Alright, I need some answers for this cause it’s driving me up a wall, so if any West African, Nigerian or person familiar with West African (Nigerian) folklore can help me with this, I’d be very grateful (sorry both the books and the internet kept using the two locations interchangeably, and as such I’m not sure how widespread this creature/spirit is).
The Abiku. I got a book for Christmas about a ton of folklore and in it it describes them as such, “An insatiable demon of the night which prey upon the Yoruba people of West Africa…its diet consists of children…hide them [children] under mats or blankets so that Abiku will not find them…nobody seems to give a definite description of Abiku…shapeless as smoke…filter his {they only use masculine pronouns for it in the book I’m looking at at the moment} way through the densest thicket of jungle…no stomach (his principal peculiarity), and is therefor obliged to continuously eat.”
But then online, they’re described as spirits of death that latch onto children causing them illness and death, but besides the murder happy fun time with children only, it seems to be a completely different creature. The only other common ground is both versions mention they are arboreal spirits primarily.
So my question is, since the internet and books are not helping me and as much as I enjoy folklore, I’m quite ignorant on a decent chunk of African folklore (the libraries I had growing up really didn’t have much aside from Egyptian mythology and for some strange reason, Anansi stories), are these two separate spirits/creatures? Are they the same and just different aspects were highlighted/ignored in the other version? Is it a regional belief difference in the story? I swear I have tried for years to figure this out on my own, but when you can’t find sources, least of all reliable ones, it can drive you up a wall.
In Schild’s 1975 compilation of West-African fairy tales there is a tale attributed to the Ekoi from Nigeria that I can only seem to find Dutch and German retellings of. Very puzzling. It’s a striking story though. It tells of a time when only women lived on earth and how, when the deity Obassi Nsi accidentally causes one of them to die, the women are gifted a man by way of making amends.
I’ve found notes on how Obassi Nsi used to be female, Mother Earth, while her counterpart Obassi Osaw was the ruler of the sky. This could fit with an earth populated solely by women, but there is also a creation myth where Obassi Osaw creates a man and a woman side by side and Obassi Nsi teaches them how to live on earth.
This one is much easier to find online (in English), but that may also because it’s more compliant with European thought? Other tales from Schild’s bundle are far less obscure, so I wish I could find out where Schild got this extraordinary little origin story from.
I will include my translation of the Dutch under the cut:
In the beginning there were only women on the earth. One day Obassi Nsi, the ruler of the earth, accidentally killed one of the women. The other women were distraught and begged him to kill them all at once, if that was how it had to be, instead of making them die one by one. Obassi Nsi was horrified that he had caused them such pain and to make up for it he told them they could choose any gift they desired from his many possessions.
The women asked him to tell them what it was that he had to offer them. If they heard him mention something they wished for, they would call out “yes” in answer.
Obassi began naming all his possessions. He named the fruits, the birds, the animals, but the women kept saying “no”.
At last he had reached the very bottom of the list and there was only one single thing left he could offer them. “Do you want a man?” he asked.
“Yes!” they all cried as if with one voice, and they took each other by the hand and danced for joy because they would be given such a lovely gift.
So it was that the women took a man to soften the loss of their friend. That is how men came to serve women. Up to the present day they must toil for them, and while a woman who marries officially becomes part of the property of the man, she is still the one that gives the orders. She has the right to demand the impossible and he has to dance to her tune.
The moral postscript puts a bit of a damper on the story for me, but that’s something I’ve seen a lot. I know a Christian folktale from African-American origins that ends on a very similar sentiment.
“With his connections, Eshu can be a powerful ally. But he’s also a Trickster God with a sense of humor and will often throw a spanner in the works to keep life interesting. This could explain why we don’t always get what we want. Be careful — this master of crossroads is also a master of cross-purposes. The perfect deity for the internet age.” (x)
