Compare the Bulu tales, Schwab, JAFL 27: 284–285; 32: 434.
In JAFL 27, Turtle sets a trap and by pretending to teach other animals who come along one by one how to use it, he catches one victim after another until he is himself caught.
In JAFL 32, Pangolin offers to initiate the animals one by one and makes them climb a tree and jump upon a concealed rock, which kills them. Turtle finally circumvents the trick.
In a Jamaica version collected in Mandeville, Anansi holds a butchering at a place where there is a tree which seizes any person who leans against it and flings him upon a lance which Anansi has set up.
34. But-but and Anansi. [[Story]]
The very popular story of Butterfly’s revenge is a somewhat obscured version of an old theme—the Jataka story of The Quail’s Friends, Francis and Thomas, 247–250. Compare Steel-Temple, Wide Awake Stories, 184; Gerber, Great Russian Animal Tales, Pub. Mod. Lang. Asso. of Am. 6: No. 2: 19–20; Grimm 58, The Dog and the Sparrow, discussed in Bolte u. Polívka 1: 515–519.
Though common to-day, the story seems to be of comparatively late introduction. Old Edwards, over eighty, heard it when he was “ripe.” Compare Tremearne, 231. [[255]]