Oral Literature in Africa (66 page)

In court and elsewhere there are also frequent occasions for using a proverb to smooth over a disagreement or bring a dispute to a close. According to the Yoruba proverb, ‘A counsellor who understands proverbs soon sets matters right’ (Ellis 1894: 218), and a difficult law case is often ended by the public citation of an apt proverb that performs much the same
generalizing function as citing legal precedents in other societies. Some of these might be classed as juridical axioms and maxims, but many in fact succeed just because the attempt at reconciliation is oblique and through an analogy rather than a straightforward injunction. The contenders are not only brought to view the dispute in a wider perspective (and thus be more ready to come to terms), but this is conveyed in a tactful and allusive way. Among the Limba, for instance, an elder in court tries to persuade one party to a dispute not to be angry with someone younger by reminding them that one ‘does not shoot the chimpanzee for its ugliness’; i.e. one should not go to extremes in punishing a child, however bad, any more than one actually kills a chimpanzee because it is ugly. In pronouncing his decision the president of an Anang court frequently uses the proverb ‘If you visit the home of the toads, stoop’ to remind those involved that one should conform to the divine moral law, and the Yoruba make the similar point that once a dispute has been brought to an end it should then be regarded as finally settled—’When the face is washed you finish at the chin’ (Messenger 1959: 70; Ellis 1894: 231). In a less formal context, the Kikuyu bring an interminable and profitless discussion to an end by asking the question, agreed to be unanswerable, ‘When new clothes are sewn, where do the old ones go?’
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More or less formalized law cases, then, provide many opportunities for proverbs. However, they also occur in less formal situations for giving ordinary advice. Here too their oblique and tactful nature makes them particularly effective. Many examples of this could be given. In Lamba culture, for instance, the young are warned in such terms as ‘Your mouth will turn into a knife and cut off your lips’ or ‘You will let the mouse rot in the trap’ (i.e. let the opportunity pass) (Doke 1934: 361), and among the Tetela the proverb ‘The palm-tree grows in the tall grass’ may be used as a gentle hint to parents that it is best to leave a child alone and to let him play and get dirty—he will grow up (Stilz 1939). The Oron miser who, with some polite excuse, refuses a request, particularly for money, is told obliquely that the asker knows quite well that he does not really want to do it: ‘The child who refuses to go an errand says he does not know the way’ (Simmons 1960
b
: 135: slightly expanded to make the literal English translation clear).

This function of proverbs to advise, rebuke, or shame another into complaisance has been particularly well described for the Ila of Zambia (Smith
and Dale ii, 1920: 311ff.). A man may be reminded that, as we would put it, Rome was not built in a day—’One day is not sufficient to rot an elephant’—or that pride and contempt of authority are not admired since ‘We do not like the pride of a hen’s egg’: eggs in a nest are all equal, so one of them should not be proud. Practical as well as ethical advice is given: ‘If you eat with one chief only, it is because you have no feet’, for you should get what you can out of all of them. Ridicule and mockery in proverbs are also effective. As Smith writes of Ila proverbs, wit has a utilitarian aim; laughter is never far away, and because of their susceptibility to ridicule the Ila, like many others, can sometimes be laughed out of a thing more than deterred by argument or force. Thus Pharisees are mocked as those who ‘spurn effectively the frog but drink the water’: they are the kind of people who object to finding a frog in their drinking water but are perfectly happy to drink once the frog has been removed. Another pressure is through irony, assuming that what
ought
to be done
is
always done; the quickest way to gain hospitality among the Ila is to quote ‘The rump of a visitor is made to sit upon’ (Smith and Dale ii, 1920: 312). Indeed, any kind of satirical or penetrating comment on behaviour may be made in the form of a proverb and used to warn or advise or bring someone to his senses. He is reminded of the general implications of his action—and the fact that the reminder is cast in apparently innocent and irrelevant terms may make it all the more effective.

