The King and Kíní-kíní
A tale in which a bird left off the king's invitation list sings the cleared bush back into growth three times, and the king's son, who lost an ear over the bird's escape, recaptures him by drumming him into a dance.
This is a tale about a king who summons all the birds to clear a piece of ground and forgets to invite one of them. The excluded bird, kíní-kíní, sings the cleared bush back into growth every afternoon until he is caught with birdlime. He turns out to void cowries when struck. He escapes through the king's small son, who is beaten and loses an ear for it, and who then recaptures the bird by building a drum and playing him into a dance. Recorded in English by A. B. Ellis in 1894 .
It carries two songs, a drum text, and glosses of three named Yorùbá drums, which makes it the richest single tale in Ellis's collection for performance material.
The bird and the tree
Ellis identifies both in footnotes. Kíní-kíní is "a small black and white bird, sometimes called the doctor-bird," named from its cry, which resembles the words kini-kini . The odan is "a variety of ficus, which is planted in streets and open spaces as a shade-tree" . A bird named for its own call, perched in a tree people plant deliberately for shade in public places, is the tale's whole staging: the saboteur is unmistakable by sound and sits where everyone can see him.
The tale
Ellis's teller opens: "My alo is something about a certain king" .
One day the king called all the birds to come and clear a piece of ground . But he forgot to call kíní-kíní.
All the birds came. They set to work and cleared a large piece of ground. In the middle of it was an odan tree. At midday, when the sun was hot and all the birds had left their work for the day, kíní-kíní came and perched on the odan tree, and began to sing.
The king sent to invite my companions, Kini-kini. He assembled all the children of the folk with wings, Kini-kini. Grow grass, sprout bush, Kini-kini. Come, let us go to the house, Kini-kini. And there we can dance the bata, Kini-kini. If the bata will not sound we will dance the dundun, Kini-kini. If the dundun will not sound we will dance the gangan, Kini-kini.
- kini-kini the bird's name, which is also its cry
- bàtá, dùndún, gángan three named drums, glossed below
Idiomatic English as printed above; Ellis renders the sense-lines into English and keeps the refrain and the drum names in Yorùbá.
Translator: A. B. Ellis
As in alo-the-poor-woman-and-the-aranran-bird, what survives is a partial song: a Yorùbá refrain carrying the rhythm with English sense-lines between. The refrain is the bird's own name, so the song is self-naming in the manner of oríkì, and every second line the singer announces who is doing this. yoruba-oriki treats the form.
The song's structure is worth setting out because the translation flattens it. Two lines of grievance, "the king sent to invite my companions / he assembled all the children of the folk with wings," then the working line, "grow grass, sprout bush," then four lines that are pure celebration, a party the bird proposes to go to. The curse sits in the middle and is one line long. The bulk of the song is the excluded bird describing the dance he was not invited to, and then inviting himself: "come, let us go to the house, and there we can dance the bata."
Next morning, when the birds came to work, they found the ground they had cleared all grown over with grass and bush . They told the king, and the king said: that is nothing; clear it again.
They cleared it again and at midday went away . Kíní-kíní came back and sang his song again, and again the grass and bush sprang up. The next day the birds informed the king. No matter, said the king, clear the ground again.
A third time they cleared it and went away, and a third time kíní-kíní came and sang so that the grass and bush sprang up .
The next day the birds asked the king for authority to seize the person who had played this trick . The king said: very well.
Then all the birds went back, put a great quantity of birdlime on the odan tree, and went home . Next morning they cleared the ground again, and at midday went and hid in the bush close by.
Kíní-kíní came and perched on the odan. He sang his song, and the grass and bush grew up. Then he wanted to fly away, and found himself held by the birdlime.
All the birds flocked to the tree and seized him and brought him to the king, saying: behold the one who has caused us so much trouble.
The king made him come near and asked: what have I done to you, that you should act thus? And kíní-kíní said:
When you called all my companions to clear the ground you left me out, therefore I have revenged myself.
When the king heard this, he raised his hand to give the bird a slap.
Pardon, pardon, said kíní-kíní. If I find any cowries I will give them to you. When I get any kola-nuts I will bring them to you.
The king gave him a slap, and kíní-kíní voided cowries till the room was filled.
What is this, said the king, much astonished, and raised his hand again. I beg pardon, said the bird, repeating the same promise. The king slapped him again, and the bird voided still more cowries than the first time.
The king sent messengers through all the country and summoned all his people to assemble on the fifth day to see a marvel. All the people promised to come.
Then the king put kíní-kíní in a basket, covered the top, and went out. His little son, who wanted to give the bird a slap himself, uncovered the basket, and the bird flew away.
When the king came home he went to the basket, found no bird in it, and called his son. Where is the kíní-kíní, he asked. The boy answered that he had gone to play with it and the bird had flown away.
