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The Fowl and the Cat: A Swahili Poem in the Tikuu Dialect

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Alice Werner
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Extract

A letter received some time ago from my Lamu correspondent, Muhammad bin Abubakar (commonly known as Muhamadi Kijuma), contains a passage which may be translated as follows:—

“Behold these verses: I obtained them from the Watikuu (that is to say), from an aged woman of Rasini; it contains a testimony (to the ancient glories) of Emezi, which was a great country [city?] with mansions of stone, very large, and before the Arabs settled in Africa, it was already in ruins. It lies to the south of Waraka.”

Type
Papers Contributed
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , June 1924 , pp. 527 - 531
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1924

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References

1 Nti is the word, but the writer may have meant mui (mji).

2 Stigand, , The Land of Zinj, p. 168Google Scholar; see also p. 34. For Emezi, see pp. 29, 44.

3 For examples, see Stigand, loc. cit., and Taylor, African Aphorisms, p. 18.Google Scholar

4 Kuku is used metaphorically (and contemptuously) for persons of low or servile condition; cf. the proverbs kuku haekwi shahidi, wala hajui sharia (“A fowl is not set as a witness, nor does it know the law”), and kuku na mavi mlowe: ukumuwasa aleni? (“What's bred in the bone…”); also Kuku mwenye kuvaa viatu, for a parvenu— slaves being forbidden to wear sandals.