Oral Literature in Africa (65 page)

Bantu proverbs, then, are noted for special patterns which in many cases give a poetic flavour to the saying. They use various devices to express the thought succinctly and sometimes rhythmically, or even in what Chatelain calls ‘blank versification’ (1894: 22). The effectiveness is heightened by the fact that often, though not always, there are archaic or unusual words and picturesque phrasing.

Similar tendencies probably also occur in many non-Bantu proverbs, although no such detailed synthesis as Doke’s has been published for any other language group. There is widespread evidence of balanced propositions. Yoruba proverbs, for instance, are said often to come in couplets with antithesis between the two lines, noun answering to noun and verb to verb: ‘Ordinary people are as common as grass, / But good people are dearer than the eye’, or ‘Today is the elder brother of tomorrow, / And a heavy dew is the elder brother of rain’, while repetition also occurs effectively in the form ‘Quick loving a woman means quick not loving a woman’.
¹
Parallelism and chiasmus also occur as in the Baule praise of mutual help, ‘Gauche lave droite, droite lave gauche’ (Effimbra 1952: 289) and rhythm may also be evident. Fulani proverbs use assonance, special grammatical forms such as subjectless verbs or the subjunctive without specific time reference, and parallel phrasing as in ‘An old man does what men don’t like, but he does not do what men don’t know’ (i.e. his actions may be unpopular, but they cannot be unnoticed) (Arnott 1957: 389). Related forms sometimes employ elaborate and studied expression; particularly good examples of these are the neat Fulani epigrams cited by Arnott or the long and complex Akan ‘drum proverbs’ (Nketia 1958
c
; see also Ch. 17, pp. 488ff.).

In proverbs the actual performance as distinct from apt citation and picturesque form is not usually significant. Nevertheless, it is sometimes of interest, perhaps particularly where the words themselves are not so elaborately stylized as in Bantu proverbs. Thus in Limba, where proverbs are not highly developed in any fixed form and there is little stress on rhythm or balance, I was told that in the saying mocking unjustified self-importance (‘Do not walk like a European while wearing a loin-cloth’), part of its attractiveness lay in the way it was said, with a pause before the last word and the emphasizing of the idea of the loin-cloth by the long-drawn-out way in which it was pronounced. Herzog says of the Jabo that proverbs are uttered in a much more rhythmic way than would be the case with the corresponding words in ordinary speech (Herzog 1936: 8).
Also a more studied and rhetorical utterance is likely when, as so often in West African societies, proverbs are used in formal speeches before law courts. It is possible then that where the poetic quality of a proverb is not so evident in its verbal content, this is sometimes compensated for by the manner or the context in which it is said.

The question, therefore, of the actual style of proverbs appears to demand further research. Whatever the details, however, it is clear that
some
sort of heightened speech, in one form or another, is commonly used in proverbs: and that this serves to set them apart from ordinary speech.

III

Since proverbs can refer to practically any situation, it would be impossible to give any comprehensive account of the content of African proverbs. Something of their variety can be gathered from the headings under which they are classed in many collections (in terms either of explicit content or implied allusion), for these headings include every aspect of human affairs. Categories of the manifest content include such headings as ‘Animals’ (subdivided into, for instance, ‘dangerous’, ‘game’, and ‘domestic’), ‘Birds’, ‘Insects’, ‘Mice, rats, and others’, ‘Strangers, Europeans, and Europe’, ‘War, fighting, guns, and weapons’, and innumerable others; while classifications in terms of the latent reference range from ‘Man and woman’, ‘Efficiency and its conditions’, ‘Home life’, ‘Life and death’, and ‘Passage of time’ to ‘Conceit’, ‘Power’, ‘Cunning’, and, of course, ‘Miscellaneous’.

Since the actual import depends on the context of use, it is in fact impossible to give any definitive treatment of the allusive content of proverbs without a study of their situations; this material is not usually included in the published collections. A few general points, however, may be worth mentioning briefly and tentatively.

It could perhaps be said that though abstractions in the sense of generalizations are an essential aspect of proverbs, abstract notions are little considered in their own right (except perhaps in some of the more religiously orientated sayings of the Islamic peoples). The stress is rather on comments about human affairs; thus the Thonga ‘The heart of a man is a sea’ and the picturesque Yoruba saying about the mind confronted with a difficult problem (‘As the leper’s hand struggles to grip the needle’) exemplify the exception rather than the rule (Junod and Jaques 1936 no. 803; Gbadamosi and Beier 1959: 60). It is noteworthy also that in most Bantu proverbs there are few references to religion; this contrasts with
West Africa where this topic is fairly frequent, particularly among Muslim peoples such as the Hausa and Fulani. This may perhaps be connected with the significance of the ancestor cult in many Bantu societies, so that the equivalent of this sort of allusion is made in terms of
human
experience and activity without reference to a transcendent god or specialist religious activity.