There is another aspect of proverbs that is connected with their use for comment or persuasion, and which sometimes appears in a specialized and extreme form. This is their oblique and suggestive character. The speaker wishes to convey something, but in such a way that later on he can deny that he actually stated what was implied, or so that only some among his listeners may understand the point. This type of suggestiveness is developed to a particularly high degree in the Zande
sanza
in which a kind of malicious double-talk is used to convey a meaning other than the obvious sense. Again, the Nyanja have a special term that can be translated as ‘speaking by opposites’ by which they make deliberate mis-statements with an esoteric intention—the older people and
cognoscenti
can understand, but not other listeners (Gray 1944: 102). Similarly among the Thonga a proverb may be used with an apparently clear meaning but in practice a completely different intention (Junod and Jaques 1936: foreword), while the Kamba
ndimo
, ‘dark saying’, is a kind of secret language (Lindblom iii, 1934: 28).

Irony or sarcasm as a way of getting at someone is, of course, widespread in many forms, but the proverb is a particularly good way of conveying this. This kind of implicit attack on another, already mentioned in the context of
a formal law case, sometimes takes more unusual forms. An example is the elliptical language of names. Through this people can refer to another’s fault while at the same time avoiding any direct commitment. Thus, among the Karanga, a dog may be called by the proverbial name ‘Things which change from day to day’ in allusion to a capricious wife, or a flirtatious woman may be called ‘All eyes’ as a reproof since she has eyes for all personable males; similarly a dog’s name may be ‘Home-wrecker’, given him by a suspicious husband to warn off his wife’s lover (Hunt 1952).

Certain themes seem to be present in the various contexts of proverbs we have discussed so far. Though proverbs can occur in very many different kinds of contexts, they seem to be particularly important in situations where there is both conflict and, at the same time, some obligation that this conflict should not take on too open and personal a form. Such conflict can occur in many different ways—there may be competition for scarce resources, there may be a stress, as among the Zulu or Ibo, on the idea of personal achievement or, as among the Azande, on the significance of hierarchy, with the competitiveness for advancement and notice so closely connected with these; in all these situations there may also be an idea that the conflict involved should not be allowed to become extreme and explicit. It can be seen how the veiled and metaphorical language of proverbs is particularly relevant in such contexts.
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Indeed, proverbs may also be specially suitable even in everyday situations of advice or instruction where the hidden tensions that are sometimes inherent in such relationships are controlled through the use of elliptical, proverbial speech. Even in cases of overt and institutionalized conflict—for example, the law cases in the more highly organized African states—proverbs play a part in formalizing and controlling the conflicts involved. In some Western societies, there are provisions in the legal system for minimizing personal clashes involved in lawsuits while at the same time making it possible for each side to present their case effectively by the relative impersonality of the written word, and by the institution of counsels for each of the two parties who, as well as forwarding their clients’ interests, impose a kind of veil which prevents direct confrontation. It seems that in certain non-literate African societies
the use of proverbs may fulfil something of the same function.

Proverbs, then, may be a particularly suitable form of communication in situations and relationships of potential or latent conflict. This aspect may perhaps serve to throw some light on the fact that whereas some peoples make great use of proverbs, among others, for instance the Nuer, they seem to be of little or no importance.
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For it may be that it is precisely those societies in which there is marked latent conflict, or in which there is particular need to regulate formalized conflicts, that proverbs play an especially large part.

Collectors and commentators frequently mention the use of proverbs in education. Although the details are often not made very clear, it seems that there are several different senses in which proverbs can fulfil educational functions. Sometimes proverbs (and other verbal forms like riddles) are used in a quite specific way in societies that lay great stress on initiation ceremonies. The initiates may be instructed in the proverbs and aphorisms current in the society, just as they are also often taught dances, songs, and other skills. Among the Chaga, for instance, proverbs play an important part in formal instruction during initiation ceremonies and are highly valued; (Raum 1940: 217; 333–34) ‘the Chaga’, it is said, ‘have four big possessions: land, cattle, water and proverbs’ (Raum 1940: 217). This sort of formal instruction may have a certain esoteric intention; the members of the group versed in these proverbs are now, by their very knowledge, marked off from those who have not yet reached this stage. In addition, in a non-literate society instruction through proverbs provides a means for relatively formal education and transmission of cultural traditions. Proverbs with their implicit generalized import are clearly a suitable and succinct form in which to verbalize socially prescribed actions and attitudes.

