The Gossip King // Faru̱k u̱ ke̱t-u̱ ne̱t-u̱t wa u̱s-rem
Abstract
A local king takes it upon himself to right a wrong after hearing about a promiscuous woman. The king approaches the woman’s husband, but he wants to hear none of it. The local king harrasses the husband to the point that the husband takes the entire matter before the high king. The high king then calls the entire chain of gossipers to give testimony as to whether they “saw with their eyes or were they just told” of this promiscuous behavior. In the end, the local king is ordered to seek forgiveness from the husband for his aggressive gossip and harassment.
Citable as
Yohanna, Ibrahim (Speaker), Sunday John (Translator, Transcriber) & Rebecca Dow Smith Paterson (Transcriber, Annotator). 2013. The Gossip King. Manuscript.
A local king takes it upon himself to right a wrong after hearing about a promiscuous woman. The king approaches the woman’s husband, but he wants to hear none of it. The local king harrasses the husband to the point that the husband takes the entire matter before the high king. The high king then calls the entire chain of gossipers to give testimony as to whether they “saw with their eyes or were they just told” of this promiscuous behavior. In the end, the local king is ordered to seek forgiveness from the husband for his aggressive gossip and harassment.
This story was told by Ibrahim Yohanna in a recording made in February 2013 in Tungan Magajiya, Niger State.
It was transcribed in the orthography and translated into English by Sunday John via ELAN. Becky Paterson made the IPA transcription including tone marking and did morpheme-by-morpheme glossing and clause level annotation.
Note: Some Portions of this text appear in my dissertation. The audio is unpublished.
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Rebecca Paterson
Associate Research Scholar
My research interests include field linguistics, grammatical description, and translation.
