This paper traces the trajectory of the Ronga tale “Matlangu-wa-libala” (“Le Gambadeur-de-la-Plaine”) to showcase the uses of philological provenance research as a new approach in literary and media studies. The tale featured in very different versions in Simone Schwarz-Bart’s novel Ti Jean L’horizon (1979), in folktale anthologies, edited among others by avant-garde authors Carl Einstein (1925) and Blaise Cendrars (1921) and by the linguist Carl Meinhof (1917). The first written version in the works of the missionary Henri Junod (1898) will allow to uncover details about the conteuse, Chiguyane, whose name and identity, but also whose literary theory disappeared in the purifying practices of appropriation and circulation.