Author(s): Elphinstone Dayrell (1869-1917)
Year: 1910 [public domain]
Internet Archive: Always available.
Stories (40): The Tortoise with a Pretty Daughter / How a Hunter obtained Money from his Friends the Leopard, Goat, Bush Cat, Cock, and how he got out of repaying them / The Woman with Two Skins / The King's Magic Drum / Ituen and the King's Wife / Of the Pretty Stranger who Killed the King / Why the Bat flies by Night / The Disobedient Daughter who Married a Skull / The King who Married the Cock's Daughter / The Woman, the Ape, and the Child / The Fish and the Leopard's Wife; or, Why the Fish lives in the Water / Why the Bat is Ashamed to be seen in the Daytime / Why the Worms Live Underneath the Ground / The Elephant and the Tortoise; or, Why the Worms are Blind and why the Elephant has Small Eyes / Why a Hawk kills Chickens / Why the Sun and the Moon live in the Sky / Why the Flies Bother the Cows / Why the Cat kills Rats / The Story of the Lightning and the Thunder / Why the Bush Cow and the Elephant are bad Friends / The Cock who caused a Fight between two Towns / The Affair of the Hippopotamus and the Tortoise; or, Why the Hippopotamus lives in the Water / Why Dead People are Buried / Of the Fat Woman who Melted Away / Concerning the Leopard, the Squirrel, and the Tortoise / Why the Moon Waxes and Wanes / The Story of the Leopard, the Tortoise, and the Bush Rat / The King and the Ju Ju Tree / How the Tortoise overcame the Elephant and the Hippopotamus / Of the Pretty Girl and the Seven Jealous Women / How the Cannibals drove the People from Insofan Mountain to the Cross River (Ikom) / The Lucky Fisherman / The Orphan Boy and the Magic Stone / The Slave Girl who tried to Kill her Mistress / The King and the 'Nsiat Bird / Concerning the Fate of Essido and his Evil Companions / Concerning the Hawk and the Owl / The Story of the Drummer and the Alligators / The 'Nsasak Bird and the Odudu Bird / The Election of the King Bird. I have included one story below: The King's Magic Drum.
Style: The stories are told in somewhat literary English, with notes explaining specific words and details.
Frame: none.
Storytellers: There is not an actual introduction by Dayrell, so we do not get any information about just how, where, or why he collected these stories.
Additional Information: Dayrell, who was a colonial administrator in Nigeria, is also the author of another book of Nigerian folktales: Ikom Folk Stories from Southern Nigeria. The introduction to this book is by Andrew Lang who provides a hodge-podge of comparative comments (but very Euro-centric; instead of placing these stories in an African context, he focuses on European parallels). In addition to this story about the trickster tortoise, there are many other tortoise stories in the book, as you can see in this Internet Archive search: Tortoise.
Story Title: The King's Magic Drum
Tradition: Calabar story from southern Nigeria
Notes: I picked this story because it is full of so many great motifs, along with an example of episodic construction: the story of the magic drum segues into the story of the magic fu-fu tree, which is basically a different story entirely but one that plays with the same themes of greed and rule-breaking. Calabar is in southern Nigeria, and the Igbo (Ibo) are one of the peoples of Nigeria, making up about 20% of Nigeria's population today. I have modified some spelling here and there (fu-fu for foo-foo, okra for ocro), and I added a few glosses also, like adding the word "magic" when the word ju-ju is used, ju-ju being a term that refers to a wide variety of western African magical practices and beliefs.
Parallels: This story about on-and-off food magic is also found in the Americas; see "Brother Breeze and the Pear Tree" in Philip Sherlock's collection of Anansi stories from the Caribbean: Anansi the Spider Man.
THE KING'S MAGIC DRUM
There was an ancient king of Calabar. He was a peaceful man, and did not like war. He had a wonderful drum, the property of which, when it was beaten, was always to provide plenty of good food and drink. So whenever any country declared war against him, he used to call all his enemies together and beat his drum; then to the surprise of everyone, instead of fighting the people found tables spread with all sorts of dishes, fish, fu-fu, palm-oil chop, soup, cooked yams and okras, and plenty of palm wine for everybody. In this way he kept all the country quiet and sent his enemies away with full stomachs, and in a happy and contented frame of mind.
There was only one drawback to possessing the drum, and that was: if the owner of the drum walked over any stick on the road or stept over a fallen tree, all the food would immediately go bad, and three hundred Igbo men would appear with sticks and whips and beat the owner of the drum and all the invited guests very severely.
