We Cover the Epic of Sundiata here, and the Epics of Ozidi, Dausi, and Askia Muhammad here. And now to the other great epics.
Preface: A Map of Many Fires
From the Sahel’s amber horizons to the green corridors of the forest and the salt breath of the Atlantic, epic song smoulders in many hearths. The heroes and founder-figures gathered here were not told to be the same; each lives in a distinct landscape of custom, faith, and politics. Yet certain rhythms recur: exile and return, vows kept and broken, the cunning of mothers and sisters, the tempering of strength by restraint, the old world of spirits speaking into the new. This collection brings together major epics and founding cycles not yet told in these pages: Hausa, Wolof, Bamana, Mandinka of Senegambia, Fulani of Fuuta, Yoruba and Akan charters, and a handful of celebrated warrior-songs.
Each epic begins with a short cultural background, then an engaging retelling faithful to the classic structure and characters, and closes with a compact thematic reading—what the story teaches outright, and what it teaches by the way its people breathe.
I. THE BAYAJIDDA LEGEND (HAUSA STATES)
Cultural Background
In the savannahs of Hausaland—northern Nigeria and southern Niger today—city-states grew like beads on a trade-thread: Daura, Katsina, Kano, Zazzau (Zaria), Gobir, Rano, Biram. Their shared language and markets did not erase pride in each city’s walls, rulers, and guilds. The Bayajidda legend is the charter by which Hausa lands remember themselves into kinship: a serpent slain at a well, a queen’s marriage, sons who will become ancestor-kings. Griots and palace historians (maroka) tell it at courts and market festivals; smiths and dyers listen as if hearing, once again, how their town’s name came to mean family.
The Tale
There came a stranger from the east, a tall man with dust on his sandals and confidence like a cloak. Some say he fled a quarrel in Bornu; others, an intrigue in far Baghdad. His name: Bayajidda.
He walked until he reached Daura, a walled town whose life depended on the Kusugu well. There, people queued with jars but went away with thirst. A serpent—Sarki, “the king”—dwelt in the well’s cool throat and allowed only one pot of water each Sabath. The queen, Daurama, reigned from a dais beneath a canopy; she kept law and order but had not managed to unseat the serpent.
Bayajidda stood at the well at nightfall when the town was thin with shadow. He listened to frogs and to the weary chatter of women turned away. A girl, a servant of the queen named Bagwariya, whispered to him from behind a wall.
“Stranger, if you go down, you do not come up. The serpent coils round your waist and squeezes until your family forgets your name.”
Bayajidda smiled without arrogance. “Then let him coil round my sword.”
He unwrapped a blade that had crossed deserts without losing its temper and descended the steps into Kusugu. When Sarki rose—the water bulging like a drumskin—the stranger struck: once to announce himself, twice to wake the town, thrice to end the old rule. The serpent’s head thudded onto the steps; its body writhed, then stilled. Bayajidda climbed out with water spattering his legs, lifted the head by the jaws, and laid it on the stones like a gift.
Morning: the square filled. Queen Daurama, veil lifted, looked long at the stranger and longer at the head on the stones.
“What payment do you claim?” she asked.
“A drink,” Bayajidda said, “and the right to stay one night within your walls.”
“What else?” Her eyes measured not only the man but the implications.
“Only what justice offers,” he answered, and he drank.
In the telling most remembered, the queen married him. He became royal son-in-law, then consort-king by a logic old as the savannah: the slayer of a monster may claim a place next to the ruler he saved. From this marriage was born a son, Bawo. But before long, Bayajidda also lay with the queen’s household maid, Bagwariya, who had warned him at the well, and she bore him Karbagari (“he who snatched the town”).
Time ripened. Bawo’s sons are named as founders of the Hausa Bakwai, the “true seven”: Biram, Daura, Katsina, Zazzau, Gobir, Kano, Rano. Karbagari’s male line fathers the Banza Bakwai, the “related seven” allied to the Hausa family: Kebbi, Zamfara, Yauri, Gwari (Gbagyi), Kwararafa, Nupe, Ilorin in some enumerations.
