African Folktales at Internet Archive: Ijapa the Tortoise, and Other Nigerian Tales

I wrote about the trickster spider Anansi yesterday (Adventures of Spider), and I'll have more to say about Anansi before the week is over, but I want to dedicate today's post to another trickster of west Africa: Tortoise, called Ajapa or Ijapa in Yoruba, one of the languages of Nigeria in western Africa. Thanks to the great Internet Archive, this wonderful book of Nigerian stories is just a click away: Ijapa the Tortoise, and Other Nigerian Tales by Harold Courlander and Ezekiel Eshugbayi.

You may remember Harold Courlander from a couple of weeks ago, when I featured his Treasury of African Folklore, also available for borrowing from the Internet Archive.

Courlander collaborated on this book with a Nigerian author, Ezekiel Eshugbayi. They focus on Yoruba stories in the collection, although there are also some Hausa and Igbo stories, with a glossary and pronunciation guide in the back. There is no introduction but, per his usual style, Courlander includes notes on each story in the back which are very useful, both for understanding each story in its cultural context and also for comparative purposes, and there is a note-before-the-notes which you might want to read first as an introduction to the book (see p. 127); there are some Ijapa proverbs included there too!

The illustrations are by Enrico Arno, who did the illustrations for several other books by Courlander. Here you can see Here you see Ijapa the Tortoise with Ojola the Boa:

And here is Ijapa riding on his horse:

So, if you are curious to learn about this famous west African trickster, Courlander and Eshugbayi's book is a great place to start, and you'll find some other wonderful stories from Nigeria here also:

Ijapa the Tortoise, and Other Nigerian Tales

by Harold Courlander and Ezekiel Eshugbayi

I also should mention again a collection of west African stories that I shared in a previous week; it contains about 20 Nigerian folktales, many of which are about Tortoise also! 

The Orphan Girl and Other Stories

collected and retold by Buchi Offodile