How Thunder Came for the First Time

This is an aetiological tale explaining the origin of thunder. Elírí, a very small rat, has three enormous sons: an elephant, a buffalo and a ram. A bird named Irogun robs their farm and flogs their mother, and drives off the elephant and the buffalo in turn. The ram fights him, and the noise of that fight was the first thunder. Collected by John Parkinson from Ọ̀yọ́ informants and published in 1909 1.

It is one of the clearest documented instances in this section of a tale with a marked audience chorus, and Parkinson's editor states the convention explicitly 1.

The audience chorus

Parkinson prints the word "(Chorus.)" four times in this tale, at each point where the mother repeats her curse 1. The editor footnotes what that means:

What is meant is that the audience take up these words and repeat them in chorus 1.

This is the àlọ́ àpagbè mechanism described in yoruba-alo, documented in the act. The curse itself is not printed, either in Yorùbá or in English, beyond its description as the mother "cursing the man that stole, praying that he would not die well." So the corpus has a tale in which the audience's participation is marked at four exact points and the words they said are lost. That absence is worth recording as it stands: the chorus is the part of an àlọ́ least likely to survive into print, because a collector taking down a story takes down the story.

The tale

A small, small rat, Elírí, gave birth to three sons: an elephant, a buffalo and a ram 1.

They made a farm, in which the elephant planted okro, the buffalo osun, and the ram igba 1. The three sons told their mother she must go to their farm when she was in need and take her choice of what was there.

The first time Elírí came, she took okro and igba 1. The second time she found that someone had been there before her, and she cursed the man who had stolen, praying that he would not die well. (Chorus.)

Then Irogun the bird came from the bush and said: I, Irogun, I came to this farm, I plucked the elephant's okro, the buffalo's osun, and the ram's igba 1.

And the bird Irogun took a whip and flogged the mother 1.

When she reached home she told her son the elephant that she had been to the farm, had seen things stolen, and that while she cursed the thief, Irogun came from the bush, acknowledged the theft, and flogged her into the bargain.

The elephant replied that he had seen no one who would so dare to flog his mother, and that he would come to the farm. So Elírí and her son the elephant came, and the mother repeated the cursing. (Chorus.)

Then Irogun came out and drove the elephant and the mother away.

At home, Elírí repeated the story to her son the buffalo, saying how she had been flogged and how she and the elephant together had been driven away. The buffalo said it was impossible that anyone could so flog the elephant, but that he himself would go and see. So the mother and the buffalo went, and as before the mother cursed. (Chorus.) Irogun again appeared, and, flogging both mother and son, drove them away.

Meanwhile the ram had gone to market. His mother met him on the way and related what had happened. Then the ram put down the load he was carrying and said he should like to see the man who could so flog his mother Elírí, the small, small rat.

Then the mother and her son the ram went to the farm, and the ram asked his mother to repeat the curse. This she did. (Chorus.) And the bird Irogun again appeared, and repeated to the ram what he had said to the elephant and the buffalo, that he was the man who had stolen from the farm.

Then the ram wrestled with Irogun the bird, until his horns were broken and the claws of Irogun were broken also. Then they paused, and the ram sent home for ten new horns, and the bird Irogun for ten new claws.

The ram sent his wife the sheep; the bird sent his wife the bitch. Meanwhile Elírí got a fat piece of beef, roasted it, and going to the bird's home hung it just above the level the bitch could reach.

The sheep got the ten horns and brought them back to the ram. But the claws for Irogun had not yet come, because as the bitch reached home she saw the fat dropping from the beef above and stopped to lick it up; then the fat dropped again, and looking up she saw the beef. And at the sight of the beef she forgot the message.

When the ram had his new horns he said: now we will fight again. But Irogun said: I have no claws, let us wait. And the ram said very well, we will wait for a short time.

Then Irogun looked round and saw the bitch far off, still trying to reach the beef, and he called to her: carry out my message. But the bitch, thinking only of the fat dropping down, did not listen.

And so when the time allowed by the ram had elapsed, the ram said: it is not my fault if you have no claws. And they fought. Irogun sank to his knee, then his body touched the ground, and at last he was altogether down.

From that day, when there is thunder, the ram digs in the ground with its foot and says:

One day we will fight again, the fight is not finished yet, one day we will fight again.

And since that time the bird Irogun has dwelt in the ground and not on the trees as before. But the noise of the fight between Irogun and the ram was the noise of the first thunder.

The Ṣàngó connection

Parkinson appends a note to the tale:

Irogun is the original name for Shango, the lightning is Shango's fire 1.

This is a substantial claim and the corpus flags it as unverified. Parkinson supplies no evidence for the identification, no source, and no Yorùbá-language authority, and this compiler has not confirmed it against the Ṣàngó scholarship. It is recorded here as the collector's assertion rather than as an established fact, and sango should be consulted for what the corpus does document about the òrìṣà.

What can be said without controversy is that the tale sits in the same conceptual space as Ṣàngó material: thunder is explained as a fight, a fight that is not finished, and the ram is the animal doing it. The ram's association with Ṣàngó is a standard element of the tradition, and the tale's closing image, the ram digging at the ground during a thunderstorm and promising a rematch, is an ordinary observation of animal behaviour converted into an unresolved cosmic grievance.

Parkinson's editor adds a comparative footnote on the lightning-bird across southern Africa, citing Mabille on the Basuto, Dudley Kidd's Essential Kafir pp. 120-121, and Zulu and Pondo beliefs, and noting that the Basuto lightning-bird is identified with an actual species while "the Yoruba bird" appears mythical 1. That is the period diffusionist apparatus described in alo-parkinson-1909-as-a-source, and it is recorded rather than adopted.

What the tale does

The mechanism is an ascending sequence that defeats size, and it is built so the audience counts. Three sons in order of apparent power, elephant, buffalo, ram, and the two largest are driven off without a fight. The ram is the smallest of the three and the only one who wrestles rather than posturing. The elephant says he has seen no one who would dare; the buffalo says it is impossible that anyone could flog the elephant; the ram says nothing about impossibility and puts down his load.

The second mechanism is that the fight is decided away from the fight. Both combatants break their weapons, both send their wives for replacements, and the contest is settled by which errand succeeds. Elírí, who has been flogged twice and is the only reason any of this is happening, wins it: she hangs roasted beef just out of the bitch's reach, and the bitch, distracted by dripping fat, forgets her message entirely. The mother, the smallest and weakest character in the tale, defeats the thief by understanding appetite.

That the tale gives its decisive act to the wronged mother rather than to any of her enormous sons is worth stating, and the corpus marks as analysis the observation that this is a tale about who is actually effective, told in a form that spends most of its length on the ineffective. It is also, in the bitch's distraction, the same device that undoes Ìjàpá in alo-adun-and-the-borrowed-body: a watcher with a task, defeated by food placed within reach.

The ram's closing line is a formula of unfinished business, and it converts every subsequent thunderstorm into evidence. The tale does not end; it recurs.

Variants

No Yorùbá-language version and no second collection of this tale were located by this compiler. The record consulted is silent on variation.

Performance context

Evening telling, treated in yoruba-alo. This tale is the section's clearest evidence of the audience's role: the chorus is marked at four points, and it recurs at the same narrative beat each time, the mother's curse. The structure is therefore that the audience performs the grievance, four times, while three sons fail to avenge it.