The tradition & historical record
1 min read · 2 sourcesMbeku Igbo: [m̩.be.ku] (from the Igbo word for tortoise) is the trickster tortoise in Igbo and West African folktales. 1
Tales
In one aetiological tale Mbeku gets taken by the birds to a feast in the sky. When he eats all the food, the birds stop him from flying back to the earth, and he falls, which is how the tortoises got the patterns on their shells. In an Igbo fable Mbeku (or Mbe) persuades Grasshopper (Ukpana) to help fake sadness on the death of his father-in-law, so that he can get food from his kinsmen, but breaks his pledge to share the food. The grasshopper betrays him to his kinsfolk, who kill him. 1
The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Mbeku”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. 1
Mbeku is animal character from African folklore, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. 2
The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. 2