The tales may be grouped in cycles and serve both ritualistic and entertainment purposes. The tales combine elements of violence, deception and magic and the hero is variously perceived to be godlike or a fool, a destructive villain or an innocent prankster. The trickster is often an animal, but can also be a human figure and is thought to possess special powers. Trickster tales concerning animal or human protagonists are a well-known feature of oral traditions worldwide.

The collection has been microfilmed in its entirety. The transcripts are typewritten one to a single sheet and interleaved with the relevant stories. Many are illustrated with drawings made by the children and include music and the lyrics of songs. The penmanship is usually quite good and the stories are easily legible. The original manuscripts are contained in school 'bluebooks' per student. It is the largest manuscript collection of Anansi folk tales in existence.

The texts were written in Creole by 1,124 school children from 97 primary schools (both public and private, including various religious denominations) in Jamaica in 1930-1931 in response to a contest organized by the Jesuit missionary and ethnologist Joseph John Williams to collect material on the oral tradition of tales concerning the spider 'Anansi' (usually written 'Anancy' in Jamaica) and/or other animal and human figures. The collection consists of nearly 5,000 handwritten stories, each with a typed transcript, giving variants of about 200 basic trickster tales. Burns Library of Rare Books and Special Collections, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MassachusettsĪccording to Robert Hill, Professor of History & Editor-in-Chief of The Marcus Garvey & UNIA Papers at UCLA, these Anansi tales are the single most important collection of original folktales from the Caribbean in existence for facilitating research and teaching in the area of cultural studies of the African Diaspora, popular culture, and ethnomusicology. Spider Trickster Tales from Jamaica: The Anansi Folk Tales Collectionįrom the John J.