Bùjẹ̀ the Slender
An aetiological tale of the buje dye-shrub, in which a woman who refused every suitor is assaulted by the tortoise and flees into the bush, and which Ellis used to adjudicate a competing published version.
Collector
No collector is named in the source consulted.
How it was performed
Evening telling, treated in `yoruba-alo`. Ellis records that the lament was cried "many times," making it the tale's repeated element. Given the content, nothing in the sources consulted indicates what audience this tale was told to, and this compiler will not assume it was told to young children merely because most àlọ́ were.
The tale in brief
This is an aetiological tale explaining the origin of the bùjẹ̀ shrub, whose fruit pulp blackens on exposure to air and is used to stain the skin. A woman named Bùjẹ̀, who has refused every suitor including the king, is assaulted by Ìjàpá after he tricks her into carrying him, and after he proclaims it publicly she covers her head, runs into the bush, and is transformed into the plant. Recorded in English by A. B. Ellis in 1894. The tale turns on a rape. It is presented here because it is part of the documented record, because Ellis attached to it the most substantial piece of variant criticism in his folklore chapter, and because omitting it would misrepresent what the nineteenth-century Ìjàpá material contains. It is summarised rather than dramatised, and the corpus does not soften what the source says happened.
The tale
Ellis's teller opens: "My alo is about a maiden named Buje, the slender". There was a young maiden named Bùjẹ̀ the slender, whom all the men wanted. The rich wanted her, and she refused. Chiefs wanted her, and she refused. The king wanted her, and she still refused. Ìjàpá came to the king and said: she whom you all want and cannot get, I will get. I will have her, I. And the king said: if you succeed in having her, I will divide my palace into two halves and give you one half. The wager is the same one Ìjàpá makes in `alo-ijapa-and-the-dumb-princess`, with the same stake, half a palace, offered by a king for access to a woman who has refused him. One day Bùjẹ̀ took an earthen pot and went to fetch water. Ìjàpá, seeing this, took his hoe and cleared the path that led to the spring. He found a snake in the grass and killed it, and laid the dead snake in the middle of the path. When Bùjẹ̀ had filled her pot and was coming back, she saw the snake in the path and called out for someone to come and kill it. Ìjàpá ran up with his cutlass, struck at the snake, and wounded himself in the leg. Then he cried out, and the lament is the tale's set piece: Original The Yorùbá is not given. Ellis prints the lament in English only. Literal gloss No Yorùbá source text preserved in the record. Idiomatic English (Ellis's rendering, as printed) Translator: A. B. Ellis > Buje, the slender, has killed me. I was cutting the bush, I was clearing the path for her. She called to me to kill the snake, and I came quickly. Buje, the slender, Buje, the slender, I have killed the snake, but I have wounded myself in the leg. Oh, Buje, the slender, Buje, the slender, take me up on your back like a child. Take me up on your back and hold me close. Notes on the translation. No Yorùbá survives, and nothing is reconstructed. The structure that does survive is the repetition of the name, five times in a short passage, in the manner of a chanted appeal rather than ordinary speech. Ellis records that Ìjàpá "cried this many times", so in performance it is a refrain. The corpus notes that the lament is constructed as an accounting of services rendered, the bush cut, the path cleared, the snake killed, the injury taken, and that every item in it is false: he laid the snake there himself and wounded himself deliberately. It is a claim on obligation built entirely out of manufactured debts. At last Bùjẹ̀ took him up on her back, and he assaulted her. Next day, as soon as it was light, Ìjàpá went to the king and said: did I not tell you that I would have Bùjẹ̀ the slender? Call all the people of the town to assemble on the fifth day, and you will hear what I have to say. On the fifth day the king sent out his crier and the people came, and Ìjàpá cried out: everybody wanted Bùjẹ̀ the slender, and Bùjẹ̀ refused everybody, but I have had her. The king sent a messenger with his stick to summon her. When she came the king said: we have heard that Ìjàpá is your husband; is it so? Bùjẹ̀ was ashamed and could not answer. She covered her head with her cloth and ran away into the bush. And there she was changed into the plant called bùjẹ̀. Ellis notes that the pulp of the fruit of the bùjẹ̀ shrub turns black when exposed to the air, and is used to stain the skin in imitation of tattooing, leaving marks like lamp-black. He records the same metamorphosis independently in his chapter on transformation beliefs, where he lists "the shrub buje, whose fruit is used to stain the skin in imitation of tattoo marks" as a Yorùbá belle of that name who was metamorphosed.
The song
Original
The Yorùbá is not given. Ellis prints the lament in English only.
Literal gloss
- No Yorùbá source text preserved in the record.
Idiomatic English
Translator: A. B. Ellis Buje, the slender, has killed me. I was cutting the bush, I was clearing the path for her. She called to me to kill the snake, and I came quickly. Buje, the slender, Buje, the slender, I have killed the snake, but I have wounded myself in the leg. Oh, Buje, the slender, Buje, the slender, take me up on your back like a child. Take me up on your back and hold me close.
No collector is named in the source consulted.
Variants
Beyond Bowen's version as reported by Ellis, no other collection of this tale was located by this compiler, and no Yorùbá-language text. The record consulted is silent on regional variation.