A Drummer's Testament
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Customs regarding the remarriage of widows; chiefs' widows: public bathing and beating; passing through the broken wall
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Contents outline and links by paragraph
Widows are different from other unmarried women
- 1. widows present issues; some people see them as bad luck; others search for them
- 2. people fear widows; many people will not marry a widow
- 3. if a woman is widowed twice, only someone with medicine will marry her
- 4. some people search for widows; different reasons
How widows marry again
- 5. widow's dress: white cloth and scarf; at family house, many men together trying to find her
- 6. to search for a widow, stay with friend to send money to widow's elder; need soothsaying stone
- 7. soothsaying stone is ten-pesewa coin; how the soothsayer and family head hold walking stick over all the stones
- 8. when they choose one stone, family head goes and tells the widow
- 9. the suitor's householder sometimes collects the widow at night
- 10. other suitors may use vua or paɣali to steal the widow
- 11. sometimes fight with chosen husband; widow's family intervenes
- 12. arguments and trickery to send the widow without trouble
- 13. the other suitors collect their money back from the widow's housepeople
- 14. the new husband and the widow will eat karga before sleeping together
- 15. customs regarding sleeping with the widow; white cola; if widow gives birth to a boy
Chiefs' widows are beaten
- 16. dead chief's housechildren beat the widows; not the chief's actual children; mistreated by the chief's wives
- 17. can be protected from beating if have children in the house or family in the town
- 18. widows stay in houses near the chief's house until the funeral
Bathing the widows and how they pass through the broken wall
- 19. on the funeral day, Mba Naa comes from Yendi to bathe the widows
- 20. the bathing attracts many spectators
- 21. how they bathe the widows and dress them
- 22. faithful wives take spears and pass through the broken wall to the grave; drummers beat Baŋgumaŋa
- 23. those who don't pass the broken wall are whipped by Mba Naa; some pay bribes to pass
- 24. how drummers praise widows who pass the wall; family will slaughter an animal
- 25. jealousy and medicine against such widows
- 26. how the widows greet in the town the morning after the funeral and then go to their family houses
Conclusion
- 27. widows talk is different from other women
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Proverbs and Sayings
Somebody's good luck is somebody's bad luck, and somebody's bad luck is somebody's good luck.
Somebody can refuse something, and somebody will want it.
Somebody will see something and refuse it, and you will even give it to him free and he will not want it, but somebody will count money and go and buy that thing.
“Has he got a soothsaying stone?”
No one would chase a widow unless he himself was well-boiled.
If you are not well-boiled and you take a widow, the day you sleep with her, that is the day you will know if you are somebody who will die.
“All your talks have finished today. Your chieftaincy is finished. All your bluffing, and how you were showing yourself, and how you have been talking and doing bad to all the people in this house, it is finished today.”
They heard the mouth of their father.
“Gambeyirsi bihi”: they are children whose mother passed through the broken part of the wall.
“You are the son of a passer through the gambee.”
A widow's talk is different, because she has become a fearful thing.
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Dagbani words and other search terms
- Chiefs and elders
- Mba Naa
- Namo-Naa
- Yaa-Naa
- Proverbs and praise-names
- Gambeyirsi bihi
- Musical terms
- Bangumanga (Baŋgumaŋa)
- Miscellaneous terms
- barazim
- calabashes
- chieftaincy
- cowives
- gambee
- gambee gooni
- housechildren
- housepeople
- karga
- maalam, maalams
- pagali (paɣali)
- pesewa, pesewas
- tanyibga
- vua
- youngmen
- Towns and places
- Dagbon
- Diari
- Kumbungu
- Nanton
- Nyankpala
- Savelugu
- Tibung
- Tolon
- Voggo
- Wariboggo
- Yendi