Oral Literature in Africa (49 page)

10
  Many loyalists were in fact burned alive.

11
  The previous deputy.

12
  See also the detailed description of such songs in electioneering at a local level in Western Nigeria in Beier 1960.

13
  See Nurse 1964; Sachs 1966, also, on Ugandan rebel songs in the context of an independent African state, K. Alnaes (unpublished).

14
  Cf. the Shona praise poems with modern political overtones (Fortune 1964: 108) and the use of ‘griots’ for electioneering in Senegambia (Gamble 1957: 80).

11.  Children’s Songs and Rhymes

Lullabies and nursery rhymes. Children’s games and verses; Southern Sudanese action songs
.

Little systematic interest has been taken in children’s verse in Africa, and though isolated instances have been recorded this has been done without any discussion of context or local significance.
¹
On the published evidence it is not clear, for instance, how far the previous lack of a distinct body of schoolchildren in most African societies affected the specificity of children’s verse as distinct from that of other groups, or how far the oral compositions now current in the increasing number of schools parallel similar phenomena recorded elsewhere. Nevertheless, some remarks on what is known to occur in Africa may be relevant here, not least if its shortcomings provoke further research or synthesis.
²
I shall discuss first lullabies (and other songs designed for children but primarily transmitted by adults) and secondly the rhymes and songs that tend to be for a slightly older age-group and are regarded as belonging to the children themselves in their own play.

I

Lullabies provide a good example of the way in which what might be expected to be a simple, ‘natural’, and spontaneous expression of feeling in all societies—a mother singing to her child—is in fact governed by convention and affected by the particular constitution of the society.

One major factor is the question of who has the main responsibility for looking after a child. Among the Ngoni, for instance, a kind of upper-class group in Malawi, there were few lullabies: most Ngoni women employed nurse-maids from other groups to look after their children. Something similar was true among the rank-conscious Nyoro of Uganda. There, however, the nurses commonly sang their own lullabies to their charges, expressing their feelings about the mothers’ attitude:

Ha! that mother, who takes her food alone.

Ha! that mother, before she has eaten.

Ha! that mother she says, ‘Lull the children for me’.

Ha! that mother when she has finished to eat.

Ha! that mother she says ‘Give the child to me’.

(Bansisa 1936: 110)

One of the main
raisons d’être
of such lullabies among Nyoro nurses would in fact seem to be, not primarily the lulling of the child at all, but an indirect comment on their own position, ‘for they were afraid of making direct requests to their masters and therefore they always expressed what they wanted in lullabies’. (Bansisa 1936: 110)

Other African lullabies fit more easily into our common picture of a mother concentrated on the needs of her child; but even in these the tone and purpose may vary. Some lay the greatest emphasis on the idea of rocking the child to sleep, often brought out by the rhythm and liquid vowel sounds of the original. Here, for instance, is the first verse of a long Swahili lullaby:

Lululu, mwana (wa) lilanji,

Luluhi, mwana (wa) kanda!

Luluhi, mwana (wa) lilanji,

Lululu, mwana (wa) kanda!

(Lululu, Kindchen, warum weinst du?

Lululu, verwöhntes kleines Kind!

Lululu, Kindchen, warum weinst du?

Lululu, verwöhntes kleines Kind!)

(Von Tiling 1927: 291–2)

and the same soothing repetitive sounds come in one of the commonest Zulu lullabies:

Thula, thula, thula, mntanami,

Ukhalelani na?

Ushaywa ubani?

Thula mntanami, umam’akekho

(Peace, peace, peace, my child,

Why weepest thou?

Who annoys?

Peace, child, mother is not home).

(Dhlomo 1947: 7)
³

Other songs seem to represent more the mother’s delight in playing with her child than a desire to soothe it,
⁴
or a detached and good-humoured comment as in the lullaby a Dogon mother sings to the child on her back:

Où est partie la mère du petit?

Partie puiser de l’eau.

Pas revenue de puiser l’eau.

