Oral Literature in Africa (68 page)

The proverbs gain their significance from the situations in which they are used. If some of the proverbs appear to have contradictory senses, this is merely because there are many possible situations and different angles from which one can look at a problem. Besides their importance in teaching, proverbs are also commonly used in lawsuits and arguments to minimize friction. They are used too in general comment on people and the world, often humorously. Proverbs can be used to enrich and enliven speech at every level, whether of formal oratory or of everyday conversation, and are regarded as essential to the life and language of the Zulu.

The images in terms of which many of the Zulu proverbs are phrased are primarily drawn from observation of human behaviour, of the ways of animals, and of other things in the natural environment. As we would expect of a pastoral people devoted to their livestock, there are very many proverbs connected with cattle and cattle husbandry. Hunting is another popular subject; birds are often referred to, and the proverbs in fact often merge into, or appear in, the songs attributed to many well-known birds (see Dunning 1946). Proverbs may also contain references to historical events, such as those which speak of the famous Shaka, or they may be connected with well-known tales, sometimes gaining their effectiveness through referring to the events in the tale, and sometimes apparently giving rise to the story.

There are a great number of proverbs about hospitality, and about both bravery and caution. Change of fortune is another common theme, and many involve recognition of different types of people, whether within or outside the family—the good and bad, crafty and cunning, honest and
truthful, or angry and overbearing—(the last compared to ‘a log with a centipede in it’). Through all these topics, and many others, the Zulu are able to comment on and mould their social experience; their proverbs are an important facet of their conversation and literature.

The final example is that of the Azande of Central Africa, a people characterized by their powerful aristocratic class of princes, their state organization which gives rise to competition and jealousies among those at court, an authoritarian model for social relationships, and the tortuous and suspicious mentality that goes with all this. They have developed a characteristic mode of speech,
‘sanza’,
an oblique and ambiguous form of expression of which their proverbs form only one example. This double-talk (including proverbs) has been described by Evans-Pritchard in a series of articles drawing mainly on his own field-work supplemented by published collections of proverbs (Evans-Pritchard 1956, 1963
a
, 1964
a
).

The Zande term
sanza
means both proverb and spite (or jealousy) and, in addition, refers to the whole range of circumlocutory expression in which there is a hidden as well as a manifest meaning, usually malicious. The Azande have many proverbs and these are marked by the same kind of characteristics as those of other peoples. Though they do not rhyme or show much alliteration, there is a certain rhythmic balance between the two halves of the sentence: ‘Cautious one was grazed by the spear / it went right through the careless one’, or ‘The little gazelle stood by the fallen tree / and said he was bigger than it’. Where this balance is lacking the Azande tend to supply it with an introductory half-sentence. Besides the presence or absence of such prefaces there are also other variations in their verbal structure, and it is common for the proverb not to be spoken in full but to be alluded to by only an extract from it.

The content of the proverbs is sometimes derived from Zande folktales and their meaning depends on a knowledge of these. But the metaphors seem most frequently to arise from the intimate Zande knowledge of wildlife, connected with the fact that their traditional form of settlement is in scattered homesteads with wild life all around them. Very many of the images are taken from wild creatures, from hunting, and from collecting activities; far fewer are taken from agricultural work and domesticated plants—a fact which Evans-Pritchard thinks may be explained by the relatively recent change from hunting and collecting to agriculture.

Evans-Pritchard has documented fully how the situation in which a proverb is cited affects its import, so that any one proverb may have a wide
range of meanings. So, for example, the saying ‘The wildcat honoured itself by its cry’ can be variously interpreted as a reference to the respect resulting from its cry, with the implication that even if someone is not honoured he can manage for himself; to the fact that the wildcat prizes her own cry and that each person talks after his own fashion; and to the idea that ‘as there is no one who will exalt me I must exalt myself’ (Evans-Pritchard 1963
b
: 6). Many similar examples are given of differing interpretations of single proverbs.

