Oral Literature in Africa (73 page)

1.    Hélas, Toi, Esprit, Tu m’as frappé, que ferai-je?

Debout dans le chemin, je ne vois plus par où aller.

2.    Je m’agite comme l’oiseau qui erre,

L’oiseau même il a son nid,

II revient pour y entrer.

3.    Moi, ami avec l’Esprit.
¹²

Toi, tu es mort, moi, je reste.

Je mange à satiété.

4.    L’homme qui t’a pris par ses ruses,

Pars avec lui, ne le laisse pas, du tout.

Alors il n’y a pas même d’Esprit

Dont ils disent: l’Esprit existe. Où est-il?

5.    Lui seul nous tue. Ils crient continuellement: Esprit! Esprit!

Nous voudrions le voir.

Aujourd’hui, nous mourons simplement comme des moutons.

6.    La mort a dressé son camp chez moi.

Dans quelle palabre suis-je pris?

Les choses que je possède sont à moi,

Gagnées par mes propres mains.

7.    Pleure la misère, pleure la tienne,

Pleure seulement celle de l’ami qui restait chez toi.

Pintade de ma mère, assieds-toi sur l’arbre,

Regarde les enfants de chez toi,

Comment ils errent partout.

8.    Salue les défunts de ma part,

Bien qu’eux me m’envoient pas de salut.

Nous ne sommes sur la terre que pour la mort,

Pour voir des malheurs.

9.    Tu es parti,

Alors qui reste pour moi, pour me pleurer et pour conduire le deuil?

Cette mort est aussi la mienne,

Si vous sentez de la pourriture, c’est moi qui périt.

(Theuws 1954: 147–52)

1.    Que ferai-je?

Tous mes amis passent bien portants,

Moi, je suis ici comme un paralysé.

2.    Toi, Père-Créateur, aide-moi,

Que je marche avec force.

3.    J’étais au milieu de mes amis,

Tu m’en as fait sortir

Maintenant, je suis dans le malheur.

4.    Bien, je me fâche contre Dieu, je ne me fâche pas contre l’homme

qui se moque de moi,

Lui aussi en verra encore.

5.    Si c’est un homme qui m’a tendu des pièges,

Maintenant, il n’a pas de malheur, mais l’avenir est long.

L’Esprit m’a regardé, Dieu Tout-puissant

Père-Créateur, alors, Tu ne tiens plus Tes mains sur moi?

6.    Toi, Père, qui m’aimais ici sur la terre,

Si tu m’aimais tant quand tu étais en vie, tu ne me protèges plus maintenant?

Que je sois avec force.

7.    Toi, Père, Père du savoir,

Qui chassais la petite perdrix au collet et y pris une petite gazelle,

Le termite mangea la gazelle ainsi prise.

8.    Tu ne me tues pas encore, qui que tu sois?

Celui qui m’a jeté le sort

Qu’il ne reste pas en vie, qu’il meure à son tour,

S’il n’est pas difforme, qu’il le devienne.

9.    Ai-je mangé quelque chose de lui? L’ai-je volé?

Lui ai-je jeté le sort? Qu’est-ce que je lui ai fait?

On me mutilé comme un voleur. Je ne vole pas.

10.   Vous m’avez mutilé sans plus disant:

Qu’il ait des malheurs pendant sa vie,

Après la mort, ils ne sont plus sentis.

11.   Vous m’avez brisé par terre,

Je me recroqueville comme fixé dans le sol.

Je ramasse les vers.

12.   Qui me tendit ses pièges disant: pourquoi existe-t-il?

Les malheurs ne lui manqueront pas,

Tôt ou tard.

Je suis le cochon qui meurt dans les taros.

