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| Indigo Flowers (source unknown) |
duguba, yirba, allamba, baaba, banamba[1]
Keep away from us anything that
lacks harmony. Lame cows! stay afar… scabby sheep and weak goats with feeble
legs, stay out of our sight. Do not make our eyelids blush. Do not make us
believe that the second sun has been dislodged from the place where it is. Do
not make us believe that we have strayed from the meadowland where the seven
colours of the rainbow emanate from seven suns to which we give our adoration.
Silé wants to learn from
Foroforondou, daughter of Mori-Mawɗo, about all the various breeds of cows, and
everything which concerns the sheep and its cousin the goat.
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| Marula Fruit (source unknown) |
Indigo ray of the blue sun, I
implore you: open the avenue to the third sun and may the horde of wild beasts
stay down.
Silé is a descendant of Buytorin;
he has only one ambition: to see the sacred cow which nourishes spirits which
are pure with its blessed milk and whitens all that is white.
Lambs without horns, come! Cows
with short horns, come! You who have long horns and bring joy to the shepherd,
come, come! Come all together. Greetings to the bovine victim offered in
sacrifice to serve as a stepping stone of the soul travelling across the spaces
of the great beyond.[5]
Silé has triumphed over his natural reflexes. His movements are regulated.
Sleep has been set free from his eyes and drowsiness dispelled from his eyelids.”
[1] Assuming the incantation here is in the Bambara
tongue, it could mean: “great village, great tree, great God, great
grand-father, great kapok” The kapok tree can grow to a great height and has
prominent roots. Indeed, the initiator in the Kaydara tale lived in the hollow
of a kapok tree. Its flowers are not blue however, but red, white or pink. The white
silky cotton fibre from its seed pods can be used to stuff pillows and
mattresses. Its bark has some medicinal uses. But we speculate that its
connection to blue is that the oil from its seeds could be used in the
preparation of highly valued blue paint from the petals of indigo plants.
[2] Buytorin is the ancestor of those Fulɓe who observe their traditional religion and customs.
They do not recognise or accept ʿUqbah
ibn Nāfi as their ancestor. Buytorin is also considered the eldest son (among seven sons and five daughters) of the first terrestrial couple Kiikala and his wife Naagara (analogous to Adam and Eve in the Bible).
[3] The juice mbajalle
or enɗam comes from the marula or eedi fruit (sing. eedere)
(Sclerocarya Birrea Hochst) which is
a light yellow plum. The urine that is produced on drinking this fermented
beverage is considered sacred. Marula oil produced from the kernel of this
fruit is used in cosmetics.
[4] Doundari is one of the attribute names of Guéno
(God), Master of Koumen.
[5] When a cow dies a natural death, it is considered as
sacrificed by Guéno who takes its living blood; when it is skinned, it does not
bleed. The sacrifice of a cow is made by men to “draw near” to Guéno; the
spirit of the victim becomes that of a future new-born in the family. In Macina,
at the heart of present-day Mali, the sacrifice of cattle took place at the
“people’s sanctuary” (dental), whose
location is no longer known. The meat of the animal was blessed by pastors and
shared among all the members present of the clans of the four Fulɓe family groupings.
A. Hampâté Bâ & G. Dieterlen (1961)
Text in French: http://www.webpulaaku.net/defte/ahb/kumen/
English Translation:
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