Read Oral Literature in Africa Online
Authors: Ruth Finnegan
I am blessing two, not one.
This was prophesied to the sea lily
Which reaches down into the mud, the origin of creation. The time of creation has come.
(Gbadamosi and Beier 1959: 26)
This is the oracle of a hunter
Who went hunting in the forest of Onikorogbo.
They asked him to sacrifice,
So that he might not meet his death.
They asked him to sacrifice eggs,
All the eggs in his house.
But he refused to sacrifice.
He came into the forest,
But found no animals to shoot.
After he had wandered about for a long time
He met Death.
For a while they were hunting together.
At last they found two eggs.
Death said to the hunter:
You may take them home.
The hunter proposed to divide them,
But Death refused.
The hunter went home lonely.
Soon after that famine came.
The hunter cooked the eggs
And ate them with his children.
Then Death arrived and said:
I have come for my share.
There is famine in heaven.
And we have nothing to eat.
The hunter said: Alas,
We have already eaten the eggs.
Then Death killed the hunter and his children. (Gbadamosi and Beier 1959: 28)
Particular divination figures are also mentioned in the Ifa poems. One praises the figure
eji ogbe
which is the first and senior figure in all systems of Ifa divination:
The might of all rivers in the world is not to be compared with that of the sea; the dignity of rivers which rise on a hill is not as that of the lagoon.
There is no Ifa that can be compared with Eji-ogbe;
To command is the privilege of a commander;
Eji-ogbe, you are the king of them all.
I asked for honours from the Lagoon, for he is greater than the River.
I received them, but I was not satisfied. I asked them at the hands of Olokun Jeniade, the God of the sea and father of all rivers, but still I was not satisfied.
Who does not know that only the gifts of Olorun, the God of Heaven, are sufficient till the day of one’s death?
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The poem about the figure
iwori wotura
also alludes to good fortune:
Iwori Wotura
Anybody who meets beauty and does not look at it will soon be poor.
The red feathers are the pride of the parrot.
The young leaves are the pride of the palm tree. Iwori Wotura. The white flowers are the pride of the leaves.
The well swept verandah is the pride of the landlord. Iwori Wotura.
The straight tree is the pride of the forest.
The fast deer is the pride of the bush. Iwori Wotura.
The rainbow is the pride of heaven.
The beautiful woman is the pride of her husband. Iwori Wotura. The children are the pride of the mother.
The moon and the stars are the pride of the sun. Iwori Wotura. Ifa says: beauty and all sorts of good fortunes arrive.
(Gbadamosi and Beier 1959: 30)
The final example expresses once more the constant theme that one must sacrifice to obtain success:
The lord of the Forest and the lord of the Savannah,
Wanted to seduce Beloved, the wife of Fire.
They were asked to sacrifice broomsticks, a hen and Ifa leaves.
But the lord of the Savannah refused. He said:
‘And why should I, chief of the Savannah bring sacrifice
Merely because I seduced a woman?
Have I not an army of poisonous yams and thorny shrubs
All ready to protect me?’—But the lord of the Forest sacrificed.
The day came when Beloved, Fire’s wife, had gone to the house of Savannah
The Fire ran burning to the lord of the Savannah and cried: Beloved, Beloved, Beloved.
And he burned the poisonous yams and the thorny shrubs, and all the Savannah was burned.
But when Fire returned to the forest, they sprinkled Ifa leaves on it and it died.
