This story is told everywhere in Jamaica, but I find no African version
and Mrs. Parsons says (JAFL 32: 391) that, although she heard it “over
and over again” in South Carolina, it was altogether unknown in North
Carolina; see Sea Islands, 1–5. Such a distribution argues a fairly
modern origin for the complete form of the story.
The story has two parts. (1) Two friends, who have, one a dog and the
other a dog-head, go hunting, and the owner of the dog-head claims the
spoils for his own. (2) His companion, who dares not dispute him,
recovers the spoils by pretending that the owner is come to punish the
theft.
An introduction sometimes tells how the friends come by the dog and
dog-head. Each gets a present of a dog, but one is so greedy that he
eats his down, beginning at the tail, until only the head is left. When
his friend jeers at him, he makes a bet that his dog-head will catch
the prey. The business of deciding at which end to begin to eat the dog
is used as a humorous episode detached from the rest of the story, the
victim sometimes escaping in the meantime.
The trick of claiming the cow as the prey of the dog-head may be
related to such stories as that of Basset 2: 88, in which the man lays
the new-born calf beside his own bull and declares that the bull has
mothered it.
For the revenge, compare Rivière, 11; Harris, Nights, 131–132.