Ogumefu 1929 as a Source for Yorùbá Folktale
What M. I. Ogumefu's 1929 collection offers, and the disqualifying caveat she states in her own preface: the songs of these tales have been deliberately left out.
Four story for inside this section come from M. I. Ogumefu, Yoruba Legends, wey Sheldon Press publish for London for 1929 . Na im be the largest collection of non-Ìjàpá Yorùbá story wey this compiler fit get for open access: thirty-one story before the tortoise section start, wey cover leopard, twin, hunter, king, magician and different-different aetiology.
E still carry one caveat wey the author talk by herself, for inside her preface, and na im dey guide everything wey this corpus dey do with am .
The warning wey she state
Most of them include very old songs, but these cannot here be given in full .
That sentence make the book no qualify as record of àlọ́ àpagbè performance, but e still make am usable as record of story plot . Na the song dem give this genre name; yoruba-alo explain say àpagbè mean say audience dey join body, and that joining na the chorus wey dem dey sing. Any collection wey print the story dem and comot the song dem don comot the main mechanism.
Person fit see the effect for inside the text. For alo-the-leopard-man, Ogumefu describe three separate song moments and she no transcribe any of them: the leopard "began to sing a melancholy song, in which he told her" wetin e be, and as the chase dey go on "he sang that he would tear her in small pieces, and she in another song replied that he would never overtake her." Dem tell the reader say song happen and give wetin dey the song inside reported speech. Whatever those words be, for Yorùbá or for English, dem no dey the book.
Two exception dey for inside the material wey dem use here. alo-oluronbi-and-the-iroko print four-line song for English, and alo-how-leopard-got-his-spots print rhymed three-line couplet for English. Both of them na English verse wey no get Yorùbá for behind them.
Other things wey dey miss
No Yorùbá anywhere. The volume no get any Yorùbá text of any kind at all, for any story. Name dem appear (Olúrónbí, Akiti, Ajaka, Isokun, Dekun, Ole), mostly without diacritics.
No informants, no places, no dates. Ogumefu no mention any person wey tell the story, no town, no region, and no date wey dem collect any story, and she no give account of how the story dem take reach her hand.
No sign of method. She no state whether she record from live performance, or she work from memory, or she translate from Yorùbá-language print sources, or she rework existing English collections. The preface describe folklore in general terms and e no describe her own procedure.
If you compare am with Parkinson, wey name region and interpreter (alo-parkinson-1909-as-a-source), and Omolaye, wey arrange informants with their age, town and date for table (alo-omolaye-2023-as-a-source), this one na the thinnest provenance among all the source dem wey dey used for this section , . Every file wey rely on Ogumefu carry confidence medium mark because of that reason.
The framing of that period
Dem write the preface for British classroom reader dem and e carry the assumptions of that kind setting :
We must not think that the stories are scientifically true; they grew out of the imagination of the people, and for actual, proven facts we must look in our text-books. We read these folk-tales for their quaintness and humour, for their sympathy with Nature, and because we find in them the ideas and ideals, not just of one man, but of the race .
The phrase "the legends express primitive notions" follow immediately after . Na the standard idiom of 1929 popular ethnography be that, and this corpus record am as e be rather than make e adopt am. E dey important to note say this framing no be by chance e connect with the editorial decision about the song dem: volume wey present these story as quaint reading material for children no get any reason to keep performance structure, and dem cut the song dem because the book no dey try to be a record.
The corpus no know Ogumefu own background. The volume only give her initials and B.A. and nothing else, and this compiler never fit confirm whether she na Yorùbá, wetin for affect how person suppose read the book. That gap dey recorded instead of to dey guess.
Wetin e good for
Three things, and dem dey real.
Plot inventory. Thirty-one non-tortoise story with printed contents list na map of wetin the non-Ìjàpá material contain, and no other open-access English list dey wey fit match am. The contents include several aetiology wey this compiler no fit source from anywhere else.
Variant evidence. Ogumefu own "The Head" na the same tale-type as Ellis own Adun, wey different people record 35 years apart with different ending, and that one make am the best-documented variant pair wey dey available for this section. See alo-the-head-who-borrowed-a-body and alo-adun-and-the-borrowed-body.
Documented competing aetiologies. She print two consecutive explanation for leopard spot dem and mark the second one clearly as "another story," wey be the same thing wey Parkinson three shell-origin story demonstrate and wey alo-why-the-tortoise-shell-is-marked treat as evidence on how the genre dey handle competing explanation dem.
Wetin e no good for
To quote as performance. No text from Ogumefu dey presented for inside this corpus as transcription of storytelling, no song from am dey presented as àlọ́ àpagbè chorus, and nothing inside am support any claim about Yorùbá-language wording. Anywhere wey this section retell Ogumefu story, e state am clearly say the story dey only for English and say the song dem no dey the record.
The same carefulness wey the corpus apply to the modern retelling site yorubatales.com still apply here, with one difference wey favour Ogumefu: she declare the omission by herself, for inside the preface, instead of to leave the reader make dem discover am .
Where dem treat the story dem
alo-the-leopard-man, alo-how-leopard-got-his-spots, alo-oluronbi-and-the-iroko, alo-the-head-who-borrowed-a-body .