The Twin Brothers
A tale of royal twins hidden from a law requiring their death, one of whom drowns the other for the throne and is exposed when first a fish and then the river itself sing what lies in the water.
This is a tale about twin brothers born to a king's favourite wife at a time when the custom was to destroy twins at birth along with their mother. The king cannot enforce the law and hides them. They grow up inseparable, learn of their royal birth, and cast stones to decide which shall claim the vacant throne. The one who loses drowns the one who wins, and is exposed when first a fish and then the river sings what is in the water. Recorded in English by M. I. Ogumefu in 1929 .
It is the only tale this compiler could source that treats the twin-infanticide custom directly, which makes it worth recording despite the thinness of its provenance.
A note on twins
The tale's premise requires care, because the corpus documents Yorùbá reverence for twins at length. Ìbejì are held in high honour, twin figures are carved and cared for, and Yorùbáland has among the highest twinning rates in the world; ibeji treats the subject.
This tale reports an earlier custom of destroying twins at birth . The corpus records that the tale asserts this, and does not itself adjudicate the history from a 1929 popular collection. What can be said is that the change from killing twins to honouring them is documented in the historical literature as a real shift, and that a narrative preserving the older practice as a thing that had to be defied is consistent with a tradition that later reversed itself. The relationship between this tale and that history is not something Ogumefu discusses, and this compiler has not verified the tale against the twin scholarship. ibeji is the file that owns the question.
Note also that the tale's own moral energy is against the law: the king "had not the heart to put this cruel law into execution," and Ogumefu's narration calls it cruel . Whatever its date, the tale is told from a position that already regards killing twins as wrong.
The tale
A certain Yorùbá king, Ajaka, had a favourite wife of whom he was very fond; but she gave birth to twins .
At that time it was the universal custom to destroy twins immediately at birth, and the mother with them . But the king had not the heart to put this cruel law into execution, and he secretly charged one of his nobles to conduct the royal mother and her babes to a remote place where they might live in safety.
There the twin brothers grew to manhood, and loved one another greatly . They were inseparable, and neither of them had any pleasure except in the company of the other. Ogumefu gives one line for this that is worth quoting:
When one brother began to speak, the other completed his phrase, so harmonious were their thoughts and inclinations.
Their mother, before she died, informed them of their royal birth, and from that moment they spent the time vainly regretting their exile and wishing that the law of the country had made it possible for them to reign .
At last they received news that the king their father was dead, leaving no heir, and it seemed to the brothers that one of them ought to go to the capital and claim the throne. But which?
To settle the point they decided to cast stones, and the one who made the longer throw should claim the throne, and afterwards send for his brother to share in his splendour.
The lot fell on the younger of the twins. He set off to the capital, announced himself as the Ọlọ́fin's son, and soon became king with the consent of all the people. As soon as possible he sent for his brother, who henceforth lived with him in the palace and was treated with honour and distinction.
But jealousy began to overcome brotherly affection, and one day as he walked with the king by the side of the river, he pushed his brother suddenly into the water, where he was drowned.
He then gave out in the palace that his brother was weary of kingship and had left the country, desiring him to reign in his stead. The king had certainly disappeared, and as no suspicion fell on the twin brother, he was made king, and so realised his secret ambition.
Some time later, happening to pass by the very spot where his brother had been drowned, he saw a fish rise to the surface of the water and begin to sing:
The Yorùbá is not given. Ogumefu prints the song in English only .
(No Yorùbá text recorded in source)
Your brother lies here, Your brother lies here.
Translator: M. I. Ogumefu
The king was very much afraid. He took up a sharp stone and killed the fish.
But another day when he passed the spot, attended by his nobles and shielded by the royal umbrella made of the skins of rare animals, the river itself rose into waves and sang the same two lines.
In astonishment the courtiers stopped to listen. Their suspicions were aroused, and when they looked into the water they found the body of the king.
Thus the secret of his disappearance was disclosed, and the wicked brother was rejected in horror by his people. At this disgrace he took poison and so died.
No Yorùbá survives and nothing is reconstructed. What survives is the shape: two identical lines, sung twice in the tale by two different singers, the second time in public. It is the shortest song in this section and it does the most work, since it is simultaneously the accusation, the evidence and the location of the body.
What the tale does
The mechanism is that a witness cannot be killed because the witness is the place itself. The murderer's first response is competent: a fish sings, and he kills the fish with a stone, and the immediate problem goes away. His mistake is treating the fish as the source. When he returns, the river sings, and a river cannot be silenced with a stone.
The staging of the second singing is where the tale's craft sits, and the corpus marks this as analysis. He is not alone. He is "attended by his nobles and shielded by the royal umbrella made of the skins of rare animals," which is to say he is at the height of his kingship, in full public display, with the whole court present. The tale has arranged for the accusation to be made at the exact moment the largest number of important people are standing beside him. owe-secrets-gossip-rumour collects the proverb material on what does not stay hidden.
The second mechanism is the inversion of the opening. The tale begins with two brothers so close that one finished the other's sentences, and it ends with one of them killing the other for a throne. That opening line is not decoration; it is the measure against which the ending is read, and it is why the crime registers as something worse than ordinary murder. owe-friendship-trust-betrayal carries the related material.
Note the resolution. The courtiers find the body, the secret is disclosed, and the brother is "rejected in horror by his people." No trial, no execution, no royal command: the sanction is communal rejection, and it is sufficient to kill him, because he then takes poison. This is the same structure the analysis of Ìjàpá àti Ìgbín in yoruba-alo identifies as characteristic, where the community's verdict rather than an authority's punishment is what settles a matter. Compare alo-the-poor-woman-and-the-aranran-bird, where the king asks the assembled people what should be done before pronouncing.
The corpus notes finally that the throne was won by lot and lost by murder, and that the tale does not treat the lot as unjust. Casting stones was the brothers' own agreed method, and the loser accepted it long enough to be sent for, housed and honoured. What destroys him is not the unfairness of the outcome but his inability to live inside an agreement he made.
Ọlọ́fin
The younger twin announces himself as "the Ọlọ́fin's son." Ọlọ́fin is a royal title, and its use here rather than the name Ajaka given at the start is a slight inconsistency in the printed text that Ogumefu does not resolve. The corpus records it as printed and does not smooth it.
Variants
No Yorùbá-language version and no second collection of this tale were located by this compiler. The record consulted is silent on variation, and on whether the king Ajaka named here is intended as the historical Ọ̀yọ́ ruler of that name.
Performance context
Evening telling, treated in yoruba-alo. The song is two lines and repeats, which makes it the most easily joined chorus in the section, and it is sung at the two moments the tale turns. Given Ogumefu's stated removal of songs (alo-ogumefu-1929-as-a-source), it is possible that more of this tale was sung than the printed text shows.