The Yoruba Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa

The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa is a book by Alfred Burdon Ellis, first published in 1894. It is a detailed ethnographic study of Yoruba-speaking communities on the West African coast, examining religion, manners, customs, laws and language.

The work collects myths, proverbs, ceremonies and folk-tales, and includes comparative material on neighbouring languages and speech communities. Ellis’s account reads as a thorough late-Victorian field study: rich in direct observation, vocabulary lists and ritual description, it remains a useful historical source for students of West African history, folklore and comparative linguistics.

Modern readers should approach it as a product of its time — valuable for primary material on Yoruba religion and social life, while also reflecting the colonial-era perspectives that shaped nineteenth-century anthropology.