The Clever Tortoise and the Elephant

Elephant and Hippopotamus always used to eat together, and they were good friends.

One day, while the two of them were having dinner, Tortoise turned up and said that big and strong as they both were, neither of them could pull him out of the water with a stout length of tie-tie. He offered Elephant ten thousand rods if he could drag him out of the river the next day. Elephant looked at how small Tortoise was and said, “If I can’t pull you out of the water, I’ll give you twenty thousand rods.”

So the next morning Tortoise got some very strong tie-tie, tied it to his leg, and went down to the river. He knew the place well, and when he got there, he made the tie-tie fast around a big rock, left the other end on the bank for Elephant to pull, then went down to the bottom of the river and hid. Elephant came along and began to pull, and after a while he snapped the rope.

As soon as that happened, Tortoise untied the rope from the rock and came out onto the land, showing everyone that the rope was still tied to his leg and Elephant had not managed to pull him out. So Elephant had to admit that Tortoise had won, and he paid him the twenty thousand rods, as they had agreed. Tortoise carried the rods home to his wife, and the two of them lived very comfortably.

Three months later, Tortoise saw that the money was running low and thought he would make some more with the same trick. So he went to Hippopotamus and made him the same bet.

“I’ll take the bet,” said Hippopotamus, “but I will be in the water and you will be on the land, and I’ll pull you into the water.”

Tortoise agreed, and they went down to the river as before. Tortoise got some strong tie-tie and tied it to Hippopotamus’s back leg and told him to go into the water. The moment Hippo turned his back and disappeared, Tortoise wound the rope twice round a sturdy palm tree growing nearby, and hid himself at the foot of the tree.

When Hippo was tired of pulling, he came up puffing and spouting water from his nostrils. As soon as Tortoise saw him surfacing, he unwound the rope and walked down toward him, showing the tie-tie round his leg. Hippo had to admit that Tortoise was too strong for him, and unwillingly handed over twenty thousand rods.

Then Elephant and Hippo agreed that they would make Tortoise their friend, since he was so very strong. But he was not really as strong as they believed; he had won because he was so cunning.

Tortoise told them he would like to live with both of them. But since he could not be in two places at once, he said, he would leave his son to live with Elephant on land, while he himself would live with Hippopotamus in the water.

The storyteller uses this ending to explain land and water tortoises, imagining that the water-dweller grows larger because of plentiful fish. This is a folktale explanation, not a rule about real turtles’ size or diet.

About this telling

“How the Tortoise overcame the Elephant and the Hippopotamus” is story XXIX in Elphinstone Dayrell’s Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria, West Africa (1910), with an introduction by Andrew Lang. Dayrell was a District Commissioner in Southern Nigeria. The rope in the story is tie-tie, a strong plant fibre, and the stakes are paid in rods; Lang’s introduction notes that cloth and brass rods were used as money in Nigeria.

The trick, in which a small animal fixes the rope to something immovable so that a giant seems to lose a tug-of-war, is told in many forms across Africa. Dayrell’s version ends by explaining why there are both land tortoises and water tortoises.

Read the original: Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria by Elphinstone Dayrell (Project Gutenberg)

Suggested for ages 9–12 — a deceptive strength contest with a legendary explanation at the end.

The visible rope hides the real opponent

Elephant sees the rope still attached to Tortoise after it breaks, and Hippo sees him after the rope is unwound. Both judge only the final scene. The trick is ingenious, but it wins money through concealed assistance; the story does not establish that either animal bullied Tortoise.

Draw both contests

On paper, trace each rope from the pulling animal to its hidden anchor. Mark water and land. Explain how the second arrangement reverses the first and what an observer would need to inspect before calling either contest fair.

Talk about it

• How did Tortoise make Elephant think he could not be pulled out?
• How did he change the trick for Hippopotamus?
• Was Tortoise strong, or clever? What is the difference?

Related stories

• Elephant and Tortoise — Tortoise outwits Elephant in a South African tale
• The Hunter And The Tortoise — a magical tortoise from West Africa
• How The Tortoise Got Its Shell — why the tortoise looks the way it does