Oral Literature in Africa (25 page)

Parallelism and repetition are marked features in praise poetry. These take various forms, and can be illustrated from the praise of Moshesh just quoted. In the third and fourth lines of the first stanza there is parallelism of meaning as well as, in part, of the words, with the second half of the line repeated identically the second time and in the first half a repetition of the same verb but with a different noun. Parallelism by which the same person is referred to by different names can be illustrated in the second and third lines in the second stanza, where the proper name Mmasete-nane refers to the same person mentioned earlier, with, again, identical repetition of other parts of the line. Both these forms of parallelism are common elsewhere in praise poetry. There are also many other forms: sometimes the repetition is not exact but the repeated phrase has something added to it, thus leading to progress in the action:

He has taken out Ntsane of Basieeng

He has taken out Ntsane from the cleft in the rock.

(Mofokeng 1945: 132)

A motif which is frequently used in describing someone’s exploits; when placed like this side by side it adds to the impression of achievement. Or the thought may be repeated in following lines even when the wording is different:

Watchman of derelict homes,

Caretaker of people’s ruins,

Guardian of his mother’s deserted house.

(Schapera 1965: 17)

The many other forms that occur include chiasmus (cross parallelism), deliberate change of word order in the second of three parallel lines, and the practice of linking, by which a phrase at the end of a line is taken up and repeated in the first half of the next.

The use of ideophones and interjections in praise poetry is another way in which its poetic quality can be enhanced. In Southern Sotho, for instance, the interjections
hele
(expressing surprise),
he
(of a wish), or
pe
(a recognition of something overlooked) are frequently used to convey emotion. Ideophones too can add to the descriptive quality with vivid conciseness:
qephe,
for instance, conveys a sound picture of the last drop of milk during milking, occurring in such a line as ‘There is not even the sound of the last drop, there is no milk’.

The characteristically obscure nature of the language in praises is partly due to its figurative quality, as we shall see. But it also arises from the great emphasis on allusion in this form of poetry, to historical events, places, and peoples. As will be obvious from some of the examples quoted, the use of proper names is often extensive and at times stanzas consist mainly of a catalogue of names and places.

The imagery in this form of poetry provides a striking contrast to the more straightforward expression in prose. By far the most common form is that of metaphor. The hero is associated with an animal, often the animal symbolic of his particular clan: a chief belonging to the clan associated with the crocodile may appear as ‘The crocodile of crocodiles’ or, as in the Southern Sotho praises of Lerotholi, the hero’s nature may be indicated in terms of the animal:

The crocodile looked in the deep pool,

It looked with blood-red eyes.

(Mofokeng 1945: 128)

Where the comparison is to domestic animals, it is often with the suggestion that they are too wild for their enemies to manage—cattle may refuse their milk, kick mud into the milk, tear their milker’s blanket, and in the case of a bull (a common image) his sharp horns are dangerous to those around him. Most frequent of all are comparisons to wild animals, to their bravery, wildness, and fearsome appearance. Thus a hero may appear as a lion, a spotted hyena, a big vulture, or a buffalo. In some praises the hero speaks in his own voice and himself draws the parallel with an animal or a series of animals:

I am the young lion!

The wild animal with pad-feet and black back!

Whose father has given up hope from the beginning and whose mother has wept for a long time.

I am the fine elephant of the Mathubapula, the finest elephant in the Matsaakgang.

(Ellenberger 1937: 19)

Though animal metaphors are the most common, heroes are also compared to natural phenomena like lightning, wind, or storm, or to other objects like a shield, a rock, flames of fire:

The whirlwind [i.e. the hero] caused people to stumble

The people were swept by the downpour of spears

The heavy rain of summer, a storm,

The hailstorm with very hard drops

(Mofokeng 1945: 129)

Sometimes there is a whole series of metaphors by which the hero is compared, or compares himself, to various different objects:

The rumbling which is like the roll of thunder,

Ox belonging to the younger brother of the chief …

I am the wind that raises the yellow dust,

I am the rhinoceros from the Badimo cattle-post,

Son of Mma-Maleka and nephew of Lesele

(Mofokeng 1945: 129)

Similarly in the Transvaal Ndebele lines:

The hail that came down in the middle of winter,

And came down at
emaKhophana
.

