Ìjàpá and the Singing Drum
A tortoise tale in which Ìjàpá rescues a drowning hunter's son on condition of enslaving him, hides him inside a drum that appears to sing by itself, and loses him when he drinks himself unconscious at a dance.
Collecteur
Aucun collecteur n'est nommé dans la source consultée.
Comment il était performé
Evening telling to a mixed-age audience, treated fully in `yoruba-alo`. Ellis adds one detail specific to his period: the professional travelling teller, the akpalo kpatita, carried a drum. In a tale whose entire plot turns on a drum that sings, a teller with a drum in his hands is not incidental, and the performance and the story would have used the same object. Ellis does not say the drum was struck during this particular telling, and this observation is the compiler's own inference from his description of the teller's equipment, marked as analysis rather than as recorded fact.
Le conte en bref
This is a tale about Ìjàpá the tortoise, a hunter's son named Sigo who falls into a flooded gully, and a drum that sings. Ìjàpá pulls Sigo out in exchange for Sigo becoming his slave, then hides him inside a large drum and tours the town exhibiting a miraculous instrument that sings its own words. He loses everything at the last performance because he cannot stop eating and drinking. The tale is recorded in English by A. B. Ellis in 1894, and no Yorùbá original of it is known to this compiler. For the call-and-response opening that frames every àlọ́, and the division of the genre into àlọ́ àpamọ̀ and àlọ́ àpagbè, see `yoruba-alo`. This tale carries its own opening formula, discussed below, which differs from the Ààlọ́ o / Ààlọ̀ exchange.
Le conte
Olu had a son named Sigo, and Sigo decided to become a hunter. His father gave him a horse and his mother gave him a sheep, and they told him to go and hunt. He took his bow and arrows, mounted, and rode into the bush, travelling a long way until he reached the haunt of animals. Then the sky darkened and the rain came down in torrents, so heavily that the water washed Sigo into a deep gully. He could not climb out, and he stayed there weeping. When the rain stopped, Ìjàpá came by, always on the lookout for opportunities. Sigo stretched his neck up towards the lip of the gully and called out to him. Ìjàpá leaned over the edge and asked what he was doing down there. The flood washed me in, said Sigo. What will you give me if I pull you out, asked Ìjàpá. I will be your slave, said Sigo. Very well, said Ìjàpá. He climbed down and brought Sigo out, and then told him the plan: I am going to make a large drum, and I shall put you inside it. When we come to any house and I begin playing, take care that you sing well. Sigo understood. Back in his town, Ìjàpá went to the king and boasted about the fine sound of his drum. The king ordered him to bring it and beat it in his presence. Very well, said Ìjàpá, send and call all the town to the dance. The king sent word through the town, and when everyone had assembled he called for the tortoise. Ìjàpá came into the middle of the assembly, struck the drum with the stick, and the drum sang. Original The Yorùbá is not given. Ellis prints the song in English only. Literal gloss No Yorùbá text preserved in source. Idiomatic English Translator: A. B. Ellis > Sigo is the son of Olu; > Ah! let me be rescued. > His mother gave him a sheep, and told him to go and hunt; > Ah! let me be rescued. > His father gave him a horse, and told him to go and hunt; > Ah! let me be rescued. > Listen to what I say. He went to the elephant's haunt; > Ah! let me be rescued. > Listen to what I say. He went to the buffalo's lair; > Ah! let me be rescued. > The flood of the rain washed him into the cleft; > Ah! let me be rescued. > And so he became the Tortoise's slave; > Ah! let me be rescued. Notes on the translation. No Yorùbá text survives in Ellis for this song, so the three-layer treatment the corpus normally requires cannot be given here, and nothing should be reconstructed. What can be recovered is one piece of wordplay Ellis flags himself in a footnote: "There is perhaps some pun in this. Olu means a clapper, or anything to strike with, and ilu means a drum". If that reading is right, the first line of the song is doing double work, naming Sigo's mother and naming the drumstick that is striking the drum as the song is sung. This is the kind of device the corpus documents throughout Yorùbá verbal art, where a name and a common noun are separated only by tone, and it is exactly what a translation into English destroys. Ellis marks his own reading as uncertain with "perhaps," and it is reproduced here with that uncertainty intact. The people clapped their hands to their mouths in astonishment. The king had him beat it again, and they cried out at the marvel. Then Ìjàpá went home. Before long the senior women of the household Sigo belonged to asked Ìjàpá to come and beat his drum at a dance of theirs. He said very good, and went. When he arrived they made ready gruel of Indian corn (ọ̀kà, in Ellis's spelling oka) and bought rum, and asked him to play. He beat the drum and the drum sang the same song again. Then they gave Ìjàpá food, and he ate. They gave him rum, and he drank, and became drunk, and fell asleep. While he slept they took his drum, removed the drum-head, took Sigo out, and put the head back exactly as it had been. When Ìjàpá woke he took up his drum and began to beat it. A crow croaked inside it. He beat harder and faster, and the crow croaked louder and louder. And he cried out as loud as he could: > Why, when you were eating, did you not give something to eat to the drum? Why, when you were drinking, did not you give some of the rum to the drum? He went home, took off the drum-head, and found a crow inside.
Le chant
Original
The Yorùbá is not given. Ellis prints the song in English only.
Glose littérale
- No Yorùbá text preserved in source.
Anglais idiomatique
Translator: A. B. Ellis Sigo is the son of Olu; Ah! let me be rescued. His mother gave him a sheep, and told him to go and hunt; Ah! let me be rescued. His father gave him a horse, and told him to go and hunt; Ah! let me be rescued. Listen to what I say. He went to the elephant's haunt; Ah! let me be rescued. Listen to what I say. He went to the buffalo's lair; Ah! let me be rescued. The flood of the rain washed him into the cleft; Ah! let me be rescued. And so he became the Tortoise's slave; Ah! let me be rescued.
Aucun collecteur n'est nommé dans la source consultée.
Variantes
The record consulted for this file preserves no Yorùbá-language variant of this tale and no second collected version, so nothing can be said about how it was told elsewhere. Ellis published it in 1894 from an unnamed source, and the corpus does not have a second attestation to set beside it. The hidden-singer-in-a-container device is not unique to this tale in West African narrative, but this compiler has not verified a specific Yorùbá parallel and does not assert one.