After writing about African epics last week, I'm going to zoom in from big to small, focusing this week on proverbs. I'll be honest: my passion for proverbs is even greater than my passion for fables and stories; one of the reasons I gravitated to the study of fables is because of the close connection between fables and proverbs, which is true all over the world, and in Africa especially. Africa abounds in fable traditions, and it abounds in proverb traditions also, so I will have lots of books to share here in the blog this week.
The best proverb books IMO are the ones that provide the original language version of the proverb together with the translation, ideally along with some interpretation also. Even if you cannot speak the original language, proverbs are so short that you can often get a sense of the linguistic structure of the proverb, seeing the parallelisms, rhyme, etc. So, to get the week started, I'll share four old books of African proverbs that include the original language along with the English translation.
The oldest of the four books dates to 1905: Hausa Proverbs by G. C. Merrick. The book provides the Hausa text and English translation, and many of the proverbs also have some notes to help in interpretation. This book also has a selection of riddles too; there's a close connection between proverb and riddle traditions since both are based on the listener "figuring out" the meaning. You can find out more about the Hausa people of Nigeria at Wikipedia.
The next book is from 1905: Nupe Proverbs by A. W. Banfield. The Nupe people also live in Nigeria; find out more at Wikipedia. Again, you will find the Nupe text here, an English translation, plus occasional commentary:
The third book, from 1921, is: Mongo Proverbs and Fables by E. A. Ruskin. As the title indicates, this book contains proverbs and stories; the commentary on the proverbs here often takes the form of parallel sayings in English and/or French. The Mongo are a Bantu people of central Africa; you can find out more at Wikipedia.
The final book is note dated, but it was published sometime in the early 20th century: The Sayings of the Wise: Ibibio Proverbs and Idioms by Anietie Akpabio. The Ibibio people are also from Nigeria; you can learn more about them at Wikipedia.
This book is a bit different than the other three in that it was written by an Ibibio speaker for the purpose to teaching Ibibio language to (presumably) British colonial officials. As a result, the book does not feature English translations for all the Ibibio proverbs, but it does offer commentary on many of them, and sometimes provides a translation. So, this book is not as straightforward to use as the other three (which emphasize the English translations), but you can still learn a lot from exploring here.
So, even if you have just a few minutes to explore some proverbs, these books can help. One of the great things about proverbs is that even though they are ultra-short, they can really grab you and make you think about something in a new way. I'll be back tomorrow (and all week!) with more African proverb books to read and explore at the Internet Archive.
Now I'll close this post with some proverb and riddle books I've already written about in earlier posts:
by R. S. Rattray
by Ashley Bryan
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