There are very many proverbs about authority, government oppression, or the burden of power. Some examples are the Akan suggestion that a king’s sons do not need to be taught violence (‘No one teaches a leopard’s cub how to spring’), or the frequent reminders that even power must bow sometimes, which the Hausa express by ‘Even the Niger has an island’ and the Yoruba by ‘The river carries away an elderly person who does not know his weight’ (Rattray 1916: 63; Whitting 1940: 5; Gbadamosi and Beier 1959: 61). The Thonga saying ‘The centipede’s legs are strengthened by a hundred rings’ alludes to the chief’s dependence on the number of his subjects, while through ‘Authority is the tail of a water-rat’ they bring out the way power can slip away from its possessor; (Junod and Jaques 1936 no. 107) many other comments on the nature and consequences of power could be cited. Death is another favourite topic, for ‘Death has many petticoats’ and ‘There is no hillside without a grave’ (McLaren 1917: 344). The inexorability of death is often stressed—’There is no ragwort that blooms and does not wither’ and ‘Death has the key to open the miser’s chest’—and resignation and the fact that no one after all is indispensable are also brought out: ‘Even there where no cock is crowing, it becomes light’ (McLaren 1917: 343; Rattray 1916: 51; Ripp 1930). The conflicts inherent in marriage are very frequently satirized (‘Two wives are two pots full of poison’, according to the Kikuyu), and self-importance is often picked on—as in the Kikuyu ‘Knowing too much is like being ignorant’, the Southern Bantu ‘No cleverest fellow ever licked his own back’, or the Nyanja ‘ “Watch.me” was carried off by a crocodile’ (the man plunged in vaingloriously instead of patiently waiting for the boat) (Barra 1960: 2, 40; McLaren 1917: 341; Gray 1944: 112). But a list of popular topics could be prolonged almost indefinitely.

Something has already been said about the sorts of comparisons that appear explicitly in the proverbs. Very often these are to animals or birds, not because Africans have some mystical closeness to nature but because many live in relatively rural and sparsely populated areas where the animal world impinges closely on their lives. But in fact almost anything of which people have experience—not excluding problems of modern
government—can appear directly in their proverbs. It is often impossible to grasp the point or attraction of a given proverb without some knowledge of the cultural background and of what the thing mentioned means to those who utter it. Thus the effectiveness of the Zulu saying that ‘No proud girl ever had the better of the skin-skirt’ is lost to us unless we know that it is customary for only married women to wear skin-skirts and that the proverb therefore refers to the tonic effect of marriage on ‘proud cheeky girls’ (Nyembezi 1954: 11). Similarly the image in the Xhosa likening of a woman to ‘a mimosa tree that yields gum all day long’ arises from the Xhosa fondness for chewing gum, and the picture in the Mongo proverb ‘La marche pendant les eaux hautes, c’est celui qui marche devant qui est intelligent’ fits their swampy surroundings where the one in front warns those behind of holes and obstacles underwater (McLaren 1917: 333; Hulstaert 1958: 412). Among pastoral people as preoccupied with cattle as are many of the Southern and Eastern Bantu it is not surprising to find very many proverbs referring to cattle. There is, for example, the warning ‘Don’t throw away the milk-pails’ (your last hope), the common description of a liar (‘He milks even cows which are in calf’), and the comment on people’s sensitivity and interdependence in terms of cattle, ‘It licks the one which licks it, it kicks the one which kicks it’ (Ripp 1930, Nyembezi 1954: 6). The interests of each society tend to be reflected in the sort of images through which their proverbs are expressed—like the Ashanti experience of gold (‘Wisdom is not gold-dust that it should be tied up and put away’), or the Fulani interest in rank in ‘Les vêtements cachent le corps mais ne cachent pas la généalogie’—even a rich and well-dressed man of servile origin will still only be a slave: appearances are not everything (Rattray 1916: 154, Gaden 1931: 103).

