How the Tortoise Helped the Animals

In a drought, the animals consulted the babaláwo, who at that time were the ground-rats. The chief ground-rat took Ifá, which Parkinson glosses as "nuts of the palm-tree with the shell on," and asked when there would be water. And the rat said: yes, there will be water tomorrow. Then he continued: go to a certain place and you will find a big stream. The first animal who went to verify this found the water, but could not approach and drink because of the multitude of fishes, snails and crabs who sang out. Original (as printed by Parkinson; see the note below) > Ti barua, ti barua, o, i gi, ti barua, ti barua. Literal gloss None can be given. Parkinson supplies no translation and no gloss. Idiomatic English None available. The line is printed untranslated. Translator: Ìpilẹ̀ṣẹ̀ editorial rendering, unreviewed Notes on the translation and the orthography. This is the only Yorùbá text preserved in Parkinson's tortoise tales, and it is printed in 1909 orthography with no tone marks and no subdots. It is reproduced here exactly as printed. No translation is supplied because Parkinson supplies none, and this compiler will not reconstruct one: without tone marks the line is genuinely ambiguous, and a guessed reading would be a fabrication dressed as scholarship. The corpus records it as an untranslated chorus and marks the record silent on its meaning. What can be said is structural. The line is repeated in the same shape three times in the telling, functioning as the fixed audience refrain against a changing narrative, which is the àlọ́ àpagbè mechanism described in `yoruba-alo`. Whether it is lexical Yorùbá, a distorted phrase, or non-lexical vocables of the Alugbinrin and Jómijó kind seen in `alo-ijapa-and-the-babalawo`, the record consulted does not establish. Then the animals wanted to choose another animal, and Afafa, which Parkinson glosses as "a beast like a small dog," said he would go and drink. But the others said no, you make too much noise, and Parkinson notes in an aside that Afafa barks greatly at night. You can do nothing, they told him. And Afafa was annoyed, and went into the bush, holding himself aloof from the others until this day. So they sent another animal, and the fishes and crabs sang again, and he could not drink. So they chose their King the Elephant, and the Elephant too was obliged to say: I have been, but could not drink. Then the stag offered to go, saying he would kill all these beasts with his horns; but when he got to the river he could do nothing. Then said the leopard: I will kill them all with my claws. But the fishes all sang, and he had to come back, having been unable to do anything. While they all consulted, the tortoise came in and complimented them, and said: what do you here? And they said: you go away. But the tortoise said: > I only came to see what is the matter, for three days you have had a meeting. What then is wrong? And some said, go, you are nobody, but others said, stay, never mind his size, hear all his words. And they told him all the circumstances of the case. Then the tortoise said he would assist them, but they all mocked, saying again: go away; now you know what we have done. Go. Still the tortoise remained, and said the sentence the tale turns on: > If I can't do it, yet will I show you the way. Who told you of the river? And they said: the ground-rat. Then answered the tortoise: the matter is simple. Go to him and say, we see the river but we cannot get near it. And they did as he said, and went to the ground-rat, and said: we have seen the river for three days but could not approach. Then said the rat: why did you not come to me at once and tell me the first time? Then he said: call the vulture. And they called him and sent him with one animal to the river, and the rat directed that the vulture should hold himself in readiness when the animal began drinking. When they got to the edge of the river the vulture came down and stood on the bank, and when the other animal began to drink, the fish all called out their chorus. But the vulture dug his beak into the water and, pulling them out, flung them on the bank, so that from that day all the toads and frogs live on the margin of the river; and the animals all drank, while the rats still worship the Ifá, and if you go to their holes you will see the nuts there to this day. Then, having drunk, the animals all went to the tortoise to give thanks, but when they got to the place where he was they could not see him, but trod upon him, and it is their footmarks you see upon his back to this day, while to avoid their treading he still lives under the leaves.