At the naming of princes, the griot always pauses to quote Bayajidda as he stood at the well:
“Water belongs to all who thirst; the one who blocks it claims a kingship he did not earn.”
“Then take yours,” the queen answered, and the land arranged itself accordingly.
Themes and Morals
- Charter by Courage: The slaying of the serpent legitimises the stranger and welds communities into kin through narrative. Moral: Public service is the root of sovereignty; a ruler earns place by removing burdens from the people.
- Queenly Agency: Daurama is no cipher; she chooses as sovereign. Moral: Female rule and consent shape legitimacy as surely as male prowess.
- Kinship as Map: Turning city-states into siblings gives memory a political spine. Moral: Rivalry under kinship is safer than rivalry without it.
II. NDIADIANE NDIAYE (NJAJAAN NJAAY) AND THE JOLOF CHARTER (WOLOF)
Cultural Background
Between river and ocean in today’s Senegal, Wolof lamans (land-holding nobles) governed fields and ponds while traders ferried salt, fish, and cloth along the coast. Out of this web rose the polity of Jolof, remembered through the tale of Ndiadiane Ndiaye (Njaajaan Njaay), a figure part man, part wonder. The story is told by géwël (praise-singers) at courts in Waalo, Cayor, Baol, Sine-Saloum; it is not one rigid text but a bouquet of consistent scenes: a mysterious origin near water, an ordeal of recognition, a knitting together of jealous lamans by charisma and covenant.
The Tale
On the edge of a lake in Waalo, women came to draw water at dawn. One morning they found a child sleeping on the sand, hair curly as tilled earth, skin with a sheen that belonged to no one tribe’s pride. No mother was seen. They took him to Fatim Beye (in some tellings), a woman whose authority in the village was not to be argued with.
“We found him where the lake breathes mist,” they said.
Fatim held the child and felt her arms remember something older than her own life. She raised him. When he sought his name, the elders, after consulting saltigues (seer-priests), called him Ndiadiane Ndiaye.
He grew with an unforced magnetism. When he spoke, men who had been avoiding each other’s eyes looked up and found themselves nodding. The lamans, who had learned to distrust any authority larger than their pond, watched him like cats at the edge of a dance—aloof, entranced.
A test was arranged. A calabash of milk, brimming, would be placed on his head. If he could carry it across the square without a drop spilled while insults flew from all sides, the gods (or God) had chosen him to sit where disputes congealed. Ndiadiane walked. The young men taunted; the old men muttered; women hissed jokes that would make a weaker backbone bend. He set the calabash down without a wet thumb.
The lamans murmured. “Maybe a man who does not spill milk will not spill blood.” They pledged an allegiance carefully phrased: not slavery to a king, but covenant to a coordinator—Buurba Jolof—who would keep the peace, call councils, and hold the canopy when the winds turned stiff.
He travelled through Cayor, Baol, Sine, making alliances as much by listening as by edict. He married strategically. Songs praise the day he stood between two warring lineages and said, low enough for only the first few rows to hear, “If either of you wins alone, you will be alone with your victory.”
Years later, sensing that every love has a season and every covenant a test, he disappeared as strangely as he had arrived, walking back towards the lake until mist swallowed his outline.
At the Jolof court thereafter, when a new Buurba is acclaimed and lamans press hands to hearts in that stiff dance of loyalty and scepticism, the griot sings:
“A calabash once crossed this square without spilling. Remember what you promised when you clapped.”
Themes and Morals
- Charisma and Covenant: Authority is not extraction but orchestration. Moral: A ruler keeps peace by binding equals into a larger self, not by feeding on them.
- Ritual Legitimation: The milk test enacts a principle: composure under insult is a prerequisite for power. Moral: Those who cannot carry full cups through noise should not carry sceptres.
- Water-Born Origin: Emergence from a lake acknowledges a world where the visible and the sacred mix. Moral: Founding myths ground politics in wonder to discipline hubris.
III. DA MONZON OF SÉGOU (BAMANA/BAMBARA)
Cultural Background
On the middle Niger, the Bamana people built the state of Ségou, famous for its ton—age-grade and military associations—and for the way music and organisation marched in step. The Da Monzon cycle, performed by master griots (think of Bazoumana Sissoko’s school), recounts a king’s campaigns: alliances plaited, feints placed like chessmen, generosity given and withheld with purpose. It is less about a single duel than about the ethics of manoeuvre.