The elephant that took fire in a pot-sherd,

And went and set the kraals of men alight,

And burned down those of all the tribe

(Ellenberger 1937: 6)

Special grammatical forms are also used to introduce a metaphorical impression. In Southern Sotho, for instance, there is sometimes a change in the course of a poem from class 1 concords (the personal class) to others, a device which both conveys a metaphor and leads to variety, a change from the monotony of class 1 throughout; (Mofokeng 1945: 129) and ‘wrong’ concords in Zulu similarly suggest a metaphorical idea (Vilakazi 1938: 117).

Similes are much rarer than metaphors, but a few occur in descriptions. Someone may be said to be

Like a stone hammer

Like a round boulder, the hero

(Mofokeng 1945: 129)

or the chief may be ‘as shapely as the full moon’ or ‘as straight as a sandalwood tree’ (Schapera 1965: 21).

Hyperbole appears in emotional description, adding to the vividness of the picture. The confusion and fierceness of the battle may be indicated by

A cow should run carrying her calf

A man should run carrying his child

or

The small herbs were frost-bitten in the middle of summer …

The trees lost their leaves,

The sparrows, the birds that lay eggs in the trees, forsook their nests (Mofokeng 1945: 130, 124)

while a man’s feelings may be conveyed by

He left grieved in his heart

He left with the heart fighting with the lungs,

Heaven quarrelling with the earth

(Mofokeng 1945: 131)

It is largely through this figurative and allusive form of description that actions and qualities of people are conveyed in the praise poems. There is little stress on personal emotions, lyrical descriptions of nature, or straightforward narration. Rather a series of pictures is conveyed to the listeners through a number of laconic and often rather staccato sentences, a grouping of ideas which may on different occasions come in a different order. In this way impressions are communicated with economy and vividness. Vilakazi comments, for example, on the ‘emotional shorthand’ of such a passage as this Zulu poem:

The thunder that bursts on the open

Where mimosa trees are none.

The giant camouflaged with leaves

In the track of Nxaba’s cattle

He refuses tasks imposed by other people

(Vilakazi 1945: 45)

Here the figurative language conveys the action. First the hero’s temper is described as like a sudden thunderstorm, then his force is indicated by comparing it to a giant elephant hidden by the leaves of the trees. His strength is then brought out further by the way he is able to win back the cattle taken away by one of the headmen (Nxaba) who fled north in Shaka’s reign; finally the fact that not even Shaka can impose his commands on him proves his hardihood and strength of mind.

This loose ordering of stanzas by which a series of pictures of a man’s qualities and deeds is conveyed to the listener is typical. Nevertheless there are also vivid descriptions of the action itself in a way which fits the partly narrative aspect of praise poetry. Thus there are many examples of battle scenes in Southern Sotho praise poems. Here the sounds of the words, as well as the meaning, sometimes serve to heighten the effect:

Cannons came roaring, the veld resounding

Sword came tinkling from all sides

(Kanono tsa tla li kutuma thota e luma.

Lisabole tsa tla li kelema kahohle)

(Mofokeng 1945: 120)

The hero’s attack and the fate of his victims are favourite topics:

Maame, the whirlwind of Senate,

Snatched a man off his horse

The European’s horse took fright at the corpse

It took fright at the corpse without a soul

and

The lion roared when it saw them near.

It jumped suddenly, wanting to devour them

They ran in all directions the people of Masopha, They ran in all directions

and filled the village,

They scattered like finches.

(Mofokeng 1945: 123, 124)

When the victim falls on the ground, dead, and lies motionless this is described in one poem as

He lay down, the grass became taller than him

While it was finally dead quiet on the ground

while the effect of battle, its many deaths, can also be shown indirectly in a description of the general scene:

A foul smell came from the ridge,

They no longer drink water the people of Rampai

They are already drinking clods of human blood

(Mofokeng 1945: 123, 120)

It has frequently been remarked that the stress in praise poetry is on action and on the building up of a series of pictures about the deeds and qualities of the hero, rather than on lyric descriptions of nature; and in a general way this is certainly true. A few passages can be singled out as Dhlomo and Vilakazi have done, to represent a more lyrical approach to the beauty of nature. In a Zulu praise poem we have

The greenness which kisses that of a gall bladder!

Butterfly of Phunga, tinted with circling spots,

As if made by the twilight from the shadow of mountains,

In the dusk of the evening, when the wizards are abroad.

(Dhlomo 1947: 6)

Another picture which seems to be expressed for its own beauty is the brief praise of the blue-throated lizard in the Northern Sotho:

Blue-throated lizard of the Lizards

A blue chest (or throat) I have put on

Brown I also have put on

I, father-of-clinging of the hillside

(Lekgothoane 1938: 213)

But while such instances can fairly easily be found, in general the stress is far more on the hero and his character, so that what pictures are given of the scene and surroundings are subordinate to the insight they give into the hero’s activity. The weather, for example, may be described not for its own sake but as a kind of formalized indication that some important event is about to be depicted or to show the determination and perseverance of the hero whatever the conditions. This comes out in the following Southern Sotho passage:

When he is going to act the mist thickens;

The mist was covering the snow-clad mountains,

Mountains from which the wind blows.

There was a wind, there was snow, Likila,

There was a wind, there was snow on the mountains,

Some were attracted by pillows and remained

(Mofokeng 1945: 121).

Here, as in all these praise poems, the first interest seems to be the laudatory description of the hero rather than descriptions of natural phenomena or the straightforward narration of events. It is to this panegyricizing end that both the general form and the detailed style of these poems all tend.

IV

As these poems are very much
oral
compositions, intended to be heard rather than read, they demand also some consideration of the way in which they are delivered and composed and the kinds of occasions on which they tend to be heard.

Although again the details vary, there seems to be general agreement that praise poems are delivered much faster, and in a higher tone, than ordinary prose utterances. The reciter pours forth the praises with few pauses for breath and at the top of his voice. Often there is growing excitement and dramatic gestures are made as the poem proceeds. Grant describes a well-known Zulu praiser whom he heard in the 1920s. As the poet recited, he worked himself up to a high pitch of fervour, his face was uplifted, and his voice became loud and strong. The shield and stick that he carried were, from time to time, suddenly raised and shaken, and his gestures became more frequent and dramatic, so that he would suddenly leap in the air or crouch with glaring eyes while praises poured from his lips—until at last he stopped exhausted (1927: 202). The audience too play their part and often shout out encouragingly in support of what the praiser is saying or to cheer him on, adding to the emotional, even ecstatic mood that is induced by the delivery of these poems.

Something has already been said about the metrical and quasi-musical form of the delivery. Even in the mood of excitement described by Grant there is a clear emphasis on the penultimate syllable of certain words, and, in a more marked way still, on the word just preceding a pause at a line- or stanza-end. Praise poems have no musical accompaniment, nor, apparently, are they actually sung. Rather, they are semi-chanted, in the sense that a special stylized intonation is expected during the recitation. In Zulu the tonal and melodic movement is not a separate musical creation, but arises directly out of the words of a given line; and at the ends of lines and stanzas there are certain formalized cadences and glides, used as concluding formulas (Rycroft 1960).

The power of a praise poem seems to depend partly on the delivery and the personality of the reciter. It is said, for instance, that when the great general Ndlela kaSompisi recited the whole audience became awestruck (Bang 1951), and Lekgothoane expresses the same view in an extreme form when he writes that ‘a man whilst praising or being praised can walk over thorns, which cannot pierce his flesh which has become impenetrable’ (1938: 191). However, with this complex and sophisticated form of poetry, unlike the simpler prose tales, the literary effect does not seem to have been dependent primarily on the skill of the reciter, but rather on the art of the poet as composer—in his use of the traditional forms described above, such as figurative expression, allusion, and the various stylistic devices which, quite apart from his delivery, served to heighten the effectiveness and power of the verse.