Hart divides Aït Atta fables and legends into two categories: stories about animals and birds, by far the more numerous, and tales about semi-legendary figures who may have existed. In one, hunters were sharing out a boar when one of them cut himself: his blood fell on a piece, which he declared forbidden; he died soon after without saying which, and the whole boar was declared forbidden. The tale thus makes the ban on boar a custom, distinct from the Qur'anic ban on pork. Another tells that the stork was a qadi who soaped the stairs of his court to watch the litigants fall and laugh at them: God turned him into a stork, which nests on top of houses and still laughs by clattering its beak.
Dog and Jackal were brothers; when Jackal ate the lamb Dog had entrusted to him, they fell out, and ever since the dog guards the sheep the jackal stalks. The rainbow is called tislit n-w-ushshn or tamghra n-w-ushshn, “the bride” or “the wedding of the jackal”, because it appears after heavy rain, when the shepherds, frozen, stay in their tents and the jackal can steal sheep; Hamdane also records the expression tamɣra n wuccn among those of Aït Atta speech. In the stories of Jackal and Hedgehog, Jackal is very cunning but Hedgehog always outwits him: invited to a meal where balls of butter and mud alternate in the jar, Jackal draws mud saying bismillah, Hedgehog butter saying bikhmillah, “and there is a certain difference between the two”. Dadda l-Fahim, “the grandfather of understanding”, advises a man whose trousers are too small to climb onto the roof and jump into them while two friends hold them open.
The fable of the hawk, the tortoise and the stork ends with a maxim: “Awi taswut a aswu”, “marry one of your own kind”. Hart also quotes proverbs with their meaning: “Ki mir u nik mir; mai diran adisug ughyal?”, “you are a prince and I am a prince, who is left to drive the donkeys?”; “Sawul si minnik!”, “speak your own language!”, said to someone who speaks Arabic or French in front of other Amazigh; “Ahrui na illan saslikh atittan”, “the shirt next to the skin is the one that scratches”, that is, one's real enemies are one's neighbours; “Zig ifullusen al-ifunasen”, “from chickens to cattle”, of a thief who grows bolder; “Unna midar ur illi sa'd asinga Sa'id”, “the man who has no luck, even if he is called Saʿid”; “Ku yan adizri wa tsihi-ins iddu”, “each man stays his time and then goes”, evoked about the annual election of chiefs.
Assisted translation, not validated
⚠ Tales recorded by Hart in the 1960s and summarised here, not full transcriptions; the proverbs are in his transcription. Two tales he reports, whose moral disparages women (Qarun) or Black people (the “Sultan l-Fhal”), and two proverbs, one racist and the other setting Arabs against Amazigh, are not repeated.
Sources — 2 sources cited · 2 independent documentary line(s)