The Tale
Drums sounded across the river while the Bara (royal praise-drum) sent messages with strokes known to every courtyard. Da Monzon sat on a mat under shade, watching the river think. Not all kings love councils; he did. “A campaign is lost,” he would say, “first in the head, then in the field.”
Messengers came from a neighbouring chief, Kon Kafono, who had alternated between tribute and insolence.
“Bamana king,” the envoy said smoothly, “our chief sends kola and friendship.”
Da Monzon turned the nuts in his hand. “Friendship tastes sweeter when eaten after apologies,” he replied. He sent back salt, a valued gift, and a proverb: “A canoe returns more easily on a full river.” Kon Kafono took the hint. Tribute followed, as did a pledge to keep raiders off the trade road.
Not all foes could be sweetened. A rival in the south fortified a hill town and mocked Ségou from the walls. Da Monzon sent a hunter to walk the market with open ears. The hunter returned with a whisper. “Their chief fears eclipses and puts the garrison to sleep on nights when the moon dies.” The king nodded. “We will march with the moon.”
On the appointed night, drums were wrapped in cloth. The ton moved like cats. When men on the wall nodded, the gates fell open as if by thinking about it. At dawn the king walked in not like a sacker but like a notary, confirming liberties of potters and weavers, punishing only the few who had delighted in cruelty. The town switched allegiance without needing a new cemetery.
In another episode, a trusted general returned with spoils and a swagger that smelled of disloyalty. Da Monzon called a feast and, before the meat cooled, a praise-singer began a satire light enough to be swallowed, sharp enough to cut.
“A horse that eats its owner’s grain too loudly finds itself sleeping outside.”
Laughter. The general’s ears went the colour of a red gourd. He bowed, and the swagger left his shoulders like a bad spirit.
The cycle closes not with a massacre but with an assembly: captains seated, craftsmen lined up, griots reciting the law of trade and tolls, the king reminding his people that an empire is not a trophy but a schedule. On nights like that, the Niger sounded pleased.
Themes and Morals
- Strategy and Restraint: War is often a failure of listening. Moral: Use intelligence before iron; spare to bind; punish to teach, not to glut.
- Satire as Governance: The griot’s barbed praise keeps the powerful supple. Moral: Permit the song that saves you embarrassment and saves the state your pride.
- Organisation as Heroism: Glory here is in logistics, timetables, and the calm that treats neighbours as future allies. Moral: Statesmen win twice: once by winning, again by the way they win.
IV. BITÒN MAMARY COULIBALY (BAMANA/BAMBARA)
Cultural Background
Before Da Monzon’s careful machinations, a man named Bitòn Mamary Coulibaly gathered youths into a disciplined ton and turned a cluster of villages into the Bambara state centred on Ségou. The epic of Bitòn is about founding by discipline: how to make a river navy, how to bind braggarts to duty, how to turn a band into a banner.
The Tale
Bitòn watched boys waste their heat on private quarrels and thought, “If we do not harness this, the river will carry it away.” He called them to a clearing and set a drum down.
“This is Bara,” he said. “When Bara calls, you come. When Bara instructs, you move. We will be a body with many limbs and one mind.”
Some laughed. He did not argue; he demonstrated. He drilled at dawn, rewarded the punctual with meat, made latecomers sing a comic song about the folly of latecomers. He appointed river-captains and built boats that moved like oiled thoughts. He posted the first code: no theft within the ton; no insult to a mother; no striking of a subordinate without cause; shares of booty to be announced and handed over in the open.
Raids from the north had taught Ségou the taste of ashes. Bitòn took his boats upstream against the current, revealing a patience men mistook for weakness. He landed at a raiders’ base with drums silent, baskets of salt on shoulders. He bartered; he gathered intelligence; at night, when the men who boasted of owning the river slept, he marked the anchorage and the path of the watch. He left; returned; struck; and by noon had their chief eating from a bowl in his camp.
