Oral Poetry from Africa
A Hausa poem from northern Nigeria. This is an Islamic poem, composed in writing but intended for public performance. The prospect of the day of resurrection is a warning to all who do evil.
Know you that tyranny will be darkness on the Day of Resurrection,
It is the word of the Messenger of God, Muhammed…
The Fulani creation myth from northern Nigeria. Doondari is the creator. The five elements in the first half of the poem (stone, iron, fire, water and air) are carefully balanced against the five stages of man’s suffering and triumph in the second half.
At the beginning there was a huge drop of milk.
Then Doondari came and he created the stone
This is one of the most important poems of Ifá, the divination system of the Yorùbá. In this long and fascinating poem we meet many of the principal Yorùbá Òrìṣà (gods) and each is characteristically described. But the central argument is that each man’s fate is ultimately decided by his own character.
Orunmila said that one always bends down when entering the doorway.
Ifa asked the question,
‘Who among you Gods could follow your devotee
to a distant journey over the seas?’..
A Yorùbá Oríkì (praise-poem) from Nigeria. Ògún is the god of iron and metallurgy. He is pictured as a blacksmith, but presides over every activity in which iron is used — hoes for cultivating, cutlasses for reaping, guns for hunting, cars for travelling, and so on. He therefore becomes a god of creativity and of harvesting, of hunting and of warfare, of invention and exploration and destruction.
Ogun kills on the right and destroys on the right.
Ogun kills on the left and destroys on the left.
A Yorùbá Oríkì (praise-poem) from Nigeria. As the god of fate, the uncontrollable element in human life, Eshu (Èṣù in Yorùbá) is praised as a kind of trickster god, bringing about the unexpected, the contradictory and the downright impossible.
Eshu turns right into wrong, wrong into right.
When he is angry, he hits a stone until it bleeds.
This is part of the hour-long dirge chanted by the Yorùbá poet Omobayode Arowa at the state funeral of Lieutenant Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi. Adekunle Fajuyi was Military Governor of Western Nigeria until he was killed, along with Major-General Aguyi Ironsi, in July 1966. His state funeral was held in January 1967.
Dekunle, handsome man, hail!
And farewell!..
