In Jamaican folklore, Bredda Anansi always wants more: more food, more fame, more of everything. Story three in our Anansi series is the day he tried to keep all the wisdom in the world for himself, and the little boy who showed him he didn’t have as much as he thought.
New to the series? Start here: Who Is Bredda Anansi? · Previous story: Anansi and Tiger
Proverb
“Craven choke puppy.”
Greed will choke you: grab for too much, and it may cost you everything.
Bredda Anansi Want It All
Back in the days when animals walked and talked like people, wisdom didn’t belong to anybody. It was everywhere. A little in the goat, a little in the john crow, a little in the old woman selling at the market. Everybody had some, and nobody had all.
That never sat right with Anansi.
“Why mi fi share?” he said to himself one evening, rocking on his verandah. “If mi have all di sense inna di world, everybody haffi come to mi. Every question, every problem, dem haffi come knock pon mi door. An mi will charge dem.”
So Anansi took down his wife’s biggest clay pot, the one she used for Sunday soup, and he went out to collect.
Di Pot Full Up
He went from yard to yard, creature to creature. A little sense from Bredda Goat about where the sweetest grass grows. A little from Sista Fowl about when rain is coming. A little from Bredda Crab about walking sideways when trouble comes straight at you. Every scrap he found, he scooped into the pot and slapped the lid down quick before it could get away.
By the end of the week the pot was so full of wisdom it hummed. Anansi could hardly lift it.
“Now,” he said, patting the lid, “mi haffi hide it where nobody can reach.”
He looked around the district. Under the bed? Too easy. Down the well? Too wet. Then he saw it: the tallest silk-cotton tree in the whole parish, standing alone at the edge of the pasture, with branches up so high they combed the clouds.
“Perfect.”
Up Di Cotton Tree
Anansi tied the pot to his front with a long piece of rope, wrapped tight around his belly, and he started to climb.
He got one foot up. The pot bumped the trunk. He slipped back down.
He tried again. Two feet up. The pot swung out, pulled him backwards, and he landed flat on his back in the grass.
“Wha’ do dis tree?!” Anansi bawled. “Somebody grease it?”
He tried a third time, a fourth, a fifth. Every time, the pot was in the way, sitting right between him and the tree, so he couldn’t grip the bark. By noon he was sweaty, scratched up, and vexed.
Di Likkle Bwoy Wid Di Big Sense
Now, all this time, somebody had been watching from behind the cotton tree. It was Anansi’s own son, Ntikuma, the smallest one, always trailing behind his father.
After the sixth fall, the little boy couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Pupa,” he said, “why yuh nuh just tie di pot pon yuh back? Den yuh can hug di tree an climb.”
Anansi froze.
He looked at the pot on his belly. He looked at the tree. He looked at his son.
It was so simple. So obvious. And Anansi, the man who had gone around collecting every scrap of sense in the world, hadn’t thought of it. A pickney had.
“Lawd,” Anansi whispered. “All dis wisdom inna mi pot, an mi still never have enough fi know dat?”
Di Pot Bruk
Shame hit Anansi hot, and then vexation came right behind it. He snatched the rope off his belly, lifted the pot high over his head and flung it down on the ground.
CRASH.
The pot burst open. All the wisdom inside rushed out at once. It went up in the wind, scattered over the pasture, and blew across the hills. Then the afternoon rain came down and washed it into the gullies and the rivers, and the rivers carried it all the way to the sea and to every place on earth.
Anansi sat in the grass among the broken pieces, and for once he had nothing to say.
And that’s why, to this day, nobody in the world has all the wisdom. Everybody got a little piece of it. Even the smallest pickney.
Jack Mandora, me no choose none.
So Why Do We Still Tell This One?
This is the story Granny told when somebody in the house started acting like they knew everything. The big brother who wouldn’t take advice. The uncle who argued with the radio. The child who came back from one year at university correcting everybody at the dinner table.
Anansi had the biggest collection of wisdom in the world, and he still didn’t have common sense. That’s the joke at the heart of it. Knowing a lot and being wise aren’t the same thing. And wisdom kept in a pot, locked away for profit, isn’t wisdom at all.
It’s also a story about who gets listened to. In a lot of Jamaican homes, children were expected to be seen and not heard. But in this one, the smallest person in the story has the best idea. Sense doesn’t check your age or size before it shows up.
And there’s that old warning too: craven choke puppy. Grab for everything, and you may end up holding nothing but broken pieces.
Storytelling Roots
The pot of wisdom tale comes to us from the Akan peoples of Ghana, where Kwaku Anansi’s eldest son is Ntikuma. It is one of the best-known Anansi stories in West Africa and across the Caribbean, carried over the Atlantic along with Anansi himself and retold in yards and on verandahs ever since. What you’ve just read is Showcase Jamaica’s own retelling.
Cultural Note
Tellers don’t all end this story the same way. In some versions, the wisdom washes into the rivers and the sea. In others, the wind scatters it across the world. In some, Anansi flings the pot down in anger; in others, it simply slips from his hands. Every version agrees on the important part: wisdom was never meant to belong to one person.
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Talk Di Tings
Who was the “pot of wisdom” in your family, the one who thought they knew everything? And who was the Ntikuma who set them straight?
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