Bùjẹ̀ the Slender

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.