Congo life and folklore

by John H. Weeks

On the other hand gullibility, dupability, utter stupidity and lack of foresight are associated with bulk, i. e. the larger animals are, as a rule, thoroughly fooled. They have laughed many a time at the way the Gazelle “fooled” the Leopard, yet I do not think there was one who would not rather have been the Leopard than the Gazelle--they were not so good as their philosophy.

Greediness in eating is condemned by all natives, and it is interesting to note that the only time, in these stories, the Gazelle is caught and punished it is his greediness that leads to his downfall; and, again, in the story of the Gazelle and the Palm-rat, the latter is choked, not so much because he broke his promise--that is regarded as ’cuteness by the natives--but because he refused to share the palm-nuts with his companion--an act condemned by all natives. This is a trait well marked in the native character. Any one of them will scramble and wrangle for as big a portion of anything going as he can get; but once he has it he will share it with any of his family, or his companions, or even with strangers who happen to be present when he is eating it.

Again and again, when I have given portions of food or salt to a boy, the recipient has shared it equally with his comrades. Here is a monkey to be divided among a dozen boatmen. Two of them will be set to clean it and divide it into twelve portions, and they will be very careful to make all the divisions equal, because by an unwritten law, which I have never seen infringed, the two who apportioned the meat will not take their shares until the others have selected theirs. This is a guarantee that all the portions will be alike, otherwise the last would come off very badly. Each as he chooses will select what he considers to be the largest heap; but once he has it, he is quite willing to share it with any or all of his comrades.

There is a delightful absence of proportion in these stories, for in them mice and birds marry young women; a mouse carries the head of a leopard in his bag and brags that he has eaten nine leopards, and although he punishes the elephant and the buffalo he has to cry for help against the hyena; the gazelle eats whole pigs and goats; and a chameleon snarls and the elephant, leopard and other animals run away in terror. Nothing is strange or incongruous in a land where witch-doctors abounded, and were credited with performing wonders by their supposed magical powers. If you questioned any feat, you were at once told most emphatically: “Well, it was done by his magic, or his fetish, or his charm performed it.”

In all the animal stories in this collection the different animals mostly address each other as “uncle,” irrespective of sex; but as this would have been confusing to the reader, I have only retained the term where it fits the sex of the one addressed. In the Congo language there is no gender, and the animals belong to various classes (there are fifteen classes in the Lower Congo language); but directly they are used in stories, and have human characteristics ascribed to them, they are removed from their different classes and placed in the first, or personal, class, e.g. Nsexi is in the second class, and its pronominal prefix is i singular, and zi plural; but being moved into the first class it becomes a person, and its prefix is o singular, and be plural--the animal is no longer an “it,” but a “he” or “she.”

Included in this collection are a few stories that are not animal ones, as "The Water-Fairies save a Child"--a warning to parents not to be unreasonable in their punishments; "The Story of two Young Women"--a lesson on vanity, and that wealth does not always bring happiness; and "The Adventures of the Twins"--a whimsical criticism on how human beings should be made in order to avoid the inconveniences, limitations and troubles that attend their present mode of construction.

The reader must not be surprised to find that some of these stories are similar to those made famous by Uncle Remus,[^[68]] and the reason is not far to seek. About three generations ago the Congo natives were transported in large numbers as slaves to America, and naturally they carried with them their language and their stories. The goobah in Uncle Remus is a corruption of nguba, the Lower Congo word for peanut; and Brer Rabbit is the gazelle,[^[69]] Brer Fox is the leopard, and the Tar-baby is the fetish called Nkondi; but in the Tar-baby a concession is made to civilization, for in Uncle Remus’s account the image is covered with tar to account for Brer Rabbit sticking to it, whereas in what I believe to be the original story the Nkondi image causes the victim to stick by its own inherent fetish power. In “Cunnie Rabbit, Mr. Spider and the other Beef,” there is a story of a Wax-girl, which has all the elements of the Tar-baby, and here again the wax that causes the sticking is a concession, I think, to civilization like the tar.

All raw natives would believe that a fetish by its own magical powers could hold tightly its victim without the aid of such extraneous things as tar and wax. It is apparent that the narrators have lost faith in the magical powers of their fetish, and have introduced the wax and the tar to render their stories a little more reasonable to themselves. It is interesting to note that when Brer Rabbit was thrown among the leaves of the briar bush he unsticks from the Tar-baby, and in the Leopard sticking to the Nkondi the Gazelle “cuts some leaves and made a charm to set the Leopard free.” One can discover many similarities between these stories and those told by Uncle Remus. There is little doubt that most, if not all, the stories of Remus were told around the Congo village fires before they delighted the hearts and lightened the burdens of the negro slaves on the southern plantations of America. Yet is Congo the original home of these stories? Or have they travelled far by devious ways, perhaps even doubling back in their course, so that their real home is now lost in antiquity, and the road to it obliterated by the swamps of time across which the human family has wandered in its many journeyings?

The natives in their talk often use phrases from their stories which are quite sufficient to recall to the hearers the whole fable and its teaching, as “sour grapes” with us conjures up the fox looking with longing eyes at the fruit beyond his reach. Many of these concentrated sentences have become the proverbs of to-day, and the Lower Congo language is rich in such mots, and one could, in fact, gain a very clear idea of the Congo man’s philosophy from an analysis of the sentences culled from their stories which have become their maxims.

In these pages will be found some puzzle stories, such as “The Four Fools” and “The Four Wonders.” These are propounded and cause no end of discussion as to which has performed the greatest feat of skill, and thus earned the fowl that laid money (i. e. beads); and also who had committed the greatest wrong against the usual order of mundane affairs, and thus deserved the most blame. Each fool and each wonder-worker has his adherents, who will argue in his favour with so much vehemence and gesticulation that the listener who does not know them will think them on the verge of a most desperate fight. After long and toilsome journeys the writer has heard his carriers argue about these problem stories far into the night; and they would return again and again to the charge, each individual (or party) supporting his favourite character with all the natural eloquence at his command. Night after night they would revert to the same story in order to give expression to the arguments, in favour of their views, that had come into their minds through the day while journeying with their loads up and down the hills. One problem story has furnished them, sometimes, with sufficient discussion to last four or five nights.