Reading Notes: Stories from the Congo Reading A

The Vanishing Wife

Main Characters: 

Buite
Swarmi

Setting:

It just says "certain town"

Plot:

Buite and Swarmi were brothers but Swarmi was married and owned servants while Buite was lonely and had no one. Buite had a dream that a beautiful woman told him to knock on the ground and he would get a canoe and paddles. She also told him to go fishing and she would could it for him as long as he cut the heads off of the fish. All of this came true in the dream and when he woke up to go fishing, everything that happened in his dream came true again in real life. He got the canoe and when he came home, he saw an extravagant home that replaced his shed with the beautiful wife and nine servants. She cooked the fish for him and he was wealthy and happy. He went fishing everyday with one of the servants and eventually grew tired of having to cut the fish heads off everytime. He kept refusing to do it after a certain point and the servant would protest so then he would run after the servant and cut the fish's head off before it was too late until the ninth servant, he couldn't catch up in time and the house, wife, everything disappeared.

House before and after transformation: AmericanRealEstate

Bibliography. "The Vanishing Wife" from Notes on the Folklore of Fjort by Richard Edward Dennett, websource