Efriam Duke was a rich man. He had many farms and hundreds of slaves, a large store of kernels on the beach, and many puncheons of palm-oil. He also had fifty wives and many children. The wives were all fine women and healthy; they were also good mothers, and all of them had plenty of children, which was good for the king's house.
Every few months the king used to issue invitations to all his subjects to come to a big feast, even the wild animals were invited; the elephants, hippopotami, leopards, bush cows, and antelopes used to come, for in those days there was no trouble, as they were friendly with man, and when they were at the feast they did not kill one another. All the people and the animals as well were envious of the king's drum and wanted to possess it, but the king would not part with it.
One morning, one of the king's wives took her little daughter down to the spring to wash her, as she was covered with yaws, which are bad sores all over the body. The tortoise happened to be up a palm tree, just over the spring, cutting nuts for his midday meal; and while he was cutting, one of the nuts fell to the ground, just in front of the child. The little girl, seeing the good food, cried for it, and the mother, not knowing any better, picked up the palm nut and gave it to her daughter. Directly the tortoise saw this, he climbed down the tree and asked the woman where his palm nut was. She replied that she had given it to her child to eat.
Then the tortoise, who very much wanted the king's drum, thought he would make plenty palaver over this and force the king to give him the drum, so he said to the mother of the child, "I am a poor man, and I climbed the tree to get food for myself and my family. Then you took my palm nut and gave it to your child. I shall tell the whole matter to the king and see what he has to say when he hears that one of his wives has stolen my food." For this, as everyone knows, is a very serious crime according to native custom.
The queen then said to the tortoise, "I saw your palm nut lying on the ground and, thinking it had fallen from the tree, I gave it to my little girl to eat, but I did not steal it. My husband the king is a rich man, and if you have any complaint to make against me or my child, I will take you before him."
So when she had finished washing her daughter at the spring she took the tortoise to her husband and told him what had taken place. The king then asked the tortoise what he would accept as compensation for the loss of his palm nut, and offered him money, cloth, kernels or palm-oil, all of which things the tortoise refused one after the other.
The king then said to the tortoise, "What will you take? You may have anything you like."
And the tortoise immediately pointed to the king's drum and said that it was the only thing he wanted.
In order to get rid of the tortoise the king said, "Very well, take the drum," but he never told the tortoise about the bad things that would happen to him if he stepped over a fallen tree, or walked over a stick on the road.
The tortoise was very glad at this and carried the drum home in triumph to his wife and said, "I am now a rich man and shall do no more work. Whenever I want food, all I have to do is to beat this drum, and food will immediately be brought to me and plenty to drink."
His wife and children were very pleased when they heard this and asked the tortoise to get food at once, as they were all hungry. This the tortoise was only too pleased to do, as he wished to show off his newly acquired wealth, and was also rather hungry himself, so he beat the drum in the same way as he had seen the king do when he wanted something to eat, and immediately plenty of food appeared, so they all sat down and made a great feast.
The tortoise did this for three days, and everything went well; all his children got fat and had as much as they could possibly eat. He was therefore very proud of his drum, and in order to display his riches he sent invitations to the king and all the people and animals to come to a feast. When the people received their invitations they laughed, as they knew the tortoise was very poor, so very few attended the feast, but the king, knowing about the drum, came, and when the tortoise beat the drum, the food was brought as usual in great profusion, and all the people sat down and enjoyed their meal very much. They were much astonished that the poor tortoise should be able to entertain so many people, and told all their friends what fine dishes had been placed before them and that they had never had a better dinner. The people who had not gone were very sorry when they heard this, as a good feast, at somebody else's expense, is not provided every day. After the feast all the people looked upon the tortoise as one of the richest men in the kingdom, and he was very much respected in consequence. No one, except the king, could understand how the poor tortoise could suddenly entertain so lavishly, but they all made up their minds that if the tortoise ever gave another feast, they would not refuse again.
When the tortoise had been in possession of the drum for a few weeks he became lazy and did no work but went about the country boasting of his riches and took to drinking too much. One day after he had been drinking a lot of palm wine at a distant farm, he started home carrying his drum, but having had too much to drink, he did not notice a stick in the path. He walked over the stick, and of course the drum's magic ju-ju was broken at once. But he did not know this, as nothing happened at the time, and eventually he arrived at his house very tired and still not very well from having drunk too much. He threw the drum into a corner and went to sleep.
When he woke up in the morning the tortoise began to feel hungry, and as his wife and children were calling out for food, he beat the drum, but instead of food being brought, the house was filled with Igbo men, who beat the tortoise, his wife and children, badly. At this the tortoise was very angry and said to himself, "I asked everyone to a feast, but only a few came, and they had plenty to eat and drink. Now, when I want food for myself and my family, the Igbos come and beat me. Well, I will let the other people share the same fate, as I do not see why I and my family should be beaten when I have given a feast to all people."
