The Historiography of Yoruba Myth and Ritual

Abstract

The historiography of African myth begins by documenting, comparing, and interpreting variant traditions. Where documentation is inscriptive and comparison descriptive, interpretation is notoriously complex, embracing a variety of approaches within two methodological extremes. The functionalist extreme -- what Peel calls “presentism” -- defines myth as a charter of political and ceremonial relations in society, and interprets variant traditions as rival political claims. Myth is by this definition a false reflection of the past because it is continually revised to fit the present. The historicist extreme regards myth as testimony of the past in oral societies, incorporating history into a narrative which resists revision and remains historically valid through fixed principles and “chains” of oral transmission. Variant traditions, according to this view, are dismissed as aberrations or contaminations of more authentic texts. Neither approach can evaluate the historicity of African myth unless both are somehow combined, for as the historiography of African oral traditions reveals, both tendencies are present in myth itself. This paper combines both approaches in an interpretation of variant Yoruba myths by examining the relationship between Yoruba myth and ritual.The prevailing approach to variance within the Yoruba mythological corpus follows the historicist narrative of Beier's historiographic method. Beier interprets contradictory accounts of the same events or cultural figures by treating one of the versions, usually associated with the more local-level traditions, as a holdover from a pre-Yoruba aboriginal culture which was modified and assimilated by immigrant Yorubas who descended upon ancient Ife. Although some of his interpretations are plausible, he applies this approach indiscriminately to myth-ritual complexes which do not clearly support his aboriginal theory.