Oral Literature in Africa (60 page)

The stories are told according to the local conventions about the suitable personnel and order—sometimes by just a few outstanding narrators, sometimes according to a rotation round each participant in turn, sometimes by whoever has the story ‘thrown on to him’ by the last teller. ‘Myths’ and ‘legends’ are more often told during the day, often in the course of solemn discussions or gatherings about serious matters. But in these cases in particular, details about such occasions are usually lacking. For all types of narrative, in fact, further investigation of their contexts is needed.

The position of the story-teller himself is central to any discussion of the context or purpose of the various narrations. But here very little is said by collectors—even less than about the occasions on which they are told. Most editors, indeed, do not even include the names of those who told them the stories, far less give details about their background or position in the local community.
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The degree of specialism conventionally expected of story-tellers is often unclear. In some societies, we are told, there are at least a few ‘professional’ story-tellers who travel from one village to another, and, presumably, live on their art: this has been asserted of, among others, the Temne, Hausa, and Yoruba of West Africa, Yao of East Africa, and the Bulu, Rwanda, and possibly the Pygmies of Central and West Equatorial Africa.
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It might perhaps be questioned how far all these men were really professionals in the sense of gaining their livelihood purely from literary activity or, even so, whether this referred merely to the telling of prose stories. Often the references are no more than brief assertions in passing.

What is certain, however, is that story-telling is usually practised by non-professionals. Leading story-tellers like the Limba Karanke Dema for instance are recognized as possessing a certain degree of specialist skill,
but this is a spare-time skill only. In most instances there is no evidence that any material reward accrues to the story-teller, however great his expertise. Though some individuals are clearly regarded as more expert than others, story-telling typically tends to be a popular rather than a specialist art. All, it appears, are potentially expert in story-telling and are, with some limitations, prepared to take part in the evening occasions when stories are being told and exchanged in social gatherings. There is thus no African parallel to the specialist privileged class of narrators to be found, say, in Polynesia (Radin 1952: 14).

The limitations on this general mastery of the art of storytelling arise from local conventions about the age and sex of the narrators. In some societies, it appears, these are quite free; in others there is a definite emphasis on one or another category as being the most suitable one for a story-teller. In some areas it is the women, often the old women, who tend to be the most gifted, even when the stories themselves are universally known.
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Elsewhere it is men who tend to be the more expert (e.g. Limba, Hausa, Fang, Pygmies), and this applies particularly to the more serious types of narration (myths and legends).
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In other cases again, certain stories (perhaps particularly animal stories) are felt to be the preserve of children and to be most suitably told by and to them even though adults know them and sometimes join in (e.g. Ibo, Dogon, Galla). Tales told by and for children can scarcely be judged on a par with those by adults, and the particular preoccupations of certain narrations might well be elucidated if we knew whether, say, they were typically narrated by women.
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The same point arises from the question of the audiences for whom these stories are intended. In some cases at least it is clear that certain categories of stories are designed primarily for children and are told to them either by other children or by the old women (see the instances cited above). But in other instances either this is not known or the collector has not thought it worth while to describe the audience. Such topics, which could be crucial for an assessment of the social and literary significance of the texts, are most often left to the reader’s uninformed imagination.

This leads directly to the question of the functions and purpose
of stories and of the various types of narrations. Since it was argued earlier that under the influence of functionalist anthropology (see Ch. 12, p. 330ff.), too much attention has been paid to this question, it might seem contradictory to include it here in a discussion of topics which need more investigation. But the earlier assertions about utilitarian function often depended on very doubtful assumptions. While it is true that the moral, sanctioning, and justifying functions do sometimes form one aspect of the stories which we might otherwise have missed, many questions remain. In studying the oral literature of any particular people, we want to know, for instance, about the views of the people themselves (or, sometimes more significantly, about the views of different groups among them) concerning the purpose and functions of their narrations; about local classifications of different types of narrations and whether these have any relevance for native assessments of their aims and nature; about how far individuals, or people in general, are prepared to verbalize their attitude to their stories; about the consistency or otherwise of their stated views (as well as that of the actual narrations, audiences, and contexts involved); and about the relative weighting they would give, perhaps varying in different contexts or at different periods, to the various elements involved such as entertainment, imagination, education, practice in public speaking, recording, humour, elegance, ridicule, obscenity, moralizing, etc.
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Of course, even then we need to remember that, as in the case of written literature, there can be no final definition of the purpose and use of oral literature.

Amid all the theorizing about the possible functions of stories there is one point which, it seems, is too often overlooked. This is the likelihood that within a culture stories are likely to have many functions. They will probably vary with the content and tone—compare, for instance, the three different Kikuyu stories quoted in this chapter. Even more important are the details of the occasion on which a story is told—including the audience, the narrator’s state of mind, and recent events in the locality. Again, intentions affect the possible functions of stories. We could illustrate this with the way in which some Christians now try to turn stories in the Congo into Christian allegories (Stappers 1962: 14), or the political purposes to which origin stories have recently been put in Gabon (Fernandez 1962), or Western Nigeria. This point about varying functions is an obvious one, but
it has often been neglected. It is only too tempting to pick on just one aspect or one transient function and try to extrapolate it to apply to all stories on all occasions.

The idea that African stories are above all designed to convey morals has caught the imagination not only of functionalist anthropologists but also of some of the
Négritude
writers (e.g. Thiam 1948; Dadié 1957; Colin 1957; Adewa 1938). This assumption is made so often that it is worth challenging it in detail. Certainly some stories do end with a moral or a proverb (though in some cases this does not seem an integral part of the tale). Also stories are sometimes told to educate or admonish children, and this class of tales may even have a special local term.
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But there is no evidence at all to suggest that this is the only or the primary aim of the stories—and plenty of evidence that many African tales contain neither direct nor indirect moralizing. This single Hausa story is merely one of innumerable examples of this. Here a realistic appraisal of the ways of the world outshadows, even ridicules, any attempt to moralize.