The king took the little boy and beat him. He beat him, he beat him, and in his anger he cut off one of his ears. Go quick, he said. Go quick, and find the bird. And he pushed him out of the house.
The boy made a little drum and went out on the road to the bush. He sat down in a place where the birds were accustomed to come, and began to beat on his drum, and the drum said:
Tinliki, tinliki, tinli-puru. Tinli-puru.
Literal gloss: Tinliki, tinliki, tinli-puru (onomatopoeic drum rhythm syllables; untranslated vocables)
Idiomatic English: Tinliki, tinliki, tinli-puru. Tinli-puru. (drum sound pattern)
Translator: A. B. Ellis
Notes. This is drummed sound rather than words, printed as syllables. The corpus treats the Yorùbá talking drum and its rendering of speech in yoruba-drum-poetry; what is preserved here is a rhythm pattern, not a sentence, and no meaning is supplied for it. Ellis offers none.
All the birds flocked round, and each danced in turn. When it came to kíní-kíní's turn, he did not want to dance. All the birds begged him, but he refused.
Then the boy played quicker. He beat, and beat, and beat, while all the birds begged kíní-kíní.
At last the bird began to yield. He twisted here and he twisted there. He flew three times round the head of the little boy. The boy continued beating as if he had not noticed anything, and kíní-kíní began to dance.
He turned here and twisted there. He turned, and twisted, and turned, till he came quite close up to the drum. Then the little boy thrust out his hand and seized him by the leg. All the other birds flew away.
The boy brought kíní-kíní to his father. I have caught him, he said. Here he is. And then the line the tale is built to arrive at:
Won't you do something now to restore my ear?
Then the king got up. He took a dead leaf and put it in the place of the ear. And the dead leaf softened and changed into an ear.
The drums
Ellis glosses the three named drums, and the note is a genuinely useful piece of period documentation:
Bata, dundun, and gangan, are the names of different kinds of drums. The bata is a tall drum, the dundun is hung with little bells, and the gangan is properly a war-drum. These names are onomatopoeic. Each drum has its own measure and rhythm, and people say "to dance the bata, to dance the dundun, or to dance the gangan," just as we say, "to dance a waltz, to dance a polka, or to dance a quadrille" .
The comparison to European dance names is the useful part: it establishes that each drum names a distinct rhythm that a dancer performs to, so listing three drums in a song is listing three dances. The corpus treats these instruments properly in yoruba-drum-poetry, and the descriptions here are Ellis's own and are recorded as a nineteenth-century observer's account rather than as the corpus's description of the instruments.
What the tale does
The mechanism is that a small omission is answered with total obstruction, and the tale refuses to treat the response as disproportionate. Kíní-kíní's own statement of his case is one sentence, it is entirely accurate, and nobody contradicts it: you left me out, therefore I have revenged myself. The king's question, "what have I done to you," is answered so completely that he does not argue. He hits the bird instead.
What follows is the tale's real subject, and the corpus marks this as analysis. Every subsequent disaster in the tale comes from the king's failure to attend to persons. He forgot to invite one bird; he could not be bothered to hear the birds' complaint the first two times, saying "that is nothing" and "no matter"; he discovered a bird that produces cowries and immediately made it an exhibition to be shown to the whole country on the fifth day; and when a child let it escape, he beat that child and cut off his ear. The omission at the start and the mutilation at the end are the same failure at different scales, and owe-chiefs-kings-authority collects the proverb material on rulers who do not see the people in front of them.
The son's recapture is the counter-argument, and it is built out of exactly what his father lacks. He does not chase the bird or set a trap for it. He makes a drum, goes to where birds gather, and plays until the birds themselves start begging kíní-kíní to join in. The bird is caught by being included: he is invited to dance, which is the one thing he wanted in the first place and the whole content of his song. The boy's method is to give the bird what the king withheld, and then to hold his nerve, beating "as if he had not noticed anything" while the bird circles his head three times.
The closing exchange is the point of the tale. The boy does not ask for a reward, praise, or his father's approval. He asks for his ear back, which is to say he asks his father to undo what his father did. And the king can: he takes a dead leaf and it becomes an ear. The corpus notes that this makes the mutilation retrospectively worse rather than better, since it establishes that the king had the power to repair it all along and used it only when asked directly by the child he injured, after that child had solved the problem for him.
Variants
No Yorùbá-language version and no second collection of this tale were located by this compiler. The record consulted is silent on variation.
Performance context
Evening telling, treated in yoruba-alo. This tale gives a teller more to work with than any other in Ellis: a song sung four times, a drum text, a dance sequence with the bird twisting and circling, and a beating. If the professional teller carried a drum, as Ellis records at p. 243 and as alo-the-opening-formula-and-the-teller discusses, then the drum text in this tale is a cue for the instrument in the teller's own hands, and the audience would have heard tinliki, tinliki, tinli-puru played rather than spoken.