Brazil

Although chain tales have been recorded in many parts of the world and have been the subject of systematic study, they are either extremely rare in New Guinea, or they have largely escaped the attention of those who recorded its oral literature. The chain tale presented here is the only New Guinean one that has come to my attention. What makes it remarkable is that three almost identical variants were recorded in geographically widely separated areas in languages that are at best only distantly related. The question of how to explain this similarity is broached but alas not answered because of the dearth of data.