He did not slaughter; he recruited. “Your arm is strong,” he told captives. “Your oath can be stronger.” He made them swear by the names they feared to break. He gave them tasks in the navy; he rotated them with locals so that loyalty tied them to the new order.
Bitòn’s greatness lay not in being loved (though he was), but in being predictable in justice. He punished theft even when a cousin did it. He removed an officer who grew insolent, and then visited him later with a bowl of food to ease the sting publicly. He sat with griots and allowed satire to touch even his own preferences for grandeur. When his men brought him a fine horse, he walked it round the square and then sent it to a young captain whose mare had gone lame, saying, “A mount is a tool first, an ornament second.”
His end came—as founders’ ends often do—from within. A faction tired of discipline sought a shortcut to glory and made the night long. The epic does not glamourise the assassination; it lets the luckless conspirators look small. The Bara drum sounded at dawn anyway, and men came, though there was a tremor in the rhythm.
Themes and Morals
- Discipline as Freedom: Rules free energy to become achievement. Moral: A code is a kind ship: it allows you to sail far without drowning.
- Justice Over Kinship: Impartiality is a cement stronger than affection. Moral: If the cousin does wrong, tie his hands before you tie the stranger’s.
- Institutions Survive Men: The drum sounds though the founder is gone. Moral: Build so that the song can be sung without you.
V. KELEFA SAANE (MANDINKA, SENEGAMBIA)
Cultural Background
Along the Gambia and Casamance rivers, in Mandinka towns where the kora has a long memory, griots keep alive the brave and flawed figure of Kelefa Saane (Sane). He is a warrior of the nineteenth century—chivalrous, generous, proud in the way that makes both friends and errors. His epic is a favourite in the repertory: music thick with galloping ostinato, praises quick as a horse’s breath.
The Tale
Kelefa was born to a home that braided courage and courtesy. As a boy he watched horsemen return, dust in their smiles, and vowed to sit a horse so still his shadow would think him a tree. He trained with cutlass and spear until the cutlass felt like an extra finger and the spear like a thought.
His generosity was prodigal. If a stranger admired his cloak, he handed it over; if a boy stared too long at his stirrups, the boy went home on his horse while Kelefa walked, laughing at his own soft heart.
War called. A tyrant across the river had taxed salt until the poor ate bland grief. Kelefa crossed at dawn, cloak light, arm heavier. He fought in front, not from behind a wall of men. In the mêlée he noticed a soldier protecting children trying to escape across a burnt field. Kelefa shouted, “Hold! Let the children go,” and even those sworn against him hesitated and obeyed. The field remembered that day; grass grows differently where mercy was shown.
At feasts, griots teased him: “Kelefa, your hand is quicker than your thought.” He laughed and gave another gift to the satirist.
Then came the ambush that epics warn but pride rarely hears. Having defeated a rival and spared many, he rode home with too few guards, too openly, through a grove where men who had smiled at his gifts lay waiting with muskets cocked. The first shot took his hat; the second wrote pain in his side. He wheeled his horse, cut down two, took a third’s wrist, then felt the world tip. He said (so the line is sung), “If I must go now, let my horse know the way home.” He fell where the grove ends and the field begins.
Women beat their chests and sang his name with teeth bared at grief. The griot raised the kora and chanted: “A good man’s fault is the shadow of his goodness. Pride follows generosity like a dog that loves too much.” The song is not cruel; it is a clean cut on a wound that would otherwise fester into legend without lesson.
Themes and Morals
- Chivalry and Carelessness: Virtue without vigilance invites ruin. Moral: Be generous; also count the men at the bend in the road.
- Mercy as Strength: Sparing the helpless in battle becomes a line in your praise-name that frightens tyrants more than scars do. Moral: Power that restrains itself multiplies.
- Satire as Affection: The griot’s teasing is not malice but medicine. Moral: Laugh when wisdom comes dressed as a joke.
VI. SAMBA GUÉLADIO DIÉGUI (FULɓE, FUUTA TOORO)
Cultural Background
In the Fuuta Tooro region along the middle Senegal River, the Fulɓe (Fulani) people sing of Samba Guéladio Diégui, a hero-king whose most striking quality is pulaaku—the Fulani code of measured self-control, patience, and modesty. His story moves with the deliberate grace of a man who can fast while others feast and speak quietly while others shout.