Partie piler la feuille de baobab

Pas revenue de piler la feuille

Partie préparer les plats

Pas revenue de préparer les plats

Sur la falaise, sur la falaise, un oeuf de poule est suspendu!

where the last line vividly pictures the way the little child’s bottom is perched like an egg on his mother’s steep back (Griaule 1938
a
: 226). The Kamba mother also pictures her own absorption in her child and her neglect of other things for his sake, viewing her own attitude with a certain detachment:

Mother,
⁵
mother of the child, leave off crying, poverty!

You have come, you have surpassed me in crying.
⁶

And even if it is the rain which rains,

I put away the tree,
⁷
I shall call my mother.

And even if it is the Masai,
⁸

Who carries spear and shield, I put away the tree.

I shall call you, I shall lull to sleep on my arm, mother.

I shall not hear the goats who are bleating. (Lindblom iii, 1934: 51)

Like many other lullabies, those of the Rundi are characterized by rhythm and cadence as well as the use of onomatopoeic words. But they also seem notably meditative in tone. The mother expresses and comments on her own feelings and on her expectations of the attitudes of others:

O ce qui me donne du travail, je t’aime.

Demain de bonne heure nous causerons.

De très bonne heure, des qu’il fera clair.

Viens que je te caresse (en te donnant de petits coups).

Endors-toi, mets fin à ma solitude.

Ecoutons s’il y a des ennemis.

Mon roi, mon roi.

Tranquille! que je te frotte d’odoriférants

Qui t’accompagnent chez le roi (qui te font arriver jusque chez le roi).

Tranquille! sommeille sur le dos.

Ta belle-mère est stérile.

Elle te donnerait du tabac (au lieu de nourriture).

Même si la bouillie ne manque pas.

(Zuure 1932: 352)

There are also rhymes or songs for grown-ups to recite to children, distinct both from lullabies and from ordinary adult songs. The Zulu are said to have many ‘nursery songs’ in both rural and urban areas, among them one made up of an amusing combination of clicks to teach children the correct pronunciation (
Qhuweqha weqhuweqha, / Qhingqilithi qh!
etc.) (Vilakazi 1938: 121). Several examples of these rhymes for children are included in Griaule’s comprehensive study
Jeux dogons
. One is for finger play:

Le petit doigt a dit; oncle j’ai faim

L’annulaire a dit: nous allons recevoir (à manger)

Le majeur a dit: demandons

L’index a dit: volons

Le pouce a dit: je n’en suis pas (pour voler).

Depuis ce temps, le pouce s’est ecarte des autres doigts. (Griaule 1938
a
: 224)

The next song is to stop a small child crying by tickling up his arm:

Singe noir

Dans la main de mon fils

Ai mis un pélyé [fruit] cassé

L’a enlevé puis l’a mangé

Puis ça, puis ça, puis ça.

Ça, gêrgêrgêr ….

(Griaule 1938
a
: 225)

There does not seem to be evidence of a large body of specialized nursery rhymes in any African society to the same extent as in English tradition, for example. However, it is hard to believe that it is only in Zulu and Dogon—two of the most comprehensively studied African cultures—that rhymes of the kind quoted can be found, and it is very possible that further research will reveal similar nursery-rhyme forms in many other African societies.
⁹

II

Like children elsewhere, African children seem to have the familiar range of games and verse for their own play—nonsense songs, singing games, catch rhymes, and so on. They also engage in riddle-asking and in other games and dances that cannot be treated here (see Ch. 15).

Before quoting instances of such children’s verses, one has to sound a note of caution. Obviously, what is to count as ‘children’s verse’ in a given society depends on the local classification of ‘children’, and one cannot necessarily assume that the ‘children’s songs’ of another society are directly comparable with those of one’s own. In English society, for example, the contemporary concept of ‘a child’ is closely connected with the idea of a school population, a partly separate community of school children with their conventions and lore to some extent opposed to those of adults. It was suitable therefore that the main sources for the Opies’ classic work (1959) on children’s verse should have been the schools. But this close association of children and formal schools does not hold true in all areas of Africa—and was even less true in the past—and one cannot necessarily assume the same clear-cut separation between the interests and orientations of children and those of adults.