(Theuws 1954: 126–9)

Though surprisingly little work has been done on the literary aspect of prayers as distinct from their content or function,
¹³
this is certainly a fruitful field. There is scope for many studies about the extent of individual variation, style, and content; about the way in. which, in pagan, Christian, and Islamic contexts, prayer may be expressed through conventional literary forms; and about the relationship of prayers to the other literary genres of the language.
¹⁴

The same could probably be said of other formalized utterances such as blessings, instructions to a new king or leader,
¹⁵
oaths, sermons, (see Turner 1965) lengthy salutations, formulaic speeches of thanks or acknowledgement, and so on. Even so apparently trivial an occasion as that of a beggar approaching a would-be patron may, in certain communities, have its own expected clichés and form. An example of this—a standardized cry by a Hausa beggar—can conclude this discussion:

The name of God we praise, the merciful one we praise; I will praise Mahamad. Alas, alas for the ignorant one! He is doing a sorry thing! He is letting off the world,
¹⁶
he knows not that death is approaching. Both morning and evening let him regard the prophets of the great God; there are none in the world save they who follow Isa and Merau and the Creator my Lord. The believer in the prophet who fasts, who has scared charms, who gives alms—he will have his reward in this world, and in the next he will not be without it.

(Fletcher 1912: 64)

III

In Africa, as elsewhere, people delight in playing with words and on words. Tongue-twisters, for example, are sometimes popular with children—or even
adults—and even these represent one type of awareness of the potentialities of language for more than just conveying information. They have been recorded in particular in parts of West Africa, though doubtless examples can be found elsewhere.
¹⁷
Among the Yoruba, for instance, a favourite game, according to Ellis, used to be to repeat certain tricky sentences at high speed; for example:

Iyan mu ire yo; iyan ro ire ru.

When there is famine the cricket is fat (that is, considered good enough to eat); when the famine is over the cricket is lean (i.e. is rejected).

(Ellis 1894: 241)

and similar instances are recorded from the Fulani and the Hausa. Here are two Fulani examples from Arnott’s collection:

ngabbu e mbaggu muudum, mbabba maa e mbaggu muudum: ngabbu firlitii fiyi mbaggu mbabba naa
,
koo mbabba firlitii fiyi mbaggu ngabbu?

A hippopotamus with his drum, a donkey too with his drum: did the hippo turn and beat the donkey’s drum, or did the donkey turn and beat the hippo’s drum?

(Arnott 1957: 391).

ngdabbiimi pucca puru purtinoo-giteewu, e ngu aardini kutiiru furdu furtinoo-giteeru, e ndu aardini nduguire furde furtinoo-giteere; nde diwa ndu đunya, ndu diwa nde dunya, nde diwa ndu dunya, ndu diwa nde dunya, etc., etc …
.

I mounted a pop-eyed dun horse, he was driving before him a pop-eyed dun dog, and he was driving a pop-eyed dun duiker; she jumped, he ducked, he jumped, she ducked, she jumped, he ducked, he jumped, she ducked, etc ….

(Ibid.: 392)
¹⁸

Puns are another common form of verbal play. These take various forms. In tonal languages the play is sometimes with words phonetically the same (or similar) but different tonally. This can be illustrated in the Yoruba punning sentence:

The rain on the shoes (
bata
) goes patter, patter, patter (
bata-bata-bata
), as on the rock (
apata
); in the street of the chief drummer (
ajula-bata
), the drum (
bata
) is wood, the shoes (
bata
) are of hide.

(Ellis 1894)

There is also the Swahili word game played with reversed symbols, a special kind of punning (Sacleux 1939: 390 (under
kinyume
)). Puns can also be used as the basis of an elaborate game. This is recorded of the Hausa where the second participant in the long punning series finally turns out
to be mere ‘worthless grain’. An extract can illustrate the kind of exchange, though the subtlety obviously depends on the actual Hausa words which make it possible for B to take up each of A’s remarks in a different sense:

(Fletcher 1912: 60–1)
²⁰

Besides the use of puns for amusement in ordinary talk, punning can also occur in a quite elaborate, stylized way in cultivated conversation. This can be taken to such an extent that a man can even become famous—as in the case of certain Amharic wits—for his linguistic gymnastics and philosophical punning. It is worth quoting Messing’s comment on this:

