The Dog and the Tortoise: The Agidi Tree

A dog and a tortoise made friends, and their farms lay next to one another. One day, when they went to their farms, the tortoise bought agidi and took it to the farm. The dog neglected to buy any. When at last they stopped work to eat, both were hungry, and the tortoise began to eat his agidi and did not give any to the dog. When he had finished he wrapped up the leaves and threw them in the dog's face. Then the dog took these leaves and planted them in his farm. After some time they grew and bore agidi. Now it happened one day that the tortoise came to the farm having forgotten to buy agidi. When they had finished working and the time to eat had come, the dog went to the leaves he had sown and began to sing. Original The Yorùbá is not given. Parkinson prints the song in English only. Literal gloss (No Yorùbá text recorded in source) Idiomatic English (as printed, in the interpreter's phrasing) > The agidi of the leaf must fall on me. Translator: John Parkinson's interpreter Notes on the translation. No Yorùbá survives, and nothing is reconstructed. The English is Parkinson's interpreter's, kept close to the original phrasing by the collector's stated method. The line is a command addressed to the tree, in the same grammatical shape as Tela's rock-spell in `alo-the-tortoise-and-tela`, "this rock must open." Two tales from the same collector, the same region and the same sequence use the same construction for a magic instruction, which is weak but real evidence about the form such spells took in the telling. As he sang, so it fell and opened. Then the dog ate, and the remnant he threw away, giving none to the tortoise. As they went home the tortoise said: how is it that you, who are my friend, have no pity, that you eat while you know I hunger? So the dog answered him: > Do you not remember the last time when you threw the leaves in my face having eaten the agidi? My agidi is the fruit of the same leaves which I planted after you had done this. Then said the tortoise: never mind, there is nothing so bad in that. But he thought: I can get the agidi for myself. One day the tortoise went alone to the farm, and when he had finished his work and was hungry, he went to the dog's farm and began to sing at the fruit, desiring that it should fall. But no agidi fell. Instead a big stone fell, smashing the tortoise to pieces. Then came all the ants and insects and mended him as best they could, but they never managed to get all the marks from his back where the pieces joined together. So these marks remain until this day.