Why Spiders Are Always Found in the Corners of Ceilings

Egya Anansi was a very skilful farmer. One year he, his wife, and his son worked together to prepare a far bigger farm than any they had tried before. They planted yams, maize, and beans, and the harvest that came up was enormous—a good ten times larger than any crop they had ever grown. Egya Anansi was delighted when he saw how much corn and beans there were.

But he was a very selfish, greedy man who never liked to share anything, not even with his own wife and son. When the crops were ripe, he hit upon a plan to keep all the profit for himself. He called his wife and son and said, “We have all three worked very hard on these fields, and they have repaid us well. Now we will bring in the harvest and store it in our barns. After that we will need a rest. I suggest that you and our son go back to our house in the village and take your ease for two or three weeks. I must travel to the coast on some very urgent business. When I return, we will all come to the farm together and enjoy the feast we have earned.”

His wife and son thought this a good, sensible plan and agreed at once. They went straight back to the village, leaving the cunning husband to begin his journey. He had no intention whatsoever of going anywhere.

Instead, he built himself a snug hut close to the farm, stocked it with every kind of cooking pot, carried in a large supply of corn and vegetables from the barn, and settled down to feast alone. This went on for two weeks. By then Anansi’s son began to think he ought to go and weed the farm before the weeds grew too high. So he went out and worked there for several hours. Passing the barn, he happened to glance inside, and he was shocked to see that more than half of their wonderful harvest had disappeared. He was very upset, assuming that robbers had been at work, and he wondered how to stop them.

He went back to the village and told the people what had happened, and they helped him make a rubber-man. When evening came they carried the sticky figure out to the farm and stood it in the middle of the fields to scare the thieves away. Some of the young men stayed behind with Anansi’s son to keep watch from one of the barns.

When it was fully dark, Egya Anansi, knowing nothing about any of this, came out of his hiding-place as usual to fetch more food. On the way to the barn he saw the shape of a man standing in front of him, and at first he was very scared. But the man did not move, so Anansi grew bolder and walked up to him.

“What do you want here?” he said. There was no answer. He asked again, and still there was no reply. Now Anansi lost his temper and struck the figure on the cheek with his right hand. Of course, his hand stuck fast to the rubber.

“How dare you hold my hand?” he cried. “Let go at once, or I’ll hit you again.” He hit the figure with his left hand, and that stuck too. He tried to pull himself free by pushing with his knees and his body, until at last his knees, body, hands, and head were all glued to the rubber-man.

There Egya Anansi had to stay until daybreak, when his son came out with the other villagers to catch the robber. They were astonished to find that the thief was Anansi himself. He, for his part, was so ashamed at being caught in the middle of his greed that he turned into a spider and hid in a dark corner of the ceiling where no one could see him. Ever since, spiders have been found in dark, dusty corners where people are unlikely to notice them.

Where this story comes from

“Why Spiders Are Always Found in the Corners of Ceilings” is story X in Barker and Sinclair’s West African Folk-Tales (1917). Barker singles it out in his introduction: he suggests comparing the way Anansi is caught here with the tar-baby episode that travelled with enslaved Africans to the American South and became part of the Brer Rabbit stories.

Barker also writes that Anansi is usually pictured as “a wise, cunning, deceitful creature” who runs to hide in the ceiling when found out, which is exactly how this story ends. Sinclair’s drawing shows Egya Anansi in the comfortable hut he built for his secret feast.

Read the original: West African Folk-Tales on Project Gutenberg (Barker and Sinclair)

Best for ages 9–12 — a sticky-figure trap story that connects to the famous tar-baby tales.

Reading the story closely

Anansi first acknowledges that all three family members earned the crop, then invents a journey to enjoy it alone. That makes the theft a breach of a shared agreement, not merely eating too much. The silent figure catches him because he interprets every lack of response as an insult or attack and responds by striking harder.

Draw the trap sequence as contact, interpretation and next action. At which stage could stepping back stop the escalation? Then compare the family’s cooperative harvest and collective search with Anansi’s secret hut. His final hiding explains spiders’ corners within the tale; it is not a universal description of where spiders live.

Questions to ask

• What lie did Egya Anansi tell his wife and son?
• Why did Anansi keep getting more and more stuck?
• Have you heard another story with a sticky figure? How is it like this one?

Related stories

• The Dance for Water, or Rabbit’s Triumph — a southern African tale with a sticky trap
• Why the Lizard Continually Moves His Head Up and Down — another Anansi just-so story
• The Squirrel and the Spider — Spider steals a harvest and loses it