The Tale
Samba grew up between pasture and river, learning cattle’s patience and water’s memory. An unjust ruler—greedy for cattle and contemptuous of elders—cast him into exile on a day when the wind blew red and the river pretended indifference. Samba gathered his few things without complaint and left with a sentence that became a proverb:
“Exile is a road; I will return by walking it well.”
In foreign towns he declined provocations and accepted work beneath his station without hunching his back. He kept clean clothes, clean words, and clean accounts. People trusted him with their goods and their daughters’ honour. His name walked ahead of him.
Years later, a messenger found him at a cattle pen, hands gentle on a calf’s neck.
“Fuuta calls. The ruler has turned jackal; elders whisper your name at night.”
Samba returned, not with a mob, but with delegates from towns that had weighed him and found him even. He stood in the square. The unjust ruler strutted on a balcony.
“Dog of exile!” the ruler shouted. “Who gives you the right to bark?”
Samba looked up and said nothing for a long heartbeat. Then: “The one who fed cattle and did not steal milk.”
The crowd heard the code in that line. They turned their backs on the balcony. The ruler’s support fell like a badly tied roof. Samba did not seize; he accepted. He chose judges who spoke slowly; he set taxes that could be paid without selling a daughter; he ate last at feasts and first at fasts. When a border chief insulted him, he sent cloth and a proverb with the gift: “A clean shirt cools anger better than a spear heats it.” The insult ended.
Themes and Morals
- Restraint as Power: Pulaaku is not timidity but tensile strength. Moral: He who governs himself is fit to govern others.
- Return by Merit: Exile tests; return proves. Moral: Do not rush destiny; arrive on time with clean hands.
- Civility as Statecraft: Courtesy and frugality are political tools. Moral: A ruler who eats last rules longest.
VII. SILÂMAKA AND POULLORI (FULɓE)
Cultural Background
This Fulani pair are celebrated not as king and subject but as companions whose loyalty embarrasses tyrants and softens the hearts of witnesses. Their saga is told in Fuuta and beyond, reminding listeners that friendship can be a public virtue.
The Tale
Silâmaka, a prince with a face that made old women smile, met Poullori, a man as quiet as a deep well. A tyrant took offence at their ease together and laid traps to turn them against each other: bribes wrapped in praise, women posed as snares, false messages forged and sent at midnight.
Silâmaka laughed at gold. Poullori shook his head at painted smiles. When a forged message arrived—“Your friend has called you coward before the council”—Poullori walked straight to Silâmaka with the letter open.
“If you wrote this, say so. If you did not, stand up, and let us go to the council together.”
At the council, they handed the letter to a scribe who, reading the strokes of the pen like the tracks of a lizard, said, “This hand belongs to the ruler’s secretary.” The room grew very quiet. Tyranny looked smaller than it had at dawn.
In the end, when force became inevitable, Silâmaka and Poullori fought back to back as if their spines were one bone. The tyrant fell; not many fell with him. Their restraint had kept hatred local.
Themes and Morals
- Friendship as Politics: Transparent loyalty undermines manipulation. Moral: Speak openly with your friend before night makes rumours grow horns.
- Temperance: They refuse both gold and lust when used as tools. Moral: The easiest trap is baited with what you like too much; like less.
- Courage Without Boasting: Their bravery is matter-of-fact. Moral: Do what needs doing; let others write the song.
VIII. FODÉ KABBA (FUUTA JALLON)
Cultural Background
In the Fouta Djallon highlands of present-day Guinea, a movement for religious reform produced leaders with both rosaries and swords. Fodé Kabba (Fodé Kaba) appears in epics as a figure who ties piety to battle while warning that zeal without justice can burn the house it means to purify.
The Tale
Fodé Kabba, student of a marabout, loved the smell of books and leather. But he also loved the way a well-made blade sits in a sheath. When elders complained that chiefs tithed twice and protected never, he rose to speak.
