Oral Literature in Africa (52 page)

The unbalanced nature of this approach can be illustrated by a specific example. This is a story taken from the Limba of Sierra Leone. It is quite obvious to any reader that the basic plot is a biblical one; in fact the outline plot was told to the narrator only a few years earlier. It is the tale of Adam and Eve, and even the names of the characters in Limba have remained more or less the same. Yet in its interpretation and telling by a Limba story-teller, the tale has become in almost every sense a truly
Limba
one.

This is the story as told by Karanke Dema, a skilful Limba narrator, in 1964. He opens by asking a friend, as well as myself, to ‘reply’ to him—that is to lead the audience participation that is so essential a part of the whole process of Limba story-telling.

Adamu and Ifu

Suri—reply to me. I am going to tell a story, about when the earth came out, how after long we were brought out, we Limba, how after long we came to do work, how we lived. I am going to tell it this evening. You Yenkeni [R. F.], by your grace, you are to reply to me.

You see—Kami Masala (God), he was once up above. In the whole world then there were no people. So Kanu Masala thought; he said, ‘I will take people to there.’ What he brought out were two human beings—one
man; one woman. What were their names? The man—he was Adamu. The woman—she was Ifu. (Ifu.)
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Ifu.

When he had brought them out, they came and lived [here]. They spent two days and nights—but they found nothing to eat. So they went to Kanu Masala then.

‘We have come here to you.’

Kanu asked ‘Any trouble?’

‘No. We—the reason we have come is this: you brought us out, you went and put us on the earth here; but we—hunger! Nothing for us to eat. Will we not die tomorrow?’

Then Kanu said, ‘I will give you food.’ Kanu came down. He came and showed them the trees in fruit. He showed them every tree in fruit for them to eat.

‘This is your food.’ He showed them one—’Don’t eat this one oh!’ It was like an orange; when it is in fruit it is red. ‘Don’t eat this one oh! This is a prohibited one. You are not to eat it.’

Adamu said ‘All right.’

They lived there for long—they ate from those trees. They did no work. They did nothing except just live there, except that when they were hungry they went and ate.

Then a snake got up there. He came and made love with the woman, Ifu. They travelled far in that love.

Then the snake came near, the
bangkiboro
snake.
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He came and said to the woman, Ifu,

‘Do you never eat from this tree?’

Ifu said, ‘No. We do not eat it. We were told before that we should not eat it, it is prohibited.’

Then the snake said, ‘Oh you! That tree—eat from it.’ Ifu said, ‘We do not eat it.’

‘Eat it! Would I lie to you? We share in love you and I. Just eat it. There is nothing wrong about it.’

Ifu said, ‘We do not eat it. If we eat it we are doing something wrong.’

The snake said, ‘Not at all. Just eat.’

Ifu said, ‘All right.’

He picked it, he the snake. He went and gave it to Ifu. Ifu said, ‘You eat first.’

He the snake—he ate. Ifu took it. She ate one. The other one she kept for Adamu.

When Adamu came, she came and gave it to him.

Adamu said, ‘I will not eat this oh! We were told before that we should not eat it.’

‘Not at all’, said Ifu.

‘Just eat it. There is nothing wrong about it.’ Adamu refused. She implored him there. Adamu took the fruit, he ate the fruit.

Now Kanu Masala—he saw this. He knew. ‘Those people have broken the prohibition I gave them.’

When they had eaten it, Adamu—his heart trembled. ‘When Kanu Masala comes here tomorrow, this means we have done something wrong.’

When Kanu Masala came down, Adamu was hiding now when he saw Kanu coming. He hid himself. Both of them were by now hiding themselves (seeing Kanu Masala) [another interjection by Suri]. When Kanu arrived he came and called, calling the man.

‘Adamu! Adamu!’

Now Adamu was afraid to reply—for he had eaten from the tree. He called him again.

‘Adamu! Adamu!’

He was just a bit afraid to reply.

He called Ifu! Ifu!’

Both of them were afraid to reply.

He called Adamu again. Adamu replied. Adamu came. He came and asked him—

‘Adamu.’

