A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.
Overview
Ravòrombé, whose name is translated as Big-bird, builds a house in the water and obtains Ikétaka as housekeeper. She brings home things taken from people and lays eggs, most of which hatch into birds that fly away. One egg, set aside as apparently spoiled, eventually produces a human girl. Ravòrombé names her Ramàitsoanàla and steals a milk cow to nourish her because, being a bird, she cannot nurse the child herself. She provides a small box for the infant and collects precious objects and ornaments as she grows. Her repeated homecoming suspicion that she smells humans belongs to the story’s protective but dangerous household life.
When Andriambahòaka seeks the daughter as a wife, Ikétaka warns that the returning bird could devour the visitors. He eventually takes the girl before her mother returns, bringing grain and beans to delay pursuit. Later readable passages make Ravòrombé an active helper: her daughter’s tears prevent her lighting the hearth, drawing her to the girl’s distress. She completes difficult weaving and sewing tasks imposed by rival wives. Before a public comparison she brings back the daughter’s eyes and skin, adds ornaments and a golden chair, and restores her appearance. The middle page explaining the earlier injury was unavailable during this review, so its cause is not reconstructed. The bird’s egg-laying, cow-taking and restorative assistance are attested without identifying her as an extinct elephant bird or giving an invented wingspan.
Origins & earliest records
Sibree’s missionary-era English translation of a Malagasy narrative in the Folk-Lore Journal. The collection history involves Dahle and other contributors; this selected passage does not identify a precise narrator or first telling.
Records & interpretation
Ramàitsoanàla, printed pp 161–163,165–166. Actual transcription pages 169–171,173–174 inspected. Page 172/printed 164 unavailable; no causal explanation of the daughter’s lost eyes/skin inferred from the missing page.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Malagasy Folk-Tales — Ramàitsoanàla
Selected readable passages of the bird-mother narrative; middle-page access gap retained.
Family, evolution & connections
Textual genealogy: Ravòrombé and Ramàitsoanàla in Sibree’s translation
Explicit mother-child relationship on printed page161 and the daughter’s jointly parented son on page166 of the1884 translation.
Scroll sideways to see all branches. With a keyboard, focus the tree and use the arrow keys.
- Ramàitsoanàla (daughter of Ravòrombé), with Andriambahòaka (her husband)
- Andriambahòaka (their son, named for his father)
Follow the bird’s egg-laying and explicit naming of her daughter, then the final page’s named marriage and son; retain the two generations of Andriambahòaka as distinct people. Selected supernatural textual genealogy, not biological evolution. Other eggs hatch into unnamed birds and are not individually reconstructed. The father of Ramàitsoanàla is not supplied, while her own son’s father is named. Missionary translation mediates the account; unidentified contributors and the earlier missing narrative page remain unresolved.
Ramàitsoanàla
Sibree’s selected translation explicitly makes Ramàitsoanàla hatch from an egg laid by Ravòrombé. The bird calls her the offspring she will name and obtains a milking cow because she cannot nurse a human child. This is source-specific supernatural parentage rather than an inference from the daughter’s later rescue. The named father is not supplied here, and no biological hybridization or zoological identity is inferred.
#Nerru
Ravòrombé brings back her daughter’s eyes and skin in the selected Malagasy story, while #Nerru’s mother fastens a fresh skin covering around her daughter’s exposed entrails. Both narratives place maternal action in a bodily crisis, but their beings, injuries and remedies differ. The comparison does not reconstruct the missing middle page of the Ravòrombé story or propose an actual medical procedure or shared historical source.
Andriambahòaka (son of Ramàitsoanàla)
The story’s final page makes Ramàitsoanàla marry Andriambahòaka and bear a son with the same name as his father. Together with the opening identification of Ravòrombé’s daughter, this establishes a source-specific grandchild relationship. The repeated personal name does not collapse father and child into one character, and the bird grandmother is not directly assigned as the child’s mother.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary collected narrative translationFolk-Lore Journal 1884 — printed p 161Research access: 2026-10-05
- Primary collected narrative translationFolk-Lore Journal 1884 — printed p 162Research access: 2026-10-05
- Primary collected narrative translationFolk-Lore Journal 1884 — printed p 163Research access: 2026-10-05
- Primary collected narrative translationFolk-Lore Journal 1884 — printed p 165Research access: 2026-10-05
- Primary collected narrative translationFolk-Lore Journal 1884 — printed p 166Research access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.