The Amharic language lends itself readily to puns and hidden meanings, since many verbs can have double or triple interpretations due to the hidden variations in the basic verbal stem and the absence or presence of gemination of some consonants. The listener must pay close attention. If he misinterprets the context and fails to discern the pun, he is often made the butt of the next tricky joke by those who have heard it before. The more a storyteller and wit masters the
sowaso
‘grammar’ of the Amharic language, the better he can manipulate this humor.

(Messing 1957: 69)

A few other instances of relatively light-hearted sayings also deserve mention. There is, for instance, the case of Galla humorous prose. This was the preserve of the professional jesters who used to be maintained at the
small courts among the Galla. The wittiest of their sayings were learnt by heart and regarded as a distinct literary form—
hdsa
. One such piece opens:

In the whole world there are three misfortunes. Of these misfortunes one is wealth when it is great and increases. The second is thy wife. The third is God, who has created us.

and so on, in expansion and explanation of the same theme (Cerulli 1922: 190–1). Strikingly similar are the various examples of Fulani ‘epigrams’ collected by Arnott, some in a form of verse, others, apparently, in a kind of rhythmic prose. Some of these resemble a type of extended classificatory proverb, often based on a threefold principle. Another common form is for the saying to be opened by a short general statement followed by trios of particulars in parallel terms. The effectiveness of these epigrams, marked by repetition of key-words and assonance from recurring suffixes, is heightened by the structure of the Fulani language with its practice of concord in nominal classes and the potentialities of verb tenses. Two types of epigrams, one based on a stated general principle, one a crisp classificatory form, can be illustrated from Arnott’s material:

Three exist where three are not:

Commoner exists where there is no king,

but a kingdom cannot exist where there are no commoners;

Grass exists where there is nothing that eats grass,

but what eats grass cannot exist where no grass is;

Water exists where there is nothing that drinks water, but what drinks

water cannot exist where no water is.

(Arnott 1957: 384)

Beards; three of fire, three of sun, three of shade.

(These are the nine beards of the world.

Three fire, three sun, three shade.)

Chief, shade,
Teacher, shade,
Tailor, shade;

Blacksmith, fire,
Corn-cob, fire [i.e. roasted in ashes],
He-goat, fire [i.e. branded?];

Farm-labourer, sun,
Pedlar, sun, Herdsman, sun;
These also are three.
These are all the nine beards of the world.

(Arnott 1957: 386–7)

There are many other short stereotyped phrases and sentences that, in varying cultures, may be worthy of literary study. One could mention,
for instance, various short semi-religious formulas—such as the Hausa expressions used after yawning, sneezing, etc., (Fletcher 1912: 68–9) market cries, (Fletcher 1912: 59) or the conventionalized calls sometimes attributed to bird, e.g. among the Yoruba (Fletcher 1912: 58).
²¹
Formal salutations can also have a literary flavour. Thus Hulstaert has collected several hundred such salutations from the Nkundo, which are used formally to superiors or (in certain formal situations) to equals. These Nkundo forms to some extent overlap with proverbs and, particularly the more stereotyped among them, should in Hulstaert’s view be given a place ‘dans le trésor du style oral’, for they are marked by a certain rhythmic quality, by figurative expression, and by a use of archaic language (Hulstaert 1959: 6, 9). The salutation ‘Les écureuils se moquent du python’, for instance, is an oblique way of saying that only a fool provokes the powerful, for this is to risk entanglement, even death; while ‘La terre est un fruit’ suggests that just as a round fruit rolls and turns, always showing a different face, so too does human fortune (Hulstaaert 1959: 46, 50). Few formal greetings, perhaps, approach the Nkundo figurative elaboration, but further study of this type of formal wording in other cultures could well be of interest.