Dog, and His Human Speech is a Central African folktale collected by missionary Robert Hamill Nassau, from the Tanga people.
[3] According to Daniel Crowley, researcher May Augusta Klipple, in a preliminary study published in 1938, indicated the existence of 10 variants of tale type 707 from Africa, without specifying their region.
[7] Nassau collected another tale from the Batanga people [fr] with the name The Toucan and the Three Golden-Girdled Children, and published it in Journal of American Folklore, in 1915.
[8] In an untitled West African tale collected by Allan Wolsey Cardinall, deity Nyame, who is already married to a woman named Akoko, the Barn-door Fowl, takes four other women as his wives, who later move to his house.
There, they need to follow the rules of the head-wife, who asks the women what each would give to their husband: the first promises to clean and sweep the compound, the second would cook for him, the third that she would spin cotton for him, and the fourth answers she would bear him a "child of gold" (or "gold-child").
[12] In a tale from the Ndowe people of Equatorial Guinea, El cerco de los leones, two sisters confide in each other that they will bear handsome children.
However, Hill Chief's headwife, who was childless, bears great jealousy towards the newcomer, and, to humiliate her, replaces Ti's first son for a kitten, then casts the baby in a box in the river.
[15] In a Liberian tale from the Vai people with the title The Banished Mother, an African man has two wives, one elder and barren and the other younger.
Thus, the puppies are also cast afloat in the water in the other half of the same calabash, while the younger wife is banished from home, enduring whatever punishment Heaven meted out for her.
The African man returns later with his elder wife and introduces her the twins - his spitting image - and the puppies, causing the woman to faint.
When the second wife gives birth to a boy, the headwoman puts a kitten in his place, takes the child and casts him in the water in a box.
[17] In a tale collected by Alta Jablow from a Loma teller in Liberia in pidgin English and published as Twins of Gold and Silver, Gala, a Sky God, has three wives, Kwo (barn fowl), Dopai (red deer) and Si (spider), but no children, so he decides to find a fourth wife for himself.
Gala meets a beautiful woman and inquires her about her skills, since Kwo is responsible for the cooking, Dopai for planting rice, and Si for weaving.
In time, the other three co-wives begin to feel jealous about her, and when she gives birth to her promises twins, Kwo takes the boys and abandons them in the forest, Dopai replaces them for two frogs, and Si wraps cloths around the animals.
The woman finds the hut and a hunter welcomes her in, then explains he found the boys during a hunt and became rich with the dust that came off their metallic bodies.
Discovering his co-wives' ruse, he casts them down to earth in the shape of animals: Kwo as a barn fowl, Dopai as a red deer and Si as a spider.
Adiaha returns to king Eyamba, still with her ugly skin disguise, and gives birth to a son, to the jealousy of the head wife.
[19] Folklorist Andrew Lang, on his notes, recalled similar tales of "European folk-lore" wherein the king is deceived and throws his children in the water because he thought his wife gave birth to puppies.
[21] Hermann Gundert Harris published a variant in the Hausa dialect of Kano, with the title Story of a Poor Girl and the Rival Wives.
The tale contains barren co-wives, a poor girl giving birth to twins, the replacement for animals, and the children meeting the father.
The sartyi's favorite wife takes the twin boys as soon as they are born, throws them "en dehors du tata" and replaces them for margouillats [fr] (a type of lizard).
[23] Équilbecq noted its similar motifs with European fairy tales and the story from the Arabian Nights: the intrigue of the co-wives and the extraordinary promises of the women.
One day, when they are fourteen, they go to the bushes to fetch some senna plant and talk about if the king marries both of them, but they fear their friendship fall apart if they become his co-wives.
Years later, the king's beautiful son goes to a hunt, despite his father's pleas to the contrary due to his young age, and meets his real mother in bush.
[26] In one tale from the Maasai people, titled 'L-omon loo-'ñgorōyok are oo 'l-mao ("The story of the two wives and the twins") - tabulated by Arewa -, a man is married to two women.
[29] Africanist and linguist Leo Reinisch collected a tale from the Saho people which he translated as Glückliche errettung zweier kinder eines königs ("Fortunate rescue of a king's two children").
Back to the twins, a hermit that lives in the wilderness with lions, hyenas and leopards, finds the basket and raises the children until he dies.
The old woman sees the boy one day, whom she recognizes by the golden mark on his front, and tells the king's first wife about it, who orders her to get rid of him.
Thus, the old woman pays a visit to the female twin and convinces her to seek the earrings ('orgehänge') that belong to the wife of the king of demons ('gemahlin des königs der dämonen', in Reinisch's translation), since it will act as a medicine for her.
[30] In a Khoekhoe tale collected by Leonhard Schultze-Jena, Ariba gye iiguibahe kχoësa or Die Frau, der ein Hund untergeschoben wird, a woman's son is replaced for a dog by jealous women, but he is saved by an aigamuxa.