Yoruba Legends
M. I. Ogumefu
Free download available in PDF, epub, and Kindle ebook formats. Skip down page to downloads.
See the front cover of this book (image will open in new tab)
Description
The Yoruba people are an ethnic group from West Africa. This book is a collection of 40 short folk tales.
This book has 60 pages in the PDF version, and was originally published in 1929.
Download for ereaders (below donate buttons)
Last week, around 33,000 people downloaded books from my site - 9 people donated. I really need your help to keep this site running. Please give a small donation - £1, $1 - anything helps. You don't need a PayPal or Stripe account and it only takes a minute.
The buttons below are set in British Pounds currency - click here if you would prefer to donate in USD
PDF ePub Kindle
Excerpt from 'Yoruba Legends'
THE ancient King Oduduwa had a great many grandchildren, and on his death he divided among them all his possessions. But his youngest grandson, Oranyan, was at that time away hunting, and when he returned home he learnt that his brothers and cousins had inherited the old King’s money, cattle, beads, native cloths, and crowns, but that to himself nothing was left but twenty-one pieces of iron, a cock, and some soil tied up in a rag.
At that time the whole earth was covered with water, on the surface of which the people lived.
The resourceful Oranyan spread upon the water his pieces of iron, and upon the iron he placed the scrap of cloth, and upon the cloth the soil, and on the soil the cock.
The cock scratched with his feet and scattered the soil far and wide, so that the ocean was partly filled up and islands appeared everywhere. The pieces of iron became the mineral wealth hidden under the ground.
Now Oranyan’s brothers and cousins all desired to live on the land, and Oranyan allowed them to do so on payment of tribute. He thus became King of all the Yorubas, and was rich and prosperous through his grandfather’s inheritance.
******
A CERTAIN King named Sango sent two slaves to a distant country on an important mission.
In due course they returned, and he found that one slave had achieved successfully what he had been sent to do, while the other had accomplished nothing.
TheKing therefore rewarded the first with high honours, and commanded the second to receive a hundred and twenty-two razor cuts all over his body.
This was a severe punishment, but when the scars healed, they gave to the slave a very remarkable appearance, which greatly took the fancy of the King’s wives.
Sango therefore decided that cuts should in future be given, not as punishment, but as a sign of royalty, and he placed himself at once in the hands of the markers. However, he could only bear two cuts, and so from that day two cuts on the arm have been the sign of royalty, and various other cuts came to be the marks of different tribes.