Proverbs seem most typically to be used for warning, to bring another to a sense of proportion, and to comment on or ridicule another’s action. They are also used, in a connected way, to take the wind out of another’s sails in a dispute. Thus if, instead of saying bluntly ‘you are bringing trouble on yourself, you express it as the undeniable fact that ‘the frog brings down rain on its own head’, you have an unanswerable argument, you come out of it uppermost, and you manage to sting your opponent while sounding quite innocent.

Besides its sense of proverb,
sanza
also refers to ambiguous or hidden language in a wider sense. Usually this form of speech is used in a malicious way, often with the intention of speaking
at
someone while seemingly making an innocent remark. It is particularly common between man and wife and between courtiers in jealous competition with each other at a prince’s court, but it enters into all Zande social activities. By using this form of speech, as with the narrower class of proverbs, a man can get at another while at the same time keeping himself under cover; the sufferer will not be able to make overt trouble, and in any case the insult, being hidden, can be withdrawn without loss of dignity. This oblique and veiled form of speech is one which, as Evans-Pritchard shows in some detail, fits the suspicious and competitive outlook of the Azande, and can be connected with the authoritarian nature of their relationships and their dominant fear of witchcraft.

This hidden and oblique form of speech, then, with its overtones of playing safe and avoiding direct commitment, is one developed to a high degree among the Azande. However, it seems to be an element in all use of proverbs, one which comes out particularly in situations of conflict or uneasy social relationships and where depths of hidden meaning are sensed or implied.

Proverbs in Africa are effective in a whole range of ways in life and in literature. This might not be immediately obvious from the manifold, usually un-annotated, volumes in which African proverbs have been collected. Their literary significance emerges not only in the beauty of
words and form, their sense of detachment and generalization, and their connections with other genres of artistic expression, but also in the aptness and perceptiveness with which they are used in an actual context. Perhaps the most interesting point to emerge from the writings of those who have studied the actual use of proverbs is their
situational
aspect. Proverbs are used on particular occasions, by individuals in a particular context, and their wit, their attractiveness, their insight, even their meaning must be seen as arising from that context
.
¹⁵

Footnotes

1
   There are also several cases where there are both a general term, covering both proverbs and other types of verbal art, and, in addition, a more precise term referring to proverbs only.

2
   A point well made in Arewa and Dundes 1964; see also Evans-Pritchard 1963a.

3
   In these straightforward forms the veiling or allusiveness characteristic of so much proverbial expression is sometimes in fact achieved by devices other than direct imagery. Abbreviation is one common way (e.g. in the Ovimbundu proverb-names); another is to express the proverb in some medium other than verbal utterance, with drums, for instance, or through gold-weights (Ashanti).

4
   McLaren 1917, p. 334; Smith and Dale ii, 1920, p. 316.

5
   On form and style the best discussion is that by Doke (1947) on Bantu proverbs, and his account is followed closely here.

6
   For some non-Bantu ‘wellerisms’ see Dundes 1964.

7
   See e.g. Knappert: 1966
a
; for some non-Bantu rhyming proverbs see Jackson 1919.

8
   This, incidentally, makes the alphabetical classification adopted by some collectors an unsatisfactory one.

9
   Christensen 1958: 232; see also the story about the Akan attitude to proverbs cited in Evans-Pritchard 1963: 7.

10
  Stevenson 1927: 246; on judicial proverbs, see also Meeussen 1959; Van Goethem, 1947; Schapera 1966.

11
  Proverbs are not, of course, the only way of dealing with such situations and relationships in non-literate societies. There are also, for instance, witchcraft beliefs and accusations; the use of veiled political and satirical songs; or joking relationships. In this last form, the opposite means is, in a sense, being chosen: proverbs may deal with conflict by smoothing it over; joking resolves it by exaggerating the hostility involved and thus, in its way, resolving it.

12
  A point raised by Evans-Pritchard in 1963b: 109; and, so far as I know, nowhere satisfactorily discussed.

13
  Straight generalizations and aphorisms are sometimes included in collections of proverbs and these may be used to instruct in some general sense; but further study may show that several of these satisfy neither the criterion of being a generally accepted truth, nor that of involving allusive, figurative, or otherwise picturesque expression; they are thus strictly only marginal to the analysis of proverbs and of oral literature in general.

