One day Ananse the spider heard that two villages were each holding a feast, on the same day. He wanted to eat at both, and he could not bear to miss the start of either one.
So he made a plan. He tied a long rope around his middle and gave one end to each of his two sons. He sent one son to each village. "When the feast begins, pull the rope," he told them, "and I will know which way to go." Then he sat down halfway between the two villages to wait.
But both feasts began at the same moment, and both sons pulled. Ananse was dragged one way and then the other, and could go to neither. The harder they pulled, the tighter the rope squeezed. By the time his sons came looking for him, both feasts were over, and the rope had pinched his middle thin.
That is why, the story says, the spider has a thin waist: Ananse wanted both feasts at once, and tasted neither.
A traditional story, retold here in our own words.
An Ashanti (Akan) Ananse tale, retold here in our own words. It keeps the idea and the closing lesson of the widely known story, follows no single published version, and has not been checked against one. Harold Courlander tells the tale as "Two Feasts for Anansi: Why Anansi Is Very Thin in the Middle" in "The Hat-Shaking Dance and Other Tales from the Gold Coast" (Harcourt, Brace & Co.), listed in the booklet of his recording "Ashanti Folk Tales from Ghana" (Folkways FW07710); that book was not read.