Outa Karel’s Stories: South African Folk-Lore Tales: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Outa Karel’s Stories: South African Folk-Lore Tales, credited to Sanni Metelerkamp, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Outa Karel’s Stories: South African Folk-Lore Tales by Sanni Metelerkamp. Read in English by NoelBadrian Sanni Metelerkamp was a South African playwright and author born in 1867. She is well known for her biography of her great-grandfather, George Rex, the British born entrepreneur who founded the town of Knysna and was rumoured to have been an illegitimate son of King George III. Possibly her greatest legacy however is the publication of a collection of folk tales which in her own words "… are the common property of every country child in South Africa." By the time she published "Outa Karel’s Stories: South African Folk-Lore Tales" in 1914, South Africa had come through a time of great turmoil. There had been years of conflict between the Boer settlers, the Zulus and the British. The arrival of peoples from all over the world seeking gold and diamonds together with the advent of the railroads, was opening up the country and changing society. Sanni was afraid that many of the old traditions and stories would be lost and so set down these few for posterity. She also stated " I greatly regret that (the stories) appear here in what is, to them, a foreign tongue. No one who has not heard them in the Taal - that quaint, expressive language of the people - can have any idea of what they lose through translation, but, having been written in the first instance for English publications, the original medium was out of the question." However, even The Taal (which in South Africa refers to Afrikaans) would not have been the language from whence these tales originated. They came from the oral traditions of the indigenous peoples of South Africa . The storyteller is Outa Karel, an old family retainer and though they are told here in English, there are several words and expressions in the "Taal". There is however an excellent Glossary at the beginning of the book which is read as a separate file for reference. ( Noel Badrian)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Outa Karel’s Stories: South African Folk-Lore Tales
• Author credits: Sanni Metelerkamp
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 16
• Listed recording duration: 3:08:26

Catalogue topics

• South Africa
• animal stories
• folk lore

Track guide

1. 00 Glossary — 6:17
2. 01 The Place and the People — 14:09
3. 02 How Jakhals Fed Oom Leeuw — 21:07
4. 03 Who was King? — 17:14
5. 04 Why the Hyena is Lame — 4:56
6. 05 Who was the Thief? — 8:50
7. 06 The Sun — 10:28
8. 07 The Stars and the Stars’ Road — 9:30
9. 08 Why the Hare’s Nose is Slit — 10:02
10. 09 How the Jackal got his Stripe — 11:22
11. 10 The Animals’ Dam — 15:59
12. 11 Saved by his Tail — 7:58
13. 12 The Flying Lion — 11:53
14. 13 Why the Heron has a Crooked Neck — 11:30
15. 14 The Little Red Tortoise — 13:49
16. 15 The Ostrich Hunt — 13:22

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.