The recording of texts in native languages is a lengthy process when the transcriber cannot recognise the different elements in the sentence, which is spoken as a single word. Texts were recorded in most of these languages; but to save time the folk-tales were taken down from the lips of an interpreter and cut down by the omission of the repetitions. In Story XXXII. for example, the formula is repeated for each of the man’s sons and for each of the E.’s sons. Anyone who wishes to reconstruct the original narratives can readily do so by expanding each incident in this way.
The stories from the Ẹdo proper are not included; they are relatively few in number; some will appear in Man, where a Kukuruku fragment was printed in 1917.
Irua, Eša Tribe.
i.
Akpasikoko (mosquito) came out and shouted, “I am a man,” and the leopard said, “Hold your tongue.” “You can say I am not a man; you do the same.” “I broke a hundred calabashes fetching water for my father and a hundred on the way back.” “I do nothing for my father; I want what is black and white, to kill it for my father.” So the leopard said: “Nothing is black and white, only myself”; so he ran away and the squirrel laughed at him.
Obe (a snake) was near, and the squirrel pulled out a tooth and shook it at Obe, so Obe ran and met a bush rat and begged him for room to hide. “I was drying myself and saw the leopard run.” The squirrel laughed and I said: “‘Don’t hurt me‘ '; but he pulled a tooth out, so I ran.” But the bush rat could not give him room; he said that if he did the snake would kill his seven children.
A few days later the snake was in the bush rat’s house and called him, saying: “I will kill your son; he humbugs me”; so the rat said: “He is a boy, he knows nothing.”
