Oral Literature in Africa (55 page)

Even if the great similarity in plots gives a slightly misleading impression of the degree of cultural uniformity actually involved, this information
does throw some light of a limited kind on the sorts of plots that have wide popularity and the continually recurring situations that are the subjects of so many African stories throughout the continent.
¹⁶

Characters of African stories also recur throughout the continent. Most familiar of all are the animals, particularly the wily hare, tortoise, spider, and their larger dupes. But there are also many stories about people, ordinary and extraordinary, some about legendary heroes or ancestors, and a few which recount the actions of various supernatural beings. They are also occasionally woven round other personified objects like, say, the parts of the body, vegetables, minerals, the heavenly bodies, or abstractions like hunger, death, or truth. These various characters do not usually appear in strictly separate cycles, but in many cases are depicted as interacting among themselves: thus a story mainly about animals may introduce a human being or even God as one of the figures, or a human hero can be shown as succeeding through his magical powers in speaking with and enrolling the help of various animals. The same general plots may be centred round different types of characters in different areas, or even on different occasions in the same society. In Lamba stories, to cite just one instance, ‘the exploits of the little-hare and of a curious little human being, Kantanga … are very much the same’ (Doke 1934: 358). In other cases it may be rather ambiguous whether the central figure is really animal or really human, and it may appear in different guises on different occasions. The Kikuyu Wakahare, for instance, appears sometimes as a squirrel, sometimes as a human, the Zande trickster is called ‘spider’ but envisaged as a man, while the famous Zulu equivalent of Tom Thumb and Jack the Giant Killer rolled into one,
uHlakanyana,
is usually a tiny clever boy, but in other contexts appears as a weasel.
¹⁷
.

In spite of such overlap between the appearance of these various characters, it is convenient to discuss the various types of stories by differentiating them roughly in terms of their main characters. We will thus discuss in turn stories based mainly on animal characters, on human characters, and finally on historical and on supernatural beings of one kind or another (‘myths’). That it is not possible to regard these general types as clear-cut categories will be clear both from the way the characters overlap and from the general
remarks in the previous chapter on the difficulties of producing clear typologies in the case of such flexible and variable material. This indeed is why the material has been presented in a single chapter here rather than as separate chapters under the popularly acceptable headings of ‘animal stories’, ‘myths’, ‘legends’, etc. However, in view of the nature of the sources available and for mere convenience of discussion, we can speak of animal tales, tales about people, and so on, at the same time insisting that in view of the overlapping and impermanence of any given story, these must not be regarded as categories in any generally valid typology of African narratives.

II

When we consider the many animal tales that have been collected from Africa, the main factor that has struck most observers is the great emphasis on animal tricksters—small, wily, and tricky animals who cheat and outdo the larger and more powerful beasts. They trick them in a pretended tug of war, cheat them in a race, deceive them into killing themselves or their own relations, gobble up their opponents’ food in pretended innocence, divert the punishment for their own misdeeds on to innocent parties, and perform a host of other ingenious tricks.

The actual author of these exploits varies in different areas. Among most of the Bantu peoples it is the little hare, an animal that also occurs as a main character in some of the savannah areas of West Africa; as ‘Brer Rabbit’ he also appears in similar stories in the New World.
¹⁸
The spider
¹⁹
is the main character in most of the forest regions of West Africa, particularly in the westerly parts including Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Sierra Leone; he also comes into Hausa stories to the north, Luo and Zande tales in Central Africa, and corresponds to ‘Annancy’ in the West Indies, a name that directly recalls the Ghanaian
Ananse,
the Akan spider. The tortoise predominates in the easterly regions of the west coast, in an area extending at least from the Yoruba of Nigeria across to the Fang and others of West Equatorial Africa. The tortoise also comes into other areas in a lesser way; among the Ila of Zambia, to give one example, the main cycle of tales are about Sulwe, the hare, but there are also a number about Fulwe, the tortoise. There are also a few other favourite trickster characters who occur often enough in
stories but without any clear-cut geographical domain: the little antelope, often portrayed as innocently ingenious; the squirrel (e.g. in many Limba, Kikuyu, and Luba stories); the wren (in Luba tales); and a few with more purely local reference: the small weasel who appears among the Zulu and Xhosa, most often apparently personified as a small boy; and the jackal trickster in Hottentot animal stories, as well as in some Zulu, Xhosa, and Sotho tales.
²⁰