This is not to say that there are no local or traditional ways of marking off the age-group of children from that of the adult world, merely that these do not necessarily parallel those of Western Europe. It is common for a ceremonial initiation to mark a clear dividing-line between childhood and maturity, often taking place at around the age of puberty, but in some societies (or with some individuals) this may be much earlier or much later. In some cases, initiation may be as young as, say, seven or eight years old, and the special initiation songs that are so often a feature of this ceremony might seem to parallel songs sung by similar age-groups in other societies. In fact they may be quite different in intention; they are to be sung by the children
qua
initiates (i.e. officially no longer children) and are often taught them by their elders. They cannot then be regarded as children’s songs in the sense we are using the term here. In some African societies, again, there is strong pressure from children, as they get older, to prove themselves ready to enter the adult world. This means that, besides having their own verse and games, they are likely to try to master certain of the songs and other activities regarded as suitable for adults, and, indeed, may be encouraged to do so. Among the Ila and Tonga of Zambia, for instance,
ziyabilo
songs in praise of cattle and other possessions are sung by grown-up men; but many of these adult
ziyabilo
were in fact composed by their singers when they were still young boys minding their father’s cattle in the bush. The child thus models himself and his verse on his father and other adult men rather than concentrating on a special type appropriate to children (Jones 1943: 12–13).

One way in which children are often separated from other groups is in the kind of work they are expected to do, and there are sometimes special songs associated with such tasks. These include the light-hearted songs sung by the young Limba boys who spend long weeks in the rainy seasons in farm shelters scaring away the birds and animals from the ripening rice, or the children’s song among the Dogon, sung to discourage various birds from plundering the millet:

Oiseau, sors!

goro sors!

bandey sors!

Pour vous le mil n’est pas mûr.

II n’est pas l’heure de manger le mil vert

Diarrhée du ventre.

Où il est parti le guérisseur de la diarrhée?

II est parti à Banan
¹⁰

II est parti à Banan; ce n’est pas le moment de venir.

Oiseau sors!

Tourterelle sors!

Pigeon sors.

(Griaule 1938
a
: 220)

If the exact nature of ‘children’s verse’ must be seen as depending partly on the particular ideas of each society about age structure, assignment of tasks, and behaviour expected of the various age-groups, it does nevertheless seem that in most African societies children do to some extent separate themselves off from adults in at least some play activities and have at least some rhymes and songs of their own. This is encouraged by the fact that many of them live in large family groupings, with much time spent outside their own homes in the open air rather than in small, enclosed family circles. Nowadays, too, there is the additional factor of the increasing number of schools.

Nonsense songs, tongue-twisting rhymes, and trick verses are all documented. Ibo girls, for instance, sing a nonsense rhyme which could be translated as ‘Oh, oh, oh, oh, / girls agree / tall girl, Iruka / koko yams, / sour, sour koko yams, / he goat sour’,
¹¹
and tongue-twisters are recorded among the Mbete of West Central Africa and others:

Kusa le podi kudi
— Le liseron enlace le poteau.

Kudi le podi kusa
— Le poteau enlace le liseron

and

Mva o kwadi nama
— Le chien attrapa l’animal.

nama o txwi mva —
L’animal mordit le chien.

(Adam 1940: 133)

The nonsense frequently takes the form of a kind of follow-up or progressive rhyme, usually in dialogue. In one form or another, this type of verbal play has been recorded from several parts of the continent.
¹²
The sequences may be just for fun or may also include a definite competitive content making up a kind of game. This is true of the Moru of the Southern Sudan where the children divide into two sides, one of which asks the questions. The answer depends on remembering the right sequence of words quickly enough, and those who get it wrong are ridiculed: