African Proverbs: Kru proverbs from Liberia

Along with folktales of all kinds, proverbs are another special interest of mine, and one of the most exciting things about learning more about Africa and African traditions is learning about African proverbs.

Given the thousands upon thousands of African proverbs that have been translated into English and published in books and articles, I need some way to focus my collecting. So, no surprise, I have decided to focus on African proverbs that feature animals. (No surprise because my favorite stories are also the ones about animals.)

So, I started reading and taking notes today, and just by chance the first article I grabbed was Kru Proverbs from Liberia collected by anthropologist Melville Herskovits and his Kru colleague, Sie Tagbwe, as published in the Journal of American Folklore in 1930 (with a very moving tribute to Mr. Tagbwe who died shortly before the article was published). 

It's an exemplary collection: there are 199 proverbs, each with the Kru language version (more about the Kru people), an interlinear English translation, a more free English translation, plus a detailed commentary from Mr. Tagbwe to explain the meanings of the proverbs. I'm taking notes in a Google Doc for all the proverbs that mention animals; so far, that is almost half of the proverbs, or 25 out of 61 (I still have lots more to read!).

Of those 25 proverbs, there were 10 that seemed to me people would enjoy without lots of detailed notes about the cultural context, so I made Google Slides for each of those with an image of the animal, the proverb in English, plus a sort of footnote at the bottom of the slide containing information about the source plus a link to my Google Doc, along with the image credit, and a sentence or two of commentary if needed, especially if I changed the wording of the English. Here's the slideshow, and I've embedded that also in the sidebar of this blog down at the bottom:

I've also created a Padlet where I am putting the slides since that is a way to "see" all the slides at once (you can then click on an item in the Padlet and it will display at full size). Here's a link to the Padlet.

The main reason, though, for making the Padlet is so that I can have an RSS feed. That means as I add the new items to the Padlet, they show up in Inoreader, which means they also show up in the RSS feed on my homepage at LauraGibbs.net:

So, that's the overall plan for how I will be working on African animal proverbs along with the work I'm already doing on African folktales too. I may adjust the routine as I go along, but right now it's feeling pretty good. I promise hundreds more to come!

Meanwhile, I'm taking it as a kind of cosmic sign that I picked this article about Kru proverbs to get me started because it turns out the Kru people have a very distinctive style of animal proverb. There are proverbs that use imagery, just as you would expect. For example: It doesn't do any good to strike the ground after the snake has passed. You have to see opportunity in the moment; if you wait, it will slither away, quick as a snake slithers away.

But here's something really fascinating: in addition to proverbs with animal imagery, the Kru people also tells proverbs that are presented as "so-and-so" says proverbs, like this: Dog says, "Because I beg for food, I can't speak my mind." The meaning of the proverb is basically like the English "Beggars can't be choosers," but the proverb has a totally different feel to it by being presented in the animal's words.

As the article explains, this "(animal) says" is a distinctive Kru style of proverb. Of the 61 proverbs, I've read so far, 15 are in this "(animal) says" style. I'm excited to keep reading through the rest of the proverbs to see how many more of them I will find!

I'll be back with another post as I continue to work my way through this beautiful collection of proverbs. :-)