‘Yes?’

‘What made you eat from that tree really? I told you you were not to eat it. You took, you ate it just the same. What made you eat it?’

Then Adamu said, ‘Ah, my father. It was not me. It was the woman. She came and gave it to me—Ifu. I said, “I do not eat this.” She said, “Just eat it.” She has brought me into trouble.’

Then Kanu called Ifu.

‘Ifu! Ifu!

Ifu replied, ‘Yes?’

‘Come here.’

Ifu came near.

He asked her, ‘What made you give him from that tree for him to eat?’

Then Ifu said, ‘It was not me, my father; it was the serpent who came and gave me from the tree. He said “Eat it. It is food.” I refused for long oh! He
said “Just eat it. There is nothing wrong about it.” I ate it. What I left I came and gave to Adamu.’

He called the serpent, the
bangkiboro
snake. The
bangkiboro
snake came. When he had come, he asked him.

‘What made you give those people from that tree for them to eat?’

The
bangkiboro
snake said, ‘I gave it to them, yes; there was nothing wrong about it at all.’

Then Kanu said, ‘For you, you have not done well. I told them they were not to eat from this tree. You came and gave it to them. You do not want them to prosper (lit. ‘do not like their life’). It looks as if you—you will be parted from them. You will go into the bush once and for all. You will never again come out [to live] among human beings (Limba). When you meet a human, you will be killed. For you have not done well.’

Since the
bangkiboro
snake went off into the bush—if you see a
bangkiboro
snake now with human beings, whenever they see each other, they kill him. That is why they hate each other.

When the
bangkiboro
snake had gone into the bush, then Kanu Masala said,

‘Ifu’

‘Yes?’

‘You, because you were lied to today and agreed to it, and I told you before that you were not to have suffering but you did not agree to this— now you, you will have suffering. You will now stay behind Adamu. All you women now, when you are married to a man, you will live in his power. That is what I say. When you give birth, when you do that, you will have suffering. That is what I say. When you work now, after the man has cleared and hoed, you will weed. The rain will beat on you there. The sun will burn you there—as you think about your husband’s sauce.
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For that is what you chose. That is what you will do.’

Then he said,

‘Adamu.’

‘Yes?’

‘Because you were lied to by the woman and you agreed to it, you will begin to work. You will work now. When you want to get a wife you will have to woo her. Every man will have to give wealth for long to get her. When you have married several [wives] you will look for a house—you must build, you the man. You will have to get a farm for them to go to. That is what I give you. For you refused to live in the good fortune you had.’

If you see now—we Limba we live now to work; the sun burns us; the rain soaks us; ha! we endure that suffering; if you want to get something
to eat you have to struggle for long—that began from the serpent, the
bangkiboro
snake. If you see that we hate each other, him and us— that is the only reason. Now the
bangkiboro
snake, when he sees a human, says, ‘That man is coming to kill me’; and if you do not strengthen yourself, you the human, he will catch you, biting you. For he was driven out from among us. If you see how we live, we Limba, working— that was where it began.

That is it, it is finished.
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To explain in detail how typical a Limba story this now is would involve a lengthy description of the types of content, style, and expression characteristic of the genre of oral literature the Limba call
mboro
(see Finnegan 1967: 49–103). We can only note one or two points here. There is the way in which the relationship between the snake and Eve is assumed to be that of love: as in so many other Limba stories a wife betrays her husband for the sake of her lover and brings disaster both to him and to mankind as a whole. This idea is by no means confined to the Limba, it is true. But the characteristic way in which it is expressed and appreciated and fits with
Limba
literary conventions is so very interesting that it seems dull to spend much time on the question of where the content first came from. The same could be said of other characteristically Limba points in the story: the use of dialogue; the expression of the action through a series of parallel episodes; the way in which, as so often in Limba stories, a character is at first too fearful to emerge from hiding; the stock description of human beings left by Kanu on earth without food and having to go and ask him for help; and, finally, the reference at the end to the present hard fate of the Limba, about which (in certain moods) they are much preoccupied—the way they have to labour long hours in the fields, season after season, in sun or in rain, to produce the rice which is their basic sustenance. All these points, bare as they may seem on the surface, are in fact of profound meaning to the Limba who hear and tell the story, and possess a whole range of connotations and allusions which would be unintelligible to one unacquainted with their culture.