(Gbadamosi and Beier 1959: 27)
Those who memorize and recite such poems are members of a highly trained and respected profession. The Ifa diviners (
babalawo,
lit. ‘father of mysteries’) spend several years learning the literature for their profession. The minimum seems to be three years: the first is often spent learning the names and structure of the
odu,
the second and third learning some of the literature of each as well as the actual practice of divination and its rituals (Parrinder 1961: 145). But sometimes seven or ten years are spent in apprenticeship to a qualified diviner, and the general opinion is, not surprisingly, that an Ifa diviner continues to learn as long as he lives. In some areas at least it is also a strictly organized profession with a head diviner (
olori-awo
) in each quarter of a town or village and several grades
of diviners under him (Clarke 1939: 250; Abraham, 1958: 277). It is clear also that both they and others regard their skill seriously. Though it is presumably possible in principle for dishonest individuals to exploit the system, there seems to be no question of the system as a whole being a piece of calculated trickery. As will be clear even from the few examples cited, however, the Yoruba themselves admit the existence of individual scepticism on the subject. Nevertheless, the general belief is not only that the diviners themselves are genuine but that what they say represents the accumulated wisdom of generations, a belief strengthened by the fact that diviners themselves approach their own problems through Ifa consultation.
That Ifa divination and its literature should be regarded as seriously as this is not surprising when one considers the nature of the consultation. Only one point need be repeated in this connection.
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For each figure that is thrown the diviner does not repeat just one poem (and associated story), but at least four or so, either in outline or in full. Not only are these mostly expressed in allusive and poetic language, but the diviner himself does not know in advance the specific problem the questioner has in mind, and it is left to the client to make his choice among the several verses recited; there is always likely to be at least one which will appear relevant to him, particularly in view of the fact that what is described is not an exact prediction for the future but a poetically described precedent. ‘The diviner’s role is to recite and explain, the supplicant’s role is to discern the precise canto in which
Ifa
is speaking to him, and
Ifa
may speak in veiled ways’ (Prince 1964: 9).
In view of this literary and thus in a sense unfalsifiable nature of Ifa, the respect given to diviners and the continued popularity of Ifa divining among Christians and Muslims as well as pagans is not any cause for surprise.
Ifa, then, covers a whole corpus of literature consisting not only of straightforward injunctions to sacrifice, of meaningful and elaborate names and (sometimes) prose stories, but also of a body of allusive and complex poetry. This literature cannot be said to form a definitive and fixed canon. Not only does the number of pieces associated with each figure differ from diviner to diviner, but there are also regional differences in the pieces themselves (Bascom 1943: 130) as well as in the formal order of the figures. Each piece is separate and complete in itself, and may contradict other
comparable pieces. The literature itself is fluid in the sense that there may be changes in the pieces, with new material merged and added by individual diviners which is then accepted as authoritative by their followers. But in spite of this lack of fixity and comprehensiveness, it remains true that the Ifa utterances form part of a conventional and vast scheme, hugely conceived, one that is known and recited by serious and highly qualified specialists but which has not yet been systematically collected in written form in anything approaching the scale of its conception.
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IV
One of the main points to emerge from this brief account of African religious poetry is its variety. Just as the theory and practice of religions vary in different parts of Africa, so too does religious poetry. Similarly, even in one society there may not only be religious variations with corresponding effects on literature, but different poetic genres, many of them connected with religion, are likely to be recognized. Furthermore simplistic assumptions which attribute cultural unity of various kinds to African religion or to religious expression turn out to be highly questionable. Thus the picture of African religious expression dominated by magical spells and incantations can be seen to have little evidence to support it. Certain other generalizations also seem uncertain. It is asserted, for instance, in one recent collection of religious texts that when authors of these pieces do exist they are always anonymous, and that such texts possess no
literary
character for their users who are interested only in their religious functions (Dieterlen 1965: 17–18). There are in fact far too many variations to sum up the matter so simply. Sometimes there are official priests and religious specialists, people who tend to be authoritative and conservative and lay great stress on the idea of preserving the ancient text. In other cases there is little interest in authority and more scope for improvisation and originality. Moreover, the literary appreciation of religious pieces varies with culture,
context, genre, and even individual—there is certainly no
a priori
reason to suppose that it cannot coexist with religious sentiments or situations.
