Ikom folk stories from Southern Nigeria

Pourquoi la tortue a la carapace fendue, pourquoi le soleil et la lune vivent au ciel : les histoires d'Ikom, dans le sud-est du Nigeria, recueillies en 1913.

Extrait

LONDON: PUBLISHED BY THE Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. 50, GREAT RUSSELL STREET, LONDON, W.C. It will be observed on perusing some of these stories that in several of them the greater part of the tale has nothing, apparently, to do with the main object, which frequently might be dismissed in a few sentences. But that will not surprise anyone who knows the native well, as he can never come to the point at once, but must always first beat about the bush. For example, a native will come to make a complaint that certain goods belonging to him have been stolen and he wants to have the thief punished. After the usual salutations have been exchanged, he will make his complaint, which when translated by the interpreter will be something like the following: “My father and father (grandfather) catch one man goat and one woman goat. They done born two piccane. One piccane done die and leff one piccane. Them piccane, them leff, born two piccane. My father and father done die and him brother take all them thing; but he be big hunter man and no care them goat too much, so he done dash my father. My father catch one slave man, they call ’im Okon and he good man, so my father dash him them two goat. Okon catch wife and two piccane. One be mammie piccane they call ’im Awa, she fine too much, when she done grow I marry her proper and take her brother Abassi for make my head boy. Last moon I send him Calabar for my canoe with twenty bag kernel and one puncheon palm oil. I tell ’im for factory and bring tobacco and cloth and gin. He done catch them thing and one night he stop for one country, he no know how them call him. Them people come and thief them gin for night time but he no look them man cause he live for sleep, so I make them boy pay for them gin and now I want catch them thief man.”

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