If this point can be made about a story based on a plot introduced as recently as only two years ago, how much more is this likely to be true of plots and motifs which have supposedly spread in the more remote past. Whatever interest the diffusionists’ investigations of origins may have—and they are at least more verifiable than generalized evolutionary theories—it is clear that too great a preoccupation with this can lead, and indeed has led, to
a neglect of other equally interesting questions about the present literary and social significance of this genre of oral literature.

III

Another aspect of the historical-geographical school of ‘folklorists’ has been the interest in classification. The original motive of this is obvious. Until the various elements in folktales are classified for easy reference, it will not be possible to collect and analyse comparatively the data necessary for tracing the life history of the various plots and motifs in question. Other influences from anthropology and sociology generally have increased this desire for classification, so that those now preoccupied with this are not all necessarily outright adherents of the Scandinavian school.

This approach is excellent up to a point. Every subject needs some general agreement about terminology, not least the study of oral prose narratives. Clarification of the general-terms here can be most helpful, for instance the recent article by Bascom (1965
b
) directed towards a definition of ‘myth’, ‘legend’, and ‘folktale’ as sub-types of the single category ‘prose narrative.’ Other classifications are more detailed, and include such ‘types’ as, say, ‘dilemma tale’, ‘aetiological tale’, and so on, many of these deriving ultimately from Stith Thompson’s categorization.
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Such typologies have helped to focus our attention on certain facets of prose narratives, to make comparisons and contrasts, and generally to become more aware of the potential differences in structure, content, or outlook in various kinds of stories.

However this can have its dangers. One point is that, in the case of the African material, it may be rather too early to produce helpful typologies of the more detailed kind. This at first sight seems ridiculous when so much has been published in the field of African prose narratives. In fact, however, much of this published material is of questionable quality. Often we are given summaries or synopses of the plot or structure, the texts themselves have frequently been written down by schoolboys or others with little skill in the actual artistry of the genre, and the final versions have often appeared in none too dependable translations with no comment at all on local classifications or attitudes. None of this suggests that classifications based on such data are likely to be very precise or helpful. Too often, indeed, the collections that appear to illustrate particular classifications have
themselves been recorded and presented by collectors who have assumed in advance that these categories have universal and ‘natural’ validity.

One simple example of this is the general category of ‘myth.’ In most European cultures, it seems natural to assume a distinction between ‘myths’ (narratives, believed in some sense or other to be true, and concerned with the origins of things or the activities of deities) and ‘folktales’ or ordinary stories (fictional narratives, taken much less seriously). This rough classification also applies, more or less, to the narratives of certain non-European peoples. But—and this is the point—there are also societies in which this distinction between ‘myth’ and ‘folktale’ is not observed. The local people themselves may not recognize this classification but rather, as in the case of several African peoples, regard both as belonging to the same general genre of oral literature. In some of these cases, one may be able to detect
some
such general distinction, even though the people themselves are not conscious of it, even deny it. But in others, even that basis for categorization is lacking,’ and it is not possible to find any local or empirical distinction between different groups of narratives. Yet European students often insist that there
must
be some such distinction, and impose their own categories by assuming without question that they can group together all those stories which have any superficial resemblance to what they have been brought up to regard as ‘myth.’ This sort of naive assumption is not made by the leading scholars in the field; indeed, writers like Thompson and Bascom have specifically warned against it. But many more popular adherents of this approach have been swayed by a combination of this kind of typology, and of their own cultural traditions, so that they do not stop to ask even whether there is any local basis at all for such a distinction from other narratives. There may be—but there just as well may not be. When facile assumptions about classification take the place of actual investigation (about, for instance, such questions as the attitudes of teller and audience to the narration, or the detailed subject-matter of the different ‘types’ of stories and how they compare), we have reached the point where easy classification should be replaced by more modest research into the facts.