Proverbs, then, are sometimes used quite formally and consciously as a vehicle to achieve the ends, and in the same sort of contexts, that we associate with formal education. However, when collectors comment on the educational function of proverbs they do not necessarily intend to convey such a specific role as that described above, one which certainly does not occur in every African society. What they often seem to be describing is the
general
educative role of proverbs. Now proverbs often imply some general comment on the way people do, or should, or should not behave. It is clear that the conveying of a people’s experience and expectations can be performed in a particularly effective
way through the use of proverbs. But proverbs are in practice cited in a whole variety of situations, and only in some of them does there seem to be any intentionally educational purpose. The manifest aim may in fact be to get at an opponent, to defy a superior in a polite and oblique way, to make an effective and unanswerable point in a speech, etc.—yet at the same time the latent function is performed of transmitting a certain view of the world, a way of interpreting and analysing people and experience, and recognition of certain situations. Among the Ibo, for instance, proverbs fulfil this aim incidentally even though the explicit occasion is that of a dance. As the masked dancer progresses, he has proverbs and aphorisms called out before him, and, as Green writes, ‘the chanting in front of the masked figure of these utterances is a way of steeping the members of the society in the traditional values of their culture’ (Green 1948: 840). Other quasi-educational results which may come from the frequent use of proverbs seem only incidental, not really distinguishable in kind from the general socialization and education undergone by people just because and in that they are members of a particular society.

In between these two extremes there is the kind of situation in which, without any specific formal occasion for their use, proverbs are yet consciously used from time to time with the intention of instructing or of giving advice. Thus we are told of proverbs in many societies (e.g. Zulu, Lamba, Ila, Nyanja, Kuanyama Ambo, Fante, Anang Ibibio), that they are used for ‘instruction’ or ‘child-rearing’. Most authors, however, do not give details of the actual situations of such usage. It is true that the generalizations implicit in many proverbs make them suitable vehicles for this sort of instruction; but the occasions we are told about suggest that what in fact is often being done is to convey the applicability of a proverb to a particular
situation
rather than to teach any actual generalization implied or stated in the proverb. This too is of course a type of education. But it is perhaps not quite that implied by the frequent references to the ‘educational purpose’ of these proverbs.
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Besides these relatively utilitarian aspects of proverbs it is clear that
there is also what might be called a purely literary aspect. That this view is not just that of the outside observer is clear from the overlap in terminology already mentioned between proverbs and such unquestionably literary genres as stories, parables, or riddles. In the case of certain peoples, indeed, their proverbs (sometimes together with their riddles) appear to be the richest or most interesting part of their oral literature, for example the Fang (Tardy 1933: 282) and the Anang Ibibio (Messenger 1959: 64). Of the proverbs in many African societies we are told that they are consciously used not only to make effective points but also to embellish their speeches in a way admired and appreciated by their audiences. It is part of the art of an accomplished orator to adorn his rhetoric with apt and appealing proverbs. The Anang Ibibio reputation for eloquence largely arises from their skilful use of proverbs, and a Zulu orator who can quote aptly, readily, and profusely is particularly admired (Messenger 1959: 64; Vilakazi 1945: Ch. 10). Proverbs are also used to add colour to everyday conversation. This aspect seems to be very widespread indeed and in some cases at least to be an art cultivated to a very high degree. Thus among the Mongo, proverbs are said to be continually cited; among the Zulu, someone who did not know their proverbs would be lost in the allusiveness of their conversation; while among the Bambara, proverbs are honoured to such an extent that they tend to use a proverb every two or three phrases even in everyday conversation (Hulstaert 1958: 5; Stuart and Malcolm 1949: introduction; Travélé 1923: 35). The Akan allude to the subtlety in proverbs by their saying ‘When a fool is told a proverb, the meaning of it has to be explained to him’, and as Nyembezi writes of the Zulu, in words also applicable to many other African cultures, proverbs are essential to life and language: ‘Without them, the language would be but a skeleton without flesh, a body without soul’ (Rattray 1916: 152; Nyembezi 1954: 44).