Parkinson 1909 as a Source for Yorùbá Folktale
What John Parkinson's Ọ̀yọ́ tale collection contains, why its stated provenance is unusually candid for its period, and how to read its editor's comparative footnotes.
Five tori for inside dis section come from one single journal article: John Parkinson, "Yoruba Folk-Lore," wey dem publish for inside Journal of the African Society for 1909 . Na short collection, e dey for public domain, and e get one quality wey make am get value per page pass Ellis: Parkinson talk where him tori dem come from and how dem take reach him page.
Di provenance statement
Di article open with one sentence about method, and na di reason why dis source get value well well:
The following tales, told to me for the most part by natives of Oyo, have been left as far as possible in the phrases of the interpreter, himself a Yoruba .
Three facts dey declared here wey Ellis never declare anywhere for him book: one region (Ọ̀yọ́), say interpreter dey, and say di interpreter identity na Yorùbá speaker. Di fourth thing na wetin dey implied and e matter equal amount too, say Parkinson know say him English dey one step away from di actual telling and e choose make e no polish am into literary prose.
Di result dey clear for di page. Parkinson English often dey awkward in one specific way, with sudden apposition and word order wey no normal, and dis awkwardness na evidence instead of incompetence. When Tela spell talk say "This rock must open because the owner of the house has come! I 'Prince Tela,'" di strain wey dey inside di English na di closest thing wey di corpus get to di shape of di Yorùbá wey dey under am. Di alternative, collector wey go turn everything into fluent Victorian English, go just destroy dat information quietly.
Against dis: dem no call di interpreter name, dem no name any individual person wey tell di tori, dem no put any date, and dem no print any Yorùbá text for any tori except one chorus wey dem no translate.
Wetin di collection contain
Parkinson print twelve numbered items. Tori VIII to XI na di tortoise tori dem wey dem use for dis section :
- VIII. How the tortoise helped the animals.
alo-the-tortoise-helps-the-animals - IX. The story of a tortoise and a man named Tela.
alo-the-tortoise-and-tela - X. The story of a dog and a tortoise.
alo-the-dog-and-the-tortoise - XI. A story of the pig and the tortoise.
alo-the-pig-and-the-tortoise
Tori I, hunter and ape wey get sixteen tail, dem treat am for alo-the-hunter-and-the-ape-with-sixteen-tails. Tori XII na Ifá narrative instead of àlọ́.
Di grouping note
Between tori dem, Parkinson put one editorial line of him own:
Stories VIII., IX., and X. tell how the tortoise got the marks on his back .
Na dis single sentence useful pass for inside di article and dem discuss am well for alo-why-the-tortoise-shell-is-marked. One collector, one region, one publication, three explanation dem wey follow each other and wey no agree with each other on top di same physical fact, wey dem print without any attempt to reconcile dem. E be direct evidence say dem no understand Yorùbá aetiological tori dem as truth claims wey dey compete.
Di only Yorùbá text wey survive
Parkinson preserve exactly one line of Yorùbá across all him tortoise tori dem, di chorus wey fish dem, snail dem and crab dem sing for Tori VIII:
Ti barua, ti barua, o, i gi, ti barua, ti barua .
E no supply any translation and e no put any gloss. Dem print am for 1909 orthography, without tone marks and without subdots, and di corpus reproduce am for dat state and refuse to translate or reconstruct am, for di reasons wey dem set out for alo-the-tortoise-helps-the-animals. Without tone marks di line really dey ambiguous and any reading wey person supply go just be invention.
Reading di editor footnotes
Di article carry plenti footnotes wey dem sign as "Ed.," and dem be different kind of material from Parkinson text. Di editor systematically compare each Yorùbá tori to analogues elsewhere for Africa: Hottentot, Ronga, Basuto, Bemba, Tete, Chinamwanga, Nyanja, Malinke, Akra, Nago. Di footnote to Tori VIII alone name Bain's "The Story of a Dam," Junod, Jacottet's "Le Chacal et la Source," and Monteil's Contes Soudanais .
Two caution dey apply.
Na diffusionist comparative folklore for di idiom of dat period. Di impulse to locate every African tori as variant of one pan-African type na di dominant scholarly mode of dat time, and e dey tend to treat di local telling as instance of something else instead of wetin e be by itself. Di corpus record dese comparison dem as di editor apparatus and e no treat Bantu analogue as variant of Yorùbá tori.
Di citation dem still really useful anyway. Di footnote wey identify Bouche's Étude sur la langue Nago (Bar-le-Duc, 1880) say e contain di yam-rock tori with lizard na how dis corpus take know say dat tori type get three independent nineteenth-century attestations instead of two (alo-ijapa-and-the-rock-of-yams). Dis compiler never obtain Bouche or Zimmermann, and dem report both strictly as di editor take summarise dem.
One editorial footnote dey worth to quote for different reason. As e dey comment on how tortoise wife call di dog "the man you sent," di editor observe say dis na "due to the habit of personification in these beast-fables, which apparently makes the narrator forget that he is not dealing with human beings" . Di judgement say di narrator don forget something na di editor own, and e fit dey wrong: owe-tortoise-ijapa-trickster document say dese animals na anthropomorphic personages wey get names, households, in-laws and secret-society memberships, so to call di dog man no be lapse. Di corpus record dis as instance where reader of dat period misread one convention.
Parkinson him sef
Dem identify Parkinson for di article as M.A., F.G.S., formerly Principal of the Mineral Survey of Southern Nigeria. Na geologist wey dey work for colonial administration, e no be ethnographer or linguist, and di collection na byproduct of colonial employment just as Ellis own be. Na dat make di corpus label am as early-twentieth-century colonial-period source.
Wetin make am different from Ellis no be di author position but na im method: im tell di reader where di tori dem come from, keep di interpreter phrasing, print di one Yorùbá line wey im get without pretending say im understand am, and group im aetiologies without trying to harmonise dem. Na four decision be dat wey modern corpus fit work with.