“Faith without justice is a robe without a body. If you pray facing east and your neighbour starves to your west, you have turned away from God.”
His following grew. He wrote letters to chiefs first—firm, courteous, offering reform. Some listened. Others laughed.
He took up the sword, but he kept rules: no burning of granaries, no harm to women and children, no seizing of scholars’ books. In a campaign remembered for its restraint, he surrounded a town and ordered the drummer to beat the slower rhythm, the one that means “We prefer to negotiate.” The gate opened. He replaced the chief with a judge who had once been mocked as “too soft.” Grain prices fell; prayers rose no louder than before but meant more.
Later, when a hot-headed captain burned a hamlet for hiding a tax-collector (a tax-collector who had indeed been cruel), Fodé Kabba flogged the captain publicly and paid reparations. He stood in the square and said, unflinching, “If my men do wrong, I answer first.”
Themes and Morals
- Piety with Policy: Faith is proved by justice. Moral: Pray with your hands as well as your lips.
- Rules of War: Ethical constraints make victory sustainable. Moral: Better one gate opened by patience than ten by fire.
- Accountability: Leaders must answer for followers. Moral: Authority is responsibility, not immunity.
IX. ODUDUWA, ORANMIYAN, AND MOREMI AJASORO (YORUBA CYCLES)
Cultural Background
In southwestern Nigeria, Yoruba kingdoms remember their origin through a set of interlocking cycles centred on Ile-Ife and Oyo. The Oduduwa narrative sanctifies kingship; Oranmiyan carries that kingship outward; Moremi Ajasoro saves the city by bold intelligence and a vow that costs dearly. Bards (àkúnkọ), palace historians (Arokin), and priestly orders keep the stories vibrant.
The Tale
Oduduwa descended—so the priests say—by a chain from the sky, bearing a cock, a handful of earth, and a palm kernel. The world below was water, restless and without focus. Oduduwa scattered the earth; the cock scratched it wide; the palm took root. Dry land appeared and Ife became the navel of the world. Kingship here is not merely political; it is cosmological. To sit on Oke Itase is to agree to balance spirit and soil.
From Oduduwa’s line came Oranmiyan, restless as a horse that hates the stable. He strode north, founded Oyo, left his mark eastward in Benin, then returned whistling a tune that suggests both satisfaction and unfinished business. He established the Alaafin of Oyo and the offices that bridle a king’s mouth: Bashorun and the council who could oblige an Alaafin to “go to sleep” (die) if he became a curse to his people. The constitution wore poetry’s clothes.
Trouble came to Ife in the form of masked raiders called the Ìgbò/Òrìṣà in some tellings (others say Ugbo/Ugho—forest neighbours whose masquerades looked like gods). They struck at night; their grass cloaks made fear crackle on the skin. Warriors failed; charms failed. A noblewoman, Moremi Ajasoro, rose and spoke to the goddess of the river Esimirin:
“If I learn how to save my people, I will return and give you whatever you ask.”
Disguised as a woman lost in the marsh, she let herself be taken and became a wife among the raiders. She listened. She learned that the grass cloaks were dry as old thatch and that fire feared nothing in their camp. One night she escaped, returned to Ife, and said to the chiefs, “When they come, carry fire hidden in calabashes. Let the women sing as if greeting festival. When the masks whirl, throw flame.”
They did. The raiders panicked as fire bit their fear into pieces; the city was spared. The people rejoiced, but Moremi walked with slow feet to the river’s edge. The goddess rose like cool breath.
“I keep my vow,” Moremi said.
“What do you love most?” the goddess asked.
“My son, Olúrọ̀gbó,” she whispered.
The river gave no reply that could be bargained with. Moremi returned to the town and told her child; he bowed without protest and went into the water’s embrace. Ife’s grief was vast. They built his shrine; they celebrated Edi in memory; they learned the price of salvation can be counted in the coin that hurts most.
Moremi’s fame is not merely heroism; it is the moral that rescues are not free. Women sing her name with pride and a salt taste.
Themes and Morals
- Sacred Kingship: Oduduwa’s descent maps kingly duty to cosmic balance. Moral: A crown is a load carried between earth and sky.