He therefore at once sent out invitations to all the men and animals to come to a big dinner the next day at three o'clock in the afternoon.
When the time arrived many people came, as they did not wish to lose the chance of a free meal a second time. Even the sick men, the lame, and the blind got their friends to lead them to the feast. When they had all arrived, with the exception of the king and his wives, who sent excuses, the tortoise beat his drum as usual and then quickly hid himself under a bench where he could not be seen. His wife and children he had sent away before the feast, as he knew what would surely happen.
Directly he had beaten the drum three hundred Igbo men appeared with whips and started flogging all the guests, who could not escape as the doors had been fastened. The beating went on for two hours, and the people were so badly punished that many of them had to be carried home on the backs of their friends.
The leopard was the only one who escaped, as directly he saw the Igbo men arrive he knew that things were likely to be unpleasant, so he gave a big spring and jumped right out of the compound.
When the tortoise was satisfied with the beating the people had received, he crept to the door and opened it. The people then ran away, and when the tortoise gave a certain tap on the drum, all the Igbo men vanished.
The people who had been beaten were so angry and made so much palaver with the tortoise that he made up his mind to return the drum to the king the next day. So in the morning the tortoise went to the king and brought the drum with him. He told the king that he was not satisfied with the drum and wished to exchange it for something else; he did not mind so much what the king gave him so long as he got full value for the drum, and he was quite willing to accept a certain number of slaves, or a few farms, or their equivalent in cloth or money.
The king, however, refused to do this, but as he was rather sorry for the tortoise, he said he would present him with a magic fu-fu tree, which would provide the tortoise and his family with food, provided he kept a certain condition. This the tortoise gladly consented to do. Now this fu-fu tree only bore fruit once a year, but every day it dropped fu-fu and soup on the ground. And the condition was, that the owner should gather sufficient food for the day, once and not return again for more. The tortoise, when he had thanked the king for his generosity, went home to his wife and told her to bring her calabashes to the tree. She did so, and they gathered plenty of fu-fu and soup quite sufficient for the whole family for that day and went back to their house very happy.
That night they all feasted and enjoyed themselves. But one of the sons, who was very greedy, thought to himself, "I wonder where my father gets all this good food from? I must ask him."
So in the morning he said to his father, "Tell me where do you get all this fu-fu and soup from?"
But his father refused to tell him, as his wife, who was a cunning woman, said, "If we let our children know the secret of the fu-fu tree, some day when they are hungry, after we have got our daily supply, one of them may go to the tree and gather more, which will break the magic ju-ju of the tree."
But the envious son, being determined to get plenty of food for himself, decided to track his father to the place where he obtained the food. This was rather difficult to do, as the tortoise always went out alone and took the greatest care to prevent anyone following him. The boy, however, soon thought of a plan and got a calabash with a long neck and a hole in the end. He filled the calabash with wood ashes, which he obtained from the fire, and then got a bag which his father always carried on his back when he went out to get food. In the bottom of the bag the boy then made a small hole and inserted the calabash with the neck downwards, so that when his father walked to the fu-fu tree he would leave a small trail of wood ashes behind him.
Then, when his father, having slung his bag over his back as usual, set out to get the daily supply of food, his greedy son followed the trail of the wood ashes, taking great care to hide himself and not to let his father perceive that he was being followed. At last the tortoise arrived at the tree and placed his calabashes on the ground and collected the food for the day, the boy watching him from a distance. When his father had finished and went home the boy also returned, and having had a good meal, said nothing to his parents, but went to bed.
The next morning he got some of his brothers, and after his father had finished getting the daily supply, they went to the tree and collected much fu-fu and soup, and so broke the magic ju-ju.
At daylight the tortoise went to the tree as usual, but he could not find it, as during the night the whole bush had grown up, and the fu-fu tree was hidden from sight. There was nothing to be seen but a dense mass of prickly tie-tie palm.
Then the tortoise at once knew that someone had broken the magic ju-ju of the tree and had gathered fu-fu from the tree twice in the same day, so he returned very sadly to his house and told his wife. He then called all his family together and told them what had happened and asked them who had done this evil thing. They all denied having had anything to do with the tree, so the tortoise in despair brought all his family to the place where the fu-fu tree had been but which was now all prickly tie-tie palm and said, "My dear wife and children, I have done all that I can for you, but you have broken my magic ju-ju; you must therefore for the future live on the tie-tie palm."
So they made their home underneath the prickly tree, and from that day you will always find tortoises living under the prickly tie-tie palm as they have nowhere else to go to for food.
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