14
  Nyembezi 1954; unattributed references are to this work throughout this section.

15
  Like stories and riddles, proverbs are among the most readily collected items of African oral art. Besides references already given here and in the Bibliography, see the useful bibliography and list of collections in Bascom 1964; also references in Doke 1947 and the extensive bibliography in the general article by Werner 1961, 1962.

15. Riddles

Riddles and related forms. Style and content. Occasions and uses. Conclusion

It may be surprising to find riddles included in a survey of oral literature. However, riddles in Africa have regularly been considered to be a type of art form, albeit often of minor and childish interest, and have long been included in studies of oral literature. There is some reason for this. As will be seen, riddles often involve metaphorical or poetic comment. This indeed was pointed out long ago by Aristotle when he remarked on the close relation of riddles to metaphorical expression (
Rhetoric
iii.2 (1405
b
)).
¹

In Africa riddles are common and have been extensively collected. They are often very closely related to proverbs. Like proverbs they are expressed briefly and concisely; they involve analogy, whether of meaning, sound, rhythm, or tone; and the two forms are sometimes even combined in the ‘proverb-riddle’. Riddles also sometimes have close connections with other aspects of literary expression—with such forms as enigmas and dilemma tales, with stories and epigrams, and with praise names. In spite of such connections, however, riddles emerge as a distinct type of literary expression in most African cultures,
²
often one considered to be the special domain of children and, unlike proverbs, to be for entertainment rather than for serious consideration.

I

In a general way ‘riddles’ are readily distinguishable by their question-and-answer form and by their brevity. However, a preliminary point must be made here. The popular European or American picture of a riddle is of an explicit
question
to which a respondent must try to puzzle out the correct answer. African riddles are not altogether like this. The ‘question’ is usually not an interrogative at all in form but, outwardly at least, is a statement.
³
An answer is expected but very often the listeners are not directly asked to guess but merely faced with an allusive sentence referring analogously to something else, which they must then try to identify. The point, furthermore, is normally in some play of images, visual, acoustic, or situational, rather than, as in many English riddles, in puns or plays on words.

There are many different forms. Very often the riddle is in the simple form of a phrase or statement referring to some well-known object in more or less veiled language. Examples of such simple riddles seem to occur all over the continent. There is the Tonga ‘Little things that defeat us—Mosquitoes’, Malum ‘Water standing up—Sugar-cane’, Fulani ‘Be born; come morning, give birth—Fresh milk’ (because milk is left overnight before making butter), Shona ‘The little wildcat in the long grass—Scissors’, or the Lamba ‘The house in which one does not turn round—The grave’ (Fell n.d.; Harries 1942
b
: 282; Arnott 1957: 382; Fortune 1951: Doke 1934: 363). The Nyanja have a characteristic series of riddles in which not only the answer but the question
⁴
consists of one word only—‘Invisible!—The wind’, ‘Innumerable—Grass’ (Gray 1939: 258, 261; for similar or identical examples see Dewar 1900).

In most of these riddles, what is required is that the answerer should identify the object indicated in these allusive general statements. In fact many riddles need a double process to solve them, for the analogy in the initial statement may not be immediately obvious; therefore the solver must first select the salient features of the object or situation mentioned,
and then go on to identify a similar object. A good example is the Fulani riddle ‘I threw a lance, it flew over seven rivers and went and speared the Chief of Masina’s bull’, where the answer is ‘A vulture’, the salient features being the fact that it goes far and lands on an animal.
⁵
Many other examples of such analogies could be cited—for example, the Karanga riddles ‘My father’s little hill which is easily destroyed—Porridge’ because of the way porridge is heaped up on the plate and soon eaten, or ‘A flame in the hill—A leopard’, and the Zezuru ‘The little chap who plays the typewriter—The tongue’ (Hunt 1952: 94, 96; Fortune 1951: 39).

In these simple riddles, then, some generalization or some image is suggested and the answer involves pointing to the particular object implied. The answer here is the name of the object indicated, often just one word, and the analogy is one of meaning; the respondent must recognize the similarity of situation, character, or behaviour in the statement and its answer.

This type seems to be the most common African form. But there are also other cases in which the analogy involved is not of meaning but of rhythm, sound, or tone, often with a longer reply. These forms must now be considered.

Sometimes there is a rhythm or balance between question and reply. Among the Thonga, for example, one riddle runs ‘Over there smoke goes up, over there smoke goes up’, to which the reply, in balancing structure, is ‘Over there they mourn over a chief, over there they mourn over a poor man’ (Junod and Jaques 1936). Junod speaks of many other Thonga riddles in which there is a kind of rhythm in the syllables so that the questions and answers are like ‘two little verses, balancing each other in a poetical way’ (Junod 1938) a form of riddle distinguished in the native terminology from the one-word-answer type. Similar ‘strophic’ riddles are recorded among the Transvaal Sotho (Endemann 1937–38; cf. Cole-Beuchat 1957: 144–5), a form reminiscent of the similarly balanced proverbs so common in the same areas.

Besides rhythm, the analogy may take the form of tone resemblance between question and reply. This has been recorded, for instance, from the Luvale of Zambia (White 1958), the Luba of the Congo (Van Avermaet 1955), and the Ibibio-Efik group of Southern Nigeria (Simmons 1956, 1958).
⁶
In these riddles, occurring in languages in which tonality is a significant feature, the question and answer are marked by identical or similar tonal patterns. The Ibibio tone riddles described by Simmons are characterized by their erotic content or allusions, practically all containing some reference to vagina, clitoris, or coition, as in the riddles ‘Big ships—Big clitoris’ and ‘Sun shines (and) come hits ground (and) splits—Vagina opens (and) come takes fly (and) chews’, each characterized by exact or nearly exact tones in each part (Simmons 1956: 80; 82). Simmons gives only very literal translations). Not all tone riddles have this erotic content: Luvale ones, for instance, do not (White 1958). But they all share the characteristic that the analogy between statement and reply is primarily one of form—tone and perhaps rhythm—rather than meaning.

So far at least, tone riddles have been infrequently recorded. Other acoustic images, on the other hand, are very common indeed. Very often the ‘question’ consists of just one word or phrase to suggest the answer through its sound alone. This sound may be one that gives a direct onomatopoeic impression even to foreigners. In the Kamba riddle
‘Seh!’
the answer is ‘A needle stabbed the sand’, for the question imitates the sound made by a needle dropping point first into the sand (Lindblom iii, 1934: 26), a riddle not unlike the similar Limba one from the other side of the continent, ‘
Sengsekede
’, answered ‘You cannot put a needle on a rock’ (because the sound of
sengysekede
suggests the sound made by the needle when it falls over). More often the acoustic analogy implicit in the question is not immediately obvious, for ideophones conventionally recognized in one culture are used to convey an acoustic image to members of that culture. Thus the Makua riddle ‘
Eiya eyeya
’
,
an ideophone representing a state of life, is answered ‘An orphan’, the Fulani ‘
Kerbu kerbu njolla
’ represents ‘Goats’ feet on hard ground’ (Harries 1942
b
: 287; Arnott 1957: 381ff.), the Thonga have ‘
Shigiligigi shigi’—
The rain of early morning’, and the Kamba
‘Aa’
is answered ‘The old man drank a little milk in the dry season’—the sound conventionally suggesting the man’s intense thirst and his enjoyment of the milk (Junod and Jaques 1936 no. 159; Lindblom iii, 1934: 7). In none of these is the connection a ‘natural’ one that could be recognized by someone unacquainted with the culture.

