Ture

Ture, whose name is the ordinary Zande word for spider, is the trickster and culture hero at the centre of the vast Zande folktale corpus known as sangba Ture. Gluttonous, lecherous, boastful and endlessly inventive, he speaks in sanza, deliberately ambiguous speech, and repeatedly brings disaster on himself and others through his appetites. Yet the same cunning makes him a benefactor: in widely told tales Ture wins water for humankind from a murderous old woman who had dammed it from all people, and steals fire from its jealous owner, so that streams and cooking fire become common goods. Evans-Pritchard, who gathered and published the largest single corpus of an African people's tales as The Zande Trickster (1967), read Ture as a collective mirror of Zande personality, embodying social norms through their comic transgression. An earlier collection, Mrs. E. C. Gore's Sangba Ture (1921), first set many of these stories in print.

Domains

• trickery and cunning
• culture heroism
• water and provision

Powers

• speaks in double meanings
• releases water for humankind
• steals fire for humankind

Epithets

• Ture

Relations

• spouse: Nanzagbe
• rival: Yangaima

Sources

• E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Zande Trickster (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).
• E. E. Evans-Pritchard, The Zande Trickster (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), introductory essays.
• Mrs. E. C. Gore, Sangba Ture: Zande Folk-lore (1921; repr. ed. Canon E. Riley).