African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African Americans 739
PROSE NARRATIVES: THE MAASAI
As if intrinsic delight is not enough, oral traditions also provide commentary on a
people’s history and society. Given the mischief of cultural imagination, however, the
relation of oral literature to a people’s past and present is elusive, as it may serve to
reflect or distort, to explain or rationalize, to assert or deny, or to describe or satirize
history or the social order.
Fortunately, the formal properties of oral production often convey something of the
truth claims implicit in given genres. Maasai oral culture includes both the sung and the
spoken word. Apart from ordinary songs, several forms of lyric poetry and recitation, the
most noted being the sweet Eoko and the rapid, tongue-twisting Enkijuka; the concise
en’dung’eta erashe (skin cutter) or proverbs; riddles called il-ang’eni (for the clever), and
numerous genres of oral narrative, described below.
In The Masai: Their Language and Folklore (1905), A.C. Hollis distinguished
between “stories” (inkatinin [pl.], enkatini [sing.]), “news of long-ago” (L-Omon Li-
Opa), and mythic narratives, also termed “beginnings” (inkiterunot [pl.], enkiterunoto,
[sing.]). Narrative speech in general is called “news” (il-omon [pl.]), and just as one is
said in the Maasai idiom to “eat the news” (ainosa ilomon), in its recounting one also
“eats” or “consumes” a story (ainos enkatini) (Mol 1996, 39). Within Maasai narrative,
Naomi Kipury distinguishes myth and legend, as well as Ogre, Trickster, and Man
stories.
Maasai tales of the “beginning” describe the origins of social multiplicity. Best known
are “The Origin of Cattle” and “Ascending the Escarpment,” each of which involves
movement along a vertical axis that signifies a transit between the human and the
supernatural worlds and the origins of Maasai culture.
The Origin of Cattle
One day God called Maasinta, who had no cattle, and told him to make a large enclosure,
and to wait early in the morning. At the appointed hour, God dropped down a long leather
strap, down which cattle descended into the enclosure. The Dorobo woke up, saw the
cattle coming down, and expressed surprise, saying “Ayieyieyie.” At this, God said to
Maasinta that if these were enough, then he would receive no more, and that he should
love the cattle. Maasainto cursed the Dorobo, that he should remain poor, live off animals
in the wild, and find milk to be poison (Kipury 1983, 30–31).
Here, the genesis of cattle explains the social distinction between the Maasai
pastoralist and the Dorobo hunter, their economic status, and the dominance of one and
subordination of the other, which are all seen to originate through supernatural
intervention, and to be explained by, and justified by, the myth.