Though all these trickster figures tend to get up to the same kinds of tricks in story after story, they cannot altogether be assimilated to each other. The spider, for instance, though often wily, is also, in some areas at least, depicted as stupid, gluttonous, boastful, and ineffective, not infrequently outdone by his own wife. There are also instances of the same image being applied to the tortoise.
²¹
On the other hand, the sly effectiveness of the hare is what we notice in most Bantu tales. All these tricksters, however, are adaptable. They are able to turn any situation, old or new, to their advantage. The tortoise now aspires to white collar status in Southern Nigeria and attends adult education classes, (Berry 1961: 14) while the spider
Ananse
referees football matches among the Ashanti in Ghana. (Nketia 1958
d
: 21)

Besides the leading animal figures, there are also many others who come into the tales in secondary roles. Some of the stock characters associated with them are common to many areas: the lion, strong and powerful but not particularly bright; the elephant, heavy, ponderous, and rather slow; the hyena,
the
type of brute force and stupidity, constantly duped by the little quick animals; the leopard, untrustworthy and vicious, often tricked in spite of his cunning; the little antelope, harmless and often clever; the larger deer, stupid and slow—and so on. (Not all these occur in all regions or all stories in exactly the same way.) Surprisingly, other animals—the zebra, buck, or crocodile—seldom occur, or, if they do, tend to come in just as animals and not as the personified characters presented by those already mentioned.
²²
One final and rather different animal character that
must be mentioned is the mantis in Bushman tales. He is the favourite hero in Bushman narratives, and though he shares some of the qualities sometimes attributed to tricksters (powerful and foolish, mischievous and kind), his supernatural associations and the unusual type of action in these stories set him rather apart from leading animal characters in narratives elsewhere in Africa.

With few exceptions, these animals are portrayed as thinking and acting like human beings, in a human setting. This is sometimes brought out by the terminology, like the personal prefix used in Sotho to turn the ordinary form of, say, lion (
tau
) into a personal form (
motau
—Mr. Lion) (Smith and Dale ii, 1920: 339), or the class of honorific plural in Lamba which makes an ordinary animal term into a personal name—‘Mr. Blue-Snake’ (Doke 1939: 95). In other cases no grammatical change is or needs to be made. The animals act like human characters, experiencing human emotions. And yet the fact that they are also animals is not altogether lost sight of. This can be exploited either through grammatical forms, like the alternation in Zande stories between animal and personal pronouns, (Evans-Pritchard 1967: 26) or through allusions to the animal’s characteristic cry, appearance, or behaviour to add to the wit or incongruity of the presentation. In a Limba tale, for instance, a spider is shown taking off his cap, gown, and trousers in a vain attempt to placate his magic pot; in the story he is unquestionably like a man—albeit an absurdly foolish man—with a house, wife, and human garb, but the fact that he is, nevertheless, a
spider
struggling with all these clothes adds just the extra understated touch in the telling which makes the whole story very funny.

Many of these stories are light-hearted, even satirical, and centre round the tricks and competitions of the hare, spider, or their friends, set in a wide range of adaptable and adapting situations. But there are also more serious themes. One common form is a story ending up with a kind of moral, sometimes in the form of a well-known proverb. The listeners are told that they can learn a lesson from the experiences of the animals in the tale—that, say, one should not be rude to one’s mother-in-law, that men’s words are more weighty than women’s, that strangers should be treated well, that it is ill-advised to oppress the weak, or even that determination sometimes triumphs over virtue. In some places too, Christian morals are specifically introduced, e.g. among the Luba. (Stappers 1962: 14) In such narrations the moral element sometimes seems to form the core of the story, so that we could appropriately term it a parable rather than a straightforward story. But in other cases, sometimes even those from the same area or teller,
the moral seems no more than a kind of afterthought, appended to give the narration a neat ending.

