How Mushrooms First Grew

Long, long ago, two brothers lived in a town, and their bad habits brought them nothing but trouble. Every day they sank deeper into debt. The people they owed money to gave them no peace, until at last the brothers ran away into the forest and became robbers on the highway.

But they were not happy. The wrong things they had done weighed on their minds. In the end they decided to go home, clear a big farm and pay back their debts little by little. They set to work, and soon they had a fine field ready and planted with corn. The soil was good, and they hoped the harvest would bring them plenty of money.

But that very day a bushfowl came by. It was hungry, so it scratched up every seed they had just planted and ate them all. When the two brothers came to the field the next day, they were horrified to see all their work wasted. They set a trap for the thief, and that evening the bushfowl was caught.

When the brothers found the bird, they told it, “From now on all our debts belong to you, because you have robbed us of the means to pay them ourselves.”

The poor bushfowl was very worried to have such a load put on it. It made a nest under a silk-cotton tree and began to lay eggs, meaning to hatch them and sell the chicks to pay the debt. But a terrible storm blew up, and a branch broke off the tree and fell, and all the eggs were smashed. So the bushfowl passed the debts on to the tree, because the tree had broken its eggs.

The silk-cotton tree was dismayed to owe so much money. At once it set to work making as much silk cotton as it possibly could, so that it could sell it. Then an elephant came along who knew nothing of all this. He saw the soft silk cotton, went up to the tree and pulled down every bit of it. And so the debts passed to the poor elephant.

The elephant was very unhappy when he learned what he had done. He wandered off into the dry country, trying to think of a way to earn money, but he could not think of one. As he stood quite still under a tree, a poor hunter crept up. The hunter could hardly believe his luck at finding such a fine elephant standing so quietly, and he shot him. Just before the elephant died, he told the hunter that now the debts were his.

The hunter was very upset, because he had no money at all. He walked home in the dark, wondering how he could ever earn enough. He did not see the stump of a tree that the road workers had cut down, and he tripped over it, fell and broke his leg. So the debts passed to the tree stump.

The next morning a party of white ants came along, knowing nothing of this, and began to eat into the stump. When they had eaten it almost down to the ground, the stump told them that the debts were now theirs, because they had killed it.

The ants were very wise. They held a meeting to decide how best to make money. They agreed that each of them would give as much as it could, and with the money one of their young men would go to the nearest market and buy pure linen thread. They would weave it into cloth and sell it, and the profit would help pay off the debts.

And that is what they did. From time to time the ants bring out all the linen they have in store and spread it in the sunshine to keep it in good condition. When people see this linen lying out on the anthills, they call it “mushroom,” and they gather it to eat.

Where this story comes from

“How Mushrooms First Grew” is one of the Gold Coast (Ghana) stories collected by W. H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair in West African Folk-Tales (1917). The book was collected and arranged by W. H. Barker with illustrations by Cecilia Sinclair; its regional collection does not establish one specific community of origin for every story.

It is a chain tale, where a problem is passed along from one creature to the next, and it ends by explaining something everyone can see: the pale mushrooms that spring up on anthills after rain. There is a real connection between some fungi and termites: Termitomyces fungi are cultivated by fungus-growing termites, as described in this research study on termite-cultivated fungi. That association is different from the tale’s linen-weaving explanation and is not a guide to identifying edible mushrooms.

Read the original: W. H. Barker and Cecilia Sinclair, West African Folk-Tales (Project Gutenberg)

Best for ages 9–12 — a chain tale involving debt, an elephant shot dead and a hunter’s broken leg.

Reading the story closely

The full debt passes each time, even when the new damage is much smaller or accidental. The storm-damaged tree, for example, did not choose to break the eggs. The pattern makes the burden grow less connected to the brothers’ original choices as it moves along.

Draw the debt chain and label each transfer deliberate harm, accident or disputed responsibility. At the ants, the pattern changes from passing the burden to pooling resources. Yet the story shows a plan to repay, not a completed repayment; people gathering the imagined linen may even interrupt it. That open ending complicates the promise that cooperation automatically solves everything.

Talk about it

• Can you list everyone the debt passed to, in order?
• Was it fair each time the debt was passed on? Which time seems least fair?
• How did the ants solve the problem differently from everyone else?

Related stories

• Why We See Ants Carrying Bundles as Big as Themselves — another Gold Coast tale about ants
• Why White Ants Always Harm Man’s Property — a West African story about white ants
• Thunder and Anansi — a Gold Coast story from the same book