Sou is the civilizing hero of the Sara, at once demiurge and trickster, whose deeds are preserved in the Mbai-Moissala mythic cycle recorded by Joseph Fortier. The cycle recounts his journey to the sky and his fall to earth, tales of underground men and children of the stars, the origin of death, his institution of ritual and the initiation cult, and his power to raise the dead. Tradition holds that it was among the Ngama that Sou fell from heaven, while the Mbaye did most to spread his legend. In the accompanying tales he appears in a very different key: a gluttonous, cunning and thievish prankster who dupes others but is repeatedly outwitted in turn, most often by the hare. Sources thus present him as a single figure spanning the roles of world-orderer, founder of cult, and comic trickster, and scholars align his tale-cycle with the broader trickster traditions running from West Africa to the Congo.