- Constitutional Wisdom: Oranmiyan’s offices bind royal power. Moral: Build checks so that dignity does not turn to danger.
- Sacrifice and Civic Love: Moremi’s vow is the knife-edge of public virtue. Moral: Sometimes the city lives because a mother’s heart is cut.
X. OSEI TUTU AND THE GOLDEN STOOL (AKAN/ASANTE)
Cultural Background
In the forested Akan world of present-day Ghana, states rose and fell around gold, kola, and kente. The Asante Confederacy, with Kumasi as its heart, remembers its unity and legitimacy through the descent of the Golden Stool (Sika Dwa Kofi) under Osei Tutu and the priest Komfo Anokye.
The Tale
Rival Akan chiefdoms had worn each other down with stubbornness and expensive wars. Osei Tutu, chief of Kumasi, and his friend Komfo Anokye, a priest whose authority sat lightly because it was complete, gathered the chiefs.
“Let us stop being trees proud of our separate shades,” Osei Tutu said. “Let us be a forest.”
Words alone could not make such men budge. Komfo Anokye announced a rite. He stood in the square, his staff marking earth. He called to Nyame, the Creator; he called the names of ancestors; he raised a white cloth. From the air—so the story says—the Golden Stool descended slowly, as if air had learned to be solid, and landed not on Osei Tutu’s lap but gently on his knees.
“This stool,” Komfo Anokye intoned, “contains the soul of our nation. To seat a backside on it is to insult the breath of our mothers; to sell it is to sell ourselves.”
The chiefs reached forward as men reach for a newborn. They swore oaths. They pledged men to a confederacy with shared war, shared law, shared market dues. When Denkyira, the overlord state, sent the old tax demand, Osei Tutu said, “We have a stool now; we will not pay to sit on it.”
At Feiyase the Asante army met Denkyira’s. Komfo Anokye walked the lines with a plantain leaf in his hand, and men who had feared they would run found their feet planted. The battle turned. Denkyira broke. Asante stood.
Later, an arrogant colonial governor—long after Osei Tutu—demanded the stool to sit on. The Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa led a war rather than allow it. The stool’s sanctity outlasted empires.
Themes and Morals
- Unity Through Sacred Symbol: The stool is constitution made visible. Moral: A nation needs a thing it will not trade.
- Priest and King: Komfo Anokye and Osei Tutu model spiritual and temporal partnership. Moral: Power should be in dialogue with conscience.
- Defence of Dignity: The refusal to let anyone sit on the stool trains a people to resist humiliation. Moral: Guard your meaning with the same zeal you guard your markets.
XI. BAKARIDJAN KONÉ (BAMANA/BAMBARA)
Cultural Background
Among Bamana epics, Bakaridjan Koné stands out as a paragon of loyalty who insists on honour even when kings forget its weight. The episodes vary, but the core is consistent: a warrior whose word is a blade kept sharp; a king who tests the limits of command; a community that learns where obedience ends and self-respect begins.
The Tale
Bakaridjan rode a mare sleek as a palm frond and kept his promises like a miser keeps coins. He served a king who, though brave, enjoyed the game of ordering impossible things to test men’s compliance.
One day the king took a woman from a conquered town and, after months, cast her aside. Later, in a mood for spectacle, he said, “Bakaridjan, take this woman as your wife.”
The warrior bowed, then did a thing that made the court inhale.
“My king, I obey you in all that keeps honour straight. I cannot make a wife of a woman my lord has lain with. I will not take what the law calls my mother.”
The king frowned. Flatterers hissed. Bakaridjan walked to the square, placed his sword on a mat, and said to the griot, “Sing this: A good king may be wrong; a good man must be right.”
Exile followed. On the road he met a merchant whose caravan had been taken by bandits with an irony as sharp as any sword: the bandits called themselves “The King’s Boys.” Bakaridjan tracked them, found their camp, and stood in the path.
“Give back what you stole and go home. If you say the king authorised this, then I serve no king—only law.”
They laughed. He did not. He plucked their pride one finger at a time, returned the merchants’ goods, and sent the bandits back with a message: “If the king sent you, he is no king. If he did not, he will punish you.”