Another very common framework is that in which an explanation is given for some present behaviour seen in the world, or a known characteristic of some animal or bird. For example, to cite a few titles at random from one society (Ila of Zambia), we have stones about how the Ringdove came by its ring, how Ringdove got her name, how Squirrel robbed Coney of his tail, how Squirrel and Jackal became distinct, how Skunk came to be a helper of man, why Duiker has a fine coat and particoloured tail, why Zebra has no horns, why there are cracks in Tortoise’s shell—and so on (Smith and Dale ii, 1920: Ch. 28). These aetiological themes are not just confined to animal stories but can occur in all types of African tales. However, they seem to be a particularly popular and fertile theme when the main characters are animals, and some striking animal characteristic, well known to the listeners from their own observation, can be wittily ‘explained’ in the story. Not all the aetiological tales are equally humorous and light-hearted. A few explain more serious matters: in these cases the animals are often depicted as interacting with humans or with God as well as with other animals; they explain, for instance, the origin of murder, of death, or of chiefship.

An explanatory ending, in fact, can apparently be tacked on to almost any plot as a pleasing framework and conclusion fitting in with current literary conventions—once again, we see that animal trickster stories, aetiological tales, or even ‘myths’ are not mutually exclusive types but merely favourite themes which may or may not be combined in any one story. An example of the nonessential nature of the aetiological conclusion can be seen from the following Kikuyu tale where the explanation at the end sounds very much like an afterthought.

The Hyena, Wakahare, and the Crow

One day a Hyena went together with Wakahare to collect honey in the forest, where men used to hang their beehives from the trees. Wakahare climbed the tree, extracted big lumps of combs full of honey from a beehive, and when he was satiated, said to the Hyena: ‘Open your mouth and I will drop some honey into it.’ The Hyena did so and swallowed the honey with great pleasure several times, until she was also satisfied. Then Wakahare left the tree and returned to the ground. He asked the Hyena: ‘How did you enjoy the honey?’

‘Very, very much, what bliss, my dear friend.’

‘But remember,’ said Wakahare, ‘this is a kind of sweetness that must not be evacuated from your body.’

‘Yes, I think it must be so; but how can one prevent it from going out?’

‘I’ll tell you what to do. I will stitch your orifice together with your tail and you may be sure that no sweetness will come out.’

‘Good, my friend, do it for me, please.’ Wakahare fetched a few sharp thorns and stitched the orifice with the tail of the Hyena and went off. After some time the Hyena felt a terrible urge to evacuate. She looked around for help, but nobody was to be found. At last a Jackal happened to pass thereat. ‘Oh, dear friend Jackal,’ said the Hyena, ‘come please, and help me.’

‘What can I do for you, dear friend?’

‘Please, release a little bit the stitches which are at the neck of my tail. I cannot bear it any longer.’

‘Sorry, my friend, I am unable to do that. I know you have diarrhoea habitually, and don’t want to be splashed with a discharge of that kind.’ And so saying, he went on. After some time a Serval arrived on his way to the forest. The Hyena beseeched him for help.

‘Sorry, Mrs. Hyena, you are very prone to discharge violently,’ said the Serval, I don’t want to be buried under your excrements.’ He too went his way without looking back. Later on a Hare passed by. The Hyena asked again for help, but to no avail.

‘I am very sorry,’ the Hare said, ‘don’t you see how clean I am? I am going to a feast. I don’t want to soil my dress and get untidy for your dirty business.’ He too went his way leaving the Hyena groaning and tossing on the ground on account of the pain she was suffering. At last, a Crow perched on a tree nearby. Looking down at the Hyena lying still on the grass, he thought she was dead, and began to foretaste a good meal: but as he was planning what to do next, the Hyena opened her eyes and seeing the Crow on the tree, said: ‘Oh dear Crow, dear friend of mine, help! help! please.’ The Crow left the tree and approached the Hyena. ‘What is the matter with you?’ he asked.