Similar comparisons sometimes occur over a wide area, often in nearly the same words. This may be partly due to cultural contact between peoples in the present or past. Many Hausa and Fulani proverbs, for instance, are near identical in overt meaning and translation, and the same applies to the Kru and Jabo of Southern Liberia and many others. The Bantu languages provide many examples of this, the more striking owing to their similarity in language as well as sentiment. Thus very similar proverbs are mentioned in many collections from different Bantu societies—’The eye crosses a full river’ (usually referring to man’s ambition), ‘The buttocks rubbing together do not lack sweat’ (friction between those who live together), and ‘The sweat of a dog ends in its hair’ (a poor man must swallow his wrath or, alternatively, hard work and effort are not always appreciated). Doke gives
a detailed example of the way a proverb can take slightly different forms in the many languages in which it occurs (this one is the equivalent of our pot calling the kettle black): the Ila ‘The baboons laughed about one another’s overhanging brows’; Tswana ‘A monkey doesn’t see its own hollow eyes’; Kimbundu ‘The monkey does not notice his tail’; Nyanja ‘Baboons laugh at one another’s buttocks’; Swahili ‘The ape sees not his own hinder parts, he sees his neighbour’s’ (Doke 1934: 360). The comparisons, then, are close. But the actual application and interpretation may vary from society to society, whatever the wording.

The range of comparisons and applications, then, is enormous. References to the animal world seem particularly frequent everywhere, but they are by no means the only analogies. These include everything with which a given people is preoccupied, and the extent to which any single sphere is stressed depends, as one would expect, on the culture and experience of a particular society.

IV

So far we have been considering the content and formal characteristics of proverbs in Africa. However, it is particularly true of proverbs whose use and application depends so crucially on their context that no full understanding can be reached without some knowledge of the occasions and purposes of their actual use. To consider the myriad different occasions (and hence meanings) would manifestly be impossible—as a Fante elder put it, ‘There is no proverb without the situation’
⁹
—but some comments should be made about the main contexts of proverbs and the functions they fulfil.

There are two themes that one encounters particularly in any discussion of the uses and contexts of proverbs. First, there is the sense of detachment and generalization inherent in proverbs. The speaker stands back, as it were, from the heat of the actual situation and draws attention, for himself or others, to its wider implications. And secondly, there is the oblique and allusive nature of expression through proverbs that makes it possible to use them in a variety of effective ways.

Perhaps most often mentioned is their use in oratory, particularly in law cases or disputes. In this situation proverbs are often used by one or
other of the parties to get at his opponent or try to make out a good case for himself by drawing some analogy through the image in a proverb. Among the Anang Ibibio, for instance, proverbs are often skilfully introduced into speeches at the crucial moment and are influential in the actual decisions reached (Messenger 1959). In one Anang law case, the plaintiff managed to stir up antagonism towards the accused (a chronic thief) by alluding to his past record and untrustworthy reputation. He did this by quoting the proverb ‘If a dog plucks palm fruits from a cluster, he does not fear a porcupine’: if a dog can deal with the sharp needles of the palm fruit, he is likely to be able to face even the porcupine’s prickles; similarly a thief will not be afraid to steal again. In this case, however, the thief’s guilt was not in fact clear. As part of his defence he on his side used a proverb which was influential in winning over the judge to acquit him, hinting at the way in which he alone had no sympathizers and supporters—’A single partridge flying through the bush leaves no path’ (Messenger 1959).

Counsellors and judges also use proverbs to comment obliquely on the conduct of those involved, often with implied advice or rebuke. A number of these have been recorded among the Nyanja, for whom the court is
the
place for the use of proverbial wit and wisdom and who often refer to such cases in metaphors drawn from hunting. As they put it, ‘”Quietly—quietly” doesn’t kill game (that which) kills game is “there it is! there it is”’—unless, that is, those who bring the case explain what it is all about, they cannot expect to win any more than a hunt can be successful without noisy beaters driving the game into the net; what is more, the judge should be quiet and listen like the guard at the net. People are rebuked for their wrong behaviour in court and reminded allusively that what they are doing falls into some general category they too disapprove of. Telling lies, for instance, only makes matters worse: an animal caught in a net only entangles itself further with wild struggles, and so a man is told in court that ‘It is patience which gets you out of the net’. Again, those who try to excuse themselves before the court by saying that what they did was only a small thing may be reminded that ‘The thing which upsets the porridge-pot is a small piece of
tsekera
grass’ (Gray 1944: 107; 108).