Ìjàpá and the Feast in the Sky
The borrowed-feathers tale in which Ìjàpá flies to the birds' festival disguised as a bird, is stripped of his wings, and falls onto stones laid by an enemy imitating his wife's voice.
Recopilador
La fuente consultada no nombra a ningún recopilador.
Cómo se representaba
Not an evening telling in the traditional setting described in `yoruba-alo`, but a recollection of one, given in English to a folklore collector by a young man who heard it from his parents in Nigeria. There is no song in this telling. Whether the tale carries a song in Yorùbá-language performance, this compiler cannot say from the sources consulted.
El cuento en breve
This is the tale in which Ìjàpá collects a feather from every bird, builds himself wings, flies up to the birds' annual festival disguised as one of them, and eats so greedily that he does not notice the departing guests reclaiming their feathers one by one. Left with no wings, he calls down for a bed of soft things to be laid out, and an animal who dislikes him lays out stones, imitates his wife's voice, and tells him to jump. The shell cracks. It is the version of the shell aetiology most likely to be met in English, and it needs a caution stated up front: this is a tale type shared across West Africa and told prominently in Igbo tradition as well. The account below is a genuine Yorùbá attestation from a Nigerian informant, recorded in a university folklore archive, and is presented as one telling rather than as the Yorùbá explanation of the shell. The four narratives with depth in the Yorùbá collection record are compared in `alo-why-the-tortoise-shell-is-marked`.
El cuento
As transcribed: Every year the birds hold a festival to celebrate a feast. The archive's transcript places it "in the trees and high up" as well as in the sky, and the informant treats the two as the same location. It is much coveted, with a great deal of food. Ìjàpá, being a tortoise, cannot get up there. So he starts picking a feather from every bird and makes himself a set of wings, and flies up to the festival disguised as a bird, and goes to the banquet. At the banquet he eats all their food. Somehow someone discovers he is not a bird, and goes around telling everyone that he is not a bird and has infiltrated the banquet. As each of them leaves, they take one feather back from Ìjàpá's set of wings and fly away. And then the informant's own explanation of why the trick fails, in his words: > So, because Ijapa is so big-backed, hungry, and greedy, he's staying late and doesn't realize [the birds] are taking his feathers. The archive marks "big-backed" as the informant's own phrase. By the time the last guest has gone, Ìjàpá realises he no longer has his wings. So he shouts down from the tree for someone to tell his wife. The informant cannot remember what creature hears him, saying only that it is another animal. He tells this animal to tell his wife to come and arrange a bed of soft things, so that when he jumps from that height he lands on something soft. But the animal, who also does not like Ìjàpá because Ìjàpá is greedy, arranges stones instead. And it mimics the voice of Ìjàpá's wife, calling: > Jump down! I've arranged the bed of soft things. And Ìjàpá jumps down and cracks his shell. > That's why tortoises' shells are cracked.
Variantes
The tale circulates on `yorubatales.com` under titles including "How Tortoise (Ijapa) Cracked His Shell", though that site carries no per-tale attribution and nothing is quoted from it here. Within the transcript itself, two details are unrecoverable and are recorded as gaps rather than filled: the informant does not know which animal carried the message, and gives Ìjàpá's wife no name, though the tradition names her Yáníbo (see `alo-ijapa-and-the-babalawo`). A collected version would be expected to supply both.