News reached the capital. The king, who had slept badly since the square incident, woke fully and sent for Bakaridjan.
“You were right,” he said simply. “I forgot that a king serves law, not appetite.”
Bakaridjan bowed. “Then I return to serve.”
Themes and Morals
- Limits of Obedience: Loyalty to law outranks loyalty to a person. Moral: A subject’s No can save a kingdom’s Yes.
- Public Conscience: Speaking in the square binds one’s fate to the community’s memory. Moral: Say hard things where the song can catch them.
- Redemption of Kingship: A ruler who admits wrong saves both himself and the story that will be told about him. Moral: Humility is armour stronger than flattery.
XII. OTHER NOTEWORTHY CYCLES AND SCENES (BRIEF RETELLINGS)
To keep the canvas broad, a handful of shorter portraits:
A. NANA TRIBES OF THE SAVANNAH (HAUSA HEROINE EPISODES)
Background: Hausa court cycles include formidable queen mothers and princesses who act as king-makers and strategists.
Scene: In Zazzau, a queen mother refuses a treaty sealed by an insult and, with a proverb—“A market without laughter is a market of debt”—unites rival traders behind a war effort that ends quickly because the enemy can now neither sell nor buy.
Themes: Women’s political craft; economy as leverage; pride cooled by policy.
B. HUNTERS’ CHARTERS (MANDE FOREST EDGE)
Background: Before empires, the hunters’ oaths framed justice in the forest belt.
Scene: Two hunters spare a pregnant doe and later receive a human child as a reward—Do Kamissa—whose “buffalo” spirit will shape destinies far beyond their hut.
Themes: Sanctity of life; reciprocity with the bush; the future’s debt to mercy.
C. EDO/BENIN KINGLIST ANECDOTE (OBAS’ RITES)
Background: The Edo kingdom of Benin has its own royal corpus.
Scene: An Oba must choose between a court favourite and a market-woman accused of witchcraft; he chooses investigation over fear; the market is restored; the court learns that justice nourishes taxes better than terror.
Themes: Procedural justice; royal self-discipline; markets as moral barometers.
(These brief vignettes sit at the edge of epic, but they share its moral grammar.)
Concluding Reflections: What These Epics Add to the West African Constellation
A serpent’s head on a well-step and a queen measuring a stranger; a youth who carries a brimming calabash through jeers; a king who moves armies by drum and proverb; a founder who teaches boys to answer a drum; a horseman whose laughter at satire keeps him human; a Fulani duke whose self-command turns exile into curriculum; two friends who will not let lies live the day; a reformer who counts prayer worthless without justice; a sky-chain and a palm kernel; a golden stool that refuses to be sat upon; a warrior who refuses a king’s command to save the king’s soul.
Across these tales, several notes strike true and keep ringing:
- Legitimacy grows from service. The right to rule is earned by unblocking wells, cooling feuds, feeding markets, and binding equals into covenant.
- Women are architects of history. Queens choose, mothers vow and outwit, wives spy and save, queen mothers steady or shame councils into sense.
- Restraint is a form of strength. From pulaaku to satire, from amulets tied with verses to swords sheathed after one necessary cut, these epics insist that power held back is power multiplied.
- Symbols matter because people decide they matter. Golden stools, war-drums, lake-born infants—these are constitutions sung into being, limits drawn in visible gold and audible wood.
- Law is a song before it is a code. The griot’s performance is not summary; it is ceremony, binding the living to the ancestors’ verdicts and tomorrow’s hopes.
- Sacrifice has a face. When Moremi keeps her vow, when Kelefa falls, when Bakaridjan lays his sword on a mat to tell the truth—these are not abstractions; they are hands and eyes. Remembering them keeps the moral muscle from atrophying.
And always the refrain the epics, in different dialects, agree upon: “The world is old, but the future springs from the past.” If we drink from wells kept open by brave strangers, if we carry full bowls through noisy squares without spilling, if we bind our pride to symbols we refuse to cheapen, then our children will one day sit at the edge of a mat, hear the drum test its skin, and lean in—ready to echo the line that keeps a people whole.
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