Another misleading generalization is the idea of the ‘intense religiousness’ supposed to characterize the peoples of Africa and their religious texts (Dieterlen 1965: 20). On the basis of their oral literature this seems doubtful. In any one culture religious poetry is not necessarily the most developed or valued—one need only mention the instance of the Southern Bantu among whom panegyric of human beings (not gods) is the most specialized and prized. Ifa divination literature might perhaps be cited as a counter-example, being the most largely conceived scheme of Yoruba literature. But, quite apart from the question of whether this means it is necessarily the most complex or valued type, one could hardly say, in view of much of its content and context, that it really offered definite proof that the Yoruba were therefore a highly ‘religious’ people in any obvious sense. In any case the religious significance of a poetic product can only be assessed with a detailed knowledge of its social and literary background, for only then can one grasp its meaning (or meanings) for composer, reciter, and listeners.
It is true that a few general remarks can be made about African religious poetry: the prevalence of the hymn in various forms; the relative lack of significance (apart from Islamic verse) of didactic and narrative religious poetry; and the spread of recent forms influenced by Christianity. But apart from such obvious generalizations few general points can be established. Indeed perhaps they are not worth searching for at this stage. What is now needed is much more detailed collection and analysis of religious poetry (including recent Christian-inspired forms). The whole subject deserves far more study than it has as yet received. In particular it needs to be analysed in terms of
literature
(and not just social function) and presented not as isolated snippets but in relation to its proponents, listeners, and social context.
Footnotes
1
G. Balandier, ‘Femmes “possedees” et leurs chants’,
Présence qfr
. 5, 1948.
2
On Ethiopia see Chadwicks iii, 1940: 503ff. and further references given in Ch. 3: 51. On Islamic and Christian poetry see below.
3
It is because of this overlap that I have not thought it inappropriate to include some consideration of the largely written religious poetry in Swahili.
4
See, for example, some of the initiation texts given in Dieterlen 1965.
5
Dirges are considered in Ch. 6, marriage and initiation songs, etc., mentioned in Ch. 9; some further references on initiation songs are given in Ch. 8.
6
Though see the discussion in Ch. 13: 361ff.
7
Migeod ii, 1913, Ch. 18. On Hausa, see C. H. Robinson,
Specimens of Hausa Literature,
Cambridge, 1896; Tremearne 1913: 70–2; Paden 1965; A. Mischlich, ‘Religiöse und weltliche Gesänge der Mohammedaner aus dem Sudan’,
Afrika
[Berlin] 2. 3. On similar Fulani instances in various parts of West Africa see e.g. Ba 1950; Pfeffer 1939; Monod 1948; E. F. Sayers, ‘In Praise of the Faith of Futa and a Warning to Unbelievers—a Fula Poem with Introductory Note and Translation’,
Sierra Leone Studies
o.s. 13, 1928; Lacroix 1965; Mohamadou 1963. On Songhai, B. Hama, ‘L’esprit de la culture sonrhaïe’,
Presence afr
. 14/15, 1957: 153.
8
M. Hiskett, ‘The “Song of Bagaudu”: a Hausa King List and Homily in Verse’,
BSOAS
27–8, 1964–5.
9
A great deal of work has been done on this written literature. There is a general discussion with examples (original and translation) in the recent books by Harries (Harries 1962, supplemented by the bibliographic material in the review by J. Knappert in
Afr. Studies
23, 1964), and Knappert (1967
b
), as well as in earlier writings by Büttner, Velten, Werner, Allen, Dammann, and others (see bibliography under ‘Swahili’ in IAI
Bibliography
(A) by R. Jones, East Africa, 1960; and M. van Spanndonck,
Practical and Systematical Swahili Bibliography
, Leiden, 1965).
10
See, for instance, the modern Swahili ballad published in P. Lienhardt 1968, which, though purely oral, is in the traditional
utenzi
form. In some areas, e.g. Pemba, the connection with oral tradition seems to have been even closer (see Whiteley 1958).
11
This section is mainly based on Harries 1962, Ch. 3, which contains a convenient synthesis and collection of much of the earlier work on this form of verse. See also Knappert 1966, 1967.
12
J. Knappert, ‘The First Christian Utenzi: a New Development in Swahili Literature,
Afr. u, Übersee
47, 1964.