The Tortoise and Tela
An Ọ̀yọ́ variant of the magic yam-rock tale in which the rock opens to a song rather than a command, and Ìjàpá betrays his friend by bringing the whole country to empty the store.
Collector
No collector is named in the source consulted.
How it was performed
Evening telling, treated in `yoruba-alo`. The spell is sung three times in this tale, by Tela on the first visit, by the tortoise on the raid, and by Tela again at the rescue, so the audience has a refrain to carry and the third performance of it is the one that reveals the empty store. That structure, a song that changes meaning through repetition without changing words, is the same device used in `alo-ijapa-and-the-babalawo`.
The tale in brief
This is an Ọ̀yọ́ telling of the magic yam-rock tale, in which the friend who holds the secret is a man named Tela rather than a lizard, the rock opens to a sung spell rather than a spoken command, and Ìjàpá's offence is not merely loading himself too heavily but bringing the entire country to strip the store bare. It ends with the tortoise smashed on the rock and reassembled by insects, the joins visible on his back. Collected by John Parkinson and published in 1909. The closely related version in which the lizard holds the secret is `alo-ijapa-and-the-rock-of-yams`, and the two are compared with the other shell-origin narratives in `alo-why-the-tortoise-shell-is-marked`.
The tale
The tortoise was a very sensible animal, and very friendly with a man named Tela. There was a dearth of food in the land. Tela knew where he could get food and the tortoise did not, and now and again Tela went to this place and ate there while the tortoise was sick with hunger. Then the tortoise said: you are a friend, yet you never show me where you get food; you look fat, but I get nothing to eat. And Tela answered, in a line that tells the audience exactly how the tale will end: > I thought of taking you, but I know you to be wise, and I fear that you will go to my place without my permission, so that I do not tell you. One day, however, Tela promised to take him, and when they came to the place the tortoise found it was a rock. And Tela sang. Original The Yorùbá is not given. Parkinson prints the song in English only. Literal gloss No Yorùbá text recorded; literal gloss unavailable. Idiomatic English (as printed, in the interpreter's phrasing) > This rock must open because the owner of the house has come! I "Prince Tela." Translator: Unnamed Yorùbá interpreter Notes on the translation. No Yorùbá survives for this spell, so the three-layer treatment cannot be given and nothing is reconstructed. What can be observed is that the English is visibly not idiomatic English, and Parkinson told us why: he kept the interpreter's phrasing. The broken apposition at the end, "I 'Prince Tela'," reads like a name being asserted rather than a sentence being completed, which is what an opening formula does. The corpus notes as analysis that a spell of this kind works by naming the speaker's right to enter, so the awkwardness in English may be preserving something real about the Yorùbá rather than merely failing to render it. The rock opened and they went inside and ate to their satisfaction. Afterwards the tortoise tried to take food home to his wife, and they parted, each to his own home. On the second day, when Tela was away, the tortoise went around the country and invited all the people to come to Tela's place and get food. They made arrangements for a certain day, and when they arrived at the rock the tortoise sang the spell himself, and the rock opened, not knowing it was the tortoise who sang. And the animals finished all the food in the store. When they had finished, the tortoise said: I will be the last to go. So they all went, and while the tortoise was going, the middle of the rock fell on him. In a short while Tela grew hungry and went to the rock to feed, and saw the head of the tortoise projecting. And Tela said: how is it that I find you here? When I brought you here the day before yesterday you promised you would not come, but now you have come and friends with you. But the tortoise said: get me out and don't talk. And Tela, being hungry, began to sing as before, and the rock opened. Now Tela was very hungry, and, not staying to talk because of the food he thought lay before him, went in and saw that all was eaten and nothing was left. He was so angry that he caught the tortoise and was about to crush him, when the tortoise said: have patience and I will tell you all. Then, he continued, to admit a fact, there is something that always makes me tell things I ought not to tell. Then said the hungry Tela: I have no time for this sort of thing. And he broke him on the rock and smashed him all to pieces. Afterwards the big ants and all manner of insects collected and put him together again. They all did the best they could, but they could not mend his back properly, and so the joins where they mended him show on the back of the tortoise to this day.
The song
Original
The Yorùbá is not given. Parkinson prints the song in English only.
Literal gloss
- No Yorùbá text recorded; literal gloss unavailable.
Idiomatic English
This rock must open because the owner of the house has come! I "Prince Tela." Translator: Unnamed Yorùbá interpreter
No collector is named in the source consulted.
Variants
See `alo-why-the-tortoise-shell-is-marked` for the full comparison. The immediate relatives of this tale are Ellis's lizard version and the Bouche 1880 Nago version summarised by Parkinson's editor, which follows Ellis's plot rather than this one. Parkinson's own sequence supplies two further shell aetiologies with entirely different plots, `alo-the-dog-and-the-tortoise` and `alo-the-tortoise-helps-the-animals`.