Besides composing the whole question, there are also ideophones and nonsense-words suggesting some acoustic image that appear as just one part. The Mwera riddle, for example,
‘Ndendende
the plaiter of a mat’ is answered by ‘A hornet’; the ideophone
ndendende
suggests the way the hornet moves its hindquarters rapidly in filling its hole for egg-laying, just as the leaves shake about when someone makes a mat (Harries 1947: 24). In Karanga the riddle
‘Magiregede
walks as if he were proud’ is solved by ‘A wagon’ because of the onomatopoeic word imitating the sound of wagon wheels on a road (Hunt 1952: 91), while the process of going to the spring with an empty pot and coming back with a full one is suggested by the sounds in ‘To go u, to return i’, where
u
in Shona represents the empty sound,
i
the full one (Fortune 1951: 42). Sometimes both acoustic and visual images are combined in a riddle as in the Fulani example explained by Arnott
‘Tiisiinii taasaanaa siradel woogana
—The gait of a large pigeon in sand’; the long-drawn-out words, with a few short syllables in between, correspond to the image of feet dragging through sand with occasional hops; the high-tone and close vowels of
tiisiinii
alternating with the low-tone open vowels of
taasaanaa
represent the pigeon’s gait, swaying from side to side (Arnott 1957: 381).

The characteristic form of riddles in Africa, then, is for some analogy to be recognized between question and answer, most frequently an analogy of meaning or of sound, with simple one-word reply, but also occasionally longer forms involving tonal and rhythmic correspondence. Though less fully documented than proverbs, many collections of riddles of this form have been made from all parts of the continent.

There are, however, certain other specialized forms which appear to occur only rarely (or else have proved less accessible to collectors) and often overlap to a larger extent with other forms of oral literature. They will only be treated very briefly here.

First, among some peoples riddles may be particularly closely connected with proverbs, so that either the answer or even both parts of the riddle are sayings accepted in other contexts as proverbs. One group of riddles recorded from Leopoldville stands out as being integrally connected with proverbial sayings.
⁷
Thus change of fortune and the mortality of all men are brought out in the two proverb-riddles ‘La terre tourne—Tu possèdes, tu seras privé’ and ‘Toi qui te couches sur un lit et moi qui me
couche sur une natte—Nous sortirons (de ce monde) par le même chemin’ (Comhaire-Sylvain 1949: 51). Similar instances have been recorded from Southern Nigeria. In a number of the Efik ‘tone riddles’ the response is said to be a proverb (Simmons 1958: 125), while the neighbouring Anang Ibibio have a distinct class of proverb-riddles distinguished from their simple riddles, which are only to amuse. In these both portions of the riddle consist of a proverb. One example is ‘The vine grows along the edge of the pit—He is made to speak in public’. This is explained by the fact that the Anang take a great pride in eloquence and their children are early trained to develop verbal skills; the proverb instructs children to attempt public speaking as early as possible, but at the same time recognizes that this is difficult for them: just as a vine has to struggle to grow along the edge of a hole (and not into it, which would be easier but would cut off the sun), so a child must struggle to overcome his shyness and endeavour to speak (Messenger 1960: 229).
⁸
Though proverb-riddles have not been widely reported as a distinct named type, it is possible that proverbs may in fact turn out to occur more frequently than realized in connection with riddles, either explicitly or by allusion, so that in a full analysis of the literature of any one people proverbs and riddles should really be treated in conjunction. Among some of the Central Bantu, for instance, a common riddle that occurs in various forms—’Something I threw over to the other side of the river—Eyes’, the Ila form (in Smith and Dale ii, 1920: 330)—recalls the equally common proverb ‘The eye crosses a full river’, metaphorically signifying that desire goes beyond the possible.

A similar overlap of forms is the way in which praise names occasionally occur in riddles. Thus among the Tlokwa the common praise name for cattle—’God with a watery nose’—is said also to occur as a riddle, the answer being ‘An ox’ (Nakene 1943: 135). The Hausa riddle referring to a camel is also clearly in the style of a praise term—’Largest of beasts, devilish property, everyone who loses you has to look for you’ (Merrick 1905: 80).
⁹
Again, this sort of connection may turn out to be widespread.

In South Africa we hear of the ‘bird riddle’ (Jordon 1958: 102–3). This is a kind of competitive dialogue between two boys or young men in front of an audience. Each has to prove he ‘knows the birds’ by making an assertion about one, then an analogy likening it to a type of person. Each in turn tries
to show that he ‘knows’ more birds than his opponent. In this game ‘freshness of idea, wit and humour count more than just the number of birds named’ (Jordon 1958: 103). Thus a competitor with the following was declared the winner with a single attempt: