Elkin. Why the Sun Was Late

Why the Sun Was Late is a children's book by Benjamin Elkin, with art by Jerome Snyder, published in 1966. It is available at the Internet Archive.

A fly alights on an old tree and it falls; this makes the fly proud, and he decides to push TWO boys out of another tree where they are gathering nuts. Angry, one of the boys pushes the fly away; the fly hits a branch where THREE squirrels were sitting; they fall down on FOUR snakes. They slither away into a herd of FIVE elephants. The stampeding elephants crash into a tree, knocking down a nest that contains SIX eggs. The mother bird cries, saying she will never sing again. Because she did not sing in the morning, the sun did not rise. The animals called to the Great Spirit for help, who asks the bird what's wrong; "my six eggs were broken by those five elephants," and so back on down the chain. All the fly coul say was "buzz buzz." Because the fly would not speak up and explain, the Spirit punished the fly so that he would never speak again and only "buzz." Then he makes the bird's eggs whole egg and tells her to go to her nest and sing, and back on down the chain: the elephants returned to the field, etc. 

This is obviously based on an African folktale (for another story of this type, see "Why the Bush-Fowl Calls Up the Dawn" where the god is named Obassi, the supreme deity of the Ekoi people; see also Aardema's very popular Why Mosquitoes Buzz), but the author gives no indication as to the specific source that he used or the cultural tradition to which that source belongs. It really bugs me when people do not at least acknowledge their source! I'm pretty sure that turning it into not just a chain of accidents but a chain of numbers is the author's addition (I have not seen an African chain tale that plays a number game like this), but again, I am just guessing, and I have to just guess because the author has not provided any kind of commentary on the story. Argh. 

For another unattributed African folktale by Elkin, see Such Is the Way of the World.