 60–78Werner1915 — original published field notesResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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