Anansi and the corn cob

Anansi was one of God's chosen ones and he lived in human form before becoming a spider.

One day he asked God for a single ear of corn, promising that he would repay God with a hundred servants. God was always amused by the boastful and resourceful Anansi, and gave him the ear of corn.

Anansi left with the ear and came to rest in an African village. He told the village chief that he had a sacred cob from God and needed both a place to sleep for the night and a safe place to keep the treasure. The chief treated Anansi as an honored guest and gave him a thatched-roof house to stay in, showing him a hiding place in the roof.

During the night, when the whole village was sleeping soundly, Anansi took the maize and fed it to the chickens.

The next morning, Anansi woke up the village with her screams. "What happened to the holy corn?" Who stole it? God will certainly bring a great chastisement to this village! He made such a fuss that the villagers begged him to take a whole bushel of maize as an apology. He then walked down the road with the bushel of corn until it became too heavy to carry. He then met a man on the road who had a chicken, and Anansi traded the corn for the chicken.

When Anansi arrived at the next village, he asked for a place to stay and a safe place to keep the "sacred" chicken. In this new village, Anansi was again treated as an honored guest, a big party was thrown in his honor, and he was shown a house to stay in and given a safe place for the chicken. 

During the night, Anansi slaughtered the chicken and smeared its blood and feathers on the door of the chief's house. In the morning, he woke everyone up with his cries: "The sacred chicken has been killed!" God will surely destroy this village for allowing this to happen! shouted Anansi.

The frightened villagers begged Anansi to take ten of their best sheep as a token of their sincere apologies.

Anansi led the sheep down the road until he came to a group of men carrying a corpse.

He asked the men whose bodies they were carrying. The men replied that a traveler had died in their village and they were taking the body home for a proper burial.

Anansi then exchanged the sheep for the corpse and started down the road.

At the nearby village, Anansi told people that the corpse was a sleeping Son of God. He told them to be very quiet so as not to wake this important guest. The people of this village also had a big party and treated Anansi like royalty.

When morning came, Anansi told the villagers that he was having trouble waking the "son of God" from his sleep, and he asked for their help. They began by beating drums, and the visitor remained asleep. Then they banged pots and pans, but he was still "asleep." Then the villagers hit the visitor on the chest, and he still did not move.

Suddenly, Anansi cried out, “You killed him! You killed a son of God! Oh no ! God will certainly destroy this whole village, if not the whole world!

The terrified villagers then told Anansi that he could choose a hundred of their best young men as slaves, if only he would call on God to save them.

So Anansi returned to God, having turned an ear of corn into a hundred slaves.