Explorar

Thirty-six Yorùbá proverbs on hunger, greed, and the inside of a person as the place where feeling and counsel are kept, presented with the original, a literal gloss, a named translation, and the situation each is spoken in.

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.

A tortoise tale in which Ìjàpá tastes a fertility medicine prepared for his wife three times and dies of it, with the Yorùbá text of the Alugbinrin pleading song from a named informant.

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.