Falsehood is More Profitable than Truth (Hausa)

This is about certain Men, the King of Falsehood and the King of Truth,
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who started off on a journey together, and the King of Lies said to the King of Truth that he [the latter] should get food for them on the first day. They went on, and slept in a town, but they did not get anything to eat, and next morning when they had started again on the road, the King of Truth said to the King of Lies ‘In the town where we shall sleep to-night you must get our food’, and the King of Lies said ‘Agreed.’

They went on, and came to a large city, and lo, the Mother of the King of this city had just died, and the whole city was mourning, and saying ‘The Mother of the King of this city has died.’ Then the King of Lies said ‘What is making you cry?’ And they replied ‘The King’s Mother is dead.’ Then he said ‘You go and tell the King that his Mother shall arise.’ [So they went and told the King, and] he said ‘Where are these Strangers?’ And the People replied ‘See them here.’ So they were taken to a large house, and it was given to them to stay in.

In the evening, the King of Lies went and caught a Wasp, the kind of
Insect which makes a noise like
‘Kurururu’,
and he came back, and put it in a small tin, and said ‘Let them go and show him the grave.’ When he had arrived, he examined the grave, and then he said ‘Let everyone go away.’ No sooner had they gone, than he opened the mouth of the grave slightly, he brought the Wasp and put it in, and then closed the mouth as before. Then he sent for the King, and said that he was to come and put his ear to the grave—meanwhile this Insect was buzzing—and when the King of the city had come, the King of Lies said ‘Do you hear your Mother talking?’ Then the King arose; he chose a Horse and gave it to the King of Lies; he brought Women and gave them to him; and the whole city began to rejoice because the King’s Mother was going to rise again.

Then the King of Lies asked the King of the city if it was true that his Father was dead also, and the King replied ‘Yes, he is dead.’ So the King of Lies said ‘Well, your Father is holding your Mother down in the grave; they are quarrelling’, and he continued ‘Your Father, if he comes out, will take away the chieftainship from you’, and he said that his Father would also kill him. When the King had told the Townspeople this, they piled up stones on the grave,
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and the King said ‘Here, King of Lies, go away; I give you these horses’, and he continued that so far as his Mother was concerned, he did not want her to appear either.

Certainly falsehood is more profitable than truth in this world.

(Tremearne 1913: 204–6)

Other aspects that could be further explored are the various literary conventions in the narrations of particular cultures. By this I mean not so much the larger questions like plot or character, though these too deserve more study, but points like phraseology, stock treatment of certain minor episodes, favourite allusions, and the kind of openings and conclusions that are found satisfying or attractive in a particular culture.

The type of language used often seems to be simple and straightforward. This is, however, at times rendered less prosaic by various devices, including a more frequent use of ideophones, dramatic delivery and dialogues, and the interruption of the prose exposition by songs. The language of the stories shows little of the allusive and obscure quality of some African poetry (except in the interpolated songs). But on this whole subject we have so far merely impressions; much further detailed investigation of the language of narratives
as actually delivered
is still required.
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About opening and closing formulas we do know a great deal. In various forms these are common in all areas of Africa (though it is not always clear how far they are obligatory for
all
tellers rather than idiosyncratic to particular informants): they occur too frequently to need detailed references.
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Thus among the Kamba tellers end their stories with various stylized forms, usually a wish for narrator and audience to the former’s advantage: ‘May you become rich in vermin in your provision-shed, but I in cows in my cattle-kraal’; ‘May your cattle eat earth and mud, but mine the good grass’; or, finally, ‘You’d better swing with the tail of a panther while I swing with that of a sheep’—in other words the teller is to be better off than his listeners (a sheep’s tail is fat and edible) and the audience had better learn to tell stories themselves (Lindblom i, 1928: xi; Mbiti 1959: 255). Other closing formulas include the Nigerian Bura ‘Do not take my life, take the life of a crocodile’ (notorious for its long life), the Swahili ‘If this is good, its goodness belongs to us all, and if it is bad, its badness belongs to that one alone who made this story’, the Angolan Kimbundu ‘I have told my little story, whether good or bad’, the Hausa ‘Off with the rat’s head’, or the Akan ‘This my story, which I have related, if it be sweet, (or) if it be not sweet, take some elsewhere, and let some come back to me’.
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In these closing formulas the narrator hands over, as it were, to the audience, as well as making it clear that his story is concluded.

Conversely the opening formulas serve to rouse the interest of the audience, sometimes eliciting a formal response from them as well as setting the mood for the start of the narration. Among the Fjort of West Equatorial Africa the narrator opens with ‘Let us tell another story; let us be off!’; the narrator repeats ‘Let us be off’: the audience replies ‘Pull away!’; and the narrator can then embark on the story itself (Dennett 1898: 25). Similarly, among the West African Ewe, where a narrator is usually accompanied by a drum, a few beats are first played to call attention and then the narrator announces his subject: ‘My story is of so-and-so’; the audience replies ‘We hear’ or ‘We take it up’ and the recital begins (Ellis 1890: 269). Many other formal introductory phrases could be mentioned: the Hausa ‘A story, a story. Let it go, let it come’;
or ‘See her (the spider), see her there’ with the reply ‘Let her come, and let us hear’; the Central African Nilyamba ‘A story. How does it go?’; or the famous Akan ‘We do not really mean, we do not really mean [that what we are going to say is true’].
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All such phrases serve to involve the audience directly in the narration and to mark the formal opening or close of the story.